The Michael Knowles Show - February 27, 2026


Ep. 1921 - Evacuation In Israel As Bombs Prepare To Drop In Iran


Episode Stats

Length

47 minutes

Words per Minute

174.47812

Word Count

8,283

Sentence Count

711


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Investing is all about the future.
00:00:02.000 So, what do you think is going to happen?
00:00:04.000 Bitcoin is sort of inevitable at this point.
00:00:06.000 I think it would come down to precious metals.
00:00:09.000 I hope we don't go cashless.
00:00:11.000 I would say land is a safe investment.
00:00:13.000 Technology companies.
00:00:15.000 Solar energy.
00:00:16.000 Robotic pollinators might be a thing.
00:00:18.000 A wrestler to face a robot?
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00:00:30.000 We have a new episode of Bar Fight coming out tomorrow
00:00:32.000 with guests Leftist Blondie and Brian Allen.
00:00:35.000 Check out this teaser.
00:00:37.000 You break the law?
00:00:38.000 GTFO.
00:00:39.000 You people are crazy.
00:00:40.000 Hold on, you opposed to the death of a child molester?
00:00:42.000 I, for one, am not opposed to the death of child molesters.
00:00:46.000 Why are men committing suicide more than women then?
00:00:49.000 Because of you.
00:00:50.000 If they're not as opposed to them.
00:00:51.000 Okay, alright.
00:00:52.000 Damn.
00:00:53.000 Let's go.
00:00:54.000 That's it. That's the end of the round.
00:00:55.000 Well, welcome to Bar Fight.
00:01:01.000 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:01:02.000 I'm joined tonight by two guests.
00:01:04.000 Our first guest dedicates most of her time
00:01:07.000 to combating the patriarchy online.
00:01:09.000 Please welcome Leftist Blondie.
00:01:11.000 I think we need to all realize, like,
00:01:13.000 we're in a room of crazy people.
00:01:14.000 And now our next guest.
00:01:16.000 He's the founder of Allen Analysis,
00:01:18.000 where he takes on government overreach,
00:01:20.000 corruption, and media bias.
00:01:21.000 A noble pursuit.
00:01:23.000 It's Brian Allen.
00:01:31.000 Episode 10 of Bar Fight comes out tomorrow,
00:01:32.000 5 p.m. Eastern, only on Daily Wire Plus.
00:01:35.000 A left-wing anarchist who set off an explosive
00:01:38.000 at one of my speaking events gets out of prison early.
00:01:40.000 The Clintons testify under oath about their involvement
00:01:43.000 with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:01:44.000 And the State Department orders
00:01:45.000 a diplomatic evacuation of Jerusalem
00:01:47.000 as the U.S. prepares to go to war with Iran.
00:01:50.000 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:01:51.000 This is the Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:52.000 Welcome back to the show.
00:02:11.000 The Daily Wire is making a new action movie.
00:02:14.000 The details not yet totally announced.
00:02:18.000 And it's got a big Hollywood star in it.
00:02:20.000 We'll get to that momentarily first.
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00:03:53.000 Before we get into all the rest of the news, our next war in the Middle East, etc., etc.,
00:03:59.000 a little news closer to home.
00:04:01.000 I learned yesterday from Andy Ngo, the intrepid reporter and expert on Antifa,
00:04:07.000 that an Antifa member who showed up to one of my speaking events,
00:04:12.000 now two and a half, almost three years ago in Pittsburgh,
00:04:16.000 and who set off an explosive, seriously injured a female cop.
00:04:21.000 That guy's going to get out of prison early.
00:04:24.000 According to Andy, a convicted Antifa member and bomber who injured a female police officer
00:04:29.000 with a homemade explosive has been released to a halfway house
00:04:31.000 in his 60-month federal prison sentence.
00:04:34.000 Brian DePippen, his wife, pled guilty to trying to blow up people
00:04:38.000 attending a Michael Knowles event at the University of Pittsburgh in 2023.
00:04:41.000 The female officer required surgery for her injuries.
00:04:43.000 She was out of work for like a year and really, really messed up her life.
00:04:46.000 Here's the key in Andy's reporting.
00:04:49.000 The terror couple have remained unrepentant and are praised by Antifa terrorists
00:04:55.000 for their political violence.
00:04:56.000 His wife, Crystal DePippa, only received probation.
00:04:59.000 She got a slap on the wrist.
00:05:00.000 The plea deals, in both cases, really were pretty outrageous.
00:05:03.000 At least the guy got a little bit of justice, a little taste of it.
00:05:08.000 But, Andy goes on, both of them are seeking to violently overturn the system that has shown them great mercy.
00:05:14.000 Let's just go to nocomment.com.
00:05:16.000 And this is a post from one of the Antifa groups that was supporting this terror couple.
00:05:22.000 Good news, Pepe, I guess the guy's name, he goes by Pepe.
00:05:25.000 Pepe entered the halfway house today.
00:05:28.000 And what did he say?
00:05:29.000 Here's a quote from him.
00:05:30.000 I exited the closed prison today for the open prison of community confinement, a halfway house.
00:05:37.000 From within and against these prisons, it is clear that abolition is only rational if we seek war's end.
00:05:43.000 Abolition meaning the abolition of prisons.
00:05:46.000 So, I don't know why this guy is getting out early.
00:05:49.000 I don't know why they're releasing him to a halfway house.
00:05:51.000 Because by all appearances, he's completely unrepentant.
00:05:54.000 And I think this is true with a lot of the left.
00:05:57.000 Well, I guess that explains it.
00:05:59.000 Because I think a lot of the left, including judges, including prosecutors, including politicians, they are unrepentant in their defense of political violence.
00:06:10.000 We saw this in the weeks and months after Charlie was assassinated.
00:06:14.000 We saw that a huge swath of the left justified political violence, even celebrated political violence.
00:06:20.000 Here we have this again.
00:06:22.000 Now, the guy already got a slap on the wrist.
00:06:25.000 This guy should have been in prison for at least 10 years, maybe more.
00:06:28.000 He seriously injured people.
00:06:29.000 He threw an explosive at them.
00:06:30.000 He could have killed people.
00:06:32.000 And he gets out within, what, two, three years, halfway house.
00:06:38.000 Not a good sign.
00:06:39.000 And it's a reminder of the importance of elections.
00:06:43.000 It's a reminder of the importance of holding political power.
00:06:48.000 This is not just a game.
00:06:50.000 This is not just debate club.
00:06:53.000 We have an increasingly radicalized left, so radicalized that even the Atlantic Magazine admits just last year that political violence now, terrorism, is primarily a left-wing phenomenon.
00:07:05.000 They want to kill us.
00:07:09.000 They have the support of many people within the government.
00:07:14.000 And they are totally unrepentant.
00:07:16.000 Not a good sign.
00:07:17.000 We should pray for this guy and for his wife.
00:07:19.000 Hope that his heart is changed.
00:07:21.000 His mind is turned.
00:07:23.000 Not a good sign.
00:07:24.000 Speaking of left-wing violence, really disturbing story, though not a surprising story, out of Florida.
00:07:30.000 A Florida teenager, a girl, has murdered her mom and her stepdad for misgendering her because you probably knew how this story was going to end before I even finished it.
00:07:43.000 You already knew.
00:07:44.000 I paused on girl.
00:07:45.000 You knew how this was going to end because it seems that every week now, maybe more than every week, there was another trans-involved killing.
00:07:52.000 This girl, who identifies as a boy, killed her mom and stepdad for, quote-unquote, misgendering her.
00:07:58.000 What is it that you're doing or that she's doing that's not fair to you?
00:08:03.000 Well, me and her would have a lot of arguments about things, especially over, like, me being trans.
00:08:09.000 So she'd be like, you're not a real boy and blah, blah, blah, and all, you know, the whole spiel of transphobic stuff.
00:08:16.000 Okay.
00:08:17.000 She doesn't approve of your lifestyle that you're, she doesn't approve of that.
00:08:22.000 Would you say that she's, she was, like, trying to kind of meet me in the middle, but it wasn't really working all that well all the time.
00:08:30.000 She would try to call me child instead of, because it's more, like, gender neutral rather than kind of meeting in the middle, I guess.
00:08:37.000 Okay.
00:08:38.000 Is she misgendering you?
00:08:40.000 Yeah.
00:08:41.000 So when you guys are arguing, is she intentionally, you know, calling you she or not using the appropriate pronouns or not referring to you as Jasper and referring you as Julia?
00:08:52.000 Wow.
00:08:53.000 So here, the teenager is saying, yeah, and you know, my mom, she actually did try to meet me in the middle and would just try to avoid the pronoun issue altogether, but I murdered her anyway.
00:09:02.000 What's, I don't have, I don't have much to conclude about this story other than here's yet another data point, another day, another example of a trans identifying person flying off the handle and killing people.
00:09:18.000 We can ask why this is, there might be a physical explanation.
00:09:22.000 I remember, this is probably a couple years ago now, I interviewed a gal who was transitioning to a boy, or you can't really do that, but pretending to transition to a boy, just like this one.
00:09:33.000 And she said she was filled with rage and with much increased lust when she was injecting the testosterone.
00:09:40.000 So that stands to reason, maybe there was a physical cause of this, you know, just when you inject a girl with a lot of testosterone, weird things start to happen.
00:09:50.000 But we see plenty of guys who identify as girls who also shoot people and kill people.
00:09:56.000 So there might be a deeper problem here, which is that transgenderism is a rebellion against the most basic limits that are imposed upon us.
00:10:07.000 It's a rebellion, not just against a moral order or political order or a church or even a family, but against one's very self, one's very nature.
00:10:17.000 So no surprise there that someone who would seek to kill oneself, the transgender transition is a kind of ritual suicide.
00:10:26.000 This is why they refer to their names given at birth as dead names.
00:10:30.000 You know, it's a kind of a rebirth, like a phoenix rising from the ashes in their minds.
00:10:34.000 It's no surprise that someone who would kill one's own self in a ritual would also kill one's parents.
00:10:41.000 To liberate one from oneself, certainly one would try to liberate oneself from one's parents.
00:10:47.000 In any case, the other thing to conclude from this is here is yet another example of left wing violence that will not be counted in the statistics.
00:10:55.000 Even to the point on the guy who tried to blow us up in Pittsburgh, when the debates were happening after Charlie's assassination over the left and the right committing political violence.
00:11:10.000 You heard this line from the left a lot. They said, well, actually, the left commits relatively little political violence.
00:11:15.000 You can look at the statistics and in the data set. So I did.
00:11:17.000 I went into the data sets and I realized that the most prominent examples of left wing political violence in the last few years weren't even showing up there, including the one against me in Pittsburgh.
00:11:28.000 That didn't show up the BLM violence that killed dozens of people that didn't show up as left wing violence.
00:11:33.000 A lot of the trans violence, the transvestite who shot up the Christian school in Nashville doesn't show up in in registers of left wing violence.
00:11:40.000 And I bet this one won't either. They'll say this wasn't a political motivation.
00:11:43.000 It was about identity and a family dispute. And they'll come up with all sorts of ways to cover up the problem.
00:11:48.000 So we now know, even from liberal sources, that political violence is a left wing problem.
00:11:54.000 And they're not even counting much, if not most of the left wing violence.
00:11:58.000 OK, speaking of death and destruction, looks like we're about to go to war with Iran imminently.
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00:13:22.000 We might be going to war with Iran.
00:13:25.000 I know, look, we've been hearing that for some of us every single year of our lives.
00:13:30.000 Iran is on the brink of a nuclear weapon, and we are on the brink of war with Iran.
00:13:34.000 We've been hearing this for a long, long time.
00:13:36.000 However, the situation does appear to have gotten a little more imminent.
00:13:40.000 The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem is telling diplomatic workers that if they want to leave the state of Israel, they should do so immediately.
00:13:49.000 Not just catch the next flight back to the United States.
00:13:52.000 The embassy is reportedly telling diplomats and staff, get on any flight out of Israel, any flight to anywhere.
00:14:00.000 And from anywhere, you can get a flight to the United States.
00:14:03.000 But if you want to get out, you got to get out now.
00:14:06.000 Now, would seem to suggest we are edging closer and closer to war.
00:14:10.000 We've been waiting for this for months now.
00:14:12.000 And you saw a similar buildup, actually, with Venezuela.
00:14:15.000 A buildup of military assets outside of Venezuela for weeks and months and then, before you know it, a strike.
00:14:23.000 Well, we've been seeing a huge buildup of military assets in Iran.
00:14:27.000 We've been seeing a buildup of a causus belli, the case for war, which says that Iran is trying to rebuild their nuclear program.
00:14:36.000 Iran hasn't exactly been shy about that.
00:14:38.000 They've said they want a nuclear program for a long time.
00:14:41.000 They say it's only for peaceful purposes.
00:14:43.000 I don't exactly believe the mullahs.
00:14:45.000 But in any case, Politico is reporting an attack looks imminent.
00:14:50.000 Senior advisors to President Trump would prefer Israel strike Iran before the United States launches an assault on the country.
00:14:58.000 They think that would be politically easier for the administration if Israel launches the strike first.
00:15:04.000 Israel, obviously, in much more imminent threat from Iran than the United States is.
00:15:09.000 But the United States, because we're the global empire, has assets all over the region.
00:15:14.000 So if Iran wants to hurt us, they can hurt us.
00:15:16.000 We have assets all over the place, all over there.
00:15:21.000 A couple of takeaways here.
00:15:22.000 One, the administration appears to be unified.
00:15:26.000 The left is always trying to find little chinks in the armor.
00:15:29.000 They're always trying to find little divisions of the administration.
00:15:32.000 Pitting Trump against Vance, or Vance against Rubio, or this advisor against that advisor, whatever.
00:15:39.000 But when you look at the administration from the top on down, the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, and everybody else.
00:15:45.000 They're showing a unified front.
00:15:47.000 They want a diplomatic resolution in Iran.
00:15:50.000 But they're recognizing that Iran does have nuclear ambitions and that war is possible.
00:15:57.000 The other takeaway here is, President Trump clearly really does want a diplomatic resolution.
00:16:04.000 I think most Americans do because we still have trauma from the Iraq war, which was so bungled, so many times bungled, and so horribly bungled in the 2000s.
00:16:15.000 So I think a lot of people do not want to go to war with Iran.
00:16:18.000 They want to get rid of the mullahs, but they don't want to go to war with Iran.
00:16:24.000 It's kind of like the public opinion polls in Minnesota.
00:16:29.000 The majority of Americans want mass deportations, and also the majority of Americans think that ICE is going too far, carrying out deportations.
00:16:36.000 Well, obviously, those two things are in conflict.
00:16:39.000 So, I think Trump wants a diplomatic solution.
00:16:42.000 The fact that he keeps tipping his hand, the fact that you're getting all of this reporting from Politico and elsewhere, it looks like the U.S. is on the brink of war, to me suggests Trump is signaling to the mullahs, hey, guys, make a deal with us because we're serious.
00:16:56.000 If Trump just wanted to go to war with Iran, you wouldn't read any reporting about it.
00:17:00.000 Now, how would war look?
00:17:01.000 Got to give a hat tip here to the economist Philip Pilkington, great economist who writes for various post-liberal outlets and other outlets.
00:17:10.000 He dredged up this report from the Brookings Institution in September of 2012.
00:17:17.000 Headline, simulated war between U.S.-Iran has a grisly end.
00:17:23.000 This comes from an interview on NPR's All Things Considered, a show that I was actually on just the other day.
00:17:28.000 I was on it two or three days ago.
00:17:29.000 It's worth reading, and it's worth listening to the interview.
00:17:32.000 Iran is not Venezuela, okay?
00:17:38.000 Iran is not Venezuela.
00:17:40.000 Iran is not Afghanistan.
00:17:42.000 Iran is a real country, and the Iranian government has real contingency plans.
00:17:46.000 So, on the one hand, we have to say President Trump has a great record on foreign policy.
00:17:51.000 President Trump, over the last decade, has earned a lot of grace and a lot of credibility when it comes to foreign policy.
00:17:57.000 Because basically, every single thing he's done in foreign policy, I actually can't think of an exception, going back to the first term, even.
00:18:06.000 They've all worked out really, really well.
00:18:08.000 Most recently, the strike on Iran's nuclear sites.
00:18:11.000 Obviously, the decapitation of the Maduro regime in Venezuela, which kept the regime in place, but took out the bad guy who was wanted in the United States and dropping the Moab.
00:18:20.000 And it's worked out pretty well.
00:18:23.000 So, even with Russia, you know, the Ukraine war only really kicked off after Trump was booted out of office by the powers that be.
00:18:32.000 So, he's got a really good record, and that's why I do trust the admin considerably on this.
00:18:37.000 However, Iran is not Venezuela.
00:18:41.000 Iran is a real country.
00:18:44.000 Iran is not Afghanistan.
00:18:46.000 Iran is a real country.
00:18:47.000 And the Islamic regime, look, we'd all love for the Islamic regime to go away.
00:18:53.000 I was talking to some foreign policy people about U.S. grand strategy just a few weeks ago.
00:18:56.000 So, what do you think?
00:18:57.000 Should the U.S. go in and get rid of the Iranian regime?
00:19:00.000 And the universal answer seems to be, well, if we could do it in 88 minutes, you know, if we could do it like the Maduro operation, boy, wouldn't that be great?
00:19:08.000 No love lost for the Malas, for the Islamic regime in Iran.
00:19:11.000 They've been our enemy since 1979.
00:19:13.000 So, yeah, that would be great.
00:19:16.000 Would that it were so simple.
00:19:18.000 But the war games suggest it probably wouldn't be that simple.
00:19:23.000 We don't know how that war would end.
00:19:25.000 We could reinstall the Shah or the crown prince, the son of the Shah.
00:19:30.000 He seems to be the most unifying figure for Iran.
00:19:34.000 Would he take?
00:19:37.000 Would that work?
00:19:38.000 Would it?
00:19:39.000 Plenty of Iranians hate the Malas, but would it, or would it descend into civil war and chaos?
00:19:44.000 Would we have a repeat of Iraq?
00:19:46.000 One point worth observing is that we have done coups in Iran before.
00:19:52.000 1953, there's a CIA coup in Iran, and that was when we got rid of the socialist Mosaddegh, and we helped solidify the power of the Shah.
00:20:03.000 That lasted until 1979.
00:20:05.000 So you're talking 26 years.
00:20:07.000 1979, the mullahs come in.
00:20:10.000 It's now 2026.
00:20:12.000 We've wanted to oust the mullahs for almost twice as long as we had the Shah in there in full power.
00:20:19.000 And the mullahs have held on almost twice as long as the CIA regime that we previously had in Iran.
00:20:24.000 I trust this administration on foreign policy more than basically any administration in my lifetime.
00:20:34.000 George H.W. Bush was very good on foreign policy, too.
00:20:36.000 I was two years old during that administration, so I don't remember that one that well.
00:20:39.000 But this is not the same decision as taking out Maduro in Venezuela or dropping the Moab or really any of the decisions we've seen in Trump's foreign policy.
00:20:54.000 The stakes are very, very high here.
00:20:58.000 If we strike Iran and it works out, it will be one of the crowning achievements of U.S. foreign policy of the last hundred years.
00:21:08.000 And if it doesn't work out, it will destroy the Trump administration.
00:21:13.000 Those are the stakes.
00:21:15.000 I'm glad I don't have to make the call.
00:21:17.000 Those are very serious stakes.
00:21:19.000 Saying of Muslims, New York City workers, sanitation workers here, are in uniform saying a Muslim prayer before a meal in the office with the mayor.
00:21:30.000 We'll get to that.
00:21:31.000 Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?
00:21:33.000 Seems like in America now we have a separation of church and state, but not a separation of mosque and state.
00:21:37.000 We'll get to that.
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00:23:12.000 My favorite comment yesterday is from UKRL Vivrum, who says, good to know that Martin Luther King Jr. was not assassinated.
00:23:21.000 It was death by gun violence.
00:23:22.000 Yes, this in response to that Democrat rep who says that Charlie Kirk was not assassinated.
00:23:26.000 Okay.
00:23:27.000 Some sanitation workers in New York, this was initially wrongly reported as cops in New York, but sanitation workers, but uniformed in New York, say a Muslim prayer before a meal with Zoran Mamdani.
00:23:41.000 This is old Ron there, he's in his old mayor outfit.
00:23:57.000 Okay, I don't know.
00:23:59.000 These guys, maybe they're secret Muslims, but they just look like a bunch of New York Goombas to me.
00:24:04.000 weird to see them saying a Muslim prayer. What happened to the Libs whining about separation of
00:24:11.340 church and state? Don't we always hear that? You put up a Santa Claus in the town square. They say
00:24:16.000 this is a sign of creeping theocracy. They say we need to get religion out of government. They
00:24:21.040 pretend that the United States government is based on a separation of church and state. That's not
00:24:27.420 true in the first place. I wrote a lengthy book, actually, in no small part about that, called
00:24:32.240 Speechless Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, which is available, thank you, anywhere you buy
00:24:35.700 fine books. But it shows us, actually, as that book endeavors to show, the Libs don't care about
00:24:44.380 the separation of church and state. They want to separate the state from your church. It's not that
00:24:51.460 the Libs don't like any form of religion. They don't like your religion. They don't like the true
00:24:59.460 religion. They don't like Christianity. They love all sorts of false religions, though.
00:25:04.480 Just like the Libs' take on free speech is not that we need total free speech or we need total
00:25:10.220 censorship or anything like that. It's that they don't like your speech. They're not anti-free
00:25:15.800 speech. They're anti-your speech. They want to make your speech taboo, and they want to make their speech
00:25:21.440 mandatory. You will use the right pronouns, or else you're going to get murdered, by the way.
00:25:26.700 I'm sorry. You will use the wrong pronouns, or else you're going to get murdered.
00:25:30.960 They will impel plenty of speech, and they will ban plenty of speech. They don't like your speech.
00:25:36.380 They don't like your religion. But every society is going to have some kind of religion.
00:25:44.220 We're all going to have some kind of prayer, some kind of ritual before we eat.
00:25:48.740 For Christians, we say grace. For Muslims, they do whatever Zoran and the sanitation workers just did.
00:25:54.520 And for liberals, they toast the mimosa. That's the liberal grace before meals. But there will be
00:26:02.560 something, because we're bodies, and we move in time and space, and we do stuff. And those little
00:26:08.340 mores, those little habits, are culture. And culture comes from the same root as cult.
00:26:13.040 Has a lot to do with religion. Do the libs have the fears of a creeping theocracy here in
00:26:21.540 Manhattan because of Zoran's Muslim prayers? No. No, not at all. There will be an alliance of radical
00:26:28.580 left-wing atheists and Muslims. And they don't share a lot of beliefs, but they do share a common enemy,
00:26:34.020 and the enemy is Christianity. And to some degree, Jews as well, especially in New York. There are a lot
00:26:38.020 of Jews. Okay. Speaking of foreigners in our country, this was an unpleasant video going around.
00:26:45.320 I hope no one was seriously injured. A semi-truck driven by a CDL commercial driver was going the wrong
00:26:52.760 way down a highway. 18-wheeler going the wrong way down southbound 61.
00:27:07.060 He is on the northbound lanes of 61 going the wrong way. Crazy. I love how when he realizes he's going
00:27:15.900 the wrong way, he speeds up. He doesn't slow down or pull over. He speeds up. I'm going southbound on 61.
00:27:20.980 He's in the northbound lanes on Highway 61.
00:27:28.000 Crazy. Okay. All right. I've seen enough. I don't want to see him hit somebody.
00:27:32.920 You know what happened here? Was this just an oopsie-daisy from Bubba in the country who
00:27:37.740 made the wrong turn? No. You know exactly what happened. This is a guy who can't read the signs.
00:27:44.380 He can't read the signs because he can't read English. He can't read English because he's a foreigner.
00:27:50.100 This company was registered to an Abdiwali Ahmed. And this driver, whoever he is, got his CDL from
00:27:59.840 Tim Walls in Minnesota. And in his defense, why would he be expected to read the signs?
00:28:06.940 He's from a foreign country. There's no evidence when he comes here that he speaks English, that he
00:28:14.100 would have to speak English. The government run by Tim Walls there doesn't encourage people to learn
00:28:20.180 English, doesn't encourage people to assimilate to the culture, wants to get them signed up to be
00:28:26.600 integrated into Minnesota as quickly as possible because they think that the foreigners will give
00:28:31.220 them a permanent electoral majority. So yeah, I blame this guy for his actions. I blame Tim Walls
00:28:38.520 more. I blame the federal government that has allowed all these foreigners in and encouraged
00:28:45.740 these foreigners to come in. Notably under Democrats, not really. Trump who closed the border.
00:28:50.460 I blame them a lot more. Okay. Speaking of crazy stunts, Daily Wire is making an action movie.
00:28:56.660 This, per deadline yesterday, the Hollywood trade publication, Jonathan Majors is going to be in a
00:29:03.460 Daily Wire movie. Jonathan Majors, who I don't really watch modern movies. This is my confession.
00:29:09.720 I know this is really big news, but I don't totally know why. Because I'm totally out of the pop culture.
00:29:15.780 I don't go see the big movies. But this guy's been in huge movies. This guy was in Creed 3.
00:29:20.380 This guy was in Ant-Man. I was just looking on his IMDb or his resume. It's pretty impressive stuff.
00:29:27.000 He's going to be in a DW action movie. Now, I'm not saying that I don't know the details of the
00:29:33.120 action movie. Maybe I do. Maybe I'm privy to some insider information. But we're not releasing it
00:29:39.580 yet. It's not mine to divulge. I would tell you if I could, but I'm very discreet. I'm very capable of
00:29:46.260 restraint, as you know. So anyway, this is cool stuff. It's cool to even knowing basically nothing
00:29:52.380 other than this movie star who was in a lot of big movies is going to do a movie of ours right
00:29:56.400 now. That's pretty cool. And you know why that's pretty cool? Because we need to create stuff.
00:30:03.620 This has been a theme on my show for a very, very long time. It's been a theme of this company for
00:30:09.340 a very long time. Too often, conservatives get mired in just reacting to everything and reacting to our
00:30:17.220 enemies. And just in this endless cycle of criticism, and we don't move forward. We don't
00:30:22.680 build stuff. We don't create. We don't advance the vision that we want to advance. We don't set
00:30:27.820 the conversation in the way that we want to talk about it. And this is how you do it.
00:30:33.060 You don't like the movies that Hollywood's putting out? Make your own movies and go take their actors
00:30:38.920 and go tell the stories you want to tell. You don't like what's in the news cycle? Set the new
00:30:45.080 news cycle. It's good stuff. This is OGDW kind of stuff. Okay. Speaking of interesting things on film,
00:30:52.920 the Clintons, by the way, I should point out before I move on, I should point out the only way that we
00:30:58.220 can sign big movie stars and make big movies and build culture. It's because of you. So I'm very,
00:31:03.160 very grateful to the Daily Wire Plus members who have signed up, especially our lifetime members,
00:31:07.000 but the people who have signed up, they joined the creme de la creme. They are on board for the
00:31:12.680 mission, putting their money where our mouths are. It's great. That's how we do it. I appreciate it.
00:31:17.120 If you're not subscribed to Daily Wire, if you don't have the Daily Wire Plus app, get it right now.
00:31:22.160 Get it right now. I appreciate that. Okay. Speaking of interesting things on film,
00:31:25.760 the Clintons are testifying under oath about Jeffrey Epstein. A movie, 15 years in the making,
00:31:34.300 Jeffrey Epstein, whose paramour and Madam Ghislaine Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton's wedding.
00:31:41.440 Bill Clinton, who palled around with Epstein, who knows how many times flew all over the world on
00:31:46.180 that Lolita Express. They testified under oath and we don't have the footage yet, but here is Hillary
00:31:53.380 at a press conference after the testimony.
00:31:57.980 Madam Secretary, what message does it say? I don't know when the video will be out. I don't
00:32:08.360 know when the transcript will be out. We've asked that they be out as quickly as possible and then
00:32:12.860 you can see everything. Madam Secretary, what message does it say?
00:32:16.340 We heard from Bill Gates' concerns about Epstein trying to blackmail him.
00:32:22.100 Okay. Love the reporters asking these questions. Hillary doesn't really want to talk about it. She
00:32:26.280 goes, well, the footage will be out soon. We're not going to get answers. I've said this. I think I
00:32:35.540 should win the Oscar for saying unpopular but indisputably true opinions about politics that
00:32:44.140 are going to irritate everyone. They're going to irritate the libs, certainly, but are also going
00:32:48.300 to irritate conservatives with unrealistic expectations. You're not going to get answers.
00:32:52.640 The idea that the Epstein scandal has been brewing since 2006, 2007, and that there is still some
00:32:58.900 document floating out there that's going to be the smoking gun is preposterous. You think that our
00:33:05.080 government with multiple other governments are colluding in an international blackmail pedophile
00:33:10.960 sex ring, but they have too much dignity and integrity to shred a document? It's totally insane.
00:33:17.060 You're not. Sorry. Sorry. You can hate me for telling the truth, but this is the truth.
00:33:22.660 You're not going to get any more serious information about Epstein. That's a fact. And the people who tell
00:33:29.060 you otherwise are either ignorant or they're lying to you. They're pandering to you. That's the fact.
00:33:33.360 So set your expectations. You're not going to get any more information.
00:33:38.240 What this can do, however, is reset the narrative. The libs have jumped on the Epstein narrative to
00:33:44.360 try to make it about Trump. There is nothing incriminating about Donald Trump in the Epstein
00:33:49.540 files. There is nothing serious there. If there were, Joe Biden would have released it. The Democrats who
00:33:55.020 tried to kick him off the ballot, who tried to prosecute him four times, who tried to kill him,
00:33:58.320 they would have released it. I promise you there's nothing in there, but the Epstein story
00:34:03.920 was a Democrat scandal. That's what it was in the 2000s, in the mid 20 teens, when it came up again
00:34:12.680 until very, very recently, it was a Democrat scandal. The people he paddled around with were
00:34:17.300 chiefly Democrat politicians. Even the international politicians he paddled around with were on the left.
00:34:22.880 The industrialists, the businessmen, the academics, Noam Chomsky, they were largely,
00:34:29.880 if not exclusively, on the left. It's a left-wing scandal if it breaks down left and right.
00:34:34.940 And the libs have tried to pretend that this is a right-wing scandal. This kind of testimony,
00:34:38.980 exposing the degree to which the Clintons palled around with Epstein,
00:34:42.260 that will reset the narrative to where it should be, which is that if this is party political at all,
00:34:47.100 it's a left-wing scandal. Okay. So much more to get to, but it's time for my favorite time of the
00:34:53.660 week, the mailbag. Our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles today.
00:35:00.200 All right, Michael, it's time that I send my first mailbag question to you about a big question that's
00:35:07.700 actually been on my mind for a while. So, I grew up with split custody between my mom and dad,
00:35:12.700 both of which were atheists. So, my mom has grown even more so to be that way, my dad less so.
00:35:16.540 But anyway, I ended up becoming agnostic as a result of this, which means I've never read the
00:35:22.380 Bible. I've never studied it. In fact, I'm afflicted like most other Gen Zers are, I'm 22,
00:35:27.280 by a large swath of ignorance surrounding many aspects of our culture, like, you know, the roots
00:35:32.420 of it. However, I've always found your show interesting. I've listened every day now for
00:35:38.880 about two years. I'm not like a leftist or anything like that. So, as a result, I've become more curious
00:35:43.620 about your rhetoric surrounding Christianity and religion broadly. You're brainwashing me,
00:35:48.800 in other words. So, where do you suggest someone that doesn't know anything about this actually
00:35:54.320 start to learn when it comes to Western culture, religion, even the distinction between different
00:35:58.720 religious sects as well, like the logic behind that, I find that fascinating. And so, yeah,
00:36:03.460 so what would you suggest people start with as a foundation? Thanks in advance.
00:36:06.960 Great question. I'm so glad to hear all of this, that you're moving more toward faith and that
00:36:11.480 you're plugged into it. So, I'll just give you my own example, how I went from an atheist to an
00:36:18.740 agnostic, then a theist, then a Christian, and then specifically returning to the Catholic Church.
00:36:24.840 I'll take you through it. The first thing that you should establish is whether or not God exists.
00:36:30.560 And the thing that worked for me is the arguments for God's existence. St. Thomas Aquinas famously has
00:36:38.860 five ways of determining God's existence. The Catholic Church, at least, believes that the
00:36:45.380 existence of God can be known with certainty purely from natural reason, just looking at the world.
00:36:51.560 Revelation is required for the rest of religion, but you can at least know with certainty that God
00:36:55.880 exists in much the same way that the virtuous pagans in Greece understood that. So, anyway,
00:37:02.340 there are those arguments. There are other arguments for God's existence. That worked for me
00:37:04.880 because I was an atheist because of, in part, because of intellectual hubris. So, that was my
00:37:09.280 way in. For other people, it will be acknowledging that there's meaning in the world. For some people,
00:37:15.520 it will be beauty. So, whatever it is, you have to establish that God exists, and he does.
00:37:20.880 Then, you have to grapple with the person of Christ who claims to be God. You have to determine
00:37:25.700 whether or not he's right, whether or not he's telling the truth. Is Jesus who he says he is?
00:37:33.220 He is, by the way. But you have to grapple with that. And so, you say you haven't read much of
00:37:37.180 the Bible. I would dig into the Gospels, and then I would dig into some of the corroborating historical
00:37:43.980 accounts. And you will determine, I think, that Christ is who he says he is. And then you have to
00:37:50.240 determine whether the church is what she says she is. And so, one way to determine that is by looking
00:37:57.800 at the writings of the church fathers, of the ancient churches. You know, the Christians have
00:38:02.340 done a great job of keeping records and letters and writings, going back to the first century,
00:38:06.780 even the Didache, the very first catechism was written in 70 AD. Justin Martyr's writing in, what,
00:38:12.460 150 AD? So, you get a lot of writings there. And I think the church is who she says she is.
00:38:19.900 But, you know, that's down the road from where you are right now, which is, does God exist or not?
00:38:24.740 That's where I would begin. And I mentioned the virtuous pagans because as you are reading,
00:38:29.900 and as you are reading Revelation, you can also read philosophy. And philosophy will buttress your
00:38:35.100 faith. You know, I think faith and reason go together. I don't think that they're opposed.
00:38:38.720 So, I mentioned Justin Martyr, an early Christian apologist. He's a philosopher who is reading
00:38:44.760 Revelation and recognizing that the two are harmonious. Okay, next question.
00:38:50.000 Hey, Michael. I watched your show on Wednesday, and I am pretty angry that you won't talk more about
00:38:55.400 all the terrible things that Candace is doing to Erica Kirk. What she's doing is just awful.
00:39:00.560 Everyone else is talking about it. Why won't you?
00:39:02.860 Very good question. I'm glad you asked me that. I caught so much flack for my show on Wednesday.
00:39:11.080 This was right after the State of the Union, and I did a segment on President Trump's beautiful
00:39:15.660 tribute to Erica Kirk. And what did I say? I'll tell you why I caught flack. Well, one,
00:39:23.100 the reason I caught flack is also because some manipulative organized Twitter accounts clipped
00:39:27.660 out a very small section of what I said and misrepresented what I said. But here's what I said.
00:39:31.760 I think people could sincerely be angry at what I said, but I don't think they're justified in
00:39:37.680 that. Because amid all the flack I took, I have yet to see a single person refute my argument.
00:39:44.340 I have yet to see a single person. I think people are angry because they feel a little
00:39:49.480 called out or something. But what was the argument? I said, Erica Kirk is a national hero,
00:39:54.980 as I've said many, many times. I said, she deserves our full support and full sympathy.
00:39:59.520 I said, Candace is wrong in what she's doing. I said, all of those things. Everybody should agree
00:40:05.120 so far, probably. Most people would agree. But then I said, I think it's a bad strategy
00:40:11.260 to focus all of everyone's attention on Candace and her new show. That was the part that got people
00:40:18.680 really upset. Some people. Maybe some organized people, too. But let me ask you a simple question.
00:40:25.380 Do you think Candace is happy or sad that all the right-wing accounts and podcasts are talking
00:40:33.220 about her ad nauseum and talking about her new show? Do you think that makes her happy or sad?
00:40:38.680 I think you would probably have to say it makes her happy, right? Because it's promoting her show.
00:40:44.000 Now, there can be an effect to talking about something. There can be good effects if you're
00:40:48.320 running a campaign and you talk about what someone's doing. And then that makes that person lose
00:40:52.980 support or lose an election. Okay. So then let me ask you a follow-up question.
00:40:57.560 What will the effect of all this publicity be? Will the effect be to get Candace to walk back her
00:41:04.920 claims that everyone wants her to walk back? No. I don't think anyone thinks it will. In fact,
00:41:11.800 I think we have proof that it has not done that. Okay. Will constantly talking about Candace and
00:41:18.340 publicizing her show, will that decrease the number of views that the show gets? Or will that?
00:41:25.020 No, it won't. Will it increase the number of views? Yeah. I think it probably will. I think it has.
00:41:32.900 So then what's the effect here? What good is actually being accomplished?
00:41:39.600 We've all stated we love Erica Kirk. We support Erica Kirk. I think we should focus on the good
00:41:43.800 things. That's basically my thesis. But what is actually accomplished? And the point I made on my
00:41:48.940 show is people will feel good. They'll feel a kind of emotional catharsis. People are really angry and
00:41:55.920 they get a catharsis by venting that, even if it promotes the show that they say they hate.
00:42:02.460 They'll get a catharsis. They'll seem really good to all the people who already agree with them.
00:42:08.080 They'll get to posture and seem, present themselves as really moral and valiant.
00:42:15.260 The third thing that will happen, ironically, is they will profit off of Candace's content.
00:42:20.460 They will profit off of the attacks on Erica Kirk. If they have a monetized Twitter account,
00:42:24.880 or if they have a podcast, they will be making money off of the attacks on Erica. Okay. So that's
00:42:30.080 an ironic third thing that will happen. But the only person who will benefit is Candace.
00:42:35.720 Other than maybe an individual feeling good, the only person who will benefit is Candace. And so
00:42:41.460 my observation was, if your goal is to support Erica, TPSA, obviously you state your opinion,
00:42:51.660 you state the true thing. But if your goal is to hurt Candace, you're playing right into her hand.
00:42:57.640 You're giving her exactly what she wants. I said, isn't that a bad strategy if that's your goal?
00:43:01.660 And the point I made was that it's human nature, and I don't put myself above it, but it's human
00:43:07.400 nature to want to feel good or even to seem good, even when it comes at the expense of actually doing
00:43:16.680 good. And so I'm not surprised. There were some people who were insincere in their reactions,
00:43:22.540 but even the sincere people, I'm not surprised at that reaction because I think it hits a little
00:43:27.640 close to home. But amid all of the kerfuffle, amid all of the people who are really angry,
00:43:33.480 I have yet to see a single person refute a single point of that argument. And this is what happens
00:43:39.880 when people get very passionate and allow their emotions to run away with them in politics.
00:43:43.960 They don't view things in a more dispassionate way. People make mistakes. And I think that from a
00:43:51.900 strategic standpoint, people are making a lot of mistakes right now. Okay, next question.
00:43:57.880 Hey, Michael, I'm just wondering, as far as I can tell, basically 50% of our taxes goes for social
00:44:03.700 programs. And the economy is one of the most significant things. Would it not behoove the
00:44:09.680 Trump administration, the Republicans to fight to just abolish these social programs? Ultimately,
00:44:16.540 maybe a minimal amount is good, potentially. But if it's 50% of our taxes, I would imagine
00:44:24.440 if they just freed that up 50% or even 20% or 30%, whatever it may be, that would be really
00:44:33.360 significant and can cause the economy to just boom in a way we probably wouldn't even imagine.
00:44:40.200 I would think maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. What are your thoughts on this?
00:44:43.620 You sweet summer child, I remember the days when I, you know, there was a time when much,
00:44:52.300 if not most of the conservative movement believed that. And it was called the Tea Party. I was there.
00:44:57.740 I was a wee lad, but I was there. We believed that at that time, you know, basically half the budget is
00:45:05.280 entitlements. We were running off a fiscal cliff. At that time, I think debt was 80% of GDP,
00:45:11.020 70% of GDP. Now debt is 120 or 130 or something percent of GDP. We said the only way to fix the
00:45:18.980 debt problem, this debt bomb, would be to reform entitlements because you're not going to do it
00:45:22.860 on waste, fraud, and abuse. And it totally failed. The libs accused us of pushing granny off a cliff,
00:45:29.060 wanting to destroy social security, Medicare, Medicaid. And it didn't work. We came in on the
00:45:34.900 Tea Party wave in 2010. The Tea Party wave was over by 2012. It didn't work. And the argument that
00:45:41.280 was made at that time by really great politicians, people I supported like Mitch Daniels, he said,
00:45:46.180 we need to have a social truce, a truce on some of the cultural issues in order to solve the fiscal
00:45:52.740 problem. And the voters said, no, this is the problem. So then Trump realized, okay, actually,
00:46:00.480 no, you can't, you can't put off the social issues in order to first solve the fiscal problem. It's
00:46:05.680 the opposite. You're not going to solve the fiscal problem until you solve the social issues.
00:46:11.000 So then Trump comes in and he says, no, we're going to focus on immigration. We're going to
00:46:14.800 focus on social solidarity. We're going to focus on cohesion at home. We're going to then, and we're
00:46:20.880 not going to touch social security and Medicare and Medicaid. And he won. And then ultimately he won the
00:46:26.280 popular vote. So it's not going to happen. Even if it would make sense from an actuarial
00:46:29.960 perspective, it makes sense from an accounting perspective, it, it's not going to happen anytime
00:46:36.760 soon. You got to, I think you have to fix the cultural problems before that, before that happens.
00:46:40.640 Okay. I want to get to more mailbag, but it's time for the member room segmentum. And today is
00:46:47.440 fake headline Friday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss this. Become a
00:46:51.660 member. Use code Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
00:46:59.960 Legal sent this list of everything we're not allowed to do in season two. We're going to do
00:47:11.940 all of it. We've got games, more celebrity guests, and yes, the mailbag is somehow worse.
00:47:17.880 If you thought season one was extra, season two, we're doubling down.
00:47:21.880 We're not supposed to be doing this.
00:47:23.320 Exactly. Ben After Dark season two streaming on Daily Wire Plaza.