The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1952 - Trump Corrects His Viral Picture EXPLAINED

00:00:00.000 Eric Swalwell resigns from Congress in a major political win for Democrats, I'm sorry to say.

00:00:08.660 We'll get into how that is the case. President Trump deletes an image that offended Christians

00:00:13.060 of all stripes in a rare social media backtrack and a happy turn of events.

00:00:17.540 And no matter how frustrating Republicans are, Joe Biden and the New York Times remind us just

00:00:24.640 this week, why you should work to keep Democrats out of office as if your life depended on it,

00:00:31.460 because it very possibly does. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:34.920 Welcome back to the show. Coachella is a meme factory. It is giving us Justin Trudeau and

00:00:59.140 Katy Perry pretending that they're 30 years younger than they are. It gives us Sabrina

00:01:03.800 carpenter mocking Arabs with a look of pure, unwitting liberal disgust, which is, in a weird

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00:02:35.760 apply. Eric Swalwell drops out of the California governor's race after an avalanche of sexual

00:02:44.520 harassment and assault allegations, that after a financial scandal in which his campaign was

00:02:51.440 apparently paying his wife to watch their kids, after a legal scandal which showed that he wasn't

00:02:56.360 even really eligible to run for governor. I'll read the statement first, and then we'll get into

00:03:03.200 the sheer brilliance of the Democrat Party. It pains me, but game recognized game,

00:03:11.280 they are so unbelievably efficient and good at the game of politics. But here is the statement.

00:03:19.740 I am deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgment I've

00:03:27.100 made in my past. First sentence. Second sentence. I will fight the serious false allegation made

00:03:35.040 against me. I'm so, so sorry. I apologize to my family, my friends, my constituents,

00:03:41.560 my supporters. I'm so, so sorry for all that stuff I didn't do. But that's how it reads,

00:03:47.800 but that's not what he says. In fairness, this was written by some crisis comms team,

00:03:51.880 and they did a decent job. I'm sorry for all the mistakes I've made, plural. I will fight

00:03:57.680 the serious false allegation, singular, made against me. So what he's suggesting here is,

00:04:04.380 I didn't rape that girl, but I did all the other stuff, all of which is disqualifying anyway.

00:04:10.660 Third sentence, however, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make.

00:04:16.540 I am aware of efforts to bring an immediate expulsion vote against me and other members.

00:04:20.100 That's the key.

00:04:22.000 Expelling anyone in Congress without due process within days of an allegation being made is wrong.

00:04:26.420 Hold on.

00:04:26.760 Expelling anyone without due process, what are you talking about?

00:04:29.520 You don't need due process, if that means a trial in a court of law, to be expelled from Congress.

00:04:36.380 You can just be expelled.

00:04:38.020 The Congress just votes to expel you.

00:04:40.520 An expulsion vote from Congress does not require a different branch of government to participate.

00:04:44.860 that is an entirely intracongressional proceeding. This is deeply wrong. What are you talking about?

00:04:51.000 Take it up with the framers of the Constitution, buddy. But it's also wrong for my constituents to

00:04:55.720 have me distracted from my duties. Therefore, I plan to resign my seat in Congress. I'll work

00:05:00.860 with my staff in the coming days to ensure they are able in my absence to serve the needs of the

00:05:04.720 good people of the 14th Congressional District. So he's in big trouble because he flew a little

00:05:09.500 too close to the sun. Little Icarus Swalwell here flew a little too close to the sun.

00:05:13.880 And now he's got not only political attacks against him, but legal attacks as well that

00:05:20.720 seem like they are ongoing. He's going to have to fight this out.

00:05:24.760 And that's going to continue even after he leaves Congress.

00:05:29.460 Some Republicans are going to celebrate this. Ha ha, we got a scalp from Swalwell here. Ha ha,

00:05:34.300 this is great. Yeah, we took out a top Democrat candidate for governor in California. That's

00:05:39.960 great. Oh, we took out a prominent member of the House who's a Democrat. Ha ha. Every step of this,

00:05:47.820 as I pointed out yesterday, and now we see the culmination today, every step of this is a win

00:05:53.340 for Democrats. The whole reason this happened in the first place is that Eric Swalwell was the

00:05:59.380 leading Democrat candidate for governor, but he was too weak. He was too weak to actually get it

00:06:04.820 over the finish line. So because of the huge Democrat primary field, the Democrats were

00:06:10.400 splitting up all their votes. And you had two Republicans that were also running in that field

00:06:14.340 who were way better than any of the Democrats. And so the leading candidates for governor in

00:06:20.040 California were Republicans, but California is a Democrat state. So the Democrat party could not

00:06:25.420 abide that. They gave Swalwell a shot to get enough support that he could take out the

00:06:29.640 Republicans. He didn't, so they took him out instead. They fired two warning shots at him,

00:06:35.020 the legal warning shot on residency and the financial warning shot for impropriety and

00:06:40.320 corruption. He didn't pay attention to those warning shots, so then they took him out.

00:06:45.820 The follow-up to that was, okay, he's out of the California governor's race, but he's going to keep

00:06:50.500 his seat in Congress. Well, we need to take him out of Congress, right? Well, no. I said,

00:06:56.300 as a conservative, as a Republican, I said, you don't want to just take him out of Congress

00:06:59.640 because he'll just be replaced by a Democrat. And Swalwell's completely useless. It doesn't

00:07:04.500 matter. He's a completely replaceable member of Congress. He's accomplished nothing of substance

00:07:09.420 in his life. He's just a vote for Democrats. So if you replace him with some other replaceable

00:07:15.440 Democrat. It doesn't matter. You haven't won anything. So what did I say yesterday? I said,

00:07:19.980 the only thing that Republicans can do now to get any kind of a win out of this, any small win

00:07:25.040 compared to the Democrats' big win, is to force the other Democrat members to vote on the record

00:07:31.380 whether or not to expel him. You're not going to shame Swalwell, and Swalwell's toast anyway,

00:07:38.120 but you can at least put the other Democrat members in Congress in a bad spot because

00:07:42.920 because they're all on their high horse now. They're all sanctimonious about how he's unfit

00:07:47.680 to run for governor of California because of these allegations. But they would not have had

00:07:51.960 the courage to actually expel him from Congress because Democrats need his vote. Republicans have

00:07:56.980 a very slim majority right now. And so both the Democrats and the Republicans can't afford to

00:08:02.400 lose anyone. And what do the Democrats do? They pressure Swalwell to resign without the vote for

00:08:10.640 expulsion. So now all the Democrats in Congress get off the hook. None of them have to vote on

00:08:16.740 this. None of them have to either turn on their party or more likely show their political cowardice

00:08:22.060 and their hypocrisy. So they get off scot-free. And Swalwell's going to go away, and they'll

00:08:29.000 replace him with Swalwell 2, going to be indistinguishable from Swalwell 1, maybe a little

00:08:35.440 less goofy, probably just as goofy. And the Democrats are going to keep their power.

00:08:40.640 I say this purely objectively with my political observer hat on putting aside all of my partisan

00:08:47.340 priors and loyalties. Well done, guys. Well done. You did a ruthlessly, brutally efficient

00:08:56.180 and effective political operation here. Very impressive. And Republicans have a lot to learn

00:09:01.920 from that. The lesson that Democrats are going to tell you to learn is that we hold our own

00:09:06.800 accountable. They didn't hold anybody accountable. They did exactly the opposite of that. Yeah,

00:09:11.960 they sacrificed Swalwell in order that every single other Democrat member of Congress will

00:09:17.580 not be held accountable for this. They sacrificed Swalwell in order that every Democrat running for

00:09:23.540 governor will not be held accountable for the horrific Democrat governance in California that

00:09:28.500 was so horrific that a Democrat state was about to elect a Republican governor.

00:09:32.080 They are entirely avoiding accountability here.

00:09:35.220 And they're doing it beautifully.

00:09:37.400 They're doing it sanctimoniously.

00:09:39.260 They're doing it in such a way that they are going to position themselves on a moral high horse.

00:09:44.200 It's nasty.

00:09:45.620 It's ugly.

00:09:46.580 It's putrid.

00:09:47.780 But it's ruthlessly effective.

00:09:50.560 Republicans, Republicans, please.

00:09:52.840 Republicans who can never get together on anything.

00:09:56.860 The closest Republican allies are going to try to stab each other in the back all the time.

00:10:01.140 The Republicans in the federal level, at the state level, they're always looking for ways 0.50

00:10:05.940 to snatch defeat from the Joseph victory. Can you please take a lesson from this?

00:10:09.880 This is politics. This is very effective politics. Democrats are a lot better at it than Republicans

00:10:17.520 are. A lot better. Okay. Now, turning to the Republicans, President Trump was in very hot

00:10:23.020 water for a couple of truth social posts that he made. One, excoriating the Holy Father.

00:10:28.680 One in five American voters, you will recall, is Catholic.

00:10:32.400 Catholics disproportionately represented in the conservative movement.

00:10:36.540 Just the political consideration, even putting aside the spiritual considerations, which are obviously significant.

00:10:41.900 But then there was that picture that President Trump posted after the Pope post,

00:10:46.020 in which it looked as if he was in the place of Christ, healing people with angels or some kind of celestial being.

00:10:53.520 and it managed to unite the Catholics and the Protestants

00:10:57.180 because they both really hated this picture. 0.89

00:10:59.160 And there's some good news on that front.

00:11:02.280 We'll get to that momentarily.

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00:12:09.220 that is preborn.com slash Knowles. Many people called on President Trump to pull down that

00:12:17.620 social media post that he made. And a lot of people were very harsh about it. On the right,

00:12:22.780 a lot of people were very tough on President Trump. And I don't think President Trump had

00:12:28.020 bad motives here. In fact, I'm not sure that President Trump posted that picture at all,

00:12:33.140 and I'll tell you why in a moment. But I came out and I said, hey, look, no matter the motive,

00:12:40.780 this is a bad picture. It's a bad look. Shouldn't be done. In an irreverent age,

00:12:46.120 sometimes people don't know the lines of the real taboos versus the fake taboos, but

00:12:49.580 it would behoove the president spiritually and politically to take the picture down.

00:12:53.900 And he took the picture down. I wasn't sure if he would because President Trump doesn't like to

00:12:59.860 backtrack on anything, and especially on these kinds of posts. I don't know. He's only ever

00:13:03.840 deleted one or two others. But I said, you know, it would be good for you. This is coming from

00:13:07.600 someone who's a big supporter of yours. I've got MAGA Trump bona fides as much as anybody, okay?

00:13:14.380 I've been very consistent in my support of the president. I'm very grateful for everything he's

00:13:18.280 done. I said, you know, this ain't it. This is a little bit of a misstep, and it would be good if

00:13:22.720 it came down. And he took it down. And that's good. We should be happy about that. That shows

00:13:29.820 responsive government. That shows a guy who clearly didn't intend to offend Christians.

00:13:36.400 I don't think he intended to commit sacrilege. I don't think he intended to do any of that.

00:13:41.080 Once again, I'm not even sure that he posted it. President Trump, however, does say that he posted

00:13:47.080 it. He was asked about this yesterday during a really delightful publicity stunt with an Uber

00:13:53.760 Eats driver who showed up to the Oval Office to bring him his McDonald's order. And they had this

00:13:58.440 great little press conference about how this Uber Eats driver is benefiting from the tax rebate from

00:14:04.480 the big, beautiful bill and how it's helping her husband who's in cancer treatment. It was really,

00:14:08.500 really well orchestrated by the White House. But much as President Trump gave that speech about

00:14:14.600 the Iran war next to the Easter bunny at the Easter egg roll, so too President Trump is dealing

00:14:19.260 with this very, very serious issue of his relation to Christianity and the church flanked by this

00:14:26.100 lovely Uber Eats driver. He was asked about the picture. Here's what he said.

00:14:31.000 Did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ?

00:14:34.780 Well, it wasn't a picture. It was me. I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor

00:14:40.040 and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, which we support.

00:14:45.220 And only the fake news could come up with that one. So I just heard about it and I said,

00:14:52.920 how do they come up with that? It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better.

00:14:58.100 And I do make people better. I make people a lot better. As an example, the 11,000,

00:15:04.400 I understand your husband's going through treatment.

00:15:07.100 Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

00:15:08.420 He's going through some very serious cancer treatment. So this goes a long way.

00:15:13.220 Yes, sir. It sure does.

00:15:15.160 Okay, so President Trump taking full responsibility for posting the picture.

00:15:19.540 And he says, look, I thought it was me as a doctor.

00:15:22.240 He's like, did you?

00:15:25.420 Hold on.

00:15:26.380 Yeah, I thought it was me as a doctor because I helped people.

00:15:28.380 I certainly didn't mean to commit sacrilege.

00:15:30.420 I thought it was me as a doctor because I helped people like I helped this lady next to me.

00:15:33.500 But I posted it.

00:15:34.380 I take responsibility.

00:15:35.300 The buck stops here.

00:15:37.180 I was skeptical.

00:15:39.300 And I remain skeptical that the president actually posted that picture.

00:15:43.280 In part, having spoken to some of my friends in Washington, D.C.,

00:15:48.300 it seemed to me that he did not post that picture. I'll leave it at that. But my suspicions were

00:15:56.520 confirmed that he did not post it, at least from some friends of mine around the president.

00:16:02.900 However, he took responsibility. And I don't know, why would he take responsibility if he

00:16:08.400 didn't really post it? The reason that I think he might not have posted it is that was an original

00:16:14.360 image. Some people are saying that Nick Adams, the political commentator who is now one of

00:16:18.020 President Trump's special envoys, that he was the one a year or two ago who posted that picture.

00:16:22.440 But that's not really true. He posted a version of that picture. There have been different meme

00:16:26.200 versions of that picture. But the picture that the president posted was different. Some of the

00:16:30.400 characters looked different. The image had been manipulated. And so I just simply cannot believe

00:16:37.540 that the president was sitting on Grok or ChatGBT coming up with that original image. I don't think

00:16:43.220 the president was on Adobe Photoshop manipulating that image. So it would seem to me that other

00:16:48.720 people were involved in creating that image and perhaps in posting that image, which is the sort

00:16:54.800 of thing that I was hearing from DC yesterday. So then why would the president take responsibility?

00:16:59.940 I suspect, look, again, maybe he did post it. Maybe he did create the image. Maybe he was on

00:17:04.780 I don't know. I guess it could be. But I suspect this is the president saying, I don't want to

00:17:09.340 blame a staffer. I don't want to pass the buck. I'm going to take responsibility for it. I took

00:17:13.400 a lot of lumps for this. I'm going to take responsibility for it. But I didn't mean it

00:17:18.100 to be sacrilege. I thought I was a doctor. Okay, all right, whatever. And people are going to fight

00:17:22.000 about this. You say, oh, it didn't really look like a doctor. It didn't, what are you talking

00:17:24.760 about? It didn't look like the Red Cross. What do you mean? You did post it. You didn't post it.

00:17:27.700 I guess what I would say is, President Trump did something that he doesn't often do. He almost

00:17:34.400 never does, which is he took a step back. He said, you know what? Even though I usually double down

00:17:42.200 because in this environment, the minute that you admit any fault, any confusion, any anything,

00:17:47.800 they all jump down your throat and it's often unfair. And so usually he would double down.

00:17:51.600 In this case, he said, you know what? I'm going to take that one down. That's good. I'm glad he

00:17:56.760 did that. That was the right thing to do that actually bolsters much of my view of the man,

00:18:01.560 which is he has very good intentions. He has done a very good job, generally speaking.

00:18:06.640 He's done especially a good job for Christians, for people of faith broadly on matters of life,

00:18:13.580 on matters of justice and law and order, on matters of religious freedom. He's got a really

00:18:19.080 good record on this, especially compared to his predecessors. And so there's no confusion about

00:18:25.980 the picture itself. The picture was completely unacceptable and it had to come down and he took

00:18:29.240 it down. And you know what I say to that? Good. Thank you. That's great. That's wonderful. Okay.

00:18:34.260 Now we can move on. There's still the matter of the Pope post. I'm actually going to be giving

00:18:37.840 a speech at Villanova tonight with Yav Villanova, which is the alma mater of the Pope. And they

00:18:44.080 asked me before any of this happened, they asked me to talk about the relationship between religion

00:18:49.120 and American politics tonight at the Pope's alma mater. How do you not believe in Providence? How

00:18:53.340 do you not believe in God? So anyway, we'll be getting into that issue a little bit tonight.

00:18:56.960 But to my point on President Trump clearly not hating Christians, President Trump clearly

00:19:03.540 protecting Christians, President Trump doing a lot more to protect Christians than his

00:19:08.000 predecessors in recent memory.

00:19:10.040 This story just came out.

00:19:11.960 You can read about it all over the Daily Wire.

00:19:13.760 Mary Margaret Olihan reporting on this.

00:19:16.520 The Biden administration was so much worse to pro-lifers, to people of faith, to Christians,

00:19:25.560 was so much worse than even we already thought.

00:19:29.400 Based on the 7,000 document Justice Department review,

00:19:34.980 this report found that officials in the Biden administration

00:19:38.920 worked directly, closely with groups like Planned Parenthood,

00:19:46.560 groups like the National Abortion Federation,

00:19:48.980 groups like the Feminist Majority Foundation

00:19:51.860 to compile hit lists on pro-lifers. 0.59

00:19:56.440 They would work directly with these groups.

00:19:59.580 Some of the worst people in the country,

00:20:01.760 people whose raison d'etre is to slaughter innocent babies, 0.86

00:20:06.140 would work with them to target pro-life organizations

00:20:09.380 and pro-life individuals for prosecution

00:20:11.660 to make them into political prisoners.

00:20:14.900 According to the report, the Biden DOJ prosecutors

00:20:17.360 knowingly withheld evidence that defense counsel

00:20:21.080 requested to prepare an affirmative defense. So they would go out there, they'd say, hey,

00:20:24.940 Satan worshiping abortionists, who are your enemies? And they'd go to say, oh, that Christian,

00:20:29.860 that pro-lifer, that nice old granny, those are our enemies. DOJ would go out and arrest these 0.98

00:20:35.240 people under Biden. And then when the defense would say, okay, well, can you at least present

00:20:39.740 us some of the evidence so we can prepare a defense? Biden's DOJ had the evidence and said,

00:20:43.980 no, they withheld it from them. The prosecutors would then apparently screen out jurors based

00:20:50.120 on their religious beliefs. If you're a little too Christian, if you're a little too pro-life,

00:20:54.020 you're out. You can't be on the jury. They would opt for aggressive arrest tactics rather than

00:20:59.840 allow the defendants to surrender themselves. So they'd go in, they'd say, where do you get

00:21:03.060 your news from? Is it from Daily Wire? Is it from Fox News? Okay, well, you're out. Sorry.

00:21:08.760 And then in some cases, like the case of Mark Houck, who's a pro-life father of seven, I think,

00:21:14.880 who was defending his son

00:21:17.300 at a peaceful demonstration

00:21:18.500 at an abortion mill

00:21:19.520 and some lunatic pro-abortionist

00:21:23.240 comes up to him

00:21:24.060 and he defended and protected his son.

00:21:26.520 The DOJ under Biden said,

00:21:28.380 we're going to go arrest you.

00:21:29.560 And Mark Huck said,

00:21:30.180 okay, well, if you want,

00:21:31.520 I'll turn myself in

00:21:32.440 and I'll just present myself

00:21:33.980 for due process.

00:21:35.280 And according to these documents,

00:21:36.880 the Biden DOJ said,

00:21:37.860 no, we're going to show up

00:21:40.200 with major law enforcement.

00:21:43.320 We're going to do everything

00:21:44.520 but literally kick in your door, we're going to terrorize your little kids and your wife, 0.86

00:21:49.740 and we're going to make an example of you because you had the audacity to defend your son

00:21:53.380 and even worse, to defend little babies from us, the Biden administration.

00:22:01.420 Pro-life defendants then, after they were arrested, were prosecuted much more harshly

00:22:07.340 than the pro-abortion people. Pro-life defendants found prosecutors seeking an average of 20

00:22:14.460 26.8 months in prison. That is compared to 12.3 months for defendants accused of violence against

00:22:23.320 pro-lifers. So this is all predicated on the FACE Act. The FACE Act is this liberal law

00:22:29.000 that exists really just to protect abortionists from prayers and criticism. But the only way that

00:22:35.700 they could get the FACE Act through Congress was to dangle this little carrot out for the pro-lifers

00:22:40.560 and say, okay, also, you know, we'll use this to protect pro-life pregnancy centers.

00:22:44.800 Also, we'll use this to protect churches. It's almost never used in that way.

00:22:48.600 And then even when it is, the Biden DOJ going after the pro-lifers would try to sentence them

00:22:56.480 to more than double the prison sentences that they would sentence the handful of radical violent

00:23:01.740 abortionists that they would go and arrest. This is very important because it shows you,

00:23:07.520 one, what a difference an election makes. It's very important too, because I think it puts

00:23:13.820 the truth social post and pull down into context. Yeah, no one liked the truth social posts.

00:23:21.660 I didn't like the Pope post and basically nobody liked the picture post, but it puts it into

00:23:27.580 context. One, President Trump took the picture post down. And two, when you look at President

00:23:33.220 Trump's actions in government. He's the most pro-life president we've ever had. He's the

00:23:40.260 president in my lifetime doing more to protect Christians specifically than any president I've

00:23:45.960 seen. The Democrats, on the other hand, the supposedly Catholic Joe Biden was ruthlessly

00:23:52.600 prosecuting Christians, ruthlessly. The pro-life grannies, sure, also ruthlessly invading Catholic 0.99

00:23:59.960 parishes to spy on them. Democrats broadly have been ruthlessly trying to crack the seal of the 0.99

00:24:05.920 confessional to break the church as best as they can. And ultimately, at a political level,

00:24:13.800 what it shows us is an election makes all the difference. Because had Kamala Harris won,

00:24:18.460 had Joe Biden stayed in the race and Joe Biden won, all of that would still be going on.

00:24:22.760 And it might affect you. I'm friends with some of the family members of these imprisoned pro-lifers,

00:24:28.060 Multiple political prisoners who are pro-life.

00:24:30.220 I am friends with their family.

00:24:33.000 And maybe Biden would have gone after a member of your family.

00:24:36.700 Maybe Biden or Kamala Harris or the next Democrat would go after you.

00:24:41.140 Shows you the stakes here.

00:24:42.640 Politics is not debate club, okay?

00:24:44.660 And our opponents have gotten increasingly radical and increasingly violent,

00:24:49.980 as we're now finding out from even the most milquetoast, moderate, supposedly centrist Democrats.

00:24:56.080 The New York Times, Ezra Klein in particular, going all in on political violence against conservatives.

00:25:02.360 We'll get that in a second.

00:25:03.520 First, I want to tell you about Pure Talk.

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00:25:27.440 with a U.S.-only workforce.

00:25:29.040 It would be a lot cheaper to send jobs overseas

00:25:31.080 like other companies do.

00:25:32.060 They are committed to delivering

00:25:33.080 the best experience possible for their customers.

00:25:36.520 I love the service.

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00:25:39.380 I love the regular service.

00:25:40.620 They give you, listen closely,

00:25:42.220 they give you the same towers, the same network,

00:25:44.720 the same 5G coverage as one of the big guys

00:25:47.760 for a fraction of the cost.

00:25:50.160 Not similar service, not kind of like that service,

00:25:52.760 not Timu's service, the same.

00:25:55.660 I choose to do business with a company that shares my values, supporting veterans every

00:25:58.780 single day, creating American jobs. You can too. Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles,

00:26:02.400 K-N-W-L-E-S. Switch to puretalk. puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. Switch to my wireless

00:26:06.920 company, America's wireless company, puretalk. Very little can scandalize me in the New York

00:26:13.760 Times. I'm used to it at this point. So are you. Here's an opinion column published a couple days

00:26:19.740 ago by Ezra Klein. Ezra Klein, he's supposed to be the thinking man's Democrat. You know,

00:26:26.340 he's a little more centrist. He's at the New York Times. He founded Vox.com to be explanatory

00:26:33.140 journalism. He's what they call, if you'll forgive the vulgarity, this is just the term

00:26:40.260 of art in politics now. He's what you'd call a shitlib. He's not the radical purple-haired guy

00:26:46.600 going to the Antifa meetings, throwing Molotov cocktails at my speaking events. He's not that

00:26:52.120 guy. He's the guy who wears a jacket. Probably doesn't wear a tie, but he wears a jacket.

00:26:56.980 He's the adult in the room. He's the responsible kind of liberal journalist.

00:27:01.100 And here's what he writes in the New York Times. Here's the headline.

00:27:05.480 Hassan Piker is not the enemy. Who's Hassan Piker? Hassan Piker is that guy. Hassan Piker

00:27:12.160 is the guy who supports violence against conservatives. And not just a one-off comment,

00:27:17.200 not just he got a little flustered in the heat of the moment. Hassan Piker is this guy.

00:27:22.100 This is so insane. America deserved 9-11, dude. I'm saying it. If you cared about Medicare fraud

00:27:30.740 or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott, okay? Here's some of what he actually has said

00:27:37.240 about the depravity of the October 7th terror attack,

00:27:40.960 the deadliest day for the Jewish people

00:27:42.620 since the Holocaust. 1.00

00:27:43.840 Quote, it doesn't matter if effing rapes 0.99

00:27:46.460 happened on October 7th.

00:27:48.100 Like, that doesn't change the dynamic for me.

00:27:50.920 The Palestinian resistance is not perfect. 1.00

00:27:54.500 There's a picture here of when he was threatening

00:27:56.580 to murder Tom Cotton.

00:27:58.540 This is just a posting.

00:27:59.340 My understanding is that the property owners

00:28:00.760 who have properties there,

00:28:02.020 choose just not to rent it at all.

00:28:03.700 Yeah, kill them. 1.00

00:28:04.600 Kill those motherfuckers. 1.00

00:28:05.620 Murder those motherfuckers in the street. 1.00

00:28:07.240 Let the streets soak in their f***ing red capitalist bloods, dude.

00:28:14.120 Hassan Piker is not the enemy.

00:28:17.920 So says Ezra Klein.

00:28:20.080 This is the most moderate Democrat around today in the New York Times,

00:28:23.540 which is the most establishment liberal outlet in the country.

00:28:27.160 Hassan Piker is not the enemy.

00:28:29.140 So what that means is, and this is something we all learned

00:28:33.260 and many of us were shocked to learn after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

00:28:37.240 Our problem is not chiefly the handful of leftists, big handful of leftists,

00:28:44.980 who actually commit and attempt to commit political violence.

00:28:48.520 They're a problem.

00:28:49.860 The bigger problem is the bulk of Democrats who support it.

00:28:55.580 After the assassination of Charlie, we learned that Democrats, especially young Democrats,

00:29:02.100 are something like eight times as likely to support political violence against conservatives

00:29:07.040 as conservatives are to support political violence against liberals.

00:29:10.620 We learned, you saw this on social media,

00:29:13.620 you heard this in conversations around your water cooler, 0.99

00:29:16.200 that it's not just those people, it's not just the Hassan Pikers 0.99

00:29:19.220 who are lunatics and terrorists and certainly should be deported. 0.99

00:29:21.780 It's not just them. 1.00

00:29:23.260 It's that lady who sits next to you at work.

00:29:26.160 It's your kid's teacher.

00:29:28.360 Maybe it's your nurse or your doctor.

00:29:30.860 Maybe it's the waiter at your restaurant.

00:29:33.320 It's the supposedly normal lib.

00:29:37.040 who has no limits to the political extremism and violence that he will support.

00:29:44.140 You can't put it any more clearly than Ezra Klein put it.

00:29:47.040 He said, Hassan Piker's not the enemy.

00:29:48.520 Who's the enemy?

00:29:49.440 You.

00:29:50.440 You.

00:29:50.960 You're the enemy.

00:29:52.780 Yeah, sure.

00:29:53.320 Trump is the enemy.

00:29:54.180 It's that meme that Trump ran on for re-election.

00:29:56.260 He said, they're not after me.

00:29:57.020 They're after you.

00:29:57.520 I'm just in the way.

00:29:58.960 You're the enemy.

00:30:01.120 Hassan Piker says that the streets should run red in your blood.

00:30:05.160 Hassan Piker says that the politicians that you elect, not just Trump, but Tom Cotton, should be killed.

00:30:12.300 Rick Scott, Rick Scott, has there ever been a more clubbable, amiable member of Congress, member of the Senate?

00:30:20.220 That guy should be killed.

00:30:22.620 Why?

00:30:23.340 Because you voted for him.

00:30:24.460 What's the implication?

00:30:25.860 It's not even an implication.

00:30:26.960 He says the rivers should run red.

00:30:29.120 The streets should run red in red capitalist blood.

00:30:31.720 Hasan Piker is not the enemy you're the enemy that's what the New York Times says

00:30:37.460 they want to kill you that's not hyperbole I'm not the hyperbole guy I'm not the bomb thrower

00:30:43.840 I'm not I'm not literally a bomb thrower because I'm not on the left and I'm not even figuratively

00:30:48.880 that much of a bomb thrower compared to everybody else in political media I'm just calling it like

00:30:53.800 it is I'm not reading the craziest wackiest left-wing blog online I'm reading the New York

00:30:58.580 times. They want to kill you. And so, yes, it's good to have a little friendly internal criticism,

00:31:07.160 fraternal correction of our own side. If the right does not stand together, if the right does not

00:31:14.380 get its priorities in order, treat each other with a little bit of grace, correct the things

00:31:19.440 that need correcting. But if the right does not win, does not win and then exercise political

00:31:27.940 power, they are coming for you. And if you don't want to hear that, if you want to put your head

00:31:35.700 in the sand, if you want to say, that's too crazy, I can't believe it, then when it happens, sorry,

00:31:40.640 when it continues to happen, you will have no one but yourself to blame. Speaking of the Utes, 0.96

00:31:49.180 a lot is coming out of Coachella. I've never been to Coachella. I suspect most of you have

00:31:53.500 up into Coachella either. A lot of memes coming out of Coachella. Coachella's super lib, obviously,

00:31:58.740 but there's a lot of great memes that are coming out of it. The chief one coming from Sabrina

00:32:03.780 Carpenter, who, you know, she's gone, that new music video I didn't like. The producers asked

00:32:08.220 me to watch it. It had a touch of sacrilege in it. It had some vulgarity, which you could kind

00:32:14.460 of get past, but the sacrilege was too much. Sabrina Carpenter, I think she filmed a video 1.00

00:32:18.100 once in a church. That was very bad. But I've noticed that as far as pop musicians go,

00:32:22.280 even though she positions herself as this hip radical leftist whatever a lot of the 0.72

00:32:28.480 messages in her music videos are subversively kind of conservative it's like girls who just

00:32:35.500 want to date the good-looking strong guy and do it's not feminist it's not gender fluid it's not

00:32:41.820 it's weirdly kind of conservative this was sabrina carpenter's reaction when a member of her own

00:32:48.100 audience started yelling an Arabic kind of, I can't say slogan, an Arabic kind of sound.

00:33:00.140 Is that what you're doing?

00:33:04.840 I don't like it.

00:33:10.140 That's your culture? Is yodeling?

00:33:11.720 is this burning man what's going on this is weird

00:33:19.700 vindicated i'm vindicated in my moderate sabrina carpenter standing totally vindicated here

00:33:28.940 this this is it a member of her audience does it which i guess i guess that's an arabic thing i

00:33:37.020 don't know i'm not that familiar with i guess that's an arabic thing to do it's like a kind

00:33:40.800 we go like woo and they go like anyway they do that and sabrina carpenter looks at this person

00:33:46.540 like she's got three heads she goes well what what are you doing she and the person goes that's

00:33:53.880 our culture and she doubles down she goes that's your culture what it's as if an arab is like 0.98

00:34:02.360 somebody from planet mars and then cherry on top she goes i don't like it 0.81

00:34:08.280 and I think she's come out and apologized or whatever, but this explains how can Sabrina

00:34:18.780 Carpenter, who is in her expression, in her protestation, in her conscious and explicit

00:34:26.260 speech, very much of the left, how can she weirdly be kind of conservative? It's because

00:34:33.100 there is a difference between ideological liberalism, ideological leftism, and temperamental

00:34:39.560 liberalism, leftism, or conservatism. Sabrina Carpenter, strange as it is to say,

00:34:46.640 mirabile dictu, is temperamentally quite conservative. There are plenty of people, 0.90

00:34:53.040 you know people like this, who go, they go to the liberal church. They go to the liberal

00:34:57.280 Episcopalian church with the lady preacher, the priestess. And they say that they're totally fine

00:35:05.760 with gay and trans stuff. They don't want it in their family, but they're fine with it generally, 0.99

00:35:11.560 you know, and abstractly. They voted for Joe Biden. They voted for Kamala Harris. And yet,

00:35:17.560 they live in the nice gated community. They're married. They send their kids to the good schools.

00:35:25.540 They drive a sensible minivan.

00:35:29.380 They have dinner together at night.

00:35:32.740 They read magazines.

00:35:34.680 It's liberal magazines, but they do the kinds of things that conservatives do.

00:35:40.360 That's the difference.

00:35:41.520 I think there are a lot of those people.

00:35:43.880 This is another mark in the column for temperamental conservatism.

00:35:48.740 And you can get those people.

00:35:52.100 You're not going to appeal to them with populism.

00:35:54.520 You're not going to appeal to them with like Bubba and the acoustic guitar singing about, well, I just want to go fishing.

00:36:00.540 I want to go fishing and drink my beer.

00:36:03.720 That's going to repel those people.

00:36:07.160 But it is another kind of conservatism.

00:36:11.160 And you can't hide it. 0.96

00:36:14.240 I don't care how many times Sabrina Carpenter votes for Biden. 0.99

00:36:16.580 I don't care how many times she waves a trans flag or whatever. 0.96

00:36:19.620 you can't hide that reaction that that revulsion at a foreign culture entering unwanted into your 0.72

00:36:27.120 audience that's that's it that she's she'll deny it till she's blue in the face she said no i'm

00:36:34.600 really blue in the face i'm really blue i'm a democrat no really i'm but you can't hide that

00:36:38.460 look that oh i don't want i just want us all to be normal like normal americans what is that's

00:36:44.280 your culture. There's no walking that one back. There's no taking that one down. That reveals

00:36:50.220 something that many, many liberals, many putative liberals don't want to reveal. Okay. Speaking of

00:36:57.280 Coachella, a sad scene, a sad meme coming out of Coachella by way of Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry

00:37:04.040 pretending that they're in high school again. A lot's going on right now. Things are changing

00:37:08.720 by the minute. That's why you need facts. You need facts. You then need to know the meaning

00:37:13.280 of those facts. You need different ways to think about those facts, why it matters,

00:37:17.020 what come next. That's what The Daily Wire does. And Daily Wire Plus members get all of that plus

00:37:21.940 the chance to chat live in the show, be part of the conversation. Go to dailywire.com slash

00:37:25.920 subscribe right now. My favorite comment yesterday is from HL1377. I'm going to clean this one up

00:37:33.800 because it's a family show. Says the most intelligent thing to ever come out of Eric

00:37:38.840 Swalwell was the flatulence. That's true. He did. Eric Swalwell was not able to contain himself

00:37:46.180 once on television about six or seven years ago. And that's, I agree. I agree. That hot air was

00:37:52.700 more coherent than anything that Eric Swalwell has ever said. That's true. Justin Trudeau and

00:37:58.960 Katy Perry making waves, living it up like it's 2001 at Coachella. They released this little video.

00:38:06.620 is on katie perry's instagram yeah here she is singing along to music justin trudeau kind of

00:38:17.360 lightly grinding on her this man was the prime minister of canada which though america's evil

00:38:23.700 top hat is a sovereign nation just kind of grinding on her a little bit they're they're

00:38:28.720 drinking alcohol out of solo cups. These people are like 50. But a lot of people say, good for 0.94

00:38:37.540 them. Isn't this so cute? They were married and they're no longer married. Now they're divorced

00:38:43.180 and they're shacking up with each other or something. Oh, it's sad. It's sad because

00:38:50.420 you want to be happy for them. I do. I don't like Justin Trudeau. I don't know Katy Perry.

00:38:55.540 I certainly don't like Justin Trudeau. You kind of want to be happy for them

00:38:59.440 because you remember that. You remember going to music festivals or concerts with your little

00:39:07.180 sweetheart that you're dating. Ooh, we're going to have a little drink out of a solo cup. Ooh,

00:39:11.020 we're going to kind of grow. Will they, won't they? You remember that from when you were 15,

00:39:16.020 not when you were 50. So you kind of want to be happy for them, but they've lived these lives.

00:39:23.480 they've been married, they've been prime ministers, and it just seems weird and sad

00:39:28.660 because so much of liberalism is just the denial of time. So much of liberalism,

00:39:39.640 I've actually heard this in the religious context, that sin is basically the denial of time.

00:39:45.580 You're trying to escape time. You see this with addicts. The reason that alcoholics drink all

00:39:50.900 the time. Drug addicts do a bunch of drugs. Sex addicts go screw around. Porn addicts,

00:39:55.980 any kind of addict. What they're trying to do is escape time and place and physicality. It's

00:40:02.180 escapism. And so much of liberalism, I think, is that. It's the denial of death. It's certainly

00:40:10.280 the denial of history. And it's the denial of aging. That would have been cute. That would

00:40:19.640 have been cute. The Katy Perry, Justin Trudeau thing would have been cute if they were 17.

00:40:23.820 But they're not. And so it's not cute. It's gross. It's like that guy. I remember when I was in my

00:40:29.540 20s, I go to bars a lot. And there was always that guy at the bar who was a little too old to

00:40:34.040 be at the bar. He was just a little too, it was weird. But I was at the bar. I liked being at the

00:40:38.680 bar. But it was weird that he was at the bar. And I remember thinking in my 20s, man, maybe I'll

00:40:43.280 never get married and I'll just go to bars all the time. But that would stop being fun. There's

00:40:47.720 a time at which going to brunch stops being so fun. Going to the Coachella stops being so fun

00:40:54.380 because you have changed. The bar hasn't changed. Coachella hasn't changed. Young Love hasn't

00:41:00.100 changed, but you have changed or you should have changed. And you're no longer, even if you want

00:41:07.300 to play at Young Love, you're not young anymore. It's just a little, it's wrong. And what we

00:41:14.080 endeavor to be, you know, conservatives are sometimes depicted as being like 50 years old

00:41:20.360 when they're 12. You know, they wear like a tweed jacket. They read books. They wear bow ties. I

00:41:25.720 don't know. I did some of these things too. But it's kind of funny. It's incongruous because 12

00:41:30.700 year olds are not supposed to be like that. Well, you know what? 50 year olds are not supposed to

00:41:34.200 be like that either. And the things that made you happy when you were 20 are maybe not going to make

00:41:42.140 you so happy when you're 50. It's this idea that I'm going to escape death. All these liberal

00:41:48.200 futurists, they say, oh, we're going to cure death. Any day now, we're going to upload our brains to

00:41:52.000 the cloud. Any day now, we're going to redefine marriage. Because I used to be able to go out

00:41:57.120 and date a lot of different people. Now I can't. We're going to break that limit too. We're going

00:42:00.640 to break the limit of aging. We're going to take aging shots and pills and drugs and surgeries.

00:42:05.300 Then we won't have to age anymore. But you know, the people who do all that stuff,

00:42:08.780 They don't look young forever. They look like mutants. They look like aliens. They look they look grotesque

00:42:15.120 That is grotesque

00:42:16.580 If you if you want to conserve your happiness, you have to change very berkian very conservative principle

00:42:23.820 You have to grow you have to mature because we do live in time and space

00:42:27.940 And if you want to flourish in this world, you have to make your peace with that fact

00:42:31.160 Which is that we're born and we are going to die and we are going to grow along that and you you have to grow or you're going

00:42:37.400 you're going to be left behind. Okay, speaking of immaturity and sex stuff, a viral post I have

00:42:44.640 to get to. This guy, Bradley Gray, I don't know who he is, some viral internet guy now. This tweet

00:42:50.760 has almost a million and a half views. He says, religion stole my entire sexual prime. I didn't

00:42:55.680 have sex until my wedding night at 23. I didn't have a real dating life until my divorce at 28.

00:43:00.900 And I'm now done pretending that wasn't a tragedy. Nobody wants to say this out loud, so I will.

00:43:07.400 teaching young men that their natural sexual desire is sinful doesn't make them holy.

00:43:12.200 It makes them socially crippled, anxious, ashamed, completely unprepared for the real world.

00:43:16.440 That was me for the first decade of my adult life.

00:43:19.600 Now, right off the bat, what this guy is presenting here is he's saying, look, I used to be

00:43:24.660 really messed up, but now I've got it together.

00:43:29.220 And you have to examine the evidence for that.

00:43:31.040 You say, okay, well, how is it that you have it together now?

00:43:33.140 He goes, now I'm divorced and screwing around.

00:43:36.700 Maybe I have some STDs and I'm screaming to strangers on the internet.

00:43:40.680 You can tell, I got it together, man.

00:43:42.380 You want to be like me?

00:43:43.980 Listen to what I do.

00:43:44.840 I used to be religious and married and normal, but now I've figured it out.

00:43:52.520 The biggest mistake I ever made was not sinning a lot.

00:43:56.700 I got married at 23 to a woman I wasn't right for.

00:44:00.380 Not because we were bad people, because we were both so desperate to escape the shame

00:44:04.480 that we confused relief for love.

00:44:05.820 That's what sexual repression actually produces not purity bad decisions made in desperation

00:44:10.400 She left me. This is sad. She left me. She met someone else

00:44:14.120 My first reaction wasn't just heartbreak. It was rage not at her

00:44:17.180 Not at her the person who wronged him at the years

00:44:20.800 I'd handed over to fear and guilt and rules that were never mine to begin with you want to talk about repression the actual object

00:44:26.820 of your anger

00:44:27.820 You're saying no, I can't be mad at her

00:44:30.540 You want to talk about being a little messed up in the head deflecting projecting

00:44:35.320 What's he do? He says, no, I'm not angry at the person who's wronged me. I'm angry at God,

00:44:39.380 who's never wronged me, who's only good, who made me and sustains me. I'm really angry at him,

00:44:46.300 and I'm angry at goodness and virtue, and I wish I had sinned. I was angry at the years I'd handed

00:44:51.540 over to fear and guilt and rules that were never mine to begin with. Never mine. Ah, there's that

00:44:56.400 liberal key. That's Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost. Better to reign in hell than rule in heaven.

00:45:03.400 The mind is its own place and can make a hell of heaven and heaven a hell.

00:45:07.000 It's about mine.

00:45:08.480 This is what the liberals would say.

00:45:09.420 I'd rather be miserable but independent than happy and dependent on my wife, on my community, on my family, on my God.

00:45:19.700 That's what they say.

00:45:20.780 It's exactly what Satan says in Paradise Lost.

00:45:24.420 Some of the radical romantics said that Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost.

00:45:27.720 They were reading Paradise Lost through a lens of classical liberalism and saying, see, he's the good guy.

00:45:31.980 I also read paradise lost through the lens of classical liberalism, but I realize he's the bad guy because liberalism is bad and it makes everybody miserable

00:45:38.780 And he says one of those years back. I couldn't have them. So I did the next best thing

00:45:43.340 Says how much happier I would be 1.00

00:45:46.160 If i'd pointlessly slept with 30 women, you know 30 40 50. I don't know

00:45:50.800 Actually, I don't even know that these people sleep with that many people

00:45:53.700 They probably just are frustrated. They go on a lot of dates. They swipe right on the apps and they go and look at porn

00:45:58.760 neither of which will make you happy by the way so what does he say he says the same thing that

00:46:05.340 justin trudeau and katie perry are doing same thing that so many poor benighted stunted liberals

00:46:10.300 are doing they're saying you know what i wanted i used to be happy when i was a little kid

00:46:13.380 and now that i'm fat and 50 i'm gonna go pretend to be a little kid again

00:46:16.800 it's cute when the baby says goo goo gaga and soils himself it's actually kind of cute isn't

00:46:23.840 it? It's funny when the little baby bumps into tables. It's kind of cute. It's cute. It's a

00:46:28.600 little less cute when the adult does it. And now we have a lot of adults doing that. And they think

00:46:33.260 it's good. They long for it. Okay. Tee-hee-hee on that chipper note. Today's Tee-hee-hee Tuesday.

00:46:38.960 The rest of the show continues now. You don't want to miss it. Become a member. Use code

00:46:41.580 Knowles Canada WLES at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:46:53.840 We'll be right back.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 14, 2026

Ep. 1952 - Trump Corrects His Viral Picture EXPLAINED

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