The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1960 - GROSS： Gavin Newsom Is A Political ＂Bugchaser＂

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00:00:27.480 A new report reveals that California Governor Gavin Newsom has not only intentionally flooded

00:00:34.900 his state with illegal aliens, but he has specifically sought out and subsidized the

00:00:41.380 importation of illegal aliens with HIV. We will analyze Democrats' political bug chasing. Then,

00:00:49.280 a popular cartoon depicts abortion in the most nauseating way, perhaps in the history of media,

00:00:54.300 And Congressman Brad Knott joins to discuss the FISA surveillance fight tearing top Republicans apart.

00:01:02.180 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:22.380 Welcome back to the show.

00:01:24.300 The people who are accusing Pope Leo of being a huge lib are once again looking not quite right as the Pope on the papal airplane just shoots down an attempt by German cardinals to promote weird sex stuff.

00:01:38.660 We will get to the orthodox views, the dare I say conservative views of the Holy Father.

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00:02:51.700 balanceofnature.com. Guys, this one's really weird. It's really weird. We have so much to

00:02:58.660 get to today. I'll keep it brief, but I couldn't have written this one. This is like a Mad Libs

00:03:04.580 of immigration. Yes, of course, the Democrat governor of California, who is currently the

00:03:10.240 leader to be the Democrat nominee for president. Yes, of course, he's supported open borders in

00:03:14.640 recent years. That's crazy enough. He's also subsidized the open borders. That's a little

00:03:20.840 crazier. But the fact that he is subsidized bringing in illegal aliens, specifically 0.70

00:03:27.240 who have HIV, that wasn't on my bingo card. Got to give a hat tip to Chris Rufo. He gets it done

00:03:36.860 again. Chris Rufo just absolutely crushing it. I encourage you to read the full report in City

00:03:41.280 Journal. I'll just give you a little taste of it. In the City Journal investigation,

00:03:45.260 we've traced the money and can reveal that Governor Kevin Newsom has granted approximately

00:03:49.580 $1 billion to an army of nonprofits that has encouraged unchecked numbers of migrants to

00:03:55.120 enter the country, fought deportation orders in the courts, and led street protests against ICE.

00:04:00.400 Skip down a little bit. We get to one of those nonprofits that received some of the billion

00:04:05.600 dollars from Gavin Newsom. Adam Ryan Chang, Oasis's executive director, believes that, quote,

00:04:12.980 homosexual audacity is his superpower. And he has framed his work with the nonprofit as part 0.79

00:04:20.280 of a broader left-wing campaign of liberating the LGBTQ plus community. In a recent annual report,

00:04:26.440 the group highlighted its work of apparently representing migrants with a sexually transmitted

00:04:30.280 disease. In 2024, the report said one in six new clients is living with HIV, and the rest are all 0.99

00:04:37.600 at significant risk of contracting HIV. I like the clinical language for that. So look, one in

00:04:44.500 six, that's crazy. One in six is about to get AIDS. That's nuts. AIDS is a very bad disease.

00:04:50.500 But to say, and the rest of them are all at risk. The way you're at risk of contracting HIV

00:04:58.780 is when you go to gay bathhouses. It's when you engage in extremely irresponsible, 1.00

00:05:04.660 deviant sexual behavior. That's it. I know in the 90s, there was this big push to suggest that

00:05:10.480 there was a wide pandemic of heterosexual AIDS. It's not real. It's possible that like in Africa,

00:05:16.640 that a woman could contract HIV because her husband is doing weird stuff with other men.

00:05:22.380 But the idea that there is some widespread epidemic of heterosexual AIDS just isn't true.

00:05:28.540 So you say, okay, our clients, one in six of them have HIV and the rest of them are probably

00:05:33.940 going to get it at some point. In 2025, the proportion increased to one in five. So this

00:05:38.360 nonprofit is bragging about how much AIDS the clients are getting, the clients that they are

00:05:45.240 receiving state money to bring into the United States against the law. In response to a request

00:05:51.000 for comment, Chang said people, quote, living with HIV are not barred from entering the United

00:05:54.920 States on that basis. That's true. That's true. People are not barred from entering the US if

00:06:00.340 they have HIV. I suppose one could debate whether or not they should be, but that's absolutely

00:06:05.080 right. They're not barred from that. But there's a big difference between not being barred from

00:06:10.720 entering the United States illegally and actively being recruited, subsidized with your taxpayer 0.87

00:06:18.480 dollars to find the AIDS-iest people in the world and then bring them into the United States against 0.98

00:06:23.860 the law. People who are at high risk, by the way, of contracting and spreading HIV to infect

00:06:31.000 the citizens of this country with one of the worst diseases that you can imagine.

00:06:36.180 Gavin Newsom doing all of that. So I said, what on earth is going on here?

00:06:41.940 And I remembered this term. There's this term that I read about years ago called bug chasing.

00:06:48.120 Have you heard the term bug chasing? I don't want to be too late. It's guys who not only are

00:06:56.740 indifferent to contracting HIV, it's guys who are so deviant that they want to catch it.

00:07:04.560 They put themselves in a position to get HIV. They get a thrill, some kind of extremely perverse

00:07:11.940 thrill at the thought of getting HIV, and they actively go to contract it. And I thought,

00:07:18.240 at the political level, that's exactly what Gavin Newsom's doing. Gavin Newsom is a political bug

00:07:23.660 chaser. He's a bug chaser. And then I looked up a study on bug chasing. I said, what is the

00:07:30.000 psychological profile of this niche, weird, fetishistic community that actively seeks to

00:07:36.860 get HIV. And there's oddly some scientific literature on the subject. Here's one study,

00:07:43.580 the ultimate high sexual addiction and the bug chasing phenomenon, explaining what kind of guys

00:07:48.740 would go out there and try to do this. And apparently one of the big drivers of bug chasing

00:07:54.860 of guys who want to get HIV is they want to be humiliated. And I thought, well, this explains

00:07:59.900 it at the political level, because that is what the Democrats want. I mean, in this case, literally

00:08:05.940 you have a Democrat governor and the leading candidate for the presidential nomination for

00:08:11.580 the Dems in 2028. This guy is actively going out recruiting people with HIV to break our laws and 0.98

00:08:17.860 come into our country and very likely infect other people. So literally, you have Gavin Newsom

00:08:23.020 politically bug chasing here. But it comes from the same motivation as this weird niche subculture,

00:08:28.700 which is a desire for humiliation. Illegal immigration is humiliating to a country.

00:08:35.900 Forget about HIV for a second. Illegal immigration itself is humiliating to a country 0.93

00:08:41.340 because it means that we can't enforce our most basic laws. We lack the thing that most 1.00

00:08:48.700 basically delineates us as a country, namely a functioning border. And our citizens have no

00:08:56.660 real rights, no real sovereignty. Because we don't have the political right to determine

00:09:02.960 what is our country and what is not our country. That is humiliating. And that is a big part of

00:09:10.940 the reason why the Dems do it. The Dems want to humiliate our country. They want us to be weak. 0.89

00:09:17.080 They want to blame us for everything. They want to, out of this misplaced sense of guilt,

00:09:22.820 flood the country with foreign nationals. They want to constantly take the side of the 1.00

00:09:29.360 perpetrators of crimes. They constantly take justice away from the victims of crimes.

00:09:34.320 They want to humiliate the victims of crime, just ordinary crime on the streets.

00:09:40.260 They want to humiliate us. They want America to be taken down a notch.

00:09:45.920 As Governor Andrew Cuomo said, another Democrat governor of a blue state,

00:09:49.980 America was never that great.

00:09:51.500 Remember that during the MAGA movement?

00:09:53.020 He says, make America great again.

00:09:54.780 America was never that great.

00:09:56.060 We're not that great.

00:09:56.960 We're bad.

00:09:57.900 We're slavers. 0.97

00:09:59.200 We're colonialists.

00:10:00.760 We're capitalists. 0.90

00:10:02.320 We're the worst people in the world.

00:10:03.640 We need to be taken down a notch.

00:10:06.500 That's it.

00:10:07.420 And so not to get into too much psychobabble, but at a very deep level, I'm not surprised

00:10:13.260 that the ultimate form of personal degradation and humiliation that you see in this weird

00:10:19.400 subculture is now literally become a political program with one of the most prominent Democrats

00:10:27.940 in the country. Probably a good idea, probably a good idea to keep that guy out of the White House.

00:10:35.500 Even at the kind of immigrants we bring in, talk about the humiliation. It's not even like we're 1.00

00:10:39.700 going out to the rest of the world and saying, hey, give us your smartest, your brightest,

00:10:43.060 your bravest. No. We want people from the worst countries with the fewest skills,

00:10:49.820 from the least assimilable cultures. We want to be humiliated. Well, I don't want to be humiliated. 1.00

00:10:56.600 Democrats want us to be humiliated. I don't want to. Now, one way to support our country and real

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00:12:24.660 Do you know the show Invincible? I guess Invincible is on Amazon. I don't know. I didn't

00:12:29.800 know what this show was. It's a cartoon that adults watch. Kids watch it too. It's based on

00:12:34.860 a comic book. Mr. Davies texted me about this last night. He said, you've got to cover the

00:12:39.100 Invincible story. I said, what's that? I said, well, it's this comic book that became a TV show

00:12:42.760 and it's this cartoon that guys watch. I said, hey, Ben, Ben, explain this to me like I'm a

00:12:48.420 grown man. Can you explain this story to me like I don't watch, I don't, listen, I don't want to

00:12:53.940 yuck anybody's yum. A lot of subcultures out there, but I hadn't heard of this show.

00:12:58.460 And apparently it's very, very popular.

00:13:00.640 It's been on for about five years.

00:13:02.420 And in the most recent episode, the guy, the protagonist, has gone off to save the universe.

00:13:12.500 He had to go, leave his girlfriend to go save the universe.

00:13:16.180 He's going to come back. 0.98

00:13:17.560 In the meantime, the girlfriend decided to kill his child.

00:13:22.900 And then this is how the revelation of this crime plays out.

00:13:52.900 I didn't, I didn't tell you because I wanted you thinking about coming home alive, not this.

00:14:00.220 And when you were gone, I was so alone.

00:14:06.460 And the thought of going through everything by myself, I made a decision.

00:14:13.240 But I should have, I don't know, oh my God.

00:14:16.920 Eve.

00:14:22.900 I'm sorry I did this to you.

00:14:27.320 I should have been here.

00:14:30.980 Oh, my.

00:14:32.480 Oh, my.

00:14:33.860 This superhero goes away to save the universe. 0.96

00:14:39.640 And when he comes back to thank him, his girlfriend gets a little chubby and kills his child.

00:14:46.540 and then as if that weren't bad enough his response is i'm so sorry

00:14:54.920 that i did this to you i'm sorry that i went off to save the universe

00:15:01.800 and that you were a little lonely i mean you still have like friends and family but you were 0.72

00:15:08.160 a little lonely you were a little upset that your husband was saving universe so you murdered my

00:15:13.560 child. I'm sorry. That's on me. My bad. Just for comparison, I immediately, my mind went to

00:15:22.700 a similar scenario. Not perfectly yet. The details don't perfectly line up, but it's similar enough

00:15:29.500 to compare how an abortion revelation scene played out in our popular media about 40, 50 years ago.

00:15:40.760 I know you blame me for losing the baby

00:15:44.940 Yes

00:15:48.380 I know what that meant to you

00:15:51.980 I'll make it up to you, Kay

00:15:56.380 Oh, oh, Michael 0.83

00:15:59.260 Michael, you are blind

00:16:02.340 It wasn't a miscarriage 0.99

00:16:06.400 It was an abortion 0.95

00:16:10.480 an abortion, Michael

00:16:14.280 just like our marriage is an abortion 0.65

00:16:17.700 something that's unholy 0.98

00:16:20.720 and evil

00:16:21.920 I didn't want your son, Michael

00:16:26.020 I wouldn't bring another one of your sons

00:16:29.280 into this world 1.00

00:16:30.380 it was an abortion, Michael

00:16:34.760 it was a son, a son 1.00

00:16:37.500 and I had it killed

00:16:38.520 because this must all end I know now that it's over there would be no way Michael no way you 1.00

00:16:48.340 could ever forgive me not with this Sicilian thing that's been going on for 2,000 years

00:16:55.660 so that's how that scene played out not that long ago in one of the greatest movies ever made not

00:17:03.680 Look, I'm not saying I'm defending that kind of behavior from a man, but those were the emotional stakes in The Godfather.

00:17:13.760 The woman comes out and says, hey, while you were away, I had an abortion.

00:17:19.340 And the man doesn't say, oh, I'm sorry I did that to you.

00:17:23.340 I'm sorry, what did I do to you?

00:17:25.040 I went to work and I also gave you a child.

00:17:27.340 I'm sorry that I did that to you. 0.70

00:17:29.700 I'm sorry that I made you kill my son. 0.52

00:17:31.820 That was teary eyed. That was not how it played out 50 years ago.

00:17:36.740 50 years ago, the man was so angry at this grave injustice that he himself did an unjust thing, 0.60

00:17:44.340 which is go, he smacks the woman. Quite the opposite response. And notice here,

00:17:49.700 Kay, Diane Keaton, how she plays it. When she says, I had an abortion, Michael, she says,

00:17:55.900 you gave me a son and I killed him. So there's no confusion about what she did.

00:18:01.120 She says, I killed him. 1.00

00:18:02.720 Abortion is murder, and I committed a murder because you, Godfather Michael, are evil. 1.00

00:18:09.760 Because you, mafioso, are evil. 1.00

00:18:11.920 And so I made this moral error, but I did it. 1.00

00:18:15.060 Here's my rationale.

00:18:16.800 But I did commit a crime.

00:18:19.240 Notice in the cartoon, she says, well, I made a choice.

00:18:24.840 She doesn't say, I killed him.

00:18:27.180 She says, I made a choice.

00:18:29.020 And then she almost starts to say in the cartoon, I just, maybe I should have, maybe I shouldn't

00:18:35.040 have, maybe, but she can't even say that she regrets it or that she should have spoken to

00:18:40.140 him first. That was obviously what was being left on the table there. Maybe I should have

00:18:43.500 called you, talked to you, should waited, but they can't even say that. They can't even admit that.

00:18:49.060 And I think for the pro-abortion people in 2026, they are much weaker and they are much more

00:18:56.060 self-deluded, and they're much more dishonest than the pro-abortion activists of the 70s.

00:19:01.600 You know, the pro-abortion activists of the 70s, say what you will about them,

00:19:04.300 they had an infanticidal bloodlust, but at least they were honest about what they were doing.

00:19:10.340 This is how you get Hillary Clinton, even Hillary Clinton running for president saying, 0.99

00:19:13.880 abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. The reason she acknowledges that it should be rare 0.98

00:19:17.700 is because she knows it's murdering a baby. And she comes to the wrong moral conclusion,

00:19:22.440 which is that it's okay to murder a baby if I want to. But she at least acknowledges what it is. 0.85

00:19:27.720 The abortion activists today won't do that. They only speak in euphemisms. It was a choice. It was

00:19:33.660 reproductive health. It was in really, it's you need to support me. And it's actually wonderful

00:19:37.820 when I kill my kid. And actually, if I kill my kid, it's your fault. And that's how it plays 1.00

00:19:43.100 out in the popular culture. Not recommending either of these behaviors, either the cartoon

00:19:47.980 lady or Michael Corleone here, but one of them is much more in tune with reality. Okay. Speaking

00:19:54.360 of moral questions, Papa Leone, the Pope, the Holy Father, who happily that little spat between

00:19:59.720 the president and the Pope, that's over now. It seems like they're getting along just fine. That's

00:20:02.420 excellent. Very pleased to see that the secular and the temporal, sorry, the temporal and the

00:20:06.460 spiritual power need to work together, even though there's always some tension. But some people have

00:20:11.920 taken that opportunity to accuse the Pope of being a liberal or a leftist or something, which

00:20:16.700 is really silly because on the whole, the sovereign pontiff is much more right-wing

00:20:25.900 than any American politician by definition. The terms left and right come from the French

00:20:30.960 Revolution when the people on the right were the ones who defended the church and the people on

00:20:34.320 the left were the ones who wanted to destroy the church. So when you look down, certainly on the

00:20:39.160 social issues, contraception, abortion, marriage, the pope, really any pope, even the most liberal

00:20:46.400 pope is much more conservative than the most conservative American politician. And then on

00:20:53.080 the other issues, migration, the pope is a little bit more liberal, a little bit more moderate,

00:20:58.240 I guess you would say. But even the pope will say, nations need borders. It's totally right

00:21:02.480 to have immigration laws. So even there, I think it's kind of silly. But just to underscore this 1.00

00:21:07.420 point, the pope was asked about these German bishops. The German bishops who have been a big

00:21:13.940 problem for a long time. They're basically in schism with the church. They constantly promote

00:21:18.400 heresy. So there's this one German bishop, Cardinal Marx. Cardinal Marx. It's amazing. 0.66

00:21:24.240 If you abbreviate cardinal, you take out the D-I-N-A, dot, dot, dot. It's Karl Marx. 0.50

00:21:30.380 Karl Marx says he wants to issue apostolic blessings, Episcopal blessings to same-sex

00:21:39.680 married couples. Pope Leo asked about that. Here's his answer.

00:21:44.340 The Holy See has already spoken to the German bishops. 0.68

00:21:47.680 The Holy See has made it clear that we do not agree with the formalized blessing of couples,

00:21:57.340 in this case homosexual couples as you ask, or couples in irregular situations,

00:22:01.960 beyond what was specifically, if you will, allowed for by Pope Francis in saying all people receive blessings.

00:22:10.480 When a priest gives a blessing at the end of Mass, when the Pope gives a blessing at the end of a large celebration like such we have today, there are blessings of all people.

00:22:21.960 Francis's infamous, famous, well-known expression of tutti, tutti, tutti is an expression of the Church's belief that all are welcome, all are invited.

00:22:34.360 All are invited to follow Jesus, and all are invited to look for conversion in their lives.

00:22:40.060 To go beyond that today, I think that the topic can cause more disunity than unity,

00:22:47.080 and that we should look for ways to build our unity upon Jesus Christ and what Jesus Christ teaches.

00:22:52.360 Beautiful, beautiful, a deeply orthodox and conservative answer.

00:22:57.780 Conservative in the political sense, by which I mean, he's asked,

00:23:00.720 hey, are you going to promote this gay marriage stuff, so-called gay marriage stuff in the church?

00:23:06.080 And Leo goes, no, we're not doing that.

00:23:09.320 And by the way, we're not doing that for people who are cohabitating but not married.

00:23:13.460 And by the way, we're also not doing that for people who are divorced and civilly remarried.

00:23:16.340 We remain firm in our views, which have been consistent for 2,000 years.

00:23:23.200 Also, this is basically what Pope Francis said.

00:23:27.460 Now, Pope Francis would appear to be a little more to the left than Pope Leo.

00:23:32.360 It's one of the reasons that conservative Catholics,

00:23:35.000 one of the reasons that we're pretty happy with how things are going under Pope Leo.

00:23:38.500 But notice he doesn't say, and Francis was totally wrong, and my predecessor was wrong, and I'm right.

00:23:44.220 Because that, even if the predecessor were distinctly left-wing, that very kind of rupture, that very kind of disunity, to use Poplio's word here, would express a radical impulse.

00:23:57.840 There's something deeply conservative about saying, no, no, no, listen to what my predecessor said.

00:24:03.640 He said that blessings are for everybody.

00:24:06.220 So yes, at the end of mass, we give a general blessing to everybody.

00:24:09.600 Well, we're not going to say, all right, all the fanooks get out of here and all the divorced 0.99

00:24:12.580 and civilly remarried get out of here. And you only blessings. No, no, no. We give a general

00:24:16.480 blessing to everybody, but we're not doing the gay marriage stuff. That's a very conservative 0.89

00:24:22.000 impulse. Frankly, it's to the right of much of the Republican party and most Republican politicians.

00:24:28.300 And it's the right thing to say. And the German bishops need to figure it out. These German

00:24:33.060 bishops. Good grief. Okay. Much more to get to on disunity in Washington, D.C., especially among

00:24:41.600 Republicans, because there's a major fight going on right now about an issue that was so huge for

00:24:46.900 Republican voters. That is FISA surveillance by the government, which was being used against

00:24:53.240 many ordinary conservatives. It was used against President Trump, actually, on his campaign.

00:24:57.340 uh now there's this fight over whether or not to reauthorize the surveillance program or how to

00:25:04.820 reauthorize the surveillance program or is the gop going to do 180 here so we have someone who's in

00:25:10.420 the fight himself congressman brad knott coming on to explain the issue for us first though i want

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00:25:57.120 You have to check it out. It's just magnificent. Less money, same service, no nonsense. Right now,

00:26:03.440 go to puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S. Claim unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99.

00:26:11.220 That is puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S, to switch to my wireless company,

00:26:16.160 which happens to be America's wireless company. Pure talk. The government has been surveilling us

00:26:22.480 basically forever, but they have dramatically increased the size and scope of that surveillance

00:26:30.440 in recent years. It's been a big sticking point for conservatives. We know that these powers of

00:26:36.480 the government were being used unjustly against us, used unjustly against President Trump,

00:26:41.580 not that long ago. So now there's this big fight over whether or not to reauthorize the program,

00:26:45.840 how to reauthorize the program. Big fight on Capitol Hill that basically no one, myself included,

00:26:50.380 knows almost anything about. That's how behind the scenes it's remained. So pleased to be joined

00:26:56.240 right now by Congressman Brad Knott to explain the battle. Congressman Knott, thank you for coming on.

00:27:03.500 Hey, Michael, thank you for having me. So, Congressman, it's my job to follow these

00:27:09.280 things, at least relatively closely. I guess really my job is I'm a cigar salesman, but my

00:27:14.140 hobby is politics and media. And so I've followed this reasonably closely and I can't quite figure

00:27:20.420 it out. Republicans were totally unified on seriously weakening the powers of the government

00:27:27.360 to spy on Americans because we were the victims of it. And now maybe not. Well, you highlight a

00:27:34.620 very important principle here. And let me say before we dive into the Fourth Amendment

00:27:38.620 intricacies that your cigars are fantastic. Thank you, sir. I enjoy them. You know, there's

00:27:46.240 nothing, we've talked about this, there's nothing more enjoyable than a good cigar and good

00:27:49.780 fellowship to accompany it. But returning to FISA, you hit the nail on the head. You know,

00:27:55.840 last Congress, the 118th Congress, there was a tremendous battle and Joe Biden was the president

00:28:02.380 and we were discussing, I was not there, but I was following it. Can there be a warrantless

00:28:08.300 surveillance of American citizens. And now that Republicans are in charge of the executive branch,

00:28:14.960 there seems to be a little bit of a drift back to we need to maintain FISA in its current form,

00:28:21.720 reauthorizing it without a warrant requirement. And as is the case with any complex situation,

00:28:29.080 there are intricacies and nuances. But just optically speaking, that does not look very

00:28:34.840 good to say when we're not in charge of the White House, we want the warrant requirement. When we

00:28:39.720 take charge of the White House, we do not want the warrant requirement. So there is a battle going on

00:28:45.380 and the main concern that I have been relaying to the leadership in the House, the White House, is

00:28:51.980 even under current reform structure that we achieved last Congress, the system relies

00:28:58.680 exclusively on the executive branch to detect, to discover, to report, and to basically audit

00:29:06.180 itself with this vast surveillance power aimed at foreigners that collects American citizens'

00:29:13.180 data as a byproduct. And that's the framework of the fight that we're engaged in right now.

00:29:18.800 So right now, it's all up to the White House being honest. And so with this White House,

00:29:24.160 I certainly trust the White House and they've done a great job. And I was just just pointing out last night, I did a hit on Fox News, but we're talking about on the show yesterday as well, that you can see how important it is when the White House shifts, because three years ago, the DOJ was partnered with the SPLC to persecute normal Americans.

00:29:41.920 Now, after an election, the DOJ is prosecuting the SPLC because they've committed fraud.

00:29:48.480 So, you know, big shifts take place.

00:29:50.680 And I really feel fine with this White House having that authority.

00:29:54.240 I think they're responsible people.

00:29:55.580 But what happens if, I hope it never happens, but it will at some point, what happens when

00:30:00.820 the Democrats take power under this current structure?

00:30:04.880 Well, we know that with history as our guide, and unfortunately, even within our own government,

00:30:09.980 that intel has been used for nefarious reasons.

00:30:13.720 I mean, this, the intel community has admitted

00:30:16.420 to abusing the FISA powers they have

00:30:18.680 to the tunes of hundreds of thousands of improper searches.

00:30:22.600 And, you know, I've engaged in this type of surveillance

00:30:25.260 as a former federal prosecutor.

00:30:26.720 So I've seen the system work well.

00:30:29.220 It's under a different authority.

00:30:31.420 And, you know, just as a brief summary,

00:30:34.060 when I would use a warrant to justify a wiretap

00:30:37.520 of an individual,

00:30:38.940 I knew that defense counsel had the right to inspect the hardware and how the warrant was executed, how the wiretap was achieved.

00:30:47.300 That gave us tremendous incentive to adhere to the letter of the law, because if there was any abuse of that authority, the court could order it revealed and the case could be closed and we could be sanctioned or worse.

00:31:01.120 And that mechanism was put into the Constitution for a reason by our founders.

00:31:06.160 The separation of powers mechanism is an unbelievably proficient incentive not to abuse power.

00:31:14.060 And we don't have that with FISA, and we're working towards that now.

00:31:17.700 So what are the stakes of this?

00:31:20.440 This is not a left-right fight exactly.

00:31:22.640 This is an intra-Republican fight right now.

00:31:25.000 Where does it stand?

00:31:26.300 What is the timeline?

00:31:27.920 Who needs to be persuaded?

00:31:29.200 and more importantly, what is the optimal solution to allow the government to go get the bad guys,

00:31:35.980 especially foreign bad guys, but also to protect our rights as Americans so that we aren't abused

00:31:40.840 by future politicians? Sure. Well, the stakes are, we have a FISA reauthorization that is up

00:31:49.300 and it expires at, I believe, the end of next week or roughly somewhere in that ballpark,

00:31:53.880 the end of April anyway. And if we do not reauthorize FISA, then it could potentially

00:31:59.120 slow down the accumulation of data that's aimed, again, at foreign citizens. None of the Republicans

00:32:06.200 are disgruntled about the foreign citizens, people who are outside the United States working to harm 1.00

00:32:11.820 the United States. It's the byproduct. It's the incidental collection of the American citizens 1.00

00:32:16.520 information. And so to really get this right once and for all, Michael, there's a lot of

00:32:22.860 intricacies because the technology, the collections, all those are very classified,

00:32:27.620 but they're very broad. And you can't apply the Fourth Amendment if you don't understand the

00:32:32.840 hardware, so to speak. How does it work? How does the data present itself? How is it queried or

00:32:38.300 searched? And then how long do we have it? How long is it able to be utilized against the

00:32:44.400 individuals that they're captured? So there's a lot of questions there that are very specific

00:32:50.220 that would necessarily take us into the bowels of classifications.

00:32:54.860 And that is one reason for the friction and I would say the difficulty in getting this right.

00:33:01.460 So real quick, before I let you go, what do we need to get done between now?

00:33:05.080 If this is going to come up next week, what needs to be done between now and then?

00:33:10.060 Who needs to go get in a room, sit at a table, hash it out?

00:33:13.140 You know, we pick up our pens and call our congressmen.

00:33:16.420 What do we need to ask for?

00:33:18.000 What we need to do is we need to insist that the FISA powers are reauthorized within the constitutional framework so that there is a separation of power, that the intelligence community cannot be tasked with policing itself if they're searching American citizens' data.

00:33:37.180 And achieving that is going to require a lot of legwork on the Republican side only, because I don't think that the Democrats are going to act in good faith.

00:33:43.980 And so it's going to be a very academic, a very focused and a very constitutionally centered, centered debate going on that we need to get done.

00:33:52.960 Well, we know the Dems aren't going to act in good faith.

00:33:54.700 In fact, that's the whole reason that people are concerned about this.

00:33:57.460 It's because the minute the Democrats get back into power, we know what they're going to do because they've done it before.

00:34:03.340 Congressman. That's right.

00:34:04.520 I don't envy your task because, you know, first of all, getting Republicans together in our nation's capital is it's like herding cats generally.

00:34:12.720 but that is that is the real hard meticulous work of government it's very very important we talk a

00:34:18.000 lot about the stakes of elections the stakes of shifts in power this is a big one this power was

00:34:22.720 used against us and and we need to make sure we get it right congressman thank you for coming on

00:34:26.320 the show i look forward to a cigar together at some point soon amen thank you michael good to

00:34:32.380 see you the daily wire gives you access to everything tomorrow night do not miss our special

00:34:37.120 wired in live white house correspondence dinner coverage with exclusive red carpet pre-show

00:34:41.140 coverage at 6 p.m. Eastern, followed by the dinner live at 8 p.m. Eastern right here on The Daily

00:34:45.240 Wire. It also marks President Trump's first appearance at the dinner as president. So I

00:34:49.540 think it's fair to say he may have a few things on his mind. Watch live tomorrow night starting

00:34:53.760 at 6 p.m. Eastern on The Daily Wire. Okay, my favorite comment yesterday is from FamilyGash7500

00:35:02.280 who says, we actually got Hassan Piker encouraging playing GTA 6 in real life before we got GTA 6.

00:35:11.460 You're so right. You're so right. We're going to be living in GTA 6 if the libs take power before

00:35:17.180 we can play GTA 6. So true. Our mailbag is sponsored by PureTalk. Go to puretalk.com

00:35:22.800 slash KnowlesCanadaWLES to claim unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99. That's crazy.

00:35:28.420 Take it away.

00:35:30.200 Hey, Michael, it's the professor here.

00:35:31.980 I want to pay you back real quick for all the times you tried to rip me away from Judaism

00:35:35.120 and bring me to Catholicism. 0.99

00:35:36.640 I want to challenge your Catholicism real quick. 0.95

00:35:39.040 Let me give you a Bible verse. 0.81

00:35:40.420 It's Zechariah 8.23.

00:35:42.640 It's a messianic prophecy.

00:35:44.240 It talks about the age of the Messiah.

00:35:46.260 And it says, quote,

00:35:47.180 This is what the Lord Almighty says.

00:35:49.880 In those days, ten people from all languages and nations will, the Hebrew is, 0.93

00:35:54.700 or take firm hold of one Jew by his talit,

00:36:02.520 that's our prayer shawl that we wear over our shoulders,

00:36:05.020 and say, let us go with you

00:36:07.000 because we have heard that God is with you.

00:36:09.060 Here's my question.

00:36:10.280 Why does it say that in the end of times,

00:36:11.880 that's the future,

00:36:12.940 when the Messiah comes, 1.00

00:36:14.860 all the nations will go and grab a Jewish person 1.00

00:36:17.940 by his specific prayer robe

00:36:19.620 and say, we know God is with you,

00:36:21.420 please show us the way. 0.99

00:36:22.360 Why doesn't it say that he's going to go up to a Catholic 0.54

00:36:24.220 and you know go up and grab a catholic's robe or go up and grab a christian's robe how come how come

00:36:29.680 it specifically says jew because you've acknowledged in in in the past that there is a difference

00:36:34.520 between the jews today in the church you believe the church is the spiritual israel but the hebrew

00:36:39.620 here says yehudi which is a physical nation the biblical term derives from yehudi people of people

00:36:45.740 from judah and the jewish people today are biologically from the nation of judah so why

00:36:50.720 are they going to grab my prayer shawl instead of yours or one of your priests? 0.81

00:36:56.160 An excellent question, Professor. I love that you are delving into this. This is an excellent

00:37:01.340 opportunity because you say, well, you say, you know, sometime in the future when the Messiah

00:37:05.680 comes, of course, we believe that the Messiah has come and has fulfilled this prophecy,

00:37:11.360 though there are two kinds of figuration, the prefiguration of the Old Testament

00:37:15.200 in the Old Testament of the New Testament, and then the New Testament itself prefiguring future

00:37:22.100 glory, the second coming. But in that prophecy from Zechariah, what does it say? It says,

00:37:26.380 they will grab hold of a Jew, hold on to him and say, God is with you. They will join him. 0.96

00:37:32.920 And you read that as, why are they going to grab me? But it's not about you, and it's not about a

00:37:38.080 future Jew. It's not about a nice guy walking around the Diamond District of New York or 0.95

00:37:44.820 walking around Boca Raton or something like that. In my reading of the prophecy, who's the Jew? 0.89

00:37:51.760 I guess you would have to ask from the Christian perspective, who is the Bible about? The Bible is

00:37:57.280 about Christ. And so the Jew who is being referenced, who is a literal Jew born of Mary

00:38:04.020 in the line of David is Christ. And they, we do grab onto his shawl. I mean, first of all,

00:38:12.580 you see throughout the Gospels, people literally grabbing onto his shawl and calling out to him

00:38:18.320 and saying, gee, the Canaanite woman crying out, Jesus, please save me. Why? What is it with you?

00:38:22.360 I've come to the people of David. No, no, please, please. And we see that the fulfillment of this

00:38:29.220 Messiah is at once for the literal nation of Israel, but then also for the whole world.

00:38:34.940 Because in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor bond nor male nor female,

00:38:38.900 but all are one in Christ Jesus. But it is fulfilled when you recognize that the Jew 0.97

00:38:42.840 that is being spoken about in the prophecy is not some future guy. It's not Professor Jacob Jr. 0.87

00:38:49.220 It's Christ. He's the Jew. He's who it's about. Which makes sense, by the way, even within the 0.99

00:38:55.360 kind of Jewish understanding of the Hebrew Bible, because it's about this fulfillment of God's

00:39:00.700 promise in the Messiah. Other verses from Zechariah. Zechariah 9.9. Rejoice greatly,

00:39:05.980 O daughter of Zion, shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem, lo, your king comes to you, 1.00

00:39:09.760 triumphant and victorious as he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass. 0.99

00:39:15.820 This is just before the prophecy that you're talking about, and it is very obviously fulfilled 1.00

00:39:21.280 in the gospels when Christ enters Jerusalem on an ass. Zechariah 12, 10, and I will pour out on 0.89

00:39:26.740 the house of David, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that

00:39:30.800 when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him as one mourns for an

00:39:35.620 only child and we bitterly over him as one weeps over a firstborn. He's pierced another fulfillment

00:39:40.360 that we see on the cross. And we see the fulfillment of what you're describing. They

00:39:45.660 will reach out. All of these people will reach out and grab onto this Jew. Who's the Jew? It's

00:39:51.960 Christ who comes because our God, I'm speaking of our sort of shared religion, the fullest way that

00:39:59.840 we can view the religion of the Bible, the fulfillment of it, is there's the literal

00:40:05.240 component, and then there is a fulfillment that is not merely, it is on the historical level,

00:40:10.500 but it's also on the spiritual level. And it's literally for this nation, this literal chosen

00:40:16.580 nation that God picks, and it's fulfilled on the spiritual level as a fulfillment that people

00:40:23.880 couldn't even have imagined. God's glory and God's mercy and God's grace is even greater than we can

00:40:28.760 imagine, of course, by definition. And so it's spiritually for all the people of God. That

00:40:32.860 excellent question that should not trouble you at night when you're thinking about Christianity,

00:40:38.100 but should actually affirm your curiosity about it. Okay, next question.

00:40:46.060 Hello, Michael. This is your favorite international friend, Pavel. I am wondering

00:40:53.500 if you have any advice for young men how to be

00:40:57.640 manly, masculine, and be a good man overall.

00:41:01.380 Please let me know what you think.

00:41:04.180 The best advice to be a good man overall.

00:41:08.200 Obviously, you got to smoke a Mayflower cigar.

00:41:10.200 Obviously, that's my first advice.

00:41:12.200 That almost goes without saying.

00:41:14.060 But then, good advice on being a man.

00:41:16.400 I'm going to give you a real practical advice

00:41:17.760 just off the top of my head.

00:41:19.420 Don't complain.

00:41:20.960 It's kind of funny because my job is to complain about politics.

00:41:23.020 but I don't idly complain. I don't, I at least try not to whine. I like to offer

00:41:26.460 positive, affirmative, productive suggestions. You see this when a man and a woman get into a 1.00

00:41:32.440 tiff. Sometimes the wife says, I'm just, I don't, well, I don't want to, I don't want to call out

00:41:37.320 any wives in particular. You know, a wife will come out and say, I have this problem. And then 0.94

00:41:41.860 the man comes out and says, okay, well, here's how I think you should solve it. And then the wife

00:41:45.740 inevitably says, why don't, how, why are you doing, why are you telling me that? I don't want 1.00

00:41:49.060 you to solve my problem. I just want you to kind of listen to me and have compassion or something.

00:41:54.660 But the man always wants you to solve the problem. So that's one thing. Don't idly complain. Don't

00:42:00.880 whine. If you got a problem, go out there and solve it. A man should be confident, should endeavor

00:42:09.540 to be comfortable in his skin. And a man, maybe paradoxically, or this is a little addendum to

00:42:19.340 that, a man should have humility. A man can never really be confident unless he's humble, because

00:42:25.180 the fact of the matter is we're broken people, we're flawed people, we could be bigger and

00:42:30.100 stronger and smarter and tougher. We're all going to die someday. So you need to have some humility,

00:42:34.220 and therefore you need to cooperate with God's grace. Now, a lot of the be a man advice,

00:42:41.240 the real tough guy advice, is Pelagian or is at best we would say platonic. It's this idea that

00:42:49.200 through philosophy and working out and hustling and through the cultivation of personal virtue,

00:42:55.400 we can be good. But Christians say, no, there's a lot to that philosophy and there's a lot to 0.69

00:43:03.320 natural virtue, but that alone will never take you to being good. You can only be good if you 1.00

00:43:08.700 cooperate with God, who is goodness himself. So that's the other thing. You have to be religious.

00:43:13.140 To be a man, ultimately, you have to, yeah, everybody has to be religious in some way or

00:43:17.220 another because we all worship something, but you should be a man in the, you should worship

00:43:22.120 in the true religion. Okay, next question. Hi, I'm Kevin, and I was just kind of wondering

00:43:28.500 why Trump's $120,000 bookkeeping error is not treated the same as Ilhan Omar's $30 billion

00:43:37.820 bookkeeping error. Is she going to be charged with a bunch of felonies?

00:43:42.920 Yeah, the Democrats, they tried to pretend that Trump is some big criminal because they said that

00:43:49.500 on some loan application or something, he overvalued his properties, even though it all

00:43:55.680 worked out fine and the properties are obviously very valuable and there was really no problem

00:43:59.200 whatsoever. Meanwhile, yes, the Dems are committing massive fraud, not to mention insider trading and

00:44:05.840 not to mention all sorts of financial crimes and other sorts of crimes. Yeah, because that

00:44:10.180 prosecution of Trump was purely to keep him out of office again. That's all it was about. That's

00:44:14.920 why they prosecuted him four times for four different reasons. That's why the attorney

00:44:18.360 general of New York, Letitia James, ran on a platform of, I'm going to put Trump in prison.

00:44:23.500 That's why they tried to kick him off the ballot.

00:44:25.200 It was purely political.

00:44:26.400 So, no, it won't be treated the same way, even though what Ilhan Omar is accused of doing is infinitely more egregious, almost infinitely more egregious.

00:44:34.420 But no, because it was just a political op.

00:44:35.980 That's why.

00:44:36.460 Okay, next question.

00:44:38.740 Hi, Michael.

00:44:40.020 Sometimes American Catholics get accused of having dual loyalty.

00:44:43.740 It seems that we're seeing more of this recently with everything going on in Iran and the ongoing sort of clash between President Trump and Pope Leo.

00:44:52.820 So I'm curious how you would explain the relationship between church and state to a non-Catholic and how the church actually understands the Roman pontiff's temporal and moral authority.

00:45:04.860 Thanks.

00:45:05.900 Very good question.

00:45:07.740 Yes, you have heard these charges of dual loyalty in American history.

00:45:11.680 It's funny because these charges are made of Jews today, but they were more often made of Catholics in American history. 0.54

00:45:18.380 The reason it doesn't work for Catholics is because it's true that we have a loyalty to a foreign potentate, a foreign monarch, but it's of a different kind than the loyalty to our nation.

00:45:32.160 because the loyalty that we have to the Pope,

00:45:34.640 especially now that the Pope doesn't have any territory,

00:45:36.380 he never had all that much territory.

00:45:38.020 The loyalty that we have to the Pope

00:45:39.460 is at a spiritual level.

00:45:43.640 We're not citizens of the Vatican.

00:45:45.820 I don't pay taxes to the Vatican.

00:45:47.600 I can't be conscripted into the papal suaves

00:45:50.320 or something like that.

00:45:51.460 Whereas the loyalty that we have to the United States

00:45:53.940 is a national loyalty.

00:45:55.900 So we have plenty of loyalties.

00:45:57.480 I have loyalty to my parents.

00:46:00.180 I have loyalty to my country.

00:46:02.160 I have loyalty to the Daily Wire.

00:46:04.280 I have loyalty to what, those are all different kinds of things, right?

00:46:08.260 A country or a family or a company or whatever.

00:46:12.500 So that's the difference. 1.00

00:46:14.360 It's trickier for Jews. 0.50

00:46:16.540 I mean, this is one of the real problems with nationalism, which arose in the 19th century.

00:46:22.660 Don't forget, before the 19th century, before the big nationalist movements, the revolutions of 1848, there were all sorts of different kinds of political order.

00:46:30.620 empire was much more popular, much more common. And so within empire, oddly enough,

00:46:41.360 groups like the Jews who have this kind of tribal identity, but lacked a territory or a state, 0.92

00:46:48.460 that's actually much easier because there are all sorts of little groups that have their own

00:46:51.480 kind of loyalties, but they're kind of taken within this broader empire. When nationalism

00:46:56.220 arose as a consequence of modernity, it put the Jews in a very difficult position because,

00:47:03.140 and this is why the two responses, the two attractions for a lot of, especially intellectual

00:47:09.020 Jews, were either communism, which kind of tried to undo a lot of nationalism, or Zionism, which

00:47:17.140 was a Jewish form of nationalism. But in that case, they were kind of criticized from all angles,

00:47:22.540 Damned if you do, damned if you don't. That was a consequence of a major political revolution in 0.99

00:47:29.260 the world order. And so I think there are lots of problems with nationalism. I guess it's preferable

00:47:34.020 to liberal globalism, but that's why I always say two cheers for nationalism. That's why there's a

00:47:38.640 lot of kinship between the Catholics and the Jews on this point, because really just historically,

00:47:45.140 The Catholics and the Jews are two political identities that have endured since antiquity.

00:47:52.600 And they don't fit perfectly neatly within the nationalist framework.

00:47:59.660 For the reason that when nationalism really comes about in the piece of Westphalia, the Treaty of Augsburg, one of the conclusions of that was cuyus regio, eus religio.

00:48:10.020 Whose reign, his religion.

00:48:13.880 The idea being that after the crack up of the unity of Christendom,

00:48:17.400 the sovereign, the king, could just decide what the religion was going to be for the nation. 0.63

00:48:23.080 And in the Protestant territories, that put Catholics in a really bad position.

00:48:26.800 Puts Jews in a tough position too.

00:48:28.800 So this is one of the issues of nationalism.

00:48:30.860 That's not like a really sexy, pithy answer,

00:48:34.440 and it's not going to inflame the antagonisms that people want to naturally sort of stoke.

00:48:39.120 But it's just a kind of curious fact of the world order.

00:48:41.300 And I don't think that our present nation state system, I don't think the UN is going to endure for the rest of time. 0.55

00:48:46.740 There will be some other form of world order that will present its challenges and its difficulties to Catholics and Jews and all sorts of other people alike.

00:48:56.080 Okay, today is Fake Headline Friday.

00:48:59.100 The rest of the show continues now.

00:49:00.820 You do not want to miss it.

00:49:01.920 Become a member.

00:49:02.440 Use code Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:49:11.300 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 24, 2026

Ep. 1960 - GROSS： Gavin Newsom Is A Political ＂Bugchaser＂

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