The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1971 - Religious Leaders Bless GIANT Golden Statue Of President Trump

00:00:00.000 AOC embraces Christian nationalism, the New York Times dumps climate change,

00:00:05.560 and religious leaders bless a giant golden statue of President Trump.

00:00:10.320 I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to the show. Pratt Daddy Fever is spreading faster than Hantavirus right now.

00:00:36.080 The reality TV star running as a Republican for mayor of L.A. is just so dominating the airwaves 0.69

00:00:43.300 that the communist mayor of L.A., Karen Bass, is now pulled out of the next debate. Does this mean

00:00:49.440 that we will have a GOP mayor of L.A.? We'll get to it in a moment. First, though, speaking of

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00:02:12.920 Guys, before we get into any of it, we just got to take a moment on the cold, hard electoral politics.

00:02:18.820 year, things are going so well for Republicans. Things are going so much better than you would

00:02:25.780 think they could possibly be going, given a midterm election year with this quagmire war in

00:02:30.480 Iran. The Virginia Supreme Court has just taken up the question of that recent referendum. You

00:02:38.300 remember the referendum that people voted on at 51 to 49 ballot referendum. People went to vote

00:02:45.640 on redistricting, supposedly restoring fairness to the congressional districts in Virginia,

00:02:49.760 which resulted in disenfranchising 91% of Republicans in Virginia.

00:02:53.920 Remember that one?

00:02:55.040 Then in response to that, Florida redistricted.

00:02:58.080 And anyway, the Virginia Supreme Court just struck down the Democrats' redistricting map.

00:03:06.180 So sorry that disenfranchising all the Republicans in the Commonwealth, that's over.

00:03:11.560 that on top of the US Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana versus Calais to strike down racial

00:03:18.280 gerrymandering, meaning that not only does Louisiana need to redistrict before the midterms,

00:03:24.120 but a bunch of other states do as well. It could cost Democrats 14 seats in the midterm elections.

00:03:31.860 So heading in any midterm election year after a presidential election, usually the party in the

00:03:36.460 White House is going to lose a ton of seats, it's going to lose the House. And you add on top of

00:03:41.040 that, all sorts of structural problems for Republicans right now, not the least of which

00:03:44.700 is the Iran war. And you say, man, Republicans are going to get blown out of the water.

00:03:50.160 And I sat down with House Speaker Mike Johnson. When was this? A month ago, maybe two months ago.

00:03:56.740 I sat down with him. We did this interview. I said, how are you feeling about the midterms?

00:04:00.020 He said, Michael, I think that not only are we not going to lose, I think we are going to grow

00:04:06.400 the majority. And I said, man, whatever you're smoking, please pass that over here. It sounds

00:04:11.580 great. I could use it. Look, I know it's the job of Republican leaders to be optimistic,

00:04:16.400 to be encouraging, to rally the troops. I said, man, that is so crazy.

00:04:22.220 Did Mike Johnson call his shot like Babe Ruth? I'm not saying Republicans are going to win the

00:04:26.880 midterms yet. I'm not willing to say that yet. But it's just every single week there is more

00:04:32.080 good news. The redistricting in Florida. Now the redistricting in Louisiana. Shooting down

00:04:37.400 the Democrats redistricting in Virginia. The redistricting in Tennessee. The Supreme Court

00:04:44.200 decision. Republicans could be looking at an extra 14 seats in the span of two weeks.

00:04:51.900 If the Republicans manage to hold on to the House, Mike Johnson's call on my show will go down as

00:04:59.180 Babe Ruth just pointing into center field. Now, the Democrats have realized that on the issues

00:05:04.200 they're in really bad shape. Republicans are not in good shape either. President Trump's approval

00:05:08.260 rating is not great right now. Republicans' approval rating is not good right now on a

00:05:11.200 whole host of issues, not just the Iran thing. The only silver lining is that the Democrats

00:05:15.320 are even less popular. That's the thing we Republicans, we got to get into our minds.

00:05:20.000 Yes, it's very easy to play the inside baseball and to see all the missed opportunities and all

00:05:24.520 the extra good we could be doing and whatever. The Democrats are even less popular right now.

00:05:29.920 So much so that the New York Times has just come out

00:05:32.640 and declared in an op-ed by Matthew T. Huber, geographer, author of Climate Change as Class

00:05:41.520 War, Building Socialism on a Warmer Planet, to say Democrats do not have to campaign

00:05:47.960 on climate change anymore. Democrats have been campaigning on climate change,

00:05:53.900 which was initially called Global Warming, since 1972. It really started to heat up,

00:06:00.200 pun intended, in the 80s and 90s. It reached its climax in 2006 with Al Gore's stupid PowerPoint 1.00

00:06:06.820 movie that somehow won an Oscar, An Inconvenient Truth, which made a bunch of predictions about 0.98

00:06:12.300 the end of the world, which turned out not to be true. But Democrats have made this not just

00:06:17.200 one issue among many. But the issue, in the same way that all politics ultimately is theological,

00:06:26.940 so for conservatives, when we talk about politics, we say, but ultimately, this is about God. This

00:06:31.520 is about Christianity. This is about the transcendent moral order and man's supernatural 0.70

00:06:35.660 destiny, eternal destiny. So too, for the Democrats, we realize all these little policy

00:06:39.840 decisions have to rest on a theological foundation. And for them, that was climate change,

00:06:45.100 which had sacraments. It had the sacrament of recycling. It had the indulgence of the carbon

00:06:52.100 tax credit. It had eschatology, the end of the world. There were major predictions that these

00:06:56.800 guys made. AOC said in January of 2019, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address

00:07:02.820 climate change. Now, how many years has it been since then? It's seven years, getting close.

00:07:08.480 she said that fighting climate change was was our generation's world war ii

00:07:14.740 which is crucial because world war ii has taken on not just the the tone of a great war

00:07:22.360 a great political battle but world war ii has taken on a deeply religious aspect as well i mean

00:07:29.360 the the very word holocaust is a religious term it refers to a burnt sacrifice on an altar from

00:07:34.640 the Old Testament. So, whereas after World War II, the driving religious animating spirit

00:07:46.220 was to not be a Nazi. We sort of replace the devil with Hitler, and we replace a traditional 0.84

00:07:54.380 moral order with the simplified moral order that comes out of World War II. AOC is saying,

00:08:00.420 actually, forget about that. Forget about that replacement quasi-secular moral order.

00:08:04.120 we're going to replace that with climate change because the world is going to end

00:08:07.380 by about 2031. Gordon Brown, who was then the prime minister of the UK, said in 2009,

00:08:13.360 we only have 50 days left to save Earth from irreversible global warming. It was in 2009.

00:08:20.840 Rajenda Pachauri, who was the former chairman of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

00:08:24.900 Change, said in 2007, if there's no action before 2012, it's too late. This is the defining moment.

00:08:31.040 That was 14 years ago. I guess we're too late. Greta Thunberg. Greta Thunberg. Before she decided

00:08:35.640 to don the keffia and take up the latest intifada, Greta Thunberg at least pretended 1.00

00:08:40.960 to care about global warming. Before Greta Thunberg was protesting against the oil embargo 1.00

00:08:46.040 on Cuba, she was protesting against oil. Now she's pro-oil, but she initially was anti-oil.

00:08:51.980 She said in June 2018 that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using

00:08:57.880 fossil fuels over the next five years. So 2018 plus five is 2023. Humanity, still very much

00:09:04.400 around. Then in 2019, she said, we are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can

00:09:10.160 talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you? You've stolen my

00:09:17.760 future. King Charles, who was then Prince Charles in 2009, said we just had 96 months to save the

00:09:25.800 world from irreversible climate change and ecosystem collapse. That was 2017, obviously

00:09:30.380 still around. Then in 2019, he said the next 18 months, he pushed the timetable, the next 18

00:09:37.020 months, we'll decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and restore nature to

00:09:41.420 the equilibrium we need for survival. That expired in 2020. Again, the world's still around. And then

00:09:46.440 of course, Al Gore in 2009, he said there's a 75% chance that the entire North polar ice cap during

00:09:52.180 some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.

00:09:55.980 Didn't happen. 2006, he predicted a point of no return by 2016. Nothing happened. So I go through

00:10:03.380 the litany. There's so many more examples we could cite. To point out, climate change was not just

00:10:08.480 one issue among many. It wasn't just alongside immigration and higher taxes and affordability,

00:10:14.300 whatever. This was the issue. This was the existential issue for the libs. So when the

00:10:19.880 New York Times comes out and says, actually, can we please stop talking about this? It doesn't

00:10:24.200 connect with people, and we don't need to campaign on climate change anymore, and let's just forget

00:10:27.560 about it. When the New York Times comes out and says that, what they are saying is Democrats don't

00:10:32.540 just need to adjust their strategy and tone a little bit. What the New York Times is saying is

00:10:37.600 Democrats need to fundamentally change. What the Democrats are doing, the way they are speaking,

00:10:44.860 the claims that they are making are fundamentally intrinsically wrong and they need to be a

00:10:51.720 completely different party. That's the New York Times admitting that. I'm so furious about this.

00:10:56.800 I'm spilling my fruity millennial seltzer all over my studio because we were so vindicated,

00:11:02.880 man. It's like crazy. It's unbelievable how bad a position the Democrats are in. And I know

00:11:09.500 all we conservatives want to do is just whine and complain and black pill and all the rest of it.

00:11:14.860 we are in a weirdly strong position right now.

00:11:19.420 Even, this was already built into the way the Democrats were talking about this.

00:11:22.160 Because when they said, you know, if you don't give me exactly what I want

00:11:24.880 and raise taxes by $10 trillion in the next five minutes,

00:11:28.020 it's like a little toddler.

00:11:28.760 If you don't do it right now, everything's going to go to hell.

00:11:32.580 And then we didn't.

00:11:33.760 And so it just proves the dishonesty.

00:11:36.780 Big, big news.

00:11:37.720 And it means that a left-wing city like Los Angeles,

00:11:42.660 Gamora by the Sea, is potentially in play.

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00:14:31.040 You want to see how out of touch the Dems are. Spencer Pratt is the former reality TV

00:14:36.060 star running for mayor of Los Angeles against an avowed socialist and a woman who, Karen Bass,

00:14:42.820 who presents herself as a moderate Democrat, but was actually a card-carrying communist not so long

00:14:48.220 ago. You want to talk about how out of touch the Dems are? This is an attack ad that was launched

00:14:55.760 against Spencer Pratt. Republican Spencer Pratt is the last thing Los Angeles needs for mayor.

00:15:03.080 Pratt opposes using taxpayer money to build brand new houses for our unhoused neighbors,

00:15:08.140 saying it's time for the homeless to get help or get out.

00:15:11.660 Pratt thinks L.A. needs thousands more police officers rather than more social workers,

00:15:16.300 and Republican Spencer Pratt thinks public employee unions should have less power, not more.

00:15:21.400 L.A. is on the right track and needs to stay the course.

00:15:24.740 Vote no on Republican Spencer Pratt.

00:15:28.280 Was that an attack ad? Hold on.

00:15:31.000 Wait, was that when I first saw this ad? 1.00

00:15:34.420 Spencer Pratt doesn't want to give all your money and homes away to a bunch of drug addict bums. 0.96

00:15:40.640 Spencer Pratt doesn't want to urinate your tax dollars into the wind by giving them to crooked unions who are basically organized crime. 0.96

00:15:48.120 Spencer Pratt.

00:15:50.080 Wrong for LA.

00:15:51.260 I thought this, truly, I believe this was a parody.

00:15:56.240 this was actually a pro-Pratt ad that was just trying to highlight how out of touch the Democrats

00:16:02.240 are apparently not the LA ethics commission filing that handles these kinds of ads shows

00:16:10.220 that the ad was funded by an independent expenditure committee a PAC called LA unions

00:16:14.920 opposed to Spencer Pratt for mayor 2026 so you say okay well maybe it's just a political op maybe

00:16:20.420 that's just some dark arts politics you know it's still you know the Roger Stone stuff you know it's

00:16:25.400 actually still a pro-Pratt group. No, apparently LA unions opposed to Pratt is sponsored by the LA

00:16:32.020 County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. The group spent almost a quarter million dollars on digital

00:16:39.060 advertising opposing Spencer Pratt. That ad is real. To me, this is the biggest white pill.

00:16:46.920 We'll get to in one second whether or not Spencer Pratt's actually going to be the mayor of LA.

00:16:51.280 But it's not even just that he's making waves.

00:16:53.620 He's taken over the Internet.

00:16:55.560 He's scaring the current mayor of L.A., Karen Bass.

00:16:59.140 To me, the biggest white pill is that the people running the Democrat campaigns still don't get it.

00:17:04.740 They thought that was an effective ad.

00:17:07.920 You know what the voters want? 1.00

00:17:09.620 They want more bums defecating on the street. 1.00

00:17:11.800 That's what the people want. 0.98

00:17:12.620 So we just need to highlight Spencer Pratt's terrible record on allowing heroin fentanyl addict bums

00:17:19.180 to terrorize people in their neighborhoods. 0.75

00:17:22.560 Once we show them that, once we show the people

00:17:25.500 that he doesn't even want to steal their money

00:17:27.640 and give it to us, well, why, by golly,

00:17:30.820 then his poll numbers will crater.

00:17:32.320 They really think that.

00:17:34.980 Spencer Pratt just goes on the local NBC affiliate.

00:17:40.940 Talking about the race for mayor,

00:17:43.120 he addresses the claim of his opponents

00:17:45.420 that he is just a reality TV star.

00:17:49.180 once the city let my house burn down i pivoted quickly into a community advocate and i've

00:17:55.020 received two community advocate awards so when you vote for spencer pratt on your ballot today

00:17:59.860 or tonight it'll say spencer pratt community advocate because that's how i identify now i

00:18:04.800 i'm no longer a reality star and also it's funny i keep being called a reality star i'm the only

00:18:10.540 candidate living in reality too okay uh okay oh you just hear the despair from the nbc anchor

00:18:19.600 so that's right you call me a reality tv star yeah i guess i am i'm the only candidate living

00:18:24.320 in reality i'm running against an avowed socialist on the city council i'm running against the

00:18:29.280 current mayor who is an actual communist like a objectively true we like when there are objective

00:18:36.020 measures of things. I was joking last week about, I was debating the left-wing pundit,

00:18:41.400 Mehdi Hassan. And I said, the thing I really loved about our debate at Dartmouth is it's

00:18:45.080 objective. Unlike a lot of TV debates, they vote. They vote at the end and you figure out who won

00:18:49.840 and lost. So you can say, okay, this left-wing pundit who wrote a book called How to Win Every

00:18:55.460 Debate, he officially lost. I'm very glad we're going to have to have a new version of the book,

00:19:00.640 which is how to win every debate except against Michael. Same thing here. We can look at objective

00:19:06.620 measures. And he said, this guy, Spencer Pratt comes out and he says, look, I objectively am

00:19:15.040 the one who lives in reality. These guys objectively are losing. Here's one objective

00:19:21.020 measure. The LA mayor, Karen Bass, who is objectively a card-carrying communist, 0.58

00:19:26.280 just pulled out of the debate. She's withdrawn from the May 13th candidate forum hosted by the

00:19:33.220 League of Women Voters of Greater Los Angeles and the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs.

00:19:37.920 Why? Why'd she pull out? Because she knows that Pratt is going to eat her for lunch. 0.95

00:19:45.720 So I don't want people to be, look, obviously there's a lot of good news and I want to encourage

00:19:50.020 Republicans here because things are better than many of them want to acknowledge. However,

00:19:55.140 However, do not get your hopes up for Mayor Pratt of LA. Okay, I'm sorry to bring people

00:20:01.040 back down to earth for a second, but it's important to be objective here. It's important

00:20:06.560 to actually know our realistic political position. In many ways, the GOP is doing a lot better than

00:20:11.060 people think. It's very unlikely that Pratt is going to be mayor of LA. I want every Republican

00:20:16.660 out there to go vote. I want every moderate, every centrist, every center leftist who's

00:20:20.060 disillusioned to go out there and vote. Anything can happen in politics. But the reason Karen

00:20:25.060 Bass is pulling out of this debate is because she is winning right now. She realizes that if 1.00

00:20:31.480 she just doesn't show up to debates and she just keeps her mouth shut, if the election were held

00:20:36.520 today, she would win by a lot. And the risk of going on stage with a guy like Spencer Pratt is

00:20:41.980 he is going to humiliate her. He's just going to be pummeling her. And so there's very little

00:20:47.000 upside and there's a lot of potential downside here. The effect of Pratt thus far in the race

00:20:51.900 has simply been to take out Nidia Rahman. 1.00

00:20:54.580 Nidia Rahman, who's the socialist on city council.

00:20:57.940 She's done.

00:20:58.700 If you look at the Kalshi odds, 0.97

00:21:00.500 I don't think I have the precise numbers here.

00:21:04.000 But as Pratt's stock has risen,

00:21:06.880 Nidia Rahman's stock has just totally collapsed.

00:21:10.620 But Karen Bass remains the overwhelming favorite

00:21:13.720 to win the LA mayor race. 0.97

00:21:16.920 It's not everything happens overnight in politics.

00:21:18.920 and we republicans we conservatives are a little impatient sometimes kind of funny because you'd

00:21:24.460 think conservatives would be more patient but we're not the left has far much more the virtue

00:21:29.960 of patience than conservatives do they're willing to march through the institutions for decades

00:21:34.360 they're willing to take incremental change they're willing to accept conciliatory middle

00:21:40.780 ground compromises to score a win today so they can score a bigger win tomorrow we conservatives

00:21:45.100 are not so much, and we get very depressed. But we should look at the progress we're making right

00:21:50.500 now, even if we don't win the LA mayor's race. It's a lot of good progress here. The socialist

00:21:55.260 side of the Dems is collapsing. It's not just Nydia Raman and the LA mayor's race. AOC is

00:22:00.120 getting pummeled. AOC has just made a novel claim about American history. She says that the American

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00:23:33.020 As we celebrate America's 250th anniversary,

00:23:35.580 we reconsider what is america and we we have to therefore consider what is the seminal event of

00:23:43.240 america the american revolution aoc says the american revolution was not about taxation

00:23:51.820 without representation the american revolution was not the assertion of the identity of americans

00:23:56.140 as the descendants of englishmen no no wasn't about freedom and independence and patriotism

00:24:01.060 what it was about was fighting the billionaires of their day. The American Revolution was against

00:24:09.620 the billionaires of their time. And we're declaring independence from such an extreme

00:24:17.520 marriage of wealth and power in the state. Okay, that's an interesting thesis, AOC.

00:24:27.000 I'm going to be open-minded about it.

00:24:29.060 It just seems like there are a few facts that contradict it.

00:24:32.220 For starters, George Washington, the father of our country and the absolutely invaluable, irreplaceable man of the revolution, was one of the richest men on the continent in his age.

00:24:49.980 He might not have been the single richest man in the American colonies, but he was pretty close.

00:24:53.720 At the time of his death in 1799, his estate was valued around $780,000.

00:24:59.120 That's roughly $500 to $600 million today, inflation-adjusted.

00:25:03.720 That would have been worth a little under 0.2% of the entire U.S. GDP at the time.

00:25:09.580 And by the way, his wealth had already been pummeled by his public service and the neglect of his farm.

00:25:15.560 So Washington was inflation-adjusted, if not a billionaire.

00:25:20.020 He probably would have been a billionaire had he not fought in the revolution.

00:25:22.340 But he was pretty close.

00:25:23.720 other than washington we look at another founding father robert morris robert morris

00:25:29.460 was one of two people to sign the declaration of independence the articles of confederation

00:25:34.160 and the u.s constitution robert morris was not a proletarian class warrior against the billionaires

00:25:40.940 robert morris was the single richest man in the american colonies of his day well what about some

00:25:48.400 of the other prominent figures. What about, say, John Hancock? John Hancock, whose signature was

00:25:54.120 the most prominent on the Declaration of Independence, so prominent that it has actually

00:25:59.020 become a synonym for signature. Now, I'll put John Hancock on that document. John Hancock was,

00:26:06.500 once again, was he a proletarian? Was he a sort of street urchin anarchist? No,

00:26:11.940 he was one of the richest men in the colonies as well. So not only is AOC a little bit imprecise

00:26:17.560 in her analysis, she is exactly perfectly wrong. She has described the inverse of the American

00:26:25.080 revolution, which was led not against the billionaire class, but actually by the very

00:26:30.980 richest men in the entire colony. But other than that, really great, really great history lesson

00:26:34.360 from AOC. Now, speaking of AOC, my favorite turn of events this week, this weekend, is that AOC

00:26:42.560 has embraced Christian nationalism. You got the Democrats ditching climate change. So their

00:26:49.900 pseudo religion is out. They realize it's a total loser and their predictions haven't come true. 0.99

00:26:53.760 And it's just not connecting with voters, most importantly. So they need to replace it with

00:26:58.140 some other kind of religious animating spirit. And what are they doing? They see Republicans

00:27:04.840 are having a lot of success. So I guess they're going to embrace Christian nationalism. Here is 0.96

00:27:09.980 AOC, listening to a sermon being preached by her colleague, fellow Democrat in Congress.

00:27:17.000 This is Senator Raphael Warnock.

00:27:20.540 Ebenezer welcomes you. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, born in the Bronx,

00:27:28.660 when I lived in New York. Do they still call it the boogie down? It was the boogie down, Bronx.

00:27:35.560 And I don't take lightly the peril that we are facing just one week after the Voting Rights Act was gutted.

00:27:46.480 And in the days since we have learned why the Voting Rights Act existed, we are living in terrifying times.

00:27:57.880 But we are people of faith.

00:28:05.560 And our faith is the foundation that gives us the courage to fight in the face of overwhelming odds.

00:28:20.260 Like Deborah, who rose as a judge in a time of cruel kings and said, I will go.

00:28:32.140 Preach, sister. 0.55

00:28:33.440 Preach, sister AOC. 0.96

00:28:34.660 Wait a second.

00:28:35.280 Hold on.

00:28:35.560 i thought we were supposed to resist the christian nationalists and the theocrats

00:28:42.080 what i was told like five seconds ago by the democrats that the greatest terror threat

00:28:51.340 rising up in america is the specter of christian nationalism here we have aoc preaching at a church

00:28:58.780 talking about how we people of faith need to rise up, quoting the Bible, to go vote for Democrats.

00:29:08.440 Preaching, by the way, at a church led in part by a sitting Democrat senator,

00:29:15.220 Raphael Warnock. Raphael Warnock is still paid by that church. Raphael Warnock in 2022

00:29:20.940 was paid $155,000 by that church. And you'd think that would be some kind of ethics violation.

00:29:30.060 That's basically his salary as a senator. How does he get a double salary, one for being a

00:29:36.140 sitting elected official and the other for being a pastor at a church? Isn't there some rule against

00:29:40.700 that? He's still being paid even today. It's so ironic because the left loves to throw around

00:29:47.760 this word theocracy. And when they say theocracy, they refer to any government that in any way

00:29:53.560 appeals to religious moral principles. But that's not what theocracy means. First of all,

00:29:58.920 all government has to appeal to some moral principles. That's just what making laws is.

00:30:03.100 But theocracy is a very specific kind of government. Theocracy is government by clerics.

00:30:10.260 It's not just government run by Christians or Jews or Muslims. Theocracy is government by priests. 0.86

00:30:17.760 by religious clerics. And what's so ironic here is that when I look around at the Republican

00:30:23.480 senators or the Republican congressmen, I don't see any priests. I don't see any pastors. Do you?

00:30:28.800 I don't really, I can't think of any. Maybe there's one or two. I can't think of any though.

00:30:32.840 I can't think of any that are making $155,000 a year as pastor of a church.

00:30:37.480 The only theocracy that I can see actually fitting the meaning of that term

00:30:43.140 is among Democrats in Congress, specifically Raphael Warnock.

00:30:49.600 But it's not just him. AOC's showing up to the church.

00:30:54.660 Apparently, Christian nationalism's okay. Apparently, actual theocracy is okay, 0.89

00:30:59.900 as long as it's in service of Democrats. But it was ever thus. This is just the extension

00:31:08.040 of the point I made about free speech some years ago, which is that the battle over free speech

00:31:14.000 is an illusion. It's not really a battle between free speech and censorship. It's a battle between

00:31:18.420 competing sets of standards, competing sets of taboos. Same thing goes for Christian nationalism,

00:31:24.380 religious government, theocracy. The battle is not between a religious kind of government

00:31:29.960 and a secular kind of government. It's a battle between the different kinds of religions

00:31:35.760 that will animate, and in the case of the Democrats here, actually run the government? 0.72

00:31:41.860 Do we want to live in the government that is informed by, I mean, I don't want to live in

00:31:46.740 a theocracy. I don't want government by clerics. I think it's wrong that a paid official pastor

00:31:51.440 is a sitting senator. That should not be permitted. I don't want priests to be elected

00:31:56.440 to office. Topic, I guess, that's slightly tangential, maybe a topic for another time.

00:32:02.280 But when we're talking about how religion will influence the government, the question is, do you want government that is Christian, broadly Christian, Judeo-Christian was a very popular term for many decades?

00:32:12.760 You know, the kind of basic principles of the Bible, the kind of government that John Adams wrote about when he said that the basic principles of the Christian religion on which all the sects are united.

00:32:26.800 He's talking about a zillion different Protestant sects.

00:32:29.700 They weren't super pro-Catholic, but there were a couple Catholic founding fathers.

00:32:34.140 He says that's the basic principle of the government.

00:32:36.960 That's how we want independence. 0.97

00:32:38.200 Do you want the government to be run on that religion, or do you want the government to be run on the religion of AOC, which is the religion of the sun monster killing us all unless we sacrifice recycling, which is the government of we need to kill our babies to prevent overpopulation. 0.93

00:32:54.740 We need to sacrifice our children to the sun gods so that he doesn't take out the earth, 0.73

00:32:58.900 which is the religion of Gnosticism that says our bodies don't have anything to do with who we really

00:33:04.040 are, which is the religion of sexual indifference, which says that men and women are exactly the

00:33:10.400 same, which is the religion of abolishing marriage. In Christianity, marriage is a key 0.92

00:33:18.180 sacrament. It's one of the few really tangible actions in public life that our Lord speaks

00:33:23.480 about directly in the gospel of St. Matthew. According to the left religion, marriage is

00:33:28.980 nothing like anyone ever thought it was, and it doesn't really matter, and we can redefine it as

00:33:33.480 we like. That's the question. Which religion do we want to live under? Because the theocrats of

00:33:40.760 the left, the actual theocrats of the left, are much more serious than the religious right.

00:33:47.860 And maybe we should learn a lesson or two from them. I think the religious right needs to up

00:33:51.980 our game. Now, the religious right ruffled a lot of feathers, including among Christians just over

00:33:58.260 the weekend because religious leaders, specifically evangelical and Jewish leaders, showed up to

00:34:05.860 dedicate and even bless a golden statue of President Trump at Doral. Doral, which is one of President

00:34:13.540 Trump's clubs in Florida. I was there not that long ago. And this has some Christians worried

00:34:18.080 that we might be entering into golden calf territory here. 0.74

00:34:21.280 We might be entering into the infidelity of the Israelites 0.78

00:34:25.540 in the Exodus kind of territory. 0.54

00:34:28.060 But I thought there was one evangelical pastor

00:34:30.040 who had a very, very good response to the criticism. 0.98

00:34:33.440 Big fights over history, AOC rewriting the American Revolution. 0.87

00:34:37.940 Of course, you had Nicole Hannah-Jones at the New York Times

00:34:40.500 rewriting the American founding in 1619 or 1620.

00:34:44.660 It is a big battle.

00:34:45.480 The battle over modern politics is very much a battle over history.

00:34:48.080 And the libs have done a good job rewriting history, which is why you got to check out

00:34:50.840 real history with Matt Walsh on Daily Wire Plus today. It's done really, really well. People

00:34:54.520 love watching this series. Matt does a great job with it. Pains me to say it, but he does a great

00:34:59.240 job with it. So you go subscribe right now. The libs do not want you to know the real history of

00:35:04.100 this country and the 250th anniversary of America. Now it's more important than ever to go watch

00:35:08.740 real history with Matt Walsh on Daily Wire Plus today. My favorite comment yesterday. Wow. Again,

00:35:13.780 I don't read the names. It's just the comment. Once again, we're just going to call my favorite

00:35:17.680 comment, the Drummer's Workshop Norm's Music section of the show, who says, Greek salad was 0.50

00:35:22.300 invented by black people, according to AOC. Yeah, you remember that? That was the other, man, AOC's

00:35:25.880 been on a run the last few days. Democracy invented by black people. Jamal Madison, I think it was, 0.99

00:35:33.640 who is the father of our constitution. Is that right? Is that right? Cleisthenes, but like with

00:35:38.260 a bunch of apostrophes in there. Anyway, AOC, got to love it. Religious leaders at Doral,

00:35:45.200 one of Trump's clubs have just blessed a giant golden statue of Trump.

00:35:53.620 And I was zooming in on the religion here. I can't help but notice, I don't think there 0.74

00:35:58.200 were any Catholic priests in attendance. But there were Christians and Jews. I think it was

00:36:03.900 mostly evangelical Protestant leaders and some Jewish leaders. And they installed the statue

00:36:11.260 of Trump on one of his properties, raising his fist in the air in that amazing moment where he

00:36:15.040 was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, survived by the grace of God. He said, fight, fight, fight.

00:36:20.720 And these religious leaders came and blessed the statue. And so a lot of critics have said,

00:36:24.940 well, this is a golden calf. You're making an idol out of Trump. You're worshiping Trump. This

00:36:28.780 is wrong. It's too far, even for us Christians. I thought Pastor Mark Burns had a really good

00:36:34.960 response to the criticism. I won't read the whole thing. It was quite long. But he says,

00:36:39.940 one of the greatest honors of my life was leading the dedication of President Donald

00:36:43.520 J. Trump statue to the world. What amazes me is how quickly some people have compared this

00:36:47.940 beautiful statue created and made possible by more than 6,000 patriots to a golden calf or

00:36:52.460 idol worship. Let me be very clear. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone. The word of God

00:36:59.200 says, you shall have no other gods before me. Exodus 20 verse 3. It also says you shall worship

00:37:05.540 the Lord your God and him only you shall serve. Matthew chapter 4 verse 10. That is the line.

00:37:10.580 And now take out your pencils because I love this line from pastor mark burns

00:37:15.220 He says honor is not worship

00:37:18.580 respect

00:37:19.800 Is not idolatry

00:37:21.920 Celebration

00:37:23.540 Is not bowing down to a false god

00:37:26.260 Write that line down honor is not worship

00:37:30.060 Respect is not idolatry

00:37:32.080 Celebration is not bowing down to a false god. This statue was created was not created for worship

00:37:38.080 It was created as a symbol of resilience,

00:37:40.220 patriotism, courage, and gratitude.

00:37:41.860 It was created to honor a man

00:37:43.340 who many may disagree with,

00:37:44.600 but millions of Americans believe

00:37:45.960 has done extraordinary things

00:37:47.080 to make this nation stronger.

00:37:49.440 I love this.

00:37:50.860 So on the point itself,

00:37:52.760 should there be a statue of Trump

00:37:54.060 at one of the Trump clubs?

00:37:56.100 Yeah, probably, right?

00:37:57.020 That makes sense.

00:37:57.540 I don't, is there anything crazy about that?

00:37:59.460 There's a statue of Barry Weiss

00:38:00.520 at the University of Austin.

00:38:01.520 I think it's okay to have the founder,

00:38:03.360 especially when we're talking about Donald Trump,

00:38:04.740 who's the president,

00:38:05.380 whose name is on the club.

00:38:06.160 I think it makes sense

00:38:07.060 to have a statue of Trump there, right? He's the president. He's an historic president. Okay.

00:38:11.060 So is the problem that the statue is gold? What is it about gold? I don't think there's anything

00:38:16.160 intrinsically immoral about making a statue out of gold or plenty of gold statues in the world.

00:38:20.320 So what's the issue? The issue is that maybe the issue is the blessing, but is it wrong to

00:38:28.840 ask for God's blessing? I don't think there's anything wrong with asking for God's blessing.

00:38:33.200 Is there? We ask for God's blessing all the time. We ask for God's blessing over our dinner,

00:38:36.100 over our breakfast. Is that wrong? No, what's wrong? What's wrong with this in the minds of

00:38:43.440 some people is that they think that these religious leaders, evangelical Protestants

00:38:50.220 and Jews are creating a golden idol to worship. But the pastor, the evangelical pastor who led

00:38:57.060 the dedication said, no, no, no, we're not creating this as an idol to worship. We're just honoring

00:39:02.440 Trump. This is a symbol of patriotism, courage, and gratitude, and resilience. And honor is not

00:39:08.480 worship. Respect is not idolatry. Celebration is not bowing down to a false god. I love this

00:39:12.060 because this is an excellent opportunity to understand icons. Since antiquity, all the way

00:39:19.060 up through the modern era, there have been certain controversies, iconoclast controversies.

00:39:24.440 Is it okay for Christians to make images of Christ or of angels or of anything else?

00:39:32.440 And this is litigated because, you know, in the Bible, God says don't make any graven images of

00:39:38.380 anything in heaven. But then God also specifically commands the Israelites to make golden statues of

00:39:44.260 cherubim, of angels. So is God contradicting himself? No, I think God is explaining what

00:39:50.200 we're talking about here. Explaining the distinction between an idol to worship and an

00:39:55.600 image, which is for honor, for respect, for celebration. We are physical creatures, so

00:40:02.460 all of our communications and our thoughts are mediated by images. Even if you close your eyes

00:40:06.760 and you're praying, you can't help but make images in your mind. So it's not the images

00:40:10.640 themselves that are wrong. It would be giving undue worship to an image, a created thing,

00:40:16.760 giving to that thing the worship that is due to God alone. A lot of times, it's funny because

00:40:21.940 I don't think there were any Catholics at this dedication, but it's the Catholics who were

00:40:25.920 accused of worshiping Mary, the mother of our Lord, or mother of God, or venerating the saints. 0.93

00:40:34.820 We shouldn't be venerating the saints. We shouldn't be making these images.

00:40:40.000 And what is the Catholic response? Which is often to evangelical Protestants,

00:40:44.900 but some other people too. The Catholic response is, no, no, no, honor is not worship.

00:40:50.000 Respect is not idolatry.

00:40:52.160 Celebration.

00:40:52.840 You know, our processions where we process

00:40:54.260 with either a statue of the Blessed Mother

00:40:55.920 or certainly a Eucharistic procession

00:40:57.400 actually is an act of worship

00:40:58.300 because it's Christ himself

00:40:59.680 really truly present in the Eucharist.

00:41:02.320 But let's say a Marian procession,

00:41:04.420 you know, the old images,

00:41:05.260 you don't see it as much anymore,

00:41:06.320 of Catholics walking around with a statue of Mary.

00:41:09.780 We're not worshiping that.

00:41:12.480 Celebration is not bowing down to a false God.

00:41:14.460 Respect is not idolatry.

00:41:15.500 Honor is not worship.

00:41:16.080 I love the opportunity.

00:41:18.740 I'm not weighing in on the aesthetics of the statue.

00:41:21.080 I haven't seen it up close.

00:41:22.520 Maybe it's a nice statue.

00:41:23.700 Maybe, I don't know.

00:41:24.240 I haven't seen it up close.

00:41:26.260 But asking God's blessing on our president

00:41:28.880 or God's blessing even on a place or a thing,

00:41:33.420 totally within Christian tradition

00:41:34.840 and paying respect to our leaders,

00:41:39.320 honoring our leaders,

00:41:40.960 creating depictions of our leaders,

00:41:43.220 nothing wrong with that at all.

00:41:44.520 And I hope it helps people to understand

00:41:46.100 why we honor the saints.

00:41:47.320 to venerate is to honor and to respect it. So it's those exact words that the pastor's talking

00:41:52.060 about here. We venerate them. If we venerate a courageous president, all the more so should we

00:41:58.060 venerate the people who have dedicated their lives to God with special sanctity. Makes perfect sense

00:42:03.000 to me. Love it. Now, speaking of moral issues before we go, this has been too positive a show,

00:42:09.380 so we got to get a little negative here, folks. There's a graph going around, got to give credit

00:42:14.280 to end wokeness here on X, showing the percentage of Americans who are married by the age of 30.

00:42:20.460 In 1975, 91% of women, almost all women, were married by the age of 30. And 81% of men,

00:42:28.440 men get married a little bit later, but 81% of men, that's a lot. Then it starts to decline.

00:42:34.400 And this is after the sexual revolution with the advance of feminism. 10 years after that,

00:42:39.520 the number had dropped to 77.5% of women, 67.7% of men. Then it just keeps dropping.

00:42:47.080 10 points or more per year. Drops another 13.5 points in the next decade for women, 1.00

00:42:55.380 and about the same for men. Drops another 13.5 points the following year after that.

00:43:00.360 Almost the same for men. Drops another 12-ish points, 12.5 points 10 years after that.

00:43:07.140 today in 2025 only 25.6 percent of women one in four women is married by the age of 30

00:43:14.260 for men it's 16.5 percent absolutely was that one in seven or so 0.91

00:43:22.680 or less even brutal even more brutal

00:43:27.800 this is the end of society we opened up the show talking about climate change that was

00:43:34.440 going to be the end of the world. The sun monster was going to get really angry at us. If we didn't

00:43:38.220 keep performing the ritual of recycling and sacrificing our babies, the sun god was going

00:43:44.440 to be really upset and destroy the earth. Well, that didn't happen. This, however, is the end of

00:43:49.480 society by definition. The fundamental social unit, the fundamental political union is the family.

00:43:56.660 We talk about taxes, industry, tariffs, war, immigration. None of that matters.

00:44:03.020 A nation doesn't matter.

00:44:05.760 A nation does not exist 0.95

00:44:07.380 if people do not get married 1.00

00:44:10.380 and have children.

00:44:12.300 You might say,

00:44:13.180 well, isn't having children

00:44:14.120 the issue here?

00:44:14.920 You could have children 0.68

00:44:15.880 out of wedlock.

00:44:16.520 I guess a people

00:44:17.940 could continue

00:44:18.740 in some degraded sense

00:44:20.080 if you just keep having

00:44:20.900 children out of wedlock.

00:44:22.000 But a society cannot

00:44:23.820 because the smallest unit

00:44:26.100 of society,

00:44:26.800 the very first society

00:44:28.080 we encounter,

00:44:29.920 the society without which

00:44:31.620 we cannot do

00:44:33.020 is the family. Because that's multiple people in a relationship of mutual obligation and right.

00:44:44.600 You cannot have that without marriage. And the marriage rate has completely collapsed,

00:44:51.600 at least at a younger age. So even if you say, well, no, people are going to keep getting

00:44:55.960 married. They're just going to get married at an older and older rate. Okay. That means that,

00:45:00.420 One, it's going to be harder for those marriages to work because people are more solidly formed. 0.98

00:45:04.120 Just like, you know, it's easier to repair a broken bone.

00:45:07.740 It's easier to bend somebody at their personality or even their bodies when they're younger because our bones haven't totally ossified yet.

00:45:15.880 As you get older, it's harder to mash those two things together.

00:45:19.240 But also, it just means you're going to have less opportunity to have kids, less opportunity to grow together, less opportunity to gel, meld, become one flesh.

00:45:28.480 That's the issue.

00:45:30.420 To me, this is the issue.

00:45:31.720 And we always talk about the biggest issue is climate change.

00:45:35.500 The biggest issue is the war or Israel or Iran or Russia.

00:45:40.240 The biggest issue is affordability.

00:45:45.040 Yeah, everything's an issue.

00:45:47.240 The fundamental issue facing society is marriage. 0.98

00:45:54.480 This is one of the secrets of Fatima, isn't it? 0.87

00:45:56.800 For the Catholics in the audience. 0.91

00:45:57.880 is that the final battle between Satan and God

00:46:00.760 will be over marriage and the family.

00:46:02.600 But even if you're not particularly religious,

00:46:04.340 you can see it as a truism.

00:46:06.480 The essential issue for society is the family

00:46:09.420 because the family is the unit of society,

00:46:11.440 the atomic unit of society.

00:46:13.400 Okay, today's Music Monday.

00:46:14.640 The rest of the show continues now.

00:46:15.700 You do not want to miss it.

00:46:16.400 Become a member.

00:46:16.780 Use code KnowlesKin at WLES at checkout

00:46:18.140 for two months free on all annual plans.

00:46:27.880 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - May 11, 2026

Ep. 1971 - Religious Leaders Bless GIANT Golden Statue Of President Trump

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