Ep. 1983 - The Hidden Reason ＂Obsession＂ Is Breaking The Box Office
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
17
sentences flagged
Toxicity
26
sentences flagged
Hate speech
41
sentences flagged
Summary
A woman pulls the ultimate trump card on a cop who sees her texting. A Belgian politician is convicted of a hate crime for saying something that the judge admits is true, but he's still convicted for it. And on the flip side, leftist streamer Hassan Piker cannot figure out why so many people think he should go to prison for committing crimes.
Transcript
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An inexpensive indie horror movie is breaking box office records, pulling in 112 times its
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original budget in just 12 days, and the number only goes up. And Hollywood can't figure out why
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this movie is running circles around all of the other movies. But I can, and the answer is pretty
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simple. Obsession contains more taboo truth than anything Hollywood has released in years.
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We will get into it without spoilers. I'll try at least. Then, speaking of taboos around the truth,
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A Belgian politician is convicted of a hate crime for saying something that the judge admits is true, but he's still convicted for it.
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And then on the flip side of that story, leftist streamer Hassan Piker cannot figure out why so many people think that he should go to prison for committing crimes.
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I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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welcome back to this show a woman has just pulled the ultimate trump card on a cop who pulled her
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over for using her phone here is one weird trick on how to avoid a ticket when you are driving down
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the road and a cop sees you texting we'll get to that momentarily first though i want to tell you
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warranty and promotion details. Before we get into all the nitty gritty electoral politics,
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I watched a movie last night. That alone is a major annual event. I don't go see a lot of
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movies. Hollywood's producing garbage. All you ever see are a bunch of Marvel remakes and reboots
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and remakes of reboots. But there is a movie that is making headlines everywhere. It's called
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Obsession. It's this indie horror movie. And it's gone so viral. Mr. Davies comes to me and says,
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you have to watch this movie. I looked at the reporting on it. This thing took three weeks to
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shoot. It cost $750,000 to make this movie. It has so far grossed $84 million globally in just
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12 days. On certain weekdays, it is beating Devil Wears Prada 2 and the Michael Jackson movie.
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This is the first wide-release horror movie ever to have its second weekend box office beat the
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first weekend box office. It is one of the best performing movies ever. I think the box office
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in the second week rose by 39% and it just keeps shooting up. So I'm going to try to avoid the
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spoilers, but this movie actually really matters because there's a pretty simple reason as to why
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it's doing so well and Hollywood stupidly is never going to figure it out. Here, in case you haven't
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seen it going around social media is one of the trailers i was gonna ask you um what
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i i lost my train of thought i cannot what else why
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one wish will only get one wish i wish nikki freeman loved me more than anyone in the entire
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A love only the branch of a willow tree could conjure.
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It's weird how you two are dating all of a sudden.
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okay so the movie is about a guy who has a crush on a girl and he doesn't know if the girl has a
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crush on him and he's too nervous to just tell her his feelings and ask her out so he has this
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novelty toy that he picks up, which is called the One Wish Willow. And you make a wish and you hope
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your wish comes true. And the whole hook of the movie is he makes the wish and the wish comes
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true and it's a horror movie. She all of a sudden completely falls in love with him. None of these
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are spoilers. And she becomes the craziest, clingiest girlfriend you've ever seen. So why
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is this movie doing so well? I'll give you the overview of what happens in the movie just for
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context. This will not ruin the movie. It is unclear if she likes him. He's kind of friend
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zoned, but it's a little unclear. And there are all these hints that maybe she does like him,
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but she doesn't really say it. She says early on in the movie, she goes, when I have a crush on
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someone, nobody knows. So there's some evidence that she doesn't have a crush on him and she
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views him like a little brother. But then there's some evidence that she actually does like him and
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she's just keeping it really close to the vest. And in any case, he can't man up. He can't man up
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and just ask the girl out. So what does he do? He makes this wish. And in making this wish,
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he's trying to play God. He's trying to control the desires of others.
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And by trying to play God, he ruins everything. Because you see here a contrast between love
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and infatuation. Anyone who's ever been a teenager knows this difference.
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Infatuation, which is really not about the other person.
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Infatuation is when you don't really love the other person
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your own wants, your own needs onto the other person.
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So it's really a totally self-referential love. And it works. So it works so much so that the
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woman becomes more like a pet dog than like a real girlfriend or a wife. And there's a scene
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that makes this part really, really clear. Then you see all of these relationship dynamics play
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out. So I think the reason why this is working, it's really twofold. One, it's an original story.
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And Hollywood doesn't make original stories anymore.
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Just Cash Grab 2, 20 years after the last time we had a hit movie,
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And it won't be as good, but you'll still go see it.
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Devil Wears Prada 2, or more commonly what you get,
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is just Superman 57 or Spider Girl or whatever.
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Just this constant re-upping of the superhero movies,
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the plots of which are all exactly the same. You know exactly what you're going to get.
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There's very little that's artistic about it. They just add an extra explosion every movie.
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Part of it is that it's an original movie. The other reason, I think the deeper reason why it's
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working is because it's real. And it's a sad sign of our times that the most realistic movie that
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any of us have seen in probably a decade or more is this kind of wacky, weird horror movie.
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but it's real. And it's touching on something that's really central to the human condition,
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which is the dynamic between men and women. And don't forget, we live in an age that is
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particularly confused about the natural dynamic between men and women. We live in an age where
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we redefine marriage for the first time ever in all of human history anywhere.
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We live in an age where some people still believe that men can become women.
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And we have this officially, ubiquitously enforced nonsense fiction about men and women,
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something that we all know isn't true. This is why Republicans swept the elections in 2024.
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This is why Democrats are still on their heels, even when the other party is in power,
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is because of this problem of wokeness and these really fundamental issues.
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By golly, these Democrats, I don't know, maybe they could manage the economy better,
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but I don't think they could because they don't even know the difference between men and women.
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They have this error in judgment. And this movie is all about the real dynamics between men
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women. And so when this woman becomes just a totally crazy girlfriend, you see real dynamics
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play out. If you've dated enough people, you've had this experience once or twice. Maybe some of
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you are in this dynamic right now where the girl that you like, she's attractive, she's nice,
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she's funny. You start dating, she gets a little bit clingy. She gets a little bit clingy. So one
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of the moments in the movie, one of the real turning points is when the boyfriend gets invited
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out to a boys' night. Any guy who's ever dated a woman, any guy who's ever been married knows
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boys' night is kind of controversial these days where you say, no, no, look, I love you. It's
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wonderful, but there's more to my life. And I want to go, sometimes I want to go hang out with the
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guys. And some women don't really like that. Sometimes it's a little bit of a negotiation.
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Part of the reason that the movie's working is because with this crazy now horror figure,
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almost kind of demon-possessed clingy girlfriend, it's because women really do be like that
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sometimes. So the movie is, in a way, I mentioned possession because it is kind of like possession,
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but it's not just like a demon comes out of hell and possesses this woman. It's not the exorcist
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or the exorcism of Emily Rose. It's even more interesting than that because this woman is
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possessed by the desires of the man. But because the man is not God, because we're just men,
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we're fallen men, when we project our desires onto other people, when we possess people with
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our desires, things go haywire. You better be careful what you wish for. You get things that
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you don't really want. It goes even further than this because you can see a little bit of conflict
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within the kind of love mad possessed woman. And the guy who starts to regret his decision pretty
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quickly, then there's even a correction where he says, well, do I really regret this? I mean,
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I do really love this girl. I'm not going to go too much further into that because I don't want
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to spoil the movie. But there's a line here that I'll clean up a little bit so I don't give away
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a plot point. But the crazy woman, when she's totally going off the rails, and you can tell
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is really second-guessing his decision. He says, we need each other. We need each other. And then
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she tries to bring him in on some of the really bad stuff. And even this rings so true because
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when a man and woman do that thing that husbands and wives are supposed to do, when a man and a
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woman join together in matrimony, they really become one flesh. And so the movie is all the
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all the kind of crazy, wacky, bad things that the mad woman does. They really are the fault
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of the man. This harkens back to the book of Genesis, where Eve is the first one to eat the
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apple, and yet the fall of man comes through Adam. It actually is the man's fault. It's all touching
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on really real things. Another little more superficial reason why I think the movie is
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doing really well is there's no DEI in it whatsoever. Okay, real friend groups generally
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do not look like the United Nations. I know, you know, it's not, real friend groups are not like
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in typical Hollywood, modern Hollywood movies, where you got the white guy and the black guy
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and the Asian person and the Hispanic person and the gay guy and the tranny and the midget and the
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this and the, it's not this perfect DEI forced woke representation. In this movie, the friend
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group is two white guys, a white chick and an Asian chick. It's totally normal. And then they
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go to the party and there's a black guy there and there's this and that, but it's not this forced
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DEI representation. It just rings true. It rings real. And the fact that Obsession is doing so well
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is a profound indictment of Hollywood. Hollywood, these guys are supposed to be really good at
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making money on movies, but increasingly they're not so good at making money on movies. So much so
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that some 26-year-old upstart director can spend three quarters of a million bucks and make a
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gazillion dollars at the box office and totally pants all of Hollywood. I guess the significance
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of this movie is that it really is marking the end of the woke era. Just like the 2024 election
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marked the end of the woke era in politics for now, this movie is marking the end of the woke
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era in Hollywood. Even as the Hollywood industry, all the different industry groups, were trying to
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impose all these crazy woke requirements. The Oscars were doing this. You can't win best picture
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unless you check a bunch of DEI boxes. The unions were doing this. The casting directors were doing
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this. This movie kind of throws all of that out. It's really, really good. I'm never enthusiastic
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about almost anything in the pop culture. It's terrific. If you like horror movies,
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I don't want to make this out to be the Casablanca or the Godfather or something. It's a fun little
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horror movie, but it's a fun little horror movie that touches on really basic, profound things.
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And it rings true for people for the same reason that Aesop's fables ring true, for the same reason
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that the Greek myths ring true, because they touch on parts of human nature that we all know.
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And the reason it's playing so well right now is we live in a time when we're supposed to deny all
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those basic parts. Highly, highly recommend. Mark this date. It's probably the last time for many
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years or decades that I will say something coming out of Hollywood. Well, it doesn't really come
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out of Hollywood. That's the irony of it. But it's good. I'd highly recommend going to see it.
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Okay. Now, speaking of taboo truths, you see the flip side of this going on in Europe right now.
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A Belgian right-wing politician has just been convicted of a crime again for telling the truth.
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And not only was he convicted of a crime for telling the truth, the judge who convicted him
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I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly.
00:17:35.540
my Flemish is a little bit weak. He just posted yesterday that he has been convicted yet again of
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a hate crime. Here's the background. He writes about this himself. He says, in February, 2024,
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I gave a lecture at Catholic University, Leuven, wherein I linked mass migration to crime and a
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deterioration of our quality of life. Every single point I made was 100% the truth and based on
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scientific evidence. We all know this in America. We know this, definitely they know this in Europe.
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I'm going to be speaking at the Oxford Union next week. I'm sure mass migration and crime will come
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up a lot. If you're around Oxford next week, I think it's going to be next Wednesday. I hope to
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see you out there. I've got to prepare for my trip to the UK. Let's see. Salamu alaikum. My Arabic is
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a little weak, but I'm going to try to master it before I go to the oldest English university in
00:18:28.760
the world. What did this guy say? According to the judge, this is the judgment issued by the
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judge convicting him, quote, even if all of the statements made by Van Langenhove are based on
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scientific evidence and statistics, it makes no difference to the criminal intent. Van Langenhove
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is not charged with spreading false information. He is charged with presenting facts in a way
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that incites hatred against persons on the ground of one or more of the protected criteria
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in the anti-racism law. This is chilling. The word Orwellian is overused, but this is what it is for.
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We all know that in Europe, there are laws curtailing speech. And we contrast that with
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America, where we say we have total free speech here in America. That's why we have our First
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Amendment, by golly. And that actually represents a misunderstanding of the American free speech
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tradition. As I mentioned in my book, Speechless Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, number one
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national bestseller, which you can get wherever fine books are sold. Because we've had all sorts
00:19:35.520
of limits on speech in the history of the United States. You're not allowed to engage in threats.
00:19:41.260
You're not allowed to engage in obscenity, at least in principle. You're not allowed to engage
00:19:45.360
in fraud, fighting words, all sorts of speech that are not protected. But in America, at least,
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You're protected when you tell the truth. When you just tell the truth, you cannot be prosecuted
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for that. Of course, in Europe, you can be prosecuted, you can be convicted for telling
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hate facts. That is horrifying, and that is a total undermining of the point of speech.
00:20:14.240
Because the reason that we don't allow certain speech in America is that there are certain uses
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of our speech, abuses of our speech that actually undermine speech. I was doing this debate with
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Mehdi Hassan, the left-wing pundit at Dartmouth, a debate that I won by six points, by the way,
00:20:30.620
just in case anybody was counting, anyone wanted to know. He's the author of the book,
00:20:34.800
How to Win Every Argument, How to Win Every Debate, which we'll have to have an asterisk now. It's
00:20:38.120
How to Win Every Debate Except Against Michael. But there was this very funny moment during that
00:20:42.800
debate at Dartmouth where Mehdi's debate style is to just constantly interrupt people. He tries
00:20:48.680
to debate like it's on cable news or something. But this happily was a formal debate where there
00:20:54.280
are actually rules and there's decorum. And so those tricks weren't really working. He was still
00:20:57.780
trying to speak over me a lot though. And I said, hey, what are we doing? And he said, well, no,
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I'm exercising my First Amendment rights. I said, no, no, no, you can't use the First Amendment
00:21:07.680
to undermine someone else's First Amendment rights. On the specific point, he was talking
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about how Don Lemon is now being prosecuted or was being prosecuted under the FACE Act
00:21:26.320
Don Lemon was just exercising his First Amendment rights.
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You say, no, no, you cannot claim First Amendment rights
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in order to violate the First Amendment rights of others.
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This is why you're not allowed to use a heckler's veto.
00:21:41.360
When you use your speech to intentionally deceive people,
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that is not protected because it is speech that undermines the very point of free speech.
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Even obscenity. Obscenity is an abuse of speech because obscenity appeals to the prurient interest
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and undermines our reason. The whole point of free speech is that we can use our reason to
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deliberate and come to the truth. So when you have speech that is intentionally suppressing
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the truth, contradicting the truth, trying to get people to misperceive the truth,
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that speech is not protected. In Europe now, you have the opposite. You're allowed to engage in
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all sorts of terrible speech, all sorts of riots. Sometimes you're allowed to engage in all sorts of
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threats, which you get a lot from the migrants, but you're not allowed to tell the truth about it.
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If you come out and say, hey, these Muslim migrants are raping a bunch of people,
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you can be prosecuted for that, and you are. You are. You're suppressed by the government
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in the UK and in Europe, really, really chilling. So Europe seems like it's fallen at this point.
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This should be a big warning sign to the United States. Whenever you are on the side of suppressing
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the truth, it's not as simple as the conservatives were saying in 2016. Whoever here is trying to
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censor anybody, that's anti-American. That's terrible. No, no, no. America censors people
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all the time. Censorship is good. Limits are good. Sometimes. We have to be more specific.
00:23:12.140
Whenever you are suppressing the truth, censoring the truth, that's the real threat.
00:23:19.840
And ironically, terrifyingly in Europe, that is precisely the kind of speech that is being
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suppressed. And the Libs want to bring it here as well. So on this question of free speech and
00:23:31.300
censorship and being prosecuted for political activity. We now go to the flip side of this,
00:23:36.320
which is Hassan Piker, this left-wing streamer. He calls himself a communist.
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I don't think he even rises to that level. Say what you will about Karl Marx and Alger Hiss.
00:23:43.380
These were at least serious people. Hassan Piker, a little bit of a less serious person,
00:23:47.580
and a Nepo baby, anchor baby, who just goes around mouthing off with a bunch of profanity
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to threaten the lives of ordinary conservatives. Well, Hassan Piker received a subpoena from the
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federal government because he committed crimes and then used his speech to admit to committing
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crimes, like conspiring with the Cuban government, violating federal law on his trip to Cuba.
00:24:08.500
And so now he might be prosecuted. I'm not really holding my breath that he'll be prosecuted. I hope
00:24:13.240
he is. I hope he's imprisoned. But Hassan Piker cannot understand why he would be prosecuted
0.95
00:24:19.840
for committing crimes that he admitted to in public. But it's so strange because like
00:24:28.600
This is not even beneficial for any of these people, right?
00:24:45.500
Okay, so we're going to put a pause here and just fact check, correct him.
00:24:52.920
It would be beneficial to imprison Hassan Piker.
0.96
00:24:55.500
It would be beneficial in just about every way I can think of. I see absolutely no downside to it
00:25:01.540
at all. This guy is terrible for our country. He hates our country. He's working with our
00:25:05.920
adversaries allegedly to undermine our country. Well, I say allegedly, I should say admittedly
00:25:10.460
because he talks about it openly on air. And he's just awful. He's terrible. He really should not be
0.88
00:25:15.600
in this country anyway. And he's just dreadful. And if we could deport him, that'd be great.
0.94
00:25:19.480
At the very least, we can imprison him for the crimes he's committing. It would benefit us.
00:25:22.760
one less Hassan Piker in public life, send Hassan Piker back to private life,
00:25:28.860
ideally the privacy of a prison cell, that would benefit everybody. But with so funny,
00:25:34.400
what reveals his ignorance, at the very least a real blind spot here about Hassan Piker's view is
00:25:40.440
he doesn't even understand what the justice system is for. He's reverting to this utilitarian
00:25:46.720
calculus that is typical of so many leftists, where he says, well, how does it benefit you
00:25:51.680
to enforce the law? How does justice benefit you? First of all, justice benefits all of us
00:25:56.680
because justice advances the common good. But you don't punish someone because of some
00:26:02.100
utilitarian calculus of a cost-benefit analysis of increasing the utils and the happiness for
00:26:09.140
the greatest good of the greatest number of people. The law punishes you because you broke
00:26:14.060
the law, the chief aim of law enforcement is retribution. You did something wrong, so we
00:26:21.320
punish you. We think of it today, even many conservatives, as rehabilitation. The whole
00:26:26.560
point of the justice system is rehabilitation. We call it the correction system. But that's not
00:26:30.480
the chief aim of it, because we could all use some rehabilitation, but we don't all, therefore,
00:26:35.040
go to prison. It's a fallen world. We all commit sins. We're all sinners, all of us.
00:26:41.680
but we don't all go to prison. The thing that triggers you going to prison is when you break
00:26:46.600
the law. He says, well, how does this benefit you? Well, look, this is a guy who's calling
00:26:52.080
for the murder of Republican senators. I think it actually, there are a lot of practical benefits
00:26:55.600
to him being in prison and not speaking. He's allegedly, admittedly working with our adversaries
00:27:02.680
around to subvert our country. He says America deserved 9-11. He hates our country and wants
00:27:06.740
our country to be weaker. So we all benefit if he knocks it off. But the reason you are being
00:27:13.160
punished, potentially, Hassan, I hope he is, but I'm not holding my breath. The reason you would
1.00
00:27:19.840
be being punished is because you did something wrong. And there are laws which are relatively
00:27:27.080
objective. Laws are an ordinance of reason for the common good by him who is care of the community
00:27:30.780
and promulgated. Those laws, the civil laws, derive from the natural law. The natural law
00:27:38.300
is man's participation in the eternal law. And we have self-government, which allows us to craft
00:27:44.040
our own civil laws. It's one of the basic charges of American citizens. And you broke it, and you
00:27:50.500
bragged about breaking it, and now you're going to be punished. And it actually doesn't even matter
00:27:57.380
if your public podcast is the most beneficial thing to humanity.
00:28:03.760
It's certainly not, but that actually doesn't matter.
00:28:06.920
The libs fundamentally do not understand and do not want to understand
00:28:11.720
not just our constitutional system, but like even what the law is.
0.99
00:28:17.540
And I think with him, he actually is just ignorant.
0.97
00:28:21.280
But I'm reminded of this meme that goes around,
0.99
00:28:24.000
which is that so much of liberalism is just obtuseness.
00:28:27.380
It's just pretending not to understand basic things, thereby making communication impossible.
00:28:35.040
I'll use the most obvious example of this, but the fact that the libs insist that they don't
0.94
00:28:40.660
even understand why one might object to castrating little kids in transgenderism,
00:28:47.320
the fact that they pretend they don't even understand how anyone could hold the opinion
0.55
00:28:52.580
that everyone has always held everywhere for all of history
00:28:54.960
is a kind of obtuseness that makes communication impossible.
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preborn.com slash Knowles, preborn.com slash Knowles. Woman gets pulled over. She's going
1.00
00:30:40.000
viral for this, this according to the New York Post. The cop says that he saw her texting.
00:30:45.600
She had her phone in her right hand, and she shows the cop why that's not possible.
00:30:54.260
In the city of Lagos today, we're doing an operation for distracted driving.
00:30:56.980
You drove past me holding the phone with your right hand manipulating that phone.
00:31:19.900
You're saying that you saw me with my right hand.
00:31:28.160
Hand to God, you did not have fun with your hand.
00:31:31.120
She raises this sort of stump of an arm because she doesn't have a hand.
00:31:43.820
even the way i saw you you had your hand your phone in your right hand he goes i'm pretty sure
0.98
00:31:51.340
i you didn't see that raises the stump no hand and then she just goes so you want to just call
00:31:56.820
this a day and the thing i love about this interaction here is that the cop's reaction
00:32:04.800
is so human the cop's reaction is actually exactly what we just saw from the belgian judge
00:32:10.960
who convicted that right-wing Belgian politician for telling the truth.
00:32:16.600
She goes, yo, you want to just call this a day? He goes, well, no, no, no, I don't want to call
00:32:19.920
this a day. And she goes, you said you saw me holding my phone in my right hand. That's why
00:32:27.580
you pulled me over. We were just talking about Hassan Piker. You get pulled over, you get
0.65
00:32:32.420
arrested, you go to jail for specific actions that break the law. So the specific claim of the cop is
00:32:39.480
you were holding your phone in your right hand. She raises her arm. She says, I don't have a right
00:32:44.600
hand. And at that point, the cop just said, you know what? My bad. I was seeing things I didn't
00:32:50.020
see clearly. Sorry. My apologies. Have a good day. But what does he do? He doesn't do that.
00:32:56.240
He does the really human thing. He doubles down. In this way, it drives the implausibility,
00:33:03.340
the absurdity to its extreme. It was, whoa, whoa, whoa. Just because you don't have a right hand
00:33:08.020
doesn't mean that I didn't see you holding your phone in your right hand. She goes,
00:33:12.000
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what it means. Well, no, I mean, look, you said I was holding
00:33:16.600
my phone. I know what I said. I know what I said. But do you hand? And then it's unbelievable. I
00:33:21.940
mean, it's out of a Hollywood movie. It's out of not a Hollywood movie. It's out of a movie like
00:33:26.200
that horror director made because those are actually that's a good movie. You swear on your
00:33:32.480
hand up to God that you did not. And she raises her arm that lacks a hand. Yeah. Yeah. My hand to
00:33:37.320
god the hand that i don't have that you keep pretending that i have yeah hand to god i was
00:33:42.700
not holding my phone in my non-existent flesh are you okay well license and registration please
00:33:49.600
even then he can't give up on it he can't give up license and registration that is
0.84
00:33:55.560
that is the condition we all find ourselves in look at belgium says hey you said that migrants
0.86
00:34:30.080
if your premises are leading you to absurd conclusions you have to change your premises
00:34:38.160
if your premise that you you can never say anything naughty about migrants if your premise
00:34:45.660
that the migrants are all really really great and they're only benefiting society if your premise
0.78
00:34:50.760
is contradicted by all the facts the behavior of the migrants you can either punish people for
0.97
00:34:55.480
telling the truth, or you can change your premises. You can either punish the woman for
0.99
00:35:01.460
texting with her right hand, even though she doesn't have a hand, or you can say, you know
00:35:04.860
what? I was wrong, and we need to do something different. Which way, Western man? Which way?
00:35:13.140
This woman with an arm missing a hand, she's pointing us in two directions. Which way are
0.99
00:35:18.180
we going to do it? Are we going to follow the truth? The truth will set you free? Or are we
00:35:22.340
going to keep doubling down on all the lies, all the nonsense? Gets us right back to that movie
00:35:26.300
Obsession. Are we going to double down on all the DEI and the wokeness and the lies and the
00:35:31.740
fictions about human nature? Or are we just going to embrace the truth and recognize that the truth
00:35:35.460
is not hateful? The truth is not hateful. This was the argument. This was the chief premise,
00:35:42.680
really, the chief political premise of the transgender activists. They said that the truth
0.95
00:35:48.820
is harmful. If we tell the truth to people, that will lead them to kill themselves. It's cruel to
0.82
00:35:54.200
them. The truth is awful and lies will set you free. But our Lord tells us that it's exactly
00:35:58.820
the opposite. And our civilization, when it flourishes, says exactly the opposite. Which is
00:36:03.880
it? I say we follow the truth. Okay. Speaking of protecting the public, President Trump has finally
00:36:09.180
spoken out at this cabinet meeting yesterday about the shooting at the White House just a few days
00:36:14.700
ago. This after the attempted assassination of Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner,
00:36:19.940
this after the other attempted assassination of Trump at the Trump golf course, this after the
00:36:25.660
very near assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. All of this in the context of
00:36:30.320
the successful assassination of Charlie Kirk. Trump speaking out on how it's affecting him.
00:36:35.120
We'll get to that momentarily first, though. I want to tell you about Hillsdale. Go to
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by Tom Selleck, including your favorite podcast host. I never really counted on being in a movie
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with Tom Selleck someday in theaters, but this is the movie to go see, especially in the 250th
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and take a picture when you see my big mug right there on the screen. Go to hillsdale.edu slash
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Revolution. Locate a theater near you. Buy tickets now for Revolutionary America. One last time,
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that's hillsdale.edu slash revolution. My favorite comment yesterday from Rat Boyd,
00:37:47.860
who says, Tim Hortons, the donuts are to die for. They are. They are to die for. They're really good,
00:37:54.440
especially those little munchkin-looking donuts. I forget what they call them.
0.78
00:37:57.260
Timos? Is that what that? I don't know. Whatever they call them, they're really
00:37:59.480
good. But you should not literally die for them. You should not allow the government to
00:38:03.440
sign off on your doctor-assisted suicide attempt. Just go for the donuts and the coffee.
00:38:09.240
Do not commit suicide. President Trump finally speaking out on the shooting at the White House
00:38:15.100
just a few days ago. Mr. President, on the shooting last weekend, it came barely a month
00:38:19.980
after the third assassination attempt against you during the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
00:38:23.980
What was your reaction when you first heard about the latest shooting and
00:38:27.120
what gives you the courage to really keep doing your job effectively without thinking about these
00:38:31.480
threats every day? Well, I can't think about it because if I thought about it a lot, you know,
00:38:36.320
I wouldn't be a very good president. I wouldn't be here, probably. I'd be up in some room with
00:38:41.780
a locked door and say, just leave me alone. So I can't really think about it. It's such something
00:38:46.840
that it's a sad part of life. It's a dangerous business. What I'm doing is a dangerous business.
00:38:53.960
And they say, and look, we have been maybe the most consequential, but we certainly have been
00:39:06.140
if you're not consequential, you don't have so much
00:39:30.180
Okay, so great point that I think we don't always totally appreciate, which is that
00:39:34.060
the reason people are trying to kill Trump all the time is because he matters.
00:39:39.000
No one ever seriously tried to kill Joe Biden as president.
00:39:42.580
The great threats to Joe Biden as president were slippery floors and time.
00:39:48.940
Those were the greatest dangers that Joe Biden faced.
00:39:52.420
You know, you get out of bed a little too quickly in the morning,
00:39:57.120
I'm sure Secret Service had meetings about that.
00:39:59.840
And the passage of time, to quote Joe Biden's vice president,
00:40:03.740
the significance of the passage of time was a big danger to him.
00:40:08.240
But nobody was seriously trying to murder Joe Biden.
00:40:15.020
and a lot of the domestic left, mainstream left, has supported that.
00:40:19.360
He says, yeah, because I'm changing things, because I'm consequential.
00:40:26.880
assassinations do work that's why people keep doing them a very sad fact that i've been pointing
00:40:32.880
out ever since charlie was assassinated and people tried to cope with that by saying well you know
00:40:38.120
you've struck down one of our great leaders but you know we're only going to be 10 times as strong
00:40:42.340
and i said that's not true now we're headed for a period of great trial and tribulation and division
00:40:46.940
and pettiness and we need to try to we need to try to overcome that if we can but you're not
00:40:51.920
just immediately going to unify that's not how it happens that assassinations work that's why
00:40:56.500
people keep doing them. So how does Trump get out of bed in the morning? Trump, who does keep his
00:41:01.460
balance, unlike other presidents, how does he do anything with this fear that people just keep
00:41:07.000
trying to shoot him? He says, I can't worry about that. And I think what's implicit here,
00:41:13.420
Trump seemed to get a little healthy dose of religion after the Butler shooting. He said,
00:41:17.980
it's all God. I mean, I just don't know how else you explain it when your head just at the last
00:41:22.280
minute unpredictably, implausibly turns to look actually at a chart about immigration.
00:41:27.160
And that last second twist of the head is the only reason that part of your ear blew off and
00:41:30.980
not the back of your skull. I said, that's God. And so when it's our time, it's our time. We want
00:41:36.240
to be prudent. We want to take care in our life. We don't want to be reckless. But ultimately,
00:41:41.400
our days are numbered and ultimately God is sovereign. It reminds me of this great observation
00:41:45.760
from one of the legendary cigar men. This is Richard Overton, a World War II veteran,
00:41:52.280
who smoked 12 cigars a day and had whiskey in his morning coffee,
00:41:57.800
continued to drive his old 1970s Ford pickup truck.
00:42:06.020
And he talked about what it's like to go out into battle,
00:42:09.420
how you can have the courage to keep advancing.
00:42:14.600
you don't see him turn around and go back this way.
00:42:51.820
these kind of really simple moral rules, heuristics help to guide my life. This is one of my absolute
00:42:58.460
favorite ones. I've thought about it and recited it for years. You're in God's hands. If it's your
00:43:04.320
time to go, that bullet going to get you. If it ain't your time to go, that bullet going over
0.92
00:43:09.560
your head, it ain't going to hit you. And that's really how it is. We use our reason. We're
00:43:17.380
moderate, we're cautious, we're temperate, but we need courage. Courage is not only a virtue,
00:43:22.720
it's the prerequisite of all of the other virtues. And when we've done our part, all of the reasonable
00:43:28.660
preparations that we can make, it's ultimately up to God. There's a special providence in the
00:43:36.420
fall of a sparrow, and the days of our life are numbered just as the hairs of our head are
00:43:41.580
numbered. And that is what Trump is saying. He's not saying it with explicit direct reference to
00:43:46.280
to God, but that is what he's saying. And he has referenced God in, with regard to this issue
00:43:51.800
elsewhere, saying, look, I just got to go out there. I feel that I'm consequential. I feel
00:43:57.640
like I'm doing something that's important. And so I can't really think about it. If I allowed
00:44:00.760
this servile fear to overcome me, I wouldn't do anything at all. And the shooters would win.
00:44:05.940
So what do I do? The opposite of servile fear is not just braggadocio. The opposite of servile
00:44:11.740
fear is holy fear. It's humility and awe and wonder, which is the beginning of wisdom. So you
00:44:17.280
say, look, I fear, the only person I fear is God. I don't really fear the guys who are shooting.
00:44:22.400
If it's my time to go, the bullet's going to get me. If it's not my time to go, the bullet's going
00:44:25.180
over my head. And why would I fear some man who merely can kill the body when ultimately who I
00:44:33.080
should fear is God, who can throw the body and the soul into Gehenna? Now, speaking of Trump,
00:44:37.400
There's this line that Trump said from the Oval Office a few days ago, and I have to bring it up.
00:44:42.480
It's so unbelievably funny, and it was misinterpreted.
00:44:46.320
I think willfully misinterpreted in some parts, but I can't miss it on the show.
00:44:55.280
He'd like me to go, but it's going to be just a small little private affair, and I'm going to try and make it.
00:45:02.780
I said, you know, this is not good timing for me.
00:45:05.500
I have a thing called Iran and other things. That's one I can't win on. If I do attend,
1.00
00:45:12.980
I get killed. If I don't attend, I get killed. By the fake news, of course, I'm talking about now.
0.99
00:45:18.480
But he's got a very person who I've known for a long time, and hopefully they're going to have
00:45:25.280
a great marriage. Okay, so Trump's asked a simple question. You're going to go to your son's wedding.
00:45:32.000
Don Jr. was getting remarried over the weekend and he did. And he said, I'd like to go,
00:45:36.400
but I don't think I can go. And the clip that went viral, he goes, the way that they were
00:45:40.580
cutting it out, it seemed like he was saying, look, and he's a person I've known a very long
00:45:44.440
time. I love that. Talk about a true traditional patriarch and father. Ah, yes, my son. Trump is
00:45:52.400
now pushing 80. His son is very much a grown man. He goes, my son is someone I've known for a long
00:45:58.200
time. But that's not actually what he said. He's referring to his son's now wife. He's got a person
00:46:04.000
that I've known for a long time, his wife Bettina. And anyway, great, great clip. I don't care. He's
00:46:09.540
the funniest. The White House posted this very lengthy tribute to Harambe yesterday. It was
00:46:14.240
great. Before we go, though, speaking of Trump's priorities, I do want to take us all the way full
00:46:18.260
circle. Republicans are already, now that this Texas primary is over and Ken Paxton beat John
00:46:24.080
Cornyn. Now they're turning their attention directly on James Tallarico, the Democrat
00:46:29.560
candidate. Some are calling him the gay Pete Buttigieg. Here is one of the ads being run
0.89
00:46:34.000
against him. This is from the Lone Star Liberty Pack on Tallarico. The Democrats have a weird,
00:46:40.340
a weird candidate. God is non-binary. There are many more than two biological sexes. In fact,
1.00
00:46:49.080
there are six. It is now existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption. The American flag
00:46:55.340
is such a complicated symbol for most of us. Prophetic voices like Jesus have helped me
00:46:59.800
reckon with my own whiteness, my own masculinity. Our southern border should be like our front
0.94
00:47:05.260
porch. There should be a giant welcome mat out front. No need to sit and cry over your whiteness
00:47:12.400
or your masculinity. They're going to call me a radical leftist. Something that you love that's
00:47:19.340
I love, I'm just saying this because it's on my mind,
00:47:25.620
The Democrats have a weird, a weird candidate.
0.98
00:47:34.420
Lone Star Liberty Pack is responsible for the content of this ad.
00:47:37.500
And then it's just over, instead of over the Texas flag,
00:47:41.200
And it's so, so great because the Democrats still can't run away from wokeness.
0.77
00:47:49.280
They can't run away from wokeness because when you really press them, they still believe in it.
0.61
00:47:53.880
Even though the American public has firmly rejected it, it feels like we're beating a dead horse when we talk about the transgender issue or any of the other weirdness.
1.00
00:48:00.960
The whiteness and all of this really crazy stuff that Tallarico is talking about.
1.00
00:48:06.080
It feels like we're just beating a dead horse.
0.96
00:48:07.960
But the reason we have to keep beating the horse is because the Democrats still believe in it.
00:48:12.240
The Democrats are still trying to ride that horse into political power.
00:48:28.200
It would not necessarily have legs if the Democrats disavowed it.
00:48:31.060
But the Democrats can't totally disavow it because a lot of the Democrat base still believes in it.
00:48:34.240
so you just you just tie that around them i mean to bring it all the way back to the obsession
00:48:40.160
movie you have a movie that is fundamentally about how men and women actually get along
00:48:46.900
that's what that is what obsession is about it's a movie about the most basic dynamics between men
00:48:52.620
and women and it explodes it's doing so well at the box office because that is the dynamic that
00:49:00.500
the left has been denying overtly for years. And sex is just so fundamental to who we are as human
00:49:09.680
beings that it's so evocative. It's such a visceral kind of disgust that we feel when someone denies
00:49:18.980
it. I think that it's not too late. For the very online people, wokeness is kind of passe, outdated,
00:49:25.640
whatever. For voters, this is it. I want every ad. Every ad in the midterm should be about this
00:49:31.000
stuff. Okay. Today's Theology Thursday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to
00:49:34.940
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plans when you travel well your klm royal dutch airlines ticket takes you to more than just your
00:50:00.260
destination it takes you to front row views voices lost in the music and new shared memories
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And when the last song fades, the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines crew is here to ensure your journey home hits all the right notes.
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KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. When you travel, travel well.