The Michael Knowles Show - June 05, 2026


Ep. 1988 - Horrific: YouTuber Brags About Aborting His Baby With Down Syndrome


Episode Stats


Length

51 minutes

Words per minute

177.49812

Word count

9,074

Sentence count

728

Harmful content

Misogyny

9

sentences flagged

Toxicity

36

sentences flagged

Hate speech

42

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Folks, very excited to say I will be at the Zeal for America 250 rally this June 13th.
00:00:05.260 I will be there with His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke for a powerful day of prayer
00:00:10.820 and conversation as we mark America's 250th birthday.
00:00:14.360 If you are within driving distance of La Crosse, Wisconsin, I strongly encourage you to be
00:00:19.140 there in person.
00:00:20.420 If you can't make it, we will also be offering a live stream so you can still take part.
00:00:24.340 Go to catholicvote.org slash America250 to get your tickets or to sign up to watch.
00:00:54.340 Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario.
00:01:01.220 A prominent YouTuber goes viral for bragging about aborting his Down syndrome child and appears to be absolutely shocked by the backlash.
00:01:10.020 Then, President Trump personally confirms Axios' reporting that he called Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu effing crazy.
00:01:17.180 The Prime Minister has responded, will the U.S.-Israeli relationship survive?
00:01:20.840 and Megyn Kelly proposes a new political coalition that she says could transcend
00:01:26.300 and obliterate the distinction between the left and the right.
00:01:29.540 I think most Americans agree with her, and also, I'm a little bit skeptical.
00:01:35.520 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:50.840 welcome back to the show republicans have been absolutely obliterating democrats on capitol hill
00:02:03.740 this is very very good for conservative policy and more importantly we're getting great clips
00:02:09.660 out of it so we will cover what's going on first though i want to tell you about pepperdine
00:02:15.240 Go to go.pepperdine.edu slash dailywire.
00:02:18.920 Most people consume politics.
00:02:20.620 A much smaller number of people make politics.
00:02:23.040 They write policies.
00:02:24.020 They advise elected officials.
00:02:25.340 They shape institutions.
00:02:26.520 They influence decisions that affect millions of people.
00:02:29.220 And if we're being honest, many of the people currently occupying those positions are not exactly covering themselves in glory.
00:02:36.320 So where do future policymakers come from?
00:02:39.020 Ideally, from places that still take ideas seriously.
00:02:41.320 That is what makes Pepperdine School of Public Policy interesting.
00:02:43.800 I've been a fan of Pepperdine School of Public Policy for a decade now, probably.
00:02:48.800 People can specialize in national security, American politics, or local government and learn directly from fellows, including Victor Davis Hanson, Kieran Skinner, Robbie George, and Barry Strauss.
00:02:59.260 And because that program operates in both Malibu and Washington, D.C., one of those places is nicer than the other, students get exposure to both intellectual formation and practical experience.
00:03:09.060 I actually love, Malibu is great, especially when it's not burnt to ashes, and D.C., Foggy Bottom, I love it.
00:03:15.640 Perhaps most importantly, Pepperdine remains committed to free inquiry at a time when many universities seem determined to discourage it.
00:03:23.320 If that sounds like something worth exploring, visit go.pepperdine.edu slash Daily Wire.
00:03:30.060 That is go.pepperdine.edu slash Daily Wire.
00:03:33.660 I'm very sorry that we didn't air the show yesterday.
00:03:37.740 You all got to see my yes or no game with Dr. Josh Axe, but we were intending to shoot the show.
00:03:43.260 I'm here in London right now. Last night I was at the Oxford Union debating the resolution.
00:03:47.880 This house believes Trump has betrayed conservatism. I was obviously in the negative on that.
00:03:52.520 It was a lot of fun. I did another speech just myself and then a long question and answer session head to head with the students.
00:03:59.920 It's sort of like Jubilee, but with smart people. So anyway, it was a great, great time.
00:04:04.120 But right before we were about to start filming the show yesterday, the professor Jacob and I were at this fancy club in London.
00:04:12.980 The professor had set up the whole studio in the club.
00:04:16.500 And just before we start filming, the professor, with all of his equipment, blew a fuse, may have nearly burned down this very old club, and got us thrown out onto the street.
00:04:28.180 so we're walking around the streets of London you know our bags in hand like vagrants asking
00:04:35.180 for handouts and we were not able to do the show I'm very sorry to say and given that we were then
00:04:40.820 kicked out of the club I'm also sort of sorry to say that it didn't burn to the ground but in any
00:04:44.660 case we're able to do the show now uh there's a ton a ton to get to but I want to start off with
00:04:51.340 this awful, I guess the worst tweet that was ever tweeted. And the only reason it's newsy is it
00:04:59.020 comes from this apparently very prominent YouTuber, Jesse Ridgeway, who goes by the YouTube name,
00:05:05.400 Mr. Jugger, no, sorry, Nick Jugger Nuggets. And he posted about how he and his wife were going to
00:05:11.840 have a child. And then they found out that the kid might have Down syndrome. So they killed their
00:05:18.820 kid. And unfortunately, this is a very common story. It happens most of the time when parents
00:05:26.100 get a Down syndrome diagnosis. Certain countries like Iceland actually brag about how they've
00:05:32.100 eradicated Down syndrome, but there's no cure for Down syndrome. The way that they say they've
00:05:36.440 eradicated it is by eradicating people with Down syndrome. So it's very, very ghastly sort of
00:05:42.060 statistic. This is what this YouTuber says. This week, my wife and I made the very difficult
00:05:47.260 decision to terminate the pregnancy due to Trisomy 21. The choice was not made lightly.
00:05:55.880 We really appreciate all of the personal stories that you guys shared with us, especially the
00:05:59.960 unconditional support we've received from fans with no matter what we decided. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:06:06.840 We'll get back to that in a second. I know some of you may be very disappointed to hear this news.
00:06:11.080 We're devastated. This has been extremely traumatic for both of us. Yeah, I bet it has.
00:06:15.080 You killed your kid. I bet it is traumatic, especially Ashley, this guy's wife. She underwent
00:06:20.740 the procedure. Notice all of these euphemisms. We terminated the pregnancy. We made the choice.
00:06:27.620 She underwent the procedure. What procedure? What choice? Why was it traumatic? Why was it traumatic?
00:06:34.000 He goes on. Thankfully, everything went smoothly. Did it? Did it? Did it go smoothly? But emotionally,
00:06:41.680 were drained. Okay, so that's the opening. And then he goes on with this manifesto trying to
00:06:48.400 excuse what he did. So he says, Trisomy 21, also known as Down syndrome, is caused by an extra
00:06:53.000 chromosome. Yeah, we know. We know what Down syndrome is. It's caused by an error in cell
00:06:56.740 division, like a glitch. The odds of a baby having it is one in a thousand. I think it's actually
00:07:01.360 slightly higher than that. When I first confronted this news, I was shocked but optimistic. If they're
00:07:06.400 a little slow intellectually, we'll make it work. I signed on to be a parent, come what may.
00:07:10.000 but I just didn't fully understand what Down syndrome entailed. I signed on to be a parent.
00:07:15.620 You didn't sign on to be a parent. You created a child. You produced a child. Once we made it
00:07:21.280 public, it became clear most people don't know what Down syndrome entails. 50% of babies have
00:07:25.720 heart defects. 75% will have hearing challenges. Delayed physical development, poor muscle tone.
00:07:31.760 Structural issues with the face. Yeah, their faces look a little different. You're right.
00:07:35.300 Decreased lifespan. Well, now he has a very decreased lifespan. Sadly, the list is long.
00:07:39.480 feel free to look it up. Down syndrome isn't a blessing. It's objectively S-H-I-T-T-Y from a
00:07:45.360 health perspective. I didn't realize how rough it is for the child. How rough it is for the child.
00:07:50.920 He's trying to put this off onto the kid. You know, I actually did the right thing for him.
00:07:54.540 You know, I put him out of his misery. Hold on, hold on. Regardless of anything else about the
00:08:00.820 decision to kill a baby, it is just a fact measurable across time and space. People with
00:08:07.640 Down syndrome are some of the happiest people in the world, and actually families who have a child
00:08:12.980 with Down syndrome are happier than the median family. But no, it's so bad for the child, so
00:08:19.620 much better to chop the baby up in the womb. The miscarriage risk is close to 50%. Well, now it's 0.92
00:08:25.440 100%. Yada, yada, yada goes on and on and on. Then again, he says to all my fans who have
00:08:32.120 weighed in on this topic, we appreciate you. You matter a lot. We're glad you're here. I commend
00:08:37.260 you for having the strength to push forward, but me, I killed my kid. Love you guys. Thank you for
00:08:41.380 understanding. To me, the key word that tells you everything here is the word fans. I do not trust
00:08:49.460 people who refer to their fans. I think back often to Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh had the biggest
00:08:55.280 radio show ever, basically. Rush Limbaugh never talked about his fans. He talked about his listeners.
00:09:01.720 He did have listeners.
00:09:03.120 Never talked about his fans.
00:09:05.660 Fans is a real statement of hubris.
00:09:08.200 Fans is a real statement of a division between you and the audience.
00:09:13.340 It's a condescending term.
00:09:15.900 So he says, oh, I've got all these fans.
00:09:17.480 So, look, I'm so glad you support me regardless of what you do.
00:09:20.380 I don't know.
00:09:20.740 I'd never heard of this guy.
00:09:21.820 Apparently, he's one of the big OG YouTubers.
00:09:24.620 If I were a fan of his, I would not be a fan of his anymore. 0.93
00:09:30.100 He killed his kid. 0.96
00:09:31.980 Then there was a follow-up.
00:09:32.900 A lot of people responded to this post.
00:09:35.340 And then he follows up.
00:09:36.040 He goes, I've never seen such hate and vitriol
00:09:39.480 for two people grieving the loss of their unborn child
00:09:42.320 and making an impossible decision.
00:09:43.860 Hold on, hold on, hold on.
00:09:46.000 What's the impossible decision?
00:09:47.160 It's very much a possible decision.
00:09:49.100 You did it.
00:09:49.820 You made that decision.
00:09:50.900 It was possible. 1.00
00:09:52.060 The consequence of that is you killed your kid. 0.98
00:09:55.500 The last 24 hours have exposed a side of humanity 0.93
00:09:58.320 that is deeply disturbing.
00:09:59.380 Yeah, you're telling me, buddy.
00:10:00.580 you're telling me. I don't think the disturbing part is on the side you think it is. Being called
00:10:06.880 quote, murderous pieces of SHIT evil compared to Hitler, receiving nonstop death threats. Is he? 1.00
00:10:12.940 I haven't seen those, but it's all about him, right? He's the victim. He's the real victim here.
00:10:17.720 And then he goes, seeing my six-year-old dog with stage four kidney disease be used as a weapon.
00:10:22.000 So I said, what on earth is this? I go, I look, and this is the second most disturbing part of
00:10:28.720 this story. He had posted not all that long ago, and he, I guess his dog had some kind of disease,
00:10:35.680 and he writes this whole long manifesto. One year ago, Jenny was diagnosed with stage four kidney
00:10:41.600 disease after getting Lyme disease from a tick. One of the saddest days of my life. Killing his
00:10:45.480 kid, not one of the saddest days of his life. His dog being diagnosed with the disease, one of the
00:10:49.980 saddest days. I was heartbroken. She was given weeks to live, but here we are one year later,
00:10:54.560 and Jenny is still with us. We defied the odds with doctor's advice, curated a diet health plan
00:11:02.300 that has kept her going. Although I believe our love and her will has been the true secret sauce,
00:11:07.420 man, if only you had that kind of love for your human child, not for your dog. She wants to be
00:11:13.600 here with us. You know who would have wanted to be here with you is your kid. This is just awful.
00:11:20.380 And the pathology is so much deeper. I don't know if we have the video. This guy posts a
00:11:24.540 video of him and his wife reading the news that the kid has Down syndrome and the wife is crying
00:11:31.440 and this guy makes content out of it. Everything's content. His kid has been sacrificed on the altar
00:11:38.120 of content and the altar of convenience and the altar of selfishness. I won't belabor the point
00:11:44.660 and I won't read all of this guy's ridiculous words. Here's how it goes if Mr. Mick Jugger 0.52
00:11:51.740 Nuggets is watching this. Two messages you have to understand. You murdered your kid.
00:12:01.340 You murdered your kid. Coincidentally, a friend of mine, Tim Gordon, his wife just gave birth to 0.97
00:12:05.160 their like 57th child. He's very, very fertile Catholic family. And their latest child has
00:12:11.220 Down syndrome. And Tim responded to this. He said, my kid's doing great. Just usual baby stuff. We
00:12:17.000 love our kid. You killed your kid and you killed your kid because he wasn't perfect in your eyes 1.00
00:12:24.940 and you did not give your child the same care that you gave to your dog and you did not show 0.96
00:12:30.860 him the same love and you did not try to make him live, allow him to, not make him live, allow him
00:12:36.440 to live as you tried so hard to make your dog live. You killed your kid and the other side of 0.59
00:12:44.160 this is. You can be forgiven for this. You can be forgiven. This guy is reacting very emotionally 0.99
00:12:52.360 now, lashing out at the people who are pointing out this basic fact of what he did. He's writing
00:12:56.060 these manifestos. Why? Because he feels really good about his decision? Because it was just a
00:13:00.720 clump of cells? Because it's actually good for the baby to be murdered? No. He wrote the long
00:13:05.580 manifesto in the first place because he knows, not all that deep down, what he did. And then he
00:13:11.180 wrote the lengthy response because he knows even more consciously and explicitly what he did. 0.90
00:13:18.260 And I guess the Christian response here is, you can be forgiven. The blood can be wiped off your 0.92
00:13:26.080 hands. The temporal effects owing to sin cannot be undone. Your kid really is dead and it's your
00:13:30.820 fault. But you can be forgiven. From an eternal perspective, you can be forgiven. But first,
00:13:38.040 you have to accept the enormity of what you did. That's the key here.
00:13:44.500 God offers us salvation, but it's not cheap salvation. It costs a lot of money.
00:13:52.200 Not money, it costs much more than money. It costs the blood of God's only begotten son.
00:13:58.120 That's the Christian understanding. And that price is so dear that you can be forgiven for 0.99
00:14:05.120 your sins, but you have to acknowledge what you did. So now this guy has two choices and really
00:14:09.800 our society has two choices. This is why it's a matter of political import. We know that something's
00:14:15.020 gone wrong. We all feel it. It's a society teeming with neurosis and anxiety and guilt and shame and
00:14:22.980 all the rest of it because of all the terrible stuff that we do. And so we can either double
00:14:27.520 down on that by worshiping the God of the self and say, you know, this was my choice and it was
00:14:32.760 an impossible decision that I made. It was a possibility, I guess. And it was the right thing
00:14:37.360 to do. And it's actually good to murder down syndrome people. And it's good. No, I did the 0.99
00:14:40.380 right thing. The shame that I feel, this guilt that I feel, it's not real. I'm just going to
00:14:43.880 push it down and deny till I die. That's one option. And then your personal life and your
00:14:48.580 society will continue to get worse. Or you can do something very difficult. It's easy, but it's
00:14:57.440 easy, but it feels very difficult, which is you can look yourself in the mirror and acknowledge
00:15:01.920 what you did and ask God for forgiveness and he will give it to you. But you have to recognize
00:15:09.640 that reality first. Really, really horrifying. I guess one very slight silver lining here
00:15:16.700 is that this post went very, very viral and it's a lesson for other people, but this is a
00:15:21.500 cautionary, cautionary tale. Our whole society has said these sorts of things for years. Maybe
00:15:27.120 this guy even started to believe it, but deep down when you're lying in your bed at night,
00:15:31.460 you know it isn't true. Okay, speaking of crime, I want to get to another death. A black criminal
00:15:37.200 stabbed another lady to death on another train. It seems to me we've heard this song before. 0.99
00:15:42.740 I promise there's less gruesome violence later on in the show, but this story actually pertains
00:15:49.460 to one of the things I was talking about at Oxford last night. So we'll get to that momentarily.
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00:16:59.440 Seems to me we've heard this song before 0.99
00:17:02.160 There's another guy, a homeless black guy, criminal 0.99
00:17:07.280 Stabs another lady to death on another train 0.99
00:17:10.260 We have some B-roll footage here
00:17:12.960 I don't know if you want to see it
00:17:14.040 This pertains to something I was talking about yesterday
00:17:17.520 Because I was up at Oxford talking about the murder of Henry Novak
00:17:20.480 And in the murder of Henry Novak
00:17:23.060 Which I've spoken about on the show
00:17:24.440 we've talked about in the West now for a few days, this young white guy was stabbed to death
00:17:31.020 by this Sikh Punjabi guy in the UK. And then the cops showed up and as the guy is bleeding to death
00:17:38.560 and saying, I've been stabbed, I've been stabbed, the cops don't believe him. They do believe the
00:17:44.060 criminal. The criminal's family is covering up for him and the poor guy is left to bleed out on the
00:17:49.160 ground. And the reason that this happened is because the UK has an intentionally racially 0.65
00:17:55.900 discriminatory police force. They say, we don't want to arrest so many non-white people. We want
00:18:02.340 there to be more white people arrested as a proportion to non-white people. And you have 1.00
00:18:07.880 to be anti-racist and you need to confront white fragility and microaggressions. And you have to
00:18:13.960 you reflexively believe non-white people and you should dismiss white people. And it goes on and
00:18:19.480 on and on. You have this from the police action plan, the police race action plan. You have this
00:18:23.080 from the College of Policing released guidance just a couple months ago. And the premise gets
00:18:29.060 things totally wrong. It misunderstands the common good. It thinks of justice as a zero-sum game,
00:18:34.380 where if you give more justice to one group, you have less justice for the other group.
00:18:38.060 and that just fundamentally misunderstands what the common good is. Justice, security,
00:18:45.200 peace and tranquility in polity, that is a common good. A material good is like a pizza or a bottle
00:18:53.240 of wine. Those are goods, and when you share those goods with other people, you get less of them. You
00:18:58.320 share the pizza with your friend, you get less pizza. You share the wine, you get less wine.
00:19:02.540 But when you share a common good, a common good is the kind of good that is not diminished when
00:19:06.840 it is shared. It's a kind of good, actually, that grows when it is shared. When more people
00:19:12.900 share a life of virtue, peace, justice, tranquility, actually everybody gets more of that.
00:19:22.300 And so in this case, let's bring it back to the U.S. In this case, we've seen the same story.
00:19:26.880 You remember there was another black criminal stabbed or I think pushed an elderly man down 0.95
00:19:31.360 the stairs. And this was after he'd been terrorizing women on the subway. The cops actually 0.96
00:19:35.220 stopped this guy as he's chasing the women out of the subway. And the young women, the young white 0.94
00:19:39.760 women refused to cooperate with the cop. And the 23 year old woman in that case said, well, yeah,
00:19:44.220 I didn't want to put another black man in jail, even though he was committing crimes. And the
00:19:48.100 consequence of that is he then went on shortly thereafter to murder this elderly guy also on
00:19:52.760 the subway. And she just had this perverse view that if you lock up criminals, especially black 0.99
00:19:58.820 criminals, that will be bad for people, or that will be bad for black people, or one race, or 0.99
00:20:05.420 another race. And it's just not true. If you just locked up the homeless black criminals, and the 0.97
00:20:11.980 other criminals too, but this is the group we're talking about here. If you just locked up the 1.00
00:20:17.640 homeless black criminals, this wouldn't be a racial issue. If you just applied fair policing 1.00
00:20:25.680 standards, the racial tension that comes out of this would actually decrease. This wouldn't really
00:20:32.800 be an issue at all. When the UK's police force comes out and says, yeah, we do not want colorblind
00:20:41.000 policing. We do not want racial equality. That's what they're saying. They think that that is a 0.75
00:20:47.120 sort of Faustian bargain where, yeah, you're going to let more criminals out and yeah, they're going
00:20:50.600 to victimize more innocent people, but it'll at least be better for race relations. But the 0.60
00:20:55.100 opposite is true. It's worse for race relations. The fact that there are two-tiered systems of
00:20:59.360 justice actually inflames the race relations, makes the whole society worse. Okay, speaking
00:21:04.800 of racial politics, the great Brandon Gill, rising star in Congress, he was just grilling
00:21:10.640 an Ohio state senator. He asked a very simple question on these demographic issues. He asked
00:21:14.820 her a simple question, has Somali immigration been good for Ohio? Senator Antonio, thank you
00:21:22.240 for, for being here. Um, has Somali immigration been good for Ohio? 1.00
00:21:31.300 You know, that's really outside of my purview of your state Senator.
00:21:37.400 Would you like to see more as far as, as far as, as far as I'm processing your question and I'm,
00:21:47.260 I have to say that I was almost brought to tears just now because the rate and the level
00:21:59.100 of hateful rhetoric based on false information is shocking, is shocking to me, that lack
00:22:07.240 of even humanity to group a group of people together, I am shocked, I am shocked.
00:22:14.840 simple question. This woman is setting the feminists back 60, 70 years, which I guess is a 1.00
00:22:22.640 good thing. So in that way, I thank her for her response. Pretty simple question. Hey, you're an 0.60
00:22:27.720 Ohio state legislator. Has Somali immigration, Somalis were just caught perpetrating this 1.00
00:22:33.200 massive fraud in Ohio, has that been good for your state? What's her response? It's yes or no. It's 1.00
00:22:39.260 not that complicated. She says, I'm just processing your question. Okay. Well, if your brain doesn't
00:22:45.580 function well enough for you to understand a simple question, maybe you shouldn't be a legislator.
00:22:49.560 But then the cherry on top is, she says, your question almost brought me to tears.
00:22:55.400 I need my fainting couch. I'm getting the vapors. Oh, yes. Well, state Senator Sally or whatever
00:23:01.860 her name is, she's just having a little fit of hysteria. So don't worry. The legislative session
00:23:06.560 will resume any moment now. We just need to have state legislator Sally recover from her fit of the 1.00
00:23:12.380 vapors. The question almost brought me to tears. If a simple question about politics causes you
00:23:24.120 to fly into a fit of tears, you are probably not fit to work in government or in the private sector
00:23:31.460 or maybe even leave your home on any ordinary day of the week.
00:23:35.940 I've got great grilling here from Brandon Gill.
00:23:38.240 He didn't even have to do that much.
00:23:39.380 He's very, very talented at this, but he didn't have to do very much.
00:23:41.800 She did all the work herself. 0.81
00:23:43.960 And she decided to set women in public life back 75 years. 0.92
00:23:49.800 So for that, I guess we thank her. 0.92
00:23:51.360 Okay, speaking of women in politics, 1.00
00:23:53.080 my friend Megyn Kelly is proposing a new political coalition. 1.00
00:23:56.320 We'll get to that momentarily first, though.
00:23:58.500 I want to tell you about Boland Branch.
00:24:00.340 Right now, go to bolandbranch.com slash Knowles.
00:24:04.840 Folks, there comes a time in every trip.
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00:25:19.180 We've heard about the great realignment, and this took place a little bit in 2016,
00:25:24.020 and you really saw it in 2024, where some voters who previously were centrists, center-left,
00:25:30.540 definitely not Republicans, they came over to vote for Trump, and we call that a realignment.
00:25:35.280 My friend Megyn Kelly is proposing a new political coalition that she says is poised to rise out of
00:25:42.680 and supersede the left-right divide, which no longer describes politics. Here's her point.
00:25:48.300 The line between left and right is merging.
00:25:50.960 You know, like there's something rising out of the middle of that that is far less partisan.
00:25:55.500 You're talking with Anna Kasparian.
00:25:57.880 Yeah, I love her.
00:25:58.660 It's awesome.
00:25:59.840 I love her.
00:26:01.560 I'm pretty centrist in my politics.
00:26:04.560 And my cultural sensibilities are definitely more on the right these days than they used to be.
00:26:10.480 But I share a lot in common with some of the left.
00:26:13.000 So I think something's coming out of the middle that is going to be the future.
00:26:18.980 It's going to complicate politics in a really probably good way, not for the existing parties.
00:26:25.220 But there will be, as a result of that emergence, there will be a candidate or more who stand for what's happening there in the middle.
00:26:33.160 There's a few issues on which I think we agree removes culture wars from the discussion.
00:26:39.040 So in other words, the leftists who are there, I'm not trying to cut off the body parts of our children.
00:26:44.280 I think Meghan is totally sincere about this.
00:26:47.580 Not only do I think Meghan is totally sincere, I think most Americans agree with her.
00:26:52.160 I think if you went to a dinner party and you proposed this solution saying, you know, the left and the right, they're both terrible.
00:26:57.260 The Republicans, the Democrats are both terrible.
00:26:59.060 And I think we're poised to see this new party or this new movement emerge out of the middle.
00:27:04.760 And that's going to represent most Americans.
00:27:06.960 And that's going to be the future of politics.
00:27:08.780 I bet most Americans would agree with her on that, but she's wrong. People have these ideas
00:27:17.480 and they have these desires as a perennial matter, but it never seems to happen. And the reason is
00:27:23.120 that the parties and the political coalitions actually are relatively coherent. The left and
00:27:29.520 the right have existed by those names since the French Revolution. We've got almost 250 years of
00:27:35.220 the left and the right. And that divide between the more conservative element and the more radical
00:27:39.160 element, that has existed going all the way back to the very earliest polities, probably going back
00:27:45.100 to the cave. But we see this in ancient Greece. We see this in Pericles and Chimon and so on.
00:27:52.620 Megan kind of, I think, explains why this isn't actually going to happen there at the end.
00:27:59.620 In a way, I think she undercuts the suggestion, which is she says, look, I'm not going to vote
00:28:04.700 for a party that wants to cut off the body parts of children. So I guess for that reason, I'll still 0.84
00:28:07.620 vote for Republicans, but I hate them. That's why it's not going to happen. That's why. And I think
00:28:13.080 ultimately, not just what people say, but what people actually do, that's what's going to be
00:28:17.540 the reason that this third movement does not arise. I was doing an event at TPSA with Matt
00:28:23.160 in Idaho not that long ago. And some speaker, one of the questioners was just lambasting the
00:28:29.740 Republican Party. And I said, yeah, no, the Republican Party, it's awful. It's the worst
00:28:32.900 political party in the United States other than the Democrats. And that's enough, actually,
00:28:38.520 because there actually is some coherence. You know, sometimes people, especially more of the,
00:28:43.740 you know, disillusioned liberals who are coming over to the right, but they want to bring some
00:28:47.580 more of their liberalism over. This was more prominent about 10 years ago. They would say,
00:28:52.860 look, why can't we have low taxes and low government regulation, but a little bit of 0.99
00:28:57.660 abortion, but not like a ton of abortion, but some abortion and a bunch of gay stuff. And foreign 0.99
00:29:05.220 policy was kind of a split then as it is now, as it probably always will be. You say, why can't we
00:29:09.700 have that? And it's because that actually is incoherent. The same reasons that drive someone
00:29:17.920 to protect the life of an unborn baby will incline those people to protect private property,
00:29:25.360 at least to a substantial degree. The same things that motivate a person to defend an unborn baby
00:29:31.660 will motivate a person to defend innocent people on the street and therefore to arrest more
00:29:36.520 criminals. And the same motivations, I mean, I'm focusing on the abortion issue because that's 0.54
00:29:41.660 what we were talking about at the top of the show. But the same things that motivate you
00:29:44.380 to protect an unborn baby will motivate you to protect a national border. It seems like
00:29:49.780 immigration and abortion are totally unrelated issues, but they're not really. They derive from
00:29:54.460 the same basic assumptions about the country, the same basic desires, the same inclinations
00:29:59.780 and preferences. So they're going to remain the same. And people that can be dissatisfied with
00:30:04.240 the left and the right, they certainly will be. It's a fallen world. These things are going to
00:30:07.600 be imperfect. But I would not put my money on some kind of third way movement arising
00:30:14.100 to eliminate this distinction or to supersede this distinction. It's not
00:30:18.240 would that it were so simple, but I don't think it's going to happen.
00:30:21.440 All right. Very, very important story coming up. First, though, before we get to that,
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00:31:37.820 or go to preborn.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, preborn.com slash Knowles. Okay. Now speaking of
00:31:44.640 fractured political coalitions, there was reporting some days ago that Trump had this nasty phone call
00:31:49.240 with bb netanyahu over the war in iran and the reporting came out that trump yelled at him and 0.95
00:31:56.140 said you know you're effing crazy and you owe the fact that you're not in jail to me because i kept
00:32:01.360 you out of jail and then netanyahu downplayed it a little it was unclear is this just the what the 0.96
00:32:05.840 white house wants us to believe did this really happen is this bad reporting trump has confirmed 0.92
00:32:10.500 which you were angry with him you said are you effing crazy what are you effing doing um i helped
00:32:18.280 you stay out of jail is that true did you speak to him in those terms i did i i wouldn't say angry
00:32:23.600 i was a little bit perturbed at his uh constantly fighting with lebanon you know at some point i
00:32:33.240 said maybe we gotta stop this we gotta stop it but i have a very good relationship we've done
00:32:39.500 well done well together he always says we could never have done it but everybody knows that we
00:32:45.680 could have never done it without the united states but we've we've i've worked very well together i
00:32:50.380 like bb a lot and i've worked very well with him we had a you know where he i'm a wartime president
00:32:56.640 he's a wartime prime minister very important part of the world and i think we've done you know very
00:33:03.340 well we've we've gotten along very well together yeah i said it i totally said it but notice here
00:33:08.640 wasn't him yelling emotionally like that crazy state senator lady who was being grilled by
00:33:13.000 Brandon Gill. He's just saying, look, yeah, I spoke to him. I said, you're effing crazy. You
00:33:16.780 owe your political viability right now to me, and you got to knock it off. We've gotten along very,
00:33:22.780 very well together, but here is one where we're diverging. This is, I hate to say I told you so,
00:33:27.380 this is exactly my diagnosis of it from a few days ago, which is, yeah, whatever the precise
00:33:33.080 nature of the reporting, the U.S. and Israel are allies. We have a lot of interests in common.
00:33:37.680 We've gotten along very well together. We'll very likely get along very well together again in the
00:33:40.880 future. But it's two different countries, and sometimes the interests diverge. And right now
00:33:44.660 on Iran, the interests are diverging because it's in the U.S. interest to get a peace deal and reopen
00:33:49.280 the strait, and it's in the Israeli interest to keep going until there's regime change. Netanyahu
00:33:53.860 responded. So let's talk about the call that you had with him this week, which is getting a lot of
00:33:59.040 attention. The president confirmed that he said, you're effing crazy. How did you react to that? 0.99
00:34:05.660 What really happened in that call? Well, I'm not going to get into details of our conversations.
00:34:09.260 We've had thousands, well, a lot, a lot of them.
00:34:12.980 And if you think this is a crisis, you should be in some other conversations.
00:34:16.160 But we've always found a way.
00:34:18.040 We have so many agreements.
00:34:19.560 We agree on the main things.
00:34:21.060 We want to get Iran, the nuclear program in Iran, finished. 0.89
00:34:24.680 We want to make sure that Iran doesn't pose a threat to Israel, to the Middle East, to 0.74
00:34:28.860 America, that it doesn't develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, not
00:34:33.180 only to Israel and to every capital in Europe, but to every city in the United States.
00:34:37.040 That's our common goal.
00:34:38.180 That's what we set out to do and to expand the circle of peace, as the president and I did in the Abraham Accords together.
00:34:45.580 So we have common goals. Sometimes we have is in the best of families, you have these tactical disagreements.
00:34:51.600 We always find a way to work them out. And we do so as great friends.
00:34:56.780 We can disagree in the morning and by the afternoon we have common action.
00:35:01.360 These are good statements from both men. These are actually good statements from both men.
00:35:05.080 And it's the one view that you're really not allowed to hold on the U.S.-Israel alliance.
00:35:11.440 Some people say it's the most important alliance ever, and they're our greatest ally, and our interests are totally aligned. 0.78
00:35:16.400 Some say, you know, Israel is the most awful, evil, satanic power that's ever existed in the entire world.
00:35:22.180 And the one view you're not allowed to have is, yes, sometimes we work really well together. 0.91
00:35:25.780 Sometimes we have different interests.
00:35:27.060 We're broadly aligned.
00:35:28.200 But, you know, sometimes we've got to restrain them, and sometimes we've got to yell at them on the phone.
00:35:32.080 And that's how it works.
00:35:34.140 We're two different countries, and we work with them in a practical, prudential way.
00:35:37.480 But notice, that's how the relationship actually works.
00:35:40.880 That is the view of a very small minority of us podcasters and pundits, very, very slim minority.
00:35:48.000 But also, that is the view of Trump and Netanyahu.
00:35:51.780 Neither of them are escalating this into some big war of words, some huge feud where they're yelling and screaming at each other, recriminations on both sides.
00:35:58.660 Just saying, yeah, yeah, we had a tough phone call, and yeah, I don't like what he's doing here, and we're going to try to stop that.
00:36:03.100 But, you know, we get along on the broad strokes. But that's the answer. That's how it works. That's how political coalitions actually work.
00:36:09.340 Okay. Speaking of the presidency, we do have a potential Democrat presidential candidate who is going to try to upend his own party.
00:36:20.540 We don't have a ton of time to get to that today because I have to get to, before we cut into my favorite time of the week, the mailbag,
00:36:28.440 I have to get into Scott Besson just absolutely savaging the Democrats on Capitol Hill.
00:36:36.580 Here is Scott Besson being grilled by a Democrat Senator Ron Wyden.
00:36:43.140 Senator Wyden has mendaciously slandered the Treasury Building in an attempt to cover up his son having an investment meeting with Jeffrey Epstein to ask for funding.
00:36:58.440 Thank you.
00:37:00.440 Mr. Chairman?
00:37:03.440 Yes.
00:37:04.440 Let's be clear here.
00:37:07.440 Nobody is interested in the ramblings of a capo in the most corrupt regime in American history.
00:37:14.440 We want to get some facts about this deal.
00:37:17.440 That's what we're here for.
00:37:18.440 Thank you.
00:37:19.440 Well, thank you.
00:37:20.440 And I will ask my questions first today.
00:37:22.440 And we would like to hear what Adam Wyden and Jeffrey Epstein talked about.
00:37:27.440 your son's largest investment position was Rick's Cabaret. So did your son and Jeffrey Epstein talk
00:37:34.840 about pole dancing as he begged him for money using your limited credibility?
00:37:44.640 I'm going to proceed with my questions. And Mr. Secretary, I'm going to start
00:37:50.820 with regard to the issues that Senator Wyden raised.
00:37:55.040 Scott Besson is my absolute favorite form of the political animal.
00:38:00.640 That was such a savage attack on Ron Wyden.
00:38:04.260 Hey, Ron. Hey. Hey, Ron.
00:38:07.360 How's your son doing? How are his investments?
00:38:11.000 Yeah, they talking over the stripper poles together?
00:38:15.140 He just, he brings the receipts.
00:38:17.880 Scott Besson is my favorite form of the political animal
00:38:20.040 in as much as he is intelligent, he's articulate, he's well-coiffed, he's clubbable, and he is a 0.81
00:38:26.220 bloodthirsty savage beast. You get all these reports out of the White House of how he's just
00:38:29.780 beating people up in the West Wing, just body checking them into the walls. But he's eminently
00:38:33.920 clubbable. You could take him to a very fancy dinner. He's smart. He's read a lot of books.
00:38:37.800 But he's got a mission. He's just absolutely bloodthirsty. He takes no prisoners. He has no
00:38:44.380 quarter for our political opponents. It's just beautiful. You just love to see it. Go to armra.com
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00:40:00.480 Okay.
00:40:01.760 Finally, finally, we've arrived at my favorite time of the week.
00:40:03.880 When I get to hear from you in the mailbag,
00:40:04.980 Our mailbag is sponsored by PureTalk at puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S,
00:40:08.360 to claim unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99.
00:40:12.080 Hi, Michael. It's the Shuckmeister.
00:40:14.060 It seems for the first time in a long time, the entire right is aligned on one issue,
00:40:18.680 and that's James Tallarico.
00:40:20.300 And honestly, I can't stand it.
00:40:23.000 I'm fatigued, all the clips are the same, and in the deluge of coverage, everyone is missing the point.
00:40:28.960 Yes, his reading of scripture is really terrible, but it's totally unsurprising 0.97
00:40:32.980 because his opinions are typical for your high-churched Protestant in seminary.
00:40:37.940 This has been an issue for decades,
00:40:39.600 and I've observed it personally by talking to compromised Presbyterians, 0.92
00:40:43.520 and even influencers like Redeem Zoomer have been leading Reconquistas against it for years. 0.91
00:40:48.520 So before everyone realizes that it's just the natural progression of Protestantism, 0.56
00:40:52.660 and everyone should just convert to something a bit more traditional and apostolic,
00:40:56.440 what can people covering this person do to shift the conversation about the root of the issue?
00:41:02.260 Thanks.
00:41:02.980 Very, very good point. Tallarico is not an outlier. I mean, he might be a little touch
00:41:09.300 fringier, maybe, but I know, I think you're probably right. The mainline Protestantism, 0.98
00:41:16.380 the sort of high church liturgical forms of Protestantism, I mean, they've been collapsing
00:41:20.600 for years. Yes, Protestant pals of mine have been trying to lead this re conquista of the mainline
00:41:25.460 Protestant churches. I don't think it's going to be successful. I think it's way too far gone.
00:41:29.400 But I was sitting there at the inauguration in the National Cathedral when that bishopress lady was scolding President Trump and Vice President Vance on immigration. 0.99
00:41:39.740 It was so pathetic. I thought, this is it. 0.98
00:41:43.020 Henry VIII, this is what it was for?
00:41:45.900 So that down the line you can have some Episcopalian priestess, bishopress, with a short haircut, whining about immigration?
00:41:53.500 I don't know.
00:41:54.960 Yes, that is relatively mainstream.
00:41:58.160 I guess the silver lining is, I don't think it's going to have that much cachet because there aren't that many mainline Protestants anymore. And the lower church Protestants usually don't go for this stuff. Your hardcore Baptists, evangelicals, they generally don't go for that kind of stuff. But it's a good point. It's a good point to ask, not just politically, how did the Democrats get here in the way that they're perverting Christianity, really in the case of Tallarico, to satanic ends, using the Virgin Mary as an example of why we should have abortion. He's done that.
00:42:27.340 But yes, to ask more deeply, well, what gave him the license to do that from the position of certain Protestant denominations is a good point.
00:42:35.660 Good morning, Michael. This is Arun.
00:42:37.020 Okay, so I just figured out how to end the Iran war, and I want to know what you think.
00:42:42.560 So I love Israel partly because I love Jews, but also because they are a reliable ally. 0.91
00:42:48.440 They rightly call us the senior partner, and they are the subservient, or as Prime Minister Netanyahu says, the junior partner.
00:42:55.360 So how about this? We do a ground invasion of Iran, but the IDF provides the troops and we merely facilitate. How is this not the best idea ever? Thank you, as always, for your thoughts. 0.91
00:43:09.660 uh great question arun as always uh i i love your belligerent uh uh zionism your your indian
00:43:21.460 american belligerent zionism while also getting a kick out of the podcasters who are the most
00:43:28.660 anti-israel you do you have you might be the third way you might the thing that megan was
00:43:33.160 talking about where you there's going to be this this political faction that totally transcends
00:43:39.060 you might have done it. It reminds me, there was this tweet. I don't know if you guys saw this
00:43:43.760 going around. This was a while ago, but during the Gaza war, there was a tweet, an Indian guy posted
00:43:48.320 of Netanyahu and Hitler sharing a face. Like one half was one guy, one half was the other guy.
00:43:54.760 And the tweet said, they underestimate him. And lest there be any confusion, what the Indian guy
00:44:01.340 was saying was he was comparing Netanyahu to Hitler because he likes them both. And you say,
00:44:06.580 this is a very confounding, I don't, I haven't processed, I need to process like the state
00:44:13.020 senator lady, but to the substance of your question, why can't the state of Israel just
00:44:20.720 provide all the troops, but we provide air support or something like that? Because there are really
00:44:24.480 no half measures in a war like this, especially in a regime change war. So what Iran will do is 0.92
00:44:30.060 just attack American interests. Because even if the IDF is providing all of the ground troops, 0.87
00:44:35.020 if they can only do so with the support of the United States, then the way that Iran is going 0.67
00:44:40.720 to try to stop the war and defend the regime is by disproportionately attacking the United States
00:44:46.160 and all of our Gulf allies. So we'll be dragged into the war. There's really no way to slice it.
00:44:51.200 This is an unfortunate conclusion from the war in Iran, but it just seems to me there are no 0.54
00:44:56.140 good options whatsoever. And this is why you're seeing the U.S. and Israeli interest diverge.
00:45:01.800 Hi, Michael.
00:45:02.700 I just wanted to ask you about the statues you mentioned recently.
00:45:07.040 So while I think it's cool that your ancestor got a statue and all that,
00:45:10.760 I noticed some incongruities in your thinking.
00:45:13.280 You thought it was awesome that the statues were of ordinary men
00:45:17.020 that no one had never heard of.
00:45:18.840 Well, a couple of months back, you were upset by the way
00:45:21.680 a Robert E. Lee statue at the Capitol was replaced 0.94
00:45:24.440 with the ordinary black teen no one has ever heard of.
00:45:28.360 I think it was Barbara Rose Johns.
00:45:30.200 Yeah, I had to look that up.
00:45:31.740 Anyway, how do you reconcile with the fact that both statues are a people no one has ever heard of before?
00:45:38.480 To someone, I'm sure that black girl's statue is really cool, just like your however many greats grandpa's statue is cool to you.
00:45:45.800 What are your thoughts?
00:45:47.180 Well, the issue...
00:45:48.060 Thanks for the great show, Michael.
00:45:49.280 I'm a Daily Wire Plus subscriber, but I only ever watch your show.
00:45:53.320 I like how you're always kind and civil in your discourse.
00:45:56.440 Ben is too grumpy, and he talks too fast.
00:45:59.040 And Matt is too rustic.
00:46:00.800 So yeah, you're the best.
00:46:02.000 Looking forward to hearing from you.
00:46:04.600 You're clearly a woman of excellent taste, okay?
00:46:08.420 You're a very sophisticated woman, probably very beautiful as well.
00:46:13.420 And so I think your misperception here on the statue is only on one point.
00:46:18.620 My issue is not necessarily with the random black lady.
00:46:22.300 I don't even really remember who the statue was of going up somewhere.
00:46:26.800 My issue is with the fact that the statue replaced a great man of American history.
00:46:32.880 The issue is chiefly with the replacement. 0.63
00:46:35.220 I don't know whether or not the lady who got the statue deserves it or not.
00:46:38.940 When it comes to the ordinary men who have their statues, the ordinary men of the American
00:46:43.380 Revolution who have their statues up, including my great, great, great, great, great grandpa
00:46:47.220 in Washington, D.C. now, we know that they did something great.
00:46:50.980 We know that they sacrificed themselves for years and years and years to give us our country.
00:46:55.220 The most important sacrifice in the history of the United States.
00:46:58.820 So we're certain that they did something very, very important that they've not been lauded for.
00:47:04.660 But also, their statues didn't replace someone else's statue.
00:47:09.000 They didn't go into the Capitol and take down the new lady's statue and replace that lady with my grandpa.
00:47:14.720 Which, in the case of my grandpa, that would be totally fine.
00:47:17.040 But if we're just going to live in this world of constant statue toppling and constantly trying to change out,
00:47:22.900 erase parts of history and install new parts of history, that would be a little bit more difficult,
00:47:28.300 especially when it comes to someone like Robert E. Lee, who's a very virtuous man and who's very
00:47:33.140 important. He's a very good figure in American history who's been, I think, very, very unfairly
00:47:36.660 maligned. So that's the distinction. The problem is more on the pulling of the statue down than it
00:47:41.980 is on putting new statues up. But if we're going to put new statues up, let's make sure that the
00:47:45.200 people are really deserving of them and that valorizing them will be good for the United
00:47:50.980 States. In the case of that lady, I just don't know. I don't know anything about her. In the
00:47:54.680 case of these ordinary soldiers of the American Revolution, we know that their sacrifice was
00:47:59.920 great, and we celebrate it this year on the 250th. Okay, last question.
00:48:04.060 Greetings, Michael. I have a question about something you spoke about recently regarding
00:48:09.160 the legislation of speech. You said correctly that the purpose of speech is expressing the truth.
00:48:15.360 Therefore, to have legislation which curtails that would be unjust.
00:48:20.340 I'm curious if you meant that absolutely.
00:48:23.540 As a fellow Catholic, I'm sure you are aware of the sin of detraction.
00:48:28.440 And, as all laws legislate morality, in theory, there should be nothing wrong with outlawing detraction.
00:48:36.000 Provided it could be practically and justly enforced.
00:48:39.500 But all laws are contingent on just enforcement.
00:48:42.600 Would you disagree?
00:48:44.080 If so, why?
00:48:45.720 Thank you.
00:48:47.140 I suppose we'd have to define it
00:48:48.920 and make sure we're talking about the same thing.
00:48:50.340 But if by a law against attraction,
00:48:53.860 you mean a law against revealing the private sins of others,
00:48:57.800 I guess in principle you could have that,
00:49:00.520 though I probably wouldn't do that.
00:49:02.880 For the same reason that St. Thomas Aquinas
00:49:04.660 says you might not want to totally outlaw prostitution.
00:49:07.240 It's not that there's any right to prostitution.
00:49:08.860 It's not that prostitution is good,
00:49:10.260 but it's that within a polity of people 0.98
00:49:12.060 at different levels of virtue,
00:49:13.540 And if you're too tough, if you're too harsh, if your standard is too high, you can actually have the opposite effect that you want, which is you'll crack people and you'll make the vice even worse.
00:49:26.520 But then for politics, politics runs on detraction.
00:49:30.200 So one of the difficulties here is, as a public matter, sometimes people's private sins, well, they always have public effect, but sometimes they're really politically relevant.
00:49:40.240 So, like, for instance, if you see someone commit a crime, and then the police ask you, they say, hey, did you see that guy commit a crime?
00:49:48.480 You say, well, I don't want to commit the sin of detraction.
00:49:50.400 You know, I don't want to, look, I don't want to, that's not mine to reveal.
00:49:52.580 That's between him and his priest.
00:49:53.920 No, there is a political role just in the enforcement of justice for telling on people.
00:49:59.420 So, probably you're not going to get a law against detraction.
00:50:03.340 But people should do less of it.
00:50:05.160 That's true.
00:50:06.020 It's good to be a more civilized society.
00:50:07.320 And the more civilized and virtuous we are, the less need we have for a multitude of laws.
00:50:12.580 Okay, that's our show.
00:50:14.140 I'm afraid that Professor Jacob is going to burn down this hotel as well,
00:50:17.540 so we're not going to have the member block today.
00:50:19.160 But I will be back in the studio coming up very, very shortly.
00:50:22.380 I'll be leaving the motherland, unless my visa's canceled.
00:50:25.140 People keep canceling visas here.
00:50:26.860 So assuming I don't become an expat, I'll see you in the studio on Monday.
00:50:29.860 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. See you then.
00:50:37.320 Thank you.