The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 2008 - GOP Launches A Secret Weapon On Libs： Goth ＂Baddies＂

00:00:00.000 While we all wring our hands over new political winds blowing in the GOP,

00:00:05.660 isolationism, protectionism, nativism, there is a new factional insurgency among Republicans

00:00:11.120 that we should be excited about. And that is the rise of the right-wing goth baddie.

00:00:17.260 We will examine the rising Republican star, the congressional candidate shaking up conservative

00:00:22.840 aesthetics. Then a Democrat campaign staffer calls for a trans jihad and general murder of 0.53

00:00:28.440 Republicans. And President Trump swings by the Teddy Roosevelt Library to remind us all how

00:00:32.860 terrible this year would have been with a lib president presiding over America's 250th anniversary. 0.79

00:00:38.720 I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:58.440 Welcome back to the show. James Tallarico, who the polls are showing might be

00:01:03.640 the Democrat senator from Texas very soon. He wants you all to know that his whiteness and

00:01:11.940 his masculinity limits his imagination. That guy, right now, odds on the numbers, 0.72

00:01:19.660 very good chance that guy is going to be the senator from Texas. We'll get to that in a

00:01:23.940 moment. First, though, smash that like button and subscribe. Also, check us out on Spotify.

00:01:28.440 where you can download full episode audio and video to watch or listen whenever you want

00:01:32.680 without using your data. Do not miss an episode. Before we get to anything, I want to tell you

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00:03:06.800 I hate to admit that Mr. Davies, the producer of this show, is sometimes right.

00:03:13.980 I teased this a little bit yesterday.

00:03:15.280 I have to get to it.

00:03:16.220 he has been saying for weeks now that I need to cover the rise of the goth baddie. I said,

00:03:23.620 what are you talking about, the goth baddie? He's saying, no, Michael, my whole social media feed

00:03:28.340 is just being inundated with really good-looking goth girls. It's a social phenomenon. I said,

00:03:34.660 no, no, no, that's a your feed phenomenon. I said, I don't know what kind of sick, 0.79

00:03:38.900 perverted, freakish things you look up on your computer, but I'm not seeing that anywhere. I 0.97

00:03:43.460 that's not a real trend. And it takes a big, handsome guy wearing a red, white, and blue

00:03:49.300 plaid shirt to admit when he's wrong because the new star GOP congressional candidate coming out

00:03:56.040 of Colorado is, in fact, I think it's fair to say, nothing lecherous in the observation, 1.00

00:04:02.080 she's a goth baddie. This is Kelly Dennison. She just won the Colorado second congressional

00:04:08.380 primary. And she is not your typical Republican, at least in the way she looks. She's a 27-year-old 0.98

00:04:16.200 massage therapist. Her picture that is being posted around in the news reports of her victory 0.99

00:04:21.900 was actually taken in front of St. Joseph Catholic Parish. Great signs. I was in Fort Collins this

00:04:28.540 year. And she probably doesn't have a chance to win the race. I think the district is D plus 20 0.95

00:04:34.420 or something like that. But she won the primary. She has now won the hearts and minds, the

00:04:39.400 fascination of at least many Republicans on the internet. And it made me have to contemplate

00:04:45.120 whether or not Mr. Davies was seeing a trend and why it would be that a goth chick would be a 0.72

00:04:52.020 conservative Republican. I've noticed this. I travel around the country, go to a lot of churches 0.80

00:04:56.220 when I'm around the country, go to a lot of events. And I've noticed this. I actually,

00:05:00.320 I did not, not on my social media feeds, but in real life, I have been noticing more and more 0.95

00:05:04.880 goth girls, like the kind of thing you saw in the late 90s, white makeup, dark hair,

00:05:10.780 some piercings, black eyelashes, black clothing. I have been seeing them crop up more and more, 0.97

00:05:16.460 and you would often imagine them being on the left or maybe even the radical left if they

00:05:21.100 weren't totally politically apathetic, but I've been noticing them more and more on the right.

00:05:24.780 Why is that? In a way, it makes perfect sense because the goth aesthetic rose out of the

00:05:31.480 Victorian era. The best explanation I've heard for the rise of the goth aesthetic, which really

00:05:36.140 took on prominence in America during the 80s, punk, post-punk, then Hot Topic kind of commercialized

00:05:42.900 it. But it comes from the Victorian era because Queen Victoria spent a very, very long time

00:05:48.300 mourning the death of her husband, Prince Albert. So she wore a lot of black, and that's what it

00:05:52.600 draws on. And it draws on other cultural influences from that era, from the 19th century.

00:05:58.020 The gothic novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The kind of culture that is about enchantment,

00:06:07.880 the kind of culture that is about the supernatural, things that are a little uncanny,

00:06:12.340 eerie, numinous, a little bit spooky, the kind of culture that takes religion seriously.

00:06:18.740 What's interesting about the goth aesthetic is in the goth aesthetic, you could see someone wearing a pentagram or a crucifix.

00:06:25.320 You know, totally opposite religious views, but nevertheless taking religion seriously.

00:06:30.120 Whether it be in an occult and rather bad religious form or in a good religious form, which is in the form of Christianity. 0.55

00:06:38.140 I mean, even the word goth coming from gothic.

00:06:40.680 You know, the goths who sacked Rome, but then the great gothic cathedrals and then into the gothic novels of the era.

00:06:47.200 And I thought, you know, in a way, this makes perfect sense because we live in this world that has been so disenchanted.

00:06:55.260 We live in this world where everything is so clinical, everything is mediated by technology, where everything seems so clinical, so scientific, so plain.

00:07:04.480 Our longings, our desires, our hopes and our dreams, they're all reduced to chemicals firing off in our brains or some other mechanical processes.

00:07:11.820 And human beings realize that that doesn't really fully explain the world.

00:07:15.840 It doesn't even come close.

00:07:16.720 It doesn't explain the most important things in the world. And so I think we're living in an era.

00:07:21.400 This is also why you're seeing a big return to religion and especially the more sacramental

00:07:26.160 and traditional forms of religion, the liturgical kind of religion, the smells and bells kind of

00:07:30.720 religion. You're seeing people recognize that we know that the world really is enchanted and we

00:07:36.660 need to re-enchant ourselves with it. We're living post-stupid new atheism. We're now in a world 0.99

00:07:43.920 where we start to take religion and spiritual matters seriously. Even those gothic novels,

00:07:49.100 you know, they're very romantic. It coincides with the romantic era. And we live in a world

00:07:54.560 where we're told we're just supposed to have, you know, clinical partnerships with our, you know,

00:07:59.420 I'm going to propose a marriage to my partner because we're really good. We help each other,

00:08:05.000 and we're all going to just like do the dishes, and we're going to be exactly co-equals,

00:08:10.980 undifferentiated and it's all, it's just like so lame. And we want romance. We want to be that

00:08:17.640 couple climbing up the Empire State Building, taking a knee and proposing on top of a needle

00:08:23.200 above New York City. So we are living at a time, maybe I'm reading too deeply into this

00:08:28.780 congressional primary candidate, but I don't think I am. I think it's indicative of a broader trend.

00:08:33.580 We're in a time that calls for enchantment and romance and religion. We are in an age that

00:08:40.800 calls for the return of the goth baddie. And the goth baddie will not be on the left. The goth 0.66

00:08:45.340 baddie will be on the side that is looking for a return of those things, and that is conservatives

00:08:49.560 and Republicans generally. Okay, now let's look at the Democrats. What are they up to?

00:08:54.440 This is something that would come out of a gothic novel, a horror novel or a horror movie. 0.95

00:08:59.020 A Democrat campaign staffer has just called on followers to, quote, kill your local Republican 0.99

00:09:05.400 and commit trans jihad. Trans jihad. Two of our favorite things, transgenderism and Islam. 1.00

00:09:14.740 Combine them, what could go wrong? They do actually kind of combine in a lot of activism.

00:09:18.740 This person, his name, I guess it's a him, but he thinks he's a girl, is Tija De La Ruel.

00:09:27.060 I don't think that's his Christian name, but that's the name he goes by. He was a volunteer

00:09:32.920 staffer for Wisconsin Democrat socialist candidate, Katrina DeVille. Katrina DeVille. I don't know

00:09:39.820 what Katrina DeVille's real name is because Katrina DeVille is also transgender. This 1.00

00:09:44.500 Democrat candidate in Wisconsin, also trans. So this fella, the staffer,

00:09:52.920 was photographed sitting in front of a dry erase board, scrawled with the words, 0.97

00:09:56.220 kill your local Republican in black marker. And he says, we're going to make this the

00:10:02.320 moderate position for the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin, which I believe has pushed more

00:10:10.380 serial killers on America than any other state in the country. 1.00

00:10:15.080 Now, this is the trans stuff. The trans people are kind of like the er, evil version of the 1.00

00:10:22.260 goth baddie. This is like everything goes wrong. This is the villain from the gothic novel. 1.00

00:10:27.900 But I guess what's really troubling about all of this, this person calling for a trans jihad,

00:10:33.780 is how not weird he is. I mean, he's weird. Don't get me wrong. He's weird, but he's not

00:10:42.480 weird by the standards of the modern Democrat party. I mean, just listen to the reporting.

00:10:47.160 He was working for another tranny, a tranny who it's now not uncommon for a transvestite 1.00

00:10:54.740 to be in public office. There was a time 10 years ago that would have been completely absurd in both 1.00

00:10:59.240 parties. Now, there's a transvestite in Congress, sitting in Congress as a member, a Democrat, 0.99

00:11:06.260 of course. What the left is going to want to do is say that the trans staffer calling for the 0.79

00:11:14.540 murder of all Republicans is an aberration. This is not what we're about. The Republicans are

00:11:21.600 going to pounce on this story, but this is not indicative at all of what the Democrats are.

00:11:26.880 And the problem is, it is. There's a big difference. Think about back in the 90s,

00:11:32.300 we had like David Duke. There's a similar version of that in the mid-20-teens, which was Richard

00:11:37.680 Spencer, who was a kind of more intelligent, more intellectual version of David Duke,

00:11:42.340 but still white identitarian who would say Heil victory and had Nazi leanings. What's ironic about

00:11:50.580 Richard Spencer is Richard Spencer, I think, is now a Democrat because he says the Republicans

00:11:54.260 can't do anything. But whatever. My only point is, whether they were pointing to Richard Spencer

00:11:59.680 or David Duke, the Republicans certainly could say, well, no, we're not about that.

00:12:05.280 They are advancing views that we don't agree with. So much so that Richard Spencer says,

00:12:10.300 I'm done with Republicans. I'm just going to vote for Democrats. At least they're confident.

00:12:13.160 But you could say in the 90s, David Duke would be calling for all these things. And it was all

00:12:17.260 the Republicans would say, no, no, no. We support colorblind meritocracy. No, no, no. We're the

00:12:23.320 party that freed the slaves from those Democrats who own the slaves. No, no, no. We don't have 0.50

00:12:26.460 anything in common with this guy. He is not one of us. The Democrats can't say that about these

00:12:31.700 guys. They can't say that about transgenderism. Obviously, there's a trans-identified member of

00:12:35.540 Congress. They've almost uniformly embraced the transgender ideology in recent years,

00:12:39.600 and they can't even run away from it now that it's totally unpopular. But furthermore, 0.98

00:12:43.380 a huge swath of Democrats, prominent mainstream Democrats, have embraced political violence as

00:12:48.600 well, including minimizing and excusing and celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk,

00:12:52.700 who was the most mainstream Republican. When it says, kill your local Republican, 0.98

00:12:57.100 we're talking about that kind of guy. So they're totally different scenarios. 0.97

00:13:03.080 And unfortunately, I'm open to a rebuttal, but unfortunately, it seems to me that,

00:13:08.900 what's this person's name? DeVille, Cruella DeVille, I don't know, whatever the

00:13:13.020 trans staffer's name is, working for the other trans candidate. That has become the norm. And if 0.82

00:13:19.220 you get enough drinks, or probably more like hard drugs when it comes to that side, if you got

00:13:24.460 enough drinks into even your mainstream Democrats, something tells me they would start defending or

00:13:32.820 at least minimizing and justifying political violence. Something tells me they wouldn't be

00:13:39.240 so totally opposed to trans jihad. Very, very dangerous. The staffer calling for this violence 1.00

00:13:46.900 is at most, I'm being as charitable as I can, is at most an exaggeration of the norm.

00:13:54.260 David Duke in the 90s, that was a contradiction of the Republican platform.

00:13:58.520 This person is at most a slight exaggeration of where normal Democrats are at. Normal Democrats,

00:14:04.620 increasingly a contradiction in terms. Now, speaking of trans liberal Democrats trying 0.96

00:14:10.180 to murder Republicans, we have finally gotten the sentencing for the guy who tried to kill 0.95

00:14:14.700 Brett Kavanaugh. You remember this? A big story that kind of went away. The person who, over

00:14:20.660 Kavanaugh's decision to overrule Roe v. Wade, traveled across the country, tried to murder him

00:14:25.220 and potentially his whole family and his house. We have just gotten the sentencing, and it turns

00:14:31.480 out that he too is trans. It's always the ones you most expect. We'll get to that momentarily 1.00

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00:14:53.840 that personnel is policy, that the people matter much more than some stated ideology on the back

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00:15:59.460 The man who tried to murder Brett Kavanaugh has been sentenced to eight years in prison 0.94

00:16:05.360 and is now a chick. 1.00

00:16:07.600 And what's really, that's not surprising. 1.00

00:16:12.840 Transgenderism is an intrinsically violent identity and ideology 1.00

00:16:16.280 because it is at odds with one of the most basic aspects of nature 1.00

00:16:21.500 that being sexual difference. That is at the heart of distinctions between human beings,

00:16:28.300 much more so than race or ideology or geography or whatever. The distinction between man and

00:16:33.760 woman is core to human identity. And so when you have a problem with that, when you're at odds with

00:16:42.980 that, you are simply inclined, more inclined to be violent. What is somewhat surprising,

00:16:48.920 at least to me, is the way the Washington Post reported on this. The Washington Post,

00:16:53.500 she got eight years for plotting to kill Justice Kavanaugh. Prosecutors want more. 0.73

00:17:00.340 The Justice Department is appealing the sentence of Sophie Roski, who pled guilty in the case.

00:17:07.580 There you have it. Most people would remember and say, hold on, I thought it was a guy who

00:17:11.900 tried to kill Kavanaugh. Yeah. And then like a lot of these wackos, whether for sincere psychosis

00:17:17.660 or just for cynical reasons so that he could be housed in prison with women, which would be easier 1.00

00:17:23.500 on him, maybe so that he could commit more crimes. Who knows? Regardless, he now identifies as a woman

00:17:28.880 and the Washington Post is going along with it. The she and the Sophie and the her, and

00:17:35.160 we're still doing this. We're still doing this. And as I mentioned at the top, right now, 0.95

00:17:43.800 the Republican election chances are looking pretty bad. It looks like the midterms are

00:17:48.080 going to be as bad, if not worse, as some people were fearing a couple months ago.

00:17:51.700 We're still in silly season. Things could change, but the Iran war really hasn't helped 0.82

00:17:56.500 the historical fact of the midterm after one party wins the whole government.

00:18:00.560 Things are compounding at this point to not look great for Republicans.

00:18:04.120 and we could be back to 2023 era peak woke like that, like that. It's happening. The Washington

00:18:15.840 Post wants to do it. The Democrat Party wants to do it. The electeds, the people on TV want to do

00:18:20.860 it. The rank and file Democrats want to do it. They want to bring that back. And there is one

00:18:25.980 guy, there is this catacomb-like figure who is stopping them from doing it, and it's Trump.

00:18:32.660 And I get frustrations with Trump.

00:18:34.520 I get that you wish he had done more on immigration.

00:18:37.420 Some people want him to do less on immigration. 0.95

00:18:38.980 Or you wish he had bombed Iran harder. 0.75

00:18:41.060 Or you wish he hadn't bombed Iran at all. 0.98

00:18:42.640 And I understand. 0.79

00:18:43.640 I don't even mean to make light of it.

00:18:44.800 I understand the issues that people have with Trump. 1.00

00:18:49.780 He is the only reason that we don't live in a world full of trans jihad and this wacko 0.98

00:18:59.060 identifying as a woman and the newspapers calling all the men chicks. It's just him. 0.99

00:19:04.100 The only reason that that abated at all was because after the 2024 election, the powers

00:19:09.360 that be got really scared, the cultural powers that be got really scared that Republicans had

00:19:13.180 unified government that were going to come after them. And they saw the popular vote

00:19:16.240 went the way of the conservatives. So that's what they pulled back for now.

00:19:20.220 It could all come back in a second. This is what brings me to President Trump at the Roosevelt

00:19:25.860 Library. A couple of days ago, President Trump went to the Teddy Roosevelt, not the Franklin

00:19:29.940 Roosevelt, the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library. It was great. The motorcade had horses.

00:19:34.700 It was very Teddy Roosevelt. There was this great clip of Trump debating or interacting with an AI

00:19:40.880 of Teddy Roosevelt. It's all kind of fun, wacky stuff. We don't have time to get to all of it.

00:19:45.160 But here is just a little bit of his comments days before the 250th official anniversary of

00:19:52.940 the United States. From winning our independence to laying the railroads, taming the West and

00:20:00.080 planting our flag on the moon, nothing great that America has ever done has come without

00:20:06.720 staggering effort. And it has never come easy. It's been really an unflagging persistence that

00:20:14.360 drove us into greatness. We had the persistence of great people, great men, great women. They

00:20:21.080 were persistent they never gave up this country was built on the conviction that just because

00:20:28.500 something is hard to do that only means that americans try even harder and they succeed

00:20:36.680 almost all the time because whatever the obstacle whatever the challenge it's no match for american

00:20:45.160 grit. And you have it probably as much or more than any other place there is. You have American

00:20:51.320 grit. Okay. And you love it. You got the guys with the bandanas and the cowboy hats on behind

00:20:59.060 him. And it's just, it's all great. Nice big belt buckles, real Americana. And he's just talking

00:21:03.680 about how great America is and the spirit that built America. He's really invoking the spirit

00:21:08.560 of Teddy Roosevelt, who, you know, maybe until Trump, did this kind of thing, second to none.

00:21:15.860 I mean, there are so many parallels between Trump and Teddy Roosevelt, all the way down to hosting

00:21:20.480 combat sports at the White House. Teddy Roosevelt would host boxing matches, was pre-UFC, but he

00:21:25.260 would host boxing matches at the White House. He would even participate in them sometimes.

00:21:29.620 And there was one time he had to stop participating in them because he was boxing some guy and the

00:21:35.060 guy got him in the head and partially blinded him. TR was partially permanently blinded because he

00:21:40.640 was, as president, participating in a boxing match at the White House. So a lot of similarities

00:21:44.720 there. But all that could go through my head while I'm watching these great comments, totally

00:21:49.680 normal, nothing all that remarkable about the comments. America's a great place. We've done

00:21:55.500 great things. We should do more great things. What went through my head is what could have been

00:22:00.480 because had Trump lost in 2024,

00:22:04.620 let's just start there.

00:22:05.460 Had Trump lost in 2024, 0.99

00:22:06.880 some Democrat, Kamala Harris, 1.00

00:22:09.100 would be presiding over the country 1.00

00:22:10.660 for our 250th. 0.96

00:22:12.740 What speech would she have given

00:22:14.700 at the Teddy Roosevelt Library?

00:22:16.420 She wouldn't have gone.

00:22:17.220 But what speech would she have given

00:22:18.240 at the Franklin Roosevelt Library?

00:22:19.420 What speech would Joe Biden,

00:22:20.420 had he been able to pull the drool up

00:22:22.700 from his lower lip

00:22:23.480 and actually stick it out

00:22:24.420 through the campaign?

00:22:25.420 What speech would he have given

00:22:26.660 at the library?

00:22:27.980 Even Biden,

00:22:28.660 who's supposed to be

00:22:29.280 the old school, more establishment, more moderate Democrat. Well, but the party moves so far to the

00:22:33.720 left, all of a sudden, Joe Biden's embracing like transing the kids, literally transing the kids.

00:22:38.780 The speech would have been, and America, America, listen, we've had our challenges.

00:22:44.380 We haven't lived up to our ideals. We haven't, we've failed a lot. We've done a lot of bad

00:22:49.740 things. We're racist. The worst, the original sin of America, of slavery, we've never totally

00:22:55.340 gotten past it. This is a place we've gone to wars we shouldn't have gone to. We've oppressed

00:23:00.860 people. We've kept women down. Oh, and don't get me started on the gays. We haven't done enough for 1.00

00:23:05.960 the gays and the trans and the trans kids. And man, we suck. We're a terrible country, but 1.00

00:23:11.480 we try to be better. And every day we elect another Democrat, there's a chance we could

00:23:15.940 be better. But still, a lot of our bitter, clinging, hideous, rube, toothless citizens, 0.92

00:23:21.340 They want to drag us down into Nazism. 0.96

00:23:24.800 They're deplorable politics, but we're going to try

00:23:27.320 so that there will be a chicken in every pot 1.00

00:23:31.100 and a trans kid in every garage. 0.99

00:23:33.480 That's what the speeches would have been. 0.59

00:23:35.780 It would have been a year of that.

00:23:38.260 We're looking ahead, obviously, the 4th of July is tomorrow.

00:23:42.840 It would have been a year of that.

00:23:45.200 And we don't have that.

00:23:46.720 Instead, we have big, big monuments, new arcs going up in D.C., big state fair on the National

00:23:53.540 Mall, great speeches, bunting and banners and flags. And at the very least, even in a polarized

00:23:58.560 country where one major political party has collapsed in its patriotism, reflected in every

00:24:04.000 social media, every social scientific survey. At least in that country, we got the face of the

00:24:09.180 country, the guy with the bully pulpit saying, this is a great country and we've done great

00:24:12.020 things and we should be proud of that and we should build on that. And then what that got me

00:24:16.240 thinking. Final point on this, then we'll get to James Tallarico's struggles with his whiteness

00:24:20.400 and masculinity. But what if Trump had remained in office after 2020? What if the 2020 election

00:24:30.180 had turned out differently? Let's just say, hypothetically, the Democrats hadn't changed

00:24:34.420 all of the rules in the lead up to the election and increased the opportunities for voter fraud

00:24:38.700 inestimably and what if just however it shook out i'm not what if trump had remained in office

00:24:46.600 well then he would have been term limited out in 2024 and mike pence i guess would have been the

00:24:53.960 nominee and i like mike pence but look after two terms of any party it's hard to keep holding on

00:25:01.380 to the power especially with someone like trump we would have had a democrat and this is the way

00:25:07.940 It just, it's the silver lining of this,

00:25:10.580 one of the silver linings that we have

00:25:11.800 of the suffering that we face

00:25:12.760 is that God and his providence

00:25:14.900 sees a lot more than we do, to put it mildly.

00:25:18.940 And even if we were so disappointed,

00:25:20.840 I certainly was disappointed when Trump,

00:25:22.840 when the election turned out the way it did.

00:25:24.580 I can't say Trump lost.

00:25:25.760 When it turned out the way it did.

00:25:27.620 I was really disappointed.

00:25:29.020 And yet, imagine,

00:25:30.780 imagine what we'd all be thinking now

00:25:31.880 if we'd had a Democrat in 2025.

00:25:33.560 Okay, before we get to James Tallarico's

00:25:36.580 sexual and racial struggles,

00:25:37.940 I want to tell you about Mount Titanomedia. Go to mounttitanomedia.com. As we get closer to

00:25:45.160 America's 250th anniversary, I have been thinking about a simple question. How much of our own

00:25:48.740 history do we actually remember? Not the dates, not the trivia, the words, the speeches, the

00:25:52.760 arguments, the ideas that shaped the country in the first place. Because one of the strange

00:25:56.660 realities of modern education is that Americans are constantly told what to think about their

00:26:00.800 history while spending very little time actually reading the people who made it. That is one reason

00:26:05.820 I'm very excited to be part of a new project from Mount Titano Media.

00:26:10.080 It's called Finding Our Words, Words That Made America.

00:26:12.880 I think I have the book right here.

00:26:16.360 Look at that.

00:26:17.800 This is a great, great book.

00:26:19.400 The book collects some of the most important speeches in American history,

00:26:22.060 many of which have been almost completely forgotten,

00:26:24.580 despite helping define the American experiment itself.

00:26:27.760 Now there's a new Audible edition featuring voices you might recognize.

00:26:31.380 Spencer Clavin, who cares?

00:26:32.740 Andrew Clavin, yeah, yawn.

00:26:34.240 Bill Whittle, no, I'm not listening to that.

00:26:35.820 that. Military leaders, educators, scholars, and yours truly. That's the key. Okay. It's a really,

00:26:44.780 really great book. I just totally love it. You will get contacts from journalist Tracy Lee

00:26:49.320 Simmons and editor Allison Ellis. Go check it out right now. MountTitanomedia.com. Get your

00:26:54.320 copy of Finding Our Words, Words That Made America. MountTitanomedia.com. What you would

00:26:59.540 have gotten, what you would have gotten. You can get a preview of what you would have gotten,

00:27:04.260 the kind of speech you would have gotten had a Dem been in office for the 250th anniversary

00:27:07.960 from the potential, if not likely, future senator from Texas, James Tallarico.

00:27:15.760 I should mention, you know, my imagination is also just limited by my own background and identity,

00:27:23.460 right? My own, my whiteness, my masculinity, all those things limit my imagination about what's

00:27:28.300 possible. So I have to continually press against that to try to expand the limits of what I'm

00:27:33.760 dreaming of for our for our community um and that's where you know dr robin your book helps

00:27:40.040 me do that and and uh and podcasts like this help me do that his struggle he has this big struggle

00:27:46.560 the germans call it a conf james tallarico's struggle is with his sexuality breaking news

00:27:55.680 it's not not exactly man bites dog story there james tallarico struggles with his sexuality

00:28:00.640 but also with his race, his whiteness, which limits his imagination.

00:28:07.240 Now, what's so funny about this is at a very basic level, I guess we could agree with him. 0.97

00:28:16.040 In other words, it is the case, no matter how enlightened and wise we are, and people who are

00:28:20.860 wiser, who have some humility, who have gained in wisdom and knowledge, they can largely transcend

00:28:28.080 the confines of their circumstances. But there's always some limit. That's true. I guess that's

00:28:33.200 true. In a certain sense, we can all say that we're limited by our race, by our sex, by our

00:28:40.480 socioeconomic circumstances. But I guess you could say that. But he would never say this about any

00:28:47.160 other race or any other sex. So here's what I want to hear from James Tallarico. In total charity,

00:28:53.340 I say, okay, you're limited by being white. Man, I hope he comes on and does an interview. He 0.98

00:28:57.400 obviously will not. But you say you're limited because you're a white person. White people are

00:29:01.580 limited by their race. Men are limited by their sex. And their imagination is confined because of 0.99

00:29:06.680 that. So can you say, hey, hey, blacks, your imagination is confined by your race. 1.00

00:29:15.340 I don't think he would say that. Hey, ladies. Hey, ladies. I know you're getting a little 0.97

00:29:19.500 mouthy here. But just remember, your imagination is confined by your sex, woman. Know your limits, 1.00

00:29:25.540 woman? Would he say that? Probably not. So, unfortunately, he's making this really overstated

00:29:33.140 point because people who have charity, who have some goodwill, who have reason, who exercise their

00:29:39.700 reason and try to grow in knowledge, your imagination can go pretty far. Actually, I can

00:29:45.300 imagine what it's like to be people who are pretty different from me. I can even imagine what it's

00:29:49.960 like to be james tallarico i guess i really got a stretch for that one but i guess i could

00:29:53.740 but not only is he making this just tedious hr diversity training session kind of nauseating

00:30:05.000 point but he doesn't even believe it because it's not it's not really a principle he holds

00:30:10.080 because he wouldn't he wouldn't apply it evenly okay speaking of weird sex stuff one thing i do

00:30:14.740 want to get to before we get to the mailbag we have a great mailbag today but a little positive

00:30:18.340 note before people start to go on their vacations for the 4th of July. I know many people are doing

00:30:22.800 that. There is some good news on a really, one, good news coming out of Texas, not James Tallarico.

00:30:31.160 And two, it's on an actual controversial point that only the real hardline kind of comprehensive

00:30:40.920 conservatives really grasp. I think I predicted a while ago that this issue would grow and grow

00:30:47.580 and grow in the public mind, and people would start to change their minds on it, but it would

00:30:50.620 take some time. But nevertheless, it's happening. We're seeing good moves here. And that's on IVF,

00:30:57.580 on in vitro fertilization and the surrogacy industry. The Texas Republican Party, this

00:31:03.340 happened just about a week or so ago, the Republican Party of Texas voted to add a

00:31:07.940 plank to their platform, citing their desire to, quote, protect fetal life from destructive

00:31:12.460 practices such as IVF and commercial surrogacy. This is despite the fact, as is reported,

00:31:20.100 that 65% of Texas Republican voters support legal and accessible, perhaps even subsidized IVF.

00:31:28.320 So this is actual political courage and moral clarity coming out of a Republican Party

00:31:33.660 organization, which that is a man bites dog story. You do not usually see courage and clarity coming

00:31:40.020 from the party apparatus. And you are getting that in Texas. And this is another example where

00:31:45.480 I would love to say, I hate to say I told you so, because I've been on the IVF drumbeat for a long

00:31:54.200 time now. And when I first started bringing it up on the show, that the idea that actually IVF is

00:31:59.780 bad and surrogacy is bad and commercial surrogate, you know, commercializing and commoditizing human

00:32:04.180 life is really bad. I got a ton of pushback from people. I'm sure there are many people listening

00:32:08.520 now who say, well, I only got my kid through surrogacy. How dare you say there are problems

00:32:12.740 with surrogacy? I only got my grandkid or my niece or my nephew through surrogacy. How dare

00:32:16.600 you say that? Of course, that doesn't hold up as a logical argument. I know people who are

00:32:22.700 conceived as a result of rape, and I love those people, but you would never say, I only got my

00:32:28.600 friend as the consequence of rape. Therefore, rape is good, and we need legal rape, and we need to 0.55

00:32:33.320 subsidized rape. No one would ever say that. You would never say that a good end justifies 1.00

00:32:39.540 an immoral means. So the question really then becomes, okay, is IVF and surrogacy morally

00:32:45.540 justified? I know people want it. I understand how difficult infertility can be. But is it really

00:32:51.200 justified to hand over to business people and dubious physicians the origin and destiny of

00:33:01.220 human life, to establish the domination of science and technology over the origin and

00:33:05.120 destiny of human life, and to trade people as you would trade baseball cards or any other

00:33:09.700 commodity? Is that really justified? To say nothing of then opening up the prospect of

00:33:16.520 gay couples creating children with the intent to deprive them of their natural mother or father 0.98

00:33:22.200 or all the rest of it. To say nothing of the fact that the vast majority of people who are 1.00

00:33:27.660 conceived through IVF are killed, are intentionally killed. This is great. This is really, really 0.97

00:33:34.240 great. The Texas Department of Health and Human Services, I'm sorry, no, the National Department

00:33:38.720 of Health and Human Services, their embryo adoption awareness and services program is also now

00:33:44.600 replacing the word embryos in several sections with child, children, and children who already

00:33:47.860 exist. Really important. There's nothing radical about that. Embryo is just a term for a stage of

00:33:53.900 development of a child, of a person. And you say fetus, fetus is just the Latin word for offspring.

00:33:58.780 No one thinks it's a platypus. No one thinks it's a desk chair. It's a human being. It's a living

00:34:03.240 human being. So they're just clarifying what it really is. And that's important. It's really

00:34:07.740 important that people are now seeing the reality. And at the time, there were a lot of sort of

00:34:12.080 cynical political people who said, Michael, don't go after surrogacy. Don't go after IVF. You know,

00:34:17.320 it's so unpopular to go after those things. It's going to hurt your ratings. People are going to

00:34:22.460 turn on you. Just don't touch that issue. In much the same way that cynical political operators

00:34:29.200 would say, don't talk about traditional marriage. We lost that battle. Just move on. In much the

00:34:34.820 same way that cynical political operators would say, don't talk about abortion. Oh, come on,

00:34:38.480 just we lost that battle. Supreme Court ruled twice. Just move on. Public opinion, it's hard

00:34:43.240 to overcome. Just move on. Notice, one, we have just scored a major victory in winning the abortion

00:34:51.340 fight and many PR victories on that. But also at the Supreme Court, people thought it could never

00:34:57.260 happen. Already, public support of so-called same-sex marriage has really declined. I mean,

00:35:04.140 you're seeing a real collapse in public support for that. And a time will come when people view

00:35:08.560 IVF the same way. And it's not because we're some, you know, silver-tongued devil who can

00:35:12.780 convince people of anything. It's because people don't know what it is. They don't see it for what

00:35:18.960 it is, which is creating children to deprive them of their natural parents in many cases,

00:35:24.460 creating people, most of whom will be killed or frozen indefinitely in virtually every case,

00:35:29.500 and commoditizing human life, which we all know is wrong. That's happening. That's already

00:35:34.100 happening. And some of the people who are thinking about this most deeply are even getting a little

00:35:39.080 bit ahead of the DEMOS, the voting public on that. Good stuff. I like seeing that. Okay.

00:35:43.980 Much to get to. My favorite comment yesterday is from Zach Killen, who says,

00:35:47.760 how many mayflower cigars do i need to get my comment read on the show you i don't know how

00:35:55.140 many you've bought i suspect a bazillion you know we sold out of the mayflower dawn of america

00:35:59.020 the special limited edition for the 250th and the tubes and the special edition box

00:36:03.040 told you it was going to happen but for those of you who did not get it we're trying to order more

00:36:07.700 we'll we'll see if we can get it done it's hard these are you know we're using on this uh seven

00:36:11.600 year aged true connecticut usa connecticut tobacco and it's just you know this is a handmade artisanal

00:36:16.000 product. So it's a little tricky to do, but we're working on it. For those of you who did get your

00:36:19.680 boxes, congratulations. Glad you got them. I'm taking a couple of my own. I only have one box

00:36:25.460 actually. I didn't even hoard them all. I only got one box of the Dawn of America, but I'm taking

00:36:29.800 two of the sticks to smoke for 4th of July. Okay. Finally, finally, we arrive at my favorite time

00:36:34.460 of the week when I get to hear from you in the mailbag. Mailbag sponsored by PureTalk at

00:36:36.880 puretalk.com slash Knowles, Ken W-L-E-S to switch to the only wireless company awarded five stars

00:36:41.800 in every category by Consumer Reports. Take it away. Hey, Michael, what are your thoughts on the

00:36:46.860 SSPX proceeding to consecrate new bishops without papal authority? I know that you love the

00:36:52.100 traditional liturgy, but you're also not a Vatican and Pope hater, as some Catholics are.

00:36:56.840 As with all your other takes, I know that you're probably going to have a well-thought-out and

00:37:00.800 moderate response that'll probably make both sides unhappy, which of course makes you correct.

00:37:05.780 Anyways, thanks for everything you do and for the show. Very precisely worded question and

00:37:10.560 totally accurate. So for those who don't know, there's a group called the Society of St. Pius

00:37:15.760 X, which is a priestly fraternity within the Catholic Church. You know, there's all sorts

00:37:22.460 of groups within the Catholic Church. You have different religious orders, the Dominicans or

00:37:25.960 the Jesuits. So I think technically you're still Catholic. You get priestly fraternities like the

00:37:30.680 Society of St. Pius X, which really exists to preserve the traditional Latin mass and has

00:37:37.880 qualms with the Second Vatican Council and certainly with its implementation. You have

00:37:41.980 the Precifraternity of St. Peter, which was founded as kind of an offshoot of the SSPX,

00:37:45.720 which does not object in principle to the Second Vatican Council, also preserves the traditional

00:37:50.200 Latin Mass, wonderful, wonderful fraternity in the church. Anyway, this all started because

00:37:56.380 in 1988, was it? In the 1980s, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated bishops without the authority

00:38:05.440 of the Vatican, without the authority of the Pope. So he illicitly consecrated four bishops

00:38:10.980 and they all immediately incurred automatic excommunications. Now, it meant that they

00:38:18.620 could still, they were still validly saying mass, but it was illicit. It was real. And when they

00:38:24.200 consecrate the host, they're really, that's the real Eucharist, you know, when they're really

00:38:27.280 saying mass, but it was illicit. It was done without the permission of the Vatican. And so

00:38:32.560 there's been this power dynamic going on for decades now. At one point, the excommunications

00:38:37.140 of the bishops were lifted. Then one of them was kind of put back on again because the bishop

00:38:41.980 had some impolitic things to say, among other things. And I won't get into all of the details

00:38:47.460 of it. But they've just decided, okay, they haven't come to terms with Rome, so they're

00:38:52.600 going to illicitly consecrate the bishops. Again, they incur automatic excommunications.

00:38:55.840 it's very sad the whole thing is very very sad uh i i am opposed to schism i am opposed to

00:39:04.340 uh i don't you know the the ordination of the bishops it was even kind of dubious in itself

00:39:09.300 because you have to have an apostolic mandate you have to have a mandate from like the pope to

00:39:15.020 consecrate the bishops and they kind of worked around that in the liturgy which didn't didn't

00:39:19.160 totally persuade me but in any case i it's it's very bad i've never attended an sspx chapel

00:39:25.060 I love the traditional Latin mass.

00:39:26.640 I attend the traditional Latin mass.

00:39:27.900 But I do have a great deal of sympathy for the SSPX.

00:39:32.400 And one of the arguments the SSPX make is the only reason you get these other groups

00:39:36.280 that are kind of defending the traditional Latin mass is because we're the bad guy. 0.89

00:39:40.040 Like, they're the good cop, we're the bad cop. 1.00

00:39:41.620 And if you get rid of us, then all those other groups are going to go away too.

00:39:45.040 And, you know, now this leads to a scary conclusion, which is that, you know,

00:39:49.940 in a way it's these kind of other groups that save the church rather than the church saving all of us.

00:39:54.500 which I obviously don't agree with.

00:39:57.180 However, I guess what I would say,

00:39:58.560 my conclusion from this is not to dunk on the SSPX,

00:40:02.320 where I think most of the people involved

00:40:04.500 have very good intentions.

00:40:05.420 Maybe some are genuinely schismatic,

00:40:06.940 but most have good intentions.

00:40:08.560 I'm not persuaded really by the arguments of the SSPX,

00:40:11.500 but I love what they are trying to do,

00:40:13.400 which is to preserve the traditional Latin mass.

00:40:15.260 There's so many abuses, liturgical abuses

00:40:17.140 that came about after the Second Vatican Council.

00:40:19.540 And so I have great sympathy.

00:40:21.600 The whole thing makes me very, very sad.

00:40:22.780 I hope the Vatican has seemed to suggest that they want to reconcile. Maybe, you know, I pray

00:40:28.980 and I hope that that happens. That's what I'm, that's what I'm hoping for here. So yes, I gave

00:40:32.400 you an answer that is almost exactly as you would have predicted. How interesting is that? There's

00:40:36.400 so much more I want to get to. I've got written mailbag questions about love, about romance. We

00:40:41.300 don't have time. We got to go catch a flight. So I hope everybody has a beautiful 4th of July.

00:40:47.460 I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you Monday.

00:40:52.780 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - July 03, 2026

Ep. 2008 - GOP Launches A Secret Weapon On Libs： Goth ＂Baddies＂

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