Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) joins the show to discuss the massive fraud hearing that the Democrats boycotted, and to talk about his new venture, Chapter 11, a company that helps you switch Medicare to a better option. Plus, Apple and Google News caught red-handed suppressing all sorts of negative stories about the erstwhile Democratic Senate candidate Graham Plattner.
00:04:08.920Okay, before we get to the vice president, before we get to AI companies saying the product is going to kill us all, before we get to Senator Rand Paul, a story that is really spiking people's cortisol, especially men's cortisol.
00:04:23.620The European Athletics Associations have just released new guidelines saying that broadcasters can't focus on female athletes' assets anymore.
00:04:36.260They released this massive, look at this massive tome with all sorts of really lurid illustrations about how broadcasters need to stop putting the cameras on the female athletes derrière and, you know, general chest area.
00:04:55.220And they want to stop female sports from being so sexy.
00:04:59.660That's what, that is what the European broadcasters are saying.
00:05:04.360And they've released these pictures, which are really, really funny because it's, you know,
00:05:08.040the camera angles zooming in on women as they're bending over, you know, oopsie, I dropped a pencil
00:05:12.280or something like that. And they say, this is really, really bad. Cannot do it. Where do we,
00:05:17.920I'll go just to the top of this report. EBU Sport Raising the Bar Guidelines for Respectful Media
00:05:24.220Coverage in Women's Athletics. The sexualization of women athletes through selective camera angles
00:05:30.640and editing choices continues to be a significant concern across many sports broadcasts.0.86
00:05:36.360Lingering shots on bodies, low-angle cameras that capture revealing views,
00:05:41.540and excessive slow-motion replays that serve no technical or storytelling purpose
00:05:45.420are among the issues observed in the media coverage of women's athletics competitions
00:05:49.480today. And these choices carry profound implications. They shape audience perception
00:05:54.400by diverting attention from the remarkable achievements and technical skills of women
00:05:58.020athletes and risk perpetuating harmful stereotypes. First of all, let's just, okay,
00:06:02.280let's take them in reverse order. Harmful stereotypes, what's the harmful stereotype?
00:06:06.660The harmful stereotype that women are hot? What do you mean by, we're just so used to these cliches,
00:06:12.420these silly politically correct phrases. What harmful stereotype is being perpetuated by sports
00:06:18.360broadcasters showing women's bodies looking good? The harmful stereotype that women are pretty,0.83
00:06:24.440they are pretty. They generally are. Not all the time, but generally they are.0.98
00:06:30.360And furthermore, keep going back, it diverts attention away from the remarkable achievements1.00
00:06:36.840and technical skills of women. The argument that is being advanced here by the European
00:06:41.460Athletics Associations is that the broadcasters are diverting audiences' attention away from
00:06:47.680the remarkable athletic achievements of women toward women's bodies. That's the line.
00:06:54.240that first line there, lingering shots on bodies. In women's sports, we need to stop focusing on1.00
00:06:59.820women's bodies and start focusing on their athletic achievements. What do you think an0.97
00:07:04.300athletic achievement is? What do you think an athletic achievement entails? It entails the body.
00:07:13.220Athletics is about the body. We're all kind of joking about this, like, hey, come on,
00:07:19.740give me some more of those low camera angles or whatever. But even beyond the kind of lurid,
00:07:23.780lecherous jokes that pertain to this story. There is a real anthropological error that the
00:07:31.080libs are making here, which is they think you can divorce athletics from the body. You think that
00:07:38.780you can divorce women's sports from women looking good, as if to say you're diverting the sports
00:07:45.640from women being women. Athletics is about the body. Women have attractive bodies. You cannot0.99
00:07:52.880separate women's athletics from sexual attraction other than the WNBA. But nobody watches the WNBA,0.99
00:07:58.920so that's sort of a moot point. When we're talking about non-WNBA women's athletics,
00:08:04.060you cannot separate it from attraction because women are attractive. Men and women are different.
00:08:10.620When you're talking about men's athletics, it's also all about their bodies or, I don't know,
00:08:16.020mostly about their bodies. There is some strategy and skill and cleverness involved as well. But
00:08:22.140Athletics are a physical endeavor. And so when you watch men's sports, it's also about men's0.62
00:08:26.560bodies, but it's different because men are not sexy, generally, and because women relate to
00:08:34.300men's bodies in a slightly different way than men relate to women's bodies.
00:08:39.360Because men and women relate to sex differently, because men and women are different. We actually
00:08:44.220are different. And that's, I think, what the PC regulators are trying to erase here.
00:08:49.140they're trying to pretend that men and women are the same. That's what they always do. That's what
00:08:53.320the trans ideology is about. That's what the LGBT ideology is about. But you're seeing expressed
00:08:57.220here in a silly way. When people marvel at the male form in baseball or football or whatever,
00:09:04.240they're doing something different than when people look at the female form in gymnastics
00:09:09.800or running. Because the male and female forms are different. And the way that men and women0.78
00:09:16.420relate to visual and physical cues are different. That's just how it is.
00:09:22.660You can't make women's athletics not sexy. If you try, again, other than certain sports where1.00
00:09:30.240the women are not white, we don't need to get into that. You can't do that. So in as much as1.00
00:09:35.880the broadcasters are saying, stop focusing on women's bodies, they might as well say,
00:09:39.580stop focusing on women's athletics. Stop focusing on women's sports. Seems kind of like a Pyrrhic0.96
00:09:44.700victory. Okay, speaking of women getting physical, a Canadian woman is in big trouble for slapping a1.00
00:09:50.360teenager down the Jersey Shore because the teenager was wearing Trump clothing. So I've
00:09:56.780spent a lot of time on the Jersey Shore in my life. In fact, I spent multiple weeks of every
00:10:03.000year of my life until I was almost 18 years old on the Jersey Shore. I found out I was conceived
00:10:07.480on the Jersey Shore. That's too much information. I kind of wish I didn't know that. But I know this
00:10:12.720area very, very well. And you think of New Jersey, you say, well, New Jersey is very liberal, sort of,
00:10:17.340but there is a kind of working class, lower middle class, conservative ethos there.
00:10:25.480Trust me, I know I've been part of it for a lot of my life. And this came to a head where some
00:10:31.680pro-Trump person down the Jersey Shore, real common sense conservative kind of person,0.91
00:10:36.620runs up against some huge lib chick, a lib chick who happens to be a foreigner.1.00
00:10:42.720And the lib chick slaps the teenager across the face.0.75
00:19:15.620So what we're seeing here, just for a little history lesson, is the Luddites.
00:19:20.980This is a return of the Luddites, the 19th century movement named after a legendary weaver,
00:19:26.740an imaginary weaver named Ned Ludd. And we use the term Luddite now to mean people who are bad
00:19:33.040with technology or who don't really like technology. I do it myself. I say, oh, I'm
00:19:37.180such a Luddite. Sometimes I leave my phone at my desk. I don't even carry it around. I'm such a
00:19:42.120Luddite. But that's not what the Luddites were. The Luddites were actually a pretty violent
00:19:46.700movement where they were a bunch of mill workers in England who organized raids to destroy the
00:19:52.480machines that they feared were upending their lives and their jobs. And the way the Luddite
00:19:56.720movement was suppressed was when law enforcement and the military came in and shot them.
00:20:01.060So this is not like, we treat it now as this sort of wholesome, generally benign,
00:20:07.820cute little quirk of history. Oh, you remember the Luddites. This was a violent clash between
00:20:12.320labor and police and the military that sought to, through bombs and violence, destroy the
00:20:20.380the industrial revolution. So what does that mean for us? We're clearly in a moment right now where
00:20:25.760you're going to see a return of that Luddite tendency, and it's perfectly understandable.
00:20:28.960Even Anthropic, the world's most valuable AI company, is acknowledging that that impulse is
00:20:33.620understandable. Fears, one, that it's going to displace all of our jobs, and two, fears that
00:20:38.580it's going to displace our very humanity. And I think one place that you are seeing the fight
00:20:43.840really come out politically is in this fight over data centers. The data center fight is really odd
00:20:49.920because it's one where the grand strategic objective and the political objectives are
00:20:58.040totally at odds with each other. If I were running for office right now,
00:21:02.980I would have to be very circumspect in the way I talked about data centers.
00:21:06.340I would actually probably have to be opposed to data centers because there is a major populist
00:21:11.140swell opposed to the data centers. And yet, we need to build the data centers. We just have to
00:21:18.360building. I'm not running for office right now, folks, so I can be as blunt as can be. I don't
00:21:22.220need to gussy this up in any kind of nice political diplomatic language. We have to build
00:21:26.600the data centers because we're in an arms race with China. We are basically at war with China0.90
00:21:31.840anyway. China does a lot of stuff to undermine us, including sneaking bioweapons into our country
00:21:38.260constantly. They do all these sneaky little death by a thousand cuts kind of war maneuvers,0.87
00:21:43.520But we're also in an arms race with them over AI, over computing.
00:21:47.340And so I think a lot of the anti-data center propaganda that you're seeing is coming from China.
00:21:54.900Because you have to ask yourself, cui bono, who benefits most from a shift in public opinion or from new political actions?
00:22:01.500And in the case of the U.S. not building data centers in the U.S., in the case of the U.S. not pursuing AI and a computing advantage, the person that benefits the most is the Chinese, Chinese government.
00:22:11.240So I don't want to sound like a Democrat in 2016.
00:22:14.580You know, everything was just Russian propaganda or Chinese propaganda.
00:22:17.380But it's important to understand how propaganda works.
00:22:20.180The way propaganda works is not by just inventing something out of thin air.
00:22:23.620The way propaganda works is not by just creating an imaginary problem and convincing a bunch of dupes to believe in it.
00:22:29.000The way really good foreign political propaganda works is by seeing something that is real.
00:22:35.780recognizing a real tension, a real fissure in a political coalition, and then exploiting it.
00:22:44.560The more truth there is to political propaganda, the more effective it's going to be. This is why
00:22:49.240the Soviet Union in the 1960s, when it was promoting all of the civil rights stuff,
00:22:54.240the reason that worked so well is not because the Soviet Union just hypnotized all of us.0.89
00:23:00.880The reason that worked so well, why the communists were exploiting black
00:23:04.100nationalist movements and civil rights groups. It worked so well because there were racial problems0.91
00:23:09.540and there was a push for a civil rights revolution. There was that, and the Soviet0.94
00:23:14.160Union just exploited that. That's what's going on with the data centers. And so ultimately,0.80
00:23:20.940I think the way that we have to think about this question, whether we're talking about
00:23:23.220Anthropic or we're talking about people trying to murder AI CEOs or a new Luddite movement,
00:23:28.220is the way that Toy Story handled this question, actually. Toy Story was annoying because it was
00:23:33.360super racially and sexually woke. But on the point of technology, it was right, which is that
00:23:39.080you can't just blindly embrace technological innovation such that the tail wags the dog and
00:23:47.080we're just mortgaging our economy, our political order, our very humanity towards some glittering
00:23:52.180machine. But likewise, you cannot stop the advance of technology. You can't smash the
00:23:58.260machines. You can't simply do that because you'll end up smacking your nose to spite your face.
00:24:04.400In that case, China will just gain the advantage. We'll lose our global hegemony. We will be in a0.92
00:24:09.440much worse position because of it. You just have to approach these technologies in a way that is
00:24:15.100responsible and in a way that takes into account the bad stuff that could come about as a result
00:24:23.680of it in a way that is temperate and moderate and prudent. And the same thing with the data
00:24:27.960centers. People are concerned about the data centers in part because it might raise their
00:24:31.120energy costs, in part because of concerns about maybe water resources, in part because they're
00:24:36.200ugly and they don't want it in their backyard, in part because it's going to take a lot of land
00:24:40.280but not create a lot of jobs. All of those things are true, but I think those are relatively minor
00:24:45.460aspects of why people hate the data centers. Some of it is a little conspiracy thinking, which is
00:24:49.620also justified, which is that by building these data centers, you're feeding into this AI
00:24:55.940surveillance state that's going to erode our civil liberties. That's probably true, too.
00:24:59.340I think all of that, though, is relatively minor. I think the reason people oppose the data centers
00:25:03.780is because they're a physical instantiation. They're a visible reminder and a symbol of
00:25:09.060this AI revolution that really seeks to upend our society and displace a lot of the things that we
00:25:14.700love. That's why they oppose them. It's not chiefly on economic or even political grounds.
00:25:20.020It's something deeper than that. It's about a social transformation. Okay. Now, speaking of
00:25:24.440massive political fights. The vice president just got into a ton of trouble because of one clip from
00:25:31.500his interview on Joe Rogan, really, really good interview on Joe Rogan, and a clip that, as far
00:25:36.100as I can see, has been totally misrepresented. I think he's being smeared, in my view, for pretty
00:25:41.320much the dumbest reason you can see. Before we get into that, though, I want to tell you about0.96
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00:26:05.340I'd be putting in my mouth, which will send you, if you're anything like me, that will send you down
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00:26:15.880making another tube of toothpaste full of ingredients sound like they belong in a
00:26:19.840laboratory, they make miracle tooth powder with real grass-fed cattle bone hydroxyapatite.
00:26:28.040Do you know that? Compared to what else is on your toothpaste tube, hydroxyapatite is a lot
00:26:34.980easier to pronounce. It's actually, though, a very simple basic thing. It's the same mineral
00:26:38.580structure found in your actual teeth. No fluoride, no SLS, no foaming agents, just real ingredients.
00:26:45.880I was always skeptical on this stuff. Sweet little Elisa, she pilled me. She tallow pilled me. She
00:26:52.540didn't totally hydroxyapatite pilled me. I did that to her. Van Man is where it's at. On the0.97
00:26:57.640natural toothpaste, I would just put poison in my mouth. Sweet little Elisa, no, no, no, can't do it.
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00:27:25.700Vice President went on Joe Rogan's show yesterday to talk about his book, Communion. Great book.
00:27:33.340Very honored that the Vice President went on the Michael Knowles show before he went on Joe
00:27:36.900Rogan's show. Big admirer of Joe, of course. He's the king of podcasting. So anyway,
00:27:40.920I was very happy to see that very interesting interview on Joe Rogan.
00:27:46.300But the clip that's going viral has nothing to do with the book.
00:27:50.180Communion has nothing to do with the religious conversion, which is the subject of the book.
00:27:54.420The clip going viral, as always seems to be the case on social media, has to do with Israel.
00:28:00.800Because Joe was pushing the vice president on this question of public discontent with Israel.
00:28:06.800Israel as a wedge issue on the right, and now a uniform issue on the left in that the left
00:28:14.380entirely opposes the state of Israel. And so it's really, really pushing the VP on this
00:28:19.420huge shift in public opinion. It used to be that the whole country supported Israel.
00:28:23.500Then it was that the left supported Israel a little bit, the right uniformly did.
00:28:27.520Now the state of Israel is underwater in public opinion polling with basically everybody other
00:28:32.980than boomer Republicans who watch Fox News. But with basically every other demographic,
00:28:37.080the state of Israel is underwater right now. So Joe Rogan asks vice president about it.
00:28:43.120Here is the answer for which he's being smeared as anti-Israel, perhaps even anti-Semitic.
00:28:50.080Let me know what you think of this answer.
00:28:53.080But again, when I open up the pages of Time magazine and I see that there's a literal
00:28:59.080foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing. And oh, by the
00:29:05.080way, many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely
00:29:10.060dishonest ways. You know, my response to that is, well, go to hell. I'm going to do what I have to0.99
00:29:14.420do for the American people. I represent Americans first. And that's the way that I've tried to do
00:29:20.480this job. And I, you know, Joe, the crazy thing is I'm like, people don't realize this. I'm actually
00:29:27.560in this, you know, there's this massive pro-Israel, anti-Israel debate in the United States of
00:29:33.820America. I'm like the reasonable moderate. What I say to these guys is look at public opinion,
00:29:41.480look at the way young Republicans versus Republicans over the age of 65 approach this
00:29:47.320issue. Like right now, Israel is losing the public opinion battle in the United States of America.
00:37:42.580TD Easy Trade taps into that instinct because you are made to trade and TD Easy Trade is made to help.
00:37:50.260Mr. Ben Davies' favorite comment yesterday. I didn't see them yet.
00:37:54.420My producer, Mr. Ben Davies, his favorite comment from Chris Dolan is,
00:37:58.480I am not defending soccer, but apparently Michael forgot about the Falklands War when discussing the England-Argentina rivalry.
00:38:05.360I know the Yankees and Red Sox hate each other, but they never sank each other's battleships.0.97
00:38:08.740I get that's true. You're right. The Falklands War was, I guess, an important condition of the
00:38:16.620England-Argentina rivalry. But I don't know. I mean, that war was over in what, like three
00:38:22.460minutes? It was over in about three and a half minutes. And I don't know. Frankly, having spent
00:38:26.640a fair bit of time at Yankee Stadium, there has probably been more physical violence that came
00:38:31.680about as the result of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry as anything that was seen in the Falklands War.
00:38:36.260Okay, before we get into all the other very important stuff I want to get into, President Trump's address tonight, the Trump accounts, it's very important for your money.
00:38:45.100I am very pleased to be joined by one of the senators who most cares about your money, protecting your money from criminals who are trying to waste it.
00:38:54.840one of the few voices, not the sole voice, but one of the very, very few of fiscal restraint
00:39:00.920in Washington. A lot of good that does him in a town that only knows how to waste more and
00:39:06.340more of your money. That would, of course, be Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Senator Paul,
00:39:10.440good to see you. Hey, glad to be with you. At least you didn't introduce me as a dreaded
00:39:15.280moderate. No, I would never accuse you of that. As you were talking about moderate and extremism,
00:39:23.960I was reminded of the famous quote, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
00:39:29.340But there's still a lot to be learned from Goldwater and the conscience of the conservative.
00:39:33.480One of the best books really on conservatism ever written.
00:39:38.660It is a book that doesn't get enough play these days.
00:39:41.820In fact, I was just talking, speaking of the vice president, J.D. Vance, I was just interviewing him.
00:39:47.720And he brought up, he said, one of his favorite people in politics is Brent Bozell, who worked for Senator Goldwater and I think worked on that book.
00:39:55.720Everyone should go read Conscience of a Conservative.
00:39:58.860One of my favorite quotes from it is, he says, I will not ask whether legislation is needed before I have first determined that it is constitutional.
00:40:11.080And that's something that is rarely heated around here.
00:40:14.280it's like, well, houses aren't affordable, so we need a housing bill and we need the government to
00:40:19.880make houses. It's like, well, how many housing bills have we passed in the last 30 years and
00:40:23.620are they working? This is routine. No one ever looks to see if what they did 10 years ago works.
00:40:28.800They're like, oh, I have a great idea. Let's have the government make houses for people. It's like,
00:40:33.280they're already doing it and they cost a million dollars for every house. It's a terrible program.
00:40:38.280Don't do more of it. But nobody ever bothers to even research whether the previous program
00:40:43.620I'm trying to do the same thing ever worked. Well, Senator, who cares if it works in practice
00:40:47.600as long as it works in theory? There's no reason to go check your work. Now, speaking of checking
00:40:53.200the work, there was this hearing, it was yesterday, right? Yep. This hearing yesterday,
00:40:58.020the reason I have to check is because there was effectively a media blackout of this hearing,
00:41:02.860and there was a media blackout of this hearing in part because there was a Democrat boycott of
00:41:06.560this hearing. This was a hearing on fraud, the massive fraud that the House and the Senate are
00:41:12.580looking into, the White House is looking into. Nick Shirley and other journalists have done a
00:41:17.560good job of exposing independent journalists, not the establishment media. I think we have a little
00:41:21.900clip of the hearing of James O'Keefe testifying. Senator Scott.
00:41:29.580Chairman, wouldn't a Democrat go next since the Republican just testified?
00:49:53.860Thank you, Senator. Okay, today is Theology Thursday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
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