The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 2032 - The Right-Wing Burrito Fight EXPLAINED

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00:01:09.340 up to $500,000 at cardiff.co slash Knowles. The blue wave appears to be rising as Democrat

00:01:16.740 James Tallarico takes the lead in the Texas Senate race. Tucker might start a third political

00:01:21.860 party after ditching the Republicans. And conservatives spend the entire day arguing

00:01:27.800 about burritos. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:30.840 Welcome back to the show. A WNBA player is writing years, decades, if not centuries of

00:01:59.100 racial injustice by introducing a black doll. She said, growing up, there were no black Barbie

00:02:08.480 dolls. And she's going to write that wrong, even though she's like 12 and the black Barbie was

00:02:12.920 introduced in 1967. We will get to imaginary racial injustice. First, I got to start with

00:02:17.700 the burrito gate. There is so much within a burrito, rice and beans and pork. No, there's so

00:02:25.780 much political meaning within a burrito. The entire conservative movement spent all day yesterday

00:02:32.160 arguing about burritos. And this was all Andrew Colvett's fault. Our pal Andrew over there at the

00:02:39.980 Charlie Kirk show in TPUSA, it's all his fault. But it's not really all his fault. He just touched

00:02:46.020 on an issue, a seemingly trivial little point that really got to the heart of a lot of the

00:02:51.320 rancor, a lot of the divide on the American right between the neocons and the libertarians

00:02:56.080 and the traditionalists and the populists. Some of the same fissures you saw in the Never Trump

00:03:02.020 movement versus Trump in 2016. Some of the same fissures you've been seeing going all the way

00:03:06.060 back to the founding of the post-war conservative movement with William F. Buckley Jr. and Russell

00:03:10.380 Kirk. What did Andrew say? He is in trouble, boy. Andrew writes, one of our TPUSA college students

00:03:18.300 gave me his take on affordability. Quote, a burrito shouldn't cost $20. Yeah, a lot of this

00:03:26.880 is hangover from COVID and Biden era inflation, but the lived experience is the same. It just

00:03:33.240 feels like basic things cost too much. Okay, simple point. There you have it. But some

00:03:40.500 conservatives did not like this, including my pal Joel Berry, representing a little bit more

00:03:46.100 the libertarian view, a little bit more the neocon view. He posts, last night, my wife made

00:03:52.900 burritos for our family of eight, and it cost less than $20 total for everyone. I'm beginning

00:04:00.280 to think the affordability crisis is really an I don't know how to cook crisis. By the time Joel

00:04:06.940 weighed in, everybody got going. You had my pals here at DW. Matt Walsh weighs in. He says,

00:04:14.420 I can't make burritos for my family of eight for 20 bucks. No way. Groceries are way too

00:04:20.100 expensive. Ben Shapiro weighs in. He says, if you're paying 20 bucks for a burrito,

00:04:24.360 you're doing life wrong. We have Mark Thiessen, the speechwriter for George W. Bush. He weighed

00:04:29.660 in. He said, it's ludicrous to spend $20 for a burrito. The vice president, J.D. Vance, weighed

00:04:35.800 in. He said, he actually made a kind of a joke about Mark. He said, he said, you know, Mark,

00:04:40.620 It doesn't look like you've ever missed a burrito in your life. And it just, it only got more

00:04:44.840 explosive from there. Everybody was piling on. The post-liberals, the liberals, the classical

00:04:51.820 liberals, the traditionalists, the everybody. So Rabbi Amari was what everybody was weighing in.

00:04:57.900 Okay. And I will tell you what the debate is about. Eventually I held back, though I will

00:05:04.400 give my opinion on burritos. I held back for a little bit just to get the view of the conservative

00:05:10.020 movement. Because I think a lot of times people within their own conservative factions, what they

00:05:14.220 want to do is they want to say the other guys are not really conservative. This was the hallmark of

00:05:18.060 the Never Trump movement. They say Trump isn't a true conservative. You're seeing this play out now.

00:05:22.620 There's a kind of op going on against Catholics in particular. A lot of the discourse around

00:05:28.300 common good conservatism, post-liberalism is really a knock on Catholics. But it shouldn't be

00:05:33.720 because a lot of the arguments that the post-liberals or whoever else are making are really

00:05:39.380 arguments that just go all the way back to antiquity, from Aristotle and Cicero, up through

00:05:43.320 St. Thomas Aquinas, up through the founding fathers who are writing about the common good.

00:05:47.500 And it's just become this major, major flashpoint. So someone asked, they said,

00:05:51.820 why are all the conservatives, at a time when we have a mass migration into this country,

00:05:57.360 another foreign war has kicked off, economic difficulty, why are we all talking about burritos?

00:06:03.360 and I will tell you why. The neocons and the libertarians were fighting with the populists

00:06:09.940 and the traditionalists, not even over affordability, but over how to respond

00:06:17.300 when normal people who are not political nerds complain about the economy. People are complaining

00:06:25.120 about the economy because for a lot of people, it's tough out there, okay? And why is it tough

00:06:31.080 out there for all sorts of reasons, for immigration, for the massive inflation that we experienced under

00:06:36.000 the Biden era, because food did go up. It's actually the rate of increase of the cost of

00:06:41.620 food has actually leveled off, but still people are feeling it's not like the cost of food went

00:06:44.660 down again in most cases because energy prices have gone up, because housing prices have gone

00:06:50.040 through the roof. And it's tough out there, especially for young millennials and Gen Z who

00:06:54.360 can't afford houses, who feel like they're kind of stuck in an economic rut and they don't have

00:07:00.000 some of the advantages that earlier generations had. So the question was, how do we respond?

00:07:05.320 How does a true conservative respond when people complain about the economy?

00:07:09.660 And the neocon and the libertarian side suggested that what we should do is call the people who are

00:07:16.260 complaining stupid ingrates and say, oh, it's not that bad. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

00:07:21.920 If you want to get by, you can. Look, you can stretch the meat in your burrito.

00:07:26.900 You can eat ramen noodles. Forget about the burritos. You can eat ramen noodles.

00:07:29.400 In other words, their argument was just personal advice to say, don't focus on the political

00:07:36.060 problems.

00:07:36.700 Don't focus on political change.

00:07:38.440 If you ever focus on politics at all, you're basically a communist.

00:07:41.840 Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, hustle, do your own thing, make your own way.

00:07:46.920 Be an individual.

00:07:48.500 Meanwhile, the populists and the traditionalists said, no, no, no, you can't ignore political

00:07:53.000 questions.

00:07:54.500 We have a right in a self-government to deal with political issues and to deal with the

00:07:58.880 political structure, a lot of which has been rigged against us, not just over the last five

00:08:02.820 or 10 years, but over the last 30, 40 years. Policies that outsourced American jobs,

00:08:08.960 policies that destroyed American towns, policies that sold out American manufacturing and American

00:08:13.880 supply chains, policies that bailed out big financial institutions, bailed out Wall Street

00:08:20.100 at the cost of Main Street. That's not just a pull yourself up by your bootstraps individual issue.

00:08:24.660 That's a political issue.

00:08:25.920 And we absolutely have a right and a responsibility to deal with the political issue.

00:08:31.080 But there weren't all that many firm suggestions.

00:08:34.100 So you got the neocons and the libertarians saying that we need to, in an election year,

00:08:39.600 call the people a bunch of stupid ingrates.

00:08:41.420 But then you have the populists and the traditionalists just offering kind of vague

00:08:46.200 economic suggestions, nothing all that concrete.

00:08:49.860 And really what a lot of their ire was about is just the Iran war.

00:08:53.420 They just want the Iran war to stop. So they're blaming the Iran war for driving prices up. And

00:08:56.900 the Iran war has driven some prices up, but not all that much. And it really hasn't driven up

00:09:00.920 the price of burritos. So I come in here from the top, and I observe both sides actually have a

00:09:07.300 point. Okay, the populists and the traditionalists are absolutely right. And if I had to give a

00:09:13.660 winner in this debate, I would say the populists and the traditionalists make the better political

00:09:18.500 point. The populists and the traditionalists are right that we have social obligations to

00:09:22.920 our fellow citizens. We actually do. We're not just atomized individuals. They're right that

00:09:27.880 markets are political institutions. We're not a polity serving a market, but we have markets and

00:09:34.040 we cultivate markets in order to serve our political community. But that's what it's for,

00:09:37.380 okay? The market is not some sacrosanct thing. The way some of the neocons and the libertarians

00:09:41.900 talk about the invisible hand of the free market, it's as if they're talking about God himself.

00:09:45.640 They make an idol out of the market. But markets are political institutions. Also,

00:09:49.800 the populists and traditionalists are right that while my friend Ben Shapiro is totally

00:09:58.640 accurate when he says facts don't care about your feelings, politics exclusively cares about your

00:10:03.100 feelings, and the palace is never safe when the cottage is unhappy. However, you've got to give

00:10:09.020 the libertarians and the neocons their due. The former group is right not to let populist economics

00:10:14.440 get carried away, not to make the errors of the leftists who think that we can have a command

00:10:20.180 and control economy and that we can control prices with a magic wand. So they actually do

00:10:23.980 make an important point, though the libertarians and the neocons sound politically tone deaf.

00:10:30.280 So I didn't weigh in immediately on the central question itself, the burritos. So I would like

00:10:37.560 to give my opinion on the burritos, okay, which I think is a third way between the Joel Berry

00:10:46.140 and the Andrew Colvette take, between the Matt Walsh and the Ben Shapiro take. Thank you. By the

00:10:54.080 way, Professor, would you like to show, I have my associate professor Jacob here. He's dressed up

00:11:00.620 like a burrito. He is an embodiment of the conservative movement. And he's brought me

00:11:06.020 three burritos of different prices. What are the prices here? This one is $1.50. That's a burrito

00:11:14.020 for McDonald's. This one is $2.07. That's the homemade burrito. And here we have the $16 burrito

00:11:21.500 with tax and tip. You're hitting 20 bucks. So let's see. I've eaten the McDonald's burrito

00:11:27.020 on more than one occasion. It's a breakfast burrito. So I like the sausage and the egg and

00:11:34.000 the cheese. Okay. Not very satisfying. Then we've got the $2 burrito. I guess this is a

00:11:40.480 homemade burrito, though. I don't know. Who has a panini press? Oh, wow. Not a lot of meat in that

00:11:46.240 one. It's not a breakfast burrito, so it's a little bit, we're kind of debating apples and

00:11:51.920 oranges here. Okay. That is a breakfast burrito. How much meat do you put in your breakfast burrito?

00:11:56.500 That's crazy. Okay. That's a nice burrito. The homemade one, that's a nice burrito. And then we

00:12:00.560 of this little fancy bougie one. This is the avocado toast of burritos. It actually has

00:12:03.900 avocado in it. Okay. Okay. All right. That's fine. That's fine. I would say

00:12:12.920 of the three, I would say the homemade burrito for $2 is actually the best burrito. Who made

00:12:20.800 that burrito? Can someone tell me who made that burrito, please? Nick Sheehan. Yeah, he's an idiot

00:12:27.040 savant. Emphasis on one of those words, but he is. That's a good burrito. The $20 burrito is

00:12:33.220 definitely more delicious than the McDonald's burrito, but the McDonald's burrito will get the

00:12:37.460 job done. Actually, though, my conclusion is I don't really care for burritos. I don't really

00:12:45.240 like them very much. They're a little exotic. They're a little unpleasantly exotic for me,

00:12:51.780 I would say. I'm not a big fan of, I don't like Mexican food. I'm American. You know,

00:12:57.500 I've got some Italian heritage and Italian food is much better than Mexican food. It's just

00:13:02.300 entirely without exception. And I'm American. You're going back to the Mayflower, which is a

00:13:08.200 great cigar brand, by the way. And so I don't, I can't, you know, I do oppose mass migration. I do

00:13:13.660 want to build the wall and close the border. So I don't, the burrito to me, it does nothing.

00:13:19.480 It makes me feel nothing.

00:13:21.880 Oh, I don't really want any of the burritos.

00:13:24.800 Can you please clear the burrito?

00:13:26.400 I don't want any more of the burritos.

00:13:28.140 And I definitely don't want that big human burrito walking around my studio.

00:13:31.600 Thank you very much, Professor.

00:13:33.240 I hope that clears it up.

00:13:35.740 If it hasn't cleared it up, perhaps we should have one final point on this,

00:13:41.880 which is that this debate that you're seeing play out over the economy,

00:13:49.480 versus political action. This debate over focusing on the individual versus focusing

00:13:56.600 on the political order. This is a perennial debate within the conservative movement that

00:14:00.760 has been true going back at the very least to William F. Buckley Jr. and Russell Kirk and the

00:14:05.800 post-war conservative movement. This strain between the libertarians and then what became

00:14:12.180 the neoconservative movement, the early neocons who actually had a pretty good point, the later

00:14:15.260 neocons have a little bit lost the way of Irving Kristol and Norman Putthoritz. But there's that

00:14:20.160 side, which is a little more abstract, a little more focused on the individual, and the more

00:14:25.840 classical conservatives who say, no, no, no, we have obligations to the common good. I mean,

00:14:30.360 James Madison is writing about this in Federalist 47, and many of the founding fathers and framers

00:14:35.380 are writing about the common good. The purpose of the Constitution is to promote the general

00:14:39.320 welfare. The Declaration of Independence assails King George for ignoring the public good,

00:14:46.260 and this obviously has much longer legs in Western political philosophy,

00:14:50.360 going all the way back to antiquity and all the smartest people who ever lived.

00:14:53.860 As a political point, though, you cannot tell people that they are not feeling what they're

00:15:01.500 feeling. This is why the socialists are doing very, very well in the Democrat primaries,

00:15:06.760 And it's why we're seeing the beginnings of what could be a serious blue wave here with the Democrat candidate, James Tallarico, leading Ken Paxton in the race in Texas.

00:15:18.180 What I think a lot of this comes down to is a debate over feeling, fellow feeling.

00:15:25.380 The people who say, yeah, you don't really have economic problems, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

00:15:30.060 You know, fast food is a luxury good these days.

00:15:32.600 No, no one wants to hear that.

00:15:33.820 Fast food should not be a luxury good.

00:15:35.260 and people should be able to afford houses.

00:15:38.300 And it's not that you can just wave a magic wand

00:15:40.440 to bring prices down.

00:15:42.240 The libertarians and the neocons are right about that.

00:15:44.220 But you have to take people's issues seriously

00:15:46.660 because if people go to the ballot box in November

00:15:50.200 and they say, you know what, those socialists,

00:15:52.040 they're speaking to me.

00:15:52.920 They're speaking to my real problems.

00:15:54.040 I'm having problems paying healthcare costs.

00:15:55.740 I'm having problems buying a house.

00:15:58.420 I'm having, there are measures of the economy

00:16:01.560 that are not encapsulated in GDP or the preferred economic measures of some of the right-wingers

00:16:09.220 that are telling me that I am really struggling right now. If one side channels Bill Clinton

00:16:14.960 says, I feel your pain, and the other side says, shut up, you stupid ingrate, be happy for your

00:16:19.000 ramen noodles, guess which side is going to win the election? Guess which side is going to win?

00:16:24.360 Now, there is a way that Republicans can engage in the affordability conversation that does not

00:16:31.080 just turn them into socialists, does not make them ape the left, does not constitute a pyrrhic

00:16:35.240 victory because we'll win the election, but we'll end up implementing left-wing policies.

00:16:38.960 There is a way to talk about it, but you cannot ignore the problem, okay? There is a reason that

00:16:44.640 Donald Trump took over the Republican Party in 2016. It has somewhat to do with his personality

00:16:50.740 and his celebrity and all of that. But I think the reason that he took over the GOP in 2016

00:16:55.520 was not, as many thought, because of his personality in spite of his policies.

00:16:59.880 If anything, I think it was because of his policies in spite of his personality.

00:17:03.120 That's what I think it was about.

00:17:04.740 He offered different answers on immigration.

00:17:08.220 A lot of the GOP said, shut up.

00:17:09.720 Yeah, your communities are being overrun with immigrants, and they don't speak English,

00:17:12.840 and they commit crimes, and they lower your wages, especially for the working class.

00:17:16.640 But whatever, shut up.

00:17:17.560 That's just freedom.

00:17:18.880 That's just the American way.

00:17:20.540 That's just how to keep GDP up.

00:17:21.980 Shut up.

00:17:22.400 We don't care about you.

00:17:23.240 And Trump said, no, we do care about you, and we should stop migration because it's

00:17:28.680 bad for your country.

00:17:29.540 on trade. You could say that tariffs are ultimately bad, and you could say they

00:17:34.120 weren't implemented right, or you could make any sort of criticism you want about the tariffs.

00:17:37.720 But the fact that the entire GOP said, nope, sorry, we have to outsource all your jobs. We

00:17:43.340 have to get rid of American manufacturing. We have to have everything made in China.

00:17:46.820 We have to send our supply lines over to our greatest geopolitical adversary,

00:17:50.400 because the gods of the free market demanded. So shut up if your town got bankrupted.

00:17:54.840 Shut up if you can't live in the town that your parents have lived in for 10 generations.

00:17:58.400 don't care about you. Stop being such a loser. That's not going to play. Okay. And Donald Trump

00:18:03.680 came in and he said, no, no, we need to rebuild American manufacturing. I think there are good

00:18:06.900 economic arguments for that in itself, but that certainly resonates with voters.

00:18:12.960 And when that debate was had in 2016, and then somewhat relitigated when Trump ran again for a

00:18:18.320 non-consecutive second term in 2024, the more populist and the more traditionalist side won

00:18:23.380 that debate. And we should pay attention to that. Otherwise, we're going to get blown out of the

00:18:28.120 water in November. And we should listen to that because it is good. It is good because rulers,

00:18:34.640 governors, congressmen, politicians, they have an obligation to their constituents.

00:18:40.920 And politics involves three parts. It's like the tripartite soul, another insight from antiquity.

00:18:46.560 There's the logical part. There is the facts don't care about your feelings part. That matters in

00:18:50.460 politics. And there is the thematic part. There's the spirited part of politics where you can rally

00:18:56.640 people. You can make them feel good about their country again. You can make America great again.

00:19:00.020 That's the thematic part. And there is the appetitive part. When your constituents tell

00:19:04.420 you they are having a problem, you need to show them the respect of taking that seriously.

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00:20:26.220 slash Knowles. Recently, our company's softball team lost the big game by one run. Then Dale

00:20:33.300 tried to console us with the quote, winning isn't everything. Well, Dale and I are very different.

00:20:40.580 I get early payout from Bet365. If my team goes up big, I get paid out instantly, even if they

00:20:45.940 blow the lead later. Sound familiar, Dale? Thanks, Bet365. Must be 19 or older, Ontario only. Please

00:20:52.500 play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling

00:20:54.940 of someone close to you, please go to connexontario.ca and see supply.

00:20:58.180 How did the vice president respond to this? Because beyond the tweet kind of making fun of

00:21:03.280 Mark Thiessen, the vice president weighed in on this issue even before Burrito Gate erupted.

00:21:08.100 He was on Laura Ingram's show, and he was asked about the rise of socialism.

00:21:11.480 And he gave, I think, a really nuanced take, a take that I totally agree with on how conservatives should be responding to the rise of these DSA candidates in Michigan, all over the country.

00:21:25.340 But they say they can't afford a home.

00:21:27.880 The average home ownership is up to like 42 years of age.

00:21:32.080 10, 15 years ago, it was much lower.

00:21:34.480 There's concern about the cost of living, still high energy prices, 100 bucks to fill my tank today.

00:21:38.940 What does the Republican Party, specifically the administration, need to do better on that front?

00:21:44.440 Because there are real strains out there.

00:21:45.820 Well, I think that what it shows is that the past 40 years of economic policy, bipartisan economic policy have failed.

00:21:51.100 I think a lot of people look at El-Sayed or a lot of these other radical candidates and they say socialism is evil.

00:21:57.060 They're right. Socialism is evil.

00:21:58.740 But we have to ask ourselves the question, why is socialism so appealing to a lot of people who, to your point, have lower assets,

00:22:06.320 who don't have the same ownership who went to universities and were sold a bill of goods

00:22:10.580 they got a lot of debt but they didn't necessarily get the good jobs that came along with that high

00:22:15.100 debt load and I think our answer to that and by the way you've already seen a lot of it in the

00:22:18.960 Trump administration is number one protect American manufacturing the manufacturing economy

00:22:24.660 is the foundation of the middle class we see this in Europe we saw it in the United States

00:22:28.920 every country that sells its industrial base to the highest foreign bidder loses its middle class

00:22:34.760 and see socialism come on the back end.

00:22:37.380 What I think is actually going to happen is these socialist candidates,

00:22:40.820 they've caught the tail end of an economy that wasn't working for most Americans.

00:22:45.140 Unfortunately for them, the Trump economy has made long-term investments

00:22:49.840 in rebuilding that manufacturing base and making America energy independent

00:22:54.220 and actually making it possible to own a home, to have a family,

00:22:58.880 to build the real elements of middle-class life again.

00:23:02.880 Manufacturing. Preach. Preach. Yes. Thank you. This is the response.

00:23:09.840 Notice what he says there off the top. He says socialism is evil.

00:23:13.900 Some of the more neocon libertarian types are going after Vance in particular because the

00:23:19.500 2028 presidential race has already begun. And they've said, you know, J.D. Vance is basically

00:23:25.500 a socialist because he thinks we ought to have, I don't know, family policy or a manufacturing,

00:23:32.600 a developmental economic policy, or because he defends the tariffs, or because he thinks that

00:23:38.580 it's legitimate when people complain about the rising cost of goods. He's a socialist.

00:23:45.000 What does J.D. Van say here? He says, no, socialism is evil. And we need to address

00:23:52.500 why people, especially young people, are turning to socialism. We need to examine that.

00:24:00.360 We can't just bury our heads in the sand and say, oh, they're just a bunch of stupid idiots.

00:24:05.240 They don't even know that the cost of groceries hasn't risen all that much since 2023,

00:24:11.780 even though it rose dramatically during the Biden era because of inflation,

00:24:15.740 in part because of the spending policies during the days of COVID.

00:24:20.840 These stupid idiots, if they would only read economic tables, they wouldn't be socialists,

00:24:24.500 you dumb, stupid idiots.

00:24:25.420 Well, you know, that's a great strategy for getting socialism.

00:24:31.900 And what Vance is saying is socialism is evil.

00:24:35.480 And if you want to stop socialism from rising, you need to speak to the underlying gripes

00:24:41.920 based on the underlying conditions that are giving rise to it.

00:24:46.840 These are just facts.

00:24:48.600 It is hard for young people to get homes.

00:24:51.660 Why is it hard for young people to get homes?

00:24:53.180 For households headed by people under 40 right now, the inflation-adjusted median home value rose 30% from 2019 to 2024. Price of housing rose 30%. Do you know how median income rose during that exact same time period? By 9%.

00:25:14.420 That's a problem.

00:25:15.600 When the cost of housing outpaces the rise in incomes by 3x, that's a problem.

00:25:23.520 That's a big political problem.

00:25:25.460 Under-35 homeownership is now near multi-decade lows.

00:25:30.820 That's a problem.

00:25:32.220 That's a political problem.

00:25:34.260 The housing shortfall right now is anywhere from, it's a pretty wide range, but it's anywhere

00:25:39.860 from 2 million to 5 million housing units.

00:25:43.480 that's a big political problem. And in certain areas, areas with stupid Democrat policies and

00:25:50.740 lots of immigrants and sanctuary cities, in certain areas run by Democrats, the shortage

00:25:57.680 of the housing supply is astounding. We are not going to beat socialism if we don't take the

00:26:07.260 concerns that socialists appeal too seriously. We have the same goal. It's amazing the factions

00:26:13.240 of the GOP, how they call other people, they try to kick other people out of the conservative

00:26:19.560 movement. They suggest, look, in some cases, there really are wolves in sheep's clothing,

00:26:24.220 but that's not mostly what we're looking at here. I mean, I saw yesterday, James Lindsay,

00:26:29.160 who was a liberal Democrat atheist, who I think he voted for Obama and Hillary, and he came along

00:26:35.780 and realized that the left was totally nuts, and especially during the rise of the transgender

00:26:41.620 movement and all that kind of critical race theory, all that stuff. He said, okay, they're

00:26:44.420 nuts. You know, I want to side with the conservatives now. But yesterday he called

00:26:47.740 Matt Walsh a leftist. Give me a, come on, what are we doing? I like James, but come on, what are we

00:26:52.220 doing? Matt Walsh is not a leftist. Okay. You could call him a lot of things, but you can't

00:26:56.720 call him a leftist. And I think in this case, we all have the same enemy. The same enemy is

00:27:03.680 socialism, but it is not heresy. It is not a violation of conservative principles or American

00:27:10.740 principles to say that maybe we need some industrial policy. Maybe a protective tariff

00:27:14.940 is worth considering. Maybe we need to listen to people when they gripe about the skyrocketing

00:27:20.060 cost of housing. Maybe not the skyrocketing cost of burritos, but the skyrocketing cost of housing.

00:27:24.140 That's a real gripe, and you're not a communist or a traitor to the American cause for saying so.

00:27:29.160 For goodness sakes, the country was built largely on tariffs. You can say the tariffs won't work as

00:27:33.120 well now, or they have to be implemented differently, but give me a break, guys.

00:27:36.240 The country was built on a conception of the common good.

00:27:40.560 To say that a consideration of the common good makes you a leftist, give me a break.

00:27:44.720 First of all, the leftists don't care about the common good.

00:27:46.320 They care about the common bad.

00:27:48.660 But even beyond that, it's just so ridiculous.

00:27:50.860 The recriminations going, you're not a true conservative.

00:27:54.260 No, you're not a true conservative.

00:27:55.360 No, you're not a true conservative.

00:27:56.860 The conservative coalition in America has always been incoherent.

00:27:59.500 The left-wing coalition is coherent.

00:28:01.040 They're all progressives.

00:28:02.020 They're all leftists.

00:28:03.240 Plus, John Fetterman, I guess.

00:28:04.800 Even he's kind of pretty liberal though. The conservative coalition, going back to Reagan's

00:28:10.780 three-legged stool, was libertarians, traditionalists with the religious right,

00:28:15.320 and war hawk Democrats like the neocons. Those three groups have basically nothing in common

00:28:20.000 other than a common enemy. So let's focus on that. We have a common enemy, socialism. We have a

00:28:25.340 common enemy. These left-wing candidates, the DSA candidates, along with the mainstream Dem

00:28:30.660 candidates who are basically indistinguishable from the DSA candidates who want to destroy our

00:28:34.900 country. I'm glad some of these ideas are coming to light. I'm glad we have a reintroduction of

00:28:41.460 ideas such as the common good. We have a reintroduction of the idea that we don't

00:28:46.560 just worship the market. I'm glad that we're having those kinds of debates. But guys, focus

00:28:50.620 on what really matters here, okay? And if you want to do it in a really practical, I do want

00:28:55.120 offer some practical solutions. How about you point out that the driver of virtually all of

00:29:00.680 these problems is mass migration? The housing crisis is a migration crisis. If you look at

00:29:05.740 California and New York over the last five years or so, basically 100% of the increase in the cost

00:29:13.660 of housing is due to mass migration. There was a study on this, came out some months ago. And for

00:29:18.080 the rest of the country, it's about 60%. You want to talk about wages, especially among the lower

00:29:23.200 middle class and working class, wages stagnating. A lot of the downward pressure on wages is because

00:29:28.840 of mass migration. You want to talk about the fraying of social solidarity, a loss of a sense

00:29:33.940 of the common good. A lot of that is because you're just introducing too many foreign elements

00:29:38.380 that are not assimilated to the country at a time when you're discouraging patriotism.

00:29:43.340 That is largely driven by mass migration. It's not even exactly the immigrants' fault.

00:29:49.400 They're part of it, but it's the policies that led to that. That's a big problem.

00:29:53.200 The rise in prices, that was Biden-era inflation, okay?

00:29:58.780 So focus on that.

00:30:01.240 If the conservatives are willing to allow themselves to take seriously the complaints

00:30:05.440 of their constituents, then you can say, hey, this is caused by immigration and interest rates.

00:30:11.800 A lot of people are locked into their homes because they bought their homes at 2% interest

00:30:14.600 rates, and now interest rates are 6% or 7%, and they don't feel like they can sell their homes.

00:30:18.140 and you can point to improvements in the inflation rate since the biden era

00:30:23.860 thanks to trump you can point to the reshoring of investment in america that jd vance was just

00:30:28.900 talking about you can point to those things and you can actually channel the popular discontent

00:30:33.940 with the economy toward a good end but if you don't do that if you don't engage with that

00:30:38.100 and you just have this kind of snooty attitude toward your fellow americans and you say oh shut

00:30:44.740 up about the burritos. Stop eating your avocado toast or whatever. If you do that, you are just

00:30:50.160 going to drive those people into the arms of the socialists who are on the rise right now,

00:30:55.140 who are poised to take the House, maybe the Senate. And then you can sit. Once we lose the

00:31:02.000 country and the Democrats pass a mass amnesty and they pack the Supreme Court and they further

00:31:08.820 denigrate our country and destroy our society and they reinstitute all of their racial and

00:31:14.160 sexual ideologies, and they further entrenched their two-tier system of justice, and they let

00:31:20.100 the criminals out of prison, and they try to abolish prisons, and they abolishize. You know

00:31:23.400 what you can do? You can sit there and you say, but I was the most perfectly ideologically

00:31:27.180 consistent libertarian. I was the most perfect, special little neoconservative.

00:31:33.480 I never once compromised on my misunderstanding of American history. I never, I'm so ideologically

00:31:40.280 pure. And that's going to sound really nice echoing off the walls of the gulag that the left

00:31:44.160 puts us into. Not a good idea. There is a way out, but it's not going to be through disrespecting

00:31:52.880 your fellow Americans and not taking their concerns seriously. Okay. Another opportunity,

00:31:58.820 another, an alternative view to this, which is just, you know, fixing the Republican coalition

00:32:02.980 and moving forward and beating the Democrats is to take our ball and go home and start a third

00:32:06.720 party, which is what we are being told is happening by guys like Joe Kent, who was the

00:32:12.120 head of the counterterrorism center during the Trump White House. He left over a disagreement

00:32:15.880 on the Iran war. Tucker was teasing that maybe he would launch a third party. He gave a big

00:32:21.200 address last night. We'll get into what that third party could look like. Then we'll get into some

00:32:26.240 good news on the immigration front. Big win at the Supreme Court now about to go into effect

00:32:32.120 with hundreds of thousands of people who should not be here. First, though, I want to tell you

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00:34:15.420 All day yesterday, we got this tease coming around.

00:34:19.220 There was a picture that Tucker posted the other night.

00:34:21.160 I don't think we pulled the picture.

00:34:22.220 It was Tucker with Joe Kent and Marjorie Taylor Greene

00:34:25.340 and various spouses at Tucker's house up in Maine

00:34:28.200 talking about a new political movement.

00:34:31.660 You know, there's discontent with the Democrats

00:34:33.260 and with the Republicans, with the left and the right.

00:34:35.100 So there's going to be this third way in politics

00:34:36.880 with people who have left the Republican Party.

00:34:39.780 Joe Kent went on the very left-wing program,

00:34:42.540 Cenk Uygur Show, The Young Turks,

00:34:44.220 to explain his desire for a third party.

00:34:48.580 I think it's, especially for the presidency,

00:34:50.420 I think it is having a very, very simple platform, and it's acknowledging up front, like, we are going to disagree on a lot of domestic policy and a lot of social issues.

00:35:00.860 At the end of the day, the president can talk a lot about all those things, but he really doesn't have a lot of power.

00:35:06.560 We do agree that we don't want Israel dictating our foreign policy.

00:35:10.180 We don't want any more foreign wars.

00:35:11.780 We don't want to have to run a massive empire all over the rest of the world.

00:35:16.020 And then from there, when we go to make any kind of decisions that are going to affect the divisive issues, that it's going to be more of a open discussion.

00:35:24.380 Those other issues would be handled in the House, would be handled in the Senate.

00:35:27.580 They'd be handled at the state level.

00:35:29.460 Therefore, if you built this very, very simple platform but a broad coalition, people could vote top ticket for the whatever it is, the independent party that wants to keep us out of the foreign wars and stop AIPAC from calling all the shots.

00:35:42.220 But then down ticket, yeah, if abortions are number one issue as a Republican or as a Democrat, as a pro-life or as pro-choice, then that could affect how they're going to vote in the House or the Senate.

00:35:51.620 Okay, so the pitch for the third party, this is not coming from Tucker.

00:35:55.280 This is coming from Joe Kent.

00:35:56.580 The pitch for the third party is literally just opposition to Israel.

00:36:02.340 There have been third parties that have cropped up in American history for all sorts of different reasons and motivations.

00:36:09.440 But in this case, what Joe Kent is saying to this left-wing host,

00:36:13.040 Cenk Uygur, is he says, this third party will be focused exclusively

00:36:17.940 on opposition to Israel.

00:36:20.180 And then all these other issues like the right to life or, I mean,

00:36:25.300 any other issue, I guess, taxation, immigration, any of it,

00:36:31.120 down to occupational licensing reform, every single other issue,

00:36:35.500 you can just figure that out yourselves at the state level.

00:36:37.700 but really all that this party exists to do is to oppose Israel. I don't think that's going to

00:36:44.060 sell. Israel has declined massively in popularity in the United States. That had happened on the

00:36:49.000 left a long time ago. It's begun to really show up in polling on the right. That's not enough to

00:36:54.360 sustain a political party. Furthermore, Joe Kent ties it into this distaste for American empire.

00:37:01.940 And he says, we don't want to govern this empire overseas. We don't want to have a big empire. We

00:37:06.460 want to be a yeoman republic like in 1790 or something. And that's not going to fly either.

00:37:12.500 In fact, I think both of these big issues, wanting a third party and wanting to get rid

00:37:20.500 of our empire and just go back to being a yeoman farmer republic, both of those things sound

00:37:26.180 popular. If you poll people, you will get high approval ratings for both of those ideas. We

00:37:32.940 don't want to be the world's police. We don't, we want a third party. We're unhappy with both

00:37:38.860 political parties. People will tell you that they want this third party focused on these kinds of

00:37:44.200 issues. Maybe not exclusively the Israel thing, but the empire issue. But people don't actually

00:37:51.500 want that. A third party is the kind of thing that Americans want to want, but they don't

00:37:59.200 actually won. Just look at some poll results. This provided by G0, 92 to 2016, third-party

00:38:07.360 candidates. And you had some major third parties appear during that time. You had the Reform Party,

00:38:11.940 which was supposed to be a huge force in American politics. Ross Perot up through Pat Buchanan.

00:38:16.580 You had the Green Party, Ralph Nader in 2000. You've had these hints. You had the Tea Party

00:38:21.840 movement from within the Republican Party. Now you have the DSA coming out and whatever this

00:38:25.780 Joe Kent third party could be. But look at how it actually turns up. People hate the Republicans

00:38:30.360 and the Democrats, and yet 92, 43% Democrats, 37% Republicans, 19% third party. That's not

00:38:40.140 electoral votes. That's just sort of popular support, popular vote. Then the third party

00:38:45.700 support declines, 8%, 4%. In 2004 and 8, it's 1%, then 2%, then 6% in 2016. These are not

00:38:54.740 real. These are not real movements. And then on the American empire point,

00:38:59.580 a lot of people will tell you, we don't want to be the world's police. We don't want our empire.

00:39:03.160 And yet that's just not how history works. That's not how powers work. It's not how nations grow.

00:39:10.180 People don't actually want to give up the empire because basically all of the privileges,

00:39:16.520 not literally all of them, we have some geographic advantages, some ideological advantages, but

00:39:20.760 most of the privileges that we have as Americans for our wealth, our prosperity, our security,

00:39:26.400 all the rest, are downstream of the American empire. Empires are super annoying, and there

00:39:34.080 are lots of downsides to having an empire. But people miss the empire when the empire is gone.

00:39:38.800 Let's look at examples of great empires that gave up their empires, and let's see how they're doing.

00:39:44.600 The UK. The UK was one of the greatest empires in the history of the world.

00:39:50.120 The sun never set on the British Empire.

00:39:52.800 The UK gave up its empire after World War II.

00:39:56.120 How is the UK doing today?

00:39:58.060 Is it thriving?

00:39:59.760 Has it returned to the glory days?

00:40:01.900 Are they playing out their history from the Battle of Hastings onward?

00:40:07.300 No, I don't think so.

00:40:08.840 The UK is in decline and in decay right now.

00:40:11.840 And it's being overrun by Muslims and immigrants.

00:40:15.440 and now they have two-tier system of policing

00:40:18.180 that disadvantages actual Brits.

00:40:21.520 And it isn't working out well.

00:40:23.300 Spain was one of the great empires.

00:40:24.900 How is Spain doing today?

00:40:26.380 Ask the residents of Suta how Spain is doing today.

00:40:29.380 Ask the citizens of Spain

00:40:31.160 who have a terrible socialist government

00:40:34.100 that just gave amnesty to half a million immigrants.

00:40:36.840 Is Spain doing really well right now?

00:40:38.680 I don't think so.

00:40:40.140 Portugal, has Portugal thrived

00:40:41.740 since it gave up its empire?

00:40:44.160 No.

00:40:45.440 It doesn't, giving up your empire isn't all that great.

00:40:49.480 Now, Tucker then went on and gave a 90 minute or so monologue

00:40:53.860 about what people were expecting

00:40:55.880 was going to be the launch of a third party.

00:40:57.300 And it wasn't because Tucker

00:40:59.040 is a little more sophisticated than that.

00:41:00.540 So he gave this monologue about how we,

00:41:02.840 what we need in America is fairness

00:41:04.400 and what we need is justice

00:41:05.840 and what we need is sovereignty.

00:41:07.440 All these things that basically everybody agrees on.

00:41:10.900 There was nothing particularly radical

00:41:13.020 in Tucker's monologue last night.

00:41:14.780 he didn't call for a third party. So I'm not exactly, it seems like there's some disagreement

00:41:19.240 over some of the people who had dinner with Tucker and Tucker himself. But in any case,

00:41:23.020 I think when you watch those two statements together, Joe Kent saying what the third party

00:41:28.780 is about, it's about we all hate Israel. We all hate Israel and we don't want to be an empire.

00:41:35.500 That is not a viable platform for a third party. And then you watch Tucker's much more sophisticated

00:41:40.740 speech where he says, we need fairness and we need sovereignty and we need America to

00:41:44.760 be great again. Yeah, everybody agrees with that, but that's also not the platform for a third

00:41:48.900 party. It's a, it's good criticism of the Republican party. It's good criticism of the

00:41:54.680 Democrat party. There's maybe some lessons to take from that, but none, none of that is a third

00:41:59.620 party. My actual least popular view on today's a day of unpopular views. I know many people tuned

00:42:06.760 out the minute I said, I don't like burritos. It's just, I'm not, come on guys. You know,

00:42:10.700 I'm an American. I don't, I don't, in a pinch, fine, but I don't, but my actual least popular

00:42:14.940 view is that the two-party system is great, actually. It's great because the two sides

00:42:20.600 actually do have relatively coherent policy platforms. The right doesn't have any coherent

00:42:27.340 ideology. It's got a lot of different ideologies. The left has a coherent ideology and a basically

00:42:31.880 coherent policy platform, which is to destroy everything and to radically liberate the

00:42:37.000 individual. But the GOP has a relatively coherent policy platform. If you're the kind of person

00:42:43.300 who cares about the right to life, you are the kind of person who is thinking about the natural

00:42:49.640 law. You're the kind, even not consciously, but it's just part of you. So you're thinking about

00:42:54.520 national sovereignty. You're thinking of the order of loves, the fact that we have a greater

00:42:57.660 responsibility to our families than to foreigners. You're thinking about property rights. If you're

00:43:02.780 thinking about the right to life, you're thinking about the right to property too.

00:43:05.020 too. And there actually is a kind of coherence between how the right thinks about abortion

00:43:12.800 and taxation and national sovereignty. And there's a kind of coherence to how the left

00:43:18.740 thinks about it too, which is you don't have a right to anything. And it's just a total

00:43:22.040 vindication of an imposition of the will. And there isn't much room for a third party there.

00:43:29.940 If Joe can't hobby horses, we should stop supporting Israel. I think you're going to

00:43:34.160 see that emerge from within the two parties, if that's going to emerge. Which again, I don't think

00:43:38.360 it really will, because it does tie into the empire question. And that part of the world

00:43:44.760 has been a troublesome province going back to the Roman Empire. But nevertheless,

00:43:50.280 we are an empire, and that involves dealing with troublesome parts of the world. But that is how

00:43:57.020 the nation has grown on its course. I suppose we could give it up willingly, but I don't think

00:44:04.240 most people will like that. Okay. So beyond what people say they want, but don't actually want,

00:44:10.200 let's get back to the big issue. One of the big practical issues that is actually driving a lot

00:44:14.820 of this discourse from the foreign empire down to the burritos. And it's really specifically

00:44:21.080 touches on the burritos because we're talking about immigration. Good news on the immigration

00:44:24.920 front. First, though, my favorite comment yesterday is from Bonfer, I Almost Killed a

00:44:29.760 Snail. It's an interesting name, who says, Michael's candle is hypnotizing me. You can

00:44:35.980 get it at thecandleclub.com. I don't even get a royalty on it anymore. I'm slinging candles for

00:44:41.640 the love of the game, okay? My favorite products are combustible. The Mayflower cigars and the

00:44:47.180 candles. I want to be in your home. I want to suffuse your space. The body is a temple and

00:44:52.320 the temple needs incense. One thing that I think the sort of Tuckerite faction, it gets right,

00:45:03.600 that I think a lot of the populists and traditionalists who are a little different

00:45:07.440 from that faction, but they also get right, that even I think the neocons, certainly the

00:45:12.580 libertarians know, and I think even the neocons understand to some degree, is people mostly care

00:45:18.900 about domestic issues. Even if we want to benefit from having a big empire, we don't want to think

00:45:23.940 about the foreign issues that much. A lot, when constituents come up and they say, I just want to,

00:45:29.500 I don't want to be involved in the rest of the world. I want to focus on the problems we have

00:45:32.320 at home. I get where they're coming from. I feel that too. You can't neglect the rest of the world

00:45:38.300 when you're a great power, really when you're any nation. I mean, going back to the earliest days

00:45:41.600 of our country, let's not forget, five seconds after our country was founded, we were dealing

00:45:45.700 with a war in the Middle East. We were dealing with the Barbary pirates. Nevertheless, yes,

00:45:49.960 most people want to focus on domestic issues, and we want to see big wins on the domestic front.

00:45:53.980 Well, we did get one win recently, which is we've been trying to get rid of these Haitians

00:45:57.420 for like 15 years. These Haitians come over after a natural disaster in, what was it, 2010 or

00:46:04.820 something, and they were given temporary protected status. And then they were supposed to leave 18

00:46:09.160 months later, but they didn't leave. And they just kept being allowed to stay and allowed to say,

00:46:15.320 And then when conservatives tried to deport them, the courts would gum the whole thing up based on nothing, based on just their desire for progressive politics.

00:46:24.020 And so it's taken forever.

00:46:25.200 Finally, the Supreme Court comes in and reverses a stay from a lower court judge and says, you got it.

00:46:29.880 They got to go.

00:46:31.280 It's been too long.

00:46:32.740 The people who want the Haitians to stay forever, they say, well, no, these Haitians, they own houses.

00:46:38.900 They've had a quarter million kids.

00:46:40.440 And you say, yeah, they shouldn't have.

00:46:42.400 That's part of the problem.

00:46:43.560 Why do they own houses?

00:46:44.540 Why do they have mortgages but a Gen Z conservative with a bunch of student loan debt

00:46:49.080 who did everything right and followed the law?

00:46:51.720 How come that guy doesn't have a house?

00:46:53.340 That's part of the problem.

00:46:54.420 So finally, we're getting rid of him.

00:46:56.420 One of the arguments was you couldn't send him back to Haiti because Haiti is hell.

00:46:59.620 Say, well, Haiti is hell because of the Haitians.

00:47:02.280 I don't know.

00:47:03.180 Haiti is part of this island, Hispaniola, which is half Haiti, half Dominican Republic.

00:47:07.980 It's the same geography.

00:47:09.980 It's the same kind of people, you know, biologically.

00:47:13.480 But it's just the Haitian side is hell, and the Dominican Republic side is nice.

00:47:17.760 It's safe.

00:47:18.400 It's relatively prosperous.

00:47:19.800 So the issue here, it's not the trees and the dirt.

00:47:22.140 It's the Haitians.

00:47:23.520 So if Haiti is ridden with crime and all sorts of social pathologies, why would we bring that here?

00:47:29.080 Finally, we're getting rid of the Haitians.

00:47:32.040 Here is DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullins on what's going on.

00:47:38.500 We're going after them right now.

00:47:39.720 We are giving them an opportunity to either leave on their own and we'll help you or we'll arrest you and send you back.

00:47:46.060 Either way, you don't have status inside this country anymore.

00:47:48.840 That has been litigated.

00:47:50.700 The courts spoke very clearly.

00:47:52.620 We knew that we were going to win this because in its name itself, it says temporary protective status.

00:47:57.300 The president has the right to start it.

00:47:59.240 He also has a right to end it.

00:48:00.900 The president ended it, which was the right call.

00:48:03.340 So these individuals can either self-deport or we will arrest you and send you back.

00:48:07.820 It's that simple.

00:48:08.660 So it's happening now, and it involves even a little self-deportation in that we're offering

00:48:13.020 these guys $1,000 or $2,000 to just go home themselves, which you say, well, why are we

00:48:18.260 rewarding them for overstaying their temporary status? And it's, look, it's just cheaper than

00:48:22.620 arresting them. So we'll give them the money to, fine, that's great. However it is, though,

00:48:26.460 we're talking about, what is it, like 350,000 people? Yeah, 350,000 Haitians. That's a good

00:48:32.780 start. That's a good chunk of the foreigners who are here who should not be here. The other

00:48:37.400 reminder, though, in this whole saga is that the chief threat to liberty, this gets us right back

00:48:43.920 to the burrito point. The chief threat to liberty today is not from an executive that is too

00:48:49.080 powerful. The chief threat to liberty is from the other parts of the government, the other parts of

00:48:54.740 the political order, the judges in particular. But I am not that worried. I know there are a lot of

00:48:58.740 people who are concerned, not a lot, but a lot of pundits at least, who are concerned about the rise

00:49:03.660 of authoritarianism and a strong man, Francisco Franco in America, which first of all, I can't

00:49:09.000 believe it took me this long to get to this point. I cannot wait to debate with Ben on Friendly Fire

00:49:15.280 over this. He made a post where he said, if you support Mussolini and Hitler and Franco and Mao

00:49:24.200 and Stalin, you're not American. Yeah, that's un-American. And I say, hold on,

00:49:30.400 Four out of five ain't bad.

00:49:31.980 Three out of four ain't bad, whatever it was.

00:49:33.440 You can't love, yeah, I agree on the Mussolini point,

00:49:35.760 the Hitler point, and the Stalin point,

00:49:38.120 and the Mao point.

00:49:39.700 But Franco, Francisco Franco is one of the greatest men

00:49:42.500 of the 20th century.

00:49:43.740 Francisco Franco stopped the communists

00:49:45.900 from conquering Iberia, the communists who were raping nuns

00:49:49.060 and killing priests en masse,

00:49:50.920 who would have taken over Spain and Iberia,

00:49:54.380 already had been doing that.

00:49:56.240 Franco comes in.

00:49:58.180 By the way, it's not like he was super chummy with Hitler.

00:50:00.300 Hitler personally hated Franco.

00:50:01.660 He thought he was a huge jerk, and he was not liable, and he wasn't an ally.

00:50:06.380 He never allied with Nazi Germany.

00:50:08.380 Franco was a good American ally during the Cold War, and he saved Spain.

00:50:13.640 And in this house, Franco is a hero.

00:50:18.100 Bill Buckley called him an authentic national hero in Spain.

00:50:21.560 Nixon and Reagan were palling around with Franco.

00:50:23.500 Anyway, sorry, I'm getting distracted.

00:50:24.700 But it's on this point, which is, I see why people think, absent historical context, that the chief threat to liberty that we face is from an overwheeling executive that is taking too much power and governing in a dictatorial, tyrannical way.

00:50:40.880 That's not actually what's happening. The executive cannot even for years and years and years

00:50:48.820 kick out the Haitians whose temporary protected status expired over a decade ago. The executive

00:50:57.060 has like no power. One of the big issues, a driver of the discontent, is that the policies

00:51:03.740 that Trump has been trying to implement, not the least of which is the mass deportations,

00:51:06.880 have been gummed up at every step of the way by not just legislators, by the judiciary in

00:51:14.340 particular. That's where your threat to liberty lies. And that's where the blame should lie for

00:51:18.440 a lot of these problems that people, especially young people, are feeling.

00:51:24.340 Difficulty in the job market, housing, even the cost of burritos. Don't deny what people are

00:51:32.000 feeling. Recognize what people are feeling. Show people the causes of their discontent and channel

00:51:38.420 it in a way that will be productive for the political order. So much more to get to. Well,

00:51:43.320 here's the tease. I mean, we teased it right at the top of the show. James Tallarico. James Tallarico.

00:51:51.560 This guy. The guy who says that God is non-binary, who points to the Blessed Virgin Mary

00:51:57.140 as a defense of abortion.

00:52:00.420 James Tallarico says women are our neighbors with uteruses.

00:52:03.940 James Tallarico, the putatively straight white male,

00:52:07.180 his girlfriend, she lives up in Canada.

00:52:08.860 She goes to another school.

00:52:10.840 James Tallarico is leading Ken Paxton in Texas right now.

00:52:15.040 It's within the margin of error.

00:52:17.040 It's 47 to 45.

00:52:19.860 But November could be a bloodbath.

00:52:23.420 Historically speaking, it should,

00:52:24.840 because we have all the political wins against us right now.

00:52:27.140 and if you want to mitigate the damage, or I don't know, possibly pull a rabbit out of a hat

00:52:33.000 and actually beat the Democrats, you can't hand over really juicy political issues to them,

00:52:40.460 especially when they have no solutions to the issues, and they are the cause of the issues

00:52:44.500 in the first place. Okay, today is Theology Thursday. The rest of the show continues now.

00:52:48.940 You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code NOLSKINNOWLAS at checkout for two months

00:52:51.840 free on all annual plans.

00:52:57.140 We'll be right back.

00:53:27.140 blow the lead later. Sound familiar, Dale? Thanks, Bet365. Must be 19 or older Ontario only. Please

00:53:33.680 play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling

00:53:36.120 of someone close to you, please go to connexontario.ca and see supply.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 06, 2026

Ep. 2032 - The Right-Wing Burrito Fight EXPLAINED

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