The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 2068 - Obama Claims Women Could Fix The World In ＂2 Years＂

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00:03:06.960 Good Ranchers, American meat delivered. More bad news for Republicans as socialism reaches

00:03:13.180 record highs in public polling, all while young men surge to the Democrats in the pre-midterm

00:03:19.240 polls. Then Ukraine weighs legalizing pornography in order to fund its now decade-long war

00:03:24.920 after Russia's invasion. Does not seem like the best way to get God on your side for a war.

00:03:29.140 We'll see how it plays out. And a new candidate emerges in the 2028 presidential primary,

00:03:36.320 a, shall we say, big political figure, a well-rounded statesman. And now we're all wondering,

00:03:44.160 with Mr. Christie entering the race.

00:03:48.060 Is the Chris-a-sance upon us?

00:03:51.280 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:03:52.120 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:04:10.800 Welcome back to the show. 1.00

00:04:11.880 If you've not yet seen Run, Hot, Fight Infidels, 1.00

00:04:13.480 you need to go see it now. What are you doing? What are you missing? Go to dailywire.com slash 1.00

00:04:18.020 subscribe. Go see the movie everyone's talking about, Run, Hide, Fight, Infidels.

00:04:22.860 You think that Run, Hide, Fight, Infidels presents a gloomy outlook on America? I got

00:04:28.920 something that'll top it. It is this new Gallup poll, which shows that socialism is more popular

00:04:33.960 in America than ever, than ever. Socialism has been around for a long time, okay? Socialism's

00:04:40.040 been around since at least the 19th century, and it spiked. Marx hits the scene. You see the

00:04:47.680 beginning of socialist revolutions start brewing in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Then

00:04:53.920 socialism has its long run in the 20th century. Communism has its long run in the 20th century.

00:04:59.180 Yikes, terrible regimes, lots of death. But there was a moment in America when it really could have

00:05:05.800 boiled over in the 1920s and 30s. And then it's back, and it's more popular than ever. 40%

00:05:13.860 approval of socialism in the United States. Among Republicans, obviously, it's still pretty low

00:05:21.980 at 14%. And then among independents, it's at 45%. 65% of Democrats say that they have a positive

00:05:29.240 view of socialism. So it's really, really high, and it's still growing. Now, why is this happening?

00:05:38.740 It is happening in part because of the bad education system. That's real. Conservatives,

00:05:44.480 we always say, it's these schools that are indoctrinating kids into socialism. That's true.

00:05:49.120 How did we get there? We got there because Republicans have not been tough enough about

00:05:53.700 excluding socialism from the classroom. It's mostly the Democrats' fault. It's mostly the

00:05:57.420 left's fault, but it's the right's fault for letting it happen. And the way that the right

00:06:01.200 let it happen is that we weren't tough enough. The conservative movement was founded, I think

00:06:07.260 most people probably date the post-war conservative movement to William F. Buckley Jr., the founding

00:06:10.620 of a place called National Review, and the publication of a book called God and Man at

00:06:14.000 Yale. God and Man at Yale, which said that we need to stop academic freedom. Academic freedom

00:06:19.320 is fake. It's a superstition. We need to fire the socialists who are teaching at our universities.

00:06:24.780 many modern conservatives including people who feel that they're in the buckleyite trend the

00:06:31.360 national review the movement conservative line of thinking they today if you if you said that

00:06:36.940 we need to go into the schools and fire all the socialists based on their viewpoints they would

00:06:40.520 tell you you're an authoritarian you're a fascist you're franco you're you we can't do that it's

00:06:45.680 not just the i'm happy to blame the left but it's the a lot of the mainstream conservatives too 0.97

00:06:49.780 who refuse to fight back. So because of that, because we feel that the calls of William F.

00:06:56.820 Buckley Jr. were akin to fascism, we have allowed this to happen. And to this day,

00:07:02.720 there are many squishes on the right who refuse to do much of anything about it, to fire the

00:07:07.760 socialist teachers, to use the heavy hand of the state, and certainly the trustees and the funding

00:07:13.460 and the elements of civil society

00:07:16.300 to discriminate against certain viewpoints,

00:07:19.100 to prefer some viewpoints to others

00:07:20.760 and to do what needs to be done

00:07:22.240 to exclude the socialists from society.

00:07:23.820 No wonder they've indoctrinated the students.

00:07:25.680 That's part of it.

00:07:26.840 The other reason that socialism is surging

00:07:29.580 is that much of what passes for modern conservatism

00:07:32.740 is essentially just giving corporations

00:07:36.280 whatever they want.

00:07:37.720 And it's a crony form of capitalism.

00:07:39.360 and it's, sometimes we dress it up in the guise of meritocracy. So it sounds like it's really

00:07:45.740 principled. It sounds like it's something that the founding fathers would have supported.

00:07:49.560 And we say, hey, corporations should have every right to just import foreign labor and undercut

00:07:54.060 the wages of American workers. And that's actually meritocracy. They deserve it. But

00:07:58.680 the term meritocracy, it does not represent some eternal kind of political principle.

00:08:02.980 The term meritocracy is a term of propaganda. The term meritocracy is a euphemism. It's a

00:08:08.540 slogan. What does it really mean? What you're supposed to think that it means is that people

00:08:14.640 get what they deserve. What you're supposed to think that meritocracy means is just a kind of

00:08:19.980 synonym for justice. Justice, which is this consistent habit of virtue to give to people

00:08:25.560 what they deserve. But is that really what it means? What does it mean to merit something?

00:08:30.400 does the random person living in india or china or anywhere timbuktu does that person merit an

00:08:42.580 american job does that person deserve by right an american job or a place at an american university

00:08:49.880 or a green card to live in america or american citizenship do they really deserve that

00:08:56.160 They might get good scores on standardized tests.

00:08:59.740 But does that really mean that they deserve this place in the American political community?

00:09:04.700 Not necessarily.

00:09:06.280 I think the descendant of the guy who fought in the American Revolution or who fought in the American Civil War, I think that guy can make a claim to deserve something in the American political system.

00:09:16.460 Maybe his SAT score isn't as high.

00:09:19.420 Maybe, I don't know, maybe he didn't do as many extracurriculars as the guy in the foreign country.

00:09:25.700 But this term of propaganda, this term meritocracy, is assuming a very, very narrow, highly ideological view of merit, of what people deserve in a political community.

00:09:36.820 And this is one of the arguments made by the more classical and traditional conservatives, contra to the libertarians and the neoconservatives on the right in recent years.

00:09:45.620 is we say, hey, guys, there's more to a country than just GDP.

00:09:49.720 There's more to a country than just standardized test scores.

00:09:54.000 That a political community involves a lot more than that.

00:09:56.460 It involves traditions.

00:09:57.640 It involves being here for a long time.

00:10:00.080 It involves sacrifices that you've made for the country.

00:10:02.980 It involves language.

00:10:04.580 It involves religion.

00:10:05.460 It involves culture.

00:10:06.340 It involves a lot more than that.

00:10:08.080 That's what you're seeing.

00:10:09.020 So there are many people who otherwise might be on the right

00:10:11.820 who realize that what passes for the conservative view of society, the traditional view,

00:10:18.980 capitalism even, is really just a kind of form of cronyism that is being abused by bad actors

00:10:26.360 who are not oriented toward the public good, but are only oriented toward their selfish interest.

00:10:30.640 The vice president just posted today that the White House is, well, I'll just read it. I actually

00:10:35.080 just, I just retweeted it even before the show began. Let me see, I'll pull it up here on my

00:10:40.340 Twitter. You have it from J.D. Vance. Where is it? Okay, hold on. Wait. No, I've lost it. I don't

00:10:47.880 know. I've lost it. Here we go. J.D. Vance, our message to corporate America is simple. We're not

00:10:52.440 going to let you lay off American workers so you can replace them with cheap foreign labor. 0.99

00:10:56.220 That's pretty simple. That kind of message, I think, will help turn people away from socialism.

00:11:01.140 But he's being pilloried by the more establishment figures on the right for promoting socialism. 0.99

00:11:05.780 If you don't allow your country to be flooded by a bunch of foreign workers who have nothing in 0.99

00:11:09.000 common with your culture, then you're a socialist. That's the argument. Now, guess what? If that's 1.00

00:11:12.980 the message that you give to voters, you're going to see support for socialism hit record highs

00:11:18.340 because you're going to have all of the leftists who believe in socialism, true socialism

00:11:21.980 ideologically. And you're going to turn off all of the ordinary Americans, the working Americans

00:11:27.100 whose wages have been undercut, whose way of life have been upended, whose communities have been 1.00

00:11:31.680 flooded by foreigners. You're going to turn them off. You're going to say, hey, if you oppose our 1.00

00:11:36.300 program, then you're a socialist. A lot of them are going to say, you know what? I guess I'm

00:11:38.980 a socialist. I guess you're right. Or at least I'm an independent, or at least I ain't voting for you.

00:11:43.380 So you're seeing this swing play out electorally. A really worrisome fall from Cigna comes out,

00:11:50.300 says that young men are flocking to the Democrats. And that's not quite the whole story.

00:11:56.940 That headline is a little sensational too, but there's a big underlying problem.

00:12:01.220 Here's the problem. In 2024, President Trump carried young men. It was narrow,

00:12:05.360 but he carried young men. Charlie Kirk had a lot to do with that. In fact, 0.88

00:12:08.500 the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said at Charlie's funeral that Charlie made the winning

00:12:12.260 difference, specifically with young men. So why are the young men flocking to the Democrats right

00:12:16.600 now? In part, it has to do with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. In part, it has to do with the

00:12:21.380 fact that we didn't really clamp down on the left after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

00:12:24.460 The left took a victory lap. We saw that just a couple of weeks ago. But the poll doesn't actually

00:12:31.100 show that all those young men who voted Republican are now going to vote Democrat in the midterms.

00:12:36.240 According to the Signal Poll, the Democrats' generic ballot lead among men ages 18 to 30

00:12:43.300 who say they're most determined to vote is 57 to 40.

00:12:47.320 So you look at that, you say, yikes, that's a big swing.

00:12:49.900 We went from, what, 52 to 48, 51 to 49, whatever, to 57 to 40 in favor of the Democrats.

00:12:56.160 Yikes.

00:12:57.140 But hold on.

00:12:58.280 This is the lead among young men ages 18 to 30 who say they are most determined to vote.

00:13:06.240 okay, I don't think this really represents a ton of right-wing men who are now going to go out and

00:13:11.260 vote for the Democrats. I think this represents a kind of disillusionment, a pulling back of those

00:13:18.080 young men that we had pulled into the right-wing coalition and got animated to vote. It's a pulling

00:13:21.660 back of those men. They're just not going to go vote. And so there are still some men who vote

00:13:28.380 for Democrats. They're a little bit light in the loafers. They're a little bit, I don't know,

00:13:34.880 they're not the manliest men, but there are men who vote for Democrats. Those guys are animated.

00:13:40.720 Some people who are on the fringes, maybe you're switching over, but it just shows the Democrats

00:13:45.520 are really, really excited about this election. The Republicans are feeling disillusioned.

00:13:50.520 And unfortunately, the Republican messaging has been a little weak here. And unfortunately,

00:13:54.360 some of the underlying problems, not the least of which is the Iran war,

00:13:58.680 that is really shaping, that's really motivating voters as we head into the midterms. Meanwhile,

00:14:04.880 I don't want to say it's just bad news. I'm certainly not a doomer, but I want to give

00:14:10.200 you the truth. I'm not going to flatter you. I'm not going to pander. I'm not going to give you

00:14:13.460 pure Republican propaganda. The Democrats are playing this Iran war issue beautifully. Even

00:14:19.980 the most eccentric, controversial candidates, guys like Abdul El-Sayed, for whom the Iran war

00:14:25.680 should be actually a tougher issue. He was just asked a question about this at an on-campus

00:14:31.340 event. He did a great, great job. We will get to his town hall answer in a second. First,

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00:15:49.020 data. Stop overpaying and make the switch. Abdul El-Sayed, one of the worst Democrat candidates

00:15:54.540 running alternately a jihadi and a communist he doesn't you know depends is he appealing to the 0.89

00:15:59.520 muslims in dearborn michigan is he appealing to the purple-haired white liberal ladies who

00:16:03.900 have graduate degrees which are his actual base he's he's it's a tough campaign because there's

00:16:09.920 this wedge in between his supporters so he was asked about a wedge issue at this town hall event

00:16:15.460 listen to his answer you can imagine our surprise as persians our sadness when we heard you abdul

00:16:24.020 a leaked audio tape of you saying that you didn't want to comment on Supreme

00:16:28.700 Leader Khamenei's death and that people in Dearborn were sad when he died and I

00:16:34.280 just have a simple question Abdul that silence was had a gaping hole in our

00:16:40.100 community and I want to ask if you regret that silence I want to ask if you

00:16:44.180 renounce the people that held vigils that supported this terrorist for all

00:16:50.060 the stuff that he's done. I wanted to ask if you stand unequivocally against the

00:16:54.700 IRGC, against the Islamic Republic of Iran that has killed 50,000 protesters,

00:16:59.540 Abdul. I haven't heard anything from you about the protesters, Abdul. Please. I

00:17:05.120 appreciate your question and thank you. What I will tell you is this. For too

00:17:11.060 long and too often, when we think about our role in the world, we have turned

00:17:17.780 ourselves into the world's policemen and I think what we all want what we all

00:17:23.180 need is more democracy more freedom in the world but also an understanding of

00:17:28.700 what we actually can and should do with respect to that and here's my my my

00:17:35.000 point one can disagree with the governance of a foreign country one can

00:17:39.980 stand in solidarity with freedom and democracy movements but my worry is one

00:17:45.080 one when one decides that we are going to go in and take out the leadership of a foreign government

00:17:53.960 oh i hate this i hate this answer so much because it's a great answer it's a great answer you got

00:18:03.220 to give the devil his due it's an excellent answer he goes on we don't have time to get to the whole

00:18:06.240 answer he goes on he says you know there are sometimes selfish motives in these wars and you

00:18:11.080 You know, sometimes they're really being fought for private interests in oil companies.

00:18:16.340 It's a good answer.

00:18:18.200 It is.

00:18:18.900 You see the setup here from this young man who's obviously an opponent of Abdul El-Sayed.

00:18:24.800 Comes out, thank you, but Abdul, will you please stand with the Persian people against the IRGC?

00:18:31.660 And Abdul El-Sayed goes, hey, yeah, I do.

00:18:34.620 I stand with freedom and democracy movements, but statecraft isn't just about ideology in the abstract.

00:18:40.180 and we need to do what's best for the American people.

00:18:42.720 His answer, Abdul freaking El-Sayed,

00:18:46.240 communist jihadi, his answer is basically, 0.92

00:18:48.980 we just need to look after Americans first.

00:18:52.020 Communist jihadi Abdul El-Sayed says,

00:18:55.280 you know, we actually need prudence in politics

00:18:57.020 because prudence is the paramount political virtue.

00:18:58.760 And we need to make sure that we're behaving

00:19:01.440 in the appropriate way and not making the situation worse

00:19:04.700 and not getting bobbed down in wars in the Middle East.

00:19:06.380 And it's just, it's an excellent answer.

00:19:08.980 I don't know whether he really believes this.

00:19:10.660 I think he'd be a horrible senator. 0.87

00:19:12.120 I hope he loses and his candidacy goes down in flames.

00:19:15.400 His candidacy ain't going to go down in flames with that kind of answer.

00:19:18.760 The Iran war is polling at 33% approval.

00:19:23.220 So then, all right, I've said enough nice things about Abdul al-Sayed.

00:19:26.420 I'll try never to do that again.

00:19:27.640 I hope I don't have to do that again.

00:19:30.720 I want to know the motivation of the questioner here.

00:19:33.920 I don't know if that questioner works for the opponent's political,

00:19:36.800 you know, for Mike Rogers' political campaign.

00:19:38.200 There's no evidence that he does. I don't know if he is actually a Republican. I don't know that he was put up to it. Maybe it's just a totally sincere question. It could be. Whatever it is, though, that question is not helping Mike Rogers. That question is not helping the Republicans.

00:19:54.000 They think it is.

00:19:55.700 I'm sure some genius political strategist, some brilliant Beltway consultant thinks

00:20:00.460 this is a good way to help the Republicans. 0.66

00:20:02.820 Yeah, get Abdul El-Sayed to weigh in on the IRGC and the oppressive Islamic Republic of Iran, 0.90

00:20:09.320 not the brave Persian people.

00:20:13.120 Voters don't care about the brave Persian people.

00:20:15.080 Hate to break it to you.

00:20:16.280 Voters don't want to hear it.

00:20:17.160 voters are not motivated by the kind of slogans that Republicans ran on during the global war

00:20:26.100 on terror 20 years ago. Republicans lost eventually because of those slogans,

00:20:31.240 because people are not that interested. American voters are not that interested

00:20:34.200 in spreading democracy as a global secular crusade. Increasingly, we're interested in

00:20:40.460 a religious crusade, but we're definitely not interested in one of these secular liberal

00:20:44.060 global crusades, the kind of which we saw 20 years ago. Americans are far less concerned

00:20:49.260 with the freedom and democracy of the Iranian protesters than they are with the price of

00:20:55.060 diesel, than they are with focusing on issues that are nearer to home. In other words, I want

00:21:02.360 to clarify this for any GOP consultant or any candidates out there who are listening.

00:21:07.200 You are not going to improve your numbers by trying to pin the Democrats down on the Iran war.

00:21:13.800 Every second that you spend talking about the Iran war, you are losing.

00:21:19.140 The Iran war is simply a losing issue for Republicans.

00:21:23.780 By the way, there is an argument that it was a good thing to do.

00:21:28.340 There is a grand strategic, you know, I cautioned restraint on this most recent Iran war 0.90

00:21:33.920 as a practical tactical matter. 0.97

00:21:36.260 There is an argument that the Iran war could end up being a good thing in the long run. 0.83

00:21:43.320 If the Iran war had gone well from the beginning, it would have been the greatest grand strategic 0.99

00:21:47.760 victory. 0.97

00:21:48.220 So there are strong arguments for the war from the standpoint of geopolitics. 0.95

00:21:52.560 But from the standpoint of electoral politics in the midterms, it is simply a loser.

00:21:58.900 Don't talk about it.

00:22:00.000 The only way that Republicans are going to improve their chances in the midterms is by

00:22:06.500 reducing the importance of the Iran war in people's minds.

00:22:10.620 It's not about trying to win the argument about the Iran war.

00:22:13.320 It's not about talking about the poor beleaguered Persian people.

00:22:17.500 It's not talking about spreading democracy. 1.00

00:22:19.460 It's not talking about the perfidious, evil, awful mullahs. 1.00

00:22:22.120 It's like Ronald Reagan, his old line, when you're explaining, you're losing. 0.99

00:22:29.000 Well, that is especially true when it comes to this issue.

00:22:32.300 And the fact that Democrats have a good answer, Democrats don't need to offer an alternative.

00:22:35.660 They don't need to come out and say, yeah, you know what we want to do? 0.98

00:22:37.720 We want to buy off the mullahs. 1.00

00:22:38.800 You know what we want to do? 0.91

00:22:39.340 We want to improve the political standing of Iran. 0.95

00:22:43.320 yeah, you know, we don't want to defend American interests. Yeah, we want to abandon Saudi Arabia 1.00

00:22:49.120 and the Gulf States and Israel and our other allies. And they don't have to say any of that. 0.95

00:22:53.860 They just have to say diesel price is bad. We would have done it differently. They just have

00:23:00.700 to sit there as armchair quarterbacks and say they would have been way better. That will be

00:23:04.540 more persuasive to people. Not good. Not good. Especially at a time when it looks like Abdul

00:23:10.180 while Saeed is going to win that race. Anything could happen. It's a tight enough race. Anything

00:23:13.480 could happen in the meantime. But if Iran remains the top political issue,

00:23:19.660 it's going to go very well for Abdul. Okay. Now, speaking of candidates,

00:23:24.000 let's look ahead to 2028. It looks like that Republican field, it's already becoming quite

00:23:28.720 populated. On the one hand, the nomination of the vice president seems like a fait accompli.

00:23:35.560 His nearest rival, Marco Rubio, has already endorsed him. President Trump has effectively

00:23:39.640 already endorsed him multiple times. He's the guy. He's the next in line. He's done an excellent job.

00:23:45.060 I think he's the most popular member of the administration, certainly of anyone who could

00:23:48.300 run for president. So you say, okay, it's going to be J.D. Vance, right? Except other people

00:23:52.480 signal they're going to run. The first person to do that was Rand Paul. There's a libertarian lane.

00:23:57.860 Second person to signal that was Senator Cruz. There's a Reaganite lane.

00:24:03.080 Ron DeSantis has kind of signaled that a little bit. There's a lane for him too. His lane would be

00:24:08.280 Trumpism outside the administration. Trumpism without the baggage of, I don't know. I don't

00:24:12.920 know. That's a tougher lane. But he was a very good governor, so he could do it. Well, we have

00:24:16.640 a new one. We have a new candidate. You were not expecting him. I've been expecting him.

00:24:23.160 I am never taken by surprise by the political ambitions of Governor Chris Christie. The

00:24:31.160 The Christi Renaissance, the Chris-a-sants, the croissants, we call them, might be upon us for the restoration of Christendom.

00:24:40.360 Are you ready for Christi 28?

00:24:43.120 We'll get to that in a moment.

00:24:44.120 First, I want to tell you about YAF.

00:24:45.840 There's a lot more to say.

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00:24:51.800 If you're young and you know that you want to make an impact in media or politics, please do not spend the next five years waiting for somebody to give you permission to start.

00:25:01.160 I love YAF. I've worked with YAF for, gosh, almost 10 years at this point. I remember when I was a student and I was able to hear great conservative speakers because of YAF. Well, YAF has the National Journalism Center. Since 1977, NJC has been helping launch young journalists into political media through a 12-week paid full-time internship in Washington, D.C.

00:25:22.900 This is not an internship where you spend three months getting coffee.

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00:26:05.400 He's signaling it.

00:26:06.460 Christy is signaling that he's going to run.

00:26:08.000 Where is it?

00:26:09.620 New Jersey Globe.

00:26:11.440 That's what they call him, by the way.

00:26:12.760 The New Jersey Globe.

00:26:13.560 No, it's not nice.

00:26:14.300 Come on.

00:26:14.560 I don't mean to make jokes about that.

00:26:16.640 I actually do have quite a lot of respect

00:26:18.780 for Christy as a politician

00:26:19.940 because he's just, he's just a political animal. Forget about ideology. Forget about the shots

00:26:25.140 he's taken. He's just, he's a political survivor. He just keeps running. He's tenacious. But anyway,

00:26:30.500 so the New Jersey Globe, as we say, says that Chris Christie is considering a third presidential

00:26:36.640 bid in 2028. The former New Jersey governor says midterm results could determine whether the GOP

00:26:43.780 is ready for a different direction. I'm going to say it now. I know I said it again. I said it in

00:26:49.160 2024, and I was early. My Nolstradamus predictions were early, but I mean it.

00:26:56.180 Chris Christie has a lane. He might need a few lanes, actually, in the race, but no, he does.

00:27:02.600 Chris Christie has a lane, because here's how I see the field shaping up. I think Vance is going

00:27:07.820 to be the nominee, probably. I think basically anyone putting money down today would say that

00:27:13.740 Vance is going to be the nominee. But there are other candidates who are going to run. Our friends

00:27:20.040 over at Calci have all sorts of odds for people who are going to run for the 2028 Republican

00:27:25.460 presidential nomination. Obviously, right up there at the top is J.D. Vance. But you've got some other

00:27:30.860 people. There's still some odds for Rubio. I don't think he's going to run. You've got Thomas Massey.

00:27:35.320 I bet he will run. He and Rand Paul are going to fight for the libertarian lane. Rand Paul is going

00:27:42.460 to run in the more mainstream libertarian lane. Nazi's going to run in the more dissident outsider

00:27:47.960 libertarian lane. Right now, Calci has Christie at 31%. So his odds are spiking. And I think he

00:27:54.800 has a lane because, as I mentioned before, JD, almost certainly the guy. Rubio probably doesn't

00:28:00.200 run. DeSantis probably doesn't run, but could. His lane would be, I'm running as Trumpism,

00:28:07.840 but better. I'm Trump without the baggage, Trump without the tweets, Trump without the

00:28:13.960 eccentricities. That's how he ran in 24. It didn't work because he was literally running

00:28:17.600 against Donald Trump. So he was running as Trump bigger, better, faster, stronger,

00:28:21.640 but all of his natural supporters were anti-Trump. So there was just this intrinsic conflict in the

00:28:27.160 campaign and it didn't work. The same dynamic is going to play out again because Trump is going to

00:28:31.980 be very involved in 2028, whoever the nominee is. Let's say it's J.D. Vance right now. J.D. will be

00:28:38.160 the avatar for Trump, so DeSantis probably gets squeezed. Senator Cruz has signaled that he's

00:28:42.880 going to run. Senator Cruz definitely has a lane. Cruz was the number two guy to Trump in 2016.

00:28:49.200 Senator Cruz is very good at running for president. He has a natural base of support

00:28:53.720 for people who were always a little bit skeptical of Trump and some people who don't like J.D. Vance,

00:28:59.800 whether because they think his foreign policy views are not interventionist enough,

00:29:04.560 whether because they think that his economic views are too interventionist, whatever it is,

00:29:09.580 there is a kind of Reaganite lane for Senator Cruz. I think he's going to dominate that lane.

00:29:16.020 There's always the Rand Paul, sorry, the libertarian lane, which probably is going

00:29:18.860 to be Rand Paul or Thomas Massey or somebody. But then who's running as the actual establishment

00:29:25.360 Republican. Who's running as the actual Mitt Romney character?

00:29:32.340 Chris Christie could own that lane. The only way that it works is if the Trump administration

00:29:37.380 totally implodes. The only way that the Trump administration totally implodes is if Iran goes 0.67

00:29:42.360 off the rails. I don't think Iran's going to go off the rails, but it's going to go on for a long 0.89

00:29:45.860 time. It's a long shot for Christie. But if the Trump administration goes totally off the rails,

00:29:52.580 improbable though it may be, then nobody in Trump's blast radius is going to actually win

00:29:59.620 the presidency. So that means that Senator Cruz is in a much better position than the people

00:30:05.920 currently within the administration or even Ron DeSantis. But Senator Cruz has also worked with

00:30:10.320 Trump very well. It was very big of Cruz, and they ran a brutal primary against each other in 16,

00:30:15.680 and then they have a very good working relationship. So that's good. If the race

00:30:22.100 is calibrated just perfectly, the Trump administration hasn't totally imploded,

00:30:26.320 but the figures in the administration have lost their popularity, Trump's lost a little bit of

00:30:30.680 his touch, and you want the kind of an alternative, but who can kind of work with the Trump world,

00:30:37.200 Senator Cruz has got it. He's got that area totally mapped out. But if the calibration

00:30:42.360 goes totally off kilter, if there's too much weight on one side or the other, and you need

00:30:48.120 a counterweight, like a big, giant counterweight, that's your Chris Christie. Because Christie is

00:30:55.000 totally outside of Trump world. He's totally establishment now. He was an effective governor.

00:31:01.260 He's a political animal. He can take hits. He's tenacious. He'll never give up wanting to be

00:31:06.640 president. I'm not predicting Christie's going to be the nominee or that he's going to be president.

00:31:10.960 I'm just telling you, he's got a lane.

00:31:13.160 The chrysons might be upon us.

00:31:14.600 Okay, speaking of who should run the world,

00:31:17.900 Barack Obama just said something that,

00:31:20.400 oh, it makes you roll your eyes.

00:31:21.560 It makes your cortisol spike.

00:31:23.420 He's going viral for it. 1.00

00:31:24.700 Barack Obama said that if women ran the world

00:31:29.100 for just a couple of years, everything would improve. 0.99

00:31:35.500 Even when I was president, 1.00

00:31:36.700 I sometimes fantasized about if you put women in charge of every government for like two years 0.98

00:31:50.360 and then just kind of saw, all right, how are things going? I have a strong belief 0.87

00:31:59.640 that things would

00:32:02.140 they wouldn't be perfect

00:32:03.540 but they'd be better

00:32:05.280 oh yeah

00:32:08.120 oh yeah Obama 1.00

00:32:10.060 you hear this from every feminist 1.00

00:32:12.380 guy who's trying to 1.00

00:32:14.060 get some feminist chick 0.98

00:32:16.220 to undress you see this 1.00

00:32:17.760 you hear this from every feminist guy 1.00

00:32:20.020 who's trying to flatter some chick 1.00

00:32:21.500 you know I think if we just got the women 1.00

00:32:24.200 to run the world could you imagine how 1.00

00:32:25.940 better things would be I think 1.00

00:32:27.980 We just need to get women to run the world for a couple of years. 1.00

00:32:31.120 Oh, yeah, you think that Barack Obama? 1.00

00:32:33.380 That's funny because I seem to recall your life's work culminating in not letting a woman 0.99

00:32:41.080 be president. 1.00

00:32:42.140 You remember that?

00:32:43.240 I know it's ancient history now. 1.00

00:32:44.620 2008, Hillary was the presumptive nominee for the Democrat Party.

00:32:49.200 And then Barack Obama comes out of nowhere and spends 18 months insisting that she should

00:32:54.460 not be the leader of the free world.

00:32:57.140 Remember that? 1.00

00:32:57.980 So if Barack Obama believes the world would be so much better if women ran it for two years, 0.97

00:33:01.660 why did he do that? Because Barack Obama, like every feminist man, is a liar. He does not really 1.00

00:33:07.960 believe that. And it's particularly absurd and tone deaf to, and actually absurd means tone

00:33:13.840 deaf. It means out of tune. Just a little etymology trivia for the show today. It's especially tone

00:33:19.800 deaf right now because we are coming off of a national episode in which women have looked 1.00

00:33:25.980 crazier than they have looked maybe in the entire history of the world since Lysistrata. 0.97

00:33:31.220 This is coming off of the Lindsay Clancy episode, where you had hundreds of women showing up to the 0.99

00:33:35.880 courthouse, some with their kids, to defend a woman who murdered her kids. You have many,

00:33:42.180 many more women on social media creating videos in solidarity with Lindsay, saying,

00:33:47.920 now we're told that these women, they're really peaceful, they're really smart, 0.99

00:33:51.140 they're really rational they're okay i'm super pro woman i love women it is not true if women 0.59

00:33:57.900 ran the world there would be more wars women hate each other they do they just do come on we know

00:34:04.100 you know ladies we all know it women sometimes are a little bit more emotional than men i think 1.00

00:34:10.900 i think we would all have to admit that's true uh women can be rather violent in different ways 0.69

00:34:18.400 than men. The women have become more violent and more crazy as the result of left-wing social 1.00

00:34:26.080 policies, notably abortion. Yesterday was the beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen. 0.98

00:34:30.680 Fulton Sheen said, he said, can you imagine with the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade,

00:34:34.100 can you imagine what it's going to be like in 10, 15 years, how crazy women are going to be when

00:34:37.960 they have the guilt of murdering their own children on them? So all of that is true. I don't 1.00

00:34:42.680 say this to denigrate women. Men have their problems too. I'm very pro-woman. I believe

00:34:46.860 in the complementarity of the sexes,

00:34:48.700 the spiritual equality of the sexes,

00:34:50.220 but it's just not true.

00:34:51.500 And I guess my biggest takeaway from this,

00:34:53.900 and I rarely hear this brought up

00:34:55.500 in these kinds of debates and commentary.

00:34:59.160 So imagine, you know,

00:35:00.100 men have been running the world forever. 0.96

00:35:01.860 Imagine if women ran, 1.00

00:35:02.920 the men have done such a bad job. 1.00

00:35:04.700 Imagine if women ran the world, 1.00

00:35:06.160 how much better things would be. 1.00

00:35:08.140 Okay, let's look at the issue

00:35:09.400 from the other direction.

00:35:12.720 Why is it the case

00:35:14.100 that men have been running the world forever? 1.00

00:35:17.580 You've had some great female leaders, some very impressive female leaders. Elizabeth I. 1.00

00:35:23.360 I didn't agree with some of what she did, but she's an impressive female leader.

00:35:26.740 Margaret Thatcher. She was a great female leader. Very impressive. It happens, 0.81

00:35:31.900 but it's the exception. Queen Victoria, certainly, but it's the exception. 0.76

00:35:37.980 Why is it? And by the way, women do better as monarchs than they do as prime ministers or 1.00

00:35:41.780 presidents. But why is it the case that men tend to lead in public life? Is it possible? I guess 0.65

00:35:50.540 this, to me, what's interesting about this actually has very little to do with men and women. And it

00:35:53.760 just has to do with the way that liberals and conservatives look at the world. The liberals

00:35:59.180 look at the world and they see how things are. And they say, well, the world sucks. I'm unhappy 1.00

00:36:04.740 with the world. I'm discontent. I want to change the world. So everything that is should be the

00:36:09.560 opposite. It should be opposite day. That's basically liberal politics. And the conservatives

00:36:14.200 look at the world and they say, okay, well, this is the way things are and the way that things

00:36:17.520 basically have always been everywhere. Maybe there is a reason for that. It's just fundamentally

00:36:24.000 two different ways of looking at the world. One from discontent and revolution and resentment on

00:36:29.600 the left, and one from curiosity and humility and interest and interpretation on the right.

00:36:36.440 those are just two different ways of looking at the world. So as a conservative, I look at the

00:36:41.740 fact that men generally run politics. I look at that and I say, well, why is that? I guess that 0.54

00:36:47.760 tells you something about men's nature, about how men work, about how politics works. Men usually 0.93

00:36:56.280 don't stay home to take care of the kids. Men usually run the government. Maybe that tells 1.00

00:37:02.660 you something about it. And then I say, okay, now I want to learn about men and women. I'm going to

00:37:05.320 infer something. I'm going to try to understand that. Obama says, no, no, no. The liberals say,

00:37:09.020 no, no, no. They say, okay, I see how reality works. Let's just do the opposite. Let's burn

00:37:14.420 it all down. By the way, those liberals are about to very likely win a lot of political power. Okay. 0.94

00:37:20.180 So much more I want to get to. Okay. I will get to just one more story. It's actually two stories,

00:37:26.120 but they're kind of related. A substitute teacher just got caught on OnlyFans. A substitute teacher

00:37:33.480 in her kid's school, actually, St. Louis County. She just got caught on OnlyFans. So she was fired

00:37:43.820 as a substitute teacher. I think that's pretty fair, right? Then she was told she can no longer

00:37:48.740 volunteer at the school. And now she's up in arms. This substitute teacher comes out.

00:37:54.480 She says, hold on. Look, I knew that because I produce pornography of myself, I knew this was

00:38:00.980 going to come out. People find this stuff. And so I had a feeling I might lose my job. But hold on,

00:38:05.400 you're telling me that I can no longer even volunteer at my kid's school? She's horrified

00:38:10.600 by this. It's like all of a sudden, she says, I've done something so wrong and sinful that I'm not

00:38:16.000 even allowed to volunteer at this school. I can find another job. I can handle the backlash and

00:38:20.020 the criticism. But when it affects my child or my children, that's where I draw the line.

00:38:24.140 and she really believes this what's so sad is is how tone deaf she is how absurd her reaction is

00:38:32.400 he goes hold on now you're affecting my children no as if her own decisions didn't affect her

00:38:38.380 children as if it's never occurred to her that it might be bad for her children that she made 1.00

00:38:43.500 herself into a public prostitute she prostitutes herself on camera that could never have any effect 1.00

00:38:51.780 on her children. It's the fact that now they won't let her help out in the lunchroom. 0.97

00:38:57.820 That's going to have the negative effect on her children. She never even asks, why is it that I've

00:39:03.380 been fired as a substitute teacher? She's been fired as a substitute teacher because of the 0.92

00:39:06.960 scandal. Because she will be scandalizing little kids, which the gospels, Christ in the gospels 0.87

00:39:12.720 tells us, merits a millstone being tied around your neck, scandalizing little kids in particular.

00:39:17.520 she says well okay but i mean that's fine you don't have to hire me for this job but why can't

00:39:23.360 i keep scandalizing little kids as a volunteer totally tone deaf doesn't doesn't understand it

00:39:30.200 at all and this relates to another story out of ukraine that i mentioned at the top of the show

00:39:33.040 ukraine has been in this war with russia for a dozen years now russia first started to invade

00:39:38.840 the eastern part of ukraine in 2014 and you know the united states has been involved in that proxy

00:39:44.060 war since 2014 too, since the Maidan revolution. But this war has been going on for a long time.

00:39:48.340 And then Russia obviously comes in and formally invades Ukraine about eight years later in the

00:39:54.860 Biden administration. And they're running out of money. And we've given them a ton of money,

00:39:59.640 but they're running out of money now. So they've decided they're thinking about legalizing

00:40:03.260 pornography to pay for their war. I can't help but think this is a bad idea.

00:40:08.720 You see, facing a massive defense budget shortfall, Ukraine has not been able to cash in on the

00:40:12.300 millions of dollars earned by its clandestine adult content industry.

00:40:17.040 This is the point, it's like that old Mitchell and Webb bit, you know, a bit where the Nazis

00:40:20.760 are looking around and say, are we the baddies? Ukraine has this massive pornography industry, 0.68

00:40:26.140 but to Ukraine's credit, it's illegal. So they don't get tax money from it. It's all illegal.

00:40:32.540 There's a black market of OnlyFans and weird sex stuff, but they say, we're not going to profit

00:40:37.460 from this. We should clamp down on this. They basically look the other way, but we're,

00:40:42.080 this is wrong, and we don't want a country of pornography. Well, the war is dragging on. They

00:40:46.880 need some money. There's a lot of money being left on the table. Ukraine has this $27 billion

00:40:52.140 budget gap, and they realize that the porn industry is making a lot of money. So they say,

00:40:56.980 you know what? We're going to legalize porn, and we're going to tax it. So we're going to fund our

00:41:03.360 war by prostituting our women. This seems like probably a bad way to fund a war, certainly if 1.00

00:41:09.920 you're trying to present the war as a righteous moral crusade. I wouldn't, especially if you want

00:41:15.380 God on your side, you know, I wouldn't, I'm not just, I'm not going to speak for God, but that

00:41:18.460 doesn't seem like a good way to do it. So if the war in Ukraine, getting all the way, we were

00:41:23.260 talking about, talking about international wars at the top of the show. If, if the war in Ukraine

00:41:27.840 is this righteous crusade against a revanchist expansionist Russia that is just invading and

00:41:36.800 killing people, civilians, willy-nilly. If that's the war, I can get behind the Ukraine side. If 0.89

00:41:43.120 it's a war for the just defense of a country being invaded by hostile power. But if the war

00:41:50.060 is to defend Ukraine's territorial integrity for the purpose of liberal globalism, the liberal

00:41:56.080 global empire, it actually does make sense that you're going to fund the war on pornography.

00:42:01.820 That does.

00:42:02.340 Pornography is a big part of liberal globalism.

00:42:04.540 Sure.

00:42:04.980 Okay.

00:42:05.520 But now I'm a lot less interested in funding that war.

00:42:08.280 It's so perverse.

00:42:11.140 You read that story, you say, I know.

00:42:12.560 I know how we'll fund the war. 1.00

00:42:13.600 We'll prostitute our women. 0.99

00:42:15.740 I don't know. 1.00

00:42:16.580 Those don't sound like the good guys. 1.00

00:42:19.240 I think Russia are the bad guys.

00:42:22.640 But Ukraine is doing everything they can do to convince me otherwise.

00:42:26.360 Not smart.

00:42:27.080 I hope they withdraw that bill.

00:42:29.360 Now, I'm very excited to get to the mailbag.

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00:43:53.320 I did not pick the comment yesterday. The producers did my favorite comment is from justin lee who says the more I hear about this hitler guy

00:43:59.540 The more I don't like him. Yeah, I was a

00:44:01.140 It's a very wise man who first said that

00:44:03.720 Our mailbag is sponsored by pure talk at pure talk.com slash knolls to get 50 off your first month. Take it away

00:44:08.680 Hey, michael

00:44:11.060 My name is melanie and the question that I want to ask you is about purgatory

00:44:16.200 So i'm a christian. I guess you could say protestant

00:44:20.140 and I have always understood the Bible to mean and say that to be absent from the body is to

00:44:28.200 be present with the Lord. So if you're a Christian and you're saved, when you die,

00:44:33.380 you go to heaven. The opposite is true. If you are not a Christian, you die, you immediately go to 1.00

00:44:38.640 hell. However, I have heard you reference and other Catholic friends that I have reference 0.99

00:44:44.840 purgatory and I'm just curious as to where that is in the Bible and what that what the understanding

00:44:52.400 of purgatory is and where that comes from in the Bible. I do have a little knowledge of the bosom

00:44:58.440 of Abraham and that in the Old Testament but to my knowledge and understanding Christ dying on

00:45:04.180 the cross and making that atonement for our sins removed all of the prior Old Testament sort of

00:45:10.180 laws or understandings around, you know, life after death. So, yeah, if you could just explain

00:45:15.680 that, I'd greatly appreciate it. Yes, very good question. It's not the bosom of Abraham.

00:45:21.500 So, yeah, there's the bosom of Abraham, which is sort of like Hades, you know, it's like before

00:45:25.920 Christ harrows hell, and that's kind of what the bosom of Abraham is talking about. Don't think

00:45:32.280 of purgatory that way. In fact, it's probably helpful not to think of purgatory as a place

00:45:37.160 at all, I think it's more helpful to think of purgatory as a process. Where do we get the idea

00:45:43.180 of purgatory in scripture? We get it from the first John, where John is writing about the

00:45:49.000 distinction between mortal and venial sins. All sins are bad, all sin is unrighteousness,

00:45:55.800 but there are some sins which are not mortal. What does he mean by this? He means there's some

00:46:01.040 sins that they just kill you. They totally sever this relationship of grace and some just are,

00:46:06.040 they're bad, but they're distinct and they're less grave. Okay. We have our Lord talking about

00:46:13.420 the debtor, the debtor who will not get out of the debtor's prison until he pays the very last

00:46:16.880 farthing. We have all sorts of talk throughout the entire Bible about how we will be judged

00:46:22.840 according to our works. We're not saved by our works, so get that out of your mind. But there

00:46:27.600 is some kind of judgment that somehow kind of involves our works. Okay. And then in the book

00:46:32.140 of the apocalypse of St. John, the book of Revelation, we know that nothing imperfect

00:46:36.820 is permitted into heaven. So what does all this mean? It means that if we believe in Christ and

00:46:44.480 we follow him and we take up his yoke, his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and we do what

00:46:48.560 he tells us to do, then we can be saved. Okay, that's really great. But nothing imperfect can

00:46:54.880 enter into heaven. And some sins totally kill us, but some sins don't totally kill us. And so how

00:47:00.780 does that work? At the end of my life, if I'm not perfect, and I haven't yet paid the very last

00:47:06.200 farthing, and I'd have committed sins, which are not mortal, but what happens? St. Paul writes

00:47:12.940 about this in the first letter to the Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 3, verses 11 through 15.

00:47:18.560 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now,

00:47:23.860 if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble,

00:47:27.380 each man's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed with

00:47:33.360 fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done if the work which any man has built

00:47:41.460 on the foundation survives he will receive a reward if any man's work is burned up he will

00:47:48.400 suffer loss though he himself will be saved but only as through fire this is probably the clearest

00:47:56.220 description of purgatory, which again, people get hung up on it because they think it's like

00:48:01.960 some third option. Some people go to heaven, some people go to hell, some people go to purgatory.

00:48:05.620 That's not what it is. If you go to purgatory, you are going to heaven. But I think it's easier,

00:48:13.720 especially for the modern mind, to think of purgatory as a kind of process, this process

00:48:17.720 of testing by fire, of burning up, of a kind of salutary fire. And the fire imagery is exactly

00:48:25.500 what we get from St. Paul. It's not like the fires of hell. It's a salutary kind of fire

00:48:32.480 that makes sense of all of those other verses. We haven't even gone through all of them,

00:48:37.300 but it makes sense of all of the other verses that tell you about what it means for heaven to

00:48:43.940 be absolutely perfect, for you not to be absolutely perfect, and for Christ to save you. Okay, next

00:48:49.560 one. Good morning, Michael. This is Arun. So a couple years ago, before the AI revolution was

00:48:55.400 in full swing. I had a debate about transgenderism with a friend of mine who asked me if I think that

00:49:01.760 an AI can have a gender. And at the time, I told him, well, no, it can simulate a gender,

00:49:08.000 but real gender requires gonads and chromosomes and such. But it looks like at some point in the

00:49:14.480 near future, AI will be able to simulate almost every facet of human consciousness, and perhaps

00:49:21.220 will even have physical attributes that currently are only applicable to humans, perhaps even sex

00:49:29.720 organs. So I am curious, in light of that, how would you answer his question? Thank you as always

00:49:35.740 for your wisdom. Excellent question, Arun. I'm sure people are thinking about this as the robots

00:49:43.300 become more and more human-like. And I've predicted for a long time, once AI pornography

00:49:52.360 and the robots are perfected, the sex robots are made, that will be the extinction of the human

00:49:57.620 race, of course. But will they really truly have a gender? And the answer is no. They won't have

00:50:03.140 a gender because gender sex is an inseparable accident of the individual. So St. Thomas Aquinas 0.95

00:50:11.480 writes about this. It's actually a very helpful way to think during the big transgender debate

00:50:15.100 is what is sex? Is it some part of our nature, of our souls or something? Well, if that were the

00:50:21.140 case, if sex were totally part of our souls and our nature, then men and women would be different

00:50:26.540 species. And it sometimes feels like we are, but we're not actually. So it's not that. Sex and

00:50:32.300 gender are inseparable accidents of the individual. They don't pertain to our nature as such.

00:50:37.800 It's to the individual creature, the natural substance. 0.99

00:50:42.180 So men and women have sex. 0.95

00:50:45.200 The sexual difference is known by its telos, which is making babies. 0.92

00:50:50.840 It is ordered toward making babies. 0.98

00:50:52.860 Not every man, not every woman is fertile or able to have a kid, 0.86

00:50:55.960 but their sexual distinction is ordered toward the making of babies. 0.99

00:51:01.640 That's what it's for.

00:51:02.300 and so it's clear even just from those observations that the ai will not have gender even if even if

00:51:10.120 you do weird stuff with the ai it will not actually have a gender or a sex because sex and gender

00:51:15.680 pertain to natural substances ai is just an artifact it's just a machine ai is just a really

00:51:21.480 really complex version of the leftist years tumbler or the microphone or the candle that's

00:51:27.240 all that it is. It is categorically different than we are because we, human beings, are

00:51:33.420 natural substances. We're hylomorphic. We're bodies, but we're also souls, and the soul is

00:51:40.700 the substantial form of the body. So that's why I'm not just a combination of molecules bopping

00:51:46.860 around in carbon and water, but I am a distinct creature called Michael. That's because my soul

00:51:52.460 gives form to my body when it comes to ai it's just hardware plus software plus gonads apparently

00:51:59.780 is what what you're going to add on to it okay there's so much more to get to i know i'm running

00:52:04.220 late i don't care give me another mailbag over the years i've noticed that the conspiratorial

00:52:09.200 mindset has become way more mainstream amongst your average normal person who's not even

00:52:14.900 necessarily politically uh dialed in it's no longer just people in the early 2000s listening

00:52:21.500 to alex jones but it's your average friend or family member i've also noticed a compounding

00:52:27.960 effect of this where it's not not just the the major events of you know jfk assassination type

00:52:34.000 things or 9-11 that are conspiracies but it's everything every little thing is a is a farce

00:52:39.260 a facade there's a veil over it of some kind being put on by big brother i'm obviously the

00:52:46.580 internet social media plays a huge part in this but i was just wondering if you've noticed this

00:52:50.540 amongst your average person and what the reason behind it is it was covet it was covet covet is

00:52:58.420 the reason that the conspiratorial mindset has proliferated and with good reason because all of

00:53:04.580 our officials lied to us they lied to us and they shut down the whole world and they seriously

00:53:10.560 damaged our lives and it was a major trauma that we still haven't dealt with and so that's why

00:53:15.100 i'm not saying it's good i mean you know conservatives have always right-wingers have

00:53:19.660 always gotten a little kick out of conspiracy theories, in part because it's the sign of an

00:53:22.440 active mind, and they're kind of fun. But they can go dark, too. But the reason it totally

00:53:28.040 accelerated is because of COVID. And so that's on the authorities. At a certain point, you have to

00:53:35.200 be skeptical of a lot, a lot of things. People have made that observation, that conspiracies

00:53:40.880 have proliferated because of COVID. The part that I haven't heard them talk about, and this is the

00:53:44.120 second thing that's made the conspiratorial mindset spread, it was transgenderism. It was 0.92

00:53:49.220 transgenderism because all of the big powerful institutions told us something that was obviously 0.54

00:53:55.980 false. And they made us lie about it, and they wielded power to make us go along with something 0.95

00:54:02.640 that was so obviously false that it totally destroyed anyone's belief in the judgment of

00:54:08.920 those people. If they would lie to us so brazenly about something so obvious, they must be lying to

00:54:14.540 about everything. That's why. So it spreads. It's perfectly natural that it's spread. It's bad.

00:54:21.520 You don't want people to be skeptical of literally everything because then you just can't function

00:54:25.600 as a society. But that's where we are. And it's really not primarily the fault of the conspiracy

00:54:32.140 theorists. It's primarily the fault of the authorities who failed them. Okay, I know I'm

00:54:36.220 running late. What did I tell you? I said I don't care. I want more voicemail. Last one.

00:54:41.200 Hey, Michael, I have a question for you. Since one of the main emphases of the Protestant sect of the Christian faith is being able to read and interpret scripture for yourself, does that necessarily lead to the more LGBTQ affirming churches like the Episcopalian Church?

00:55:00.200 yeah oh that was a short question and the answer is yeah i don't want to paint with too broad a

00:55:06.000 brush here because obviously there are a lot of protestant communities that are super anti-lgbt 0.71

00:55:10.500 that are much more orthodox and not crazy libs and everything but yeah that is a feature of

00:55:16.500 protestantism itself there are a billion things to criticize the functioning of the catholic church

00:55:22.140 for there are a billion things i've made some of those observations myself uh but you'll notice

00:55:28.420 on the on the big issues on the big real important stuff the catholics are basically the only ones

00:55:36.380 that have held out even despite all sorts of pernicious bishops over the years and all we've

00:55:43.340 had bad popes over the years but despite that even at the height of the cultural revolution

00:55:48.180 when all the mainline denominations are embracing the sexual revolution you get a fairly liberal

00:55:54.420 pope pope paul vii he comes out with humana vitae he says nope no gay stuff no contraception 0.55

00:56:00.560 no abortion none of that we are holding to the perennial teaching and and that might be a miracle

00:56:07.720 that could be viewed as a miracle itself that the church did not cave in the 1960s and 70s to that

00:56:12.440 stuff but uh beyond that without you know kind of going down a checklist of oh the protestants did

00:56:19.340 this right and the catholics did this right and that yes i think to your intuition it this is

00:56:23.460 just a feature of Protestantism. Protestantism as such, with all the denominations, is what

00:56:29.420 distinguishes Protestantism from Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and to some degree Anglicanism,

00:56:36.200 even though Anglicanism is Protestant. What distinguishes it is that it exalts private

00:56:40.860 judgment above any other interpretive principle. So it says, go out there and figure out what the

00:56:47.400 religion means yourself. The ultimate authority is your own conscience. You might say that you

00:56:52.740 submit to the authority of some pastor or some preacher or something. But if you don't like what

00:56:56.140 he says, you're just going to go find another church. And the Catholics don't have that. 0.99

00:57:01.480 We owe some obedience of our intellect and will to our priests and our bishops and ultimately to 0.95

00:57:08.460 the supreme pontiff. And so Protestants don't like that. And I kind of get it. But that is

00:57:15.500 what has permitted the Catholic church to avoid, that and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I think,

00:57:21.120 to avoid some of those pitfalls is the church says, yeah, you can have individual conscience.

00:57:27.140 You definitely should read the Bible. You should go to adoration and to mass and say all your

00:57:31.880 prayers and think and reading and all the great doctors of the church. Yeah, you can disagree

00:57:35.560 with each other. Yeah. But ultimately, we are claiming an authority that is above private

00:57:43.640 conscience. We are claiming an authority that is above individual interpretation.

00:57:47.540 We believe that we possess the deposit of faith,

00:57:50.260 the magisterium of the church.

00:57:51.840 We believe that Christ gave to Peter

00:57:54.340 the keys to the kingdom of heaven,

00:57:55.880 a kind of authority that we believe,

00:57:58.160 I think with good reason,

00:57:59.440 has been present since the earliest days of the church.

00:58:01.780 And so, no, you don't get to just believe

00:58:04.140 whatever you want.

00:58:05.080 And so there are gonna be plenty of Protestant communities

00:58:07.280 that say, well, no, we've stuck to our guns

00:58:09.000 on all sorts of good stuff.

00:58:10.120 He said, that's great, good for you.

00:58:11.160 That's awesome, I love that.

00:58:12.300 But then you're gonna get James Tallarico's pastorist

00:58:15.100 who says, actually, I don't think that Jesus even existed. And I don't believe in the virgin birth.

00:58:20.420 And I think everyone should be a lesbian. And you're going to get that. And there's not any 1.00

00:58:24.720 mechanism. There's no ecclesiastical system or authority that is going to be able to tell her

00:58:30.720 she's wrong. Okay. It's Fake Headline Friday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want

00:58:34.980 to miss it. I have a special guest on. I have a buddy of mine who's coming on this show today.

00:58:38.620 I'm not going to tell you who it is. It's Nick Freitas. Become a member. Use code

00:58:42.720 and also check out for two months free on all annual plans.

00:58:57.320 Every significant movement in history has started with protesting. 1.00

00:59:00.080 You're a traitor! 1.00

00:59:00.840 Uncle Tom! 1.00

00:59:01.580 This is our generation's civil rights.

00:59:03.320 I have no idea what the protest is about.

00:59:05.300 Bingo!

00:59:05.860 Given the current climate,

00:59:07.340 you should have figured as polarizing as Clay Saunders

00:59:09.960 can even be allowed on campus.

00:59:11.260 Can you hear me okay?

00:59:12.120 Hey, Saunders is a close personal friend of Chancellor Friedman.

00:59:14.880 This is a decision I cannot find. 1.00

00:59:16.520 Islam will conquer the West. 1.00

00:59:19.720 Assalamu Alaikum. 1.00

00:59:23.120 Are we paying attention?

00:59:25.320 They've taken over the building, they're downstairs and they've blocked the doors.

00:59:29.720 I seek forgiveness from Allah the Almighty.

00:59:33.920 We cannot run and hide.

00:59:35.720 Mohammed is the messenger of God.

00:59:39.120 There is no God but Allah. 1.00

00:59:41.520 What do you say we turn those SOBs into a fine red mist? 1.00

00:59:48.040 As we move, one man will cover while the other guys go. 1.00

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The Michael Knowles Show - September 25, 2026

Ep. 2068 - Obama Claims Women Could Fix The World In ＂2 Years＂

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