Ep. 736 - The Mark Of The Fleeced
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
172.26004
Summary
Vaccination passports are a controversial issue that has been debated for years, and now it s up to the states to decide whether or not they should be required to carry them. Is this a good or bad thing? And who should have access to them?
Transcript
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We have some good news from Dr. Fauci. I never thought I would say that, but Dr. Fauci just
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appeared on my pal Alex Michelson's show, and Fauci said that he does not predict
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that there will be a vaccine mandate. Take a listen.
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The fact is, from the standpoint of practicality, there is merit to that.
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There are a lot of concerns and objections about discrimination for people who don't
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or Big Brother looking over you and giving you the right or not to enter into a theater or into a
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restaurant. It's a very controversial issue right now. But you can understand that there may be
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individual independent entities, not at the level of the federal government, but there may be some
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school districts that would say, unless you're vaccinated, you can't get in, or some places of
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employment that say, unless you're vaccinated, you can't come in. That's apart from a broad umbrella
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concern or control by the federal government. I don't think you're going to see a federal
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government mandate about that. Now, that is at least something of a good prediction.
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The problem for anyone familiar with Dr. Fauci's predictions is they've all turned out to be wrong,
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so that's not great. But even taking the answer for what it is, what that means is that now this
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issue of vaccine passports is up to the governors. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday from Seeker Finder, who says,
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up his Holy Week service and said, get out, get out, you Gestapo, you Nazis, get out. It was just
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absolutely fabulous. That's right. You know, the good shepherd is very nurturing and loving and wonderful.
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4hims.com slash Michael. The issue of the vaccine passports is up to the governors. The good news on
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this is more and more Republican governors seem poised to come out strongly against the vaccine
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passports. Governor Tate Reeves in Mississippi is now joining Ron DeSantis in saying, no, we oppose
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these COVID passports. Do you think private businesses should be banned from requiring vaccine
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passports? What's your take on this? Well, I don't support vaccine passports. I don't think it's
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necessary and I don't think it's a good thing to do in America. Great answer. And Tate Reeves has
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been really good on this issue. He's a good governor generally, but he's been really good on this
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issue in particular. But we're going to have to get more specific here because Jake Tapper's
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question was very specific. He said, do you support the right of businesses, of private organizations
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to require these vaccine passports? And Governor Reeves gives this broader answer. He says, I do not
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support vaccine passports. So certainly that would seem to imply that he doesn't support them at the
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state level. You know, the state mandating that to access certain government services,
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you need to show a vaccine passport. And it would, I think he is saying that he does not support
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private businesses doing that either, but it is a slightly different question. And I think that
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we're going to need to get real, real specific on this because I could see all the Republicans being
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against the state mandate, but I could see some squishes going in for allowing private businesses to
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require it, but we cannot permit that folks. If it is the government telling me that I've got to show
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my medical history and get injected with this thing in order to participate in civil life, or it's a
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private business doing that, I don't really care. I just don't want to do it. I will not support any
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Republican in the 2024 presidential primary who does not vigorously oppose the vaccine passports.
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I think this is a good rule. The good news for people in the Senate and people in Congress is
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it seems to be a non-issue for them. If Fauci is right, then this is not going to be a federal matter.
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But this is going to affect governors because governors are going to have a whole lot of say
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over whether or not they are going, and people in state houses and state senators and that sort of
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thing. Presumably state senators and state assemblymen are not going to be running for president,
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but the governors really might. This is a total line in the sand issue. There are many reasons why
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we should all oppose these vaccine passports. And some parts of the right are going to gravitate
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towards certain reasons. Some parts of the right are going to gravitate toward others. So you can,
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you can imagine the real, you know, get off my lawn libertarian right. They're going to oppose these
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vaccine passports as a matter of liberties. You don't get to do this folks. You don't get to demand,
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not only that I get injected with the shot, but that I prove that to you everywhere I go just to
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go buy a cup of coffee. For the maybe less libertarian, more traditional conservatives on
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the right, this is a complete upending of our political order. This is an upending of our political
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institutions, our traditions, our American way of life. For the religious right, there are ethical
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questions about these vaccines. Which vaccines were developed using old stem cell lines from aborted
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babies. Lots of bioethical questions here. I don't care which argument you gravitate toward.
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This is the issue. Ron DeSantis down in Florida has been, I think, the leader as far as governors go
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on this issue. And it's why the left is going after him. Did you see this yesterday? I hope you saw this.
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I know that very few people who listen to this show watch 60 minutes because very few people generally
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watch 60 minutes anymore. And hopefully it'll be fewer and fewer moving into the future.
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60 minutes, total network news hit piece on Ron DeSantis. 60 minutes played an exchange between one
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of their reporters and Ron DeSantis on an issue, not really, only tangentially related to the vaccines.
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It's about an allegation of corruption and whether a supermarket chain donated some money
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to Ron DeSantis in Florida. And so DeSantis gave them a special contract on the vaccine. It's
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total BS. It's completely bogus, which we'll get to in a minute. But just listen to the exchange
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as 60 Minutes presents it. We wanted to ask Governor DeSantis about the deal,
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but he declined our request for an interview. We caught up with them south of Orlando.
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Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign, and then you rewarded them with the
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exclusive rights to distribute the vaccination in Palm Beach.
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That's a fake narrative. I met with the county mayor. I met with the administrator. I met with
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all the folks at Palm Beach County. And I said, here's some of the options. We can do more drive
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through sites. We can give more to hospitals. We can do the Publix. And they said, we think that
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would be the easiest thing for our residents. But Melissa McKinlay, the county commissioner in
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the Glades, told us the governor never met with her about the Publix deal.
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The criticism is that it's pay to play, Governor.
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It's wrong. It's wrong. It's a fake narrative. I just disabused you of the narrative. And you don't
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care about the facts because obviously I laid it out for you in a way that is irrefutable.
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Isn't there the nearest Publix of the Glades is 30 miles away?
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No, no, no. You're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. Yes, sir.
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Okay. Wow. If you were to listen to that exchange, I think you would say,
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gosh, maybe he, there is some corruption here because he didn't lay it out in a way that's
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irrefutable. He didn't take her through anything. He just made this claim that he met with some mayors
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and county people and then some other county person said they didn't. And then, and there were some
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really good shots of the reporter smirking at DeSantis and saying, this is corruption. Okay. Right.
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That's interesting. Thankfully, we have the full footage of that exchange, which went nothing like
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what that clip would suggest. I'm not even going to play the whole exchange. Just take a listen to
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the first part of the exchange and compare it to what 60 minutes aired.
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So first of all, what you're saying is wrong. That's, that's a fake narrative. So first of all,
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when we did the, the first pharmacies that had it were CVS and Walgreens and they had a long-term
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care mission. So they were going to the long-term care facilities. They got vaccine in the middle of
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December. They started going to the long-term care facilities the third week of December to do LTCs.
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So that was their mission. That was very important. And we trusted them to do that as we got into
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January, we wanted to expand the distribution points. So yes, you had the counties, you had
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some drive-through sites, you had hospitals that were doing a lot, but we wanted to get it into
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communities more. So we reached out to other retail pharmacies, Publix, Walmart, obviously CVS
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and Walgreens had to finish that mission. And we said, we're going to, we're going to use you as soon as
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you're done with that for the Publix. They were the first one to raise their hand, say they were ready
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to go. And you know what? We did it on a trial basis. I had three counties. I actually showed
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up that weekend and talked to seniors across four different Publix. This goes on for like a minute
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and a half. In addition to what we've already heard, where he's laying out step-by-step exactly
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the plan saying, no, we didn't give this exclusive contract to Publix. We started at CVS. We start,
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then went to Walgreens. Then we opened it up. Publix was the first one that could do it. We did polls of
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the senior citizens. We found out most senior citizens live within a mile of Publix. It's
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proven very popular. It's why we're leading the country. And these guys, it goes on and on and
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on and on. The reporter has nothing. And then she keeps coming back and saying, well, but this is
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bad. And he says, okay, well, I've disabused you of this narrative. I guess you're not paying
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attention, but I've just laid it out for you. Absolutely. People should lose their jobs over
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what just happened in 60 minutes. Whatever producer or reporter quote unquote, put that thing
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together should be fired and should never work in reporting again. If they want to become leftist
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commentators on MSNBC, that would be more honest, more understandable. But what they just, what they
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just did on 60 minutes is lie. They committed fraud on 60 minutes. Why are they doing this to DeSantis?
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They're doing it to him because they're afraid of him because they think that he would be a formidable
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presidential candidate in 2024. It's the same reason they're going after Cruz for Cancun.
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I, the whole time, I, maybe I mentioned this at the time when, when the Cruz and Cancun story was
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the biggest story in the world. Why, why was everybody going after Cruz all the time? Because
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the left felt that he would be a formidable candidate in 2024. They're doing it to DeSantis because he also
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would be a formidable candidate in 2024. They only go after people that they're afraid of. You're not
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going to see 60 minute hit pieces on John Kasich. Frankly, if, if the left is not going after a
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Republican politician, I am skeptical of that politician. I'm probably not going to support
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that politician. And I think, uh, you know, I, I don't anticipate that there's going to be some
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big expose on Mitt Romney. Let's put it that way. Okay. DeSantis right now is one of the big targets.
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There are two or three big targets on the right. He's one of them. And he's stating with clarity,
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this is not just about government mandates on the vaccine. This extends to private businesses
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terms. That's texting Michael to 64,000. I want to be crystal clear on this vaccine issue because I
00:14:39.320
think that the vaccine passports, it's an actual line in the sand issue. I think that Republicans
00:14:44.280
who do not oppose this vigorously should not be taken seriously for 2024. This is going to come down
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to the state houses. So I'm really talking about the governors here. This is, first of all,
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at the bare minimum, these, these guys need to come out against state mandated vaccine passports,
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but they need to go further than that. Actually, they need to ban businesses from demanding vaccine
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passports. But Michael, that's an incursion into the free market. Not really. It's just a basic
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defense of justice and our constitutional order and our rights. DeSantis has been good on this. He's
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stated with some clarity that he would not tolerate companies requiring these vaccine passports.
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He says that would seem to extend beyond a private issue. And of course, this is the case.
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Of course, this is the case. You know, at least for the past 20 years or so,
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Republicans and conservatives have deluded ourselves and pretended that there's this
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perfectly neat distinction between the public sphere and the private sphere, you know, the private
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sector and the, the politics and the culture that there's this perfectly neat separation, but there
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isn't obviously. Politics in its most basic sense, old uncle Aristotle taught us this,
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is how we all get along together. It's what we all do together. And in our political tradition,
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we carve out broad spaces where the government is not, or at least the federal government is not
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really expected to intrude, even though from the very beginning of our country, local government has
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had a huge say about supposedly private matters. But someone wrote into me and I thought it was a good
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question. I said, Michael, how can conservatives support legislation that would prevent businesses
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from demanding the vaccine passport, but also defend the baker in Colorado who doesn't want to
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bake a cake for a gay wedding? Again, you know, I don't even know what terms we're supposed to use
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anymore. There is not a contradiction here. The reason that there is not a country, because on the
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surface, it seems like there's a contradiction. We're, we're saying in the one case in Colorado
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that businesses should be able to do whatever they want, but we're saying in the case of vaccine
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passports, businesses should not be able to do whatever they want. Well, how is this not a
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contradiction? Because politics has both form and substance. So there is the question, the really
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abstract question, should businesses be able to do whatever they want? And then there's the
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substantive question. What are the businesses doing? In the case of the baker in Colorado,
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you have an, an artist, right? A cake artist, a man who is using his craft and his skill.
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And the question is, can you or should you compel him to do something that violates his conscience
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and specifically that violates the traditional views of Christianity? And I think the answer to that
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really specific question is, no, you shouldn't, you shouldn't force a Christian baker to adopt the
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religion of wokeism, not just because of the abstract principle, but also because Christianity
00:17:39.420
is better than wokeism. And it's more in keeping with our actual political traditions in this country.
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With regard to the vaccine passports and private businesses, the question is, should businesses be
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permitted to demand your medical history, therefore to demand that you show your medical history to
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big tech companies who are developing these, these vaccine passports, should they require,
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should the businesses be able to require you to get this very hastily developed vaccine that was
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developed in the last six months or rather within six months, within the last year, you know, a vaccine
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that has not by very definition doesn't, has not been tested for long-term consequences. Should,
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on that particular substantive question, should the businesses be able to do that? And I think, no.
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But Michael, if you start talking about the substance, if you start talking about the actual
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practical issues at play, why then you're no better than the left? No, I don't think so. I think
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conservatives are really good at defending very abstract principles over the last 20 years.
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Sometimes they're defending principles they shouldn't even defend, by the way. But they've gotten really
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bad at defending anything practical, anything prudent, anything, oh, I don't know, conservative.
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They're not, they're not really good at that. DeSantis has this right. A lot of other people have
00:19:00.340
this wrong. Where are the other governors on this? By, by my last count, there were 27 Republican
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governors right now. So far, I've seen DeSantis and Tate Reeves come out pretty strongly against this
00:19:14.200
stuff. Where are the other ones? I want to hear from all the other Republican governors.
00:19:20.740
I just saw the, the governor of Arkansas, this guy, Asa Hutchinson, he just vetoed a transgender
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bill. It's a, there was, there was a bill that was passed through the Arkansas state house
00:19:35.540
that said that little children should not be pumped full of cross-sex hormones.
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And Asa Hutchinson, the Republican, apparently Republican governor of Arkansas,
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vetoed the bill. This guy, Asa Hutchinson thinks that little kids should be pumped full of cross-sex
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hormones. Something tells me Governor Hutchinson could benefit from the attachment of a few biological
00:20:00.380
structures that he apparently lacks. But while we're waiting for that medical procedure to take
00:20:06.660
place, he should be removed from office. He has no judgment. The reason that issue in particular
00:20:13.060
matters is because if, if you do not, it ties in with the, the question of substance, actual moral
00:20:19.400
arguments that we're talking about. If you do not possess the judgment to know that you shouldn't pump
00:20:24.860
little boys full of cross-sex hormones to, to make them look a little bit more like little girls
00:20:29.380
before they go through puberty. If you, if you don't have that judgment, you should not hold any
00:20:34.820
public office. You should not be elected dog catcher. And I think that Republicans should move
00:20:40.500
as swiftly as they possibly can to remove Asa Hutchinson from office in Arkansas.
00:20:48.680
Absolutely ridiculous stuff because they're all living in fear. They're living in fear of being called
00:20:55.860
a bigot or a thisist or a thatist. What Hutchinson said was, he said, this, this transgender bill,
00:21:00.420
this is just a product of the culture war. So what? So you're going to concede the culture war?
00:21:05.380
Cool. Thanks, buddy. Good grief. I, you know, I hope that President Trump lives a long life,
00:21:12.620
very long life. And then I hope when he goes to his eternal reward, I hope that he donates his body
00:21:16.620
to science and his spine to Republicans because it's pathetic what some of them are doing.
00:21:22.380
Speaking of instilling fear, Black Lives Matter is threatening to burn down the country again
00:21:29.040
if they don't get the outcome they want in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the cop who was involved
00:21:33.980
in the death of George Floyd. There is a woman I've never heard of her, but apparently she's popular
00:21:38.620
on social media, Maya Eccles. She's a model and a Black Lives Matter activist. And she just took to
00:21:45.960
TikTok and threatened to burn some stuff down if they don't get the outcome they want in the trial.
00:21:51.740
If George Floyd's murderer is not sentenced, just know that all hell is going to break loose.
00:22:06.080
That woman is a terrorist. I'm not using hyperbolic language here. Terrorism is the targeting of
00:22:15.380
civilians to achieve political purposes. So I guess she didn't specify which buildings would be on
00:22:21.720
fire. But if you can infer from the way that BLM torched the country last summer, if you can infer
00:22:27.880
from that and deduce that there would be private buildings, private businesses on fire as well as
00:22:33.060
government buildings, then what she is doing is making a criminal threat to burn places down if we
00:22:42.400
do not subvert our justice system to give her what she wants. Why are we tolerating what is the most
00:22:50.180
basic definition of terrorism? Why? Why are people going along with this? Why is Mitt Romney
00:22:56.260
marching with BLM terrorists? Why is he doing that? Why are these, I never want to hear another word
00:23:06.280
about the Capitol Hill riot so long as people like this lady can get away with making criminal threats.
00:23:14.760
And in the case of BLM and Antifa actually carrying out the threats as they did for six months in the
00:23:20.720
United States. I don't want to hear a peep about it, about the Trumpist insurrectionists. I just,
00:23:27.840
I just don't want to hear it because it's so disingenuous. It is in such bad faith. And it's not just some
00:23:35.240
lady mouthing off on TikTok. I mean, she identifies herself with the organization, right? She identifies
00:23:41.120
yourself with the BLM movement. But it's not just her. It's not just some mouthy millennial
00:23:46.240
making idle threats. This sort of thing is supported by the most powerful people in the
00:23:54.460
Democrat liberal establishment. How many Democrat politicians voiced their support for BLM last
00:24:01.680
summer as they burned down the country? Kamala Harris, the sitting vice president,
00:24:06.080
raised money to bail these people out of jail. She wasn't bailing the peaceful protesters out of
00:24:12.420
jail. The peaceful protesters weren't in jail. The arsonists and the criminals were in jail and
00:24:18.360
she raised money to bail them out. And then she went on national television and said, this shouldn't
00:24:22.820
stop. This should keep going. Joe Biden's staff members raised money for these criminals.
00:24:29.360
And yet we are supposed to clutch our pearls over Donald Trump's tweets or something. Give me a
00:24:38.520
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blade casters, xchairknolls.com. Also, speaking of the Biden administration's corruption and radicalism,
00:26:01.720
make sure you check out Ben's show. Ben will be talking about Joe Biden's new world order.
00:26:06.020
And of course, then after that, we will have the Candace Owens show. Candace's show streams on
00:26:11.260
Fridays at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central at dailywire.com. You can get the audio podcast
00:26:15.600
though, Candace, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you need some
00:26:20.980
Candace Owens in your podcast feed, look no further. Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify
00:26:26.040
and subscribe today. Be sure to leave a five-star review if you like what you hear. Check it out.
00:26:36.020
The mainstream left defends, embraces, sometimes directly joins the fringes of the far left.
00:26:55.360
And then they run away from responsibility when they get called out for it. So Jen Psaki just had
00:27:00.660
to do some damage control for Joe Biden. Joe Biden came out and he effectively called for a boycott
00:27:08.020
of Georgia for the Major League Baseball for the All-Star game. Now the All-Star game is leaving
00:27:12.640
Georgia and they're taking away lots and lots of money and economic opportunity. And now people
00:27:17.740
are very upset about this, including Democrat politicians in Georgia. So Jen Psaki was asked
00:27:22.320
about this, say, gosh, you know, does Joe Biden regret what he did? And she just denied his statement
00:27:29.820
So he was not dictating for what Major League Baseball should do, that they should, dictating
00:27:36.600
they should move the All-Star game. That was their decision. They made that decision. And as he stated
00:27:41.940
earlier, he certainly supports that. We've not asked corporations to take specific actions. That's not
00:27:47.460
our focus here. Our focus is on continuing to convey that it's important that voting is easier,
00:27:54.860
not harder. That when there are laws in place that make it harder, we certainly express an opposition
00:27:59.980
to those laws. And we all believe private sector entities are going to make decisions. And that's
00:28:05.120
their role to do so. What I'm conveying, what I can speak to is what our focus is on and what our role
00:28:12.060
is here from the White House and what his energies will be directed toward.
00:28:15.140
So Joe Biden never said that that MLB should pull the All-Star game. He never said it. OK,
00:28:20.520
that's a conspiracy theory that he would have said that. Stop it. Stop accusing him of saying
00:28:27.940
So, Mr. President, what do you think about the possibility that baseball decides to move their
00:28:31.840
All-Star game out of Atlanta because of this political issue?
00:28:35.680
I think today's professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support
00:28:45.640
them doing that. People look to them. They're leaders. Look at what's happened with the NBA as
00:28:51.920
well. Look at what's happened across the board. The very people who are victimized the most are the
00:28:58.240
people who are the leaders in these in these various sports. And it's just not right. This
00:29:03.720
is Jim Crow on steroids, what they're doing in Georgia. Mr. President, would you support the MLB
00:29:10.460
pulling their All-Star game out of Georgia? I would strongly support them doing that. I would strongly
00:29:15.960
support them doing that. He never said that. No, according to Jen Psaki. Joe Biden never said what
00:29:22.500
we just heard him say. And why would he support them doing that? Because he says that the new Georgia
00:29:27.340
law is Jim Crow on steroids. Now, there's an irony here because one of the places that MLB could move
00:29:34.840
the All-Star game would be New York, except there's a little snag here. New York has more restrictive
00:29:39.600
voter laws than Georgia, even after the Georgia awful Jim Crow law. So if, if Georgia is Jim Crow,
00:29:48.680
what does that make New York? If Republican Georgia is Jim Crow on steroids, then New York must be the
00:29:54.660
antebellum South, but it's run by Democrats. How weird is that? I guess like the antebellum South
00:29:59.080
was run by Democrats. Isn't Georgia now sort of run, right? It's there, there's a Republican governor,
00:30:04.160
but there's two Democratic senators. Not the first time that a Biden has tried to avoid
00:30:11.980
responsibilities, uh, responsibility for his mistakes. There's a, an even clearer example than
00:30:19.520
old Joe. That would be Hunter, Hunter Biden, who everyone's talking about his sex scandals right now,
00:30:25.160
because he's got lots and lots of sex scandals and they're gross. And some of them are probably
00:30:29.240
criminal and lots of them are just immoral and creepy and weird. Uh, but he's got lots of criminal
00:30:36.320
issues to the drugs and the possible materials on his laptop. Anyway, the real scandal is that Joe,
00:30:45.380
Joe Biden's son Hunter leveraged his father's name to get oodles and oodles of money out of foreign
00:30:51.780
governments that Joe Biden was making policy on at the time. Ukraine, China, he was leveraging that
00:31:00.120
name to get very lucrative deals. And in some cases he succeeded. So because Joe Biden's son
00:31:06.940
is in legal trouble, he's being asked if, is he going to cop a plea deal? Is he going to try to get
00:31:13.740
out of this federal investigation that he's under? And Hunter Biden says, absolutely not. He's not
00:31:17.520
going to cop a plea deal. He's going to maintain his innocence because he is 100% certain that the DOJ
00:31:23.140
will clear him. There's a current Department of Justice investigation into your finances.
00:31:28.020
Yep. What is it about? Can you say anything more? I can't, but I can say this is I'm cooperating
00:31:33.700
completely and I am absolutely certain, 100% certain that at the end of the investigation
00:31:40.200
that I will be cleared of any wrongdoing. You're 100% certain you'll be cleared. I'm 100%
00:31:44.900
certain of it. And all I can do is cooperate and, and trust in the process. Of course he's 100%
00:31:52.720
certain. I'm just about 100% certain too, that he'll be cleared. Not because I don't think that
00:31:56.940
he committed crimes. I think it is pretty clear that Hunter Biden committed crimes,
00:32:01.260
but he's a, he's a Biden. He's a Biden. He's been getting away with this for years.
00:32:06.120
There, there have been reports that other peaks into his private life and his finances
00:32:12.600
and possible crimes by federal agencies have been covered up over the years.
00:32:17.900
He's been getting away with this for so long. Why would that change now? Why would that change
00:32:24.100
now that his father is president? I just don't buy it. The federal agencies have been covering up for
00:32:30.560
the democratic establishment for a long time because in many ways they're captured by the
00:32:34.700
democratic establishment. The other, you know, watching that interview of Hunter Biden, it also
00:32:39.880
reminds me, don't do drugs. Don't you, I know it seems like a simple thing to say. You know, it's,
00:32:47.180
it's like I'm a, I'm an instructor in dare. Don't do drugs kids. Not, not even once. This is your brain
00:32:52.220
on drugs. That interview reminded me of the Charlie Sheen interviews from 10 years ago. Remember when
00:32:57.200
Charlie Sheen came out and he was talking about how he's, he's got tiger blood and he was all crazy
00:33:01.080
and he looked like he was all coked out all the time. That kind of jittery, awkward, it's not the way
00:33:07.480
you want to be. It reminds me that vice warps you, not just the drugs, but all sorts of vice warps
00:33:13.760
you. Hunter Biden is a handsome guy who was born with virtually some sadness in his life, obviously,
00:33:19.920
but basically every privilege that a guy could have. And he turned out rotten. He turned out just
00:33:26.700
about as rotten as it gets because of vice. And now he doesn't look good either. He looks ugly. He has
00:33:34.560
been contorted and corrupted by vice and sin. These are real things. And these are real things
00:33:39.800
that we think about during Holy Week and during Easter. Don't do it. Don't, do not end up like
00:33:45.160
Hunter, even though he's probably going to get away with his crimes as a matter of the law, as a matter
00:33:52.460
of law enforcement. But you can see them on his face. He doesn't look good. He has not aged very well.
00:33:58.980
Why is he going to get away? Why is Hunter going to get away with this stuff? Because there's two sets of
00:34:03.180
rules in this country. There's one set of rules for the in crowd, call them the elites, call them the
00:34:09.500
establishment, call whatever you want. And there's another set of rules for everyday Americans. And
00:34:16.760
that's just that. There's one set of rules for illegal aliens who are being used by the Democrat
00:34:25.660
establishment to gain political power. And there's another set of rules for Americans. So Americans
00:34:32.280
for a year have been told, can't leave your house, can't have Christmas, can't have Thanksgiving,
00:34:36.940
don't see your family, can't have a funeral for your dead loved ones. Now, if you do leave your
00:34:41.760
house, you need to test negative for COVID. You have to show a passport to prove you've gotten the
00:34:46.520
vaccine and the variants and the whatever. But if those same people, they left their house and they
00:34:54.400
immediately went to Mexico and then they ran across the border illegally, they'd be fine.
00:34:57.480
There's an estimated 10% of illegal aliens entering our country right now having COVID.
00:35:05.340
10%, one in 10 of the record number of foreign nationals flooding into our country. And even when
00:35:13.120
they do get caught, very often they're released, have COVID. Many of them are released without even
00:35:18.220
being tested as the DHS secretary admitted a couple of weeks ago. That's fine. That's okay. We don't need
00:35:27.080
to worry about COVID when it's involving people who might give Democrats more political power. We
00:35:32.500
just need to worry about COVID when it's people who might challenge that Democrat hegemony. Two sets
00:35:38.300
of rules. Speaking of dubious public health policies, Rachel Levine. Mr. Dr. Rachel Levine
00:35:49.160
is the assistant secretary of health and human services. Rachel Levine is a man who pretends to
00:35:58.760
be a woman and we are all impelled or compelled to pretend that he is a woman as well. There was a
00:36:05.760
question raised by Rand Paul when Rachel Levine was up for his position that was whether or not Rachel
00:36:13.060
Levine would have any sort of objectivity on the question of giving little boys cross-sex hormones
00:36:19.060
to make them look a little bit more like little girls and fundamentally damage their biology,
00:36:25.280
their biochemistry, because Rachel Levine has this psychological disorder whereby he thinks that
00:36:32.580
he's a woman or he very much wants to be a woman and he pretends to be one. And Rachel Levine said,
00:36:37.020
no, absolutely. I can be totally objective. It's totally fine. Well, now Rachel Levine, who will speak
00:36:41.580
on these matters because he's the assistant secretary of health, is coming out and supporting, I guess,
00:36:47.620
not really all that different from the Republican governor of Arkansas, whatever he's worth.
00:36:53.240
Rachel Levine is now supporting giving the little kids the cross-sex hormones. Here he is describing
00:36:58.240
the reasoning. Many states across the country are considering and passing bills that would outlaw
00:37:05.240
puberty blockers and hormone treatment for transgender youth. I mean, you worked in Pennsylvania
00:37:09.720
as a pediatrician. You understand adolescent medicine well. How do you view these bills?
00:37:15.080
Well, I think that they're very challenging. I think it's really challenging to see state legislators
00:37:20.840
and certain governors targeting LGBTQ people, particularly vulnerable transgender youth. And
00:37:28.720
so I will do everything I can to advocate for transgender and LGBTQ youth, to educate people
00:37:35.700
and states about LGBTQ and specifically transgender issues, and work towards fairness and equality.
00:37:44.080
Well, see, I don't think that this is a political issue at all. This is about fairness and equality
00:37:50.180
and about specifically health equity, which is part of my portfolio.
00:37:55.700
This is not a political issue at all. Wow. How brazen that is. Whether or not we should have laws
00:38:03.400
that allow perverts to pump little kids full of cross-sex hormones, that's not a political issue
00:38:08.120
because it's so obvious that we should. That's, that's what he is implying here. He's saying it's
00:38:15.320
so obvious that we should pump these little kids full of the wrong hormones and delay or prevent their
00:38:23.500
puberty and, and mutilate their bodies. It's so obvious that it shouldn't even be a topic of legitimate
00:38:30.380
political debate. We should just go right ahead and do it. This is the progressive view of politics,
00:38:38.120
which is that everything is political except for politics. Every, your sneakers are political.
00:38:43.220
Your tacos are political. Your baseball is political, but politics is not. That's going to
00:38:48.440
be decided by experts, specifically scientists, specifically in public health. You know, experts
00:38:54.760
who are clearly have a lot of expertise and are so wise, like this man, Rachel Levine, who calls
00:39:02.740
himself a woman, that we need to basically outsource all of our politics to them. And then we don't need
00:39:09.100
these crazy debates anymore. It's just a matter of equity. It should go without saying that in no
00:39:14.980
healthy country would Rachel Levine be the assistant secretary of health. It is obvious. It, it should
00:39:24.340
go without saying now. I think it must go without saying. I'm not sure that I'm allowed to say that.
00:39:28.820
Am I allowed to say that it is objectively disordered that this guy is the assistant secretary of health?
00:39:38.980
Not just because of what he says on this one issue, but more broadly, am I allowed? I don't know that I'm
00:39:43.840
allowed to say that anymore because social media companies have gone full in on this. Everyone seems to be
00:39:52.680
going in. I mean, not the majority. I think the majority of the American people don't think you
00:39:57.000
should pump little Johnny full of hormones to make him look like little Jane. So then how is this being
00:40:02.740
advanced even by some squish Republican governors like the guy in Arkansas? Because as I describe in
00:40:08.600
my book, Speechless Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, the left has engaged in a century-long war of
00:40:13.460
position whereby they don't need to make the arguments individually. It's not like a normal,
00:40:19.440
it's not like a war of maneuver where they just lob their argument and then they're refuted and you
00:40:24.500
go back and forth. They've engaged in a war of position where they attain positions of influence
00:40:29.760
throughout the society, not just in government, but in universities, notably in big, big corporate
00:40:35.380
America, big tech elsewhere. And then gradually, then suddenly they, they exercise that power and
00:40:43.900
the people are overwhelmed. The common sense is overwhelmed. The, the radicals who developed
00:40:50.900
this kind of, call it wokeism or political correctness or whatever it is that prevents
00:40:54.540
me from saying that it's weird that Rachel Levine is the assistant health secretary. The people who
00:41:00.040
developed this described what is going on right now in great detail. They predicted it and they called
00:41:06.360
for it. This is, this is what I outline in my book and, and Republicans and conservatives have been
00:41:11.060
utterly feckless at stopping it because they've fallen for the trap that these very, very clever
00:41:18.040
political thinkers on the left laid out. I do think there is a way out of this, but I suppose you'll
00:41:24.420
have to read my book to figure out what that trick is because it's a little bit of a lengthy argument.
00:41:29.560
We'll, we'll talk about it more on this show, but I do, I do lay it out there. There is some good news
00:41:34.420
though on this big tech censorship front, which is that one of the last great Supreme Court justices,
00:41:41.700
Clarence Thomas has given conservatives at least cause to hope that we might be able to win.
00:41:52.360
Clarence Thomas was just, the court broadly was just presented with some cases regarding big tech.
00:42:01.840
They did not make any big decisions. It's not like there was some big landmark case that just came
00:42:06.380
out on big tech. Actually, the court decided not to hear a couple of cases, but in making those
00:42:12.680
decisions, Clarence Thomas fired a shot across the bow and he, he endorsed a pretty strong
00:42:19.620
conservative argument to stop these big tech companies from controlling our speech and censoring
00:42:25.560
everybody. Thomas compared big tech giants, not to little private companies and you should build your
00:42:30.560
on Twitter if you don't like it. He compared them to common carriers and public accommodations.
00:42:36.620
It's a good argument because they control the flow of speech in our public square and in a republic,
00:42:41.320
speech is politics and politics is speech. He wrote, quote, even if digital platforms are not close
00:42:46.980
enough to common carriers, legislatures might still be able to treat digital platforms like places of
00:42:52.000
public accommodation. Although definitions between jurisdictions vary, a company ordinarily is a place
00:42:57.320
of public accommodation if it provides lodging, food, entertainment, or other services to the public
00:43:01.240
in general. He added that Twitter and other digital platforms bear resemblance to that definition.
00:43:06.720
Now, some conservatives are going to recoil at this argument because Thomas is basically saying, look,
00:43:10.980
if places of public accommodation, stores, hotels, these sorts of things, if they are not permitted
00:43:16.860
to discriminate, then Twitter shouldn't be able to either. Some conservatives are going to say,
00:43:20.700
no, I don't like that argument because actually, you know, in my really abstract view of things and
00:43:26.320
in my ideal world, the places of public accommodation, they would be able to have freedom
00:43:29.980
of association too. And this is not a conservative argument. That's why we need to lose with dignity.
00:43:33.800
Uh-uh. What Thomas is doing is bringing us back to reality. Not the way that our government should work
00:43:41.120
in the wonderful, perfect, abstracted minds of some very esoteric thinkers, some very ethereal thinkers,
00:43:51.980
a better way to put it, but how the government actually works, how the society actually works.
00:43:57.340
And he's saying, look, the left is maybe distorting or perverting our law. They've been doing it for a
00:44:02.380
long time and they've been using it to their advantage. We need to use the law as it currently works,
00:44:07.780
the political regime as it currently exists to our advantage too. We shouldn't just cede the ground
00:44:13.980
to the left. I think he makes a great point. I don't, I don't think Republicans should shill for
00:44:21.360
big corporations as a matter of religious principle anymore. Okay. We should, should reward good,
00:44:28.300
good corporations with our business. And, you know, we should be, we should treat corporations
00:44:32.720
fairly. We shouldn't just wield the power of the state arbitrarily, but we should wield
00:44:37.560
political power when it is just. I'll give you an example of an out of control corporation.
00:44:41.840
Spirit Airlines just punished some travelers, a young family. Now, some people say that traveling
00:44:51.460
on Spirit Airlines is punishment enough. It is in itself punishment. I've traveled on that airline
00:44:56.300
quite a bit because it's pretty cheap. There was a family, young woman, seven months pregnant,
00:45:02.220
got young kids, special needs kid. They're all wearing their masks. The little, the little kid
00:45:09.180
was not wearing a mask. And some crazy stewardess at Spirit Airlines demanded that they leave the
00:45:17.800
I told you, non-compliance, you will have to get off. I didn't want to do this.
00:45:28.680
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not too old. Okay, no problem. Just tell me what we did.
00:45:34.540
Non-compliance with the mask. We're wearing masks. We're wearing a mask.
00:45:44.060
Who's been sitting next to me? Was I wearing a mask?
00:45:46.200
She was wearing it the whole time. Guys, was I wearing a mask all the time?
00:45:48.540
I'm sorry, but the kids won't. I'll make sure you wears it. Everything's going to be fine.
00:45:53.600
be fine. I'll make sure that they're wearing it. I'm sorry, but she has to get up and she
00:46:09.380
has to take her stuff and get her. I'm not going to leave until I understand what I do.
00:46:15.380
Non-compliance, beep, boop, make the baby and the special needs kid wear the mask, beep, boop,
00:46:25.980
beep, boop, non-compliance, get off. No, no, I don't think so. I don't think corporations
00:46:30.260
should be allowed to do that. I don't think that Spirit Airlines is a private company in this very
00:46:35.740
abstract way that we like to think of this firm distinction between public and private. I think
00:46:39.600
there is a lot of government regulation of these airlines and the governments are bringing up the
00:46:47.060
mask mandates, but in some cases the corporations are pushing it more than the government and I just
00:46:51.900
don't care. I care about the practical effect of this. What happened on that airline is unjust,
00:46:58.260
should not be permitted to happen in a just society. Speaking of just societies, last time I flew on
00:47:04.860
Spirit, thankfully, it was some years ago now, was when I first visited LA. Right now, LA is
00:47:12.060
calling for homeless shelters, effectively kind of mental asylums because so many of the people on
00:47:18.840
the street are just complete lunatics, drug addicts and people who have psychological disorders
00:47:24.160
that prohibit them really from living a normal life, especially if they're not taking their meds.
00:47:28.740
So LA City Council member Mike Bonin has proposed sheltering the city's homeless population
00:47:33.940
at local beaches on the Pacific Ocean. Wow, oceanfront property for free? Sounds great.
00:47:40.860
Sign me up. Where do I, where do I, how do I do that? Obviously, the LA residents very upset about
00:47:46.020
this. As a very recent LA resident, I was there. You pay a lot of money to live in LA and most people
00:47:52.800
don't get to live anywhere near the beach. You know, you, if you're lucky, I lived maybe, I don't know,
00:47:56.780
five miles from the beach. That was cool, but I certainly wasn't touching oceanfront property.
00:48:01.340
Now, I guess I just need to become a heroin addict and live on the street and then I get
00:48:05.020
oceanfront property. No, that's a very bad idea. But I'm not opposed to the idea of building
00:48:09.860
homeless shelters or really more specifically mental asylums. This shows us a lot of what we've
00:48:17.040
been talking about, the limits of liberty. We closed down the insane asylums about 50 to 70 years ago in
00:48:23.160
the United States out of a misguided understanding of compassion and liberty. We said it was wrong
00:48:27.820
for these people to be locked up in these places and we need to let them go free. And you know,
00:48:32.960
we've got some medications so they can take that and then they'll go free. But they wouldn't take
00:48:36.700
the medication and letting them go free basically led them to living in squalor on the beach. We have
00:48:41.420
mental asylums in the country. It's just under overpasses. It's just unregulated. It's just in
00:48:46.300
parks and on sidewalks. We still have them. They're just unsafe and ugly and we get to delude ourselves
00:48:53.720
and pretend that we're so compassionate letting these people be free. No, we're committing a grave
00:48:59.400
injustice. We need to have a much more serious understanding of our liberty. Not these bumper
00:49:07.540
sticker slogans that the left is pushing but which the right has indulged as well. We need to get a
00:49:15.860
little more down to earth, a little bit more practical. Stop allowing ourselves to be pushed
00:49:21.160
around. Stop, stop giving more and more power to an increasingly bizarre liberal elite because
00:49:29.620
they're attaining more and more power each day. They're not giving any of it up. And the more we
00:49:34.340
let this go on, the longer we let this go on, the less likely we will be at stopping it. I'm Michael
00:49:39.880
Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show. See you tomorrow.
00:49:41.220
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the Biden administration pushes global corporate tax increases while ramping up spending and taxes
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at home. The White House signals more bullying of corporations to come, and Republicans are
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actually optimistic about 2022. That's today on The Ben Shapiro Show. Give it a listen.
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