Ep. 752 - The Future of the GOP
Episode Stats
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Summary
Liz Cheney is apparently considering running for president in 2024. Is she a Republican? Or is she a liberal ideologue who doesn t care much about the Republican Party? And if she does, why is she running?
Transcript
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It's over. It's over. The 2024 presidential primary campaign has not begun yet,
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but it's already over. Ron DeSantis, go home. Ted Cruz, stay in Texas. Nikki Haley, don't even try.
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We know who the Republican Party nominee is going to be. She's floating the idea of a campaign.
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It was so obvious. Liz Cheney is apparently entertaining a 2024 Republican bid for president.
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It really, really is over. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Donald Trump J on YouTube,
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who says, impeach Joe Biden, save our nation. Oh, my sweet, sweet child. Would that it were
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so simple, but it is not so simple. If you impeached Joe Biden, do you know what would change?
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Absolutely nothing whatsoever because Joe Biden is nobody. Joe Biden is a suit in human shape.
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There's only air blowing in between that suit. There is nothing that he wakes up in the morning.
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He puts his finger in the air. He feels the wind blowing. He's nothing but the avatar of the
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liberal establishment, which has power and which exercises power. And the GOP does not have any
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similar institutional or cultural sway, which is why the GOP today is like herding a bunch of cats.
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It's so split. It is so absolutely out of its mind that Liz Cheney is actually considering running
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for president. Oh, my goodness. Do you remember the olden days when the Republicans used to be
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Liz Cheney, man. That lady is a representative of the very desiccated, shallow, ridiculous liberal
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wing of the party that dominated for, I don't know, the past 20, 30 years or so, but has really
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fallen out of favor, especially in beginning in 2016 and certainly through 2020. Liz Cheney was
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one of the only people on the Republican side to vote to impeach President Trump,
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even though she's in House Republican leadership. Kevin McCarthy, who is the Republican leader in
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the House, has finally come out and said, you know, this Liz Cheney lady, she's really making
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things tough. McCarthy made a good point. He said, there is a responsibility. If you're going to be
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in leadership, leaders eat last. And when leaders try to go out and not work as one team, it creates
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difficulties. When he says leaders eat last, he's referring to a buffet line. You go out there and
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you got to make sure all your guys are fed first. You got to make sure you're taking care of all the
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people in your team. But Liz Cheney doesn't do that because Liz Cheney is not really a Republican.
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And what I mean by that, I'm not just saying she's a rhino, you know, this,
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this very often overused line. What I'm saying is she doesn't care at all about the Republican
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Party. Obviously not. She didn't vote for the Republican for President. I don't think she did
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in 2016. She certainly didn't in 2020. Then she voted to impeach him. Liz Cheney represents her
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wing of the Democratic Party. Call it the neocons. That's the term usually applied to it, meaning people
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who are very, very much supportive of adventurism abroad, American empire abroad, but don't
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particularly care for conservative priorities at home. That group of people made up one third of
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the Reagan coalition. You had the Warhawk former Democrat types in the Reagan coalition. Then you
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had the economic libertarians and then you had the traditional conservatives and the religious right
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in there as well. And for the past 30 years or so after the Cold War, when this coalition's been
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trying to hobble along, the traditional conservatives, they always cave. The religious right always caves.
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We go along, we get in line. We go along with say the libertarians. The libertarians sometimes cave too,
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particularly on foreign policy. But whatever we go along, we get along, we vote, we go with the nominee.
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And then that third group, those Warhawk, ex-liberal, neocon, whatever word you want to use,
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they don't go along. The minute they saw a candidate that they don't like, namely Donald Trump,
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they're out. They become never Trump. They vote for some Egg McMuffin candidate. They in 2020 vote for
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Joe Biden, many of them. Well, then you can't be part of the coalition. You can't, a political
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coalition doesn't work that way. If two constituent parts of it always give up everything for the
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team. And then the third part, the minute they don't get their way, they don't go along with it.
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Then you're just not on the team. And that's the issue with Liz Cheney here. I suspect actually the
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reason Cheney's talking about running in 2024 is because she knows that her chances of surviving a
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primary are very, very low for her congressional race. So she's trying to pretend like she's going
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to run for something else. No, that isn't going to happen. Liz Cheney, who is the past of the GOP,
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raises this question. If she's the past, then what is the future? What is the future of the GOP? And
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we have all, everyone has different sorts of answers. I've got a very basic answer that I think
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is the bare minimum if the GOP is to have a future. If the GOP is going to survive, the GOP needs to be
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the party of doing things, doing things for a long time. I know this sounds very basic, but it's
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something that the Republican party I think needs to hear. For a very long time, the GOP predicated its
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entire identity on not doing things. They took up this sort of pseudo quasi libertarian language of,
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you know, if the government that governs best governs least, you know, the government, anytime
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the government does anything, it's illegitimate. Taxation is theft, whatever, all these kinds of
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slogans. The minute the government passes any laws, that's over-regulation. We got to get rid of that.
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We got to cut taxes. We got to do less and less and less. No. Uh-uh. Never was particularly coherent,
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certainly isn't coherent right now, going up against a liberal establishment that controls
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everything. The GOP vision that will have a future, if it is to have a future, is a GOP that
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does things. Give you an example. The Montana legislature yesterday passed a bill prohibiting
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employers from requiring their employees to get the COVID vaccine as a condition of employment.
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This is a, a regulation that will be passed to create a new requirement for businesses to impede
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what businesses want to do. This is big government, if ever I saw it, and I love it. I'm really glad
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that the government is going in. We, the people, or they, the people of Montana, through their elected
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representatives, using the government to stop businesses from doing what the businesses want to do
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to protect the rights and liberties and traditional way of life of Montanans. That's good. That's,
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I know some people who are used to the libertarian language, they're going to say, I don't know,
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regulation on business that tells them they can't do what they want to do. That's a good thing.
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More regulation in this case means more freedom. More regulation in this case means a greater
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protection of the American way of life. I don't want to get the vaccine. I don't want to get it. I
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don't feel any need to get it. I am young. I think I'm healthy. My odds of facing a serious
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complication from this virus are not zero, but pretty close. I don't want private companies to
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make me get the vaccine. Not even as a condition of employment. I think I'm probably safe at this place,
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but as a condition of travel, as a condition of going into restaurants. And I want to use the
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power of the state to stop companies and the state from making me get the vaccine.
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Big government to protect my liberties. Joe Rogan seems to be on the same page.
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Politics is a very strange thing. Joe Rogan was a Bernie bro. Do you remember that?
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Joe Rogan understands this, whatever this liberal establishment is doing with the coronavirus as the
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excuse, this is no bueno. This is really bad. This is not particularly sensible. Joe Rogan comes out
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and says, if you're young, don't get the vaccine. People say, do you think it's safe to get vaccinated?
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I've said, yeah, I think for the most part, it's safe to get vaccinated. I do. I do. But if you're
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like 21 years old and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I go, no. Are you healthy? Are
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you a healthy person? Like, look, don't do anything stupid, but you should take care of yourself. You
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should, if you're, if you're a healthy person and you're exercising all the time and you're young
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and you're eating well, like, I don't think you need to worry about this.
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But there's a lot of jobs that will tell you, you need to have this.
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People are worried about them doing it for their children. And we talked about this earlier.
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There's that you might have to have your, your children vaccinated. And, you know, I can tell
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you as someone who's both, both my children got the virus, it was nothing. I mean, I hate to say
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that if someone's children died from this, I'm very sorry that that happened. I'm not, I'm not in
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any way diminishing that, but I'm saying the personal experience that my children had with COVID was
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nothing. Preach, my man. Preach. Yes. Right. For most people. I know someone who died ostensibly from
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COVID or complications of COVID. It's a little tricky because we know that there was some
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overreporting here, but a former teacher of mine died ostensibly from COVID. He was 97 and
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still sad, but there is a difference between a 97 year old and a 30 year old and a 21 year old.
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And what Joe Rogan is saying is, Hey, if you're really young, you don't need to get this vaccine.
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You don't. And I know I'm not questioning the safety of the vaccine. Please. Hey YouTube,
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I'm not questioning the safety of the vaccine. Okay, please let me, please don't cast me into
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the outer darkness where there's wailing and gnashing of teeth. But what I am saying is this.
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This was a vaccine that was developed extraordinarily quickly.
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There have by definition been no long-term studies of this.
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Why would I get it if I don't need it? I don't get a flu shot either because I'm not afraid of the
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flu. I actually, I could suffer some long, it's not a 0% risk that I suffer some serious consequence
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from this virus or from the flu. I'm just looking at my risk here. And the fact that the liberal
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establishment is so dead set on making me get this thing and forcing my hand and not letting me travel
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and not letting me get on an airplane and not letting me go to work and not letting me interact
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in polite society if I don't get this thing is the chief reason why I'm not interested in getting it.
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It's weird. It reminds me of Antonin Scalia's dissent in Obergfell v. Hodges, the gay marriage case,
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where he said, what the law has to say about marriage is of relatively little interest to me,
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but it is of great interest to me who rules me. Who rules me? I think the GOP gets this. I think we're
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now in a, in a world where the Democrats are the party of public health, of the experts,
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of the bureaucracy of Dr. Fauci. That's been the case for a hundred years since at least Wilson.
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And the GOP is the K, the party of the traditional American way of life, of prudence, of not being
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governed by a bunch of eggheads and lab coats. Well, okay, good. Stand up for it then. And if that
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means passing big government regulations to stop private businesses from forcing us all to get the
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jab, even if as a matter of statistics and risk, it's, it's not really all that necessary, then so be it.
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Much more important to protect the actual liberty, right, and traditional way of life.
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When I think of, when I think of tradition, I want to go back to be before all this crazy time when
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we have everything is newfangled and highly technical and all that. I want to go back to a
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winning the stash of goods. Joe Rogan comes out and says, look, if you're young, you're really not
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at much risk of this virus, so don't make them force you to do a bunch, don't let them force you
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to do a bunch of stuff you don't want to do. Joy Reid on MSNBC takes the opposite approach.
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She says that she has been vaccinated, and yet when she goes outside to exercise,
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she still wears not one, but two masks. Dr. Gupta, I am among the fully vaccinated,
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joined Team Pfizer, and I did go jogging today in the park, and I did, this was the mask that I wore
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with a doctor's mask under it. And most of the people that I saw that were in the park, the park was
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packed. I would say like 95% of the people still had masks on. There are people who are getting
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really upset about that. I won't name them. Should people be freaking out that some people like myself
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who are vaccinated are still wearing masks outdoors? Should we do that? So first of all,
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I don't think anybody is freaking out on the side of take your masks off. I think if we were to judge
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relative levels of freak out, I think it's the neurotics who are wearing two masks while they go
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jogging and jabbing themselves with 25 vaccines, even if they're relatively healthy. I think just
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it's a matter of who's freaking out. However, I also don't think that Joy Reid did this.
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It's very difficult to run when you've got a mask on, much less two masks on, and I just don't believe
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her. But let's say that she did it. There were three positions on the masks. One is you must wear
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the masks all the time. Outdoors, two masks, right? There's some version of that. Then there is,
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well, wear one if you want. Don't wear one if you don't want. Just don't make me do it. You know,
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this is all about individual choice and you can have the choice to do whatever choice you want to
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choice. And then there's the third position. This is the conservative position, which is cut it out
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with the masks. It is weird to be wearing these masks. It is dysfunctional for society for us all to
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walk around looking like banditos. People should be able to see each other's faces. We should be
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able to see one another smile. We should be able to see one another speak. We should not muscle up
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ourselves all the time. The cloth masks are ugly. They're a weird social convention and I don't like
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them. And if there ever was a scientific argument for it, remember we read a peer-reviewed scientific
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article from the NIH on this show just last week, which suggested that the masks are actually bad for
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one's health. But sure, let's say that, let's say that there are other studies and articles that say
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the masks are good for one's health. Okay. There is no argument to be made anymore when everybody can
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get the vaccine. When even the exalted Dr. Fauci in his 75th position on the masks, I think at last
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count, is saying that, no, you don't need to wear them outside. We should actively discourage it.
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The left has a point when they say that personal choices have political consequences. This was a
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phrase of the second wave feminists in the 1970s. They said the personal is the political. They have a
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point. Our individual choices in our private lives have political effect because politics is just all of us
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together. It's the most basic definition of politics. It's the same problem that you see with
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the transgender issue. Well, look, if you want to call Bruce Jenner or Caitlyn Jenner, if you want to
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call him her, that's your personal choice. And my personal choice is to call him him. And we're just
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all a bunch of personal choices. Isn't that what politics is? Just everyone making personal choices?
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No, because then you can't even communicate. The most basic thing we need to be able to do in
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politics is speak to one another and understand what these symbols of our words are referring to
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out there in objective reality. If we can't agree on pronouns, we have nothing in politics to bind us
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together. You actually need to move beyond this weak, ridiculous language of personal choice
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and say we're at personal choice to do what? Well, freedom of speech, right? Freedom of speech
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to say what? Freedom of belief, freedom of belief to believe what? What are we talking about here?
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Same thing goes for the masks. If you have a society where half the population is wearing these
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secular keffias on their face all the time, these, these scientistic mantillas and they're,
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they look like they're in full burka. And then you've got half of society, which looks normal.
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You're not going to have a coherent, cohesive society. It's just not going to work.
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You have to make a choice. Are we going to be a society that dresses up like banditos or are we
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going to be a normal society? I think we should be a normal society. So we need to discourage masks.
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Say for instance, when you walk into a bank, you're not allowed to wear a mask. When you go,
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when you're walking around in public, you are actively discouraged from wearing these sorts of
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things. It's the party of doing something. But Michael, personal choice. Yeah, there is more to
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politics than personal choice. Idaho proving this beyond the masks, proving this beyond the
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COVID issue. Idaho just signed a great heartbeat bill. The Idaho Republican governor, Brad Little,
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signed a bill on Tuesday that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be protected. It's
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called the Fetal Heartbeat Pre-Born Child Protection Act. Prohibits medical providers from
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performing abortion procedures after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is around four
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to six weeks of pregnancy, which would get rid of a whole lot of abortions. A woman who receives an
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abortion would be allowed to sue the medical provider who provided it. Really clever way to do this
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because you're making the abortionists the bad guys, which is important. The way that
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the pro-abortion people have been able to advance their argument, it's not really an argument,
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it's just an emotional appeal, is they say, you want to turn women who are desperate into
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criminals. No, no, we're just trying to turn the abortionists into criminals actually. And that seems
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fine by me. And it actually creates an incentive for the women, even the ones who have procured
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abortions, to sue the people who provide the abortions. So it, it really puts a lot of pressure
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on the abortionists. Love that. Fabulous. But this is a big government. This is a big regulation.
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We can't, come on, we're the party of personal choice. There are many people
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in the, call it the Liz Cheney wing of the party, the liberal wing of the Republican party
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that will vote for, say, pro-abortion Democrats if the Republicans nominate someone that they don't
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like. There are a lot of them who will say, no, we can't, we can't do this. We need a big tent.
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Right. We need a big tent party for pro-abortion people. We need a big tent party for people who
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want to erase the fundamental distinction in human nature. We need a big tent party for people who
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want to go bomb the Middle East. But we don't have a big tent party for traditional conservatives.
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We don't have a big tent party for old school libertarians. So how big is the tent really?
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This language of personal choice as the be-all and end-all of politics, this was a trap that was laid
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before us by the liberal wing of the Republican party, the adventurous overseas wing of the
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Republican party that would go bomb the Middle East as their number one political priority. It was a trap
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because politics can not just be about the formal question of personal choice. It has to be about what
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choices we're making. That's what we decide in self-government.
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What about this issue of abortion in Idaho? You know, we have a devout Catholic president. I don't
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know if you know that. The White House has really promoted this idea a lot that the president, he's
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a devout Catholic. How dare you question his Catholicism? Well, he's really at odds with the
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Catholic church on a fundamental question, which is life, which as Pope St. John Paul II pointed out,
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is not just merely one issue among many. This issue of life is a basic issue. It's the basic right
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from which all the other rights come. So a reporter asks Jen Psaki, your devout Catholic boss there,
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Joe Biden, seems to be at odds with the Catholic bishops on this issue of using cells from aborted
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babies for scientific research. You want to explain that for us? Jen Psaki doesn't have much of an answer.
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As you well know, the administration just lifted the ban on researchers using fetal tissue from
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elective abortions. In the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops, the leaders of the president's
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own faith, said in reaction, it is deeply offensive, quote, to millions of Americans for our tax dollars
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to be used for research that collaborates with an industry built on the taking of innocent lives.
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How does the White House respond to that criticism?
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Look, I think the White House respectfully disagrees, and we believe that it's important to invest in
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science and look for opportunities to cure diseases, and I think that's what this is hopeful to do.
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Yes, the White House respectfully disagrees with this, with the bishops. But you're not allowed to
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respectfully disagree, by the way, if you're a Catholic. On an issue such as this, there's no like,
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well, you know, you do you, and I'll do me, and that's my personal choice, and then we'll all just
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go sing the acoustic guitar songs at church on Sunday. No, it doesn't work that way. You've got
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to make these choices, and if you, if you diverge from the church, from the moral order on this issue,
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you are putting yourself in grave danger. You're making a decision to not be a devout Catholic.
00:24:51.640
This, this idea of personal choice doesn't take you very far. Ultimately, we will be judged on
00:24:59.680
the specific choices. So we need to start talking in that kind of language, because
00:25:05.500
with regard to Joe Biden and the Catholic Church, I'm speaking in a really eternal sense here, and
00:25:11.140
in the long game of judgment, but we will be judged as a political party for the choices that we are
00:25:16.980
making here. This mealy-mouthed language of you do you ain't going to take us very far as a party
00:25:24.400
either. Ben is going to be talking about all these crazy COVID choices that Joe Biden has made,
00:25:30.380
and how he's totally blown it, so make sure to check that out. Also, join us tonight for a special
00:25:34.960
episode of Backstage, where we will finally be watching Joe Biden's first congressional speech
00:25:39.520
live. Who knows if it's live? I assume it's pre-taped for Joe Biden. I just assume anytime
00:25:45.580
Joe Biden speaks, it's pre-taped, but he says it's going to be live. We will certainly be live.
00:25:49.620
That's going to be a lot of fun tonight, 8.30 p.m. Eastern, 7.30 Central, on dailywire.com,
00:25:54.340
and on our YouTube channel over at Daily Wire. Also, we have another great episode of Canvas
00:25:59.140
coming at you this Friday. This week, Canvas is hosting Dave Rubin. They're going to have a whole
00:26:03.800
lot to discuss, especially what's going on in California, my old failed state of currently being
00:26:09.400
run by New Salini, the new potential opponent, Caitlyn Jenner. Yep. Go check it out, subscribe,
00:26:15.340
and stream Candace live on Fridays at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central, only at Daily Wire.
00:26:19.700
25% off right now from a new membership with code Candace at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
00:26:27.620
Three cheers for big government. Once again, in Idaho, Idaho's passing a lot of great bills right
00:26:46.300
now. They passed that great heartbeat bill, and now they're passing a bill to ban critical race
00:26:53.160
theory in schools. This is HB 377, which will now be sent to GOP Governor Brad Little,
00:26:57.980
and I hope he signs it. Total big government regulation here, folks, limiting the choice
00:27:06.780
and the, specifically, the academic freedom of teachers to teach critical race theory. Oh,
00:27:13.420
it's so backwards, so restrictive and depressive and not liberating, and it's not for small
00:27:20.880
government, and it's perfect. It's terrific. I love it. I love it. Three positions on critical race
00:27:26.280
theory. There is the mandate critical race theory. That's the left-wing position. There is the,
00:27:32.580
look, if your school wants to teach it, that's fine, but just don't mandate it, and just don't
00:27:35.780
make me show up to that mandatory training on CRT. Come on, personal choice, right? That's the
00:27:39.780
kind of squishy position on critical race theory. Then there is the conservative position, which is
00:27:45.780
that this is poison. This is, this cuts at the heart, not just of the country, but of education
00:27:51.260
itself, and it needs to be excised and banned and cast into the outer darkness where there is wailing
00:27:57.700
and gnashing of teeth. That's the right view. Chesterton has a great line, which is that there is a
00:28:05.800
thought that stops thought, and that is the only thought that ought to be stopped. There is. Critical
00:28:13.660
race theory is among those thoughts that stop thought. Critical race theory, which is a derivative
00:28:20.020
of critical theory, which is a derivative of the Western Marxist tradition that focuses much more on
00:28:27.540
culture. It is one of the key components of political correctness. It's also one of the key
00:28:34.220
aspects that I discuss in my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds,
00:28:38.000
available now for pre-order. You can, you can even pre-order the audio book, by the way, because I've
00:28:42.700
been recording the audio book for the past couple days. It's been a lot of fun. One of the aspects of
00:28:49.940
critical race theory is not just that it castigates America as bigoted and racist and terrible, and it
00:28:54.940
teaches children who are educated in part to learn about and love their country. It teaches them to do the
00:29:00.900
opposite. It teaches them to hate their country, so that alone would suffice to get it banned. But
00:29:05.180
critical race theory goes further, and it, it doubts the possibility of reason itself. It undercuts the
00:29:13.340
idea that we have faculties of reason, that we can know things about the outside world, the objective
00:29:17.640
reality. It, it, in many ways, will dismiss essential aspects of our education as mere excuses for white
00:29:29.120
supremacy. Do you remember a few years ago, the Smithsonian sent out a, a guide, and it said that
00:29:33.500
language like hard work and objective truth, that's, those are just code words for white supremacy, so we
00:29:40.520
got to get rid of hard work and objective truth. That's the sort of gobbledygook and nonsense that comes
00:29:46.160
out of critical race theory. So you see, if you go into an educational institution and you teach people
00:29:51.900
reason and objective truth are false, you have not expanded the curriculum. You have not opened
00:30:00.100
students' minds. You have undermined the entire education. You have limited education. It seems like
00:30:08.680
you're expanding it, but you're actually limiting it. So here in Idaho, they have a bill that seems like
00:30:13.720
it's a big government intrusion on freedom. Actually, it is a, it is a regulation, but it is expanding
00:30:20.380
people's freedom. It is expanding people's education. It is making people more free by imposing more
00:30:25.500
limits on what these lunatic teachers can do. That is fighting back by doing something.
00:30:33.680
We need to fight back by do, we're not going to fight back by doing nothing. We're not going to
00:30:38.520
fight back by using the Andrew Breitbart doctrine as an excuse to not actually exercise political power.
00:30:46.280
Breitbart said politics is downstream of culture. Fair enough. Like all slogans,
00:30:51.240
well, I'm sorry. It is true. Some slogans are not true at all, but like all slogans,
00:30:57.700
it is not totally true. Yes, culture influences politics. We need to make better movies. We need
00:31:04.720
to take over cultural institutions. No doubt about that. I'm a hundred percent in agreement with that,
00:31:09.500
but that is not an excuse for politicians who we elect to not do their jobs because politics
00:31:15.040
influences culture too. The example I keep going back to is East Germany. East Germany is an atheist
00:31:24.220
region. I think it's got a 10% rate of religiosity. West Germany greater than 50% self-identification
00:31:32.960
as religious. What's the difference? Is it just a, is it a cultural difference in the flavors of
00:31:38.340
bratwurst in the two areas? No, it's a political difference because the West was free and East
00:31:44.300
Germany was dominated by an officially communist Soviet regime for the Cold War. So the Berlin Wall
00:31:50.900
falls, the Soviet Union falls, but the cultural effects of that political regime continue to
00:31:58.000
dominate in East Germany. So we need to be able to exercise that too. Great way to do it.
00:32:03.480
Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb just signed a law last week that will protect the state's churches
00:32:09.460
by designating them as essential and forbidding state authorities from treating them differently
00:32:14.860
than secular establishments during public health emergencies. You saw this happen. I especially saw
00:32:21.000
this happen firsthand in California during the height of last year's coronavirus hysteria.
00:32:28.800
Churches were shut down. You weren't allowed to go inside churches. You were told then if you did go
00:32:33.340
inside, you were not allowed to sing. You, they really did persecute the churches, but the marijuana
00:32:39.040
dispensaries were essential. That had to stay open. That was an essential service.
00:32:45.820
You saw this in other places where, you know, churches were closed, but casinos were open, let's say.
00:32:51.100
That is not hypocrisy exactly. It's a hierarchy. Certain things are more important to the dominant
00:32:57.080
liberal regime than churches. Basically everything is more important to the dominant liberal regime
00:33:02.260
than churches. That's just the, that's the state established church of secular progressivism that
00:33:09.700
we're living under. So we need to fight back by passing a big government regulation that says
00:33:16.660
that churches are essential. They're at least on par with marijuana dispensaries and casinos.
00:33:23.740
Because while politics is downstream of culture, there are, there are some rivers in this world flow in the
00:33:29.020
other direction. And one might say with equal seriousness, that culture is downstream of
00:33:36.440
politics. The left does not recognize the religious character of its political program.
00:33:45.220
I think this is in part why conservatives are so bad at, at actually doing things in politics.
00:33:50.540
Part of it is because we've been tricked by stupid cowardly language from the Liz Cheney wing of the
00:33:54.360
party for 20 years. But part of it is because we have churches. Part of it is because for the right,
00:34:01.780
our policies are not everything. You know, we do, we have churches, we have civic associations, we
00:34:07.680
have our families, and the left has less and less of that. And they combine a lot of these things.
00:34:15.380
For, for the left, their politics is their religion. I'm not the first guy to say it.
00:34:23.120
But more people are catching on to that. Whereas the right is pretty clear. Yeah, here's my church.
00:34:27.440
Here's my religion. Here's my politics. Here's how they interact. Here's how they're separate.
00:34:31.620
For the left, they say, we don't have a religion. No, we don't have a church. We're scientific.
00:34:37.640
We just do what works. You know, whatever our high priest, Dr. Fauci tells us to do.
00:34:42.780
They, they don't understand. They're not aware of it. But some people are waking up like
00:34:47.100
Rose McGowan, who is this actress. She was very central to the Me Too movement.
00:34:54.700
Rose went on Fox News and came out and said that the, the Democratic Party is a replacement church.
00:35:03.120
It's like a cult. As some of you know, some of you don't know if you've heard my name or read
00:35:09.160
anything on me in the media. I grew up in a cult and it was a very famous cult called Children of
00:35:14.980
God. And it gave me a superpower. It gave me the ability to see the control and the propaganda
00:35:21.800
machine, especially in the U.S., for what it is and how it harms people and how the left can harm
00:35:28.960
people just as much as the right if they go very, very deep into it and ignore all other aspects of
00:35:36.880
kind of reality in a way. And, and that you're serving a master that might not be serving you.
00:35:42.360
And I always say, I come in peace. I am not here to make people feel bad about their political
00:35:49.100
choices. But I am here to say that you might be in a cult too, if you don't know the signs. And I do
00:35:56.140
believe Democrats most especially are in a deep cult that they really don't, uh, and know about
00:36:04.920
and aren't really aware of. And I leave the Republicans alone more because I do respect
00:36:10.820
people more that are like, this is what we are. This is what we're about. This is what we're against.
00:36:17.480
What she's saying here is not merely that the Democrats are a cult. I think that's true largely,
00:36:23.120
but that sounds like a relatively more shallow political hit, right? That's just, yeah,
00:36:28.120
you're in a cult. You're okay, fine. But she's taking this further and making a very insightful
00:36:33.840
point here. She said, at least for the Republicans who are in a cult and what, you know, culture and
00:36:41.560
cult have a lot to do with one another. People call all sorts of religions cult, but at least for
00:36:47.900
the Republicans, at least for the people on the right, they know that they're in it. Plenty of
00:36:53.660
people call the Catholic church a cult. I would call it the one true church. I know that I'm in
00:37:00.080
it. I know I'm coming, I'm right out with you here. I say, I, yes, I am in the Catholic church,
00:37:05.460
which believes certain things and doesn't believe other things. You, maybe you're a Methodist.
00:37:11.260
People call that a cult. Well, you're, very few people are Methodists still these days, but
00:37:14.940
let's say that you are, you know that you're in it. You use that term. People on the left don't
00:37:21.780
know that they're in it. They don't know that when they say that a baby is not a baby, that a baby is
00:37:28.020
a baby if the mother wants the baby, but a baby is not a baby if the mother doesn't want a baby,
00:37:32.480
that they are making a very bizarre religious claim about personhood and insolvent and human
00:37:40.920
dignity. They don't realize that when they say that a man who believes that he is a woman is
00:37:46.500
really a woman, that they are making a religious claim called Gnostic dualism in that particular
00:37:52.500
case. They don't, they're not aware of that. They don't, they don't possess the language to
00:37:58.280
understand that. They don't have the sort of philosophical or theological education to make
00:38:03.640
sense of that. And what Rose McGowan here is saying is, and this is true even beyond these
00:38:08.340
most obviously philosophical and theological questions. This is true just in the structure
00:38:14.160
of the Democratic Party. People don't know that they're in the cult. You know, one,
00:38:19.820
two most famous things about cults. What are they? The two things you can always expect from a cult.
00:38:27.300
Sex scandal, financial scandal, right? This is true of all human institutions. We were talking about
00:38:33.100
the Catholic Church before. Catholic Church has faced both of these sorts of things,
00:38:37.220
sex scandal and financial scandal. People try to pretend that the Catholic Church is the only group
00:38:41.300
that's ever faced this. Of course, for those, those who have actually looked into the numbers,
00:38:46.280
public school teachers are much more likely to sexually abuse children than members of the
00:38:52.460
Catholic clergy, right? The Catholics in many ways were singled out for this, but this is true
00:38:56.400
throughout religious groups and it's true certainly far more so in the secular society.
00:39:00.800
But financial scandals too. There was that great documentary on the Waco siege and this was,
00:39:07.600
it was a, it was a docudrama rather and, you know, it's kind of fictionalized account of this
00:39:12.940
and there's a great line in it where the FBI interrogator and, and negotiation guy is talking
00:39:21.280
to the people in the house and he said, hey, you ever find it weird how all these prophets of God
00:39:26.060
always seem to have sex with all the women? Isn't that kind of strange? How they, God is always telling
00:39:31.740
them to have sex with all the women. Isn't that bizarre? So you, you see this especially in cults,
00:39:36.800
lots of sex scandals, but more so even lots of financial scandals. We got that in BLM. BLM,
00:39:45.100
one of the most religious aspects of the left establishment right now, right? They provide
00:39:51.860
this idea that the pervasive sin that has caused the fall of man is white supremacy and the only
00:39:58.440
way that we can ever redeem ourselves is by chanting this, this incantation, black lives matter,
00:40:04.460
black lives matter, performing these kinds of rituals in the streets. This idea that if you go out
00:40:09.400
to, I don't know, go to the playground during COVID, you're killing everybody. If you go walk
00:40:14.640
on the sidewalk, you're going to kill everybody with the virus. But if you show out by the thousands
00:40:18.160
and you loot and riot, that that's actually going to help solve the problem of COVID because it's
00:40:23.240
going to solve white supremacy. Public health officials actually wrote that in a letter.
00:40:27.600
Well, here comes the scandal. We know that BLM now stands for Buy Large Mansions. Patrice
00:40:34.000
Cullors, the co-founder of it, has been buying up lots of very swanky property all around the place.
00:40:38.000
She's denying any impropriety. She says, I never took money from BLM, not in several years at least.
00:40:44.320
Well, now we're finding out how she got the money. According to campaign finance records,
00:40:48.740
an LA-based jail reform group called Reform LA Jails, founded and led by Patrice Cullors,
00:40:55.880
made payments to multiple figures and organizations linked to Cullors herself,
00:41:01.280
including her own consulting firm, as well as a luxury resort in Malibu. So she was,
00:41:05.700
she founds an organization that is affiliated with Black Lives Matter. She then has the organization
00:41:13.300
raise a ton of money on the arguments presented by Black Lives Matter. Then she pays her private
00:41:18.620
company through the organization with the money raised because of the arguments made by Black
00:41:24.500
Lives Matter. So she paid herself just through that one organization in that one place to that one
00:41:28.860
company, 60 grand. She paid another 44 grand to Bowers Consulting Firm, whose founder and president,
00:41:35.140
Shalamia Bowers, appears to be a board member on another nonprofit founded by Cullors, Dignity and Power
00:41:41.880
Now. It is, my friends, a racket, but this is how political organization that is effective is really done.
00:41:50.560
People amass positions of influence within the culture and they raise big money and they wield that big money
00:41:58.720
for big political influence. And there's not, doesn't matter how much we investigate this woman,
00:42:04.000
there's very little that we can do about it because she's got the power, because the liberal establishment
00:42:09.040
more broadly has the power. And we can point it out, but if we're not willing to wield power,
00:42:13.280
it's not, not going to matter very much. That and a buck 50 will get us a cup of coffee.
00:42:22.440
BLM is not the only left-wing organization that's got a financial scandal right now.
00:42:27.060
A former Obama White House advisor is, has been caught stealing money reportedly from a charter
00:42:32.620
school network that he founded. Very similar scandal to the scandal that we're seeing from Patrice
00:42:38.540
Cullors at BLM, except that she was apparently a little more clever about it. Federal authorities are
00:42:43.260
arrested the former Obama White House advisor, Seth Andrew, for allegedly stealing hundreds of
00:42:48.380
thousands of dollars from a charter school network that he founded. DOJ announced this in a press
00:42:53.500
release. He's facing charges of wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements to a
00:42:57.840
financial institution related to a scheme stealing a couple hundred grand. It's amazing that these people
00:43:03.840
would destroy their lives for 200 grand, but he got caught. That's the problem. BLM appears to be
00:43:11.860
doing all the same sort of stuff. They found these non-profits for, for the prisoners, for the
00:43:17.700
people, for the oppressed. And then they use that to send money to their own private companies,
00:43:23.560
which are going to send money back to these people, which are going to pay off political
00:43:27.020
favors to other people on the boards of other organizations and are going to raise more money.
00:43:30.300
They're just better at it. It's the same sort of thing. So what I am suggesting, I know this is
00:43:38.520
radical, is what if we build up political organizations that are just as effective?
00:43:46.340
I don't want them to be dishonest. I don't want them to be immoral. I don't want them to be unjust.
00:43:51.820
I don't think we have to, but I think we can build up political organizations that can influence
00:43:57.920
private companies and influence the government, just like BLM has, that do have lots of money.
00:44:04.420
How much money did BLM raise? It was something like $90 million. So much money that you had the
00:44:08.980
BLM activists, activists in Ferguson demanding a cut. They say, hey, give us a little taste.
00:44:15.560
How come you guys are making all that money? BLM New York is now looking at Patrice Cullors and
00:44:20.020
saying, hey, how come you're getting all that money? Give us some of that money.
00:44:22.160
A lot of money in these organizations. What if we did it the right way and the moral way,
00:44:28.480
but we did it nonetheless so that we could wield real political power? Right now, John Kerry is
00:44:34.420
being accused of some serious impropriety. John Kerry is the climate czar in the Biden administration.
00:44:39.340
He is being accused of leaking information to the Iranian foreign minister, who's his very good
00:44:46.640
friend, Javad Zarif. We used to, we used to make fun of this when John Kerry was the secretary of
00:44:51.960
state. He'd spend his days, Javad, hello, Javi. Javi, baby, I'm sorry what they're doing to you,
00:44:59.060
honey, but we're, don't worry. I mean, he would actually, he was caught back channeling to Javad
00:45:04.560
Zarif during the Trump administration and saying, hey, don't pay attention to this guy. We'll switch
00:45:08.580
things. Don't come on. Don't rip up the Iran deal. Come on, baby, please. So the Iranian foreign
00:45:13.840
minister, Javad, has revealed in a leaked phone call that Kerry told Iran that Israel was behind
00:45:19.320
hundreds of attacks on Iranian assets in Syria. Hey, Jen Psaki, do you have an answer about this?
00:45:25.720
Come on, what's the answer here? In tapes obtained by the New York Times, Iran's foreign minister says
00:45:31.240
that former secretary of state, John Kerry, informed him that Israel attacked Iranian interests at least
00:45:37.300
200 times. You know, as the secretary has shifted roles, he still continues to represent,
00:45:43.320
United States on a world stage. Does the president have any comment or reaction to Kerry telling the
00:45:48.940
Iranians about covert military action on the part of Israel? We're not going to comment on leaked
00:45:55.460
tapes. We're not going to comment on that because it's obviously true. So we're just not going to
00:46:01.700
comment on that. And she doesn't have to comment. She'll get one question maybe from a reporter in
00:46:06.240
the room. Very few people are going to cover this. This is probably one of the few shows that's going
00:46:11.200
to cover this. She doesn't need to give an answer because she is an avatar of the left, which has
00:46:16.860
institutional power. And so they just don't need to worry about this sort of thing. And if the right
00:46:23.040
wants to, to affect anything, if the, if the right wants to advance its agenda, it's not enough to have
00:46:30.180
the best arguments. It's not enough even to have the best candidates. We need to amass institutional
00:46:34.900
power. And then we need to know how to use it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles
00:46:39.960
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
00:46:50.400
word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple
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Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other
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00:47:06.540
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Our
00:47:11.820
technical director is Austin Stevens. Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
00:47:17.540
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Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup by Nika Geneva. And production coordinator, McKenna Waters.
00:47:29.700
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021.
00:47:33.960
Our lords and masters in the CDC and the White House have blessed us with new COVID guidelines.
00:47:39.660
Justin Bieber is accused of cultural appropriation for wearing dreadlocks.
00:47:42.640
And we'll deal with the claim that there is systemic racism against black NFL players somehow.
00:47:47.360
All of that and more today on The Matt Walsh Show.