The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 752 - The Future of the GOP

00:00:00.000 It's over. It's over. The 2024 presidential primary campaign has not begun yet,

00:00:06.980 but it's already over. Ron DeSantis, go home. Ted Cruz, stay in Texas. Nikki Haley, don't even try.

00:00:15.660 We know who the Republican Party nominee is going to be. She's floating the idea of a campaign. 1.00

00:00:22.320 It was so obvious. Liz Cheney is apparently entertaining a 2024 Republican bid for president. 1.00

00:00:32.620 It really, really is over. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:45.140 Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Donald Trump J on YouTube,

00:00:50.400 who says, impeach Joe Biden, save our nation. Oh, my sweet, sweet child. Would that it were

00:00:59.480 so simple, but it is not so simple. If you impeached Joe Biden, do you know what would change?

00:01:06.100 Absolutely nothing whatsoever because Joe Biden is nobody. Joe Biden is a suit in human shape.

00:01:15.440 There's only air blowing in between that suit. There is nothing that he wakes up in the morning.

00:01:20.200 He puts his finger in the air. He feels the wind blowing. He's nothing but the avatar of the

00:01:23.940 liberal establishment, which has power and which exercises power. And the GOP does not have any

00:01:31.140 similar institutional or cultural sway, which is why the GOP today is like herding a bunch of cats.

00:01:40.020 It's so split. It is so absolutely out of its mind that Liz Cheney is actually considering running 0.97

00:01:50.100 for president. Oh, my goodness. Do you remember the olden days when the Republicans used to be

00:01:55.600 able to exercise power? Gosh, it was so far back. I can't remember them without the aid of old slides,

00:02:02.100 old film reels, old pictures, all of which can be digitally preserved with Legacy Box.

00:02:06.940 Legacy Box is a super simple mail-in service to have all your videotapes, camcorder tapes,

00:02:11.420 film reels, and pictures digitally preserved on a thumb drive, DVD, or the cloud. Legacy Box is a way

00:02:17.640 for you to easily and affordably preserve your past. This is something that I didn't know I needed it

00:02:24.780 until I needed it, until I lost every photo of a beloved relative of mine who had died.

00:02:32.360 Thankfully, I found the photos again. They are now in my possession. First thing I'm going to do,

00:02:36.480 send them off to Legacy Box. They're a wonderful way to future-proof your memories. Great for

00:02:41.140 Mother's Day, too, by the way. For a limited time, Legacy Box is running a 50% off Mother's Day special.

00:02:46.000 Order your Legacy Box today to take advantage of this incredible offer, one of the best discounts

00:02:49.920 they've ever offered. It's perfect for you or someone you love. Go to legacybox.com slash

00:02:54.280 Knowles. Save 50% while supplies last. That is legacybox.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.

00:03:01.060 Liz Cheney, man. That lady is a representative of the very desiccated, shallow, ridiculous liberal 1.00

00:03:14.440 wing of the party that dominated for, I don't know, the past 20, 30 years or so, but has really

00:03:20.440 fallen out of favor, especially in beginning in 2016 and certainly through 2020. Liz Cheney was 0.99

00:03:27.380 one of the only people on the Republican side to vote to impeach President Trump,

00:03:32.560 even though she's in House Republican leadership. Kevin McCarthy, who is the Republican leader in

00:03:39.380 the House, has finally come out and said, you know, this Liz Cheney lady, she's really making

00:03:44.620 things tough. McCarthy made a good point. He said, there is a responsibility. If you're going to be

00:03:49.880 in leadership, leaders eat last. And when leaders try to go out and not work as one team, it creates

00:03:56.840 difficulties. When he says leaders eat last, he's referring to a buffet line. You go out there and

00:04:03.020 you got to make sure all your guys are fed first. You got to make sure you're taking care of all the

00:04:07.440 people in your team. But Liz Cheney doesn't do that because Liz Cheney is not really a Republican. 1.00

00:04:13.480 And what I mean by that, I'm not just saying she's a rhino, you know, this,

00:04:17.000 this very often overused line. What I'm saying is she doesn't care at all about the Republican

00:04:22.900 Party. Obviously not. She didn't vote for the Republican for President. I don't think she did

00:04:28.520 in 2016. She certainly didn't in 2020. Then she voted to impeach him. Liz Cheney represents her 0.61

00:04:34.480 wing of the Democratic Party. Call it the neocons. That's the term usually applied to it, meaning people

00:04:40.140 who are very, very much supportive of adventurism abroad, American empire abroad, but don't

00:04:48.000 particularly care for conservative priorities at home. That group of people made up one third of

00:04:54.020 the Reagan coalition. You had the Warhawk former Democrat types in the Reagan coalition. Then you

00:05:00.180 had the economic libertarians and then you had the traditional conservatives and the religious right

00:05:04.400 in there as well. And for the past 30 years or so after the Cold War, when this coalition's been

00:05:11.400 trying to hobble along, the traditional conservatives, they always cave. The religious right always caves.

00:05:19.020 We go along, we get in line. We go along with say the libertarians. The libertarians sometimes cave too,

00:05:26.100 particularly on foreign policy. But whatever we go along, we get along, we vote, we go with the nominee.

00:05:31.520 And then that third group, those Warhawk, ex-liberal, neocon, whatever word you want to use,

00:05:40.360 they don't go along. The minute they saw a candidate that they don't like, namely Donald Trump,

00:05:46.980 they're out. They become never Trump. They vote for some Egg McMuffin candidate. They in 2020 vote for

00:05:54.380 Joe Biden, many of them. Well, then you can't be part of the coalition. You can't, a political

00:06:01.300 coalition doesn't work that way. If two constituent parts of it always give up everything for the

00:06:07.800 team. And then the third part, the minute they don't get their way, they don't go along with it.

00:06:11.320 Then you're just not on the team. And that's the issue with Liz Cheney here. I suspect actually the

00:06:18.260 reason Cheney's talking about running in 2024 is because she knows that her chances of surviving a 0.97

00:06:23.180 primary are very, very low for her congressional race. So she's trying to pretend like she's going 0.68

00:06:29.740 to run for something else. No, that isn't going to happen. Liz Cheney, who is the past of the GOP, 0.99

00:06:37.720 raises this question. If she's the past, then what is the future? What is the future of the GOP? And

00:06:42.920 we have all, everyone has different sorts of answers. I've got a very basic answer that I think

00:06:46.740 is the bare minimum if the GOP is to have a future. If the GOP is going to survive, the GOP needs to be

00:06:53.900 the party of doing things, doing things for a long time. I know this sounds very basic, but it's

00:07:01.900 something that the Republican party I think needs to hear. For a very long time, the GOP predicated its

00:07:08.080 entire identity on not doing things. They took up this sort of pseudo quasi libertarian language of,

00:07:15.840 you know, if the government that governs best governs least, you know, the government, anytime

00:07:21.360 the government does anything, it's illegitimate. Taxation is theft, whatever, all these kinds of

00:07:25.640 slogans. The minute the government passes any laws, that's over-regulation. We got to get rid of that.

00:07:32.000 We got to cut taxes. We got to do less and less and less. No. Uh-uh. Never was particularly coherent,

00:07:38.060 certainly isn't coherent right now, going up against a liberal establishment that controls

00:07:41.900 everything. The GOP vision that will have a future, if it is to have a future, is a GOP that

00:07:49.340 does things. Give you an example. The Montana legislature yesterday passed a bill prohibiting

00:07:55.840 employers from requiring their employees to get the COVID vaccine as a condition of employment.

00:08:01.820 This is a, a regulation that will be passed to create a new requirement for businesses to impede

00:08:11.440 what businesses want to do. This is big government, if ever I saw it, and I love it. I'm really glad

00:08:17.900 that the government is going in. We, the people, or they, the people of Montana, through their elected

00:08:25.360 representatives, using the government to stop businesses from doing what the businesses want to do

00:08:30.280 to protect the rights and liberties and traditional way of life of Montanans. That's good. That's,

00:08:39.080 I know some people who are used to the libertarian language, they're going to say, I don't know,

00:08:43.960 regulation on business that tells them they can't do what they want to do. That's a good thing.

00:08:49.580 More regulation in this case means more freedom. More regulation in this case means a greater

00:08:56.780 protection of the American way of life. I don't want to get the vaccine. I don't want to get it. I

00:09:03.300 don't feel any need to get it. I am young. I think I'm healthy. My odds of facing a serious

00:09:10.780 complication from this virus are not zero, but pretty close. I don't want private companies to

00:09:17.620 make me get the vaccine. Not even as a condition of employment. I think I'm probably safe at this place,

00:09:22.740 but as a condition of travel, as a condition of going into restaurants. And I want to use the

00:09:28.520 power of the state to stop companies and the state from making me get the vaccine.

00:09:34.820 Big government to protect my liberties. Joe Rogan seems to be on the same page.

00:09:43.100 Politics is a very strange thing. Joe Rogan was a Bernie bro. Do you remember that?

00:09:48.000 Joe Rogan understands this, whatever this liberal establishment is doing with the coronavirus as the

00:09:57.320 excuse, this is no bueno. This is really bad. This is not particularly sensible. Joe Rogan comes out

00:10:04.360 and says, if you're young, don't get the vaccine. People say, do you think it's safe to get vaccinated?

00:10:08.920 I've said, yeah, I think for the most part, it's safe to get vaccinated. I do. I do. But if you're

00:10:14.320 like 21 years old and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I go, no. Are you healthy? Are

00:10:20.600 you a healthy person? Like, look, don't do anything stupid, but you should take care of yourself. You

00:10:25.000 should, if you're, if you're a healthy person and you're exercising all the time and you're young

00:10:29.200 and you're eating well, like, I don't think you need to worry about this.

00:10:33.700 Yeah. I tend to agree with you.

00:10:35.220 But there's a lot of jobs that will tell you, you need to have this.

00:10:38.820 Well, that's what's starting to happen now.

00:10:40.000 People are worried about them doing it for their children. And we talked about this earlier.

00:10:43.660 There's that you might have to have your, your children vaccinated. And, you know, I can tell

00:10:48.500 you as someone who's both, both my children got the virus, it was nothing. I mean, I hate to say

00:10:54.440 that if someone's children died from this, I'm very sorry that that happened. I'm not, I'm not in

00:10:59.600 any way diminishing that, but I'm saying the personal experience that my children had with COVID was

00:11:04.380 nothing. Preach, my man. Preach. Yes. Right. For most people. I know someone who died ostensibly from

00:11:13.220 COVID or complications of COVID. It's a little tricky because we know that there was some

00:11:16.940 overreporting here, but a former teacher of mine died ostensibly from COVID. He was 97 and

00:11:26.280 still sad, but there is a difference between a 97 year old and a 30 year old and a 21 year old.

00:11:33.020 And what Joe Rogan is saying is, Hey, if you're really young, you don't need to get this vaccine.

00:11:40.620 You don't. And I know I'm not questioning the safety of the vaccine. Please. Hey YouTube,

00:11:46.420 I'm not questioning the safety of the vaccine. Okay, please let me, please don't cast me into

00:11:51.680 the outer darkness where there's wailing and gnashing of teeth. But what I am saying is this.

00:11:56.380 This was a vaccine that was developed extraordinarily quickly.

00:11:58.680 There have by definition been no long-term studies of this.

00:12:03.720 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

00:12:08.340 flu. I actually, I could suffer some long, it's not a 0% risk that I suffer some serious consequence

00:12:16.300 from this virus or from the flu. I'm just looking at my risk here. And the fact that the liberal

00:12:22.000 establishment is so dead set on making me get this thing and forcing my hand and not letting me travel

00:12:30.280 and not letting me get on an airplane and not letting me go to work and not letting me interact

00:12:34.640 in polite society if I don't get this thing is the chief reason why I'm not interested in getting it.

00:12:41.820 It's weird. It reminds me of Antonin Scalia's dissent in Obergfell v. Hodges, the gay marriage case,

00:12:49.820 where he said, what the law has to say about marriage is of relatively little interest to me,

00:12:56.380 but it is of great interest to me who rules me. Who rules me? I think the GOP gets this. I think we're

00:13:05.000 now in a, in a world where the Democrats are the party of public health, of the experts,

00:13:09.500 of the bureaucracy of Dr. Fauci. That's been the case for a hundred years since at least Wilson.

00:13:14.920 And the GOP is the K, the party of the traditional American way of life, of prudence, of not being 0.74

00:13:20.260 governed by a bunch of eggheads and lab coats. Well, okay, good. Stand up for it then. And if that

00:13:24.640 means passing big government regulations to stop private businesses from forcing us all to get the

00:13:30.660 jab, even if as a matter of statistics and risk, it's, it's not really all that necessary, then so be it.

00:13:38.540 Much more important to protect the actual liberty, right, and traditional way of life.

00:13:46.000 When I think of, when I think of tradition, I want to go back to be before all this crazy time when

00:13:53.860 we have everything is newfangled and highly technical and all that. I want to go back to a

00:13:57.880 simple time when a man could grow out a beard, you know, and a man could grow out a beard and look

00:14:04.320 like a caveman. How traditional is that? Well, if you want, you can. With Beard Supply, we all know

00:14:08.900 that the absolute manliest of men are clean shaven, little swarthy, have hair slicked back. But there's

00:14:16.160 another group that's just below them that are very manly. They grow beards, they grill meat, they drink

00:14:20.760 handcrafted booze. Well, thanks to the manliest giveaway ever, some lucky guy will be doing those

00:14:25.060 things for free. Enter to win a stash of goods from Beard Supply, Meat Church, Desert Door,

00:14:32.300 Howler Brothers, and more. Fabulous brands for the red-blooded American male. One lucky bearded 1.00

00:14:38.480 winner will get a stash of beard oils and grooming essentials from Beard Supply, tools for grilling,

00:14:43.960 leather care, and a $200 shopping spree with the outdoor menswear brand, Howler Brothers.

00:14:47.940 It's great. You got to up your game with a stash of goods. To enter the Beard Supply spring giveaway,

00:14:55.180 go to BeardSupply.com slash giveaway. That is BeardSupply.com slash giveaway, and good luck

00:15:00.320 winning the stash of goods. Joe Rogan comes out and says, look, if you're young, you're really not

00:15:07.180 at much risk of this virus, so don't make them force you to do a bunch, don't let them force you

00:15:12.040 to do a bunch of stuff you don't want to do. Joy Reid on MSNBC takes the opposite approach.

00:15:17.140 She says that she has been vaccinated, and yet when she goes outside to exercise,

00:15:25.480 she still wears not one, but two masks. Dr. Gupta, I am among the fully vaccinated,

00:15:32.420 joined Team Pfizer, and I did go jogging today in the park, and I did, this was the mask that I wore

00:15:38.680 with a doctor's mask under it. And most of the people that I saw that were in the park, the park was

00:15:43.660 packed. I would say like 95% of the people still had masks on. There are people who are getting

00:15:48.120 really upset about that. I won't name them. Should people be freaking out that some people like myself

00:15:54.240 who are vaccinated are still wearing masks outdoors? Should we do that? So first of all,

00:15:58.940 I don't think anybody is freaking out on the side of take your masks off. I think if we were to judge

00:16:05.440 relative levels of freak out, I think it's the neurotics who are wearing two masks while they go

00:16:11.220 jogging and jabbing themselves with 25 vaccines, even if they're relatively healthy. I think just

00:16:16.780 it's a matter of who's freaking out. However, I also don't think that Joy Reid did this.

00:16:22.500 It's very difficult to run when you've got a mask on, much less two masks on, and I just don't believe

00:16:27.640 her. But let's say that she did it. There were three positions on the masks. One is you must wear

00:16:37.200 the masks all the time. Outdoors, two masks, right? There's some version of that. Then there is,

00:16:43.080 well, wear one if you want. Don't wear one if you don't want. Just don't make me do it. You know,

00:16:47.040 this is all about individual choice and you can have the choice to do whatever choice you want to

00:16:51.060 choice. And then there's the third position. This is the conservative position, which is cut it out

00:16:56.620 with the masks. It is weird to be wearing these masks. It is dysfunctional for society for us all to

00:17:03.420 walk around looking like banditos. People should be able to see each other's faces. We should be

00:17:09.940 able to see one another smile. We should be able to see one another speak. We should not muscle up

00:17:15.500 ourselves all the time. The cloth masks are ugly. They're a weird social convention and I don't like

00:17:20.780 them. And if there ever was a scientific argument for it, remember we read a peer-reviewed scientific

00:17:25.900 article from the NIH on this show just last week, which suggested that the masks are actually bad for

00:17:32.620 one's health. But sure, let's say that, let's say that there are other studies and articles that say

00:17:37.440 the masks are good for one's health. Okay. There is no argument to be made anymore when everybody can

00:17:43.640 get the vaccine. When even the exalted Dr. Fauci in his 75th position on the masks, I think at last

00:17:52.760 count, is saying that, no, you don't need to wear them outside. We should actively discourage it.

00:17:58.660 The left has a point when they say that personal choices have political consequences. This was a

00:18:06.000 phrase of the second wave feminists in the 1970s. They said the personal is the political. They have a 0.69

00:18:10.860 point. Our individual choices in our private lives have political effect because politics is just all of us

00:18:20.900 together. It's the most basic definition of politics. It's the same problem that you see with

00:18:27.300 the transgender issue. Well, look, if you want to call Bruce Jenner or Caitlyn Jenner, if you want to 0.77

00:18:33.080 call him her, that's your personal choice. And my personal choice is to call him him. And we're just

00:18:37.920 all a bunch of personal choices. Isn't that what politics is? Just everyone making personal choices?

00:18:41.840 No, because then you can't even communicate. The most basic thing we need to be able to do in

00:18:48.620 politics is speak to one another and understand what these symbols of our words are referring to

00:18:55.020 out there in objective reality. If we can't agree on pronouns, we have nothing in politics to bind us

00:19:02.340 together. You actually need to move beyond this weak, ridiculous language of personal choice

00:19:10.900 and say we're at personal choice to do what? Well, freedom of speech, right? Freedom of speech

00:19:15.420 to say what? Freedom of belief, freedom of belief to believe what? What are we talking about here?

00:19:20.980 Same thing goes for the masks. If you have a society where half the population is wearing these

00:19:27.540 secular keffias on their face all the time, these, these scientistic mantillas and they're, 0.93

00:19:33.960 they look like they're in full burka. And then you've got half of society, which looks normal. 0.99

00:19:40.020 You're not going to have a coherent, cohesive society. It's just not going to work.

00:19:44.180 You have to make a choice. Are we going to be a society that dresses up like banditos or are we

00:19:48.520 going to be a normal society? I think we should be a normal society. So we need to discourage masks.

00:19:53.040 Say for instance, when you walk into a bank, you're not allowed to wear a mask. When you go,

00:19:57.000 when you're walking around in public, you are actively discouraged from wearing these sorts of

00:20:01.720 things. It's the party of doing something. But Michael, personal choice. Yeah, there is more to

00:20:07.540 politics than personal choice. Idaho proving this beyond the masks, proving this beyond the

00:20:15.880 COVID issue. Idaho just signed a great heartbeat bill. The Idaho Republican governor, Brad Little,

00:20:23.040 signed a bill on Tuesday that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be protected. It's

00:20:28.680 called the Fetal Heartbeat Pre-Born Child Protection Act. Prohibits medical providers from

00:20:33.260 performing abortion procedures after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is around four

00:20:37.320 to six weeks of pregnancy, which would get rid of a whole lot of abortions. A woman who receives an 1.00

00:20:44.220 abortion would be allowed to sue the medical provider who provided it. Really clever way to do this 0.61

00:20:50.280 because you're making the abortionists the bad guys, which is important. The way that

00:20:55.180 the pro-abortion people have been able to advance their argument, it's not really an argument,

00:21:00.720 it's just an emotional appeal, is they say, you want to turn women who are desperate into

00:21:05.760 criminals. No, no, we're just trying to turn the abortionists into criminals actually. And that seems 0.96

00:21:10.500 fine by me. And it actually creates an incentive for the women, even the ones who have procured 0.98

00:21:14.820 abortions, to sue the people who provide the abortions. So it, it really puts a lot of pressure

00:21:19.840 on the abortionists. Love that. Fabulous. But this is a big government. This is a big regulation.

00:21:26.480 We can't, come on, we're the party of personal choice. There are many people

00:21:30.620 in the, call it the Liz Cheney wing of the party, the liberal wing of the Republican party

00:21:37.660 that will vote for, say, pro-abortion Democrats if the Republicans nominate someone that they don't

00:21:44.020 like. There are a lot of them who will say, no, we can't, we can't do this. We need a big tent.

00:21:50.880 Right. We need a big tent party for pro-abortion people. We need a big tent party for people who

00:21:56.820 want to erase the fundamental distinction in human nature. We need a big tent party for people who 0.98

00:22:00.700 want to go bomb the Middle East. But we don't have a big tent party for traditional conservatives.

00:22:07.160 We don't have a big tent party for old school libertarians. So how big is the tent really?

00:22:13.180 This language of personal choice as the be-all and end-all of politics, this was a trap that was laid

00:22:23.380 before us by the liberal wing of the Republican party, the adventurous overseas wing of the

00:22:31.940 Republican party that would go bomb the Middle East as their number one political priority. It was a trap

00:22:37.380 because politics can not just be about the formal question of personal choice. It has to be about what

00:22:42.920 choices we're making. That's what we decide in self-government.

00:22:47.720 What about this issue of abortion in Idaho? You know, we have a devout Catholic president. I don't 0.58

00:22:53.740 know if you know that. The White House has really promoted this idea a lot that the president, he's

00:22:58.220 a devout Catholic. How dare you question his Catholicism? Well, he's really at odds with the 0.69

00:23:04.500 Catholic church on a fundamental question, which is life, which as Pope St. John Paul II pointed out,

00:23:11.420 is not just merely one issue among many. This issue of life is a basic issue. It's the basic right

00:23:18.840 from which all the other rights come. So a reporter asks Jen Psaki, your devout Catholic boss there, 0.99

00:23:26.600 Joe Biden, seems to be at odds with the Catholic bishops on this issue of using cells from aborted

00:23:32.960 babies for scientific research. You want to explain that for us? Jen Psaki doesn't have much of an answer. 1.00

00:23:38.940 As you well know, the administration just lifted the ban on researchers using fetal tissue from

00:23:44.420 elective abortions. In the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops, the leaders of the president's

00:23:49.720 own faith, said in reaction, it is deeply offensive, quote, to millions of Americans for our tax dollars

00:23:56.780 to be used for research that collaborates with an industry built on the taking of innocent lives.

00:24:02.140 How does the White House respond to that criticism?

00:24:03.940 Look, I think the White House respectfully disagrees, and we believe that it's important to invest in

00:24:11.780 science and look for opportunities to cure diseases, and I think that's what this is hopeful to do.

00:24:19.220 Yes, the White House respectfully disagrees with this, with the bishops. But you're not allowed to

00:24:23.720 respectfully disagree, by the way, if you're a Catholic. On an issue such as this, there's no like,

00:24:28.960 well, you know, you do you, and I'll do me, and that's my personal choice, and then we'll all just

00:24:33.180 go sing the acoustic guitar songs at church on Sunday. No, it doesn't work that way. You've got

00:24:39.160 to make these choices, and if you, if you diverge from the church, from the moral order on this issue,

00:24:45.620 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.

00:26:26.000 We will be right back with a lot more.

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 1.00

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 0.95

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. 0.62

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 0.99

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. 0.99

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 0.95

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 1.00

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 0.99

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, 0.87

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 0.88

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 0.89

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, 1.00

00:42:04.000 there's very little that we can do about it because she's got the power, because the liberal establishment 1.00

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. 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.52

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

00:46:39.340 Show. See you tomorrow.

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

00:46:55.900 Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other

00:47:01.460 Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.

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 Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky. Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico. Audio mixer,

00:47:23.800 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.

00:47:49.440 See you in the next one.

00:48:10.740 The Matt Walsh Show.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 28, 2021

Ep. 752 - The Future of the GOP

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript