Ep. 82 - Bannon Book: Fact vs. Fiction
Summary
The mainstream media are having a field day with the saucy anti-Trump book quotes, and President Trump is giving Steve Bannon the Rosie ODonnell smackdown. Then, Fleckis Talks, Austin Fletcher and Jacob Eary join the panel of deplorables to discuss Jeff Sessions' crackdown on pot, the old Haitian oregano, and how the Virginia House of Delegates highlights the moral error of Never Trump. Finally, the mailbag.
Transcript
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The mainstream media are having a field day with the saucy anti-Trump book quotes
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and President Trump's giving Steve Bannon the Rosie O'Donnell smackdown.
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We will analyze the claims and separate fact from fiction.
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Then, Fleckis Talks, Austin Fletcher and Jacob Eary will join the panel of deplorables
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to discuss Jeff Sessions' crackdown on pot, the old Haitian oregano,
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and how the Virginia House of Delegates highlights the moral error of never Trump.
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I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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This entire show today is going to be page six, basically.
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It's just saucy claims and pot and all this sort of stuff.
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Okay, let's get right into all of the sauciness.
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Now that I did roll out of bed off my bowling branch sheets and saw all of the crazy, scintillating headlines today, let's go through the claims.
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There's a hot book that's going to come out over Donald Trump in the White House that's saying he's just awful, everything's chaos.
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Let's go through and see which claims are credible, which are not.
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Joe Curl compiled a great list at the Daily Wire.
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Billionaire and Trump confidant Thomas Barack Jr. told a friend, Barrack, Barack, you know, said this is totally false.
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Wolf never ran the quote by him to ask if it was accurate.
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He also said it's clear to anyone who knows me that those aren't my words and inconsistent with anything I've ever said.
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If he did say it, he wouldn't, he certainly would deny it at this point.
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That said, what motivation does he have to say it?
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What motivation does he have to say it to some nobody, lefty reporter or writer?
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I'm skeptical that the writer, Michael Wolf, heard this in any credible way.
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Number two, Melania was in tears and not of joy on election night.
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This is one, he wrote, the author of this book wrote a piece in the New York Magazine and said, Trump didn't really want to be president.
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He's been talking about being president for 30 years.
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He flirted with it in the year 2000 and he almost ran for the Reform Party nomination.
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He's been talking about issues of American policy, both domestic and international, for decades.
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Even during the Reagan administration, he took out a big ad in the New York Times to question an aspect of the Reagan foreign policy.
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People don't know what it takes to run for even dog catcher or Congress or governor, much less president of the United States.
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If you don't want it, you're not going to do it.
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Number three, when Roger Ailes suggested Trump tap former House Speaker John Boehner for White House Chief of Staff, he said, who's that?
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Because Trump's such a dummy, he didn't know who the Speaker of the House was, right?
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We know, Donald Trump tweeted about John Boehner in 2013.
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He said, quote, Speaker John Boehner, who I like, should never have agreed to raise taxes because the Republicans got absolutely nothing for it.
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He sent out another tweet, or rather, Don Jr. agrees with that.
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But here's another tweet from Donald Trump about John Boehner.
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Wacky Glenn Beck, who always seems to be crying worse than Boehner, speaks badly of me only because I refuse to do his show.
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You can't have it and say that all Donald Trump ever does is watch cable news.
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He's glued to Fox News morning, noon, and night, but he's never heard of any of the things that are talked about there.
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You have to choose a line of ridiculous attack, and Michael Wolff is trying to have it both ways.
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Working with the president was like trying to figure out what a child wants.
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This was attributed to Katie Walsh, White House staffer.
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So trying to figure out what he wants, he's been saying what he wants for 30 years.
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Number five, Wolf reports that six weeks into office, Donald Trump still had not determined
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what the new administration's top priorities would be and said that operations in the West
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He said it during the campaign and he's fulfilled it.
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We know that this guy has very little credibility.
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He admitted to lying in his first book, Burn Rate, which was about his time in the early
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The dodgiest profession until like Bitcoin broker or something.
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Like any other financial conniver, I was in short-term mode.
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He's admitting he has no credibility as a matter of honesty.
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Surprise, surprise for anyone familiar with the dot-com bubble.
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He took very few notes, yet he recounted long conversations verbatim.
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Judith Regan, a classmate of Wolfe's at Vassar, disputed every single thing that he wrote
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about her in that book and said that she hadn't talked to him in 30 years, and he admitted
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Andrew Sullivan, the political columnist, accused Wolfe of fabricating whole quotes of
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In total, 13 subjects of Burn Rate said that Wolfe invented quotes from them, whole cloth.
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The New Republic's Michelle Cottle wrote about him, quote,
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Much to the annoyance of Wolfe's critics, the scenes in his columns aren't recreated
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so much as created, springing from Wolfe's imagination rather than from actual knowledge
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Even Wolfe acknowledges that conventional reporting isn't his bag.
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He's adroit at making the reader think that he has spent hours and days with his subject
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But of course, none of that will deter the mainstream media, will it?
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That's because they are less credible than Wolfe.
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If Michael Wolfe's access to Trump surprises you, then you don't know Michael Wolfe.
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New York Magazine ran, Donald Trump didn't want to be president.
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How Michael Wolfe stuck a shiv in Donald Trump.
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Cosmo, five bombshell revelations about Donald and Melania's relationship from new behind-the-scenes
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And by the way, when Ed Klein wrote that book about the Clinton, or about Barack Obama
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rather, called Amateur, did we see bombshell, bombshell, bombshell in all of those news
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We saw people calling his credibility into question, calling the quotes into question,
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What does this mean about all of the Bannon quotes?
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Wolfe alleges that Bannon said, quote, Donald Jr. is a traitor, that he's treasonous, that
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he's going to be cracked like an egg on national TV, that the Russia meeting was treasonous,
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that Breitbart's not a legitimate news source, that son-in-law Jared Kushner is greasy, and
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that they're sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category 5.
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Now, Bannon was apparently the guy who allowed Wolfe into the White House.
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His access appears to have ended, Wolfe's access, when John Kelly took charge there.
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Reports came out as early as August that Trump blamed Bannon for the leaks.
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David Martosco, a conservative writer, wrote, in case it's not clear to everyone by now,
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Steve Bannon was the single biggest leaker in the White House in the West Wing until
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Donald Jr. wrote, Steve had the honor of working in the White House and serving the country.
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Unfortunately, he squandered that privilege and turned that opportunity into a nightmare
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of backstabbing, harassing, leaking, lying, and undermining the president.
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Plus, most damning of all, Trump smacked him down yesterday.
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Now, Trump's natural reflex is to call BS on the mainstream media, to call fake news.
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For some reason, though, he seems to think Bannon really talked to this guy.
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Bannon didn't even join the campaign until two months after the meeting he allegedly calls
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But Trump seems to think that he at least said it, which makes us perhaps conclude that he's
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The writer Michael Wolff says that he has tape of Bannon, so we'll have to see about that.
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But the Trumpiness of all of it makes me think that at least some of this is true.
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We have Fleckus Talks, Austin Fletcher, and we have Jacob Berry.
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I was hoping that we would have heard something from Bannon before everyone started responding.
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But once we got all the responses from Don Jr. and President Trump himself, it kind of
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seems like what's said was said, and you can't really come back from it now.
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It's like when you kind of hold things in the back of your mind when you have a girlfriend
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or a certain relationship, and then once you say those certain things that you were holding
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in forever, you can't really take them back, and it's never going to be the same.
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So it's sad to see him go, and it's a shame to potentially lose something like Breitbart,
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Hopefully, he goes his separate way from there, and we don't lose Breitbart.
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That's true, and it is pretty gross to think of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump as boyfriend
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and girlfriend up on Makeout Point or something in an old Cadillac, but that's neither here nor there.
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If he finds some way to bounce back, it's going to be in Dick Morris style, you know,
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where he just kind of makes appearances on Newsmax TV, I think.
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And gets caught doing weird things with hookers in hotel rooms.
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I think that he got fired, and he decided to get a little bit of vengeance, but it's really
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hard to get vengeance on the president of the United States, especially when you don't
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So I honestly think that he's had his time, he had his moment in the sun, and no one really
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The mainstream media kind of made Bannon a name.
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So I think that when all this is settled down, when the dust settles, we'll be going, Bannon?
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I don't know the guy personally, but a number of my friends do.
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One thing also that makes this seem kind of legit is that apparently Wolf's access ended
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way back right when Bannon got kicked out of the White House.
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So it could have been that he was salty about getting fired, salty about how things were
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He gave these quotes out, and now they're dropping.
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That's all I care about in all of this is the freedom of it all, my freedom in particular.
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So Donald Trump has enacted a wonderfully effective conservative agenda.
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He's done it pretty quickly within his first year.
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I want lower taxes, more tax reform, less regulation, more originalist justices who are
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going to respect the Constitution, more strength and credibility abroad.
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But if Steve Bannon is going to undermine this presidency, undermine this administration,
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because of some personal vendetta or because he wants to burn down certain aspects of the
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And if you're going to turn on that and betray somebody and betray a movement and betray your
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president, your candidate, then you're not going to be able to do it.
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It's like, if these quotes are true and they do seem fairly legitimate, then that big shoe
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of Donald Trump just came down and squashed the guy.
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He might be trying to crawl out from under it, but it's no good.
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We just have to keep calm and make America great again.
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The Virginia House of Delegates now remains in Republican hands because of a lottery in
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David Yancey, a candidate there, beat his opponent, Democrat Shelley Simons, after somebody pulled
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And so I guess in the Virginia House of Delegates, the way you resolve that for the first time
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in the centuries is you just reach into a hat and pull out the Republican, thankfully.
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Jacob, is this race the ultimate demonstration of the moral error behind Never Trump, behind
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well, I'd like Trump to win, but I don't want to vote for him because it's icky?
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I honestly think that this was just, uh, like you said, it was just recount after recount.
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And I think the people just wanted to see someone seated.
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But as far as, uh, uh, whether Never Trumpers have anything to do with this, I don't think.
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They're the, we're going to vote for Hillary because we hate Trump for some reason.
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And then there are the David French, kind of Ben Shapiro, and me included in that, who
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are just kind of like, well, we don't believe Trump is a conservative.
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The most conservative administration since at least Reagan and possibly Coolidge.
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But I will, uh, I will say that we're still, this administration is still young.
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So we could see that, uh, lefty side that we know existed in Trump, at least for some
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But as far as this delegate situation goes, I think that they just wanted to end this race.
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And they're like, let's just get this over with so that we can seat someone in this house.
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Jonah Goldberg said that he wanted Trump to win.
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That if the, if the vote were a perfect tie and it came down to him to decide the winner,
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But nevertheless, he will never, ever vote for Donald Trump because it's icky.
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Because it would be hard to look at himself in the mirror.
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And his premise is that his vote doesn't matter.
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This election shows us even one single vote can matter.
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And not just in that little house of delegates election, but it's,
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Without this guy winning, the Republicans would not control the Virginia House of Delegates
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So, again though, I'm not sure what this really has to do with, with Trump as far, I know
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you're, I know you're trying to connect it to the one person.
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I'll explain to you what it has to do with never Trump.
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Never Trumpers were Republicans who said, I would like Trump to win generally because
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it would be better than Hillary Clinton, but I don't want to actually vote for him.
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And what this shows is that your vote does matter.
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Every single vote can matter, can throw a whole election.
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You know, I don't think that was actually a never Trump argument.
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I wouldn't say he like was the face of the movement.
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Really, I would probably have to say that Glenn Beck was probably the face of the never
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But I think that as far as this goes, remember, I voted.
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But I know someone who hated Trump, but they voted for Trump because they liked Pence.
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And if that argument had been presented to me, hey, if we will at least get Pence as
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the VP in a more intellectual way, I might have been more persuaded with that argument.
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But to me, this Virginia House race just represents just how volatile the elections have become
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In the spirit of Republican unity, I will leave it there.
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But I think that conservatives and Republicans should take a lesson from this election and
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from the closeness of certain races and the actual stakes for the country rather than for
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Fleckis, is a random hat drawing the best solution to a tied election?
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Besides, obviously, recounting and recounting and recounting.
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I think the Democrats should find a way to make this the norm because 50-50 odds, I'll
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That's better than anything you'll ever find in Vegas.
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If the Democrats could do 50-50 odds with the whole thing and pull everyone's name out
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That's where you're going to get a lot of dead people out of the hat.
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They've been trying versions of this strategy for a fairly long time.
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I also do kind of like the whimsy of it, of pulling the name out of the hat, because
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so frequently, one of the negative sides of democratic politics, especially in an era
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where politics and entertainment are exactly the same thing, is that people treat politics
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They treat it like the sole focus of their life, and that's what give their lives meaning.
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Obviously, we don't have a monarch in America in countries with a constitutional monarchy.
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It's sort of the monarchy that embodies the spirit of the country and is the head of state,
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and the government kind of changes, but there's that stability and continuity.
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In liberal democracies like the United States, we don't really have that.
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And so I do like the idea of sometimes it's just going to be pulled out of a hat.
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The government shouldn't dictate every aspect of your life.
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And if it is doing that, then you have to fix something about your government, more importantly,
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Speaking of the culture, Jeff Sessions' Justice Department is cutting an Obama-era dereliction
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of duty and finally enforcing federal law on marijuana.
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So for years, pot dispensaries have cropped up all over California and other states with
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legal marijuana, even though those state laws violate federal law.
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Now, Fleckis, you strike me as no stranger to the old Haitian oregano.
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What should the conservative position on pot legalization be?
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I'm kind of disappointed because, realistically, I think California was heading towards this
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It's a sanctuary state, much of which is on fire.
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It's not illegal to give people AIDS knowingly anymore.
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So I was kind of, like, every time I leave my apartment, I live downtown, it's basically
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So I'm kind of disappointed that this final piece that could have made, you know, gone
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all the way around, bam, California is officially hell.
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I thought it would have been some good action and made it more interesting.
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So I'm a little disappointed to see Jeff Sessions tear these back a little bit.
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Yeah, I really enjoy the cinematography of driving around downtown.
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Jacob, for a long time, the libertarian strain of conservatives and Republicans have said,
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Obviously, all the lefties want to legalize pot.
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I personally don't really have anything wrong with it.
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I just don't care that much, except that the pro-pot people are so passionate about it
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and they're so annoying that I really want to make them upset.
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I'm really torn on this subject, as you can see.
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Well, I think we should look at it honestly and we should say, okay, when we see...
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Now, I'm coming at it from a conservative perspective, not a libertarian perspective,
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but I think we should look at the pros and cons of it.
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It's not as volatile as even alcohol, but on the flip side, there are people who suffer
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Now, I don't believe that marijuana cures cancer.
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I've seen nothing but very subjective gossip that it has any effect on cancerous cells.
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But I do think that people who suffer with chronic pain, who suffer with anxiety, maybe
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Now, to be clear though, I'm against all forms of smoking.
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When you have a grandmother who had a lung transplant, it kind of takes the wind out of
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And like I said, we can always look at the medical aspect of it.
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But I kind of agree with you that about the pro-POP people, they just get so insanely
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It also, I will say, I won't tell any tales out of school.
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I might have tried the old Haitian oregano once or twice.
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And it turns out that local yogurt was very mystical indeed.
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So as a matter of culture, I don't really want to encourage people to do it.
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You just think things are funnier because you get stupider and hungrier and fatter.
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It just makes you kind of confused and your heart beats a little faster.
00:24:42.940
I would come to a compromise that we can legalize pot if we first legalize Cuban cigars.
00:24:55.320
Gentlemen, we've got to move on to the mailbag.
00:25:12.600
But if you are not subscribed to TheDailyWire.com, we just can't do it, folks.
00:25:20.320
If you're on Facebook and YouTube, we've got to say goodbye.
00:25:33.640
If you have an S-Corp, you're about to make a ton more money.
00:25:36.240
It's $10 a month or $100 for an annual membership.
00:25:46.620
And I will say, I had a knockdown, drag-out debate with The Daily Wire's director of tumblers
00:25:52.500
because, as you'll notice, I don't use the lid on the show.
00:25:56.500
I drink it without the lid like a civilized person who's not driving a car.
00:26:01.220
But I have to tell you, all of the lawyers want me to say, it comes with a lid.
00:26:06.200
So if you get it today, you'll get a special limited edition Michael Knowles Show,
00:26:17.500
We're all about freedom of choice here on the right and in the conservative and liberty movement.
00:26:40.680
The point that I want to leave with you in this very brief presentation is where I started.
00:26:48.340
There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world,
00:26:57.760
and that's the United States, when it suits our interest and when we can get others to go along.
00:27:04.200
The secretariat building in New York has 38 stories.
00:27:07.560
If you lost 10 stories today, it would make a bit of difference.
00:27:12.200
This kind of mindless creation of the United Nations as something different than what it's in the United States' interest to do
00:27:26.140
The United States makes the UN work when it wants it to work.
00:27:29.980
And that is exactly the way it should be because the only question, the only question for the United States is what's in our national interest.
00:27:37.680
And if you don't like that, I'm sorry, but that is the fact.
00:27:52.220
What books would you recommend for learning about the history of Western civilization?
00:27:55.900
I'm trying to avoid the revisionist trash but don't know where to start.
00:28:07.500
Whenever anyone says, I don't know anything about the history of Western civilization, I want a kind of recent book to sum things up for me.
00:28:16.320
That's from about 1500 to 2000 through the present, the era that begins with what we would call the Renaissance or the high Middle Ages.
00:28:23.920
The best book on that to begin, I think, is From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzin.
00:28:29.160
He's the guy who started great books at Columbia.
00:28:30.860
One of the reasons this book is so good is he'll just include in parentheses other books you should read as he goes through everything from the Protestant Revolution all the way up through the present.
00:28:40.300
It's a really good work on modern Western history.
00:28:43.880
It explains how we got from the advent of Protestantism all the way through the present just about everywhere on Earth.
00:28:52.660
You should also read maybe the greatest history book ever written, Thucydides.
00:28:56.320
You might notice I borrowed a line from Thucydides to open up my own magnum opus, Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a comprehensive guide.
00:29:04.860
That's a great ancient history work and really the beginning of, I think, where you should start on ancient history.
00:29:10.860
If you want other things that are kind of in the news, people are always attacking.
00:29:18.700
Some good books to start on that that you can breeze through in a day or two, maybe two or three days.
00:29:23.300
As Samuel Elliott Morrison's book on Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, is really good.
00:29:30.580
He's a little bit more conservative historian, but a wonderful, highly respected historian.
00:29:35.460
And Nathaniel Philbrick is pretty even-handed in his treatment of the Pilgrims and the Mayflower.
00:29:39.840
This was a very popular American history book that came out maybe 10 years ago.
00:29:46.720
And then you can get more into what I think is really fascinating history in the Middle Ages and late Rome.
00:29:55.060
And you kind of work your way backward from what you know to from what is familiar all the way backward into the foundations of your civilization and your culture.
00:30:05.620
I would like you to bring light to my confusion with C.S. Lewis's Law of Human Nature.
00:30:10.720
Lewis states that there are typically two instincts that humans face when looking at a problem.
00:30:20.000
So this argument tends to work for most people, but it doesn't work for all.
00:30:24.280
For example, a child who is out of control does what they want to do without regard for a conscience.
00:30:29.460
The typical response to this predicament is the child has not yet learned right from wrong.
00:30:33.220
But the moral law that Lewis is proposing is saying that right from wrong is built into us.
00:30:38.680
I do not know if humans would know not to steal, murder, or lie naturally.
00:30:47.860
These moral laws have been observed in all people at all times and all places.
00:30:52.280
Now, Lewis writes, he specifically addresses this.
00:30:55.600
This law was called the law of nature because people thought that everyone knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it.
00:31:01.860
They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here or there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colorblind or have no ear for a tune.
00:31:10.880
But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behavior was obvious to everyone.
00:31:16.760
So, yeah, there's going to be a random psychopath or someone who has no moral sense.
00:31:24.060
When it comes to the specific example of little children, a three-year-old is the worst individual on the face of the earth, right?
00:31:30.020
And the three-year-olds are just awful monsters of selfishness who demand everything and don't really care about anybody else.
00:31:35.840
But this is because they haven't yet reached the age of reason.
00:31:40.300
So the age of reason, the Catholic Church says the age of reason occurs around seven years old, but just about every framework for viewing the world has some sense of the age of reason.
00:31:50.460
Three-year-olds are not reasonable in the way that older children and then teenagers and adults are reasonable.
00:31:57.540
So a way to think of it is that my ability to reproduce is built into me.
00:32:05.120
Trust me, if I were in the woods, I would do it just fine.
00:32:09.600
But I can't produce sperm cells at age four either.
00:32:17.420
And so while that law of nature is built into all of us, we must mature.
00:32:21.960
Even Jesus in the Gospels grows in wisdom, right?
00:32:24.860
He matures because he's in time and space and he's enfleshed in a body.
00:32:32.400
it simply tells us something about our own time and our own space and what we have to do
00:32:44.440
I'm very attracted to the idea of the Catholic Church.
00:32:47.000
You know, I'm always shocked when we get these Catholic questions.
00:32:53.260
Well, I'm glad to hear that you found an evangelical church that is bringing you close to the
00:33:23.240
and that you're closer to God and that you're also thinking about joining the Catholic Church
00:33:28.680
and you're thinking that might be the next step.
00:33:30.760
That is a little bit retelling of my own return to the Catholic Church.
00:33:35.440
I did read a lot of Protestant theologians and evangelical writers and preachers
00:33:39.180
on my way back across the Tiber to my Popish 2,000-year-old institution.
00:33:45.860
One of the, you bring this up with the LDS Church, this is the risk of dealing in real institutions
00:33:52.480
and it's a real risk of faulty teaching and faulty engagement with the faith.
00:33:57.800
This isn't just about LDS or some other derivative of Christianity, even Catholic schooling.
00:34:03.060
I have a lot of people who come up to me and they say,
00:34:09.480
And they said, oh, that's why you're still in the Catholic Church.
00:34:11.360
I know a lot of people who went to Catholic schooling and it just led them, they ran away.
00:34:17.460
They don't want to associate with their childhood and the pain that comes with being a child or an adolescent.
00:34:24.260
The thing that you must do is not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
00:34:27.560
Something that might aid you on your journey, there's a wonderful resource called Catholic Answers,
00:34:32.920
which is the benefit of being around for 2,000 years and having people during those two millennia
00:34:39.960
If you pose to the Catholic Church, what should I have for breakfast on Tuesday morning at 8,
00:34:44.820
They'll have bacon and eggs and orange juice or something.
00:34:47.880
So you can consult a lot of the questions you might have on the institution of the Church,
00:34:54.180
on the sacraments, on the magisterium, on the Church Fathers, whatever.
00:34:59.240
You can search for it and you'll probably find an answer.
00:35:02.400
If you're drawn to the notion that the God who became incarnate and enfleshed and lived for a certain time and a real time and place chose real people to do real things,
00:35:12.300
who instituted the acts of the apostles and who said,
00:35:15.480
Peter, on this rock I build my church, feed my sheep, you have the keys to the kingdom of heaven,
00:35:21.240
whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.
00:35:25.320
If that leads you to conclude that maybe there is a real church with a real order and real people running it,
00:35:30.820
then I encourage you in that and don't be discouraged.
00:35:36.140
That's his main tool is to say no, no, cynicism.
00:35:43.700
People are all fools and don't ever commit yourself to something real that will make you vulnerable.
00:35:51.020
Proceed in joy and seriousness, you know, with joy and prudence and I wish you luck on your journey.
00:36:00.100
Hey, Michael, I'm 20 years old and I reside in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
00:36:03.860
I just recently received a premium subscription to The Daily Wire.
00:36:10.360
I'm glad I'll see you on the ark and the ark that'll just be,
00:36:12.960
it'll just be people floating on leftist years tumblers.
00:36:16.800
I'm having trouble finding a major that suits me.
00:36:24.480
I don't necessarily recommend studying either of those.
00:36:30.800
I don't recommend political science or really any of the social sciences.
00:36:40.360
The social sciences came about relatively recently.
00:36:42.900
They came about as theories to apply the scientific method to things that don't necessarily lend themselves to the scientific method,
00:36:57.080
I recommend that history will give you a grounding for anything that you want to do.
00:37:01.680
It will give you, in my view, a better political education than political science ever would.
00:37:08.220
Political philosophy is an interesting field of study,
00:37:10.420
but it's fallen totally out of favor at the university in favor of political science,
00:37:19.180
If you're interested in politics and theology, I might study the classics.
00:37:25.280
I think literature is a wonderful way to engage in both theology and politics.
00:37:29.680
Literature basically converted Andrew Klavan to Christianity, literature and Christmas cookies.
00:37:36.180
But an older field of study, an older discipline, I think will serve you well in any of your interests.
00:37:41.720
From Jessica, dear Michael, do you know how the new tax plan will affect freelance musicians?
00:37:48.800
Well, as a former freelance actor myself, you'll probably be fine because freelance artists don't make any money,
00:37:56.980
It actually will help you a lot, I think, because of the advantages to pass through entities.
00:38:01.840
So a lot of freelance artists have an S corporation.
00:38:05.740
So an actor could incorporate himself and then deduct movie tickets, wardrobe, haircuts, whatever.
00:38:11.860
You can deduct things that feed into the business of that.
00:38:14.820
If you're a blank book writer like me, then you could deduct blank sheets of paper or pens without any ink in them.
00:38:23.240
Under the new tax plan, you can deduct, I think, up to 25% of your income.
00:38:30.100
If you're an artist, I assume you live in one of these godforsaken cities with high city and state and local taxation like Los Angeles or New York.
00:38:40.080
That part will ding you a little bit, but I think it will be more than made up for on the S corps.
00:38:43.780
If you haven't incorporated yourself as an artist and you do make an income, incorporate yourself.
00:38:49.560
From Nathan, Michael Knowles, King of the Trolls, what is your favorite color?
00:39:03.580
My question, when should we hit a bully back twice as hard and when should we turn the other cheek?
00:39:14.400
A lot of people who would just take Christianity to be just some small aspect of it, they'll become pacifists.
00:39:30.820
Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy that heresy is not the promotion of vice.
00:39:35.000
It's just the promotion of one virtue to the exclusion of all the others.
00:39:41.220
There is a time for everything and a season for every purpose under heaven.
00:39:47.640
In the same breath that Christ says, turn the other cheek, he also says, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away.
00:39:57.960
If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
00:40:01.100
I don't know that he means that literally, as we mean literally.
00:40:04.080
He says, do not say anything other than yes or no.
00:40:07.960
Of course, he doesn't mean that literally because he says many other things.
00:40:11.080
And he tells St. Paul, takes many oaths, takes many vows.
00:40:19.880
So Christ also says to the apostles, if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.
00:40:28.360
St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas both explain just war very well, all the reasons when wars can legitimately be undertaken.
00:40:36.020
Santa Claus himself, St. Nicholas, punched a heretic in the face at the First Council of Nicaea.
00:40:41.420
When we're talking about that Sermon on the Mount, Christ sums up the whole sermon in the next chapter.
00:40:47.260
He says, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.
00:40:54.840
Seek first the kingdom of God, then follow everything else.
00:40:58.360
And then he gives us these examples, these parabolic examples, these hyperbolic examples.
00:41:02.340
Do not, you shouldn't strike back at somebody for spite, or for cruelty, or even really for vengeance.
00:41:09.540
I don't think that you should be doing it and say, ah, that'll hurt him and that will give me great pleasure and joy.
00:41:14.380
But our Lord is also not telling us to be doormats and to let the cruel rape the face of the earth.
00:41:19.820
Christ is speaking of a spiritual strategy to humble the self and to win other souls over to him.
00:41:25.100
But not everybody is moved, necessarily, by this humility.
00:41:28.900
So we should love our neighbors as ourselves, but sometimes we all need a little bit of tough love, don't we?
00:41:34.480
A priest friend of mine keeps a baseball bat near the door of his rectory because it's not a great neighborhood.
00:41:39.860
There have been break-ins and burglaries of the poor box.
00:41:42.680
I one time asked him about this, and he explained it to me.
00:41:45.620
Sometimes there just isn't time to turn the other cheek.
00:41:53.420
It's finally back, my podcast with Andrew Klavan.
00:41:56.880
The next chapter is up, chapter 11, episode 11, and we're coming to a big climax in this.
00:42:19.560
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson,
00:42:38.260
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
00:42:52.100
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