Ep. 979 -Â OK Groomer
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
189.42288
Summary
Jesse Tarlov joins The Michael Knowles Show to talk about Florida's new law banning sexual conversations between teachers and little kids in public schools, and why Democrats are fighting it all the way to the White House.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Ever since Democrats came out swinging against Florida's parental rights in education bill,
00:00:05.980
which bans sexual conversations from kindergarten through third grade classrooms,
00:00:11.920
the Libs have found themselves on the receiving end of a new political slogan,
00:00:16.620
OK Groomer. Some conservatives think this slogan is hyperbolic and counterproductive.
00:00:23.040
I, for one, think it's great. After years of Democrats bandying about the word racist,
00:00:29.140
unfairly to destroy people's lives and shut down debate, I am all for a potentially equally
00:00:35.900
powerful word like groomer, which in this case I think is being used fairly. Conservatives are
00:00:41.860
arguing that if you insist on having sexual conversations with kids in the classroom or
00:00:47.860
anywhere else and then hiding those conversations from their parents, you are a groomer. You are
00:00:54.200
priming kids for certain kinds of sexual behaviors, for a certain kind of sexual
00:00:58.600
perspective. The attack so far seems pretty effective. According to recent polls, the vast
00:01:05.440
majority of likely voters support the Florida law and oppose sexual conversations with little kids.
00:01:11.820
And yet, despite the popularity of this bill and other bills, Democrats are doubling down all the
00:01:19.300
way up to the White House, which now says it's going to fight to protect sexual conversations
00:01:24.500
between teachers and little kids in Florida and all around the country. Bad news for kids,
00:01:30.540
bad news for the culture, but potentially bad news for Democrats too, as voters head into the midterms
00:01:36.860
pissed off and eager to protect their kids. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:49.300
Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Sunshine Coolwater, who says,
00:01:54.820
I didn't even know my teachers' first names until I got my yearbooks. This is true. This is true. I
00:02:01.120
loved my teachers. I still speak to a number of my teachers, including teachers all the way back to my
00:02:05.960
kindergarten teachers, as a matter of fact. So I love my teachers. We have kept in touch,
00:02:10.760
at least with many of those teachers. But we never had any of these kinds of conversations
00:02:16.700
when we were in the classroom. I agree. I didn't know many of my teachers' first names.
00:02:22.280
I certainly didn't know what they were doing on date night. And that all seems to have changed now.
00:02:27.940
I always want to be fair on this issue. I do not want to be a pyromaniac in a field of straw men.
00:02:35.120
And so I have twisted the arm of my friend, Jessica Tarlov, who is one of, if not my very favorite
00:02:41.240
Democrat out there. Jessica, you know her from The Five. She's a co-host of The Five.
00:02:45.720
She's vice president of Insights at Bustle. She is the author of America in the Age of Trump,
00:02:52.220
Opportunities and Oppositions in an Uncertain World. If Trump runs for president again,
00:02:57.520
we might get a second run of that book. We might get The Age of Trump, part two.
00:03:02.900
So Jesse, first of all, thank you so much for coming on the show. I very much appreciate it.
00:03:07.240
So I have talked to a colleague of yours, Ethan Behrman, about the substance
00:03:11.880
of this law in Florida, the parental rights and education bill. I'd be more than interested,
00:03:17.280
certainly, in hearing your take on the substance. But first, at least, I want to get to your thoughts
00:03:22.920
as a political strategist. The opposition to this bill and others seems to be a total loser for
00:03:28.940
Democrats in Virginia, in Florida, in every poll I've seen on the subject. Why are Democrats doubling
00:03:36.120
down? Well, you're right. Well, first of all, I want to know if Ethan Behrman is potentially your
00:03:42.160
favorite Democrat, since you said I was your favorite. You rank so much higher. It's not even
00:03:47.900
close. He is. You can't even see him from where you are on the list. Well, he's actually a lawyer,
00:03:52.720
which I am not. So he's probably good to speak to about the substance of the bill in a different way
00:03:57.540
than I am. In terms of this being a loser, Democrats have fared very poorly with culture war issues
00:04:03.720
as of late. Obviously, we had a good year in 2020 and was able to take back the presidency
00:04:08.560
and control of the Senate, which made all the difference. But we do know that that was obviously
00:04:14.940
affected by the fact that we were in the midst of a global health pandemic and we had Trump,
00:04:19.820
who's a very particular type of Republican on the ballot. I know you're a fan, but there are many
00:04:24.420
Republicans who remain uncomfortable with his style. In terms of the don't say gay bill, which I
00:04:31.720
will admit when I first heard about this, I then searched for the term don't say gay in the bill,
00:04:37.040
because you would think that it was in there. It is not explicitly in there. It's part of it.
00:04:41.560
It's a quirky slogan. It's something that people think will be catchy. It has been used in a lot
00:04:47.220
of ads here. And I think it's very confusing for a lot of people. Now, I happen to think that the bill
00:04:51.940
is dangerous. I don't think that there's a need for it. And I've seen a lot of counter arguments
00:04:55.840
against it. Going back to, first of all, how often are these conversations happening? And I'm sure
00:05:02.180
that people would say, well, one time is too many, but we can't legislate for an entire state or an
00:05:07.260
entire country based upon outlier issues. I've seen pushback from teachers who have said that this means
00:05:13.000
that they can't talk about their lives with their students. And you may not have known your teacher's
00:05:17.420
first name or whether they were married or if they had kids. But I went to school here in New York
00:05:22.660
City and I only called my teachers by their first names. I knew their entire families who were active
00:05:27.960
participants in my school. And I ended up just fine. And I have a new daughter and I'm not, you
00:05:35.740
know, she identifies as a girl because I said that she identifies as a girl and she even wears pink
00:05:39.940
sometimes. So I really don't think that this is nearly as dangerous as an issue as Republicans would
00:05:47.420
have it be. But I know it's all about politics all the time. And I believe that it is a winning issue
00:05:52.380
for them now that we have parents that are pissed off about CRT. And now they're pissed off about
00:05:58.400
sexual indoctrination at the age of six. So to your point on whether this is a real issue or not,
00:06:06.080
it seems to me Democrats are running into a contradiction, which is, and they ran into the
00:06:09.820
same contradiction on CRT, which is on the one hand, they're saying it's not happening. CRT is not
00:06:14.400
being taught in the classroom. These conversations are not happening in kindergarten. It's not a big deal
00:06:18.040
at all. But then on the flip side, they say it's the end of the world if we ban these conversations,
00:06:23.700
if we ban CRT from the classroom, or if we ban sexual conversations from kindergarten. And so
00:06:28.460
I'm noticing they're going back and forth here. And I'm not sure if there is a consensus,
00:06:32.500
but if it's, if the conversations aren't happening, then great, the law is no big deal.
00:06:36.600
It's more wasted ink in government, but hey, we've got a lot of that already. So what, so then I come
00:06:42.360
back to this political question and, and it seems you agree with the political outlook on how this
00:06:48.020
is going to fare for Dems in the midterms. So then what happened? Are they just crazy? Have
00:06:52.540
they just lost their minds and they're running with a bill that they, one, don't think even
00:06:56.420
matters all that much? And two, is it deeply unpopular with voters? Well, there's always an
00:07:02.600
issue and it's on both sides of the aisle between the extremes, right? We had that obviously when the
00:07:07.360
Tea Party came to power, right? The moderate Republicans were looking at them saying this is absolute
00:07:11.500
madness. And we have an extreme left and in our party right now. And the people in the middle,
00:07:17.060
the moderates that are trying to win races in Virginia and Michigan, et cetera, are looking
00:07:20.940
at them and saying, excuse me, could you please stop talking? I don't want to hear to fund the
00:07:24.700
police. I don't want to hear about socialized medicine. We want to hear about middle of the
00:07:29.020
road solutions, which is how Joe Biden won. So I think there's a bit of a communication problem
00:07:33.560
there because often the most extreme people have the biggest platforms. They're the most effective
00:07:38.000
on social media. They're kind of screaming from the rooftops about this. But there's this fundamental
00:07:42.560
problem going on right now with my party about what we should be focused on. And voters have been
00:07:48.640
clear. They care about inflation and the cost of living. That's it. That's really all they care
00:07:53.640
about. We would like to save Ukraine from Putin. Sure. We think Afghanistan was bungled. Sure. But we're
00:08:01.400
happy to be out of the war, et cetera. Climate change, still a really big deal, but not as big of a deal
00:08:06.560
as a 22% rise in the cost of beef at your average supermarket. So that's what the midterms is going
00:08:14.320
to be about. And the moderate wing of the party certainly understands that. The left-wing side of
00:08:20.240
the party, I think, is A, running in districts that are probably too safe for their own good,
00:08:25.360
and B, just doesn't want to say that they're listening to polls. And that is, as someone who was
00:08:29.920
a former political pollster and now does it for consumer brands, I can tell you that's where everything's
00:08:36.000
won. That's where the dollars are won. That's where the elections are won. And the moderate
00:08:40.000
wing of the party is message testing all of that. They're listening to their focus groups,
00:08:44.240
and they're saying, this is just a loser for us. And there's too much time to be having this
00:08:49.920
conversation that it can go on and on and on and actually allow Republicans to be focused on these
00:08:56.000
culture war issues, which they have been winning as of late, rather than having to put up their own
00:09:00.480
plans. And I brought this up on the five yesterday, for instance, on the health care issue.
00:09:04.400
Mitch McConnell was on a Sunday show last weekend and was asked about, well, what's the Republican
00:09:08.400
plan? So that's a really good issue. I'll get a really good question. I'll get back to you.
00:09:12.720
Republicans may very well win on the health care issue, but they haven't put forward a plan.
00:09:17.520
But with Democrats screaming about these other ancillary things, it won't make a difference
00:09:21.520
necessarily at the polls. And that's where my frustration with it lies. And to your point about if
00:09:26.400
these conversations aren't happening, I didn't say they weren't happening at all. But I do remain
00:09:31.520
fundamentally concerned about the young kid, a six, seven year old. And there are a lot of people who
00:09:36.320
are gay, straight, grow up to be trans, et cetera, who say that they knew that, sorry, I shouldn't have
00:09:41.840
said gay, straight, who are gay, who feel that they knew that when they were really young. And if they
00:09:46.960
don't feel like they can talk to their parents about it, why shouldn't they be able to go to their
00:09:50.640
teachers to have those conversations? And I'm not saying that parents should be left out of the loop.
00:09:55.040
But if you are someone who believes that you were born in the wrong body and they've reported kids
00:09:59.360
as young as four years old who are saying that or saying, mommy, I don't think I'm a girl. I think
00:10:03.840
that I'm a boy. And if they can't say that to their mommy, they need someone who can help them,
00:10:09.920
who they can go to and talk to about that, not to get on puberty blockers, but to have an open
00:10:14.320
conversation. Well, okay. Because that's an important distinction. I think my response, if a child came to,
00:10:20.720
if my own child came to me and said, I think I'm a girl, even though I'm a boy, I would tell him as
00:10:26.400
lovingly, as gently as I possibly could, I'd say, well, you're not, you're not a girl. You're, you
00:10:30.400
might, you might have a psychological condition. You might have seen something on the news. You might
00:10:34.760
just be a little kid who gets confused about things. If it were a little girl, I might say,
00:10:38.280
you might just be a tomboy. I'm not denying your feelings, but you'll grow out of it as most people do.
00:10:43.220
And, but I would lovingly try to deal with that. And so what you're saying is kids need a resource
00:10:49.040
if they've got awful, terrible, regressive parents, but not to the point to put them on puberty
00:10:53.040
blockers. I think the fear here is, and we're seeing stories all around the country of this,
00:10:57.980
kids before puberty, by definition, are being put on these kinds of drugs. There was a whistleblower
00:11:03.820
just came out, a school nurse who said 11 year olds are being put on these kinds of drugs
00:11:07.240
without their parents' notification. And so it, it does raise this, I mean,
00:11:12.320
I guess this is where you get the actual title of the Florida bill, parental rights and education.
00:11:18.200
Whose right is it? If you've got two fundamentally different worldviews, the traditional worldview
00:11:21.900
that says boys, if you've got a boy's body, then you're a boy and you can't be a girl secretly.
00:11:27.120
They just deny the whole premise of transgenderism. And the new sort of secular transgender view,
00:11:32.080
which says, no, your body and your true self can be totally different. You should deny the body
00:11:37.080
and go on puberty blockers and whatever else is going to be following that. Well,
00:11:42.680
who wins out? Who wins? People might think the old Christian view or Jewish view or traditional view
00:11:47.320
is, is regressive and terrible and harmful. Though, by the way, the studies, I don't think really back
00:11:52.200
this up on the efficacy of puberty blockers at reducing suicidality or depression, but, but let's
00:11:57.600
put that aside for a second. Who gets to choose? Is it the, is it the parents? If the, who, let's say
00:12:03.060
they even deny transgenderism. Let's say they even look on homosexuality with moral opprobrium.
00:12:07.240
They're Orthodox Jews. They're traditional Christians or whatever, or the teachers who are
00:12:12.880
the representatives of this new secular culture. Well, I think fundamentally that parents should
00:12:19.720
be responsible for these types of decisions with their children. But even the example that you
00:12:23.240
talked about, the case of the 11 year old who was put on puberty blockers and the school knew and the
00:12:28.260
parents didn't know, that's an 11 year old. And this bill is talking about five year olds through
00:12:32.600
three grades. So that's right. Five through eight year olds. Well, that's good. Yeah. They
00:12:37.460
certainly shouldn't be put on the puberty blockers and they can't be legally put on puberty blockers,
00:12:42.160
but I'm just saying that we're not actually, that's an extension of this that is totally separate from
00:12:47.600
that bill. And I think that that's part of the problem when we talk this fast and loose about
00:12:52.960
things like this. And so few people actually read the substance of these bills and they're just railing
00:12:57.880
about, well, I heard this and I heard that instead of getting down to the nitty gritty of what's in
00:13:02.940
there. So we were talking about extremely young kids. You're not denying the fact that children,
00:13:07.720
you said even my children could potentially feel this way and express a concern about their gender
00:13:13.240
identity. But when you said that you would lovingly say this to them, I could push back easily and say
00:13:19.980
it's not actually loving of a child who's coming to you and telling you that they're struggling with
00:13:24.780
their gender identity to tell them, well, it's just not true. And yeah, little girl, like it's
00:13:29.640
fine if you want to be a tomboy, but you're not a boy because unless you fundamentally refute the
00:13:36.100
possibility that transgenderism exists and there are a lot of- I do. I fundamentally refute it. I think
00:13:40.820
it's a complete fantasy. I think it's not to get too down the weeds, but I think it's just a new
00:13:46.360
version of the old Gnostic heresy that says that our bodies and our souls, and really when we're
00:13:50.700
talking about transgenderism, we don't like to use these theological terms, but that's what we're
00:13:54.300
talking about. We're saying my physical self is totally different from my metaphysical self,
00:13:58.660
and the physical self should be denied, and the metaphysical self that I at least imagine
00:14:02.660
should bring the physical body more in line with what it perceives itself to be.
00:14:07.420
I think it's just bogus. I think it's an old crazy religious heresy. I think it's harmful to
00:14:12.300
everyone who's involved in it, and I think it should be discouraged. And I think when you go from
00:14:16.960
0.001% of people identifying as transgender to now 20.8% of Gen Z identifying as transsexual or
00:14:27.660
pansexual or some other gender identity issue, clearly that either Alex Jones is right and there's
00:14:33.560
something in the water, or this is a social phenomenon that's going on that is related to
00:14:39.020
how we're even talking about these things. Well, Alex Jones is not right about anything.
00:14:43.500
So I'm unwilling. He was right about the frogs. He was right about the frogs. Yale proved it.
00:14:49.340
I don't even know what you're talking about, but I cannot go along with it, and I try to block out
00:14:54.260
as much Alex Jones anything as possible. So I do think that social constructs certainly plays a role
00:15:04.020
in what's going on in the rise of people identifying as gay, as queer, non-binary, transgender, etc.
00:15:11.560
But I would posit as well that we are at a different time culturally where people are feeling
00:15:16.860
like they can actually speak honestly and openly about who they are and not feel like they're going
00:15:22.780
to lose their jobs, not feel like they're going to be ostracized from society. There's obviously
00:15:26.840
been a huge evolution in terms of how we treat people who identify in these ways. And there are a
00:15:33.820
lot of psychiatrists, and you're a lot of things, but I don't believe that you're a psychiatrist.
00:15:37.520
I'm more of a biologist myself. Ketanji Jackson is not, but I consider myself more of a biologist.
00:15:44.720
Well, as a woman, I can tell you that there are plenty of psychiatrists out there that believe
00:15:52.380
strongly that transgenderism is something that is real. It's something that also that if it doesn't
00:15:56.920
get addressed is going to lead to tremendous spikes, and we've seen this in terms of suicide
00:16:01.180
and self-harm and depression, and I go back to the original North Carolina bathroom bill,
00:16:07.140
which basically came down to who cares? Really, who cares what some, if you want to-
00:16:15.240
No, no, no, no. It was because the right had a problem with people who identified as the other
00:16:23.940
But isn't that the change? Previously, the men who identify as women were not allowed in the
00:16:29.240
women's bathroom. The libs wanted them to be able to use the women's bathroom, and the right said no.
00:16:34.240
But we're not the ones who changed the rules, right?
00:16:36.940
No, but it was because Republicans made up an issue. They said that these people were identifying,
00:16:43.680
that men who were identifying as women were going to go into bathrooms and hurt people.
00:16:47.980
No, yeah, that it was just disordered for them to go in.
00:16:51.880
And that's a huge problem and such a misrepresentation of the way that transgender people live.
00:16:58.140
And if you, obviously, I have plenty to say about Leah Thomas, and I played sports up to the collegiate
00:17:03.680
level, not certainly at the D1 level, the D3 level, but I understand that that is a rich debate that is
00:17:11.280
very textured. But to deny transgenderism, when so many people have studied this,
00:17:17.980
for their whole lives, and so many people who live this life have said that they are happier,
00:17:27.480
But I would tell you, Jesse, sometimes they say the plural of anecdote is not data,
00:17:33.020
though, frankly, I think it is, right? The plural of anecdote actually is data.
00:17:36.120
But I've talked to multiple people who had gender confusion, who even went through the process,
00:17:41.820
went on testosterone, started transitioning, and who deeply regretted it.
00:17:45.720
I've probably talked to half a dozen people who deeply, deeply regretted it and wished that
00:17:49.360
someone told them the truth. And when we talk about who's a psychiatrist or who's a biologist or,
00:17:54.360
I mean, really what we're talking about is who's a philosopher and who's a theologian and who's
00:17:58.240
talking about this question that you're bringing up too, which is, who are we? What is our true
00:18:02.980
identity? Is our true identity what we perceive it to be? Does it have to do with the body? Does it have
00:18:06.880
to do with what my teachers tell me in kindergarten? We have to leave it there because I'm seven minutes
00:18:10.920
over. But you, though, though you may be, you may not be a biologist, you may not be a psychologist,
00:18:19.000
you may, you may very well be a philosopher. You, you do remain among my top three favorite
00:18:23.900
Democrats. And I very much appreciate you coming on. Where can people find you?
00:18:29.120
Well, on Fox a lot, on Twitter at Jessica Tarlov, but I try not to read my mentions because I work
00:18:35.160
at Fox. So Twitter, that's basically it. Wonderful. You can find Jessica on Twitter,
00:18:41.680
find her on Fox, and I hope find you back on this show very soon.
00:18:47.080
All right. Thanks so much for coming on. Now, when you want to protect the sort of things you're
00:18:54.220
looking for, you know, you're looking, you're Googling, what is a man? What is a woman? You
00:18:57.660
know, really controversial stuff like that. You've got to check out ExpressVPN. Right now,
00:19:02.160
go to expressvpn.com slash Knowles. We know that big tech doesn't like us. We know that they target
00:19:11.960
us for our views. So why are you letting them peek in and look at everything you're looking at on the
00:19:19.020
internet? Every, even when you use that special super secret incognito window, you're not hiding
00:19:25.560
your data from these big tech companies. I'm talking about when you're looking at websites that you
00:19:29.900
shouldn't be looking at. You know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about those websites that could
00:19:33.140
get you in trouble. You know, I'm talking about dailywire.com. You know what I mean? You don't
00:19:38.040
want big tech knowing about that. That's probably the worst thing you could be looking at, especially
00:19:42.320
in a day when, when people are really being persecuted for their political views. ExpressVPN
00:19:46.880
anonymizes your online activity, camouflages your IP address, replaces it with a different secure IP of
00:19:52.760
your choice. I don't go on without it. I've got it on all my devices. I love it. It's the number
00:19:56.560
one rated VPN provider. Go to expressvpn.com slash Knowles. Get three months for free on a one-year
00:20:03.460
package. E-X-P-R-E-S-S vpn.com slash Knowles. Expressvpn.com slash Knowles. Head on over there
00:20:08.820
to check out the VPN that I trust. I love the okay groomer political messaging. And, and my friend
00:20:14.740
Jessica here has convinced me that it's the way to go because Republicans are winning on that issue.
00:20:20.800
I'm really, I'm glad that we could get into the substance because, you know, we're talking about
00:20:26.400
the issue itself. Who are we? What's transgenderism? What's, what are our five, can five-year-olds be
00:20:32.060
transgender? Can anyone be transgender? I like that. But she started out at the political level.
00:20:37.280
What does this mean in the midterms? And I think it's clear as day to me that this is a huge winner
00:20:45.240
for conservatives. When voters see people talking about transitioning children, it just turns them
00:20:54.380
off. There was some lunatic mother who went on ABC News the other day and talked about how from her
00:20:59.540
daughter's very first words, she began to identify as a girl. She was a, it was a boy, but then identified
00:21:09.080
as a girl. When Chazie, our daughter, when she really started to communicate to us, and that was at the
00:21:16.920
earliest moment that she actually had words and language to communicate to us who she truly was,
00:21:23.180
we were a little surprised because we didn't expect it. And then as we just literally raised her,
00:21:33.160
supported her, just like all parents do raising, you know, we're teaching her the right values.
00:21:37.980
We're teaching her to give back. You know, one of her favorite things in the world to do is to
00:21:42.740
volunteer and be in service to others. You know, that surprise evolves into something just really
00:21:50.340
cool and important. And, and that is the realization that she's our daughter.
00:21:56.760
That's the realization she had when she started saying Google Gaga, we just knew, we just knew if
00:22:01.800
anyone who's ever had a child knows that this is preposterous. First of all, it's, it's preposterous
00:22:06.740
because your kid's first words are like, you know, doggy, right? Your kid's first words don't even
00:22:11.680
sound like words. They're just kind of sounds. And so this woman is projecting something. I don't
00:22:16.800
know what she's projecting. And then it's so sad because she shows photos of her son who she's
00:22:20.640
dressed up as a little girl. And it's obviously, he's a, he's a boy. He's a boy. It's obviously a
00:22:24.960
boy. And I think the, the pictures here are the key to it because you hear these lunatic women like
00:22:31.460
this, this person here, men and women, but this woman in particular. And she says, my, my eight month
00:22:37.360
old baby obviously was transgender. And you say, this woman's off her rocker. And she's saying the
00:22:42.200
same kinds of things that elected Democrats are saying. She's saying the same kinds of things
00:22:44.900
that the white house is pushing right now. And then you see it, you see it so clear. You see it
00:22:49.040
in what your kids being taught, which became very clear during COVID when kids were being taught
00:22:53.220
online. You see it when you look at the picture and you say, no, the boy actually isn't a girl.
00:22:57.520
And the girl actually isn't a boy. And we're careening toward the midterms right now.
00:23:01.320
And this is not going to go very well for Democrats. There's a teacher in Kansas who is
00:23:11.200
insisting, he's a kindergarten teacher in Kansas, who is insistent that kindergartners are ready to
00:23:19.720
learn about transgenderism. When they've been exposed to information, they're ready to learn
00:23:24.240
about it, whether you think they are or not. And the research says that there is no age too young to
00:23:29.220
talk about pretty much anything. If they know about it, they're ready to learn about it, right?
00:23:35.000
So there is no, you know, what we think is always age appropriate. It is if they don't know about it.
00:23:41.460
They haven't been exposed to it. And yeah, you can give them time to develop.
00:23:46.540
But once they're exposed to it, and social media is going to do it, right? I know some kindergartners
00:23:51.660
in this school with cell phones. Mine had a cell phone. And so they get access to information,
00:23:58.400
they can, they can learn quickly. The world is teaching them faster than probably you are.
00:24:03.240
They're students as early as kindergarten who are identifying as non-gender conforming, non-binary,
00:24:11.760
that are transgender. And so because they're in our school, they're in our classrooms,
00:24:18.680
then that becomes a responsibility on the adults to say, okay,
00:24:23.720
I have a student who identifies this way. And so it's my responsibility to make sure the classroom
00:24:31.200
is inviting to them, just like it is to someone who might be Asian, Laotian, Korean, African,
00:24:43.560
Yeah. So this five-year-old, he's African. And so we're going to affirm that he's African. And this
00:24:48.800
five-year-old says that he's a unicorn. And so we're going to affirm that he's a unicorn, right?
00:24:54.260
Which is just as coherent as saying that the little boy identifies as a little girl. There's
00:24:59.320
a difference here, of course, because there are such things as Africans. There are such things as
00:25:04.600
Asians. There are, your, your race is something that I can look at and say, okay, that's real.
00:25:10.200
Just like your sex is something that I can look at and say, that's real.
00:25:13.540
But your imagined identity, that is not real. That's fake. And that shouldn't be affirmed.
00:25:19.120
The point he's making here is so subtle and it's so dangerous. He's saying, look, I don't want,
00:25:24.320
I don't want to teach kindergartners about transgenderism. I don't, I don't want them to
00:25:29.300
learn about transgenderism. But once they find out about it, then we have to talk about it. Then
00:25:33.700
they've got, they're already, they're already hearing about it from social media, from their
00:25:38.220
cell phones that the five-year-olds have, from the smartphones that five-year-olds are being given.
00:25:43.060
And he says, I gave my own five-year-old a cell phone. Right. That was a mistake. That was bad
00:25:46.520
parenting. You shouldn't do that. You, that was, that was your first mistake. Now you're going to
00:25:51.000
compound that first mistake. You're going to use that mistake. You're saying, look, I'm exposing
00:25:54.760
my kids to all this kind of transgender insanity. So now we've got to talk about it. Well, we wouldn't
00:25:59.840
have to talk about it if you weren't exposing them to that in the first place. So it's a way of
00:26:04.520
subtly getting that in there. And then he goes even more wrong where he says, and once it comes up,
00:26:09.640
then I've got to affirm their transgenderism. No, you don't. You should deny it because it's not
00:26:14.140
real. It's just not real. It's just made up. I don't want to sound cruel or insensitive. I actually
00:26:20.120
think I'm being quite compassionate and sensitive here. When I tell you, I would tell a five-year-old
00:26:25.240
and I would certainly tell his kindergarten teacher, it's just not real. Yeah. I'm sure the experience of
00:26:31.320
it is real. A feeling of it's real, but it is not because a boy actually can't be a girl.
00:26:36.240
And this is the radicalism you're seeing. And you're going to see this from just about every
00:26:40.480
teacher. Well, it comes up in the classroom. Sure, it comes up in the classroom. And you're
00:26:44.240
totally right. You do probably have a responsibility to address something that comes up in the classroom.
00:26:50.340
So how are you going to address it? Well, one of two ways. One of three ways, I guess. One is you
00:26:54.660
shut it down and you say, talk to your parents. Two, you say, no, Johnny, boys can't be girls. Or three,
00:27:01.500
you say, yes, Johnny, boys can be girls. You are teaching something. This is why it's not enough
00:27:06.240
for conservatives to just say, get the politics out of the classroom.
00:27:10.440
The politics are going to be in the classroom. Politics just means public stuff. It just means
00:27:14.240
the stuff that people are talking about, the way that we live our lives, that's going to end up in
00:27:17.680
the classroom. It's not enough to say, hands off, don't talk about it. You actually have to have a
00:27:21.100
point of view. As I say in my book, Speechless, free speech doesn't mean anything to people who don't
00:27:25.340
have anything to say. So it's not enough. These laws are a good start to say you can't preach
00:27:29.600
transgenderism in kindergarten. They should go further. You should teach an affirmative,
00:27:35.060
accurate, true understanding of human nature. You should say, boys are boys and girls are girls.
00:27:42.960
And when a man and a woman love each other very much, they leave their families and they get
00:27:46.620
married. And when they get married, because the sexes are complementary, they have children and they
00:27:51.200
reproduce. And that's a good thing, actually, that they do that. And that's how we all got here.
00:27:55.460
And you do that at age appropriate times, but you can't just bury your head in the
00:27:59.480
sand and you can't just avoid reality. I want to talk about what's going on with kids right now.
00:28:04.620
The most horrifying story probably I've ever seen in the news, we've been talking about it for a
00:28:10.240
couple of days, this live action story about how in DC, there were five babies who were killed through
00:28:17.080
abortion. And now a whistleblower brought these bodies that were photographs taken. A pro-life activist
00:28:24.140
broke the story. And so the authorities are, of course, investigating the pro-lifers. They're
00:28:30.380
letting the abortions soft the hook. They're investigating the pro-lifers. It's not just
00:28:35.060
five babies, by the way. This has happened well over a hundred times. And they've only got evidence
00:28:40.980
of the five. They've only got physical evidence of the five. Well, it turns out live action has a clip
00:28:45.480
of the abortionist, this butcher who committed these atrocities. And this goes back years now.
00:28:53.100
And he admitted that he was allowing, in violation of the law, allowing babies who were born alive
00:28:59.880
Obviously, you're here for a certain procedure. And if your pregnancy were, let's say you went into
00:29:05.980
labor, the membrane ruptured, and you delivered before we got to the termination part of the
00:29:11.040
procedure here. Then we would do things, we would not help it. Let's say we wouldn't intubate.
00:29:19.460
Okay. Okay. So you would make sure. Yeah, we wouldn't do any extra, you know, it's like,
00:29:23.840
yeah, it would be, you know, a person that would be a terminal person in the hospital, let's say,
00:29:31.560
that had cancer. You know, we wouldn't do any extra procedures to help that person survive.
00:29:37.140
They had, like, do not resuscitate orders. Okay.
00:29:39.640
You know, we would do the same thing here. Okay.
00:29:41.640
Whereas if you were in a hospital in Virginia, let's say, and you went into labor, and you went
00:29:48.240
to the hospital, and then they saw you deliver, they would do everything possible to help that
00:29:57.200
Yeah, we wouldn't do it. You know the thing that all the hospitals do because that's the law?
00:30:02.060
We don't do that here. You know how they help the fetus survive? Even if you're going to use
00:30:06.820
a silly word like fetus instead of baby. People say fetus because they don't want to admit that
00:30:11.400
a baby in the womb is a baby. The fetus, quote unquote, stops being a fetus by any definition
00:30:17.240
once he's out of the womb. So then what he's saying is we wouldn't help the fetus survive. He's
00:30:20.940
saying we wouldn't help the baby survive. So do that here. He talks about, oh, this poor woman,
00:30:24.620
she went to the hospital once because her abortion didn't work out for her. And then
00:30:28.440
she gave birth to the baby, and they wouldn't let her kill the baby. This guy, how many times
00:30:33.260
has he done this? It's almost funny. If not for the incredible suffering involved, it would almost
00:30:41.080
be funny how ghoulish this guy sounds. His name is Dr. Cesare Santangelo. You probably haven't even
00:30:45.820
heard that name. Dr. Cesare Santangelo. This guy, we talk about Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin's a
00:30:53.040
butcher. He's committing war crimes. Sure. We talk about people like Bashar Assad, the dictator in
00:30:57.600
Syria. He's a butcher. He's committed war crimes. Sure. Cesare Santangelo is just as bad, probably
00:31:04.800
worse, because he's focusing all of it on innocent little babies. That's his job. That's how he makes
00:31:10.100
his money in violation of the law. He seems to know it. Stone cold psychopath. The guy should at the
00:31:15.680
very least be locked up for the rest of his life. Frankly, I would recommend a harsher punishment from the
00:31:20.720
civil authority than that. And this name, this name, no one even knows this name. You should be
00:31:25.360
posting this name. You should be publicizing this name. Cesare Santangelo, the worst killer,
00:31:30.580
the worst serial killer, murderer in this country right now. Who knows? Who knows how many victims
00:31:36.000
he's got? Maybe the worst in American history. Shine a light on that. All of the entrenched powers
00:31:41.760
are trying to cover it up, cover up for this psycho and trying to bury the bodies, actually trying to
00:31:46.400
incinerate the bodies without even doing an autopsy. Don't let him get away with it. You know,
00:31:51.280
you know, sometimes on this show, I have to say, I told you so. Sometimes that's happy with good
00:31:56.240
political predictions. Sometimes it's sad with bad political predictions, but I was still correct.
00:32:00.220
Well, all of my prophecies that have come to light have inspired a new collection of merchandise over
00:32:05.880
at dailywire.com slash shop. This is the Noel Stradamus line. That's right. That's right. You all know
00:32:11.560
that the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is six months these days. I have this
00:32:16.480
wonderful new merch and I see it. I foresee it in your future. Go to dailywire.com slash shop today.
00:32:22.240
Order from the Noel Stradamus line. We'll be right back with a lot more.
00:32:26.380
The Democrats are so upset about this okay groomer slogan. The fact that Republicans are accurately
00:32:46.260
criticizing them for having, insisting on having sexual conversations with little kids without
00:32:51.020
their parents knowing about it. They're so upset that they're trying to throw that punch back on
00:32:55.640
Republicans and it's not working. It's extremely dishonest the way they're doing it. Tennessee,
00:33:00.240
my state, was trending yesterday on social media and it was trending because of a bill, Senate Bill 562,
00:33:06.740
House Bill 233, brought forward by Representative Leatherwood, which would redefine certain aspects of
00:33:16.280
marriage in Tennessee. The headline, according to all the media, was Tennessee Republicans want to get
00:33:24.500
rid of age limits for marriage. Tennessee Republicans take out an age limit in a marriage statute so they
00:33:32.760
can cover up for child abuse and have child brides and their pedos and they're the real groomers.
00:33:39.700
That was the headline. And I saw that headline and I said, no, that's not true.
00:33:43.320
I didn't know anything about the story. I hadn't read the bill. I said, that's just obviously not true.
00:33:47.140
So you can read the bill. It's two pages long. It's not that hard. And it's mostly just kind of
00:33:53.580
boring government gobbledygook, but it changes a little bit the definition of marriage. And what
00:34:00.360
it appears to do, just from my first reading, is it gives a protection to public officials who do not
00:34:07.500
believe that marriage can exist between two men or two women, who adhere to the definition of marriage
00:34:14.120
that has existed everywhere throughout all of human history until five minutes ago, and who feel that
00:34:19.100
it would be a violation of their conscience and their religious beliefs, if not reality outright,
00:34:25.080
to participate in such unions. That's what it's about. The representative who brought it said,
00:34:32.620
quote, all this bill does is give an alternative form of marriage for those pastors and other
00:34:36.940
individuals who have a conscientious objection to the current pathway to marriage in our law. Tom
00:34:41.800
Leatherwood quoted by WKRN. It doesn't even get rid of gay marriage or the redefinition of marriage
00:34:51.800
that we got from the Supreme Court through the Obergefell decision. It just clarifies marriage
00:34:56.240
and gives a specific category, a specific carve out to the definition of marriage we've had for all of
00:35:00.960
human history everywhere in the world. So what happened with the age requirements? Well, I knew it the
00:35:06.880
second I heard about this. Obviously, the state reps just messed up the language a little bit.
00:35:12.220
Obviously, as they were amending a statute, they just, they accidentally left out one part or didn't
00:35:16.560
include, but no, no one in their right mind would ever propose a bill to say that you should be able
00:35:23.780
to marry a five-year-old. That's just, no one, no one did it. No matter how poorly the left-wing
00:35:30.300
thinks of us, how evil the left-wing thinks that we are, how stupid the left-wing thinks we are,
00:35:34.420
no one would do that because it's not right. And it's politically just completely idiotic.
00:35:40.060
Even if some psycho thought that it's a good idea to be able to marry five-year-olds,
00:35:44.320
he still wouldn't put it forward because it's a total political loser. And there's no evidence
00:35:48.540
whatsoever that the people who proposed this bill ever suggested anything like that. In fact,
00:35:53.440
there's a lot of evidence to the contrary. In March, in a committee hearing in March,
00:35:57.140
the representative, Leatherwood, who put this forward, said that as he understood the very
00:36:02.880
legislation that it would, quote, not allow minors, children under the age of 18, who haven't even
00:36:07.940
reached the age of consent, to enter into a marriage contract. So it's just a completely
00:36:12.340
made-up issue. It's a total non-traversy. But the fact that the Democrats are focusing on this
00:36:18.120
completely made-up part of the bill tells you two things. One, they're really sensitive about the
00:36:24.160
groomer line. One, they're very vulnerable on this groomer issue, that they're being accused of
00:36:30.660
weird sex stuff with kids. And now, the fact that their Supreme Court nominee's most glaring part
00:36:36.200
of her judicial record is that she lets pedos off the hook, that certainly doesn't help. So they're
00:36:40.180
very sensitive about that. It's a good area that Republicans should keep pushing on. But two,
00:36:45.340
it's that they don't want to talk about the real issue of the bill. The real issue of the bill,
00:36:48.760
and maybe you agree with it and maybe you don't, is that the people pushing it do not believe that
00:36:53.500
the Obergefell decision was legit. They do not believe that there is any such thing as gay marriage,
00:36:58.620
same-sex marriage. No slight to gay people, no slight to people with differing or eccentric
00:37:03.700
sexual desires, but they just believe marriage is marriage. It actually has a meaning. You can't
00:37:09.180
change the meaning. You can't completely upend it. And so they're trying to give a carve-out for people
00:37:12.920
who still believe that. Maybe you support that. Maybe you oppose that. But one thing I know for sure
00:37:18.660
is that the Democrats don't want to deal with that issue head-on. Just like they didn't want to deal
00:37:22.500
with the redefinition of head-on period, the redefinition of marriage head-on period,
00:37:25.840
when it was put up for a vote, do you want to change the definition of marriage to include
00:37:31.600
monogamous same-sex couples? For now, they'll probably change it again.
00:37:35.640
When it was put up to a vote, it failed. When it was put up to a vote in super-duper liberal
00:37:40.720
California, it failed. Proposition 8. Then nine robed judges on the court decided to just rewrite
00:37:49.680
the Constitution and invent this right. Anthony Kennedy, the romantic poet on the Supreme Court,
00:37:54.200
just invented a new definition of marriage completely out of nowhere. And the Democrats,
00:38:01.360
who insist that this is very popular and it's a wonderful thing to do, they don't want to defend
00:38:05.340
that. And so they make up a bunch of nonsense that's not in the bill. By the way, the lawmakers
00:38:10.220
already filed an amendment to clarify that minors are not allowed to do this, that you have to reach
00:38:16.060
the age of majority to do it. Completely made up. But I think the Democrats are actually telling
00:38:21.140
on themselves and they're telling Republicans how to fight this political battle come November.
00:38:27.500
Now, Joe Biden is focusing on anything he can to try to win back November, to try to stem the
00:38:40.800
tidal waves that he's going to have to deal with in November. He's losing on the economy. He's losing
00:38:45.340
on jobs. He's losing on foreign policy. He's losing on COVID. He's losing on the weird,
00:38:49.820
creepy sex stuff with the kids. He's losing, losing, losing, losing. So the one Hail Mary he's
00:38:56.140
trying to throw here is to pause payments on student loans. The Biden administration just announced
00:39:04.140
that they are extending the federal student loan payment pause. They are going to move the return
00:39:09.640
of student debt repayment from May 1st of this year to August 31st. They had already paused it in
00:39:16.040
December of last year. No serious economist thinks this is a good idea. Forget conservatives for a
00:39:23.020
second. Even Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, former top economist to Barack Obama,
00:39:27.980
when Joe Biden was vice president, said this is nuts. He said it's very hard to understand this in
00:39:32.700
policy terms. This is not a small macroeconomic thing. At a time when the economy is overheating,
00:39:37.960
student debt action will be injecting money into the economy at a $100 billion a year annual rate.
00:39:43.760
This is a macroeconomic step in the wrong direction. So to put that into layman's terms,
00:39:47.920
what he's saying is right now we're dealing with inflation. Inflation is going through the roof.
00:39:53.140
There's just too much money swirling around right now. And so what Joe Biden is, and a lot of that
00:39:58.820
is caused by not just Biden's policy of this, but years and years and years of just printing money
00:40:03.180
and giving away money. And so the money's not as valuable and things cost a lot more. And what this
00:40:07.440
Biden policy does, rather than trying to pull that back, trying to get a hold on inflation,
00:40:12.540
it's going to inject another $100 billion a year into the economy of just free money that the
00:40:17.220
students or the graduates now are not paying for no reason whatsoever. These college graduates by
00:40:24.080
and large are doing better economically than people who don't have a college degree. Their degree might
00:40:30.180
not be worth what they paid for. It's probably not worth a quarter of a million dollars to go study
00:40:34.480
lesbian dance theory or whatever else we're talking about. Frankly, even to get a regular old degree
00:40:38.780
from an ordinary academic program these days, it's not as valuable because people aren't being taught
00:40:43.340
as much. And the practical value of a university education is not what it once was. But regardless,
00:40:49.000
they're still doing better. These are still wealthier Americans. These are still the upper
00:40:52.640
class Americans who are now being bailed out by everyone else. That's not fair. That's not fair at
00:40:58.780
all. But this does make sense of it. I now get from a policy perspective why Joe Biden's doing this.
00:41:04.340
Larry Summers might not get it because economically it doesn't make sense. But politically, it makes
00:41:09.140
a lot of sense. One, it's a de facto federal takeover of education. The Democrats are having
00:41:14.980
a hard time selling free college. They're having a hard time selling it because it's just a handout
00:41:20.020
to the upper classes in America. Most people in America don't graduate from a four-year college.
00:41:25.780
I think it's what, one in four Americans graduates from a four-year college? And then they go on and
00:41:30.880
make more money and have a more economically prosperous life. So why are the lower classes
00:41:36.120
going to be paying extra money to the upper classes? Because the upper class has made a
00:41:40.940
poor financial decision. It can't pay back the debt on their college degrees. It doesn't make a lot.
00:41:44.700
It's not a big seller. It's not going to play very well in Peoria. So the Democrats are having a hard
00:41:48.780
time doing that. So what they're doing is just saying, okay, we're going to pause it. We're just going
00:41:52.920
to pause it and run out the clock. And the more the government is involved in education in this way,
00:41:57.320
the more influence they're going to have over the educational system. He who pays the piper
00:42:02.100
calls the tune. That's the first part. Second part is it's a payoff to Biden's supporters.
00:42:06.720
College graduates, people who have spent four years, maybe not learning a whole lot of the
00:42:11.340
classical tradition or of the liberal arts, but definitely learning a lot of leftist ideology,
00:42:15.500
they're more likely to vote for Democrats. And so it's a payoff. It's a payoff to the people
00:42:20.200
who are more likely to vote for Democrats. And it's an incentive to other people to go and get
00:42:25.440
these degrees, knowing that very likely they're not going to have to pay them back anyway.
00:42:29.040
And the Democrats know that if kids go to college and spend four years getting indoctrinated in this
00:42:33.400
crap, they're more likely to vote for them. Free money. It's a way to ensconce yourself in power,
00:42:42.080
as long as the money doesn't run out. A California city is doing this right now. Palm Springs in California
00:42:47.100
is testing out a policy to just give people money for calling themselves transgender.
00:42:54.860
To just give them money, to give them a payment of $900 per month, only if they identify as transgender
00:43:01.480
or non-binary, which those things don't exist. But if you identify that way, you get the free money
00:43:07.860
from Palm Springs. I could go to Palm Springs. I say, hey, I want my free money. They say,
00:43:12.500
are you transgender? I say, no, they don't give it to me. But then if I came back, maybe I put a
00:43:17.960
little mustache on or grad show glasses. I said, hey, it's me again. Yeah, I'm transgender now.
00:43:22.560
I say, okay, here's your money. You have to meet a certain poverty threshold, but it's specifically
00:43:27.580
for transgenderism. Why? Why are they doing this? The only conclusion you can draw is that they want
00:43:36.920
more people to identify as transgender. That's it. You don't need to be Larry Summers. You don't need
00:43:42.760
to be one of the top economists in the country to know that when you incentivize something,
00:43:47.480
you get more of it. That's why you incentivize it. And the left is incentivizing this. They are
00:43:54.700
grooming kids. They're doing it. I don't think they're doing it primarily because they want to
00:44:00.820
diddle kids or something like that. Maybe, I don't know, maybe. But I actually don't,
00:44:03.980
I don't think that's the primary motivation. I think it's because they want kids to believe
00:44:09.580
in their political ideology. And their political ideology is one of liberation, liberation from
00:44:16.280
oppressive systems, liberation from custom and tradition, from the past, which is also awful,
00:44:22.540
liberation from human nature itself. Some of the people pushing this are cynical politicians,
00:44:28.240
but some of them, I think, are true believers. And they know, this is why they focused on education
00:44:33.060
so long. They know that if you can get kids when they're really, really young,
00:44:38.560
that you're going to be able to mold their brains. The classroom is a crystal ball for
00:44:43.120
your country in 20 years. And they know that sex is one of, if not the primary driver in human nature.
00:44:49.900
It's not the top top, but it's pretty important. And so if a five-year-old, if a three-year-old,
00:44:55.480
if a one and a half-year-old, like that lunatic mother said on TV,
00:44:58.520
is inculcated in this transgenderism, that's just going to be part of how they view the world.
00:45:07.380
If you really, think about how important that is. Think about how important your
00:45:10.080
religious foundation is, for those of you who grew up with religion.
00:45:14.100
It colors the way you see the entire world. And the left wants more of this.
00:45:20.640
And there are many reasons why they want more of this. Part of, I mean, the most basic reason,
00:45:26.160
we should do a whole episode on all of the reasons. But the most basic reason is,
00:45:29.660
for the left, the family has always been the greatest impediment to their political takeover.
00:45:33.260
They have to turn people into radical atomized individuals in order to gain power, in order
00:45:38.640
to push their ideological agenda of radical liberation, and in order to gain much more government
00:45:44.320
power, in order to control your lives much more and take away your freedom and take away your way
00:45:48.820
of life. So this is one way to do it. How better to break up the family than to break up the basis of
00:45:53.780
the family, which is sexual difference. It's been effective for the left in conquering the culture.
00:46:00.740
There's just one little impediment to them, and that would be the voters. And the voters hate this
00:46:06.240
stuff. And the voters, I hope, come out and give them a real shellacking in November,
00:46:10.480
because the fight is not over. It's just beginning. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the
00:46:14.620
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies.
00:46:43.720
Executive producer Jeremy Boring. Supervising producer Mathis Glover. Production manager
00:46:49.240
Pavel Vidovsky. Editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico. Associate producer Justine Turley.
00:46:55.800
Audio mixer Mike Coromina. And hair and makeup by Cherokee Heart.
00:47:00.180
Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2022.
00:47:04.680
Hey there, this is John Bickley, Daily Wire editor-in-chief and co-host of Morning Wire.
00:47:09.020
On today's episode, the CDC will conduct a month-long comprehensive review.
00:47:14.240
China seeks to keep its companies listed in the U.S.
00:47:17.100
And new reports show the Black Lives Matter organization purchased a $6 million home in
00:47:21.600
California. Join us and get the facts first on the news you need to know with our show,