Ep. 990 - The Most Humiliating CNN Fail Ever
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
183.32527
Summary
A judge struck down the CDC's mask mandate, and most people are happy. But not everyone, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been a longtime supporter of the mask mandate. And why does he think it's a good idea? Plus, a new home security gadget from Ring.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
I'm in Boston. I flew here yesterday on my first flight since that hero judge struck down the CDC's
00:00:08.440
mask mandate. And 99% of the people in the airport loved it. We were happy as a clan.
00:00:17.460
I would say, I'm just estimating here, 99% of the people in the airport were not wearing masks.
00:00:24.100
On my flight, even a flight to a liberal city, I would say 95% of the people were not wearing masks.
00:00:32.340
They were so, so happy. And the lifting of the mask mandate, the fact that it's now voluntary,
00:00:39.880
allows you to tell with 100% certainty exactly who the libs are on your flight. And there actually
00:00:45.600
are not a whole lot of them. Everyone was very, very happy, except for Dr. Fauci.
00:00:52.560
I was both surprised and disappointed because those types of things really are the purview of
00:00:57.860
the CDC. This is a public health issue. And for a court to come in, and if you look at the rationale
00:01:04.960
for that, it really is not particularly firm. And we are concerned about that, about courts getting
00:01:11.040
involved in things that are unequivocally public health decisions. I mean, this is a CDC issue.
00:01:16.760
It should not have been a court issue. So we're hoping that the inevitable increase in cases,
00:01:22.360
which we're seeing are not going to be associated with an increase in hospitalizations. So all of
00:01:28.300
these dynamic things going on at the same time, it was perfectly logical for the CDC to say,
00:01:34.260
wait a minute, we were planning on ending this mandate on a certain date. Let's wait a period of
00:01:41.760
time until May 3rd, which was a very sound public health decision.
00:01:46.300
I hope you've gotten this by now. But if you haven't, this isn't about the masks. This isn't
00:01:54.540
about whether or not you should wear the stupid masks. Dr. Fauci himself has been the most pro-mask
00:02:01.860
and anti-mask politician in the country. It's not about the masks. This is about who governs us.
00:02:09.940
Dr. Fauci believes that we should be governed by the whims and caprices of totally unaccountable
00:02:16.440
bureaucrats at the CDC. Normal people believe that we should have some say in our government. If we're
00:02:22.700
not going to be ruled by the legislature, at the very least, we could be ruled by the courts where
00:02:27.980
there's some sort of kind of almost accountability. Dr. Fauci is furious, not because people are not
00:02:36.060
muzzling themselves anymore, but because, for now at least, he's no longer running the country.
00:02:41.880
I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
00:02:50.260
Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Astora Noble, who says,
00:02:55.940
Chris said that Democrat positions become far more popular when they lie about what their position
00:03:02.460
actually is. That's true, actually. It was very nice of Chris Hahn to come on the show yesterday.
00:03:07.300
He is a Democrat. I wanted to hear out his side for the education law in Florida and also the Disney
00:03:15.780
retaliation against the education law and then the Florida Republican retaliation against the Disney
00:03:22.060
retaliation against the education law. And what Chris said was he really loves the way Democrats have
00:03:27.220
spun this thing because while don't say gay is not an accurate representation of the law,
00:03:32.560
politically it can be useful. So he's admitting this is cynical and it's not really honest. It's
00:03:38.620
not representing what the law does, but it's politically useful. And my only argument there is
00:03:43.160
I don't think it is all that politically useful. I think the majority of Americans, majority of
00:03:48.100
Floridians, the majority of Democrats even support the Florida education law. So I just don't think it
00:03:54.040
worked. I think the credibility of the left, whether we're talking about the CDC, whether we're
00:03:57.880
talking about Fauci, whether we're talking about the weird groomers at Disney and elsewhere,
00:04:02.100
I just don't think it's there. I think it's beginning to crack. Now, when you want to make
00:04:07.740
sure that your home security is very solid, I would strongly recommend you check out Ring.
00:04:12.260
Right now, go to ring.com slash Knowles. It will be one small gadget for your home, but one giant leap
00:04:19.760
for home security. One giant leap for home security. That is what CNET says about Ring
00:04:24.860
Alarm Pro, which is a phenomenal product. You know, Ring has the video doorbell. I've been
00:04:30.360
telling you about it for years. And then Ring has an award-winning alarm. Well, that's great. That
00:04:34.460
way you can protect your whole home. Terrific. Well, now you got to go pro because you don't just live
00:04:40.160
your life in the physical world. You don't just live your life in the physical home. You spend a lot of
00:04:45.680
your life in the digital world, in your digital home, and you got to protect that too. Ring Alarm
00:04:50.620
Pro does both. It's a combined home security system and Wi-Fi router so that you will feel
00:04:56.800
secure, whether you're in the home, whether you're down the street, whether you're at the office. Maybe
00:04:59.920
you guys are on the other side of the world with a Ring Protect Pro subscription, which is an amazing
00:05:04.680
deal, by the way. You can get professional monitoring for the ultimate peace of mind. If anything
00:05:09.160
happens, the professional monitoring will call and can request emergency services. Go to ring.com.
00:05:15.680
slash Knowles right now and go pro with the Ring Alarm Pro. That is ring.com slash Knowles. Ring.com
00:05:22.020
slash Knowles. The credibility, the authority of the ruling class is cracking. That's why Dr. Fauci is
00:05:31.280
so upset. He actually had the audacity to say, I only wanted two more weeks. That's what he said,
00:05:39.040
because the mask mandate on the airplanes was supposed to expire on April 18th. And then he said,
00:05:44.100
look, the CDC, I think very responsibly said that we just need two more weeks of them. Oh,
00:05:50.720
two more weeks. Huh? Where have I heard two more weeks before you jerk? I heard two weeks,
00:05:55.320
two years ago, and then you never gave up your power. So you know what? We're going to take the
00:05:58.700
power back from you. And if we can't even do it through the legislature, then we'll do it through
00:06:03.080
the courts. And this hero district judge who struck down the mask mandate. Great. That's what we're
00:06:08.620
going to come on. Just two more weeks, guys. No, people are not buying it anymore. We're not buying
00:06:16.100
that. It's only going to be two weeks. We're not buying that the masks are going to save us from
00:06:21.380
Armageddon. We're not buying what Dr. Fauci is selling. We're not buying what the liberal establishment
00:06:27.420
is selling broadly. That's why CNN plus the CNN subscription service is collapsing. It's being
00:06:34.000
shut down 21 days after it started. 21 days. That's less than two Scaramucci's. A Scaramucci
00:06:43.280
is a discrete measurement of time. It's 11 days, the length that Anthony Scaramucci lasted in the
00:06:48.320
White House. These guys didn't even make it two Scaramucci's. Warner Brothers' discovery is
00:06:54.960
reportedly, and according to lots of reports, shutting down the new CNN subscription service.
00:07:00.360
CNBC reported last week fewer than 10,000 people were using CNN plus on a daily basis.
00:07:07.880
To put that in perspective, that's, gosh, what is that? Something like 1 30th? Between 1 30th and
00:07:15.360
1 50th the number of people who watch and listen to this show every day. This show, this is a pretty
00:07:22.220
big show, but it's not even the biggest show out there on the internet. This show is getting between
00:07:27.140
30 and 50 times the viewership that CNN was getting on a daily basis. That is pathetic.
00:07:33.120
That it just, it just didn't work. And so they set this goal of having 2 million subscribers to CNN
00:07:42.500
plus within the first few years of the service's launch. Nobody's watching it. It looks like they're
00:07:49.460
going to cut their losses. Why? I could have told them that this was going to happen. No one in their
00:07:54.580
bubble could have told them this was going to happen because they have relied on brute force
00:08:00.220
to maintain whatever position they have in public discourse for not just recent years, really recent
00:08:06.220
decades. People don't make the decision actively, I'm going to go subscribe to CNN. I don't even think
00:08:13.000
they make the decision to go watch CNN. I think it's just kind of on. I think people, we joke about how
00:08:18.560
the only time people watch CNN is in the airports. Well, there's a lot of truth to that joke.
00:08:23.480
And why do people watch CNN on their TVs on the rare occasions that they do? Because it's just on
00:08:28.560
and CNN is bundled as part of cable packages and you're not going to go in. I don't even subscribe
00:08:33.560
to cable, but people who do subscribe to cable are going to go, they're not going to go in and say,
00:08:37.700
I want every channel except for CNN. They're just going to take it and it'll be on and they'll flick
00:08:41.480
through the channels and that's that. But with CNN plus, that subscription service requires you to
00:08:46.660
actively go out, put down your credit card, say, I want CNN. And no one wants CNN. I'm not even just
00:08:52.480
scoring cheap partisan points. No one actively wants it. It's just there as background noise, as a
00:08:58.760
propaganda arm for the ruling class, which increasingly is losing its credibility. All these guys are
00:09:08.040
losing their credibility. Jen Psaki, we played her on the show yesterday, spokesman for the president, was
00:09:13.140
crying, literally crying on camera over the prospect of not being able to trans the kids.
00:09:19.960
So Jen Psaki appeared on Chris Wallace's new, new soon to be old CNN plus program to discuss this law.
00:09:28.880
Chris Wallace was basically fair about the law and about the question of transgendering the kids.
00:09:34.260
And Jen Psaki doubled down on it, saying that five-year-olds and six-year-olds are questioning
00:09:40.520
their sex and ought to be affirmed in their delusions. I understand that it's, it's an
00:09:45.740
emotionally fraught issue. I understand that some of the supporters of the bill have used inflammatory
00:09:50.220
language saying that, that opponents of the bill want to sexualize children or groom children.
00:09:57.840
On the other hand, don't parents have a right to have concern? I mean, we're talking specifically here
00:10:04.720
about teaching about sex in kindergarten through third grade. I have to say as a parent,
00:10:10.160
I would have problems with that. But the law is not about teaching sex education. It's about teaching
00:10:16.000
about gender identity. And so what, what do you do if a parent or a kid, should I say a kid in one of
00:10:23.440
these elementary schools says, what about Sally? Sally has two moms or I'm not sure if I'm a girl or a boy.
00:10:31.360
I mean, these are kids who are experiencing, you know, these moments in their lives. I also think
00:10:38.060
that these are not, there's not a big record of there being either sex education or extensive gender
00:10:44.840
identity education in these schools. And this is creating a problem or a political cudgel about an
00:10:51.380
issue that I don't think exists. Jen Psaki made a really big mistake here. And she did the thing that
00:10:57.420
I keep pointing out that the libs do, except she actually did it backwards. Usually what the libs
00:11:01.760
do is say, this issue that's being addressed by the Florida education bill doesn't exist. It's not
00:11:06.600
happening at all. And it's really important that the issue does exist. And she just did it backwards
00:11:11.420
here. She said, it's so, this is so awful. This Florida education bill, this is going to really hurt
00:11:16.480
kids. You know, Sally with two mommies and you know, the five-year-old who thinks that he's actually
00:11:22.660
a girl, this is really going to hurt these kids. It's going to hurt them so bad that I'm going to
00:11:26.600
cry on camera. I'm going to literally cry tears on camera, but it's not happening. It doesn't matter.
00:11:32.160
It's not doing anything. It's addressing a problem that doesn't exist. Well, if the problem doesn't
00:11:35.680
exist, why are you crying, Jen? If the problem doesn't exist, why are you trying to tug on my heart
00:11:40.720
strings about Sally who doesn't have two mommies? Sally has a mommy and a daddy somewhere. I don't know
00:11:46.900
where the mommy and the daddy are. And I don't know what weird social experiment is messing with
00:11:51.100
Sally's head, but whatever Sally has, she doesn't have two mommies because that's not how biology
00:11:55.540
works. That's not how babies are made. That's not even a discussion that kindergartners should be
00:12:00.040
having in the classroom, how babies are made. But I guess the teacher should know the answer. Sally
00:12:05.420
doesn't have two mommies. Further, the five-year-old boy who thinks that he's a girl is not a girl.
00:12:11.740
What should the teacher say to the five-year-old boy who says that he's a girl? The teacher should say,
00:12:16.680
you're not a girl. You're a boy. The teacher should affirm his actual sex, meaning dispel the
00:12:23.620
delusions that he has. The teacher should stand up for traditional standards and mores and biology
00:12:30.660
and reality. We have got to remain in contact with reality. When you want to remain in contact
00:12:38.900
with all the people associated with your business, I would strongly recommend you check out
00:12:42.780
Constant Contact. I have been using Constant Contact for something like 15 years now. I have relied on
00:12:50.820
Constant Contact when I worked my earliest campaign jobs, when I've worked with other companies. It's
00:12:56.420
a great way to help get your business in order and reach new people. It's a digital marketing platform
00:13:03.480
that helps small businesses and non-profits of all sizes grow, build, and succeed. They've got a 97%
00:13:10.680
deliverability, right? So you know when you send something out there, you are reaching your people.
00:13:15.240
Their list growth tools help you to find a bigger audience fast. We're talking lead generation,
00:13:20.440
landing pages, text to join, social media ads. They are a proven way to grow your list and drive
00:13:25.820
engagement with your brand. With thousands of integrations, you can sync Constant Contact's tools
00:13:32.060
with the tools that you're already using. I know that's always one big hassle at companies when you
00:13:36.320
start using some new software. You think, is it going to integrate? Do I have to switch everything over?
00:13:39.540
Constant Contact makes it super easy. Powerful automation tools help you send the right message
00:13:44.220
to the right person at the right time, every time. To start your free digital marketing trial today,
00:13:49.820
head on over to ConstantContact.com. Jen Psaki said yesterday, two days ago, that this issue of
00:13:58.140
transgendering the kids makes her completely crazy. And those are the truest words that Jen Psaki has ever
00:14:03.000
said. It does make her crazy. It makes everyone who is in the thrall of this weird transgender ideology
00:14:08.520
completely insane. I'm at Boston right now. I gave a speech last night at Boston University
00:14:14.100
on this topic. The topic was, teach the ABCs, not the LGBTs. And the topic made people crazy. There were
00:14:23.280
more shenanigans at this speech I gave last night than I've seen at a campus speech in years.
00:14:30.020
First of all, the event was sold out. And then the captain of the BU police department wouldn't let
00:14:37.700
half the audience into the room. The captain of the BU police department, I don't know what his axe was
00:14:43.560
to grind. He wouldn't let our photographer into the rooms. There actually aren't any even professional
00:14:48.280
photos from the event. So you had half of the room was stuck outside and they had to stream the speech
00:14:54.480
on their phone. And then of the people who were let in, there was a planned walkout by the left-wing
00:15:01.320
lunatic kids. I had an inkling of who those kids were going to be because they were the only people
00:15:06.620
in the room with the masks. This does underscore my point, my favorite part about the airplane mask
00:15:12.420
mandate being lifted, which is just that you can now tell with 100% certainty exactly who the libs are.
00:15:17.760
So you just know, you're like, okay, I guess I'm sitting next to one lib and one normal person and
00:15:21.960
that's, okay, that's fine. I'm just going to plan out my conversation now. I'm going to plan out my flight.
00:15:26.760
So I'm looking and I see rows of these students wearing the masks and I think, okay, they're going to
00:15:32.020
stage some protest. And right when I got to the topic of the gender unicorn, the gender unicorn is this
00:15:40.340
weird assignment about a purple sexually confused unicorn that is being handed out to third graders
00:15:47.160
and second graders and kindergartners and even is being used in certain pre-K classrooms.
00:15:53.080
The gender unicorn and the gender bread man, that's another weird, creepy, sexually confused
00:15:59.480
cookie assignment. These are being used with really young kids. When I mentioned that the kids stormed up
00:16:04.280
and flipped me off and yelled and screamed and said all crazy things and waved the transgender flag and
00:16:08.280
then walked out of the room. This issue makes people crazy. And the point I drove home last night
00:16:16.960
at BU. You can watch my speech online. It's been streamed to YouTube. It's over at the YAF YouTube
00:16:23.280
channel. The point I made here is that it's not enough just to stop the weird sex lessons in the
00:16:31.140
classroom. You've got to go further. Teachers need to teach something. It's not enough just to say,
00:16:37.040
hey, don't talk about transgenderism to six-year-olds. Well, what are we going to talk about?
00:16:41.860
If you're reading a story in a kindergarten classroom and the story is about a family of
00:16:48.580
bears, mama bear, daddy bear, and baby bear, I don't think anyone would object to that, right?
00:16:55.420
Even though the lesson does have implicit lessons about sex, about family, about human nature.
00:17:01.700
Where did baby bear come from? Baby bear came from mama bear and daddy bear. And mama bear and daddy
00:17:05.380
bear live together in a marriage because that's a sort of ordinary, normal thing to do. Well,
00:17:10.540
what if the story instead being read to this kindergarten classroom were about daddy bear
00:17:15.780
and daddy bear's boyfriend and daddy bear's boyfriend's polyamorous trans billy goat,
00:17:23.780
and this were being read to five-year-olds? Would we object to that? I think we probably would.
00:17:28.360
We would. You say, no, thank you. Don't read that to my kid. Both stories make implicit claims and have
00:17:35.380
implicit lessons about sex and family and human nature, but we like the normal one and we don't
00:17:40.560
like the one with the trans billy goat. It's not just, as some Republicans are saying, it's not just
00:17:48.060
this education law in Florida bans all sexual discourse entirely. Sometimes you'll hear Republicans
00:17:54.940
say, you could call it the don't say straight bill because it doesn't discriminate between gay or
00:17:59.500
straight or trans or this. It just says all sexual conduct is out. But I just don't think that's
00:18:04.640
really what we're talking about here. I don't think that really gets to the heart of the issue.
00:18:08.840
You can't teach anything, even all the way down to an elementary school classroom. You can't teach
00:18:13.240
anything about history, literature, biology, certainly, civics. You can't teach these things
00:18:21.200
if you don't touch on topics involving men and women and human nature. Those things are just too
00:18:30.260
central. Sex and desire and family and community, those things are too central to the human condition
00:18:36.780
to avoid. And so I think we've got to stand up and say, no, we have norms. Not saying we got to be
00:18:41.520
mean to gay guys. Not saying we need to be cruel to people who are confused about their sex, but we're
00:18:47.340
allowed to have norms. There's nothing bigoted about that. The reason that Republicans don't want to
00:18:51.040
say any of these things is because we're afraid of being called a homophobe or a transphobe or a
00:18:55.240
phob-phobe or whatever nonsense slur the libs want to throw at us. But who cares? They're going to throw
00:19:00.200
slurs at you anyway. And what we're standing up for is perfectly ordinary and normal. And everybody
00:19:04.560
would have agreed with it five years ago. But now you go to a college campus and people lose their
00:19:10.320
minds talking about a really basic fact of human nature. The craziest protests I've ever had. The only
00:19:15.820
time I was physically assaulted on the campus was talking about this issue. This issue where the
00:19:22.680
Overton window, as it's sometimes called, or the standards have just completely changed to the
00:19:27.460
point that now you're not allowed to say men and women are different. If you, for instance, if you go
00:19:32.840
onto Twitter and you don't make the general claim that men and women are different, but you go in,
00:19:37.940
you're, you're retweeting Bruce Jenner. Bruce Jenner says, I'm a woman and I want to use the
00:19:43.960
women's bathroom. Let's say he's actually one of the least offenders on this transgender ideology,
00:19:48.760
but let's go with it. He's one of the most prominent ones. And he says, I want to use the
00:19:53.420
women's bathroom. And you retweet that and you say, you are not a woman, Bruce Jenner. That's a
00:19:57.660
violation of Twitter's terms of conduct. You could lose your Twitter account for that because the
00:20:03.360
Overton window has shifted. But if you retweeted some, I don't know, straight white mail and said,
00:20:08.500
you are a terrible person and you are an oppressor and you're the cause of all the evil in the world,
00:20:12.860
you won't lose your Twitter account. The latter is objectively more offensive than the former.
00:20:18.640
The latter is not true while the former is true. And yet you'll be, you'll be banned for saying the
00:20:24.000
true thing and you'll be fine for saying the false thing, which is why it's so important that we get
00:20:29.800
a hold on Twitter and Facebook and Google and the big tech platforms that control our speech and
00:20:34.640
therefore control our democracy, which is why it's important that Elon succeeds in taking over Twitter.
00:20:40.060
And there's some news on this front. Every day there's more news on Elon's hostile takeover of
00:20:47.020
Twitter and I'm here for it. I love it. It's great. Elon Musk bought over 9% of Twitter. They tried to put
00:20:54.240
him on the board. He rejected the board seat because it would have greatly limited his power. He tried to
00:20:58.920
buy up the rest of the company. The Twitter board issued a poison pill to dilute everyone's shares
00:21:05.520
of Twitter and offer every other shareholder the ability to buy shares at a steep discount,
00:21:09.940
except for Elon Musk, to basically make it prohibitive for Elon Musk to take over Twitter.
00:21:14.620
So that was it, right? Well, not quite. Elon Musk has then cryptically been tweeting about the word
00:21:19.800
tender. And the reason he's doing that is because it seems like he wants to make a tender offer where
00:21:23.860
he goes directly to the shareholders of Twitter and just buys their shares from them. And then
00:21:28.380
eventually he'll have enough to control Twitter. Can Elon actually do that? Well, we're getting
00:21:32.880
reports out right now that Elon Musk has secured $25.5 billion in financing to buy Twitter from a
00:21:41.580
group of banks led by Morgan Stanley, which includes a $12.5 billion margin loan against his Tesla shares.
00:21:52.820
So he's leveraging his other company to buy Twitter. And then Musk has said that the rest
00:21:58.440
of the money, $21 billion, will come out of his own pocket. This is being reported after Elon Musk has
00:22:04.840
filed with the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission. All of which is to say, I don't know
00:22:10.340
how this is going to end. I don't know what the board is going to do. I don't know what the next
00:22:13.160
episode of this saga is going to be. But what that tells me is Elon Musk is serious about it.
00:22:20.380
And he's serious about buying Twitter because Twitter is a serious problem. We joke about it.
00:22:25.760
We call it a hell site. We say we all waste too much time on it and probably we do. But Twitter
00:22:30.540
and to a greater degree, Facebook and Google control our speech, control our discourse,
00:22:38.420
control our whole political order. And Elon Musk gets it. And he knows this is no laughing matter.
00:22:43.100
He'll troll on Twitter. He'll joke when he buys 9% of the company that when he buys the rest of it,
00:22:47.600
he's going to take the W out. He said titter. Ha ha ha. But he's dead serious here. You don't spend
00:22:54.220
$40 billion on a joke. I don't think. Maybe Jeremy would. Maybe the god king of the Daily Wire would
00:23:00.320
spend $40 billion on a joke. But there has to be a serious point here. And Elon Musk is really proving
00:23:08.500
it. I've been sort of down in the dumps at how excited I am about the mask mandate being taken
00:23:17.120
away. Because I think, is this our new standard? This is it. Hey, I get to breathe fresh air.
00:23:22.960
Score one for the conservatives. That's it. That's our new standard. Or I'm a little down in the doldrums
00:23:27.740
about how happy I am over the Florida education bill. Yeah, we're going to wait until kids are nine
00:23:32.800
to indoctrinate them into transgenderism. Score one for the conservatives. That's it. That's our
00:23:37.920
new standard. That's all we can hope for. It's easy to be discouraged because the libs have so
00:23:42.320
much control over the culture and the political order. But you have to remind yourself, take the
00:23:48.980
win when you can get it. Take the win when you can get it. Get those marginal wins. Creep a little
00:23:53.920
bit further and further and further down the line of where you want your political goal to be,
00:23:58.580
which is a flourishing, good, free society. That's what the libs did for a century. It gave
00:24:04.320
them the country. Slowly, slowly, slowly. A long march through the institutions. We can take that
00:24:09.180
ground back. It's popular. We've got the common sense. The elite institutions have completely lost
00:24:14.560
their credibility. We can do it, but it's going to require patience and determination. And when we need
00:24:21.380
a little relaxation, what are we going to do? Why? We're going to go check out Allform. We're going to
00:24:27.260
sit on our great sofas. Right now, go to allform.com slash Knowles. I've told you about how great the
00:24:33.660
Helix mattress is. I've told you about that for years. Well, Helix has a new company. It's called
00:24:38.200
Allform. Helix is leaving the bedroom. They're going into the living room and the family room.
00:24:42.000
They have got phenomenal sofas. Not only are they extremely high quality aesthetically in terms of
00:24:48.220
the materials, but also they're just very, very cool. The way it works with Allform sofas is you can pick
00:24:54.280
an armchair, a loveseat, up to an eight-seat sectional. You can pick your fabric. You can pick
00:25:00.240
the sofa color. You can pick the leg color, the sofa size, the sofa shape. And then you can grow the
00:25:06.460
sofa as your home grows. So if you're in a studio apartment right now, you can start with a really
00:25:11.040
small one and you can add on as you grow. It's phenomenal. They've got a 100-day decide if you
00:25:17.420
want to keep it. Guarantee. So if you don't like it, they'll come. It's no big deal. You can send it
00:25:22.780
back. Not a problem. They'll pick it up for free. They'll give you a full refund. They've also got a
00:25:27.160
forever warranty. Forever warranty. So right now to find your perfect sofa, go to allform.com
00:25:33.140
slash Knowles. Allform is offering 20% off all orders for our listeners. Allform.com slash Knowles.
00:25:41.700
I am very pro-Musk. I am pro-Elon Musk. I don't know that I agree with him on everything. It's kind of
00:25:49.320
sad that the way that we take back speech and political control in our country these days is
00:25:53.760
just to pit billionaire oligarchs off of one another. But Musk, as far as billionaire masters
00:26:00.840
of the universe go, Musk seems like one of the good guys. And the reason that I have a hunch that
00:26:05.780
he's one of the good guys is completely unrelated to Twitter or free speech or big tech or the
00:26:10.660
constitution. It's actually, it has to do with his answer to a particular hobby horse of extremely rich
00:26:19.140
powerful people. For decades, actually for centuries now, very rich and very elite people
00:26:25.980
have worried about overpopulation. You saw this in the 1970s especially. There was a book called
00:26:33.040
The Population Bomb where all the genius elite scientists who follow the science and they're so
00:26:37.380
smart and we should follow them. They said that it was inevitable that within a decade you were going
00:26:42.020
to see mass famines around the world. You should encourage abortion. You should encourage
00:26:45.720
contraception. You should coerce abortion and contraception if need be. And even then we're
00:26:50.520
still going to have mass famines. And that's just what's because we have too many people in the world.
00:26:54.760
And then what happened? It's 50 years later. The world population has doubled since that time and
00:26:59.220
people are fatter than ever. Malnutrition is at an all-time low. And Elon Musk has broken ranks with
00:27:05.500
his fellow billionaires. And he's come out and said the problem in the world today is not overpopulation.
00:27:10.160
Actually, it's underpopulation. Most people in the world are operating under the false impression
00:27:16.220
that there are too many people. This is not true. Earth could maintain a population many times at the
00:27:23.160
current level. And the birth rate has been dropping like crazy. So unfortunately, we have these ridiculous
00:27:40.960
population estimates from the UN that need to be updated because they just don't make any sense.
00:27:47.880
Really, you can just look at, say, what was the birth rate last year? How many kids were born? Multiply
00:27:55.220
that by the life expectancy. And say, okay, that's how many people will be alive in the future. And then
00:28:04.300
say, is the trend for birth rate positive or negative? It's negative. So that's the best case,
00:28:11.960
Very simple, very correct. And most important of all, very pro-human. Elon Musk might be the one
00:28:20.840
billionaire who is pro-human. All the rest of these guys, Bill Gates in particular, has this bizarre
00:28:28.160
obsession with overpopulation and trying to discourage birth rates and to try to promote
00:28:34.440
contraception and abortion and things like that. This isn't some tinfoil hat stuff. He's promoted this
00:28:39.640
on television for decades at this point. And all the rest of the libs are too, whether it's because
00:28:45.220
of climate change, whether it's because of, I don't know, all sorts of neuroses that the libs have.
00:28:51.780
They want there to be fewer people. And it's always interesting that the people prattling on about
00:28:57.180
overpopulation never volunteer to help solve the problem. You notice that? All the people who are
00:29:03.500
worried about overpopulation want someone else's kids not to be born, want someone else's kids
00:29:09.200
to be killed through abortion. It's never them. It's never they themselves who say, you know,
00:29:14.360
okay, I'll check out. There's too many people on earth I'm at. Ronald Reagan made a similar point
00:29:18.540
on abortion. He said, I notice all the people who support abortion have already been born.
00:29:22.280
That's convenient, isn't it? So it seems like it's out of left field. But Elon Musk's answer on that
00:29:28.160
question tells me at a really basic fundamental level, this guy gets it. This guy, one, understands
00:29:35.140
reality and realizes that the earth could sustain many times the number of people that are
00:29:38.800
currently on it. But two, he likes people. He's not a misanthrope. He's not saying, we need fewer
00:29:44.620
people so that I can have more stuff and money and resources. Like all of the other rich guys. He's
00:29:49.800
saying, no, we can have more people. Have more people. We don't have enough. Come on, have kids.
00:29:53.740
Make a family. Have some kids. Let's go. The more the merrier. It's a very human perspective.
00:30:00.700
Speaking of humanity, a really horrible story coming out of Los Angeles. Homeless deaths in Los
00:30:08.660
Angeles have increased over the past five years. This is people who die because of exposure, just
00:30:14.820
die on the street. And they've increased not by a little bit, but by 200% in just five years. Nearly
00:30:23.500
two thousand homeless people died in LA County last year, according to a report by the New York
00:30:29.780
Times. Hundreds of those who did so, did so in plain sight of passers-by. People just walking on by
00:30:37.380
them. 287 of these people died on the sidewalk. Another 72 were found on the pavement. 24 of them died
00:30:46.160
in alleys. This is based on a report from the LA County coroner. Is that humane? The libs tell us
00:30:55.180
that if we do not let bums and derelicts and mentally ill people and addicts live in squalor
00:31:02.940
on the street, that we're cruel, we're anti-homeless, we're inhumane. You think this is humane? I don't
00:31:09.860
think this is humane at all. I think it's a horrible, disordered thing that we allow people
00:31:15.280
to live on the street. I remember back during Occupy Wall Street, so this was probably 10 years
00:31:19.860
ago now, Rudy Giuliani, speaking of this as a New Yorker, as someone who was the best mayor of New
00:31:25.500
York, probably in that city's history, came out and he said, this is a simple question. Don't let
00:31:31.000
people live on the street. Living on the street is a disordered act that harms the individual and
00:31:37.020
harms society. Why are the libs in LA doing this? They're doing this because it's nice. They think it's
00:31:44.760
the nice thing to do. I guess it is the nice thing to do. You don't bother the homeless people. You
00:31:49.080
let the drug addicts do what they want to do, at least what their appetites want to do, and you just
00:31:54.060
hands off, not my problem. I'm going to look away. But it's not loving. It's not loving at all.
00:32:00.900
You're letting these people live in squalor, experience great pain, be completely discarded
00:32:06.200
by society, and then die. And you're seeing their death numbers go through the roof. It would be much
00:32:13.300
more loving to force these people into homeless shelters, force these people into rehabilitation
00:32:18.100
centers, force the criminals among these people into prisons. That would be much more loving.
00:32:24.240
It's tough love, sure, but it's a much more loving thing. And that is the conservative answer.
00:32:30.680
And what the libs want to convince us that when we get back to reality and get back to basics and
00:32:36.000
enforce the fundamental, lowest bar basic functions of a society that we're cruel and inhumane? Not at
00:32:44.280
all. It is completely, completely the opposite. Speaking of reality, have you checked out Matt
00:32:50.980
Walsh's book yet, Johnny the Walrus? Matt Walsh, as you know, is one of the most cherished,
00:32:56.680
leading LGBTQ plus bestselling authors in the country. He is a scholar in the Department of Women's
00:33:02.920
Studies, a really, really noted, noted sexual theorist. So Matt has his great book. That would
00:33:11.960
be Johnny the Walrus. It sold out within 48 hours when it was released. Don't worry,
00:33:16.140
more copies are on the way. So reserve your copy of Johnny the Walrus over on Amazon. We'll be right
00:33:21.200
back with a lot more. Welcome back to the show. My favorite time of the week. We are now in the
00:33:39.240
mailbag. First question up from Brandon. Dear Michael, did you ask your wife's father for his
00:33:44.480
blessing in marriage before you proposed to her? The reason I ask is because I plan on proposing in
00:33:49.600
the near future. However, I'm not sure if I respect her liberal dad for constantly calling me every
00:33:54.340
name in the book for being a conservative. He's also pretty frustrated that I converted his daughter
00:33:58.100
to a conservative Christian and we have plans on moving from California to Texas. I know that he
00:34:02.840
wants me to ask him, but to point out the hypocrisy, he never asked his wife's father for his blessing.
00:34:08.240
I'm just curious what your thoughts are. Yes, I did ask my father-in-law's blessing. I like my father-in-law
00:34:13.140
a lot. Sounds like you don't really like your father-in-law very much, but you should ask his
00:34:16.860
blessing anyway, not because your father-in-law is some great guy, but because it's the right thing
00:34:23.260
to do. The act of asking a blessing is not so much about the people involved, the prospective groom
00:34:36.240
and the father-in-law, as it is about the act itself. It's a good, respectful act. It's the sort of thing
00:34:43.140
that good, civilized young men will do. And so whether you're doing it for him or not, whether
00:34:50.420
he plays any factor into your thoughts on doing it, you should do it for yourself and you should do it
00:34:54.240
because it's the right thing to do, young man. From George, Michael, I wanted to get your opinion on
00:35:00.940
having arguments with leftists in comment sections online. I often find myself getting into these
00:35:05.700
arguments on YouTube and the Lion's Den TikTok, in which I can probably count on one hand the number of
00:35:11.320
times the discussion has ended peacefully or in good faith. Most of the time, the other side will
00:35:15.480
start resorting to insults mid-conversation or start talking to me in a condescending manner.
00:35:20.500
My question is, is it worth participating in these arguments at all or should we just let them be?
00:35:25.160
It is not worth participating and you should just let them be. Yes, that's it. The definition of
00:35:30.640
badness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, right? I'm not saying
00:35:35.160
you should necessarily get off of social media. I'm not even saying you should necessarily stop voicing your
00:35:39.580
opinions on social media, but there is really no reason for you to get into fights in the comment
00:35:44.040
section and these long threads. You're probably not going to convince the person you're talking to.
00:35:49.800
Now, there might be a side benefit of this, which is you might convince people who happen to be reading
00:35:56.380
the thread. This is the purpose of really big public debates. When you have a dinner party and you go out
00:36:03.040
and have drinks and cigars and you start talking to someone, you could have maybe a private debate and
00:36:07.720
potentially persuade the other person or that person could persuade you. When you're standing
00:36:11.840
on a stage having a formal debate, the point is not to persuade the other person. The point is to
00:36:15.720
score as many points as you can and persuade people in the audience. That's pretty much the same thing
00:36:21.380
that you're seeing in social media. So you might get something out or someone else might benefit
00:36:26.100
from that or you might just make your point in the comment section and then let it go and move on
00:36:32.540
with your life and you'll have more time to make more comments and do things that are more productive
00:36:36.740
and more edifying. Chris says, Michael, I was sexually assaulted in January by a woman I work
00:36:44.600
with. As much as the libs would have you believe females assaulting males is not happening and if it
00:36:49.700
is happening, it's really not that big of a deal. I didn't fear for my physical safety, but I was
00:36:54.700
deathly afraid of how it would affect my marriage. I struggled with myself over whether I should tell my
00:36:59.560
wife what happened and pray we would get through it or hide it from her out of shame. I decided the
00:37:05.840
best outcome was to be completely truthful with her about it and thank God my wife didn't blame me
00:37:10.760
at all. While my wife wanted to do some terrible things to the woman that assaulted me, we decided
00:37:15.340
I wouldn't report the assault out of fear of retaliation from the woman and possibly my job given
00:37:20.600
the hashtag me too skew and paper of women. Ironically, my wife and I have never been closer and our
00:37:26.760
emotional connection has reached a deeper level. I think I know your answer, but what is your opinion
00:37:30.980
on tragic and emotionally distressing things bringing a marriage closer together? Well, that
00:37:34.480
certainly happens. Shared experience is a really important part of marriage. I asked my grandfather
00:37:40.720
this. My grandfather and grandmother have the best marriage I've ever seen. They've been married for
00:37:44.340
about a bazillion years and I asked him years and years ago, even before I was about to propose,
00:37:50.460
I said, maybe this was on his 60th wedding anniversary, I said, what's the key to a good marriage?
00:37:55.240
And my grandfather said, patience, shared experience, and frequent absence. Because he was a captain in
00:38:04.100
the Navy and so he would deploy for long periods of time. And that was a pretty funny joke. There's
00:38:08.240
probably some truth to that actually too. But shared experience is a really important one because
00:38:12.300
you're going to grow together or grow apart. And it doesn't mean just going on fun rides at Disney
00:38:17.680
World. It doesn't mean just that great vacation to Hawaii and all the happy memories, but the sad
00:38:22.480
memories too will bring you closer together as well as they are shared experiences. As for telling your
00:38:29.560
wife, I don't know the details of this assault. Sometimes it's hard to even picture it because
00:38:34.320
you think, well, if some woman is going to come up and assault you, why don't you just push her out
00:38:37.080
of the way? You're bigger, presumably. But I don't know. I mean, obviously it does happen. So I'm not
00:38:42.680
disputing that. But in terms of your struggle with this, do I tell my wife? You know, it's kind of,
00:38:49.880
maybe you feel embarrassed about it. Maybe you feel some shame about it. Well, you certainly shouldn't
00:38:54.640
feel any shame in that unless you were participating, unless this is not just a clear-cut assault,
00:39:00.460
you didn't do anything wrong. And in order to commit a sin, it requires an act of the will.
00:39:04.560
Well, certainly to commit mortals, it requires an act of the will, and you were an unwilling
00:39:08.600
participant here. And this issue in particular is coming up because of this case between Johnny
00:39:15.620
Depp and Amber Heard, a defamation case that Johnny Depp is bringing because of this very
00:39:21.080
acrimonious breakup between the two. I have not been watching the case because I'm a grown man,
00:39:27.320
and I'm not. We got other things to do. But it is fascinating, the reports that I've been
00:39:32.360
reading about it because this woman, Amber Heard, seems to be a complete loony tune and just
00:39:37.680
extraordinarily manipulative and wicked and just a terrible person. And poor Johnny Depp does seem
00:39:43.640
generally like the victim here. So what's the answer to that? I've had people write into me say
00:39:49.320
similar points. Michael, can you please talk about woman-on-male domestic violence? And so what
00:39:56.640
do you do with that? Well, I still come down to the point that the men need to handle it.
00:40:03.740
The men need to get a hold on things. The men need to lead here. And so it's bad. You might find
00:40:09.240
yourself with a complete lunatic like Amber Heard. But still, it's kind of on you to take some control
00:40:16.260
of the situation. And if something goes wrong and if you suffer in some way, you shouldn't feel any shame
00:40:21.540
about that unless you're a willing participant. From Andrew. Hello, Nolstradamus. This may be a
00:40:28.540
triggering question to some, though I expect not to many of the Daily Wire subscribers. Do you think
00:40:34.900
there is any correlation with the current movement of gender ideology and self-identity with a diagnosed
00:40:40.640
or undiagnosed mental disorder? Throughout history, many topics that these agendas are pushing could land
00:40:46.600
someone in a mental institution. Is it possible we're seeing history repeat itself? Or simply a
00:40:51.560
minority of confused individuals now have the ability to indoctrinate impressionable minds at
00:40:55.740
the click of a button? Well, of course. I mean, if you're a man who thinks that he's a woman, then you
00:40:59.520
have a mental disorder. You have a very acute, very clear mental disorder. There's no question about
00:41:04.760
that. It's in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It's in the DSM, the textbook of psychiatry.
00:41:12.440
So that's certainly the case. There is a social phenomenon, too, though, because while a very small
00:41:18.780
number of people suffer from this acute psychological condition where you have confusion about your sex,
00:41:24.000
the numbers are now exploding because it's also a social phenomenon and because these delusions are
00:41:29.600
being affirmed by all of the institutions of power, whether we're talking about the White House,
00:41:33.400
whether we're talking about corporations, whether we're talking about big tech, whether we're talking
00:41:37.260
about a kindergarten teacher. Everyone is affirming this madness that a boy can become a girl.
00:41:41.460
And so there are some people who might not have severe psychiatric conditions who are just going
00:41:48.280
along with this because it's in the zeitgeist. It's blowing along. And that's a big problem.
00:41:53.380
And we need a little bit of tough love here, I think. We need to stop being so nice and be a little
00:41:58.420
bit tougher and more loving and tell people who are confused, no, you're not a woman. And even
00:42:04.760
conservatives need to get tougher on this. Conservatives try to split the baby. And so they'll say,
00:42:09.420
well, if a grown man wants to pretend that he, a grown man who is wearing a dress, who calls himself
00:42:14.540
Sally, if he wants to pretend that he's a woman, that's his right, that's totally fine. But just
00:42:18.380
don't do it to little kids. No, it's not his right. He has no right. You have no right to delusion.
00:42:23.000
And we have no obligation as a society to indulge delusion, no matter what the ruling class tells us.
00:42:28.700
No, you got, we actually have an obligation to tell him the truth and say, no, buster, you're not,
00:42:33.540
take the dress off, stop calling yourself Sally. Sally's a girl's name. You're Sam, you're a boy.
00:42:38.800
Sam's kind of an anirogenous name anyway, so there you go. And you can't use the girl's room,
00:42:43.080
and you can't swim on the Penn Girl swim team, and you gotta, you gotta come back to reality.
00:42:50.980
Dear Smokey Mike, is there any way you can send out the chords to together again from your original
00:42:56.720
album? I promise I won't steal anything. I'm just not good enough to figure out what chords to play,
00:43:01.720
and I can't get the song out of my head. Love Smokey Mike's number one fangirl. P.S.,
00:43:06.980
don't tell Jeremy, but I'll be on your side 100% when the band breaks up. Thank you, Julia.
00:43:10.880
You're obviously a woman of discerning taste. I can't send you the chords to together again,
00:43:18.300
because I don't remember them. I realized this the other day. I pulled out my guitar. I was playing
00:43:23.280
guitar. My son was playing around. I figured I'll play a little guitar for him. And I remembered the
00:43:27.920
guitar solos. I was kind of playing the solos. But I realized I couldn't remember exactly how
00:43:33.240
to play the song. I'm sure I could remember it and figure it out pretty quickly. But
00:43:36.540
that's what happens with music magic. You know, these things just pop out of
00:43:40.840
the God King's head. He did write that song in the shower. He literally wrote that song
00:43:45.960
standing in the shower. Pops out of the God King's head. And we sit there, you know, like
00:43:50.760
1970s National Treasure Rockstar as we play it. And it's gone, man. It's in the ether.
00:43:57.100
If you want it again, you've got to just keep clicking play on Spotify, on Apple Music, on
00:44:02.560
YouTube. From Nick. Uh-oh. Nick, we've missed Nick. Hey, Michael, me again. I'm sorry for
00:44:08.720
being MIA the past few months. I've been on a spiritual journey. So apparently there's this
00:44:14.960
thing called ayahuasca. Long story short, I fell off my king energy and was seduced by another
00:44:20.300
goddess who loves crystals. I was listening to Joe Rogan and got really into the Beatles,
00:44:25.500
none of which I'm proud of. After I lost track of Sydney in Tulum and made it back to the States,
00:44:31.180
I couldn't shake the ayahuasca trip. I felt like I saw and spoke to other beings. It was
00:44:36.100
nuts. Do you think ayahuasca and DMT make you hallucinate or finally see what's already
00:44:41.540
there? As a spiritual dude who doesn't do drugs, I figured you could tell me what's up.
00:44:46.460
This is actually a good question, Nick, and I get this from a lot of people.
00:44:49.120
They'll say, hey, man, you know, I don't, I'm not religious or nothing. I'm not one of you crazy
00:44:54.120
Christians or nothing, you know, but I do a bunch of drugs and I, and I see lots of spirits, man,
00:44:59.040
you know, and I, so I believe in that, you know, I think, oh, so you believe in demons. Okay.
00:45:03.780
You don't believe in angels and God, but you do believe in demons. Okay. I don't do drugs. I've
00:45:09.160
never been into drugs. The, the hardest drug I've ever had was a puffer two on the old Haitian
00:45:14.180
oregano, but it does not interest me because I, I don't want brain damage. And I think I rely on my
00:45:20.360
brain. I think it's working okay right now. And if I want to explore metaphysical questions like
00:45:26.380
you're talking about, I would like to do it in a way that is rigorous. That is not, that does not
00:45:31.100
involve me losing control of my rational faculties and my will like you do when you do drugs, but that
00:45:36.740
actually focuses my intellectual faculties and my, and my will on things like philosophy and theology
00:45:44.280
that applies intellectual rigor to all of these questions. So what are people seeing when they
00:45:49.240
take ayahuasca or DMT or whatever other mushrooms or, or acid, what are they seeing? Well, they could
00:45:56.600
be hallucinating. Probably that's a big part of it, but also we, there is more between heaven and
00:46:03.240
earth and is dreamt of as in our philosophies, Horatio. Also there is a spiritual reality to
00:46:08.560
the world. There are angels and there are demons and there is spiritual battle and there's good and
00:46:11.940
bad and right and wrong. And we're in that and we hit, we are bodies, but we're also souls. And so
00:46:17.260
that, that stuff is real. And when you lose control of your intellect and your will, you open
00:46:26.260
yourself up to a lot of potentially pretty nasty things. And that, that's, that's real. I mean,
00:46:31.860
we talk about spirits, you know, forget about ayahuasca for a second. Let's say you just go
00:46:35.320
out and you drink too much. You're opening yourself up by drinking a lot of spirits. You,
00:46:40.160
you are opening yourself up in a way to spirits because you're, you're no longer as in control
00:46:45.100
of your will. So long and short, Nick is don't do drugs, buddy. Go to church, open your Bible and
00:46:51.060
go to church. From Jen, Jen Nostradamus, you are the very person I believe can help me answer this
00:46:58.400
question about evangelization. It is my understanding that Catholics slash Christians
00:47:02.880
should spread the word of God, but how can one do that without being an overbearing Jesus freak to
00:47:07.960
those around them? Or how can I tell my friends of that description, how to chill? It's a good
00:47:13.620
question. Friend of mine, when he was, when he was converted, when he described this experience of,
00:47:20.940
of just being opened to the Holy Spirit, he said his first thought was, dear God, please don't make
00:47:25.880
me a Jesus freak. And he meant that's actually a good place. Please. And, and I, I had a pretty
00:47:32.560
radical reversion as well in my, after college in my early twenties, you know, it was a process that
00:47:37.180
was gradual and then sudden. So I, I really can empathize with what you're talking about here.
00:47:41.040
And everyone, when people convert or revert, I have noticed they go through a very intense period
00:47:45.900
where they're pretty weird because it's a, it's a pretty wild experience. Uh, so I, I, I suppose my
00:47:51.480
prudential judgment here though is if you want to persuade people, if you want to convert people,
00:47:58.380
you can't seem like you're just completely off your rocker. You can be joyful. You can be excited.
00:48:03.720
You can be eager to spread the joy that lives within you, but you've got to be grounded in reality
00:48:08.880
as well. Don't forget the gospels are not poetry. They're not philosophy. The gospels are news reports.
00:48:15.500
The gospels are journalism accounts. And, and the, the rest of the New Testament is letters.
00:48:21.380
It's grounded in real hard facts. That's where the hope lies. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the
00:48:30.400
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the word,
00:48:40.100
please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on
00:48:45.000
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also be sure to check out the
00:48:50.700
other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro show, the Andrew Klavan show, and the Matt
00:48:55.480
Walsh show. The Michael Knowles show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer, Jeremy Boring,
00:49:00.980
supervising producer, Mathis Glover, production manager, Pavel Vidovsky, editor and associate producer,
00:49:06.680
Danny D'Amico, associate producer, Justine Turley, audio mixer, Mike Coromina, and hair and makeup by
00:49:13.540
Cherokee heart. Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2022.
00:49:19.240
Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of the Andrew Klavan Show. You know, some people are
00:49:23.560
depressed because the Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moons turn to
00:49:28.320
blood. But on the Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started. So come on over to the
00:49:33.040
Andrew Klavan Show and laugh your way through the fall of the Republic with me, Andrew Klavan.