The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire： A New Host & Mr. Knowles Goes to Washington

00:00:00.000 Matt, you're all about, you know, clobbering your enemies into political submission.

00:00:04.180 I've reached Zen. I became Buddhist. I didn't tell you guys.

00:00:07.000 The yarmulke is optional. The ads are mandatory.

00:00:08.900 I object on the record.

00:00:09.980 I want to turn to Ben because you killed Jesus, right?

00:00:12.440 I want to make my life so difficult. Like, seriously. 0.95

00:00:22.600 Hey, everybody.

00:00:24.500 Well, hi there.

00:00:26.360 Hey.

00:00:26.680 Am I the only one smoking today?

00:00:28.680 As always.

00:00:29.540 I'm not smoking.

00:00:29.960 Yeah.

00:00:30.700 Depends what you mean by smoking. I think we're all smoking in our own little way.

00:00:34.860 It looks like Walsh is drinking.

00:00:36.920 Oh, no, it's water.

00:00:37.380 Water.

00:00:37.880 Okay, well, maybe. Maybe it's water. Maybe.

00:00:41.280 I moved to a location so that I could smoke, actually.

00:00:43.880 It felt wrong if there was no smoking going on.

00:00:46.280 I don't have any booze, unfortunately.

00:00:49.780 Fellas, I have a lot that I want to tell you about because I was doing big, important stuff yesterday

00:00:55.280 while you were all just kicking your feet back up on the couches.

00:00:57.940 But there are a lot of questions to get to in this episode of Friendly Fire.

00:01:02.360 Did movies peak in 2008?

00:01:05.280 Will Zoran Mamdani lead America into communism or jihad or why not both?

00:01:11.560 Do we have a new Daily Wire host joining?

00:01:15.040 Yes, we do.

00:01:15.740 Matt Fratt of Pines with Aquinas.

00:01:16.900 And is Catholicism rising in the United States?

00:01:20.120 All of that and so much more.

00:01:22.160 But fellas, before we get into any of it, Matt, today's a big special day.

00:01:26.120 Did you know that?

00:01:26.660 I didn't.

00:01:28.220 What's today?

00:01:29.640 I was reliably informed.

00:01:31.960 I don't know why we keep doing these shows on Big Matt days, but I believe today is your

00:01:35.740 wedding anniversary.

00:01:36.580 Is that right?

00:01:37.300 Now that you mention it, yeah, 14 years.

00:01:39.620 And my wife was thrilled when I told her that we couldn't go out just now because I had to

00:01:46.640 go do a Friendly Fire episode.

00:01:48.060 I told her that.

00:01:49.720 She said, Matt, get out there and do that Friendly Fire episode.

00:01:53.580 That's the most important thing.

00:01:56.360 It's the best gift you could give her, actually.

00:01:58.040 I mean, when you think about it, it really is.

00:02:00.120 I know.

00:02:00.380 You know, we're going to shoot this episode and then our big wedding anniversary plan is

00:02:04.720 we're going to watch the episode back.

00:02:07.580 So that's what we're going to do.

00:02:11.040 What are you going to do?

00:02:12.400 So after you finish watching the episode, are you going to take her out to dinner in the

00:02:16.640 middle of the woods somewhere?

00:02:18.060 Actually, she wanted to go kayaking, so we're going to go kayaking.

00:02:22.540 And that's an activity we like to do as a couple.

00:02:26.340 And I like it because we'll go out kayaking.

00:02:28.820 And a lot of times, once we get out on the water, I'll discover that, silly me, my fishing

00:02:34.520 pole is still in the kayak.

00:02:35.600 I didn't realize it was there.

00:02:36.940 And so then I have to fish also because it's there.

00:02:39.740 So that's what we'll do.

00:02:41.320 So her watching you fish is like your anniversary?

00:02:44.720 That's what it's going to be.

00:02:45.640 You have a very, very generous wife.

00:02:48.300 I do.

00:02:49.780 I mean, we knew that already, but that's kind of an unbelievable level of generosity.

00:02:53.580 I mean, like truly.

00:02:54.940 I mean, I feel like Drew, for his anniversary, he doesn't have to do much.

00:02:58.060 I mean, basically, he's just a skeleton sitting across a table.

00:03:01.520 We have a very deep tradition, which is every big anniversary, and now we've been married

00:03:06.680 130 years, I think.

00:03:08.380 Every really important anniversary, my wife turns to me and says, should we have a party? 0.98

00:03:12.860 And I say, nah.

00:03:14.300 And she says, all right.

00:03:15.300 And that's what we do every important anniversary.

00:03:17.940 On my fifth wedding anniversary, I said, do you want to go somewhere?

00:03:21.540 And sweet little Lisa said, yes, I do.

00:03:23.620 And I said, well, where do you want to go?

00:03:25.260 You want to go to the Caribbean?

00:03:26.760 Do you want to go?

00:03:27.280 And she goes, I want to go to Memphis.

00:03:29.160 I kid you not.

00:03:29.780 She said she wanted to go to Memphis.

00:03:31.080 And I thought, this is great.

00:03:32.140 I just saved like thousands of dollars.

00:03:33.760 And we did.

00:03:34.260 We went.

00:03:34.560 We went to Graceland.

00:03:35.980 We saw the little ducks at that hotel and didn't get mugged, actually.

00:03:39.660 So that was pretty good.

00:03:41.700 I'll admit that for me, I'm usually the one who remembers the anniversary.

00:03:44.660 My wife does not remember the anniversary, almost ever.

00:03:47.560 And so it is completely reliant upon me what we will do that day.

00:03:51.900 And so usually it's probably a dinner.

00:03:54.160 Although, you know, these days as we get older, you know, we're the kinds of people who have

00:03:59.060 never stayed up a single time for the ball drop on New Year's Eve.

00:04:02.040 And so if it hits like 9.30 p.m., we're pretty much done.

00:04:04.980 I mean, we have a bunch of kids and I'm sure.

00:04:06.840 Matt, I have to say that yours is really, if I had predicted what your anniversary was going

00:04:11.300 to be like, that actually was not, I was not off by much.

00:04:14.460 I really feel like that was a pretty good, you know, if I had to guess and I was like,

00:04:19.160 okay, is it going to be Matt like taking his wife out to dinner or in a kayak on a lake

00:04:24.360 with a fishing pole, not talking to anyone, but just kind of like staring at the water

00:04:28.860 and musing about like, like, I definitely, I wouldn't have been off that.

00:04:33.220 I would, like the odds on that were pretty good.

00:04:35.520 I feel like, honestly.

00:04:37.380 They were.

00:04:38.180 And just one quick reflection, if I may.

00:04:42.420 If I have about 30 minutes, I'd like to offer.

00:04:46.360 I do.

00:04:46.920 I just, because, you know, 14 years, I do just want to say, because I think this is important.

00:04:52.540 And I think everyone here is on the same page that, you know, 14 years into marriage, before

00:04:56.800 I got married, I heard the same thing that everybody always says, which is it's so hard.

00:05:01.260 Being married is so hard.

00:05:02.540 It's so difficult.

00:05:03.420 It's so, so, so hard.

00:05:04.820 I heard this over and over again.

00:05:06.520 I'm 14 years into it.

00:05:07.820 I'm waiting for the hard part still, you know, 14 years into it with six kids.

00:05:12.220 And I mean, there are challenges, obviously, when you're living with another human being,

00:05:15.640 but for the most part, it's like, it's great.

00:05:18.300 I mean, you have a person that you, that you like, that you love, that you're, that is with

00:05:22.420 you and sharing life with you.

00:05:23.560 And it is actually, it is actually great.

00:05:26.900 It is now being parenting, parenting can be really hard.

00:05:30.400 That's the part that is also great and wonderful, but that there's, that's the hard part.

00:05:35.820 But just the marriage part, I honestly don't know what people are talking about.

00:05:40.720 I always like when people say it's work.

00:05:42.580 I mean, the one thing marriage is not is work.

00:05:44.600 It's marriage is life.

00:05:46.180 Drew's marriage is not work for him.

00:05:48.340 That's true.

00:05:48.780 But do you know what is work for him?

00:05:50.640 Writing books like this, After That, The Dark, which if I'm, is that at Lord, Alfred Lord

00:05:56.460 Tennyson?

00:05:57.140 Very good.

00:05:58.040 You must've looked that up.

00:05:59.040 I can't, I can't imagine that you actually knew that.

00:06:00.960 No, I remember.

00:06:01.200 It's like one of five poems I, at some point probably had memorized.

00:06:04.460 Do you know where you can get this book?

00:06:05.960 You can get this book anywhere.

00:06:07.780 You can get it signed from the Daily Wire shop.

00:06:10.040 If you go on dailywire.com slash Clavin, you will find all the venues where you can get

00:06:15.860 it.

00:06:16.060 And I hope people will get it.

00:06:17.140 I already put one book on the New York Times list.

00:06:19.700 And when I say I put it on the audience, put my book on the New York Times list.

00:06:23.260 If I can do that twice, I can, I will stop calling the New York Times, a former newspaper, 0.96

00:06:28.240 and I'll just call it a crap paper.

00:06:29.960 Well, you know, somebody, somebody gave me a gift here. 0.98

00:06:32.280 I don't know what it could be.

00:06:34.360 Oh, it's, it's Drew's book.

00:06:35.880 There you go.

00:06:36.840 There you go.

00:06:37.560 Just what, just what I've always wanted.

00:06:39.160 Matt, if you're seeking to get something for your wife for your anniversary, I feel like

00:06:43.420 there's nothing.

00:06:44.200 Oh, look at that.

00:06:45.840 Wow.

00:06:47.060 Wow.

00:06:47.580 Look, that's a man who thinks ahead right there.

00:06:49.340 Look at that.

00:06:49.960 That's, that's incredible.

00:06:51.120 By the way, I will say that just a note about the, the marriage and anniversary discussion

00:06:55.700 and all that.

00:06:56.500 I've been reliably informed that the best way to get people to live better lives is to 0.96

00:06:59.520 tell them that they should never get married because women are absolutely awful in every 1.00

00:07:02.700 possible way. 0.94

00:07:03.700 And, uh, and that that actually is heartening and makes your life better.

00:07:06.320 I've been informed of that by, by reliable sources in their guests.

00:07:08.960 In any case, um, yes, I, I, I'm, I'm totally with, like here you have sitting right here

00:07:15.120 for very happily married men with a wide variety of children.

00:07:19.600 Matt, again, I, we've discussed this before publicly, but I judge a man and his masculinity

00:07:25.140 by how many children he has.

00:07:26.640 And so Matt is, Matt is leading the pack here.

00:07:28.720 Matt has six.

00:07:29.740 Uh, I'm, I'm coming in at four.

00:07:31.720 I, I've, I've said many times that Matt cheated because he has two sets of twins.

00:07:34.960 And so that, that really, that really is cheating.

00:07:36.880 Like that's, that's really like a cheat code.

00:07:38.780 You know, one of the downsides to having a wife is one of the big downsides to having a 0.98

00:07:42.600 wife is she's always shopping and buying stuff. 1.00

00:07:45.180 Am I right?

00:07:45.740 Well, that can be really good for you if you own a business, because when you go to Shopify,

00:07:50.220 you can power your business.

00:07:52.500 You might say, Michael, I don't know how to make a website.

00:07:54.980 Doesn't matter.

00:07:55.600 Shopify has great tools to do it for you.

00:07:57.320 You might say, Michael, I don't know how to design things.

00:08:00.540 I don't worry.

00:08:01.640 Stop.

00:08:02.260 We trust Shopify so much in the daily wire shop that we are even willing to risk selling

00:08:07.820 Drew's book on that platform powers everything we sell here.

00:08:10.660 It's really magnificent.

00:08:11.620 So right now you can turn your big business idea into with Shopify.

00:08:18.980 You can sign up right now for your $1 per month subscription.

00:08:23.000 It is a trial.

00:08:24.500 You will start selling today at shopify.com slash fire, F-I-R-E. 0.99

00:08:29.600 That is shopify.com slash fire, shopify.com slash fire.

00:08:36.420 How do you like that?

00:08:37.680 Okay, guys, I want to talk about me for a second.

00:08:39.580 I feel like we haven't talked enough about me.

00:08:42.300 I yesterday was not in my studio.

00:08:44.500 I was in Washington.

00:08:45.540 I was down at Capitol Hill because they were holding a hearing in the Senate on political

00:08:49.860 violence.

00:08:50.360 And most of the Democrats, I'd say about half the committee was smart enough not to even

00:08:56.080 show up because they know that they've got blood on their hands and they have absolutely

00:09:01.320 nothing they can say about political violence.

00:09:03.040 But some of them peaked in every now and again, including the Thracian Senator Spartacus.

00:09:09.860 Here's what Cory Booker had to say.

00:09:10.960 There is political violence.

00:09:15.880 Extremists who have left-wing ideologies and right-wing ideologies.

00:09:19.640 To say it's just one and not the other is to deepen the problem.

00:09:23.680 But we have an administration right now who is eviscerating the people that should be keeping

00:09:29.740 us safe and who was pulling down from the website, as they did earlier this year when

00:09:35.640 the Department of Justice removed from its website a government-funded report published

00:09:39.920 last year that found that the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types

00:09:46.180 of terrorism and domestic violence extremism.

00:09:48.480 If we can't accurately describe a problem and do it without partisan rhetoric or seeking to score

00:09:55.360 partisan points, we will not solve this problem.

00:10:00.320 We need to stop all this awful partisan rhetoric, okay, and recognize that violence occurs on both

00:10:06.560 sides of the right, which commits all of the violence.

00:10:10.040 Stop it, stop it, stop it. 0.79

00:10:12.000 So they're pushing this whole time.

00:10:14.260 It's both sides, both sides, and then they just spend all their time hitting the right.

00:10:17.960 Meanwhile, the actual data show, increasingly so, that the violence is a left-wing problem.

00:10:24.900 Even the Atlantic had to admit it, and that's with the data sets not even counting most left-wing

00:10:28.460 violence.

00:10:29.140 So as Booker's making his remarks, he goes on, he says, we need to be introspective.

00:10:35.400 We need to be willing to take back some hot things that we say.

00:10:39.180 So we need to be willing.

00:10:40.040 I said, okay, this is great, because you still injure Jay Jones, who's running for attorney

00:10:44.740 general in Virginia, who's called for the murder of Republicans and our kids, says we're breeding 0.93

00:10:49.060 little fascists, and he wants to urinate on the graves of Republicans. 0.96

00:10:51.860 So Booker makes his point. 0.96

00:10:53.780 Then Senator Blackburn asked me something, and this is what I had to say.

00:10:57.460 I think Senator Booker made a good point just a moment ago when he said we have to self-examine.

00:11:03.560 We have to be introspective.

00:11:05.420 And I can't help but think of a line today.

00:11:09.060 Jay Jones has the vision, commitment, and integrity to keep families safe and make sure

00:11:13.900 every Virginian gets a fair shake in the justice system. 0.99

00:11:16.880 I'll be working every day to ensure Jay wins this race.

00:11:20.320 That's the endorsement of Senator Booker for a man who would seek to be the attorney general

00:11:25.460 of Virginia.

00:11:26.280 This is a man who, if people have not been reading the news, has called for a Republican 0.98

00:11:31.040 to be murdered, for his children to be murdered, for the children to die in their mother's arms 0.98

00:11:35.240 in order to persuade the Republican to change his policy views, and a man who says that he 0.99

00:11:40.000 would urinate on the graves of multiple Republicans.

00:11:42.640 Senator Booker, in the spirit of introspection, is standing by this endorsement.

00:11:46.700 So I suppose I would invite, perhaps I should have looked, because Senator Booker has left

00:11:51.780 the room, and I think I can guess why.

00:11:54.220 Senator Booker, I think, should practice what he preaches.

00:11:59.800 So there was a Cory Booker-shaped hole in the wall.

00:12:02.020 Anyway, Drew, you were around for the caning of Sumner, as I recall.

00:12:05.780 You know, you've seen plenty of political violence in America.

00:12:08.480 Do the Democrats have any kind of point here at all on saying it's about both sides and not

00:12:13.600 being partisan?

00:12:14.240 Or no, do we just have to say it's a leftist problem?

00:12:16.700 Well, I think it's good that Cory Booker did not kill Kirk Douglas with the trident when

00:12:21.740 he was Spartacus.

00:12:23.000 I actually watched you on TV, and I was thinking, oh, there's my friend, Michael Knowles, who

00:12:27.760 probably dropped by my house, because he's in D.C., probably dropped by my house for

00:12:30.980 a drink and a cigar.

00:12:32.240 I'm still waiting by the phone, but nothing happened.

00:12:34.840 Here's the thing.

00:12:35.780 There's always going to be incidents of violence on both sides, but that is a very different

00:12:39.600 thing than an atmosphere of violence.

00:12:41.100 When you go around scratching Teslas because you don't like Elon Musk, when you riot every

00:12:47.780 night in Seattle, these are things that are not happening on the right.

00:12:52.560 You can get a crazy right-winger, but nobody on the right and the center-right is calling

00:12:56.480 for violence with the constant drumbeat, steady drumbeat of calls and entitlement as the left

00:13:03.600 does.

00:13:03.820 I mean, when they were burning down cities because of George Floyd, an editor from the

00:13:08.500 New York Times, from the New York Times editorial board, went on TV and said, well, it's not

00:13:11.580 violence when you're just burning down buildings.

00:13:14.280 But you know what?

00:13:15.200 Yes, it is.

00:13:16.040 And people were killed in those riots.

00:13:17.880 And as you said quite well, I thought, in your speech, it's the only nice thing I'll ever

00:13:21.600 say about you.

00:13:22.320 You pointed out that they just don't count that as political violence.

00:13:25.080 They don't count the people who threaten Matt because they're transgender.

00:13:27.980 That's not left-wing political violence, but it is.

00:13:30.520 And when you count all of that stuff, it dwarfs any incident of right-wing violence.

00:13:35.640 So you were totally in the right.

00:13:36.760 I hate to say it, but it's true. 0.99

00:13:37.760 Oh, right.

00:13:37.940 And I looked handsome, too, as I think you wanted to say.

00:13:40.280 That's a nice tie.

00:13:41.220 I kind of like the striped tie there.

00:13:43.140 That was good.

00:13:44.160 You know, I will say that, yes, of course, you can find violent people all across the

00:13:49.140 political spectrum.

00:13:50.280 It is true that the permission structures of the left are more deeply rooted than anything

00:13:54.560 remotely similar on the right.

00:13:55.640 You don't see any sort of mainstream political right-winger who's not willing to denounce

00:14:00.000 generalized political violence from their side or anything like it.

00:14:04.700 But you do see it on the left all the time, the sort of the kind of feeding of the revolutionary

00:14:08.080 left, this idea that violence that's coming from the left, well, yeah, we don't love it.

00:14:12.780 But at the same time, you can totally see where it's coming from and the conditions that give

00:14:16.320 rise to the violence must be alleviated.

00:14:18.300 And that's why the violence is really it's like we don't love it, but it's kind of predictable.

00:14:21.800 And that sort of excuse making, that permission structure for violence is very much in tune

00:14:27.420 with, I think, the entire left wing infrastructure at this point, which is why they're so comfortable

00:14:31.680 with, for example, the DSA, which is a revolutionary group.

00:14:35.680 I mean, I think that the attempt to foster the revolution on the left is deeply entwined

00:14:41.220 with the violence.

00:14:41.940 It's why when Charlie got shot and we talked about this, I think, when Michael, you and

00:14:48.340 Matt and I, we were on Charlie's show, we talked about the fact that there was a clip

00:14:52.640 of Charlie talking with some sort of trans radical and the trans radical said, you're just so 0.96

00:14:56.900 hateful. 0.92

00:14:57.860 And it's like that is the problem.

00:14:59.480 Like your entire structure is we oppose your point of view.

00:15:02.980 Therefore, we are hateful.

00:15:03.900 Therefore, we are a threat to you. 1.00

00:15:04.980 Therefore, you can kill us. 0.99

00:15:06.240 Therefore, you can do violence to us. 0.98

00:15:07.920 And that is deeply embedded in left wing ideology.

00:15:11.240 Now, I think there are parts of the right that do have very similar horseshoe theory

00:15:14.620 ideas about the world.

00:15:15.920 I would hope that those parts of the right would remain marginalized.

00:15:18.540 I can't think of a single sort of mainstream elected political official on the right who

00:15:23.260 gives credence to this.

00:15:25.020 It's given credence by pretty much all the mainstream elected officials on the left.

00:15:28.620 I think there are people in the commentary to give credence to it, but I don't think it's

00:15:31.360 like a mainstream part of right wing elected kind of Republican talk.

00:15:35.840 But as sort of a mainstream phenomenon, yes, it is disproportionately represented on the left.

00:15:40.440 This permission structure for violence.

00:15:41.880 Well, this is what Senator Schmidt, a very mainstream Republican figure, he calls this

00:15:46.800 hearing to try to address the problem.

00:15:48.280 I think that was really good, shining a light on it.

00:15:50.300 We really haven't seen that from the Senate before.

00:15:52.620 A lot of great Republicans, the White House is trying to do stuff about it.

00:15:55.340 Matt, you're all about practical solutions as well as clobbering your enemies into political

00:16:00.660 submission.

00:16:01.500 What do we do?

00:16:03.680 Well, I mean, consequences.

00:16:05.640 That's the first thing.

00:16:06.540 Actual consequences for people who commit this violence.

00:16:09.340 When you categorize rightly, I think, Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, which

00:16:15.560 is exactly what it is, by any reasonable definition of the term, well, that means that there should

00:16:21.600 be consequences to that.

00:16:23.120 And what do we do?

00:16:24.360 If you're calling it a terrorist organization, then you're putting it in the same category

00:16:27.960 as Al-Qaeda or ISIS.

00:16:29.340 And how do we handle those groups?

00:16:31.760 And what would we do if those groups were operating openly in the United States outside of ICE

00:16:37.400 facilities and that sort of thing?

00:16:39.120 Well, we know how that would be handled.

00:16:40.500 And so that's how it should be handled here.

00:16:43.120 And you're also correct.

00:16:43.980 I think that this is, and it's a point that's not made enough about how the left gets around

00:16:47.900 this reality, which is that all of the political violence is on their side.

00:16:51.780 And they do it by recategorizing their political violence as not political violence.

00:16:56.200 And by the way, this is a trick they pull with all forms of violence.

00:17:00.740 Okay, this is how they have tried to get away with claiming that some of these cities that

00:17:05.480 we can all tell have descended into total violent chaos have actually, they claim that,

00:17:11.740 oh, well, violent crime is going down.

00:17:13.260 Well, how do they get away with that?

00:17:14.400 It's because when you look at it, oh, well, they're just recategorizing violent crime as

00:17:18.460 nonviolent crime.

00:17:19.400 There was a case in Kentucky recently of a child that was stabbed to death in his home

00:17:26.140 and the rest of the family was also attacked.

00:17:28.360 And somehow the guy who committed that crime was categorized under the law as a nonviolent

00:17:33.780 offender.

00:17:34.600 Yeah.

00:17:34.740 And so this is the game they play on so many different levels.

00:17:38.960 And it's really important to point that out.

00:17:40.580 No, this was, you know, the actual incident that I was there to testify about yesterday

00:17:44.140 was this Antifa attack at the University of Pittsburgh where two Antifa operatives showed

00:17:49.320 up.

00:17:50.140 They had been members of a cell.

00:17:52.220 They were claimed by Torch Antifa Network.

00:17:54.860 The guy was caught with explosive material going through TSA multiple times.

00:18:00.040 They were there.

00:18:00.680 They threw an explosive, seriously injured a cop.

00:18:03.400 And luckily there was an FBI agent there who was really forcing this up through the DOJ.

00:18:09.500 I don't think the DOJ wanted to move on it at all.

00:18:11.480 And then what happened, the DOJ classified it as obstructing law enforcement, gave the wife

00:18:16.640 probation, let her almost entirely off the hook. 0.98

00:18:19.680 And the guy got something like five years in prison.

00:18:22.140 What he did was attempted murder.

00:18:23.740 It calls for a much more serious sentence.

00:18:26.060 I go through all of the sets, data sets on political violence.

00:18:30.480 It doesn't show up.

00:18:31.820 I look at the BLM riots that killed dozens of people, left over a billion dollars worth

00:18:36.080 of property damage.

00:18:37.160 It doesn't show up as left-wing political violence.

00:18:39.900 Some of the most prominent examples you can think of, it's just not there.

00:18:43.400 And so what's so crazy is, even given the fact that they hide all of these data in their sets

00:18:49.920 and in the federal statistics, even so, today, the Atlantic has to admit the left-wing violence

00:18:56.420 still exceeds the right-wing violence, even when you exclude most of the left-wing violence.

00:18:59.980 So, Matt, you say, all right, we've got to treat them like al-Qaeda. 0.88

00:19:02.380 I'm inclined to do that, too.

00:19:03.880 But there is a distinction between a foreign terrorist organization and a domestic one.

00:19:08.560 And so do you handle them like al-Qaeda or do you handle them like, I don't know, the mafia or the KKK or something?

00:19:16.500 I'll take any of those.

00:19:18.660 Handle them like an organized, violent threat.

00:19:21.980 You know, that's how you handle them.

00:19:23.780 And also, there's another point about left-wing violence, which is that, in fact, when we're talking about left-wing violence in general,

00:19:32.640 there's one entire category of it that is left out of the conversation,

00:19:37.600 which would be the tens of millions of babies that are killed because of left-wing policies 0.58

00:19:44.740 and have been killed in this country over the last 60 or 70 years.

00:19:48.380 And that's relevant because it is violence, tens of millions of babies.

00:19:52.360 But also, it shows, it's one of the reasons why left-wing violence is a much bigger problem.

00:19:57.840 It's because they don't recognize fundamentally the dignity and sanctity of human life.

00:20:03.860 They just don't recognize.

00:20:04.740 They see it as, well, if you're inconvenient to them, that you actually don't have a right to exist in the first place.

00:20:10.380 And if they're going to apply that to their own children, well, then, of course, they're going to apply it to Charlie Kirk.

00:20:15.300 They're going to apply it to any one of us.

00:20:17.860 Right, right.

00:20:18.440 Okay, well, that's true.

00:20:20.360 It's been building for a long time.

00:20:21.660 It's, by my count, you know, decades.

00:20:23.860 Because you can go back through even the 60s, the 70s, frankly, even earlier than that.

00:20:27.980 But I want to go back to where pop culture ended, which is 2007, according to Mr. Walsh.

00:20:35.040 We'll get to that.

00:20:35.760 And I want to go all the way back a decade, thinking about a decade of Daily Wire.

00:20:40.520 And I want to offer you the deal of the decade.

00:20:43.520 Because we've got really exciting stuff.

00:20:44.880 We even have a new host here joining the Daily Wire.

00:20:47.320 The Merlin died long before you and I were born.

00:20:56.580 G'day, everybody.

00:20:57.440 My name is Matt Fratt.

00:20:58.340 Welcome to Pints with Aquinas.

00:20:59.540 It wasn't if it was going to happen.

00:21:05.560 It was when the United States was going to be attacked.

00:21:07.760 I've seen what you can do.

00:21:09.760 Edward?

00:21:10.540 I'm not Edward.

00:21:11.460 I'm a demon.

00:21:12.460 The whole purpose behind this is to overturn Western civilization.

00:21:16.680 Bin Laden was getting very antsy.

00:21:19.000 A ton of new stuff at the Daily Wire, including the fact that we have hired yet another Catholic host.

00:21:43.760 That's right.

00:21:44.240 Pints with Aquinas, Matt Fratt.

00:21:45.800 The Labor Department is going to investigate us for anti-Protestant discrimination.

00:21:49.520 Maybe we'll get some Protestants around there, too.

00:21:51.280 I don't know.

00:21:51.700 But in any case, I'm very excited.

00:21:52.920 You know, I've been buddies with Matt for a long time.

00:21:54.780 And he's a great cigar man.

00:21:56.160 And so Pints with Aquinas being on the platform is going to be great.

00:21:59.080 If you want it, then you need to give us $7 a month, which is nothing.

00:22:04.660 After Bidenflation, that is absolute chump change, okay?

00:22:09.120 But we're going back to our prices from 10 years ago to celebrate a decade of Daily Wire.

00:22:12.640 If you want it, go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.

00:22:16.260 Matt, in the spirit of nostalgia, did pop culture peak in 2008?

00:22:22.860 It did, yes.

00:22:24.660 It's funny you asked me that question.

00:22:26.960 So I was actually surprised.

00:22:28.760 I was talking to the producers of this show, and we were talking about topics, and I pitched this topic.

00:22:33.420 I didn't think we'd talk about it.

00:22:35.400 But we are, and that's great, because we finally stumbled on a topic that I find interesting.

00:22:40.640 So I was talking about it on my show this past week.

00:22:44.900 I kind of laid out this theory.

00:22:46.400 It's not just my theory, but something I've been thinking about for a while.

00:22:49.420 And I am legitimately interested to hear what you guys have to say about it.

00:22:53.060 So the theory is basically this, that pop culture and the culture itself peaked almost at a precise moment in time.

00:23:02.100 And I would say 2007, but you could go a year before that and a year after.

00:23:05.440 So from like 2006 to 2008 was the peak of culture, the peak of what some have called, what I think is a good term for it, monoculture.

00:23:15.040 So it's our shared cultural experience, and it peaks right then and there.

00:23:19.560 And you can kind of pinpoint the peak with pop culture, with the things that Hollywood was putting out.

00:23:23.720 I mean, this was 2006, 2008.

00:23:26.380 It was There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Children of Men, Apocalypto, The Dark Knight, and a bunch of other great films came out at the same time.

00:23:34.800 This is also television.

00:23:35.920 I mean, it was like some of the, arguably, maybe the five of the eight greatest television shows of all time were airing, overlapping with each other.

00:23:46.280 The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Shield.

00:23:51.760 The Office was in its prime, I think, in its prime, probably the greatest comedy of all time.

00:23:56.420 And then a bunch of others we could name.

00:23:57.800 So all of this was happening at the same time with pop culture.

00:24:01.520 And what you find is this decline that started right around that time, in particular with comedies.

00:24:10.160 There were also great comedies.

00:24:11.420 Superbad was like the last great teen comedy.

00:24:13.660 It came out in 2007, I believe.

00:24:16.640 Some other, Tropic Thunder came out in 2008.

00:24:18.960 I think the last great comedy period.

00:24:22.180 And you see it there, and it starts to decline.

00:24:25.300 And then it completely falls apart.

00:24:26.980 And over the next, you know, pretty much from 2010 until now, there have been some good films.

00:24:32.920 There have even been some great films, I would say.

00:24:34.740 Even some great television series.

00:24:36.920 Chernobyl, I think, is one of the best miniseries of all time.

00:24:39.720 Came out in 2019.

00:24:41.040 But you're never going to find that kind of volume all at one time.

00:24:44.560 And I think it's because culture declined and then collapsed.

00:24:48.400 And right now, when we're looking around, and this is really a starting point for me, 0.82

00:24:52.120 I'm trying to figure out why does everything suck now? 0.95

00:24:54.640 Everything just sucks, and everybody can feel it. 0.97

00:24:57.180 And why is it? 0.98

00:24:58.360 And it's because we don't have a culture anymore.

00:25:00.840 There is no culture.

00:25:02.020 The monoculture, the shared cultural experience is gone.

00:25:05.340 It's dead.

00:25:05.820 It doesn't exist anymore.

00:25:06.820 And it's only going to get worse, I'm afraid to say.

00:25:09.000 And that's because if we go back to 2007, 2008 range, some other things were happening

00:25:14.200 at that moment when Hollywood was reaching, I think, like its pinnacle, other things were

00:25:19.820 happening that would prove to be its demise.

00:25:22.560 And a lot of people on the right will point to, well, what happened in 2008?

00:25:26.060 Barack Obama came in, and that was kind of the beginning of this era of wokeness that

00:25:30.880 we're still living in.

00:25:32.000 And yeah, that is part of it.

00:25:33.640 But that's not even close to the biggest part of it.

00:25:35.900 In fact, I would argue that if Obama was never elected, we would still be seeing a lot of

00:25:39.900 these things today.

00:25:40.520 Because the other thing that happened in 2007, in June of 2007, is when the iPhone was released.

00:25:45.800 And the iPhone was released.

00:25:46.840 And at that point, within a few years, social media took over.

00:25:49.720 There were already, of course, Facebook was on at this point.

00:25:52.900 Twitter was in 2006.

00:25:54.740 Instagram, I think, was a couple of years later.

00:25:56.760 But within a few years of the iPhone coming out, everybody now has the internet, of course,

00:26:01.880 on their phone.

00:26:02.300 They're bringing it with them everywhere they go.

00:26:04.260 And social media comes online.

00:26:07.120 It dominates the culture.

00:26:08.640 And then you have the algorithms.

00:26:10.360 And now, because of that, we don't have a shared cultural experience anymore.

00:26:14.220 Now we have what we have in our phones.

00:26:16.280 We have this algorithmic, personally designed experience.

00:26:20.860 And rather than it being like a radio station that you listen to with a DJ who's your local

00:26:25.940 DJ and says, hey, listen to this great song, you know, and everyone's listening.

00:26:29.300 Or you go to MTV back in the 90s for the 90s kids.

00:26:32.260 Rather than that, we have this algorithm that just was, it just feeds us content.

00:26:36.580 And the algorithm doesn't care.

00:26:37.980 You know, the algorithm doesn't care what kind of content it is.

00:26:40.440 It doesn't care whether you like it or not.

00:26:41.720 The only thing the algorithm cares about is that you keep watching it.

00:26:44.560 And so it'll serve you up a cute cat video.

00:26:46.960 And then it'll serve you up a video of somebody getting shot in the head.

00:26:49.240 And then it'll serve you up a video of somebody falling on a skateboard.

00:26:52.100 And then it'll serve you up a Taylor Swift music video.

00:26:53.880 It does not give the slightest damn what it is.

00:26:56.280 It just wants you looking at it.

00:26:57.460 And this thing becomes more and more personalized to the kinds of things that you tend to look

00:27:01.060 at.

00:27:01.460 Even if you don't like them, you tend to look at it.

00:27:03.200 And so now we have this weird scenario where if you go to, you know, if you're a parent

00:27:10.440 and you have a 15-year-old son, your son has his own celebrities.

00:27:18.260 He has his own culture that he's in that is almost entirely inaccessible to you.

00:27:23.900 It's incomprehensible to you.

00:27:25.400 It's not like when I was a kid in the 90s and my parents knew that MTV and they didn't

00:27:32.120 really approve of a lot of the pop music and the rap and all that, but they knew who those

00:27:36.280 people were because they were the celebrities.

00:27:38.160 They were the stars and they might not have liked them, but they knew who they were.

00:27:41.660 We all shared the same kind of, we were in the same atmosphere of the same stars and

00:27:45.360 celebrities and films.

00:27:46.680 And now you can have someone who their favorite celebrity is some influencer who's got 20 million

00:27:52.960 followers, but if you're not one of those 20 million followers, you have no clue who that

00:27:57.360 person even is, um, at all.

00:27:59.880 And so things are becoming, you know, narrower and narrower.

00:28:03.960 And now we bring AI online and we extend that out another five years.

00:28:09.300 And now we're going to be in a world where five years from now, your favorite film may

00:28:15.680 be a film that no one else on earth has seen because AI will just generate it for you.

00:28:21.660 And your favorite pop star will be someone who no one else has heard.

00:28:25.540 Your favorite song is something no one else has listened to.

00:28:28.300 We're already seeing that starting to happen.

00:28:30.100 I think it's going to get worse.

00:28:31.380 And, um, and the monoculture is dead.

00:28:33.200 And now we have this kind of fractured culture that is broken into a billion different pieces.

00:28:38.100 And, uh, and I'm not sure how we pull ourselves out of it.

00:28:41.300 Depressing.

00:28:41.820 Thanks, man.

00:28:42.400 It is quite depressing.

00:28:43.680 I want to go first to, uh, to Drew.

00:28:45.940 Uh, so did anything I said make any sense at all to you whatsoever?

00:28:50.820 It made some sense, but I think it's too narrow.

00:28:53.260 I mean, there've been many great peaks in popular American culture.

00:28:56.500 1939, if you look at the list of movies nominated for Oscars, they're not only the best, the

00:29:01.480 biggest box office movies, they're also some of the greatest movies ever made, including,

00:29:05.540 you know, the wizard of Oz and Mr. Smith goes to Washington, real genuine classics.

00:29:10.320 And another wind.

00:29:11.340 What's that?

00:29:11.720 Yeah.

00:29:11.900 Gone with the wind.

00:29:13.060 You have another big peak, uh, in the 1970s when all the Spielberg pictures came out

00:29:16.860 and you had the Godfather and you had people lined up around the block lines.

00:29:20.520 I haven't seen since the seventies were so that every single person in America had seen

00:29:24.860 it.

00:29:25.000 And what you had at the time that you're talking about, uh, most especially is that, uh, surge

00:29:30.300 in television.

00:29:31.020 When one form, the movies became kind of obsolete and it played out.

00:29:34.840 You had this incredible, what everything you said about television was true.

00:29:38.020 Like the shows were on, it was like dazzling.

00:29:40.300 My eyes were spiraling at what's happened.

00:29:42.940 And you're also right about the, this utter collapse, which I've been talking about on

00:29:47.620 my show for almost five years of this absolute collapse of the culture.

00:29:52.160 But I think that what you're seeing, but I'm totally, uh, disagree with your, the negative,

00:29:57.040 uh, prediction that you're making.

00:29:58.600 And here's why I think what we're really seeing is we're seeing the death of my generation.

00:30:02.760 I'm hoping they can leave without taking me with them, but we're, we're sick of them

00:30:06.080 and they're going away.

00:30:07.020 And all of their ideas have come a cropper and all of these left-wing ideas that just completely

00:30:12.200 dominant, I mean, had a stranglehold, a monopoly on our, our culture. 0.94

00:30:16.380 All of them turned out to be untrue.

00:30:18.040 So you had this woke moment, which was the, the, what they thought was a discovery of a

00:30:22.360 totally new morality that every generation before them had missed.

00:30:25.280 But in fact, it was just calling good, evil and evil good.

00:30:27.860 And you can't make movies out of that.

00:30:29.500 You can't make movies in which women aren't women. 1.00

00:30:31.500 You can't make movies in which abortion is good. 1.00

00:30:33.500 You cannot make, tell stories in which what is actually evil is portrayed as good.

00:30:39.300 You just can't do it.

00:30:40.560 I think this whole AI thing, yeah.

00:30:44.040 Is it going to change everything?

00:30:45.560 I think it is, but ultimately I see it already.

00:30:48.860 People are using AI.

00:30:50.100 It's going to democratize, uh, the, the culture of people are already using AI to make films

00:30:55.620 who would never have been able to make films. 0.97

00:30:57.540 Now, right now they're small, stupid films, but soon they'll get better and better. 0.99

00:31:01.400 And I think that because of the power of quality and because of the tendency of things to coalesce, 0.98

00:31:08.760 you will see what right now is indeed a dead and scattered culture and has been for several

00:31:13.820 years.

00:31:14.140 You'll start to see it coming back together with new forms.

00:31:16.880 And this is the thing I'm worried about with conservatism.

00:31:19.880 I'm afraid conservatives are still back in the movie making days and they don't understand

00:31:24.260 that people are going to be wearing Oculus's or Oculi or whatever, and are going to be seeing

00:31:28.860 3d things, uh, they're going to be sharing, uh, things that were made with AI, with the

00:31:33.960 help of AI.

00:31:34.940 And we're, I think we're in the past.

00:31:37.100 I think we're doing Christian rock.

00:31:38.400 You know, we're saying like, uh, you know, oh, here's a form that's already there.

00:31:41.800 We're going to do it, except we're going to do it on the right wing.

00:31:44.160 And that's not what we need.

00:31:45.540 What we need is fresh new ideas and fresh new minds, uh, to make new stuff that, that

00:31:50.880 no one's ever seen before.

00:31:51.900 I think it's coming.

00:31:52.780 I would, I would even give it only two years before you're sitting around going, wow, I didn't,

00:31:57.360 I never even saw anything like that.

00:31:58.660 That's pretty cool.

00:31:59.580 So I'm, I'm much more optimistic than that.

00:32:01.460 I do also share, I'm kind of like, I, yes, obviously the technological changes are going

00:32:05.240 to kill certain media, just like a premium digital TV in the early two thousands really

00:32:11.480 supplanted movies.

00:32:12.980 But, but yeah, I'm, I'm kind of with you, Drew on the hopefulness in that, like the

00:32:17.540 fourth, we've made it this far into the show with only mentioning Aquinas.

00:32:21.400 Well, we already mentioned Aquinas because of Matt Fratt, but the fourth primary precept of

00:32:25.060 the natural law is that human beings are inclined to live in an ordered society.

00:32:29.200 And I think that's true, you know, and liberalism sometimes tells us we're not inclined to live

00:32:33.220 in society, that we're all just individuals.

00:32:34.680 And, you know, we just fell out of a coconut tree like Kamala Harris, but no, we're inclined

00:32:39.200 to live in society.

00:32:39.880 So I'm with you.

00:32:40.420 Even if we make our own weird AI stuff that it really only tickles our fancy, I think

00:32:45.420 we're going to be impelled to share it with other people.

00:32:47.340 It's just part of human nature.

00:32:48.940 And so, yeah, we're, we're in a kind of a, the gutters of culture right now, but I agree

00:32:53.240 history, history goes on.

00:32:54.600 There's no, there's no end of history until there is.

00:32:57.740 Um, so I, I fell asleep.

00:32:59.560 I don't know how you somehow made this particular topic.

00:33:02.620 We're on the fourth primary precept of the natural.

00:33:03.340 I don't, I don't know how you made a topic about pop culture this boring guys.

00:33:07.520 I have to admit it was, it was a unique contribution to our own cultural moment to make it that

00:33:13.260 unbelievably boring, like really, really well done.

00:33:15.800 Um, I mean, I generally agree with Matt's, with Matt's take, uh, I think that the rise

00:33:19.500 of the cell phone has made it incredibly difficult for us to have communal experiences.

00:33:22.980 The only communal experiences we have are live sporting events.

00:33:26.500 Uh, other than that, uh, people, people don't just get like the reason comedy died is because

00:33:30.920 comedy must be experienced communally.

00:33:32.540 You cannot really truly experience comedy by yourself.

00:33:35.860 Like it's very rare to watch something unless you're a naturally garrulous person and just

00:33:39.600 start laughing out loud.

00:33:41.000 Hey, you might chuckle to yourself, but like the only time you really laugh super hard is

00:33:44.140 when you're with other people.

00:33:45.080 Uh, and so I think that the death of sort of that community experience means the comedy

00:33:48.860 was the first to go.

00:33:49.860 Uh, I think when it comes to sort of the big blockbusters, because CGI got so prevalent,

00:33:54.660 then stuff that used to kind of blow you away where it's like, you got to go to the theater

00:33:57.580 and see it.

00:33:58.440 Uh, it, you just don't feel that way anymore.

00:34:00.280 And you can watch it on your screen if you wait for two weeks.

00:34:02.640 Uh, and so I think COVID killed a lot of that, but as far as the biggest thing that happened,

00:34:07.160 I think is that as we removed all these limitations, so I'm, I'm a big believer in the idea that

00:34:11.000 when it comes to art, limitations are actually quite useful.

00:34:13.980 Limitations force you to do creative things within boundaries.

00:34:17.020 And I think that as we removed pretty much all the boundaries, the art got significantly

00:34:20.300 worse.

00:34:20.760 So if you go back to the writing of the 1930s and forties, much of which was taking place

00:34:24.660 on sound stages in Hollywood with a cast of, of rotating characters, the writing had to

00:34:28.940 be really good because you had all of these limitations that had been placed upon you.

00:34:32.680 And as we started to go to a hundred million dollar budgets, most of which was CGI, it

00:34:36.560 was like, okay, well now I can do whatever I want, whatever my, whatever catches my fancy.

00:34:40.060 It's like, well, what if I just write slop or if it's, it's slop that I can just put money

00:34:43.400 into.

00:34:43.860 And, and then it turns out that it's utterly forgettable.

00:34:46.640 And so for a while, TV was the place because TV actually had limitations, right?

00:34:50.620 You actually had a budget that you had to hold to for TV, particularly in the Breaking

00:34:54.760 Bad era.

00:34:55.300 You could shoot those aside from the actors pretty cheaply.

00:34:57.780 It's not like a, a production that requires vast quantities of cash.

00:35:01.740 Same thing was true for Sopranos, right?

00:35:03.180 These are all dramas that are very well written because of the limitations.

00:35:06.200 As you remove the limitations, things get significantly worse.

00:35:09.480 Now you don't have the limitation of having to, for example, write a minimum time.

00:35:13.280 You can write a 30 second thing and it can go viral.

00:35:15.660 And so that doesn't require you to be good at it.

00:35:17.220 You can, you can dump AI in there, just make it slop.

00:35:20.160 So you don't have to actually be good at it.

00:35:21.700 So the quality goes down.

00:35:22.700 I'm not a big fan of the democratization of art in this way, because frankly, I don't

00:35:28.540 think most people are very good at art.

00:35:30.480 I think that, I think that the, the kind of idea that everyone can be a poet, everyone

00:35:34.840 can make a movie.

00:35:35.760 You know, we had this with Facebook, right?

00:35:37.640 Well, we're all going to make new friends on Facebook.

00:35:39.420 And then what did it turn out?

00:35:40.400 It turned out that everyone used the internet for pornography and none of your friends on

00:35:43.720 Facebook are your actual friends.

00:35:44.820 And I feel like the same exact thing is going to happen with art.

00:35:46.920 Most people are not going to be sitting around thinking about how do I write the next Godfather

00:35:50.200 for me or my friends?

00:35:51.020 Most people are going to think around, think about how do I, how do I like make the next

00:35:54.120 piece of bizarre tentacle porn?

00:35:56.420 And, and I just like, I have, I have such a low opinion of human ability and human artistic

00:36:01.780 capacity and self-control that if there are no external checks, I think it gets worse.

00:36:06.120 No, but it breaks the strangle.

00:36:06.940 I want to get back to Thomas Aquinas.

00:36:08.980 But before we do that with Matt Fradd, I have a question for you, Matt.

00:36:13.520 In Spanish, what's the number after uno?

00:36:18.400 Dos?

00:36:18.800 Dos?

00:36:19.800 Yes.

00:36:20.380 Is that the?

00:36:20.840 Dos. 0.62

00:36:21.900 Yes.

00:36:22.740 No, it's, it's Dos.

00:36:25.960 It's Dos.

00:36:26.500 Stop it.

00:36:26.920 We're in the middle of an ad for Dos.

00:36:28.260 That's it.

00:36:28.940 Look, we've all seen it.

00:36:30.300 Every week there's a new miracle supplement promising to fix everything overnight, but

00:36:33.480 that doesn't work.

00:36:34.520 One thing that does work is using herbal supplements like cumin or ginger, dandelion.

00:36:39.800 Like if you take these in the proper dosages, actually these are quite good for you.

00:36:42.320 And this is where dose for your liver comes in.

00:36:44.200 Behold, behold right here.

00:36:45.700 Yes, dose for, I don't know if I have a bigger liver than Michael, but like Michael has a

00:36:50.240 tiny liver apparently.

00:36:50.920 Yeah, give me a bit, where's my dose?

00:36:52.040 We have like, we have a normal, like this is a man-sized dose for your liver, Michael.

00:36:55.540 Mine is begging not to be put in my liver, not inflated in the liver, please, please.

00:36:59.840 It's a liver health supplement that promotes daily liver function so your liver can do its

00:37:03.420 job.

00:37:04.020 Think about energy production, digestion, fat metabolism, vitamin storage.

00:37:07.240 It's taken in a daily two ounce shot.

00:37:09.400 It tastes like fresh squeezed orange juice.

00:37:11.140 That's what the ad copy says and we're about to find out right now because we're going to

00:37:14.080 taste it.

00:37:14.240 Oh, we have to drink it?

00:37:16.200 Yes, Matt.

00:37:17.200 I mean, we get to drink it?

00:37:21.880 Man, you are, you are, wow, wow, Matt, what do we even bring you on for?

00:37:25.580 I know you're asking yourself the same question.

00:37:27.060 Let's try this.

00:37:27.780 Okay.

00:37:27.940 I have the same question every time.

00:37:29.140 It's good.

00:37:30.220 Hold on.

00:37:30.520 I can't get the thing off of it.

00:37:32.400 Yeah.

00:37:32.720 Can I say something weird?

00:37:34.200 Can I say something weird?

00:37:34.780 That's actually good.

00:37:35.060 I love turmeric.

00:37:36.300 I love it.

00:37:37.140 I'm like, I'm like from the hills of Thiruvananthapuram.

00:37:39.760 I love it.

00:37:40.300 I'm a little, I'm an Indian in my taste for turmeric.

00:37:42.980 My liver is singing.

00:37:44.440 My liver is singing.

00:37:45.060 I've come back to life.

00:37:46.480 I'm back.

00:37:47.500 It's alive.

00:37:48.800 I still haven't got my paper off.

00:37:51.940 That's because your liver is weak.

00:37:53.200 I take back Matt's hand.

00:37:54.940 He's got to get his wife in here to open the cap for him. 1.00

00:37:57.340 Dose is a delicious way to get those great nutrients.

00:37:59.520 Some ingredients in dose.

00:38:01.260 Ginger, which helps relieve nausea and supports the immune system.

00:38:04.200 Turmeric, which supports detoxification and supports brain function and promotes healthy

00:38:08.100 liver cell function.

00:38:09.300 Dandelion root extract, which helps muscle recovery.

00:38:12.060 Milk thistle promotes sugar metabolism.

00:38:14.700 Zero sugar, zero junk, zero calories.

00:38:16.520 You're going to reduce sluggishness.

00:38:17.680 You're going to get rid of the midday crashes, support your metabolism, even aid that daily

00:38:21.160 digestion.

00:38:21.780 New customers can save 35% on your very first month of subscription by heading on over to

00:38:27.140 dosedaily.co slash friendlyfire or entering friendlyfire at checkout.

00:38:31.180 That's D-O-S-E-D-A-I-L-Y dot C-O slash friendlyfire for 35% off your first month of subscription.

00:38:37.420 By the way, yeah, we taste it.

00:38:38.220 It's kosher.

00:38:38.640 That's why I'm allowed.

00:38:39.300 And it actually is quite good.

00:38:40.700 I like the taste of it.

00:38:42.480 And I feel fine and fit as a fiddle and ready for love.

00:38:46.160 That's the...

00:38:47.540 Just TMI.

00:38:48.740 Yeah, yeah, well, you know.

00:38:51.420 Hey, you know what's one of the greatest changes in culture I've seen is that all of the political

00:38:56.420 cartoons from the 19th century of the tentacles of the Roman octopus stretching out all over

00:39:01.500 the country and the Pope just coming to conquer the world.

00:39:04.220 That is happening here at The Daily Wire because we're bringing on the beloved host of Pints

00:39:09.280 with Aquinas, Matt Fratt.

00:39:11.160 Matt, welcome.

00:39:13.340 G'day, fellas.

00:39:14.000 It's nice to be here.

00:39:15.360 I've admired you guys from afar and I've seen that admiration just steadily plummet as

00:39:21.880 I've gotten to know you.

00:39:22.800 But here we are.

00:39:26.360 Well, I mean, first of all, I have to say I've done a terrible job here with my Jew propaganda 1.00

00:39:31.840 outfit where apparently I hire and I'm involved in hiring only Catholics.

00:39:36.600 Literally only Catholics.

00:39:38.440 It's like Knowles and Walsh and Isabel and you, Matt.

00:39:41.680 I don't know what's either it's an unstoppable force or I'm really bad at my job.

00:39:47.200 And it could be both.

00:39:47.940 I mean, it could be it could be both of those things, actually.

00:39:50.700 Clavin, you texted me and said that you texted me and said that there are more Catholics at

00:39:55.800 Daily Wire than at the Vatican.

00:39:57.080 And I wasn't sure if you knew that that may have been a dark joke about the Vatican or not,

00:40:01.920 but it was goodbye.

00:40:04.460 I actually am impressed that the Catholics are actually getting nicer.

00:40:07.820 I mean, I actually like Matt, which is as opposed to these guys and it's getting, it is getting

00:40:12.160 to me.

00:40:12.380 It's like the Vatican, except for straight people. 0.95

00:40:14.320 It's, you know, so it's really exciting.

00:40:18.720 There is the clip.

00:40:19.960 Now, I object on the record to that.

00:40:24.820 Here's a, here's the, a subject that I want to talk about.

00:40:27.540 Are people becoming more Christian?

00:40:29.440 Are we in the middle of a Christian revival with a sort of, a sort of emphasis on Catholicism?

00:40:34.500 And, and the thing is, I've been predicting that for over a decade and the, the, the numbers

00:40:41.120 don't show it.

00:40:42.220 You know, the feeling is there, but the numbers don't really show it.

00:40:45.600 More people are going out of the Catholic church than coming in.

00:40:48.140 More people are going out of Protestant churches.

00:40:50.400 You know, the tragic and disgusting murder of our friend, Charlie, Charlie Kirk did cause

00:40:55.900 a sort of surge, but it's hard to know whether something that is, is going to lack, uh, is

00:41:00.400 going to last.

00:41:01.080 And I, I feel that we're looking at the wrong thing.

00:41:04.540 I think the thing that's important is that smart people, uh, intellectuals are becoming

00:41:09.100 Christians. 0.51

00:41:09.460 And I think the reason they're becoming Christians is because the, the thing that we were told,

00:41:14.020 which is that the science had made that, uh, impossible.

00:41:17.460 The science had made it impossible for smart people to believe has all fallen apart.

00:41:21.240 And as that has filtered into the universities, it has filtered into the humane humanity departments.

00:41:26.300 You're getting guys like Charles Murray, one of the most brilliant people alive going,

00:41:29.820 and oh yeah, you know, it actually doesn't hold together that there's no God.

00:41:33.600 So I, I want to ask, I want to turn to Ben because you killed Jesus, right?

00:41:37.400 I, I want to ask you a question.

00:41:40.880 You make my life so difficult.

00:41:43.420 Like seriously, guys, it wasn't me.

00:41:47.000 I didn't do it.

00:41:47.820 Okay.

00:41:48.320 Like seriously.

00:41:50.180 All right.

00:41:50.800 Anyway, continue.

00:41:51.480 I want to know where you stand, where you stand on the revival.

00:41:53.460 And will you, will you, is it, isn't it time for you to accept your Lord and Savior?

00:41:57.800 Oh my God.

00:41:58.740 You're just, he will not stop.

00:42:00.700 I mean, as I've said before, whoever converts me gets a million.

00:42:03.320 Well, infinity heaven points actually is what I, is my understanding of the theology.

00:42:07.060 But, uh, when, when it comes to, you know, are people going back to church?

00:42:10.220 I think the overwhelming broad answer is no, but the people who are going back to more traditional churches, uh, you, I'll speak for my own religious community on this one.

00:42:19.900 Uh, obviously, you know, in America, the Jewish population is declining because the number of people who go to synagogue is declining.

00:42:25.480 However, the number of people who are going to synagogue who are going to Orthodox synagogues is radically increasing because the Orthodox are maintaining their own and their kids are staying Orthodox and they're having lots of kids.

00:42:35.640 And people who want to be invested in the religion want a form of religion that actually teaches the, the religion.

00:42:41.320 And I, I suspect the same thing is happening in the Catholic community.

00:42:45.160 There are a lot of people who are lapsing away from Catholicism as, as sort of mainline Catholic churches in, in some areas liberalize or there are disagreements with some, you know, the last couple of popes, particularly Pope Francis in terms of some of his politics.

00:42:59.840 But the people who are re-engaging are re-engaging in very, very strong and vibrant ways.

00:43:04.240 And so I think what we're seeing is not that the numbers are going up right now, but that the seeds are planted for the numbers to go up very rapidly in the future because the people who are sticking around are, are bringing their friends and they're, and they're keeping their families Catholic. 0.62

00:43:16.840 But, you know, I don't want to, I don't know why you went to me.

00:43:18.860 Why, why am I speaking to the Catholics? 1.00

00:43:20.320 I mean, you really should go to, you know, like Matt Fradd or Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles, all of whom are Catholic.

00:43:25.800 And like, why are you just leave me out of this?

00:43:27.980 I want to stay on Ben for a minute.

00:43:29.640 Wait, wait, wait.

00:43:30.320 I want to, I want to talk to Matt Fradd because he's, you know, it's not just an intellectual pose like with Knowles.

00:43:35.900 You actually have faith.

00:43:36.940 And I want to, I want to know what you feel about the current situation.

00:43:41.580 Yeah.

00:43:42.020 I think back in 2008 during the height craze of the new atheism, we were assured that as people gave up their primitive knuckleheaded belief in God,

00:43:53.000 that a golden age of reason would be ushered in.

00:43:57.320 And then you've got some Sheila named Carol marrying a train station in San Diego. 1.00

00:44:01.680 And more recently, men can have periods.

00:44:04.020 And I think we've sort of just woken up in the wreckage that these lies have brought about.

00:44:09.380 And we don't want to live in a completely meaningless universe.

00:44:12.460 And so if there is an argument that's moderately convincing, it's better to go with that than to live a life in despair,

00:44:21.780 which is what I think atheism gets you.

00:44:24.280 So maybe it was that the new atheists overplayed their hand.

00:44:27.080 They were very cool, but there wasn't much in the way of argumentation on their side.

00:44:33.220 And so it was like a smoke bomb going off in culture and people couldn't see straight.

00:44:37.180 We didn't know if we were abusing our children for teaching them the Christian faith, as Dawkins said, and these sorts of things.

00:44:44.820 But I think over time, we've realized that arguments for atheism aren't good, that there are compelling arguments for theism.

00:44:53.500 And also, I think we're just cultureless monads adrift.

00:44:58.640 And we are desirous for a culture, preferably a culture that was once our own, 0.98

00:45:04.580 which is a sort of piety, a sort of natural piety, a desire to live the way that my ancestors lived.

00:45:13.780 So I think that might be part of it.

00:45:18.220 All right, Knowles.

00:45:19.380 Nobody really cares what you have to say, but say something.

00:45:21.780 Go ahead.

00:45:21.920 Good.

00:45:22.180 I want to contradict your premise here, which is the notion that more people are leaving the Catholic Church than they're coming in,

00:45:27.820 which I guess is literally true because we have infant baptism as Christians have practiced for 2,000 years.

00:45:33.380 So that's a debate for another time, I suppose.

00:45:35.220 But because of that, you know, there are people who they'll baptize their kids so that they can have a nice lunch with, you know, Aunt Sheila.

00:45:42.300 But they don't have any intention of practicing the faith.

00:45:45.240 And so, yeah, a lot of those people will fall away, echoing a little bit what Ben said.

00:45:49.520 But if you look at adult conversions, especially young adult conversions, those really are spiking.

00:45:54.360 And more traditional forms of Christianity, especially Catholicism, you are seeing a real surge there in America and in France.

00:46:02.440 And this got me wondering how Mr. Walsh would react to this because it's a frequent tension in Matt's thinking.

00:46:09.480 Is there, you know, the natural instinct toward pessimism, which is, you know, things are collapsing and we're all going to be raving baboons?

00:46:18.060 Or is there this sense of victory that after many centuries of oppression, the Catholics are finally coming out of Augsburg and Westphalia, and now we're actually going to retake all of the West? 0.79

00:46:30.600 What do you think, Matt?

00:46:31.820 Well, I mean, there's always the ultimate optimism because we've read, you know, the last page of the book and we know how the story ends.

00:46:38.840 And we know it ends with triumph.

00:46:41.000 But in the medium term, before we get there, what's going to happen?

00:46:44.140 I think I have a mixture of pessimism and optimism because I do think that kind of to the point that's already been raised, the church is getting smaller, but it's also getting more conservative.

00:46:57.760 It's getting more faithful at the same time.

00:46:59.280 And that's kind of what the statistics show us.

00:47:02.040 But then also what you realize is that you can't really trust the stats because I think what's actually happening is that now that we live in this godless, heathen world, there's no real cultural incentive to just show up to church, even though you don't believe and you don't care.

00:47:20.100 So there's no, there's, you don't really have the cultural Christians anymore because there's no incentive for that. 0.95

00:47:26.260 You could just not go to church.

00:47:27.520 You could, you could not claim any faith and you'll be fine. 0.93

00:47:30.140 And I, so I think that that is falling off.

00:47:33.560 Now, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, if you look at church attendance or whatever else, people that were claiming to be Catholic, claiming to be Christian, it was higher.

00:47:41.860 But a lot of those people, you know, they didn't really believe, they didn't actually care.

00:47:46.320 They were just showing up.

00:47:47.260 They were going through the motions because there was a certain cultural and social, there's a social advantage to it.

00:47:53.220 And now that the social advantage is gone, a lot of those people are falling off, but they didn't have the faith.

00:47:58.140 They were, they were, they, they weren't faithful to begin with.

00:48:00.480 And now the people that are showing up, like they, they really believe they're there because they really believe.

00:48:05.620 And, and I also think to someone's point, I wasn't really paying attention.

00:48:10.480 There's this, this need for meaning.

00:48:12.420 And so what you have, especially with Gen Z, they're, they're, you know, they came into a culture that there's no meaning. 1.00

00:48:20.340 There's, there's, there's, there's, there's, it's directionless.

00:48:22.920 And so they have this, this real hunger for meaning, which means that that's why you have some Gen Z, that they're super Catholic.

00:48:29.520 They're super conservative.

00:48:30.560 They're really traditional.

00:48:32.400 And that's great.

00:48:33.580 And you find that they're going to the Latin mass and all that kind of stuff.

00:48:36.660 And then you also have Gen Z, they've gone to the other extreme and they're getting into LGBT and trans and all that.

00:48:41.840 But it's, it's all, it is all this intense hunger for, for meaning.

00:48:46.320 And some of them are finding the right place.

00:48:48.140 Some of them are finding the wrong place. 0.87

00:48:49.900 I mean, I hear, I want to compliment our new acquisition, Matt Fradd here, because I think that one of the things that is happening and it's been happening in religious communities for a while is that what you said there, Matt, which is that so many young people for a while and sort of the new atheist movement, they figured that it was just dumb to be religious.

00:49:05.440 That if you were a smart person, you could not be a religious person because science said, and because if you were the kind of person who went to church or you went to synagogue, that meant that you believed in some like weird old man in the sky who was manipulating the marionette strings.

00:49:18.800 And I think that one of the things that Matt Fradd in particular has done, because you dedicated your life to making logical arguments on behalf of faith and on behalf of the Bible, because of that, even if people don't necessarily believe because of those arguments, they understand that intelligent people do believe those arguments.

00:49:34.040 And I think that this is actually a really, really important thing, because there was sort of a cultural dichotomy that was placed for most of my childhood between sort of the dumb rubes who went to church and believed in God. 0.98

00:49:44.900 And then the very intelligent university goers who who really believed, you know, the smart things and the smart people would never hang out with the church people and the church people were a bunch of backwater kind of like how Barack Obama described them, right? 0.69

00:49:56.560 The bitter clingers and all of this. And I think that two things happened.

00:49:59.680 One, the expert class completely fell on their face with with so many of their beliefs.

00:50:03.440 And it ended in men can be women. And at the same time, there was a new class of people like you who are out there intellectually saying, hold up a second.

00:50:13.040 Like, here's a high IQ defense of of what of what God is and how people believe in God.

00:50:20.300 And in fact, I don't have to make that up. I can cite some of the smartest people who ever lived, including Aquinas, to actually explain all of this.

00:50:26.760 And so even if people don't necessarily understand the ontological argument, they understand that very intelligent people make the ontological argument.

00:50:33.040 And therefore, it is not stupid to believe in the ontological argument.

00:50:36.320 This is such a great point, Ben, because it just gives a kind of permission.

00:50:39.680 It's happened to me. It's not like I certainly not when I first encountered them that I understood these arguments for God.

00:50:45.340 It just was enough to say, oh, wait, smart people can articulate things in a smart way.

00:50:49.860 Maybe I should give that a go. And to your point, Matt, yes, you know, 30 years ago, maybe the number was higher or the percentage was higher of supposedly practicing Catholics.

00:50:57.580 But to me that the test is, well, how many go to confession?

00:51:01.020 You know, and like 30 years ago, like everyone stopped going to confession.

00:51:03.900 And we believe as a matter of faith that you can't receive our Lord in a state of mortal sin.

00:51:08.400 And if you're in a state of grave mortal sin, you know, you're really in danger of hellfire.

00:51:12.640 And so if you're not taking that part seriously, you know, you do have to wonder how serious you're taking the faith.

00:51:17.980 I think it was Padre Pio said that the confessional is like a bath for the soul.

00:51:22.380 And Mr. Fratt, I can't help but notice that when you get out of the bath, you, unlike the other people on this panel right now, you shave what would be your beard.

00:51:32.120 Well, first of all, I think it should be, I want to just state for the record that I said to Daily Wire, don't you think it's a bit tacky for me to shill your merch on day one?

00:51:43.840 And they just showed me a whip and told me to shut up. 0.99

00:51:47.860 So no, not at all, man.

00:51:49.260 I mean, I'm a big fan of Jeremy's Razors myself.

00:51:52.380 I know Matt Walsh has made fun of the likes of me, and I don't think he's wrong to have done that.

00:51:58.160 But my wife has really sensitive skin and doesn't enjoy kissing me when I have whiskers. 1.00

00:52:03.080 And so for a while, I had to decide, do I want the respect of men or the kisses of my wife?

00:52:08.420 And I don't know what it says about me, but it was a tough call.

00:52:12.240 But when I decided, I got Jeremy's Razor and shaved the face.

00:52:16.920 Nobody understands Jeremy's Razors better than I do because I have much more real estate to shave than the rest of you.

00:52:25.080 And I actually use and subscribe to Jeremy's Razors.

00:52:29.820 I don't even know if you guys remember that Harry's Razors, I think it was you, Knowles.

00:52:34.680 They canceled you because, what did you say? 0.98

00:52:36.980 Men can't become women, some kind of subversive trash like that. 1.00

00:52:39.940 And they actually canceled their ads. 0.98

00:52:42.500 And so we started Jeremy's Razors.

00:52:43.920 We named them after Jeremy Irons, I think.

00:52:46.080 And we started to put out razors that actually support the idea that men should be men and should be, you know, have a razor that can not just cut the beard.

00:52:58.000 It should just take their skin right the hell off, you know. 0.99

00:53:02.080 I think that's why we're so tough that we can use, you know, Jeremy's Razors. 1.00

00:53:08.100 They're absolutely terrific.

00:53:09.220 And right now, you can get two full years of premium shaves for just 21 cents a day, which for me is like, I mean, you've got to prorate that.

00:53:18.120 That's like a penny a minute almost.

00:53:20.140 That's 730 days of a shave as uncompromising as you are.

00:53:25.000 Go to jeremysrazors.com and get the razor that works as hard as you do.

00:53:30.480 And be a man, for crying out loud, be just an unrepentant man because that's what it's about.

00:53:35.360 That's what Jeremy's Razors are all about.

00:53:37.420 Yeah, let me jump in.

00:53:38.620 I mean, there's no – if there was a clever segue, I wouldn't be the guy to find it anyway.

00:53:44.360 But in this case, there isn't one.

00:53:46.060 I do want to tell you, though, about –

00:53:48.420 When you use Jeremy's Razors, your face will be softer than a baby's bottom.

00:53:54.320 There you go.

00:53:55.040 No, that's terrible.

00:53:56.000 That's exactly what I meant when I said that there's no good segue.

00:53:59.960 So, if I'd already gotten into it, we could have just moved on.

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00:54:24.080 And, you know, we're living in a time when lies are easy and truth is costly.

00:54:27.600 And that's especially true in the fight for life.

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00:56:00.060 Okay, Matt, I've had enough, Matt, Brad, I've had enough talk about just generic theism and everything.

00:56:05.160 I want to know, it's been a little bit of a rough 500 years for Holy Mother Church, and there have been ups and downs, really great art, actually, in the counter-reformation.

00:56:14.540 So I feel great.

00:56:17.220 I feel really good.

00:56:18.020 And I know there's some people who always just want to be down, and anything the Pope does is bad, and anything that seems good about the culture, the Christian culture, or, you know, for the church, I don't know, somehow is bad.

00:56:29.020 And I don't know, maybe I'm a little too rosy about it, but are you feeling good?

00:56:33.760 Me? Yeah, I feel fine.

00:56:35.760 Yeah, I think the reason I'm a Catholic is that I think Catholicism is true.

00:56:40.840 I think that God exists, that Christ is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, the long-awaited Messiah.

00:56:46.260 I think he established a church, and I think he gave that church authority, and that that church is the Catholic church.

00:56:51.000 You know, we live in a day and age where we're constantly bombarded with the latest scandals, and that can be very demoralizing, and it makes sense.

00:56:57.880 You know, and you think, well, how could this possibly be the true church of Christ when we see scandals, when we see abuses, when we see cowardice?

00:57:06.560 But I was thinking this morning that that would also invalidate the true religion in the Old Covenant.

00:57:11.440 You know, I mean, Rahab the prostitute, Moses the murderer, Solomon has his heart turned towards Baal by his foreign wives, David the adulterer. 0.94

00:57:23.360 So, I think if you're looking for the true church, and by the true church, you mean the church of perfect people, then you won't find it. 0.91

00:57:31.580 And if you did and then joined it, it wouldn't be because you're abysmal.

00:57:36.720 So, I think when people are evaluating whether or not the Catholic church is the true church, they should think of it that way.

00:57:44.520 Does God exist?

00:57:45.920 Has he revealed himself definitively in the person of Jesus Christ?

00:57:48.740 And has he established a church, and which church is that?

00:57:53.140 Is that too serious?

00:57:54.460 Is that—

00:57:55.120 No, no, that's absolutely fair.

00:57:56.360 Did that bring you over, Drew?

00:57:57.480 You're already almost there.

00:57:58.860 You're peering over the Tiber, just dipping your toe in.

00:58:02.180 But I do have to say that the one thing—

00:58:03.160 Join us, Clavin.

00:58:04.160 Everything's on fire.

00:58:05.100 We need you.

00:58:07.020 One thing that almost everybody has hit on is the fact that, you know, ideas trickle down.

00:58:11.700 Ideas do trickle down from the top.

00:58:13.100 And I talk to people, as you all do, all across the country, and one thing you hear people say all the time is,

00:58:18.020 Well, I'm not smart.

00:58:18.840 I'm not educated.

00:58:19.720 But, you know, I have this opinion.

00:58:20.900 And the opinion is usually far smarter than any university professor.

00:58:25.280 And now, I think what you're getting is permission to believe.

00:58:29.640 Because the science is simply very—it's not dispositive.

00:58:33.580 You never can prove a spiritual truth.

00:58:36.000 Proof is an actual material thing that you do, a material process.

00:58:40.700 But the science just shows that, one, consciousness is almost certainly separate from material.

00:58:47.800 It does not come from the brain.

00:58:49.100 It comes through the brain.

00:58:50.180 And the other thing is that the world is simply built for us.

00:58:53.660 It is built for life.

00:58:55.020 The odds of this world being what it is are the same odds as a wind blowing across a junkyard and assembling a 747.

00:59:02.920 It's just not going to happen.

00:59:04.160 And the fingerprints of the creator are everywhere.

00:59:07.100 I mean, the heavens declare his glory.

00:59:09.260 And all of that stuff is true.

00:59:10.920 Once you start getting into your own personal religion, I think things, you know, then you get into the old arguments.

00:59:16.000 And I believe those should be solved by violence.

00:59:18.660 I think the Thirty Years' War, we should just bring that back and just have utter, like, warfare and death across the different belief systems until the last man is standing. 0.67

00:59:29.780 I think that's the only way, right?

00:59:32.260 I mean, otherwise, we have to be nice to one another and kind of listen to each other's ideas.

00:59:35.400 And it would be like the show.

00:59:36.600 We wouldn't be able to stand it.

00:59:39.920 That's a great point.

00:59:41.600 Unfortunately, I can't reach through the screen.

00:59:44.340 Can I say something else?

00:59:46.320 Oh, you go.

00:59:47.140 No.

00:59:48.200 Yeah, no, please.

00:59:49.800 Okay.

00:59:50.380 I was going to say there's like a pragmatic reason to believe in God and Christianity as well.

00:59:56.060 Now, Pascal gets into this in his ponces, the basic idea being, if I can't decide whether the arguments for atheism or Christian theism, if I can't decide that one's better than the other, then I still could have a pragmatic reason to preferring one over the other.

01:00:11.700 The Second Vatican Council said that when God is forgotten, the creature itself grows unintelligible.

01:00:17.320 And I think if you look around in what we call our culture, I don't think we have a culture, but when we look around today, I think we just see a lot of people who don't know where they're from, what they're for, or where they're going.

01:00:28.500 But I think the opposite is true too, right?

01:00:31.000 So if I can come to believe in God and his revelation, then I know that I've come from somewhere, that I'm for something, and that there's a way in which I should live.

01:00:40.020 And that when I act in accordance with that, whether or not I know how to out-debate atheists on the internet, if I put that into effect in my life and my life becomes better, if people around me start, like if my wife starts liking me more, you know, because I'm patient and kind, then maybe do that.

01:00:56.060 I remember I met several people, like, I just can't believe.

01:00:59.200 I'm like, just choose to do it.

01:01:00.400 Because if God doesn't exist, what are you afraid of? 0.99

01:01:02.560 Being a hypocrite? 0.99

01:01:03.220 That wouldn't be immoral. 1.00

01:01:04.040 Just get over it. 1.00

01:01:04.740 Just be a hypocrite. 0.99

01:01:05.900 But if there's good reason to believe in God, then start acting like that. 0.98

01:01:09.860 Although I think your first statement, I prefer to believe because it is true and then let the benefits of it come through.

01:01:19.420 See, I actually agree with Matt Fran's second statement there, actually.

01:01:23.460 That is a cynical technical person.

01:01:25.880 Well, no, I mean, I might be so bold as to call it the Jewish approach to religion. 0.87

01:01:30.300 Which is, do them its vote and then you end up believing in God, right?

01:01:33.020 Like, basically do the thing.

01:01:34.800 And it turns out that when you do the thing and it enriches your life in a particular way, then you end up actually with a deeper belief system about the nature of the system into which you are buying than if you had never done the thing.

01:01:45.340 Like, I know there have been some jokes about, you know, if I were to convert, would I end up as a Catholic or a Protestant?

01:01:51.540 And I've offended both parties by suggesting that while I have tremendous sympathy for the rules-based order that the Catholics provide, if I were going to ditch an even more rules-based order, I'd go all the way and it'd be party time and I'm going full Protestant.

01:02:05.500 So I've pissed off everybody with that particular answer.

01:02:08.980 But the sort of acts-based, you know, form of finding religion, I think it actually is the way I think that most people actually end up believing in religion.

01:02:18.760 I think that the intellectual frameworks that all of us spend time creating around God and around the Bible, you know, I think that those, it provides that permission structure.

01:02:28.180 But I think that the way that most people actually engage in religious life is they just engage in religious life.

01:02:33.780 And it's why even the very notion of I believe in God is such an intellectualized form of how most people actually behave with regard to God that I don't think it has tremendous value in the way that I think that our overly intellectualized society, you know, sort of promotes.

01:02:49.200 Our society is like, well, do you believe in God or do you not believe in God?

01:02:51.960 If you believe in God, why do you believe in God?

01:02:53.760 What are all the reasons you believe in God?

01:02:55.320 And that's sort of like saying, you know, do you believe in gravity?

01:02:57.980 Do you not believe in gravity?

01:02:59.000 If you do believe in gravity, please explain the physics of how gravity works.

01:03:01.940 Well, no, I live in a world that has gravity in it.

01:03:04.900 And so for me, I live in a God-created world and I act in a way that I would only act if God were a part of my world.

01:03:11.580 And I think that even people who are atheists or agnostic very often are living in that same world without recognizing that they're living in that God-created order.

01:03:19.420 And so I think that, you know, that—

01:03:21.000 Wouldn't you have a problem?

01:03:21.640 I mean, I have a problem when I hear Christians say things like, you know, they'll say things like, nobody is born imperfect. 0.99

01:03:27.200 And you think, like, I've seen some pretty tragic births in my life, you know, and I don't think that that's true.

01:03:31.900 If I found myself spouting untruths in the name of God, I would begin to have doubts.

01:03:37.040 My experience was that having reasoned my way to the probability of God, I began to engage with God and found that everything made sense.

01:03:44.780 Everything made more sense.

01:03:45.720 Suddenly I wasn't talking nonsense anymore.

01:03:47.580 I mean, I am.

01:03:48.160 But, Drew, I think that that's—it's a great point, but I also think that's why it's very important.

01:03:52.140 And this actually is, I think, a general statement about religion that I'll be interested to hear you guys take on.

01:03:58.000 I think one of the problems with sort of the internet subculture around religion is that people go very quickly from new convert to preacher.

01:04:04.220 And, you know, that I think is actually a gigantic mistake.

01:04:07.960 I don't think that you get to convert to Catholicism tomorrow and become pope the day after.

01:04:11.000 And I don't think that—like, you actually have to spend some time and become comfortable with the ideas to the point where you actually live the ideas, believe the ideas, and understand them to be true in your heart in order for you to promote them rationally.

01:04:24.260 And I think that you can start off by not fully believing the thing that you're working through.

01:04:28.360 But I do think that you actually have to spend a lot of time with the thing before you actually believe the thing to the, you know, to the point where you can say to other people, this is true and not be dishonest about it.

01:04:38.580 Yeah, and as you say, the smartest people in history have all believed, and there's—you don't want to throw away their thoughts, which is what guys like Dawkins do.

01:04:45.720 It's what those new atheists did. 0.97

01:04:46.980 It's like, oh, that's ridiculous. 0.99

01:04:48.300 And then you realize they've never read Aquinas. 0.90

01:04:50.560 They've never read the people who thought these thoughts.

01:04:52.780 You know, they just have no idea.

01:04:54.500 It is simply a club, a sophisticated elite club of unbelievers that I grew up in, but I think it's falling apart. 1.00

01:05:01.660 And I think the reason it's falling apart is because of science.

01:05:04.240 I think science has just made it untenable to hold those opinions with that kind of sneering superiority.

01:05:09.520 I think that's all over now, and I think that just frees people into belief, you know, frees people to believe.

01:05:14.480 Have you noticed that Mr. Walsh—have you noticed that Mr. Walsh is sitting there like some kind of Hindu swami?

01:05:20.320 I think he passed away about 10 minutes a minute.

01:05:21.900 Blah, just meditating.

01:05:23.440 Is it because you've reached a sort of spiritual enlightenment?

01:05:25.660 I have.

01:05:26.020 I've reached Zen.

01:05:27.080 I became Buddhist.

01:05:27.840 I didn't tell you guys.

01:05:29.540 I do think—well, I was thinking about, Matt, the point you made about—not to oversimplify, but it's a little bit of like fake it till you make it.

01:05:38.460 Like, you know, maybe you don't fully believe this, but if it's not true, you've got nothing to lose by sort of acting as though it is.

01:05:47.340 And then maybe as you act as though it is, you'll come to believe it if I understand kind of your point.

01:05:53.340 And I think that in many cases in life, I actually think fake it till you make it is maybe one of the wisest cliches that's ever been uttered because that is true for a lot of things. 0.68

01:06:05.560 I mean, I've said this many times about depression.

01:06:08.400 You know, people say, well, I'm so unhappy.

01:06:11.120 I don't know how to be not depressed.

01:06:12.640 Well, just pretend you're not.

01:06:14.100 Like, just act like you're not.

01:06:15.700 Pretend you're not unhappy.

01:06:17.140 Just go around.

01:06:18.020 Totally fake it. 0.68

01:06:19.060 Be completely fake and phony and act like you are not depressed.

01:06:22.280 And you will find that you actually become less depressed because you're acting like it.

01:06:26.620 So I think that that is often true with a lot of things.

01:06:28.820 Matt, how's that working out with you for the show?

01:06:31.040 Well, I'm not faking it, though.

01:06:33.600 That's the thing.

01:06:34.020 I'm not faking it at all.

01:06:34.940 But I think there's a lot of truth to that.

01:06:39.100 But the counterpoint when it comes to religion in particular is that, like I said, what feels like two and a half hours ago, that it's like people were doing that in the culture.

01:06:49.660 When there was a social incentive, they were going to church.

01:06:52.840 They were going through the motions.

01:06:54.800 And then as the social incentive fell off, they just stopped going.

01:06:58.280 And so in a way, they were kind of faking it, but they didn't make it.

01:07:02.140 So that didn't seem to quite work.

01:07:05.260 On a societal scale in our countries.

01:07:08.320 Yes.

01:07:08.800 And, you know, look, a lot of what we're talking about is actually natural reason, right?

01:07:13.420 You know, a lot of it is, okay, we can know things about human nature.

01:07:16.900 Even to your point, Matt, on fake it till you make it.

01:07:19.020 There's just things about human nature and human behavior that will conduce to some kind of flourishing and maybe make you happy.

01:07:24.080 And in all this talk of, like, if you live in accord with the truth, that's going to get you somewhere.

01:07:29.700 And look, there's truth in natural religion, even Matt's Baba Swami stuff from the Far East. 0.90

01:07:34.060 And, but I think this also gets to the point we were talking about earlier when we were alluding to relitigating the Thirty Years' War is, you know, look, there's a lot we can know from abstract reason and, you know, from nature.

01:07:46.500 But then there's particularity to it, too, you know, and certainly Christians believe in a very particular religion.

01:07:51.900 Jews do also, you know, a particular people or a particular God speaks to a particular people on a particular mountain.

01:07:56.820 And so I think that's what's really interesting about this moment is we've gone from this bland generic Gnosticism that says not even our bodies really matter to us at all.

01:08:05.400 That's where you get transgenderism down to, well, hold on. 1.00

01:08:08.000 Does God exist?

01:08:08.980 Okay, well, what is God like?

01:08:10.140 Okay, there's this God.

01:08:11.240 And did he really reveal himself?

01:08:12.740 Did he really, is he really incarnate as a real individual particular person?

01:08:16.620 And then to your point, Mr. Fradd, you know, and does he really establish a particular church?

01:08:21.060 And does he really encourage us to do particular things, you know, leave us particular sacraments in a particular way?

01:08:26.820 And on that Catholic propaganda, Matt, I'm very much looking forward to Pints with Aquinas launching, I think, in January.

01:08:34.960 Is that right?

01:08:35.960 On Daily Wire?

01:08:37.020 Correct.

01:08:37.680 I'm pumped as well.

01:08:38.600 Thank you.

01:08:39.780 In a particular year, which is 2026.

01:08:42.060 Very good.

01:08:42.580 Matt, thank you.

01:08:43.300 I'm very excited about this, I will say.

01:08:44.840 And he's already been initiated.

01:08:45.560 I mean, he read his first ad here, which, as we all know, is the actual real initiation ritual of joining Daily Wire.

01:08:50.980 The yarmulke is optional.

01:08:52.180 The ads are mandatory.

01:08:53.260 They do tell you you have to become Jewish, right? 1.00

01:08:55.100 We discussed that with you, dude.

01:08:57.240 That's on the contract renegotiation, I think.

01:08:59.540 Okay, Matt, thank you very much.

01:09:02.160 So we're all obviously super pumped to have Matt Fradd with us here at Daily Wire.

01:09:06.500 Matt is awesome.

01:09:07.420 His show is great.

01:09:08.600 One of the smartest people around. 0.98

01:09:10.380 One of the dumbest people around and one of the most horrific people around is about to be the mayor of New York. 0.98

01:09:14.540 That's Zoran Mamdani. 0.99

01:09:15.400 According to the latest Kalshi Odds, apparently he's an 87% favorite to become the Democratic nominee.

01:09:21.380 And that's people putting their money where their mouth is because that's essentially a betting market.

01:09:26.520 And, yeah, it looks like he's very likely to become the next mayor of New York.

01:09:29.580 And my perspective on that, I believe we don't even have to talk about this. 0.95

01:09:32.580 I think we all know that he's a Marxist, pro-jihadi, terrible person. 0.85

01:09:35.920 And I think it speaks ill of an enormous number of people in New York.

01:09:39.740 And I think the only question really is, you know, do the people of New York deserve this?

01:09:44.320 Because, you know, they are voting for it.

01:09:45.900 And the theory of democracy is that people deserve what they get and they should get it good and hard.

01:09:52.040 And so, you know, I guess if that's the direction they choose to go, that's the direction they can choose to go.

01:09:56.800 We'll be covering that, obviously, all the rest of this week, next week as well.

01:10:00.700 So, yeah, he's terrible.

01:10:03.440 And, you know, on that truly dark note, I'm going to give you a note of light.

01:10:07.200 And that is that lifetime memberships are available.

01:10:09.240 So if you want an entire lifetime of watching this show, I know that Matt feels like he's already experienced an entire lifetime of participating in this show.

01:10:16.920 But if you want an entire lifetime membership, you know, you get to, like, come here whenever you want for literally the rest of your natural life,

01:10:22.940 which, you know, depending on your age, should be well beyond Drew's natural lifespan.

01:10:26.160 So you get to see who we replaced Drew with, which will be exciting, I think, for all of us, actually.

01:10:29.540 And then you'll be able to check it out with the lifetime membership here at Daily Wire.

01:10:35.060 You know, we announced this 10,000 lifetime all-access members, only 10,000.

01:10:39.500 Already, 7,500 of those are gone.

01:10:41.700 So there are 2,500 left.

01:10:43.640 You can do the math unless you're a New Yorker, in which case you're electing a socialist for no reason.

01:10:47.920 But 2,500 lifetime memberships left.

01:10:49.880 You can go get those right now.

01:10:50.800 Don't miss this opportunity to help us build the next decade of Daily Wire and beyond.

01:10:54.280 You've seen all the amazing content we're going to be putting out just in the next couple of months.

01:10:57.540 And let me tell you, we have such a content schedule stacked for you for next year.

01:11:01.320 All right, like amazing, unprecedented stuff in the history of independent media, really, truly.

01:11:06.160 This is your exclusive opportunity to become the backbone of a movement to build the future

01:11:09.760 and ensure that the best is yet to come.

01:11:12.440 Claim one of those 2,500 remaining lifetime memberships, as well as your gold Daily Wire forward flag pin,

01:11:18.640 which none of us brought with us.

01:11:19.740 We have them in our safe.

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01:11:23.400 And that, so, you know, but you can have one.

01:11:26.800 You can have one if you go over to dailywire.com slash lifetime.

01:11:30.060 I see that Drew has his hat on, which is, you can get that at our Daily Wire shop as well, by the way.

01:11:34.640 The hats are very, very cool.

01:11:36.140 So go check that out right now, dailywire.com slash lifetime.

01:11:39.820 And there's nothing else here.

01:11:41.340 There's nothing.

01:11:42.160 Are we doing anything else together?

01:11:43.760 No, we're leaving them desiring something more.

01:11:47.420 Yeah, that's right.

01:11:48.140 Let them, leave them wanting more.

01:11:49.720 I think we can all run screaming from the building now, right?

01:11:51.460 That's friendly fire, everybody.

01:11:54.080 See you gentlemen next time.

01:11:59.900 This land is in a welter of confusion.

01:12:09.560 There are more kings than sheep.

01:12:12.400 More princes than crows on a battlefield.

01:12:15.220 All seeking to snatch what they can, when they can, without a care for who suffers.

01:12:26.820 Until this island is ruled by one who wields both justice and mercy, there will be no peace.

01:12:34.660 tournaments.

01:12:35.300 Yeah!

01:12:35.980 Yeah! 1.00

01:12:56.880 Oh, shit! 1.00

01:12:58.400 Oh, shit! 1.00

01:12:58.980 Hey! 1.00

01:12:59.840 Hey! 0.99

01:12:59.900 Hey! 1.00

01:13:00.080 Oh, shit! 1.00

01:13:00.940 Look at them. 1.00

01:13:06.820 Boys playing the game of kings, they say they have the Merlin with them.

01:13:20.080 The Merlin died long before you and I were born.

01:13:25.460 I've seen what you can do.

01:13:27.980 This is where it begins.

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The Michael Knowles Show - October 30, 2025

Friendly Fire： A New Host & Mr. Knowles Goes to Washington

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Summary

Transcript