The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire： Promiscuity, Newsom’s DEI Insanity & Conspiracy Nuts

00:00:00.000 When you let aero truffle bubbles melt,

00:00:02.340 everything takes on a creamy, delicious, chocolatey glow.

00:00:06.320 Like that pile of laundry.

00:00:07.800 You didn't forget to fold it.

00:00:09.240 Nah, it's a new trend.

00:00:10.720 Wrinkled chic.

00:00:12.100 Feel the aero bubbles melt.

00:00:13.900 It's mind bubbling.

00:00:20.840 War at war.

00:00:22.540 We can't travel.

00:00:23.880 There's a ton of corruption coming out of California.

00:00:26.520 I weirdly agree with AOC on something.

00:00:29.560 and the nation debates whether or not you should call your wife a whore to strangers on the

00:00:35.080 internet. This is friendly fire. I should mention too, by the way, we have coming on to talk about

00:00:41.420 the corruption out of California with original reporting. We have the great, the one and only

00:00:45.820 Chris Ruffo, who I believe is beaming in from whatever undercover activity he's engaged in.

00:00:51.640 Gentlemen, good to see you. Good to see you. It's mediocre to see you too, Michael.

00:00:56.900 I mean, are we going to be joined by the biblical prostitute Rahab to actually discuss the merits of prostitution?

00:01:04.480 I wish we were.

00:01:05.860 Prior experience.

00:01:07.120 The prostitute thing, what I love about it, she wasn't actually a prostitute.

00:01:11.680 She was apparently just promiscuous, according to this tweet that now has 27 million impressions.

00:01:16.020 What I love about it, though, so it actually—

00:01:19.520 Give some context, Michael, so people know what the hell you're talking about.

00:01:21.600 All right, all right.

00:01:22.060 If you miss this, you kind of need the context.

00:01:24.200 It's from a guy named Trevor Sheets.

00:01:26.900 And I'm not going to read the whole thing. This is like a manifesto. But he says,

00:01:30.320 and what's going viral is, my wife was formerly promiscuous. I was a virgin.

00:01:36.240 She was then radically born again, committed to church, evangelized constantly, all good.

00:01:41.200 Then he goes, Puritan books in her bedroom. Okay, don't, that's not. A friend of mine said that

00:01:46.500 Thanksgiving is a real holiday in the UK because it's when they got rid of the Puritans. But

00:01:49.920 whatever, we'll move past that. Prayer journals, grief over past sexual sin, etc. We got to know

00:01:54.840 each other. We got married. She's purer than most virgins now because biblical purity has less to do

00:01:59.180 with the past and with the future. We're too quick to forget the story of the woman labeled as a known

00:02:03.320 sinner or prostitute. It goes on and on about Christ's redemption. And so we all agree. I say

00:02:08.280 that's really wonderful. Yes, the devil whispers in our ear, says sin doesn't really matter. The

00:02:14.180 minute we do it, he tells us we'll never get past it. We're bogged down in our shame. We can be

00:02:17.960 redeemed. We can cooperate with God's grace. Should you really, should you really call your

00:02:24.060 wife a whore? You have to tell everybody who your wife slept with. First of all, this girl was,

00:02:30.180 was terrific by the way. I just want to, I'm glad she's been saved, but I have, I have such fond

00:02:36.400 memories. I, he's like, is that, you know, that's why it has 27 million hits. It's all those guys

00:02:42.920 coming back oh yeah and then you put a picture of her up too which is just terrible because then

00:02:49.500 it's like not only is she a whore here's what she looks like yeah that's that's really that's

00:02:53.980 quite terrible i i i hate that i hate that so much like if she were going to tell that story

00:02:58.300 about how she redeemed herself and it made her marriage better you know pure but like i'm sorry

00:03:03.980 dude unless you got like explicit permission from your wife to unearth every aspect of her past that

00:03:08.820 she's humiliated by yeah i just can't imagine can you imagine any other sin where you would

00:03:13.220 just do this to your wife like my wife you know she used to be uh she used to sell drugs to kids

00:03:18.740 she's really like one like the best like incredible like just was picked up for selling

00:03:23.620 hashish to children yeah my wife used to do drugs she still does but she also used to do them too

00:03:29.280 yeah yeah do not like do not like and and that's an overshare that is a big overshare and and yes

00:03:37.680 And they put us in the position of being like the older brother and the prodigal son thing where we're bitter that, you know, she's been forgiven, but we're not.

00:03:46.860 We just don't want to know about it.

00:03:48.120 I also, you know, it seems to me, yes, it's good to let people know, especially in our depraved culture, that there's redemption.

00:03:53.940 You can accept, you know, God's love, cooperate with Christ.

00:03:57.320 And that's all very important to tell people.

00:03:59.260 But we also owe each other discretion, I think.

00:04:03.240 You know, we owe each other the grace of moving on sometimes.

00:04:07.680 you owe your children maybe something, your future children to say, hey, we don't want you

00:04:12.740 calling mommy a whore on the internet. Isn't there really a time and a place? Isn't there

00:04:18.620 almost greater sanctity in just carrying some of these crosses privately? I get it if a porn star

00:04:25.320 or something repents. Obviously, this is already public and you can talk about it. But if it's just

00:04:30.120 like Shelley was a bit of a bicycle, then maybe just keep it to yourself. I don't know.

00:04:35.960 Keep it a little relative.

00:04:37.320 I totally agree with this.

00:04:39.380 Totally agree with this.

00:04:39.880 By the way, a bit of Jewish law.

00:04:42.200 If somebody converts to Judaism,

00:04:43.740 you're not allowed to talk about their past

00:04:45.560 before they were Jewish

00:04:46.380 unless they want to talk about it.

00:04:48.120 Really?

00:04:48.380 You're supposed to because, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:04:50.300 So when you say that somebody's a convert to Judaism,

00:04:52.360 you're not even in the community supposed to say

00:04:54.060 they were a convert to Judaism.

00:04:55.400 That's up to them if they want to talk about it

00:04:57.420 because there is a baseline assumption

00:04:59.400 that once you hear about somebody's past,

00:05:01.440 you're going to judge them differently in the present,

00:05:03.840 which I think is true.

00:05:04.520 Like now that you see her walking around church, I mean, don't think of a pink elephant gang.

00:05:09.280 If she's walking around the church and it's like, well, what do I know about this lady?

00:05:14.920 Well, I know a few things and she knew many things.

00:05:17.880 Yeah, it's unfortunate.

00:05:19.680 Just just awkward.

00:05:21.100 It puts a lot of images in the mind.

00:05:23.580 No, I am thinking whenever I really pick the crime, whatever like the big crime that I commit is, I don't know whether it's insider trading, whether it's triple homicide, whatever.

00:05:34.520 and then I just I I have that pocket yarmulke ready to go and you know right when they're about

00:05:39.760 to get me I say no that was my past life shalom we're done with that it's Mikael now now actually

00:05:46.080 sorry Ben yeah oh yeah no I was actually just going to say this is not the best tweet of the

00:05:51.240 week the best tweet of the week remains that story of the man with no arms and no legs who

00:05:55.880 somehow was a cornhole champion but also achieved the signal feat of driving a car and also shooting

00:06:01.400 a man while driving a car and i did tell that story to my kids and i said kids don't you ever

00:06:06.420 tell me that you can't accomplish anything in this life it was it was new york writing of the

00:06:14.820 highest caliber and whereas you make the point ben you know now you got images in your mind of

00:06:20.320 this lady because of what her husband wrote i still don't have the image in my my head of the

00:06:24.900 quadriplegic midget murderer or whatever that I don't, I can't figure out like a chicken nugget

00:06:31.480 in my head is sort of what I'm anyway. I don't, I don't know if everyone realizes this speaking

00:06:35.560 of religion, but the passion of the Christ, one of the greatest movies ever made is now streaming

00:06:41.620 on daily wire plus you can watch. This is the movie to watch during Holy week. We're in passion

00:06:46.540 tide up to Easter with Easter coming up in just 12 days. Feels like the right time to talk about

00:06:51.320 why this film still matters. So I will be joining my friends, Matt Walsh and Isabel Brown

00:06:57.040 for a real discussion about it, what it meant then, what it means now. I'm afraid the other

00:07:03.440 Catholic, Anglo-Catholic and Jew of the Daily Wire are not invited. No, I actually think you

00:07:08.820 might've been invited and just weren't able to make it up. But in any case, a few of you are

00:07:13.240 going to be in the room with us, not just watching, but actually sitting with us being part of the

00:07:17.480 conversation. If you join Daily Wire Plus right now, you will be automatically entered. If you're

00:07:21.860 already a member, congratulations. You are entered. Details are at dailywire.com slash

00:07:26.800 passion. Shall we bring on, is this enough babbling about paraplegics and prostitutes?

00:07:35.840 Yeah. Can we bring on Christopher Rufo? No, no, no. I just have to ask one question.

00:07:40.700 I have to ask a question. How was he able to accomplish this if he had already been unarmed?

00:07:47.480 anyway thank you all for joining friendly fire we'll see you next week

00:07:56.840 we're joined now we're joined now by christopher rubo to talk it pains me to talk about something

00:08:02.740 substantive on this show at all but i believe you've done some original reporting chris to

00:08:07.920 unveil left-wing corruption is that right yeah that's right i'm spending the next year plus

00:08:15.360 looking into corruption in California. So it is a very rich territory. And to my surprise,

00:08:21.800 it seems like nobody has been looking into it at all. And so we're starting to find some great

00:08:26.720 stories of waste. They spent $100 million on a bridge for monarch butterflies. San Francisco is

00:08:33.500 giving money to nonprofits that specialize in providing massage therapy for black criminals.

00:08:39.160 A lot of things are happening in California that we're finding out.

00:08:44.060 It's going to take more than a year. You're going to need a bigger notepad, I think.

00:08:48.060 This is kind of the follow-up to, well, you had uncovered a lot of corruption in Minneapolis,

00:08:53.580 and then Nick Shirley and other people went really viral going out, taking videos of this.

00:08:59.020 This was a major, major news story. I thought this would be very helpful in the midterms to

00:09:03.380 Republicans. Now I'm not sure if anything will be helpful to Republicans in the midterms,

00:09:06.900 but we can analyze that in a moment. But I'm not really seeing a lot about this. I mean,

00:09:11.880 Now, obviously, I follow you very closely, Chris, but shouldn't this be a bigger story?

00:09:17.540 It should. But I think it just really depends on who is able to do it. So to her credit,

00:09:23.340 Barry Weiss has forced CBS News to do some of this reporting, which is seems kind of odd and

00:09:29.340 out of place for a major news network to be looking into Democrat corruption. There are

00:09:34.000 some people that are looking at it behind the edges. But the reality is that those of us on

00:09:38.180 the right, do not have the same kind of media apparatus that the left does. And I think, of

00:09:43.960 course, Daily Wire is adding investigative reporting. We're adding it at Manhattan Institute.

00:09:48.460 But it's going to take a bit more to uncover the corruption and turn it into these stories.

00:09:54.820 The good news is, as we did in Minnesota with the Somali fraud, sometimes these stories can

00:10:00.340 catch the public imagination in a way that has real political consequences. And so my own personal

00:10:05.540 goal, I'll share it here, is to do to Gavin Newsom in California, what we did to Tim Walls

00:10:11.520 in Minneapolis. I think it's possible. And certainly California is providing a lot of

00:10:18.020 opportunity to do so. Chris, I do have to ask about the Monarch Butterflies.

00:10:22.820 Well, yeah. This is my question too. Same question, Drew.

00:10:26.340 yeah the bridge so um it's something we looked into it's actually uh in los angeles the governor

00:10:39.760 unveiled this splashy project about five years ago to create a bridge for cougars butterflies

00:10:47.140 and other small critters over the 101 freeway over this kind of 10 lane uh interchange and so

00:10:54.100 in other countries, in other states even, these things cost between $5 and $10 million.

00:11:00.140 In California, though, it's cost about $114 million. They're behind schedule. There's really

00:11:05.980 no end in sight. They put a radical environmentalist in charge of the project who wears

00:11:10.760 bright pink construction gear. She carries around a stuffed animal of a cougar.

00:11:15.820 And they're doing stuff that's actually kind of amazing. It's a public-private partnership where

00:11:20.020 they have native americans performing sacred indigenous rituals for this overpass they're

00:11:27.360 actually they're sacrificing human hair native tobacco they're looking for magical mushrooms

00:11:33.540 they dispatch some environmentalists um for months and months and months to find uh seeds

00:11:40.020 in sacred solitude um the whole thing is like an episode of portlandia but then you realize no this

00:11:47.020 is just how California builds its infrastructure. Oh, no, I'm just a little confused, Chris,

00:11:50.700 because I thought all the cougars in LA hung out at the W Hotel waiting for those hunky athletes

00:11:56.520 to come on by, maybe buy them a drink. But you're saying that the bridge is not in downtown

00:12:01.680 Hollywood. This is somewhere in the hills or something. Yeah, no, no, it's not the cougars

00:12:06.800 at the Whole Foods in Venice. This is a different kind of cougar. It's a mountain lion. And even

00:12:12.260 that is kind of amazing. You actually look at aerial shots of this bridge. They're building a

00:12:16.600 bridge from this kind of untouched wild lands where the cougar has a natural habitat. And then

00:12:22.000 they're building the bridge into a suburban neighborhood. So in some ways it's like some

00:12:27.440 environmentalist version of the purge where they're letting these cougars into this neighborhood

00:12:31.920 filled with pets and children and elderly people. And look, in general, cougar attacks are rare,

00:12:39.580 but they have been increasing over the years. And there was a story in LA, they have these

00:12:44.060 inbred cougars in the Griffith Observatory area that have been attacking pets, kind of chomping

00:12:50.620 on Fido the dog. So it may be in our future. It may be some kind of depopulation scheme. Time will

00:12:58.520 tell. Do you think that any of this will actually hurt Newsom? Because I think he's probably in the

00:13:08.180 lead right now for the Democrat nomination. He's already leaning in to one of the attacks that

00:13:13.840 we've made about him in recent years, which is that he looks just like Patrick Bateman and acts

00:13:18.040 like Patrick Bateman and probably chops up hookers and has them in his freezer, allegedly. I know we

00:13:23.040 have to say allegedly, but he leaned into it and he posted this picture where it was half Bateman's

00:13:27.680 face and half his face. And I don't know, I get the impression that he is now comfortable as the

00:13:33.440 front runner. So I think you're totally right to do some actual productive right-wing operative work

00:13:39.160 and try to take this guy down

00:13:40.620 because I think he's the biggest threat.

00:13:42.440 But does anyone care?

00:13:44.400 He's such a failure.

00:13:45.500 If he's already the top of the heap,

00:13:47.140 it just seems like nothing's going to take him down.

00:13:49.800 Look, I don't think a stylistic critique will work.

00:13:52.960 And in fact, what we're seeing with Gavin Newsom

00:13:54.960 is the same thing we're seeing

00:13:56.480 with the young looks max or clavicular,

00:13:59.840 where you're focusing on his physical appearance

00:14:02.360 or his mannerisms or his aesthetic appeal.

00:14:05.400 You're not going to win with Gavin Newsom

00:14:07.340 because look, we'll admit it,

00:14:08.900 you know, as some four very heterosexual men. Gavin Newsom is a handsome guy. He's a charismatic

00:14:15.620 guy. He has some kind of magnetic appeal. And look, like Fifty Shades of Grey is a popular

00:14:22.640 novel for a reason. I think he'd do very well with the women's vote on that. But I think what

00:14:28.640 does have a chance to really damage him is if we can show definitively that what he's done in

00:14:35.580 California is a disaster on an unprecedented scale. And so my team right now is finishing

00:14:41.260 a report which should come out in the coming weeks where we're tallying not just billions

00:14:45.660 or tens of billions of dollars in fraud, but potentially hundreds of billions of dollars

00:14:50.480 that has disappeared from the California state budget during Newsom's tenure. And so, look,

00:14:56.300 Americans, you know, they like their Teflon politicians from Bill Clinton to someone like

00:15:03.380 Donald Trump. I think highlighting that doesn't work, but I think highlighting and documenting

00:15:09.700 concretely the disaster that Newsom has yielded in California could be, as we saw with Tim Walsh,

00:15:16.700 the thing that finally kind of tips the public opinion over the edge.

00:15:21.480 I have a question. There's one thing I've always wondered. This happens in California,

00:15:26.500 happened when I lived there way, way back in the day. They send the money for a bullet train,

00:15:32.820 for instance. The thing never gets built. I mean, not a single rail is laid. Where does that money

00:15:38.860 go? Where does the money go? Nobody ever seen, there's no, not a single reporter ever seems to

00:15:43.640 ask the question, where do these billions of dollars disappear to? Who's banking them?

00:15:49.720 It's a really interesting question. And so there's kind of the direct beneficiary and

00:15:54.360 the indirect beneficiary. So let's talk about Medi-Cal, which is California's healthcare

00:15:59.460 system for the poor. During his time in office, Gavin Newsom has almost doubled public expenditure

00:16:05.160 on Medi-Cal. It's something now like $200 billion a year in public spending in California, which is

00:16:11.960 bigger than the GDP of many, many countries around the world. And we know from government estimates

00:16:18.200 that between 10% and 25% of Medi-Cal is lost to outright fraud. Criminals who take that money and

00:16:26.720 in many cases, send it overseas. And so you're asking, well, what interest does someone like

00:16:31.900 Gavin Newsom or state Democrats have in allowing this to continue? And that's where you get the

00:16:36.740 indirect beneficiary. One of the most powerful unions in California is, of course, the union of

00:16:41.800 healthcare workers, which is trying to pass this wealth tax, which has tens of thousands of members

00:16:47.940 that benefit from the system being engorged with public funds. And so in many ways, the unions

00:16:53.740 see this as a form of corruption that simply expands the pie. And then they get a cut of that.

00:17:00.920 They forward that cut, part of that cut to the Democrat politicians in the legislature,

00:17:06.080 to the governor's reelection campaigns. And all of this money, oftentimes at arm's length,

00:17:11.900 not directly, but indirectly, it really pays the bills and greases this corruption wheel.

00:17:17.300 And the Democrats know that there's no political opposition. There's no media opposition. There's

00:17:22.220 no activist opposition. They have virtually total control, like a Mexican one-party state system

00:17:28.720 over California, that they can operate a massive fraud scheme with impunity. Everybody gets paid,

00:17:35.380 and all they have to do is just keep that lid on the pot, keep the corruption at a simmer,

00:17:41.060 and hope that it doesn't boil over. Wow. What do you make? So Newsom, I think, is still in the lead.

00:17:47.940 That's what a lot of this is all about. What do you make of the other potential candidates?

00:17:53.060 So like AOC, who I think is seriously talked about as a presidential candidate,

00:17:57.600 she comes out this past week and says something that a lot of conservatives agree with.

00:18:02.620 She criticizes all the various betting market sites and even sports gambling and just the

00:18:08.100 now very pervasive gambling, even when gambling was very restricted until recently.

00:18:12.780 And she said, this is sad. I'm going to catch a lot of flack for this.

00:18:15.700 that's not a left-wing position it's not it's one that can cross party lines it's kind of

00:18:21.840 interesting it's it actually deals with moral questions is that does she really believe it

00:18:27.020 is it just a sincere thing is it a cynical play and is you don't think she but well then is it

00:18:31.980 just is it about the presidential race what's it about well yes tell me why you say no i think

00:18:37.740 maybe yes but i'd like to hear from ben yeah okay so i think that the only reason that she's calling

00:18:42.500 out the betting markets and the futures markets, right?

00:18:45.080 The reason that she's doing that is because there are prominent Republican figures who

00:18:48.260 are associated with some of our sponsors and are associated with sites like, for example,

00:18:53.360 Kalshi.

00:18:53.840 That is the real reason that she's doing this.

00:18:55.300 This is why the Democrats have decided that, for example, Elon Musk was bad.

00:18:58.900 He used to be good.

00:18:59.800 This is why they've all of a sudden mobilized against crypto like that.

00:19:03.120 That sort of used to be a bipartisan thing, crypto.

00:19:04.960 And then it turned into Democrats hate crypto.

00:19:06.940 Basically, anytime anybody who's a prominent Republican figure is associated with anything,

00:19:11.160 they suddenly swivel and they turn and they hit that thing and so yeah i i yeah i do not think

00:19:17.420 that a woman like aoc who believes that if we just shovel money at people like we just take

00:19:23.840 money we shovel it at them that we can't do that because the people are going to be too stupid and

00:19:27.880 they're going to gamble it like that does not fit within her sort of purview of how the world works

00:19:32.500 i will name another aspect of consumption that aoc is dramatically against there's not a single one

00:19:38.240 that you can name where she says, this is a thing you should, like prostitution, drugs, alcohol,

00:19:43.220 like name a thing that AOC believes there should not be a market for. The only thing she believes

00:19:47.420 there should not be a market for is like a prediction market. And the only reason she's

00:19:50.700 saying that is because of course, Don Jr. is associated with prediction markets. I think

00:19:54.340 it's that simple. Chris, you disagree? Yeah. I mean, I think certainly that's probably part of

00:20:01.640 it. And what we've seen over the last five years, really accelerating the last one or two years,

00:20:07.220 is that the tech industry has shifted or at least split.

00:20:11.600 And there are certain industries, as Ben mentioned,

00:20:14.260 of course, SpaceX, crypto, prediction markets,

00:20:19.600 you know, in other parts of the tech industry

00:20:21.740 where it seems to be kind of right-coded.

00:20:24.760 Palantir is another company.

00:20:26.800 And so, yeah, would she want to undermine the power

00:20:29.440 of these cash-generating machines

00:20:31.840 that seem to support her political enemies?

00:20:35.500 Yes.

00:20:35.960 but I think it's also just a kind of antipathy towards kind of bro culture in general. And so

00:20:43.160 I think there may be some non-cynical, but simply kind of personal and authentic hatred for it,

00:20:50.460 because look, young men and young white men in particular have been complaining for a number

00:20:56.400 of years, sometimes in an exaggerated way, sometimes with some reason that they've been

00:21:01.580 locked out of prestige institutions. There was that great essay in compact, the lost generation

00:21:06.820 about how white men had been frozen from Ivy leagues, from media, from other prestige occupations.

00:21:13.000 And one interesting wrinkle in that piece is they've found that they can harness their talents,

00:21:17.840 make money, make a reputation in these new emergent industries. And so I think she does

00:21:23.440 not like the idea of young white men founding companies, making money, having some cultural

00:21:29.920 prestige. She wants to shut it down. And so maybe there's a bit of both, but I don't think it's

00:21:36.240 necessarily entirely cynical. You know, I wonder too, if there's a... I got to break in here for

00:21:40.620 just a minute, guys, because I have to say this, you know, I haven't got much time. So I just want

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00:23:25.400 You know, there's one angle on the AOC thing that I think it might marry the sincere with the

00:23:30.880 insincere, which is, you know, gambling used to be a wedge on the right. In many ways,

00:23:37.300 I think it still is. I was given a speech at an Alabama think tank like six, seven years ago,

00:23:41.700 And a real hot topic of debate was whether or not to legalize the state lottery.

00:23:47.180 You know, the lottery used to be run by the mob in New York.

00:23:49.640 It was the numbers game that the mafia ran.

00:23:51.520 And then in the 60s, 70s, 80s, they started to liberalize it.

00:23:54.560 But, I mean, I think it was Mississippi, I think, only legalized the lottery in 2019.

00:23:59.340 So it's still this live issue, to what degree we should regulate gambling.

00:24:03.200 And so if I'm AOC and I'm looking at the right and I say, what's the good wedge issue going to be?

00:24:07.580 that's one of them that could, even if it doesn't advance me, it can get my opponents fighting.

00:24:13.120 We on the right used to do that to the left with Israel because Israel was a wedge issue there.

00:24:17.920 Now I think the whole left is basically anti-Israel, but a little bit on the right too.

00:24:22.080 But that was just one where you think, even if I don't want to talk about the substance of this

00:24:26.280 issue, I at least want my enemies to be fighting each other. I could see a little bit, I mean,

00:24:30.720 she's a pretty sophisticated operative, even if she doesn't have a whole lot of book learning.

00:24:34.960 It's a it's a difficult question of vice, because when you when you ban vice, the mob does take it over.

00:24:41.140 That is what happens. And the libertarian side of the right is always like, why can't people decide to gamble?

00:24:46.200 I myself, I kind of edge toward banning vice. You know, I think that it's just it's just bad.

00:24:51.780 It's better for society to say it's no good. You know, AOC, she can't possibly be sincere about this because she's the one who tweeted out to prostitutes.

00:25:00.200 prostitutes, sex work is work, which is the same thing their pimps are telling them.

00:25:03.860 So I think that she obviously does not care about vice.

00:25:06.960 You know, the left is always happy for you to destroy yourself.

00:25:09.480 The only way they want you to be free is in ways that make you a slave.

00:25:12.520 They want you to have all the sex you want because ultimately that will enslave you,

00:25:15.520 all the drugs and all of that stuff.

00:25:17.060 So I got to I got to say that Ben has got a very, very convincing case here on this

00:25:21.820 because I just don't see her being sincere suddenly about one vice that we shouldn't ban.

00:25:26.440 But I'm looking forward to a time when both parties are sort of authentically themselves as opposed to this sort of picking and choosing of the issues.

00:25:34.620 So, you know, AOC here, I wish the Democrats would just say the thing they made.

00:25:38.780 The Democrats are fine with gambling.

00:25:40.020 They're not trying to – like if you've made the proposal that welfare dollars come with a proviso that you cannot use them on lottery tickets.

00:25:46.020 Which seems to me, by the way, a totally legitimate proviso.

00:25:48.820 The Democrats would oppose that.

00:25:49.820 They would 100% oppose that.

00:25:52.060 And that's our taxpayer dollars, and they would oppose that.

00:25:54.220 So the idea that suddenly she's very, very anti the, you know, futures markets or whatever, she's very against prediction markets.

00:26:01.620 I just find that totally unconvincing.

00:26:03.560 But this is kind of where we are in a nihilistic political world where neither side will just say the thing it actually believes.

00:26:09.580 Instead, they look for that wedge issue and they just try to ram a fist into the wedge issue without any belief system to back it.

00:26:16.120 Like, do I really think that if AOC had the power to ban lotteries or ban gambling, that she would actually do it?

00:26:21.360 Michael, she's opposing it for a very different reason than you're opposing it. Let's put it that

00:26:24.280 way. I do not trust her motivations there. So yeah, I mean, again, I think that that is totally

00:26:31.600 insincere, but I think that that is the rules of the road for the Democrats at this point is utter

00:26:35.640 insincerity on every topic. Yeah, that's true. But you know, I get it. Look, yes, I think you're

00:26:41.440 right. I totally agree with you. The problem is though, wedge issues are a lot of fun and we all

00:26:45.800 love playing with them. And what's weird today is that like every issue seems to be a wedge issue,

00:26:50.940 Even down to the Iran war, which is we're now in our third week of the Iran war.

00:26:57.000 The American right is still quite supportive of it.

00:27:00.600 I think it's still 90% or slightly below that support.

00:27:05.500 Nationally, most Americans are against it and seem to be increasingly against it.

00:27:10.880 I fear that that overwhelming right-wing support is soft.

00:27:15.300 I fear that if something goes catastrophically wrong, it's not going to dip a little bit.

00:27:19.020 I think it's going to swing very suddenly.

00:27:20.940 Uh, everyone agrees they want this thing wrapped up quickly and I could, you know, talk about

00:27:26.900 futures markets. It could really mess up the economy globally. It could really mess up

00:27:31.020 Republicans chances in the midterms. And, and I don't really know, you know, the podcast class

00:27:36.220 is anti-Iran war. The voters tend to seem to be pretty pro-Iran war, but I, I, this seems to me

00:27:42.560 like the, the biggest time bomb, uh, bomb, I guess being appropriate here for, uh, the, the

00:27:48.920 midterm elections. I don't know, Chris, you're the most operative of any of us here. Am I

00:27:53.000 misreading that? I mean, look, a couple of things. So first off, if they are able to conclude the

00:28:00.340 war and move on in a matter of weeks or a single digit amount of months, people will forget by the

00:28:06.260 midterms. Politics operates on media cycles like up until that last moment. And so, you know,

00:28:12.140 when the president goes to McDonald's, when they have the eating the cats and dogs memes,

00:28:16.760 I mean, we're talking about the October surprise. And so the public will make a late breaking decision. And if the war is still in the news, then I think it's potentially catastrophic. If the war is out of the news, they'll make a decision on a different basis.

00:28:31.880 But the general tide and the general thermostatic effect of midterms when there's a three part control of government for one political party suggests that Trump is going to be, you know, kind of wiped out, at least in the House.

00:28:46.760 I think that's still probably the best bet. But this and this gives certainly some new uncertainty.

00:28:55.040 And my big fear is that that uncertainty can spiral out into a number of different directions.

00:29:00.640 A couple of those would be very concerning that you've outlined.

00:29:03.960 And I guess the other side of the question, and I've asked this to hawks over the last

00:29:08.060 few weeks, haven't got a sufficient answer, but is what does victory look like?

00:29:13.240 How do we know when we've won and what do we get if we've won?

00:29:17.260 And is it so kind of clearly and significantly better than the status quo ante prior to

00:29:24.100 hostilities that voters will reward the president?

00:29:27.060 Again, you should never analyze these solely on political considerations, but I think both the substance and the perception to me on that other side of the issue are still a bit hazy. The administration hasn't quite articulated them as I see.

00:29:42.120 I agree. I agree with you on this. Let me let me just because I want to hear you hear you, Ben.

00:29:48.020 But it's just I think that the time bomb analogy is a good one.

00:29:52.440 I thought this for a while. I think Trump has about two weeks, really, to come up with something that looks like victory.

00:29:58.900 And I think that whatever he does, of course, the press is going to call it defeat.

00:30:02.940 If he you know, if they actually have regime change and an angel comes in and runs Iran in a moral way and turns over all of their plutonium,

00:30:10.440 plutonium, it's still going to be some, they'll still find a way to sell it as a loss. But I think

00:30:15.860 that the one thing that I would like to see, and the thing that I think he could do pretty quickly

00:30:20.780 is if he buries even deeper, the buried, you know, nuclear material that they have, which he could do

00:30:27.960 with a bombing raid. I think that's going to be his last, the last thing he wants to do. But I

00:30:33.240 think in the meantime, the idea that they're going to get regime change, I mean, they are hanging

00:30:37.980 people in the streets. Very tough for those people to mobilize an actual rebellion with

00:30:43.280 the way they're killing people. The Israelis have done a great job of killing off their security

00:30:47.860 forces, but still they're just a brutal, brutal terroristic regime and they're willing to hold

00:30:53.920 onto it that way. I do not know if we can take control of the Strait of Hormuz, but I just,

00:30:59.860 it's a nightmare to me to think of our troops going in there. It is so easy. The thing about

00:31:04.500 the military, love the military. I love the military, but they're a hammer and everything

00:31:08.480 looks like a nail. And they're always going to come back to the president and say, if we just do

00:31:11.520 one more thing, this is going to be fine. I just think, I think he's done a noble thing. I think

00:31:17.760 he did a brave thing. I think he did the right thing, but I think it's a time game. I think at

00:31:22.800 some point the time runs out. Well, I mean, obviously I think that everybody has their eye

00:31:27.400 on the calendar and that's what the polls show is that the American people are supportive of this

00:31:30.640 so long as, as Chris says, this last month and it doesn't last four months.

00:31:34.120 And obviously, Chris is also right that if we're talking about this at election time,

00:31:37.260 it's going to be a terrible thing for the president and for the party.

00:31:40.620 I think there are a couple of things that are happening here.

00:31:42.140 One is a political thing and one is a not political thing.

00:31:44.680 The not political thing is that I think President Trump looks at his presidency and he says

00:31:48.400 this is the last chance for America to actually end this threat because post his presidency,

00:31:53.540 the chances are very good that whoever succeeds him is going to be incredibly soft on this

00:31:58.260 issue. And then Iran is going to rebuild. It's going to remobilize. It's going to take additional

00:32:02.280 control. So if you don't like what Iran is doing in the Strait of Hormuz now, wait until they have

00:32:06.300 ICBMs tipped with nuclear missiles. I mean, like that is the thing that I think President Trump is

00:32:10.800 correctly saying. And on a moral level, that's why I think it is quite brave what he's doing.

00:32:14.480 As far as what does victory looks like, I think that there are sort of two things that we have

00:32:18.560 to look at. What does not defeat look like? And then what does victory look like? I don't think

00:32:22.220 those are quite the same thing. Not defeat looks like the Strait of Hormuz is at least relatively

00:32:27.440 open if people even if people are paying small bribes to the Iranian government to move through

00:32:31.260 the oil starts moving again the Iranian government is tremendously weakened they don't have enough

00:32:35.780 money to actually pay their IRGC members and a year from now the regime collapses which I think

00:32:39.780 is all very much within the realm of possibility given the fact that again the entire top level of

00:32:44.600 the regime has been completely destroyed their missile facilities have been destroyed their

00:32:47.900 drone facilities have been destroyed their nuclear facilities will be destroyed before this is over

00:32:51.660 And so the question is sort of a timeline one. We may see a delayed victory in that sense. A not defeat would be that we do all those things. And then the Strait of Hormuz is at least passable. And that is a not defeat. A clear victory would be something, you know, where we all get to cheer in the streets. And that would be, for example, the president takes Harga Island. The IRGC completely runs out of money. The people go out in the streets and they take over. Right. That's a clear victory. I think it's like a 20 percent possibility. I don't think it's an 80 percent possibility. I think it's a 20 percent possibility.

00:33:19.760 I think the regime being on such unstable footing with the rest of the regimes in the area allied against them, because that's actually what's happened right now is the entire Gulf region is now against the Iranians, all of them.

00:33:32.740 And so because of that, Iran is now more isolated than it literally ever has been.

00:33:36.300 They have less revenue coming in than they literally ever have.

00:33:38.760 They have less control on a street by street basis than they have for 50 years.

00:33:42.440 They have less weaponry in terms of forward mobilization than they have in 50 years, and they have fewer terrorist proxies capable of doing serious damage than they have in 50 years.

00:33:50.040 Is that a victory for the United States?

00:33:52.440 It is a victory in a broader sense.

00:33:54.380 Is it the kind of thing where you can, like, run around with a big newspaper that says, you know, we win?

00:33:58.600 I don't think so.

00:34:00.120 But again, if we get that latter situation, which I think is probably like a 75% possibility, actually, if we get that and then President Trump walks away, I think that's a win for the United States.

00:34:09.180 I think it's a win for the world.

00:34:10.220 And even if he doesn't get the political credit he deserves for it, he will get that credit or he should via history if the regime ends up falling a year or two years from now.

00:34:18.300 But then, Ben, to Chris's point, if he says, all right, you know, what what can we bring to voters to say, see, the intervention was worth it?

00:34:24.960 If the real victory here, you know, we we install Mark Ayatollah Rubio and he, you know, he takes over and it's all great.

00:34:34.260 If you say that, look, there's 20 percent chance that that happens more likely, you know, probably best case scenario.

00:34:40.940 We just have not defeat and we can go to voters and say, hey, look, we went into Iran and blew up a bunch of stuff.

00:34:48.160 But then they closed the Strait of Hormuz, which could have been a complete disaster in perpetuity.

00:34:53.320 But we got the Strait of Hormuz reopened again and your gas prices are going to come down hopefully before November.

00:34:59.700 Please reward us at the ballot box.

00:35:01.460 Is that is that?

00:35:02.420 Well, no, I don't think I don't think.

00:35:03.740 So this is what the thing I think that what Trump is doing is a thing that nobody has recognized in American politics for literally decades.

00:35:09.880 He is doing a politically brave thing.

00:35:11.980 Yes.

00:35:12.300 I know that we're not allowed to talk about brave things right now.

00:35:14.780 But this is a politically brave thing because what he is doing is he is saying, listen, even if it costs me at the ballot box, even if my party doesn't do as well, if I get this threat neutralized for the foreseeable future, that is worth a few losses.

00:35:28.000 And to me, that makes it more brave, actually, because here's the problem that I have with this sort of logic, Michael.

00:35:35.040 There is literally no war that you can fight short of a full scale regime change war.

00:35:39.860 Short of that, there is no war that you can fight that resonates to the American public

00:35:43.840 as a victory, which means that you end up in a position where you are gradually ceding

00:35:47.280 territory to literally every enemy because we're not going to regime change China.

00:35:50.920 We're not going to regime change Russia.

00:35:52.520 We're not even regime changing really Venezuela, right?

00:35:54.940 We kind of regime behavior changed Venezuela.

00:35:57.540 And so if the idea here is that the only way to win a victory is to win a full scale victory,

00:36:01.800 the result of that will be a breaking of the American hegemony over the rest of the world

00:36:06.640 in the name of political gain.

00:36:08.020 I think President Trump is actually fighting back against that.

00:36:10.560 And so even in my 75% scenario, that is what's best for America, even if it's not what's

00:36:14.840 best for the Republican Party in the midterm elections.

00:36:16.740 By the way, again, I think if we get that 75% scenario, that's assuming the war is going

00:36:20.960 to be over in the next six weeks.

00:36:21.960 So I don't think that that's the thing people are talking about in November anyway.

00:36:24.780 I think they're going to be talking about the economy.

00:36:26.840 Speaking of which, President Trump, will he visit Iran before the end of the year?

00:36:30.660 This is the open question over at Kalshi.

00:36:33.640 Kalshi has a shock, shockingly, apparently 11% of people believe that President Trump

00:36:38.840 is going to visit Iran before the end of the year.

00:36:41.640 That would be a midterm campaign stop for sure.

00:36:44.840 They are one of our sponsors, obviously.

00:36:46.320 They also, by the way, are saying Tulsi Gabbard out as director of national intelligence.

00:36:50.440 60% prediction.

00:36:51.740 She does not make it into August.

00:36:52.880 I fully agree with that.

00:36:54.060 I think Tulsi Gabbard is on her way out as DNI, especially given the shenanigans of Joe

00:36:58.800 Kent, who's making an absolute ridiculous fool of himself right now. Anyway, back to the

00:37:04.220 conversation. Well, actually, the Joe Kent does kind of tie in. But yes, Drew, you were making

00:37:08.480 a point. Yeah, I want to say that, you know, I think that what Ben is saying about the courage

00:37:14.040 of Trump, the political courage of Trump is absolutely true. And I think it is incredibly

00:37:18.360 frustrating to have a press corps, which, as Chris says, still has a lot of power, more power than

00:37:24.980 than the right wing rebel media selling this as if it were some kind of military catastrophe.

00:37:31.460 And it's almost comical to read. I read The New York Times every morning for my sins,

00:37:35.300 and it's gotten to the point where it actually makes me laugh out loud to watch what they what

00:37:40.100 they call the news over there, which is just one defeat for Trump in Iran after another.

00:37:45.000 But but still still in all, I mean, that that is part of, you know, that is part of the way

00:37:50.620 the electorate feels. And we do have to deal with that because the people who are in the Democrat

00:37:56.420 Party are no longer the Democrat Party of old. They're no longer people who want to push the

00:38:01.620 ball a little bit left of the 50 yard line. They are full scale anti-Americans. And it's I feel

00:38:08.640 like some kind of right wing nut when I say this, except they keep proving it. There is nothing they

00:38:13.640 will not do that that puts this country last and their their attempt to destroy ICE so that they

00:38:20.480 They can keep all the people that they came in, came into the country under Biden.

00:38:24.880 The fact that they won't cover the murder of a young woman in Chicago by an illegal alien because they don't want to put illegal aliens in bad odor.

00:38:34.640 The fact that they won't point out what Zora Mamdani is doing in New York.

00:38:39.080 I mean, one of the most evil politicians I've ever seen in this country because they're afraid of its being Islamophobic.

00:38:45.080 This is a party that is not for our country, and we have to keep them out of office as much as is humanly possible.

00:38:53.300 I totally agree with this.

00:38:54.420 And obviously, you know, the political considerations do matter.

00:38:57.820 And I will say that what I'm afraid of is broader than just the Democratic Party.

00:39:01.080 I think there is an America last segment of the body politic that I do think has infected a segment of the right.

00:39:08.620 I don't think it's a huge segment of the right, but it's certainly infected a segment of the right.

00:39:11.260 I don't know what else to call it when Tucker Carlson is having on full scale Chinese propagandists to discuss why America needs to cede power to China while this schmuck who's going around declaring that the Illuminati run the world.

00:39:22.880 I mean, this is literally who this guest was.

00:39:24.720 The kind of the rise on the right of this America last ideology where America is a nefarious force in the world and thus its impact must be minimized.

00:39:32.660 I don't want to conflate people who are asking, I think, serious and decent questions about the war and where it ends.

00:39:37.820 That's a normal thing to do.

00:39:39.140 And of course we should do that because it's all a risk reward scenario.

00:39:41.940 And how do you think it's going to turn out?

00:39:43.300 That's a different thing from the idea that America has done something morally evil in what it is doing right now.

00:39:47.920 And that America, in joining with Israel to take down Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear facilities, is doing something quite terrible.

00:39:53.800 And actually, what we really need is Sharia law in American cities to make them cleaner and better.

00:39:57.900 That seems to be a very different thing.

00:40:00.160 I'm trying to believe that Ami Kozak has just perfected his Tucker Carlson imitation.

00:40:05.240 And that's it. There's no longer actually Tucker talking.

00:40:08.360 Well, you know, there's always been this kind of American opposition to America.

00:40:13.760 Probably the clearest example is Jane Fonda sitting at the anti-aircraft in Vietnam.

00:40:17.900 But you would sometimes get some of that on the right now.

00:40:20.920 Maybe it's a little more pronounced in more public aspects of the right,

00:40:24.000 even though it's a relatively small percentage.

00:40:26.400 But the question that I have to ask is, you know, if I'm not trying to examine motives,

00:40:31.920 if I'm not trying to get into the psychology of what's prompting these kinds of attacks,

00:40:36.800 Is there a legitimate, is there a sincere reason that someone would say, hey, we actually do have

00:40:43.220 to cede a little bit of our international ambition? China's gotten too strong, or America's

00:40:50.240 lost the heart for these protracted military conflicts because of Iraq and Afghanistan,

00:40:54.400 or we need to rethink how we do regime change. So maybe we need more of the Venezuela model

00:40:58.720 where you're not uprooting the whole civil authority, but you're just putting a gun to

00:41:03.380 vice president's head and saying, do what we want or we'll shoot you, you know, which I think has

00:41:06.900 actually worked out very well. Is there, sure, there's always going to be the Hanoi Jane,

00:41:12.820 but is there a sincere and even admirable or respectable kind of restraint view on foreign

00:41:22.540 policy? Well, I mean, I think you can make the argument that the sort of restrainer point of

00:41:26.900 view, which is, yes, America is losing ground and therefore we need to reconsolidate, we need to

00:41:31.480 restrengthen and then we can try to reestablish hegemony because the world actually is better

00:41:34.920 with broader american power sort of a more in sadness than in pleasure perspective at the

00:41:39.840 possibility of multi-polarity but that's not what i'm seeing from from a lot of nobody's saying

00:41:43.860 that's right and and by the way and and by the way i i will say that you know i don't want to

00:41:48.760 get into psychology but some of these people just appear to be nuts okay joe kent appears to me to

00:41:52.580 be a nut job okay joe kent is like how that schmuck ended up at the national center for

00:41:57.660 counterterrorism as the director of it is absolutely beyond me. And I can do two things

00:42:01.620 at once. Totally respect his military and CIA service and also believe that guy's a kook and

00:42:05.700 a nut and a schmuck. Because, I mean, today he literally apparently said that he would try to

00:42:10.560 help out the defense of Tyler Robinson if called upon to do so in the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

00:42:16.840 I'm sorry. That's crazy. So he believes that is crazy. I haven't followed it that closely. He

00:42:21.920 believes that it was he doesn't think that Robinson was the shooter. Obviously, he thinks it was

00:42:26.960 a foreign op or something?

00:42:28.640 He thinks that they're

00:42:29.060 nefarious outside actors.

00:42:30.580 Yes, and then there was

00:42:31.340 this whole story

00:42:31.960 about how Andrew Colvitt

00:42:32.980 of TPUSA

00:42:34.000 had texted him

00:42:35.200 messages concerning

00:42:36.640 Israel and Charlie's

00:42:38.160 relationship with

00:42:38.920 pro-Israel donors,

00:42:39.860 and he had texted that

00:42:40.760 to Joe Kent

00:42:41.920 because he thought

00:42:43.820 maybe it was relevant,

00:42:44.760 and then somehow

00:42:45.520 Candace Owens ended up

00:42:46.720 with those magical messages,

00:42:47.980 and no one knows how,

00:42:49.220 but it certainly was not

00:42:50.000 from Andrew Colvitt.

00:42:51.040 I mean, like,

00:42:51.540 the fact that he's

00:42:52.060 under investigation,

00:42:53.000 Joe Kent, for now,

00:42:54.220 leaking information,

00:42:55.160 classified information,

00:42:56.020 which I almost certainly went to one of these podcast bros.

00:42:59.680 You know, that is the part that's astonishing to me.

00:43:01.800 And I do think that we have to talk again.

00:43:03.660 It's not a podcast war thing to say

00:43:04.900 that people who have high levels of influence

00:43:06.380 in American life,

00:43:07.700 if they're saying crazy and nutty things,

00:43:09.580 maybe people should stop listening to them so much.

00:43:11.200 And also, when we're talking about government officials,

00:43:12.780 that's different.

00:43:14.140 I mean, he was a government official.

00:43:16.060 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:16.300 But I will also say that

00:43:17.540 they almost staffed part of this administration

00:43:20.120 directly from the guest list of like the podcast bros.

00:43:23.600 And you can't staff a good government this way.

00:43:25.380 I'm sorry, you cannot like you should not use Joe Rogan's guest list as your way of staffing an administration.

00:43:31.880 I mean, Joe Rogan was spending the last two days talking about Benjamin Netanyahu is dead and Erica Kirk has crazy eyes.

00:43:37.200 Like, well, there is a brain rot that is setting in and it has infused all the way up to the governmental level.

00:43:44.160 That's the part that's scary.

00:43:45.320 Michael, the argument you made last week when, of course, I made all sorts of headlines because we're beating the crap out of you and you're fighting us back.

00:43:51.540 And it was fisticuffs all the way around.

00:43:53.140 Agreed. But the argument that Michael was making, that these are sort of the podcast wars, that's a legitimate argument until you get to Joe Kent.

00:44:02.620 Yeah, when we're talking about government officials, that's totally different. I agree. I totally agree.

00:44:07.000 And when those government officials are basically acting at the behest of podcast hosts, and podcast hosts are visiting the White House and shaping policy,

00:44:13.940 then you start to ask some serious questions about who knows what, when, and why are they there, and who's staffing.

00:44:19.420 Well, one correction. I'm a strong defender of podcast hosts visiting the White House.

00:44:24.720 I think that's a very important tried and true tradition that should continue.

00:44:29.620 But I did see that Kent has denied that he was leaking. But then you raise the question,

00:44:35.660 okay, well, who leaked it? So obviously, there's going to be some kind of investigation.

00:44:40.180 And I guess you could have a world in which the director of the counterterrorism center

00:44:45.480 is indicted. I mean, this seems to be, something that's impressed me a lot about this Trump

00:44:51.020 administration in particular, is there's been a ton of unity, even among people who would seem to

00:44:55.820 be rivals or vying for position. The vice president and the secretary of state could

00:44:59.520 both run for president. They seem to have a lot of unity. They're unified with the president.

00:45:03.400 This seems to be the first break where you say, okay, you have this official who wasn't a super

00:45:08.060 senior official, but he was there coming out. Now he's kind of running against the administration.

00:45:12.900 Are you going to see more of this?

00:45:14.480 Is this the beginning of division?

00:45:16.140 Or are they going to run this guy out, investigate him, maybe indict him, and then keep the team together?

00:45:22.360 Well, I think one of the things that you're seeing here that's really fascinating is that there's a sort of, as the Trump administration draws into its sort of late stages, right?

00:45:32.040 We're three years away from a new president.

00:45:33.920 As that happens, I think that Trump staffed the administration figuring, hey, I'm the president.

00:45:38.720 All these people work for me.

00:45:39.680 They can say whatever they want.

00:45:40.580 In the end, I'm the one who makes the call.

00:45:41.700 And then you have a bunch of people in the administration who are gaming for their own political futures, and they recognize that a very lucrative way of being able to draw your own sort of political future is to break away from the administration and be critical of the administration.

00:45:55.280 That is an excellent way to sort of launch your political career, which is why there's been all these rumors about Tulsi Gabbard over at DNI, because, of course, people widely perceive her to be at odds with the president's foreign policy.

00:46:05.920 She's sticking around for now, but I think that there are a lot of good rumors that she probably will not stick around for very long.

00:46:11.000 And so I think you'll see more of that as the administration gets later and people have their kind of next step.

00:46:15.720 You're going to see people start to use the administration as a stepping stone rather than as an umbrella.

00:46:20.700 And I think that could be a real problem.

00:46:22.540 I want to get to more of this with all of you in a second.

00:46:24.440 First, your reminder, by the way, Daily Wire Plus members can chat live with both me and Michael Knowles in the middle of our show.

00:46:30.100 That's a thing that we actually are doing now.

00:46:31.760 So you don't just watch the conversation.

00:46:33.540 We want you to be a part of it.

00:46:35.260 It's a thing like we'll actually stop in the middle of the show and answer your questions in the middle of the show,

00:46:39.080 interrupting our own thought processes

00:46:40.360 to make these things happen for you, the people.

00:46:43.380 You can get answers right here as we go.

00:46:45.940 Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe.

00:46:48.740 Become a member today.

00:46:49.660 Okay, Michael, go for it.

00:46:50.740 Yes, well, before, you know,

00:46:52.980 this actually brings us all the way back

00:46:54.280 to the top of the show

00:46:55.220 because we're talking about how many people

00:46:57.020 slept with some lady that some husband

00:46:58.700 was talking about on the internet.

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00:47:38.740 Which is, you know, one of those phenomena that we were talking about earlier in the show.

00:47:43.280 Helix is an award-winning mattress brand reviewed by outlets like Forbes and Wired. I love it.

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00:47:56.700 comfortable. I pity the fool who buys them because they're so comfortable they fall asleep. I don't

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00:48:17.840 you can actually sleep on your mattress. And then you'll be able to give an even better testimonial

00:48:22.160 than Drew about how it actually increases your sleep quality, as opposed to you just being very

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00:48:31.100 check them out. Free shipping, 120-night sleep trial, limited lifetime warranty. Means you test

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00:48:49.900 helixsleep.com slash friendlyfire, 20% off site-wide. Make sure you enter our show name

00:48:54.260 at checkout so they know that we sent you helixsleep.com slash friendly fire chris i'd love

00:49:00.640 to get i'd say the production quality on today's show has been excellent it's magnificent really

00:49:04.220 on top of it the whole day so good guys so good all the way through yeah the the line delay isn't

00:49:10.340 affecting us at all no yeah you know the the the ad the ad text has been just like the echo was

00:49:17.560 We're just now hearing about the girl who slept with all those people.

00:49:21.040 Well, the question is, is this setup functioning as well or better than the White House right now with all this consternation?

00:49:29.040 And Chris, I would like to get your take on it because, you know, wrangling Republicans is truly like herding cats.

00:49:36.240 They all want to go off in their own different directions.

00:49:37.880 There actually are lots of ideological disagreements.

00:49:41.840 There has long been an anti-war right.

00:49:45.000 There's a more pro-war right.

00:49:46.300 There's a tariff right.

00:49:47.080 There's a free trade, right? You know, it's hard to see what keeps us together other than parted

00:49:51.400 hair and, you know, garish neckties. But right now, we're looking ahead at the midterms and then

00:49:58.160 at 2028. Is that Trump cohesion destined to fall apart? Are we going to lose the DNI? Are we going

00:50:06.600 to lose, who knows, Secretary of State? Is this it? Certainly, I think it's possible. I think there

00:50:14.560 are, look, frankly, some members of the administration who aren't performing who

00:50:18.120 should be let go. Kash Patel, it would be high on my list for that to happen. But

00:50:23.180 the broader picture that I think we need to understand, and we're kind of dancing around

00:50:27.600 the edges of, is the relationship between the right's media apparatus and the right's political

00:50:33.500 apparatus. Look, at their worst, these things are in tension or in contradiction, where you have

00:50:39.540 the political apparatus oriented towards power and the media apparatus oriented towards money,

00:50:44.840 monetization, audience, et cetera. Sometimes those things overlap in a healthy way. Sometimes they

00:50:50.660 point against each other and we're entering a media moment where, and you can see it, I mean,

00:50:56.140 it's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger where the incentive systems are not overlapping

00:51:00.800 and integrating in a way that advances the public good. And I'll give you a specific example of what

00:51:05.600 I mean. My specialty, what I do is I take investigative reporting. I turn it into

00:51:10.360 kind of media campaigns that try to drive public policy. And I'll tell you the last

00:51:15.580 three to six months have been very difficult relative to say the first three to six months

00:51:23.460 of the administration, precisely because the conspiracy podcasting, the antisemitism podcasting,

00:51:30.700 The kind of general just psychotic or schizo breakdown of the rights media apparatus in many quarters, not, of course, in these quarters, has degraded the ability for the right to be effective.

00:51:43.280 And what happens is that political leaders often, often respond to and follow media narratives. If the media narrative is get rid of critical race theory, abolish DEI, you know, stop kind of trans insanity in schools that leads politicians towards a greater understanding of reality and towards some sort of positive policy outcome.

00:52:06.060 If the media narrative is, did Israel kill Charlie Kirk? Not only is the breakdown epistemological, meaning we can't actually see the truth, we're not tightly kind of clung on to reality, but there's no positive outcome that can emerge from that.

00:52:23.640 There's nothing we can do. If the premise is false, the conclusion is impossible. And so every media cycle that is dominated by the interpersonal tabloid drama or just the kind of brain addled conspiracy is directly harming the Trump administration's ability to succeed and therefore directly harming its political fate.

00:52:44.560 I gave a speech on this topic to members of Congress two weeks ago. There was a GOP retreat, and it was on this exact point. I said, guys, the problem is, my invective against the podcast wars, it's not actually because of any of the personalities, all of whom I at least have been friends with, almost all of whom I have been friends with at some point, some of whom I'm still friends with to this day.

00:53:07.040 But I said, the problem is structural. There's this moment where when the media and the political,

00:53:15.260 the elected types, where their incentives were really aligned in 2024, we called it the podcast

00:53:19.880 election. But increasingly, you're seeing a divergence of their interests to the point,

00:53:25.200 I mean, I can even see it sometimes in my own views or in my own ratings, where I think,

00:53:30.200 I know if I talked about this sensational thing, or if I said something that I think,

00:53:34.620 I actually think is unjust, or if I even talked about all the people who were saying and doing

00:53:39.240 the unjust things that are politically irrelevant, that have nothing to do with advancing the

00:53:43.020 administration's priorities, but are just kind of titillating, I know my ratings would go up

00:53:47.640 and I'd make more money, but I don't, I don't want to do that. I'm more of a political animal.

00:53:52.640 I want to advance the political good, but it doesn't matter what I do or not. If that is the

00:53:57.480 case that for the right broadly, you have a media machine that is incentivized one way,

00:54:01.880 And you have a political policy machine that's incentivized another way. It's just not going to work. And it's so painful to me because, yeah, I don't I don't want to I don't want to beat up on you again because it just makes you look so bad.

00:54:13.600 But I think that I think that the problem is that it is structural. You're right about this, Michael. It is structural. But part of that structure is that falsehoods get out by powerful podcasters into the general public.

00:54:27.480 And you find yourself, you know, talking to people who think that Winston Churchill put his opposition in prison, which is simply a falsehood.

00:54:36.380 And I think that that that is something that it is our job to correct.

00:54:39.880 And I listen, I agree. This is this is not something I want to see.

00:54:43.260 I don't do not want to see us arguing about this stuff.

00:54:45.600 But I do think that it's, you know, it's incumbent upon us to speak the truth when other people are speaking lies, especially speaking lies that are very popular.

00:54:54.880 I mean, the other thing that I'll add here is that it's not just a matter of topicality that is incentive misaligned. So, yes, you will get more views talking about, you know, the Candace Owens latest crazy theory than you will talking about the immigration fight that's currently happening over funding of DHS. Obviously, that's true.

00:55:15.200 However, there is another incentive structure that is significantly worse than that, which is if you are the person who exposits the insanity, you will get exponentially more traffic than the person who bunks the insanity.

00:55:26.640 Right. That is it. That is a that is a there's a difference there.

00:55:29.120 So lumping, it's almost a category error to say.

00:55:31.860 Yeah, it's two levels.

00:55:32.640 You know, on one side, you have the people that.

00:55:35.160 Yeah. And so so like I would put closer to the basically I would say the rational and the irrational or the incentive structure right now is toward the irrational.

00:55:43.580 It is toward blackpilling, and that is the opposite of the stuff that Chris is doing.

00:55:47.560 I gave a speech at Manhattan Institute a few weeks ago, and this was basically the topic of my speech.

00:55:51.600 It was, you know, one of the things that we ought to do as conservatives is be solution-driven.

00:55:55.580 Why? Because solutions, number one, help people.

00:55:57.840 But number two, if you can solve things within the American system, that does uphold the American system,

00:56:02.420 which is an inherently good thing to do because the American system is a good thing.

00:56:06.660 The black pill that people are taking right now says the system is unfixable and inherently bad.

00:56:11.700 And therefore, any solution that you effectuate within that system is upholding an unjust and terrible system.

00:56:18.000 And that right now is incredibly sexy to people because people have decided that the institutions themselves are bad.

00:56:24.080 And so what's really selling is people saying, even the institutions you used to trust, they're lying to you.

00:56:29.300 And they're not just lying to you about some things.

00:56:30.740 They're lying to you about literally everything.

00:56:32.880 There is nothing you can believe.

00:56:34.320 And what's even better for the podcast bros is they can say, the only person you can trust is me.

00:56:38.960 And the way that you can trust me is because, you know, you can't trust any of them because I'm saying you can't trust any of them.

00:56:43.940 And, you know, the institutions are all corrupt.

00:56:45.740 And the way you can tell they're corrupt is because I'm about to tell you that aliens killed Charlie Kirk and they would lie to you.

00:56:50.580 They write the unspecified.

00:56:51.980 They they will lie to you about this.

00:56:53.760 They will tell you that there's an actual evidentiary system required.

00:56:56.800 But I I know in my heart, the dream came to me that actually it was somebody else who did it.

00:57:02.320 And I'm so honest and authentic that I can't be controlled this way.

00:57:05.660 I'm free. I'm free to say what I'm not being paid.

00:57:08.060 I'm not being controlled by anyone.

00:57:09.900 Now, of course, the answer is all these people are being paid.

00:57:12.680 They're making ungodly money.

00:57:13.600 By the viewers, yeah.

00:57:14.140 I mean, the idea that, yes, correct.

00:57:16.240 I mean, the idea that they are doing it for poverty, right?

00:57:19.360 That these are some sort of priests wandering in the wilderness, begging alms on behalf of truth.

00:57:24.860 Like, it's such horseshit.

00:57:25.660 I can't even express how horseshit he is.

00:57:26.980 But this is part of the structural issue, too, to your point, man.

00:57:29.760 Now it's all these independent voices because in the new media that the networks don't,

00:57:34.120 we're one of the last networks of new media organizations.

00:57:37.120 And so everyone's independent now. So that too creates different incentives, at least if you're

00:57:42.340 on a network. If you're on a network, you can get fired. If you're on a network, there are kind of

00:57:46.460 standards, there's cohesion among the different shows. And so in the old days, back in TV or

00:57:51.500 radio, if someone was saying something that was beyond the pale or the standards, there'd be a

00:57:56.800 campaign. You get that person fired, they'd leave. Now it seems to me the whole structure of the

00:58:02.880 media is anti-institutional. So you've got the trauma of COVID where you realize that big

00:58:08.460 institutions were actually lying to you about a number of things. You've got the decay of our

00:58:12.760 political institutions generally, which is manifest and has been for decades at this point.

00:58:17.260 And then you have this new media ecosystem, which is intrinsically anti-institutional.

00:58:22.560 So something, Chris, that you do very well is you say, all right, well, if I don't like what's

00:58:26.680 dominating the news, if that's harming my political prospects, I'm gonna change the news. I'm gonna

00:58:31.500 go do an investigative report. And then I'm going to lead a media campaign about that to get people

00:58:35.920 focused again. That has worked a number of times. But I just wonder if, you know, it's kind of a

00:58:41.700 tragedy, really. The right wing media began because the old, terrible establishment news media shut

00:58:47.800 us up and lied about us and censored us. And then we had this independent media and we kind of rode

00:58:51.860 that. It was great. We got the podcast election. It was great. And then the thing that made us

00:58:56.840 great ended up being our own downfall in the right-wing media. Is there any, to get to the

00:59:01.420 point on structure, is there any way to fix the incentives? Yeah. I mean, you have to understand

00:59:07.260 that the structure is new. And so it's not just Fox News, NBC, ABC that have standards and

00:59:13.080 practices. They have legal review. They have an audience that is aggregated and then sold to,

00:59:19.120 you know, Fortune 500 company advertisers. The new structure and the structure we're not talking

00:59:23.920 about is the algorithm. And so the media and technology companies are, you know, the technology

00:59:29.780 companies are not media companies, but in a sense, they've replaced the media companies.

00:59:34.420 And it's like looking into a black box. And I know there has been a lot of talk about the Twitter

00:59:39.960 algorithm, how that's changed. I think there's been a lot of talk about the YouTube algorithm

00:59:43.580 and how that's changed. And look, what happened after COVID was censorship, especially censorship

00:59:50.080 against the right, against dissident voices. Was wrong, we shouldn't go back. But paradoxically,

00:59:56.680 by Elon opening up the algorithm, by YouTube loosening some restrictions on the algorithm,

01:00:02.000 you have now a new problem that needs to be solved. And again, I'm not endorsing censorship.

01:00:07.060 I'm not saying we should go back. But we have to grapple with the fact that if you're on Twitter

01:00:11.660 right now, truly psychotic narratives gather steam at a rate that cannot be debunked

01:00:19.980 in a cool, calm, and sober way. And that has downstream effects on all of various platforms.

01:00:26.140 And then what's happening is that people in the legitimate media are sensing the feeling of the

01:00:31.760 algorithm, and they are chasing the algorithm because that's where the audience is, that's

01:00:37.240 where the ad revenue is, that's where their narratives are going. And so, look, are there

01:00:42.380 nefarious things happening with the algorithm, with foreign influence? You hear a lot of whispers

01:00:46.200 about this, nothing extremely concrete, but we should inspect, at least at the theoretical level

01:00:52.400 at this point, that we are becoming creatures of the algorithm. And we have to understand the

01:00:57.980 algorithm at least as good as we understood the old networks. If we want to understand how to

01:01:03.300 triumph over some of these blatantly false and conspiratorial narratives and create a right-wing

01:01:08.860 media machine that is once again oriented towards achieving things in the public arena that advance

01:01:14.700 the public good? You know, I have to say that this is actually something I'm worried about in

01:01:20.320 the short run, but not in the long run. I mean, gatekeepers come back. The important thing is

01:01:25.200 that we make sure that we are at the table when the gatekeepers come back. The appointment of

01:01:29.160 Barry Weiss at CBS is a perfect example. She's a liberal person, but she is a fair person,

01:01:34.740 and she understands that news cuts in both directions. And the fact that she's being

01:01:39.060 attacked the way she is shows you how desperate they are to maintain the power that is already

01:01:44.580 crumbling. I'm not as worried of this becoming pure chaos. What I'm worried about is who

01:01:51.080 makes it to the table a little bit. I'm a little bit more worried about that. I'm very disappointed

01:01:57.280 in people following the algorithm and getting on board the train, the conspiracy train and the

01:02:05.800 crazy story train and all that stuff. But eventually, eventually, things have to congeal.

01:02:10.440 They always do. And the people start to be in control again and start, you know, cooler heads

01:02:15.360 start to control things. What I think we have to do is we have to make the case that fair news is

01:02:20.480 good news. Doing your job, doing your job, not changing the world, not telling us the truth,

01:02:25.860 but getting the facts, gathering the facts, telling us the facts are the important things.

01:02:30.000 I think, Chris, you know, I admire you. I think you've done a tremendous job of being that kind

01:02:34.980 of voice. I think the Daily Wire now is hiring the kind of people who can help us become that

01:02:39.000 kind of voice gathering news i mean from the very beginning my argument has been we need two things

01:02:44.020 we need entertainment and we need actual reporting because we've got the opinions we've got good

01:02:48.720 opinions we've got good outlets outlets and outlooks but i think that i'm not as worried

01:02:54.160 about this i think that the thing is if we keep doing the job we're doing which is investigating

01:02:58.740 gathering news shaping the news eventually we're going to win because the fact is we're telling

01:03:03.800 the truth you know some of what we say is opinion a lot of what we say is just the fact

01:03:07.820 the thing that i'm afraid of is is really not the algorithm which again i think will shift over time

01:03:13.660 and and i think again chasing clicks is is a fool's errand because the algorithm will shift

01:03:18.320 again and if you've lost your center you know but for whales right you're still your soul for but

01:03:23.560 for whales uh you know the i think that the the thing that that concerns me uh and that i'm seeing

01:03:29.080 in the conservative movement is i've watched as the conservative movement went from a conservative

01:03:33.080 movement, to a broader anti-left movement, to an even broader anti-establishment movement.

01:03:39.280 And once you move all the way from conservative all the way over to anti-establishment,

01:03:43.640 this is no longer conservative. Because the reality is that when you are conservative,

01:03:47.340 there are certain institutions, not all of them, but there are certain institutions that you

01:03:50.140 believe are core, that must be conserved, right? That actually you want them to remain established.

01:03:57.000 And so, you know, so I think that that broader thing, I think that what the Trump era did is

01:04:02.740 it shifted the conservative movement into the anti-left movement, right?

01:04:05.600 Rush Limbaugh said this famously, right?

01:04:07.240 He changed the Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies on his show

01:04:10.860 into the Institute for Advanced Anti-Left Studies.

01:04:13.040 He switched it back, but he did switch it, yeah.

01:04:16.400 He did switch it.

01:04:17.180 And I think it was indicative of kind of where the movement was.

01:04:19.360 It's like, we can't win as pure conservatives,

01:04:20.680 so now we're just going to become broadly anti-left

01:04:22.520 and we're the anti-left alliance.

01:04:24.180 And then after 2020, it turned into the,

01:04:26.560 we're the broad anti-establishment front.

01:04:29.000 And I think one of the problems that the Trump administration is having

01:04:31.140 is now they're establishment.

01:04:32.280 So what happens when you are an anti-establishment front that is the establishment?

01:04:37.400 And the same thing happens that always happens, which is you start to eat your own.

01:04:40.540 And so I think that that is an inherently unstable coalition.

01:04:43.360 There's no such thing as an establishment, anti-establishment coalition.

01:04:46.260 It doesn't work that way.

01:04:47.420 And so that's why I think you're seeing a lot of the chaotic ideological breakdown that you're watching right now.

01:04:51.780 Yeah, that's true.

01:04:52.500 And of course, you know, we have to continue to appeal to a populace that does feel like they were jilted by the establishment.

01:05:00.140 but you can't just be chasing that algorithm because the most clearly guaranteed way to go

01:05:05.500 viral on Twitter is to call your wife a whore. And none of us wants to do that. Gentlemen,

01:05:10.680 wonderful to be with you. Chris, thank you for joining. Thank you to all of you for being here.

01:05:14.880 See you on the next Friendly Fire. Thanks, guys. Good to see you.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 24, 2026

Friendly Fire： Promiscuity, Newsom’s DEI Insanity & Conspiracy Nuts

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