The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive,

00:00:05.200 the Price is Right Fortune Pick.

00:00:07.320 BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly.

00:00:10.140 19 plus to wager.

00:00:11.460 Ontario only.

00:00:12.540 Please play responsibly.

00:00:13.760 If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

00:00:16.880 please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor.

00:00:22.900 Free of charge.

00:00:23.960 BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario.

00:00:30.000 Before you knew what a stock was, you traded snacks, cards, turns.

00:00:35.560 You knew what something was worth because you felt it.

00:00:39.040 That instinct to trade didn't disappear.

00:00:41.720 It just grew up.

00:00:43.240 TD Easy Trade taps into that instinct so you can build something real for the future.

00:00:48.220 With no minimums, no monthly fees, and 100 free trades.

00:00:52.020 You already got this.

00:00:53.640 Because you are made to trade.

00:00:55.760 And TD Easy Trade is made to help.

00:00:58.660 Download it now.

00:01:00.000 While we all wring our hands over new political winds blowing in the GOP,

00:01:05.540 isolationism, protectionism, nativism, there is a new factional insurgency among Republicans

00:01:11.020 that we should be excited about. And that is the rise of the right-wing goth baddie.

00:01:17.160 We will examine the rising Republican star, the congressional candidate shaking up conservative

00:01:22.740 aesthetics. Then a Democrat campaign staffer calls for a trans jihad and general murder of 0.53

00:01:28.340 Republicans. And President Trump swings by the Teddy Roosevelt Library to remind us all how

00:01:32.760 terrible this year would have been with a lib president presiding over America's 250th anniversary. 0.79

00:01:38.620 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:58.340 Welcome back to the show. James Tallarico, who the polls are showing might be

00:02:03.540 the Democrat senator from Texas very soon. He wants you all to know that his whiteness and

00:02:11.840 his masculinity limits his imagination. That guy, right now, odds on the numbers, 0.72

00:02:19.560 very good chance that guy is going to be the senator from Texas. We'll get to that in a

00:02:23.840 moment. First, though, smash that like button and subscribe. Also, check us out on Spotify.

00:02:28.340 where you can download full episode audio and video to watch or listen whenever you want

00:02:32.580 without using your data. Do not miss an episode. Before we get to anything, I want to tell you

00:02:37.420 about Bowling Branch. Go to BowlingBranch.com slash Knowles, B-O-L-L-A-N-D-B-R-A-N-C-H.com

00:02:43.880 slash Knowles. There are few better feelings than getting home after a long day, taking a shower,

00:02:48.340 climbing into your own bed. And there are few worse feelings than immediately realizing

00:02:52.200 this bed is not nearly as comfortable as I remember. Maybe the sheets are worn out. Maybe

00:02:56.740 the comforter is too heavy. Maybe you're waking up hot halfway through the night. Point is, you

00:03:01.080 don't realize how much your bedding affects your sleep until you finally replace it. That's exactly

00:03:04.980 what happened to us with bowl and branch. Okay, we love our bowl and branch bedding. I've had many

00:03:11.300 sets of bowl and branch bedding. Say that 10 times fast over the years. I have purchased bowl and

00:03:18.020 branch to give to family members. The bedding is made from 100% organic cotton, so it's incredibly

00:03:23.780 soft and breathable. Unlike a lot of cooling bedding that depends on gross synthetic fabrics

00:03:28.480 and chemical treatments that'll probably poison you, Bowling Branch stays cool because of the

00:03:32.480 way the cotton itself is woven. It's simple, makes a real difference. It's just, it's the best.

00:03:36.440 I just ordered. I finally acquiesced to Alisa. She likes to spruce up the bedding once every

00:03:41.320 at least like 10 years, and she wanted a new comforter. We just ordered another Bowling

00:03:44.840 Branch comforter set. They're having their annual summer event. If you've been thinking

00:03:48.440 about upgrading your bedding, do it right now. Sleep cooler this summer with Bowling Branch.

00:03:51.260 for a limited time, get 20% off site-wide.

00:03:53.780 BowlingBranch.com slash Knowles, code Knowles.

00:03:56.100 BowlingBranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D-B-R-A-N-C-H.com slash Knowles,

00:04:00.700 code Knowles to take 20% off.

00:04:02.160 BowlingBranch.com slash Knowles, code Knowles.

00:04:04.900 Exclusions apply.

00:04:06.680 I hate to admit that Mr. Davies,

00:04:11.040 the producer of this show, is sometimes right.

00:04:13.880 I teased this a little bit yesterday.

00:04:15.180 I have to get to it.

00:04:16.740 He has been saying for weeks now

00:04:18.900 that I need to cover the rise of the goth baddie.

00:04:23.340 I said, what are you talking about, the goth baddie?

00:04:25.260 He was saying, no, Michael, my whole social media feed 0.50

00:04:28.240 is just being inundated with really good-looking goth girls.

00:04:32.700 It's just, it's a social phenomenon.

00:04:34.380 I said, no, no, no, that's a your feed phenomenon.

00:04:36.780 I said, I don't know what kind of sick, 0.99

00:04:38.820 perverted, freakish things you look up on your computer, 0.97

00:04:41.800 but I'm not seeing that anywhere.

00:04:43.300 I said, that's not a real trend.

00:04:46.020 And it takes a big, handsome guy

00:04:48.160 wearing a red, white, and blue plaid shirt to admit when he's wrong because the new star

00:04:53.560 GOP congressional candidate coming out of Colorado is, in fact, I think it's fair to say, 1.00

00:04:59.440 nothing lecherous in the observation, she's a goth baddie. This is Kelly Dennison. She just

00:05:06.500 won the Colorado second congressional primary, and she is not your typical Republican, at least 0.99

00:05:13.300 in the way she looks. She's a 27-year-old massage therapist. Her picture that is being posted around

00:05:20.300 in the news reports of her victory was actually taken in front of St. Joseph Catholic Parish.

00:05:25.460 Great signs. I was in Fort Collins this year. And she probably doesn't have a chance to win

00:05:31.760 the race. I think the district is D plus 20 or something like that. But she won the primary.

00:05:37.140 She has now won the hearts and minds, the fascination of at least many Republicans on 0.96

00:05:41.700 the internet. And it made me have to contemplate whether or not Mr. Davies was seeing a trend

00:05:46.820 and why it would be that a goth chick would be a conservative Republican. I've noticed this. 0.92

00:05:54.020 You know, I travel around the country, go to a lot of churches when I'm around the country,

00:05:57.560 go to a lot of events. And I've noticed this. I actually, I did not, not on my social media

00:06:01.640 feeds, but in real life, I have been noticing more and more goth girls. Like the kind of thing you

00:06:06.280 saw in the late 90s, white makeup, dark hair, some piercings, black eyelashes, black clothing.

00:06:14.520 I have been seeing them crop up more and more. And you would often imagine them being on the left

00:06:19.440 or maybe even the radical left if they weren't totally politically apathetic. But I've been

00:06:23.280 noticing them more and more on the right. Why is that? In a way, it makes perfect sense because

00:06:28.480 the goth aesthetic rose out of the Victorian era. The best explanation I've heard for the rise of

00:06:34.660 the goth aesthetic, which really took on prominence in America during the 80s, punk,

00:06:39.700 post-punk, then Hot Topic kind of commercialized it. But it comes from the Victorian era because

00:06:44.880 Queen Victoria spent a very, very long time mourning the death of her husband, Prince Albert.

00:06:50.480 So she wore a lot of black, and that's what it draws on. And it draws on other cultural

00:06:55.180 influences from that era, from the 19th century, the gothic novels, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

00:07:00.500 the kind of culture that is about enchantment the kind of culture that is about the supernatural

00:07:10.240 things that are a little uncanny eerie numinous a little bit spooky the kind of culture that takes

00:07:17.220 religion seriously what's interesting about the goth aesthetic is in the goth aesthetic you could

00:07:22.660 see someone wearing a pentagram or a crucifix you know totally opposite religious views but

00:07:27.820 nevertheless taking religion seriously, whether it be in an occult and rather bad religious form

00:07:34.140 or in a good religious form, which is in the form of Christianity. I mean, even the word goth 0.67

00:07:39.220 coming from Gothic, the Goths who sacked Rome, but then the great Gothic cathedrals and then

00:07:45.500 into the Gothic novels of the era. And I thought, in a way, this makes perfect sense because

00:07:50.320 we live in this world that has been so disenchanted. We live in this world where

00:07:56.380 everything is so clinical, everything is mediated by technology, where everything seems so clinical,

00:08:02.040 so scientific, so plain, our longings, our desires, our hopes, and our dreams, they're all reduced

00:08:07.600 to chemicals firing off in our brains or some other mechanical processes. And human beings

00:08:12.780 realize that that doesn't really fully explain the world. It doesn't even come close. It doesn't

00:08:17.520 explain the most important things in the world. And so I think we're living in an era, this is

00:08:21.840 also why you're seeing a big return to religion, and especially the more sacramental and traditional

00:08:26.480 forms of religion, the liturgical kind of religion, the smells and bells kind of religion,

00:08:31.300 you're seeing people recognize that we know that the world really is enchanted, and we need to

00:08:36.840 re-enchant ourselves with it. We're living post-stupid new atheism. We're now in a world 0.99

00:08:43.820 where we start to take religion and spiritual matters seriously. Even those gothic novels,

00:08:48.860 They're very romantic. It coincides with the romantic era. And we live in a world where we're

00:08:54.760 told we're just supposed to have clinical partnerships. I'm going to propose a marriage

00:09:01.260 to my partner because we're really good. We help each other, and we're all going to just do the

00:09:06.780 dishes, and we're going to be exactly co-equals, undifferentiated, and it's all. It's just so lame.

00:09:14.020 and we want romance. We want to be that couple climbing up the Empire State Building,

00:09:20.420 taking a knee and proposing on top of a needle above New York City. So we are living at a time,

00:09:27.160 maybe I'm reading too deeply into this congressional primary candidate, but I don't

00:09:30.920 think I am. I think it's indicative of a broader trend. We're in a time that calls for enchantment

00:09:36.200 and romance and religion. We are in an age that calls for the return of the goth baddie,

00:09:43.100 and the goth baddie will not be on the left. The goth baddie will be on the side that is looking 0.98

00:09:46.500 for a return of those things, and that is conservatives and Republicans generally.

00:09:51.080 Okay, now let's look at the Democrats. What are they up to? This is something that would come out

00:09:55.540 of a gothic novel, a horror novel or a horror movie. A Democrat campaign staffer has just

00:10:02.340 called on followers to, quote, kill your local Republican and commit trans jihad. Trans jihad, 1.00

00:10:10.100 two of our favorite things, transgenderism and Islam. Combine them, what could go wrong? 1.00

00:10:16.000 They do actually kind of combine in a lot of activism. This person, his name, I guess it's a

00:10:21.800 him, but he thinks he's a girl, is Tija De La Ruel. I don't think that's his Christian name,

00:10:29.720 but that's the name he goes by. He was a volunteer staffer for Wisconsin Democrat Socialist candidate

00:10:36.340 Katrina DeVille. Katrina DeVille. I don't know what Katrina DeVille's real name is because

00:10:41.180 Katrina DeVille is also transgender. This Democrat candidate in Wisconsin, also trans.

00:10:49.700 So this fella, the staffer, was photographed sitting in front of a dry erase board, 0.97

00:10:55.360 scrawled with the words, quote, kill your local Republican in black marker. And he says,

00:11:01.100 we're going to make this the moderate position for the state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin, which I

00:11:06.740 believe has pushed more serial killers on America than any other state in the country. 1.00

00:11:15.000 Now, this is the trans stuff. The trans people are kind of like the er, evil version of the 1.00

00:11:22.160 goth baddie. This is like everything goes wrong. This is the villain from the gothic novel. 1.00

00:11:27.800 But I guess what's really troubling about all of this, this person calling for a trans jihad,

00:11:33.680 is how not weird he is. I mean, he's weird. Don't get me wrong. He's weird, but he's not

00:11:42.380 weird by the standards of the modern Democrat party. I mean, just listen to the reporting.

00:11:47.140 He was working for another tranny, a tranny who it's now not uncommon for a transvestite 1.00

00:11:54.640 to be in public office. There was a time 10 years ago that would have been completely absurd in both 1.00

00:11:59.140 parties. Now, there's a transvestite in Congress, sitting in Congress as a member, a Democrat, 0.99

00:12:06.160 of course. What the left is going to want to do is say that the trans staffer calling for the 0.79

00:12:14.440 murder of all Republicans is an aberration. This is not what we're about. The Republicans are

00:12:21.500 going to pounce on this story, but this is not indicative at all of what the Democrats are.

00:12:26.780 And the problem is, it is. There's a big difference. Think about back in the 90s,

00:12:32.200 we had like David Duke. There's a similar version of that in the mid-20-teens, which was Richard

00:12:37.580 Spencer, who was a kind of more intelligent, more intellectual version of David Duke,

00:12:42.240 but still white identitarian who would say Heil victory and had Nazi leanings. What's ironic about

00:12:50.480 Richard Spencer is Richard Spencer, I think, is now a Democrat because he says the Republicans

00:12:54.160 can't do anything. But whatever. My only point is, whether they were pointing to Richard Spencer

00:12:59.580 or David Duke, the Republicans certainly could say, well, no, we're not about that.

00:13:05.180 They are advancing views that we don't agree with. So much so that Richard Spencer says,

00:13:10.200 I'm done with Republicans. I'm just going to vote for Democrats. At least they're confident.

00:13:13.060 But you could say in the 90s, David Duke would be calling for all these things. And it was all

00:13:17.160 the Republicans would say, no, no, no. We support colorblind meritocracy. No, no, no. We're the

00:13:23.220 party that freed the slaves from those Democrats who own the slaves. No, no, no. We don't have 0.50

00:13:26.340 anything in common with this guy. He is not one of us. The Democrats can't say that about these

00:13:31.600 guys. They can't say that about transgenderism. Obviously, there's a trans-identified member of

00:13:35.440 Congress. They've almost uniformly embraced the transgender ideology in recent years,

00:13:39.500 and they can't even run away from it now that it's totally unpopular. But furthermore, 0.98

00:13:43.280 a huge swath of Democrats, prominent mainstream Democrats, have embraced political violence as

00:13:48.500 well, including minimizing and excusing and celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk,

00:13:52.600 who was the most mainstream Republican. When it says, kill your local Republican, 0.98

00:13:57.020 we're talking about that kind of guy. So they're totally different scenarios. 0.97

00:14:02.980 And unfortunately, I'm open to a rebuttal, but unfortunately, it seems to me that,

00:14:08.800 what's this person's name? DeVille, Cruella DeVille, I don't know, whatever the

00:14:12.920 trans staffer's name is, working for the other trans candidate. That has become the norm. And if 0.82

00:14:19.120 you get enough drinks, or probably more like hard drugs when it comes to that side, if you got

00:14:24.360 enough drinks into even your mainstream Democrats, something tells me they would start defending or

00:14:32.720 at least minimizing and justifying political violence. Something tells me they wouldn't be

00:14:39.140 so totally opposed to trans jihad. Very, very dangerous. The staffer calling for this violence 1.00

00:14:46.800 is at most, I'm being as charitable as I can, is at most an exaggeration of the norm.

00:14:54.160 David Duke in the 90s, that was a contradiction of the Republican platform.

00:14:58.420 This person is at most a slight exaggeration of where normal Democrats are at. Normal Democrats,

00:15:04.520 increasingly a contradiction in terms. Now, speaking of trans liberal Democrats trying 0.96

00:15:10.080 to murder Republicans, we have finally gotten the sentencing for the guy who tried to kill 0.95

00:15:14.600 Brett Kavanaugh. You remember this? A big story that kind of went away. The person who over

00:15:20.560 Kavanaugh's decision to overrule Roe v. Wade traveled across the country, tried to murder

00:15:24.940 him and potentially his whole family and his house. We have just gotten the sentencing,

00:15:29.900 and it turns out that he too is trans it's always the ones you most expect we'll get to that

00:15:36.680 momentarily first though speaking of understanding public policy and politics i want to tell you

00:15:41.100 about pepperdine go to pepperdine.edu slash daily wire someone's going to write the laws someone's

00:15:45.840 going to shape public policy someone is going to advise elected officials lead agencies and make

00:15:49.640 decisions that affect millions of people the question is who i happen to be of the belief

00:15:53.740 that personnel is policy, that the people matter much more than some stated ideology on the back

00:16:01.120 of a napkin. You want the people to be well-formed. That is what forms their character,

00:16:05.740 their judgment. These are the people doing the jobs. That is why Pepperdine's School of Public

00:16:09.740 Policy exists. Students earn a master of public policy while tailoring their studies to American

00:16:13.760 politics, national security, or local government preparing for careers where ideas become action.

00:16:18.540 One of the things that makes the program especially unique is where students learn.

00:16:22.160 They study in Malibu, overlooking the Pacific, and in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House, combining rigorous academics with firsthand exposure to where policy is actually made.

00:16:32.420 I remember I had a professor in college teaching con law, and I noticed in the summer, he got out of the kind of northeast, and he would go teach at Pepperdine.

00:16:42.900 Because maybe it's a great school and a great place to be.

00:16:46.320 If you're serious about serving your community or even serving your country, Pepperdine School of Public Policy is worth exploring.

00:16:52.160 Go to go.pepperdine.edu slash dailywire.

00:16:55.820 That is go.pepperdine.edu slash dailywire.

00:16:59.440 The man who tried to murder Brett Kavanaugh

00:17:02.520 has been sentenced to eight years in prison 0.99

00:17:05.260 and is now a chick. 1.00

00:17:07.500 And what's really, that's not surprising. 1.00

00:17:12.780 Transgenderism is an intrinsically violent identity 1.00

00:17:15.420 and ideology because it is at odds 1.00

00:17:18.660 with one of the most basic aspects of nature

00:17:21.380 that being sexual difference. That is at the heart of distinctions between human beings,

00:17:28.200 much more so than race or ideology or geography or whatever. The distinction between man and

00:17:33.660 woman is core to human identity. And so when you have a problem with that, when you're at odds with

00:17:42.880 that, you are simply inclined, more inclined to be violent. What is somewhat surprising,

00:17:48.820 at least to me, is the way the Washington Post reported on this. The Washington Post,

00:17:53.400 she got eight years for plotting to kill Justice Kavanaugh. Prosecutors want more. 0.73

00:18:00.240 The Justice Department is appealing the sentence of Sophie Roski, who pled guilty in the case.

00:18:07.480 There you have it. Most people would remember and say, hold on, I thought it was a guy who

00:18:11.800 tried to kill Kavanaugh. Yeah. And then like a lot of these wackos, whether for sincere psychosis

00:18:17.560 or just for cynical reasons so that he could be housed in prison with women, which would be easier 1.00

00:18:23.400 on him, maybe so that he could commit more crimes. Who knows? Regardless, he now identifies as a woman

00:18:28.780 and the Washington Post is going along with it. The she and the Sophie and the her, and

00:18:35.040 we're still doing this. We're still doing this. And as I mentioned at the top, right now, 0.95

00:18:43.680 the Republican election chances are looking pretty bad. It looks like the midterms are going

00:18:48.060 to be as bad, if not worse, as some people were fearing a couple months ago. We're still in silly

00:18:52.240 season. Things could change, but the Iran war really hasn't helped the historical fact of the

00:18:58.080 midterm after one party wins the whole government. Things are compounding at this point to not look

00:19:03.240 great for Republicans. And we could be back to 2023 era peak woke like that. Like that. It's

00:19:14.720 happening. The Washington Post wants to do it. The Democrat Party wants to do it. The electeds,

00:19:19.460 the people on TV want to do it. The rank and file Democrats want to do it. They want to bring that

00:19:24.300 back. And there is one guy, there is this catacomb-like figure who is stopping them from

00:19:31.040 doing it. And it's Trump. And I get frustrations with Trump. I get that you wish he had done more

00:19:36.680 on immigration. Some people want him to do less on immigration. Or you wish he had bombed Iran

00:19:40.480 harder. Or you wish he hadn't bombed Iran at all. And I understand. I don't even mean to make light 0.85

00:19:44.560 of it. I understand the issues that people have with Trump. He is the only reason that we don't

00:19:52.760 live in a world full of trans jihad and this wacko identifying as a woman and the newspapers 0.99

00:20:01.460 calling all the men chicks. It's just him. The only reason that that abated at all was because 0.99

00:20:06.880 after the 2024 election, the powers that be got really scared. The cultural powers that be got

00:20:11.940 really scared that Republicans had unified government that were going to come after them.

00:20:14.660 And they saw the popular vote went the way of the conservatives. So that's what they pulled back

00:20:19.660 for now. It could all come back in a second. This is what brings me to President Trump at

00:20:25.240 the Roosevelt Library. A couple days ago, President Trump went to the Teddy Roosevelt,

00:20:29.360 not the Franklin Roosevelt, the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library. It was great.

00:20:32.700 The motorcade had horses. It was very Teddy Roosevelt. There was this great clip of Trump

00:20:37.700 debating or interacting with an AI of Teddy Roosevelt. It's all kind of fun,

00:20:42.700 wacky stuff. We don't have time to get to all of it. But here is just a little bit of his comments

00:20:48.120 days before the 250th official anniversary of the United States.

00:20:54.620 From winning our independence to laying the railroads taming the West and planting our flag

00:21:01.140 on the moon, nothing great that America has ever done has come without staggering effort and

00:21:08.320 it has never come easy. It's been really an unflagging persistence that drove us into

00:21:15.040 greatness we had the persistence of great people great men great women they were persistent they

00:21:22.040 never gave up this country was built on the conviction that just because something is hard

00:21:30.700 to do that only means that americans try even harder and they succeed almost all the time

00:21:38.280 because whatever the obstacle, whatever the challenge,

00:21:42.500 it's no match for American grit.

00:21:45.540 And you have it probably as much or more

00:21:47.480 than any other place there is.

00:21:49.800 You have American grit.

00:21:54.360 Okay, and you love it.

00:21:55.520 You got the guys with the bandanas

00:21:57.160 and the cowboy hats on behind them.

00:21:59.240 And it's just, it's all great.

00:22:00.220 Nice big belt buckles, real Americana.

00:22:02.920 And he's just talking about how great America is

00:22:04.960 and the spirit that built America.

00:22:06.780 He's really invoking the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt, who, maybe until Trump, did this kind of thing, second to none.

00:22:15.760 I mean, there are so many parallels between Trump and Teddy Roosevelt, all the way down to hosting combat sports at the White House.

00:22:22.000 Teddy Roosevelt would host boxing matches, was pre-UFC, but he would host boxing matches at the White House.

00:22:26.840 He would even participate in them sometimes.

00:22:28.960 and there was one time

00:22:31.060 he had to stop participating in them

00:22:32.280 because he was boxing some guy

00:22:34.580 and the guy got him in the head

00:22:36.020 and partially blinded him.

00:22:38.060 TR was partially permanently blinded

00:22:40.120 because he was as president

00:22:41.360 participating in a boxing match

00:22:42.580 at the White House.

00:22:43.440 So a lot of similarities there.

00:22:45.220 But all that could go through my head

00:22:47.160 while I'm watching these great comments,

00:22:49.340 totally normal,

00:22:50.060 nothing all that remarkable

00:22:51.520 about the comments.

00:22:53.340 America's a great place.

00:22:55.000 We've done great things.

00:22:56.020 We should do more great things.

00:22:56.880 what went through my head is what could have been because had trump lost in 2024 let's just start

00:23:04.980 there had trump lost in 2024 some democrat kamal harris would be presiding over the country for

00:23:10.940 our 250th what speech would she have given at the teddy roosevelt library she wouldn't have gone 1.00

00:23:16.860 but what speech would she have given at the franklin roosevelt library what speech would

00:23:19.820 joe biden had he been able to pull the drool up from his lower lip and actually stick it out

00:23:24.320 through the campaign. What speech would he have given at the library? Even Biden, who's supposed

00:23:28.860 to be the old school, more establishment, more moderate Democrat. Well, but the party moves so

00:23:33.320 far to the left, all of a sudden Joe Biden's embracing like transing the kids, literally

00:23:37.420 transing the kids. The speech would have been, and America, America, listen, we've had our

00:23:43.500 challenges. We haven't lived up to our ideals. We haven't, we've failed a lot. We've done a lot

00:23:49.340 of bad things. We're racist. The worst, the original sin of America, of slavery, we've never

00:23:54.920 totally gotten past it. This is a place we've gone to wars we shouldn't have gone to. We've

00:24:00.500 oppressed people. We've kept women down. Oh, and don't get me started on the gays. We haven't done 1.00

00:24:05.500 enough for the gays and the trans and the trans kids. And man, we suck. We're a terrible country, 1.00

00:24:11.160 but we try to be better. And every day we elect another Democrat, there's a chance we could be

00:24:16.000 better, but still a lot of our bitter clinging, hideous, rube, toothless citizens, they want to 0.92

00:24:22.120 drag us down into Nazism. They're deplorable politics, but we're going to try so that there 0.94

00:24:28.560 will be a chicken in every pot and a trans kid in every garage. That's what the speeches would 1.00

00:24:34.660 have been. It would have been a year of that. We're looking ahead, obviously, the 4th of July

00:24:41.500 tomorrow, it would have been a year of that. And we don't have that. Instead, we have big monuments,

00:24:49.940 new arcs going up in DC, big state fair on the National Mall, great speeches, bunting and banners

00:24:56.320 and flags. And at the very least, even in a polarized country where one major political

00:25:00.780 party has collapsed in its patriotism, reflected in every social scientific survey. At least in

00:25:07.440 that country, we got the face of the country, the guy with the bully pulpit saying, this is a great

00:25:11.000 country. And we've done great things. And we should be proud of that. And we should build on

00:25:13.760 that. And then what that got me thinking, final point on this, then we'll get to James Tallarico's

00:25:19.340 struggles with his whiteness and masculinity. But what if Trump had remained in office after 2020?

00:25:27.200 What if the 2020 election had turned out differently? Let's just say, hypothetically,

00:25:33.160 the Democrats hadn't changed all of the rules in the lead up to the election and increased the

00:25:37.240 opportunities for voter fraud inestimably. And what if, just however it shook out, I'm not,

00:25:43.760 what if Trump had remained in office? Well, then he would have been term limited out

00:25:48.760 in 2024. And Mike Pence, I guess, would have been the nominee. And I like Mike Pence.

00:25:57.400 But look, after two terms of any party, it's hard to keep holding on to the power,

00:26:01.760 especially with someone like trump we would have had a democrat and this is the way just

00:26:08.080 it's the silver lining of this one of the silver linings that we have of the suffering that we face

00:26:12.660 is that god and his providence sees a lot more than we do to put it mildly and even we were so

00:26:20.260 disappointed i certainly was disappointed when trump when the election turned out the way it

00:26:24.320 did i can't say trump lost i don't when it turned out the way it did i was really disappointed and

00:26:29.000 yet, imagine, imagine what we'd all be thinking now if we'd had a Democrat in 2025. Okay, before

00:26:34.840 we get to James Tallarico's sexual and racial struggles, I want to tell you about Mount Titano

00:26:40.300 Media. Go to mounttitanomedia.com. As we get closer to America's 250th anniversary, I have

00:26:46.760 been thinking about a simple question. How much of our own history do we actually remember? Not

00:26:50.060 the dates, not the trivia, the words, the speeches, the arguments, the ideas that shaped the country

00:26:54.840 in the first place. Because one of the strange realities of modern education is that Americans

00:26:58.740 are constantly told what to think about their history

00:27:01.080 while spending very little time

00:27:02.800 actually reading the people who made it.

00:27:04.600 That is one reason I'm very excited

00:27:06.760 to be part of a new project from Mount Titano Media.

00:27:10.160 It's called Finding Our Words, Words That Made America.

00:27:12.760 I think I have the book right here.

00:27:16.240 Look at that.

00:27:17.660 This is a great, great book.

00:27:19.300 The book collects some of the most important speeches

00:27:20.920 in American history,

00:27:21.960 many of which have been almost completely forgotten

00:27:24.020 despite helping define the American experiment itself.

00:27:27.080 now there's a new audible edition featuring voices you might recognize spencer clavin who cares

00:27:32.260 andrew clavin yeah yawn bill whittle no i'm not listening to that military leaders educators

00:27:38.400 scholars and yours truly that's the key okay it's a really really great book i just totally love it

00:27:46.580 uh you will get uh contacts from journalist tracy lee simmons and editor allison ellis go check it

00:27:50.920 out right now mount titanomedia.com get your copy of finding our words words that made america mount

00:27:56.180 titanomedia.com what you would have gotten what you would have gotten well you can get a preview

00:28:02.980 of what you would have gotten the kind of speech you would have gotten had a dem been in office

00:28:06.480 for the 250th anniversary from the potential if not likely a future senator from texas james

00:28:13.800 tallarico i should mention you know my imagination is also just limited by my own my own uh background

00:28:22.440 on an identity, right? My own, my whiteness, my masculinity, all those things limit my imagination

00:28:27.180 about what's possible. So I have to continually press against that to try to expand the limits of

00:28:32.580 what I'm dreaming of for our community. And that's where, you know, Dr. Robin, your book

00:28:39.480 helps me do that. And podcasts like this help me do that.

00:28:44.600 His struggle, he has this big struggle. The Germans call it a Kampf.

00:28:48.380 james tallarico's struggle is with his sexuality breaking news it's not not exactly man bites dog

00:28:58.120 story there james tallarico struggles with his sexuality but also with his race his whiteness

00:29:03.580 which limits his imagination now what's so funny about this is at a very basic level i guess i

00:29:13.420 guess we could agree with him. In other words, it is the case, no matter how enlightened and

00:29:19.720 wise we are, and people who are wiser, who have some humility, who have gained in wisdom and

00:29:24.620 knowledge, they can largely transcend the confines of their circumstances. But there's always some

00:29:31.020 limit. That's true. I guess that's true. In a certain sense, we can all say that we're limited

00:29:35.800 by our race by our sex by our socioeconomic circumstances but i guess you could say that

00:29:43.860 but he would never say this about any other race or any other sex so what i here's what i want to

00:29:50.340 hear from james talarico in total charity i say okay you're limited by being white i mean i hope

00:29:56.220 he comes on and does an interview he obviously will not but you say you're limited because you're

00:30:00.600 white white people are limited by their race men are limited by their sex and their imagination is 0.55

00:30:05.600 confined because of that. So can you say, hey, hey, blacks, your imagination is confined by your 0.99

00:30:12.940 race. I don't think he would say that. Hey, ladies, hey, ladies, I know you're getting a 0.98

00:30:19.300 little mouthy here, but just remember, your imagination is confined by your sex, woman. 1.00

00:30:24.660 Know your limits, woman. Would he say that? Probably not. So unfortunately, he's making this

00:30:30.380 like really really overstated point because people who have charity who have some goodwill

00:30:36.620 who have reason who exercise their reason and try to grow in knowledge your imagination can go

00:30:43.520 pretty far i actually i can imagine what it's like to be people who are pretty different from me

00:30:48.120 i can even imagine what it's like to be james tallarico i guess i really got a stretch for

00:30:52.420 that one, but I guess I could. But not only is he making this just tedious HR diversity training

00:31:01.680 session kind of nauseating point, but he doesn't even believe it because it's not really a principle

00:31:09.660 he holds because he wouldn't apply it evenly. Okay. Speaking of weird sex stuff, one thing I

00:31:14.480 do want to get to before we get to the mailbag, we have a great mailbag today, but a little positive

00:31:18.260 note before people start to go on their vacations for the 4th of July. I know many people are doing

00:31:22.700 that. There is some good news on a really, one, good news coming out of Texas, not James Tallarico.

00:31:31.060 And two, it's on an actual controversial point that only the real hardline kind of comprehensive

00:31:40.820 conservatives really grasp. I think I predicted a while ago that this issue would grow and grow

00:31:47.480 and grow in the public mind, and people would start to change their minds on it, but it would

00:31:50.520 take some time. But nevertheless, it's happening. We're seeing good moves here. And that's on IVF,

00:31:57.460 on in vitro fertilization and the surrogacy industry. The Texas Republican Party, this

00:32:03.240 happened just about a week or so ago, the Republican Party of Texas voted to add a

00:32:07.840 plank to their platform, citing their desire to, quote, protect fetal life from destructive

00:32:12.360 practices such as IVF and commercial surrogacy. This is despite the fact, as is reported,

00:32:20.000 that 65% of Texas Republican voters support legal and accessible, perhaps even subsidized IVF.

00:32:28.220 So this is actual political courage and moral clarity coming out of a Republican Party

00:32:33.560 organization, which that is a man bites dog story. You do not usually see courage and clarity coming

00:32:39.920 from the party apparatus. And you are getting that in Texas. And this is another example where

00:32:45.380 I would love to say, I hate to say I told you so, because I've been on the IVF drumbeat for a long

00:32:54.100 time now. And when I first started bringing it up on the show, that the idea that actually IVF is

00:32:59.680 bad and surrogacy is bad and commercial surrogate, you know, commercializing and commoditizing human

00:33:04.080 life is really bad. I got a ton of pushback from people. I'm sure there are many people listening

00:33:08.420 now who say, well, I only got my kid through surrogacy. How dare you say there are problems

00:33:12.640 with surrogacy? I only got my grandkid or my niece or my nephew through surrogacy. How dare

00:33:16.500 you say that? Of course, that doesn't hold up as a logical argument. I know people who are

00:33:22.580 conceived as a result of rape, and I love those people, but you would never say, I only got my

00:33:28.500 friend as the consequence of rape. Therefore, rape is good, and we need legal rape, and we need to 0.55

00:33:33.220 subsidized rape. No one would ever say that. You would never say that a good end justifies 1.00

00:33:39.440 an immoral means. So the question really then becomes, okay, is IVF and surrogacy morally

00:33:45.440 justified? I know people want it. I understand how difficult infertility can be. But is it really

00:33:51.100 justified to hand over to business people and dubious physicians the origin and destiny of

00:34:01.100 human life, to establish the domination of science and technology over the origin and destiny of

00:34:05.400 human life, and to trade people as you would trade baseball cards or any other commodity.

00:34:10.200 Is that really justified? To say nothing of then opening up the prospect of gay couples 0.99

00:34:18.620 creating children with the intent to deprive them of their natural mother, father, or all the rest 0.99

00:34:23.080 of it. To say nothing of the fact that the vast majority of people who are conceived through IVF

00:34:28.320 are killed, are intentionally killed. This is great. This is really, really great. The Texas 0.97

00:34:34.860 Department of Health and Human Services, I'm sorry, no, the National Department of Health

00:34:38.860 and Human Services, their embryo adoption awareness and services program is also now

00:34:44.500 replacing the word embryos in several sections with child, children, and children who already

00:34:47.760 exist. Really important. There's nothing radical about that. Embryo is just a term for a stage of

00:34:53.800 development of a child, of a person. You say fetus, fetus is just the Latin word for offspring.

00:34:58.320 No one thinks it's a platypus.

00:35:00.140 No one thinks it's a desk chair.

00:35:02.040 It's a human being.

00:35:02.840 It's a living human being.

00:35:03.700 So they're just clarifying what it really is.

00:35:06.020 And that's important.

00:35:07.320 It's really important that people are now seeing the reality.

00:35:09.960 And at the time, there were a lot of sort of cynical political people who said,

00:35:13.500 Michael, don't go after surrogacy.

00:35:15.540 Don't go after IVF.

00:35:17.040 You know, it's so unpopular to go after those things.

00:35:19.760 It's going to hurt your ratings.

00:35:21.620 People are going to turn on you.

00:35:23.080 Just don't touch that issue.

00:35:24.300 in much the same way that cynical political operators would say,

00:35:29.680 don't talk about traditional marriage.

00:35:31.360 We lost that battle.

00:35:32.640 Just move on in much the same way that cynical political operators would say,

00:35:36.300 don't talk about abortion.

00:35:37.780 Oh, come on.

00:35:38.360 Just, we lost that battle.

00:35:39.440 Supreme court ruled twice.

00:35:40.760 Just move on public opinion.

00:35:42.960 It's hard to overcome.

00:35:43.520 Just move on. 0.98

00:35:44.720 Notice one, we have just scored a major victory in winning the abortion fight

00:35:51.520 and many PR victories on that.

00:35:54.300 but also at the Supreme Court, people thought it could never happen.

00:35:58.320 Already, public support of so-called same-sex marriage has really declined.

00:36:03.880 I mean, you're seeing a real collapse in public support for that.

00:36:06.540 And a time will come when people view IVF the same way.

00:36:09.340 And it's not because we're some, you know, silver-tongued devil

00:36:12.140 who can convince people of anything.

00:36:14.020 It's because people don't know what it is.

00:36:17.400 They don't see it for what it is,

00:36:19.120 which is creating children to deprive them of their natural parents in many cases.

00:36:24.300 creating people most of whom will be killed or frozen indefinitely in virtually every case and

00:36:29.720 commoditizing human life which we all know is wrong that's happening that's already happening

00:36:34.300 even and and some of the people who are thinking about this most deeply are even getting a little

00:36:38.980 bit ahead of the the demos the voting public on that good stuff i like seeing that okay much to

00:36:44.520 get to my favorite comment yesterday is from zach killen who says how many mayflower cigars do i

00:36:50.020 need to get my comment read on the show. You, I don't know how many you've bought. I suspect a

00:36:56.320 bazillion. You know, we sold out of the Mayflower Dawn of America, the special limited edition for

00:37:00.820 the 250th and the tubes and the special edition box. I told you it was going to happen. But for

00:37:05.740 those of you who did not get it, we're trying to order more. We'll see if we can get it done.

00:37:09.000 It's hard. These are, you know, we're using on this seven-year aged true Connecticut, USA,

00:37:13.440 Connecticut tobacco. And it's just, you know, this is a handmade artisanal product. So it's a little

00:37:17.000 tricky to do, but we're, we're working on it. For those of you who did get your boxes,

00:37:20.080 congratulations. Glad you, glad you got them. I'm taking, taking a couple of my own. I only

00:37:24.660 have one box actually. I didn't even hoard them all. I only got one box of the Dawn of America

00:37:28.540 and, but I'm taking two of the sticks to smoke for 4th of July. Okay. Finally, finally, we arrive

00:37:33.660 at my favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you in the mailbag. Mailbag sponsored

00:37:36.140 by pure talk at pure talk.com slash Knowles can WLES to switch to the only wireless company

00:37:40.560 awarded five stars in every category by consumer reports. Take it away.

00:37:44.040 hey michael what are your thoughts on the sspx proceeding to consecrate new bishops without

00:37:49.700 papal authority i know that you love the traditional liturgy but you're also not a

00:37:54.240 vatican and pope hater as some catholics are as with all your other takes i know that you're

00:37:58.980 probably going to have a well thought out and moderate response that'll probably make both

00:38:02.600 sides unhappy which of course makes you correct anyways thanks for everything you do and for the

00:38:07.820 show very precisely worded question and totally accurate uh so for those who don't know there's

00:38:13.340 a group called the Society of St. Pius X, which is a priestly fraternity within the Catholic

00:38:20.920 Church. You know, there's all sorts of groups within the Catholic Church. You have different

00:38:24.080 religious orders, the Dominicans or the Jesuits, so I think technically you're still Catholic.

00:38:28.360 You get priestly fraternities like the Society of St. Pius X, which really exists to preserve

00:38:35.160 the traditional Latin Mass and has qualms with the Second Vatican Council and certainly with

00:38:40.480 its implementation. You have the Precifraternity of St. Peter, which was founded as kind of an

00:38:44.380 offshoot of the SSPX, which does not object in principle to the Second Vatican Council,

00:38:49.140 also preserves the traditional Latin Mass, wonderful, wonderful fraternity in the church.

00:38:54.000 Anyway, this all started because in 1988, was it? In the 1980s, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

00:39:02.640 consecrated bishops without the authority of the Vatican, without the authority of the Pope.

00:39:08.320 So he illicitly consecrated four bishops, and they all immediately incurred automatic excommunications.

00:39:17.180 Now, it meant that they were still validly saying Mass, but it was illicit.

00:39:22.900 It was real.

00:39:23.840 When they consecrate the host, that's the real Eucharist, where they're really saying Mass, but it was illicit.

00:39:29.340 It was done without the permission of the Vatican.

00:39:32.240 And so there's been this power dynamic going on for decades now.

00:39:34.980 At one point, the excommunications of the bishops were lifted. Then one of them was kind of put back

00:39:40.400 on again because the bishop had some impolitic things to say, among other things. And I won't

00:39:45.960 get into all of the details of it. But they've just decided, okay, they haven't come to terms

00:39:50.780 with Rome, so they're going to illicitly consecrate the bishops again. They incur automatic

00:39:54.820 excommunications. It's very sad. The whole thing is very, very sad. I am opposed to schism. I am

00:40:03.480 opposed to, I don't, you know, the ordination of the bishops, it was even kind of dubious in itself

00:40:09.200 because you have to have an apostolic mandate. You have to have a mandate from like the Pope to

00:40:14.920 consecrate the bishops. And they kind of worked around that in the liturgy, which didn't totally

00:40:19.260 persuade me. But in any case, it's very bad. I've never attended an SSPX chapel. I love the

00:40:25.820 traditional Latin Mass. I attend the traditional Latin Mass. But I do have a great deal of sympathy

00:40:31.140 for the SSPX. And one of the arguments the SSPX make is the only reason you get these other groups

00:40:36.180 that are kind of defending the traditional Latin mass is because we're the bad guy. Like they're 0.96

00:40:40.180 the good cop, we're the bad cop. And if you get rid of us, then all those other groups are going

00:40:44.300 to go away too. And, you know, now this leads to a scary conclusion, which is that, you know,

00:40:49.840 in a way it's these kind of other groups that save the church rather than the church saving

00:40:53.780 all of us, which I obviously don't agree with. However, I guess what I would say my conclusion

00:40:59.340 from this is not to dunk on the SSPX, where I think most of the people involved have very good

00:41:04.860 intentions. Maybe some are genuinely schismatic, but most have good intentions. I'm not persuaded

00:41:09.260 really by the arguments of the SSPX, but I love what they are trying to do, which is to preserve

00:41:13.940 the traditional Latin Mass. There's so many abuses, liturgical abuses that came about after the Second

00:41:18.520 Vatican Council. And so I have great sympathy. The whole thing makes me very, very sad. I hope

00:41:23.440 the Vatican has seemed to suggest that they want to reconcile, maybe. I pray and I hope

00:41:29.260 that that happens. That's what I'm hoping

00:41:31.180 for here. So yes, I gave you an answer that is almost

00:41:33.020 exactly as you would have predicted. How interesting

00:41:35.060 is that? There's so much more I want to get

00:41:37.120 to. I've got written mailbag questions

00:41:39.300 about love, about romance.

00:41:41.100 We don't have time. We've got to go

00:41:43.180 catch a flight. So, I hope everybody

00:41:45.080 has a beautiful 4th of July.

00:41:47.540 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:41:49.360 See you Monday.

00:41:59.260 Amen.

GOP Launches A Secret Weapon On Libs： Goth ＂Baddies＂

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript