The Michael Knowles Show - February 16, 2025


How To Debate： Me vs. 25 LGBTQ Activists REACTION


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

208.54953

Word count

3,202

Sentence count

261

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of the Surrounded podcast, I sit down with comedian and podcaster Michael Bloomberg to discuss his experience as a debate guest on CNN's "The Situation Room" and discuss the differences between moderated and unmoderated debates.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Did you know that over 85% of grass-fed beef sold in U.S. grocery stores is imported?
00:00:05.260 That's why I buy all my meat from GoodRanchers.com instead.
00:00:08.900 Good Ranchers products are 100% born, raised, and harvested right here in the USA from local family farms.
00:00:14.600 Plus, there's no antibiotics ever, no added hormones, and no seed oils.
00:00:18.820 Just one simple ingredient.
00:00:20.360 That's meat.
00:00:21.280 Best of all, Good Ranchers delivers straight to your door for added convenience.
00:00:24.760 So lock in a secure supply of American meat today.
00:00:26.980 Subscribe now at GoodRanchers.com and get free meat for life and $40 off with code DAILYWIRE.
00:00:32.400 That's $40 off and free meat for life with code DAILYWIRE.
00:00:35.720 Good Ranchers, American meat delivered.
00:00:37.680 My point is fascism as a whole really loves to hone in on small portions of society.
00:00:45.520 And right now, I'm sorry, I'm going to outright call you a fascist.
00:00:49.080 Oh, no.
00:00:49.860 Oh, heaven. Heaven for a fan.
00:00:51.700 What's it like to be surrounded by more than 20 people who want to rip you to shreds and devour your body?
00:00:59.160 Well, I just found out when I flew to Los Angeles to appear on the Surrounded podcast.
00:01:04.320 I don't understand the fascination with trans bodies and what's happening in the bathroom. 0.94
00:01:08.520 I've engaged in plenty of debates before.
00:01:10.760 The Surrounded debate was a little bit different than some of the others.
00:01:14.060 For instance, when I'm having an unmoderated one-on-one debate, that's going to give me a different style of preparation.
00:01:22.000 What you want to do is give your opponent enough rhetorical robe that he or she can hang him or herself with it.
00:01:30.280 As happened with Bronte on the subject of gender identity.
00:01:35.160 The percentage of women who get abortions because the baby poses a direct threat to their lives, it's a very small number.
00:01:43.120 Far less than 1%.
00:01:44.380 By direct threat to their lives, you mean they're going to lose their life?
00:01:47.680 Yeah.
00:01:48.120 Okay, well, Michael, do you know what the leading cause of death for pregnant people is?
00:01:52.120 Pregnant people? 0.95
00:01:52.980 Mm-hmm.
00:01:54.800 Mothers? 0.99
00:01:55.720 Does it bother you to use inclusive language?
00:01:58.100 It's just interesting because...
00:01:59.040 I prefer to use precise language.
00:02:00.500 So this was a great moment because we weren't even really debating trans identity or whatever.
00:02:06.160 We were debating abortion.
00:02:07.520 But she kept speaking and she got tripped up in this hobby horse of pregnant people. 1.00
00:02:13.960 So in those kind of debates, you just kind of let them keep talking.
00:02:17.680 Or maybe you gently pull them in to destroying themselves.
00:02:21.500 That's very different than when you have a moderated debate.
00:02:24.360 Are people who are marching shouting Jews will not replace them?
00:02:27.080 Nazis are bad.
00:02:27.640 Can you say yes or no to this?
00:02:29.280 Are you capable of that?
00:02:30.120 I don't need to answer a question because I'm not on the stage.
00:02:32.320 No, I did not ask you if Nazis were bad.
00:02:34.320 And I understand those are big words.
00:02:36.140 People who don't like Jews, people who are Nazis are bad people, play.
00:02:38.800 That's not what I asked you.
00:02:39.940 I've answered this five times.
00:02:41.320 No, you haven't.
00:02:41.940 You're rewording it.
00:02:43.400 Even Chris has gone my side.
00:02:45.240 I feel so badly for you.
00:02:46.940 Why do you feel badly for me?
00:02:47.740 It's very easy to play a victim.
00:02:50.080 You can boo all you want to.
00:02:51.860 I don't give a half a f***ing s***.
00:02:53.760 So there, the way to win one of those debates is you have to be prepared to debate the moderator
00:02:59.800 and win.
00:03:01.260 And in a live debate setting like that, you need to win over the audience.
00:03:05.480 What's a little bit strange about the surrounded debate format is there's not really a live
00:03:10.380 audience.
00:03:10.820 There are just so many debate opponents that they themselves kind of constitute an audience.
00:03:14.940 But you don't have a huge amount of time.
00:03:16.660 The clock is running down and all of the other participants are ready to vote out the other
00:03:21.040 person at any given moment.
00:03:22.640 So it off-foots you from all these other kinds of strategies.
00:03:25.840 Now, compare that to going on a cable news talk show or something like that.
00:03:29.500 The cable news talk shows exist for people to speak over each other.
00:03:33.420 Unfortunately, I don't like it, but that's just how the medium is built.
00:03:36.020 You have to do that if you're going to participate in them.
00:03:38.380 And so you have to get your points in in a more concise way.
00:03:41.960 You do have to clobber people.
00:03:43.520 If there are multiple people in a debate panel, then you're going to form coalitions.
00:03:49.160 And you really don't want to find yourself being the one surrounded by the people who
00:03:53.760 are attacking you on cable news, especially if you don't know what you're talking about,
00:03:57.260 as unfortunately happened to someone that I was recently chatting with on Piers Morgan's show.
00:04:02.280 Oh, my God.
00:04:02.940 Are you really are you really saying that the reason the crusade, which was sent to the
00:04:06.820 Holy Land to liberate the Holy Land from whom?
00:04:09.560 From Jews and Muslims. 0.96
00:04:10.680 I'll tell you why the crusade.
00:04:11.800 The crusade began because the eastern emperor asked for help from the western pope because
00:04:16.820 the Seljuk Turks were slaughtering Christians in the Holy Land because those lands were Christian 0.67
00:04:20.700 before the Muslims invaded in the seventh century.
00:04:23.720 So that's why those lands became those lands became Christian after the first crusade.
00:04:27.920 OK, so let's be very clear.
00:04:29.500 The lands were Christian in the first and second centuries.
00:04:31.840 Islam didn't exist before the seventh century.
00:04:33.660 What are you talking about?
00:04:34.400 OK, I could.
00:04:36.020 Listen, listen, I can go all day if you want to talk about the crusades.
00:04:40.920 Can you, though?
00:04:41.740 Go on.
00:04:42.420 So in a cable news type hit, because it's all just a bunch of talking heads, facial expressions
00:04:48.640 really matter.
00:04:49.300 You need to be still.
00:04:50.620 You need to be patient.
00:04:52.640 You need to be calm.
00:04:53.960 Calmness is really important.
00:04:55.000 The moment you get a little agitated, especially when the camera is so close up on you, you
00:04:58.740 start to look like you're unraveling, as perhaps you saw happening with my interlocutor there.
00:05:04.520 And then if they start to say things that aren't true on a subject that you maybe know something
00:05:08.840 about and they don't know anything about, then it looks absolutely devastating.
00:05:14.740 And that is the point of those.
00:05:16.180 You need to make sure that whatever point they raise, you just smack it down in a way that
00:05:21.120 is charitable, but decisive.
00:05:24.280 That medium is unlike the Surrounded podcast, which is 20 minutes for every single topic.
00:05:30.120 That medium is one to two minutes max for the viral exchange that goes around the media.
00:05:38.000 So fast forward to the Surrounded podcast.
00:05:40.860 I have over 20 people who want to rip me apart, sitting all around me, ready to jump in, fighting
00:05:47.160 for the opportunity, time limited, to destroy my views with facts and logic.
00:05:53.180 Here's how it went.
00:05:54.180 So what about the right of a kid to have his natural mother and father?
00:05:57.140 Because when the rubber meets the road in gay marriage, it's not just two people living
00:06:01.000 together.
00:06:01.400 You could always do that.
00:06:02.140 It's not two people doing those things you guys do that you could always do that.
00:06:05.040 It's the ability to adopt children and in some cases acquire children by going to the
00:06:09.280 baby store and purchasing the eggs of one woman, renting the womb of another woman, and
00:06:13.640 raising children, depriving them intentionally of their natural mothers. 0.52
00:06:16.340 And that's very wrong.
00:06:17.580 And that does infringe on the rights of kids.
00:06:19.580 I understand that you believe that.
00:06:21.480 And all the scientific literature, by the way, backs that up.
00:06:24.160 That's not true.
00:06:24.940 It is true.
00:06:25.760 Fact check that, please.
00:06:26.660 It is true.
00:06:27.520 Let's let them fact check that on the video and progress with the conversation.
00:06:30.220 I'm happy to fact check it for you right now.
00:06:31.880 No.
00:06:32.060 The study that you're referring to is the Michael Rosenfeld study out of Stanford in 2010.
00:06:36.060 And it said that kids raised in gay households did just as well in school as the other kids.
00:06:39.660 It's not a study.
00:06:40.780 No, it was a major study.
00:06:41.760 No, you don't be okay.
00:06:42.300 But it was wrong.
00:06:43.300 It had a major methodological error.
00:06:45.240 And it's been corrected by multiple other stuff.
00:06:47.420 I would love to engage with you on that in a sec.
00:06:48.700 Would you?
00:06:49.060 Yes, in a sec.
00:06:50.260 The majority of people in society are okay with these things.
00:06:53.300 And society's laws should reflect what the majority of people are okay with.
00:06:57.560 The majority of people were okay with slavery for much of the 19th century.
00:07:00.980 So should society's laws just reflect that?
00:07:03.600 Slavery is bad.
00:07:05.540 Gay marriage, gay adoption, things like that are not bad. 0.98
00:07:07.660 Gay adoption is very bad for the kids. 1.00
00:07:09.700 I'm not even knocking the guys who want to do it.
00:07:11.640 I understand there's a natural longing to have kids.
00:07:13.860 But it's still bad for the kids.
00:07:15.760 Okay.
00:07:16.260 So you can tell he implicitly concedes the debate when he shifts the ground of it.
00:07:21.000 So initially he says, it is not true.
00:07:23.500 It is not backed up by the scientific literature that it's bad for kids to be raised in same-sex
00:07:28.660 parent homes.
00:07:29.580 And I say, no, it is.
00:07:30.780 And I start to explain why, though.
00:07:32.480 He ends up cutting me off so we couldn't really talk about many of the studies.
00:07:35.480 And he says, well, never mind that.
00:07:37.020 Most people think it's good, so it's good.
00:07:39.920 And so he shifts it from, all right, let's see.
00:07:42.360 Is there any rigorous scientific study that's actually looked into this?
00:07:46.020 Oh, shoot.
00:07:46.800 Maybe Knowles here actually does have some studies.
00:07:48.940 Okay, well, never mind.
00:07:50.080 Let's turn to public opinion surveys instead.
00:07:52.900 But of course, you know, 50 million Frenchmen can be wrong, which is the point that I made 1.00
00:07:58.180 to him.
00:07:58.560 People popularly have held views that have been quite wrong for history, and we've corrected
00:08:03.700 them.
00:08:03.920 But there are other studies, perhaps the most prominent of which came in 2012, which examined
00:08:08.440 kids raised in same-sex households and normal family households on 80 different measures
00:08:15.320 of emotional and social well-being, whether they're going to end up on welfare, whether
00:08:19.840 they're going to end up hooked on drugs, whether they're going to end up with anxiety and depression
00:08:23.500 and all that sort of stuff.
00:08:24.440 And it found out that on 77 out of 80 measures, the kids raised in the normal households fared
00:08:33.480 better than the kids who were raised in same-sex households.
00:08:36.640 Even Jubilee tried to do a fact check on this to back up their point, but it's totally indefensible.
00:08:41.920 Go to GoodRanchers.com, use promo code Knowles.
00:08:45.820 I'm going to tell you about my dinner last night.
00:08:47.760 I come home, sweet little Elisa and the boys had already eaten, but actually, I don't know
00:08:52.000 if sweet little Elisa had totally finished eating. 0.79
00:08:54.220 I guess the boys are running around, they need this, they need that.
00:08:56.180 So anyway, I go to get my plate, and I see a nice, beautiful, delicious New York strip
00:09:01.060 steak from Good Ranchers.
00:09:02.860 So I go with the tongs, I get my steak, and Elisa says, don't take that whole steak, Mac!
00:09:07.200 I haven't had that yet.
00:09:09.140 I said, wait, hold on, you want me to cut this steak in half?
00:09:12.560 I'm a grown man, I'm not going to eat this full New York strip steak?
00:09:15.800 No, I want to have some.
00:09:17.160 I said, fine, I'm a good husband.
00:09:19.020 I cut the steak in half, even though I want to eat this entire delicious New York strip
00:09:23.860 from Good Ranchers.
00:09:24.820 I take half.
00:09:25.840 But then she tells me later, she goes, but there's also a little ribeye over there,
00:09:28.860 you have some of the ribeye, and then you have...
00:09:30.180 I said, okay, that makes a little bit more sense.
00:09:32.160 So I have both the New York strip and the ribeye, both delicious.
00:09:34.700 Frankly, I liked the New York strip a little bit more.
00:09:37.080 Whatever you have from Good Ranchers, you're going to love it.
00:09:39.120 It's the best meat you're going to get.
00:09:40.340 The price can't be beat.
00:09:41.440 It's all American. 0.73
00:09:42.440 It's all really good, clean stuff.
00:09:43.900 Not too late to start the new year right.
00:09:46.020 Go to goodranchers.com right now.
00:09:47.960 You will get free ground beef, chicken breasts, or wild-caught salmon in every order for a
00:09:51.840 year, plus $25 off with code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, goodranchers.com, promo code Knowles.
00:09:57.640 A key skill that you need to develop for any kind of debate is your BS detector.
00:10:01.760 You need to be able to identify when someone is saying something that he knows nothing
00:10:06.980 about, as happened in this clip.
00:10:08.820 Going back to specifically same-sex marriage, you said you argued from an anthropology.
00:10:15.040 That's like your basis of...
00:10:16.140 Yeah, men and women are different, and marriage involves one of each.
00:10:19.220 Which specific culture are you referring to?
00:10:21.120 Because we have so many cultures that have communal relationships in which people are
00:10:24.640 raised.
00:10:24.940 When you said in the act of procreation, have you ever heard of it takes a village to raise
00:10:28.860 kids?
00:10:29.380 That's not something that's just a saying.
00:10:30.780 No, no, I didn't say...
00:10:31.580 That actually happens literally in specific cultures.
00:10:32.780 No, no, no, but when I say procreation, that's the act of creating the child, and usually there
00:10:37.620 aren't three or four people involved in that.
00:10:39.320 It's usually two people.
00:10:40.500 Yeah, but even those people that do create the child oftentimes were referred to as different
00:10:44.560 genders depending on the culture that it is that you're observing.
00:10:46.940 Which cultures are you referring to?
00:10:49.020 We could talk about the Mayans.
00:10:50.380 We could talk about certain Amazonian cultures.
00:10:52.240 I recognize that they're not Western cultures, so you might not prioritize them, but that
00:10:55.880 doesn't mean that they don't exist, unfortunately.
00:10:57.600 Well, they no longer exist, the Mayans. 1.00
00:10:59.480 Oh, right, because of colonialism.
00:11:00.740 I'm glad that you're just pointing it, though.
00:11:01.740 But what was their view of gender?
00:11:03.700 What specifically are you referring to?
00:11:05.060 Gender is something that's specifically a social characteristic that we're all performing
00:11:08.020 in right now.
00:11:09.200 I mean, you can't say...
00:11:10.160 No, no, I'm not asking your opinion.
00:11:12.620 I'm asking what...
00:11:13.180 You brought up the Mayans. 0.99
00:11:13.800 What did the Mayans think?
00:11:14.840 That's just something that is observable.
00:11:16.000 But what did the Mayans think?
00:11:17.160 You brought it up.
00:11:17.860 You seem so confident about this.
00:11:19.140 What did the Mayans think about marriage and gender?
00:11:20.940 People can look up right now.
00:11:22.480 If you're right here at Google...
00:11:23.880 Yeah, exactly.
00:11:24.500 Michael's trying to hone me down on trivia night right now.
00:11:26.780 No, I'm just asking you to explain...
00:11:27.980 Right now, what we're trying to talk about specifically are examples of what's happening.
00:11:30.180 I'm asking you to explain the point that you brought up.
00:11:33.200 Yes, this is really an important point.
00:11:34.640 And so he's not the only guy who's fallen into this error.
00:11:38.140 But a lot of people in modernity, they think, well, no, surely there must have been a
00:11:42.760 billion different views, you know, of marriage because people deny the natural law.
00:11:46.540 They deny objective moral reality.
00:11:48.700 So they just think, well, it just stands to reason that all these different cultures in
00:11:52.660 history must have had totally different views.
00:11:54.060 But the thing is, they haven't.
00:11:55.820 Because the natural law is real and human nature is real and it doesn't really change.
00:12:00.100 So when he says, well, the Mayans, I think, look at this guy, this guy doesn't know anything
00:12:04.620 about the Mayans.
00:12:05.940 Okay, what did the Mayans think?
00:12:07.560 And then he does this tap dance for three minutes because he can't answer the question.
00:12:11.060 I enjoy engaging in all of these kinds of debates because I like ideas.
00:12:15.580 I endeavor to seek the truth and I like to persuade people of the truth as I see it.
00:12:21.620 So I dig them all.
00:12:22.960 But I, in particular, I liked this format.
00:12:27.260 This format is great.
00:12:28.240 I love this and I'm just irritated that we didn't think of this first and do this show
00:12:31.080 ourselves.
00:12:31.660 Some of the interlocutors are a little more serious than others.
00:12:34.900 But I really liked chatting with all of them and they have a great deal of my sympathy.
00:12:39.940 I think Michael knows this is annoying.
00:12:41.640 You need to be quite honest.
00:12:43.380 Disrespectful and kind of unintelligent.
00:12:45.820 I think he's a fucking Nazi.
00:12:47.460 The way that they usually dishonestly present my views is that I hate them or that I want
00:12:52.840 to kill them or something like that, which I don't.
00:12:55.380 I've explicitly said that I don't.
00:12:57.040 They say, oh, well, we don't want people to die.
00:12:59.420 But they know damn well that the suicide rates skyrocket the second you remove access to
00:13:05.320 gender-affirming care.
00:13:06.480 That was one of the most horrific experiences I've ever had talking to another human being.
00:13:11.740 I'm very glad I did it and I'm never doing it again.
00:13:14.320 Yeah, Michael's a clown.
00:13:15.740 I've talked to Ben Shapiro.
00:13:17.180 I've talked to Charlie Kirk.
00:13:18.080 I've talked to a lot of conservative figures and he is the worst at having some sort of cohesive
00:13:23.260 argument.
00:13:24.060 All he tries to do is push people's buttons to get these emotional responses that then he can
00:13:28.740 turn into those viral clips.
00:13:30.320 I was all pretty funny and I suppose to be expected that they would call me Hitler or
00:13:34.800 whatever, you know, an evil, stupid cretin. 0.99
00:13:37.780 The one part that I disagree with is with the guy with the beard, Mason, who says, look,
00:13:44.980 I've talked to these other conservatives and all the other conservatives are all above
00:13:48.980 board, but that Knowles, you know, that Knowles, he's just bomb throwing and he's not really
00:13:53.040 trying to pursue an argument.
00:13:54.500 He's just trying to be provocative and get an emotional response.
00:13:57.540 That is, in fact, the opposite of what I do.
00:14:00.900 Okay.
00:14:01.440 I think I would probably have higher ratings if that is what I did, but I don't.
00:14:05.900 If anything, I think my presentation here was a little bit dry and friendly and conciliatory.
00:14:14.320 I'm just stating my views, which are views that most people agreed with until very recently.
00:14:20.860 Views like marriage is between a man and a woman.
00:14:23.700 Views like men can't become women.
00:14:27.640 I even granted the premise that there's a distinction between biological sex and gender
00:14:32.020 expression.
00:14:32.820 As far as I know, I'm the only conservative who grants that publicly.
00:14:36.440 Frankly, maybe the fact that I'm friendly about it is more irritating to them.
00:14:40.340 If they just have to contend with the ideas themselves, it leaves them more vulnerable,
00:14:45.440 I think.
00:14:46.100 That's my take on it.
00:14:47.160 You know what I love about our partnership with Helix Sleep?
00:14:56.560 They understand that better sleep means better days.
00:14:59.020 I've been sleeping on mine for months now, and the difference is incredible.
00:15:02.040 No more tossing and turning, just pure, restorative sleep.
00:15:05.240 Take advantage of their incredible 4th of July sale.
00:15:07.680 Right now, you can get 27% off site-wide at Helix.
00:15:10.500 Just visit helixsleep.com slash dailywire.
00:15:12.880 That's helixsleep.com slash dailywire for 20% off site-wide.
00:15:16.700 Make sure you enter our show name at checkout so they know we sent you.
00:15:20.100 Start sleeping better tonight.