The Michael Knowles Show - The Pro-Life Spiderman

00:00:00.000 With great power comes great responsibility, and we all have different powers, some natural and

00:00:06.560 some cultivated over time. Some of us can play the violin, some of us can run very, very fast,

00:00:11.920 some of us can climb up thousand foot tall buildings without any ropes or anything at all,

00:00:16.240 like complete and utter maniacs. And you could either just do that for fun or because you have

00:00:21.720 a death wish, or you could do that for a good cause, as Mason Deschamps has done, raising money

00:00:27.900 for all sorts of pro-life causes and crisis pregnancy centers around the country, making

00:00:35.360 the case for life by constantly risking his own. Mason, thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:00:42.860 Oh, thank you, Michael. You know, I just have to say this is kind of a dream come true. I've been

00:00:47.720 listening to your episode, to your show since episode five. And so you are not only one, but

00:00:55.200 if not the sole reason I became a conservative. So I just have to thank you a lot.

00:01:00.040 You've got to be kidding me. Wow, man, I'm so honored to hear that. That is genuinely and clearly.

00:01:05.160 Listen, I knew that you were a courageous person already just from reading all the stuff you've

00:01:12.580 been doing. But I didn't realize how, you know, absolutely gentlemanly and scholarly you were until

00:01:19.060 I saw you with the scotch and the cigar. Very, very great stuff. And I'm really, really honored that

00:01:23.220 I played some role in helping the way that you think. But now I feel as though I might bear some

00:01:27.980 responsibility because you maniac, you just go up there and risk your life constantly. I see here,

00:01:34.020 you have climbed the 1,070-foot Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, the 770-foot New York Times

00:01:42.020 building. Too bad you couldn't have just smushed that building when you got to the top there.

00:01:45.580 The 560-foot Renaissance Center 400 Tower in Detroit and the 840-foot Devon Tower in Oklahoma City.

00:01:55.060 How and why?

00:01:58.480 Yeah, you know, so I was actually, I'd wanted to join the pro-life movement for a while and get

00:02:06.100 involved somehow. But nothing had quite convicted me until one morning I was listening to your show

00:02:11.020 and I heard about the Justice for the 5 incident. And, you know, of course, like everybody,

00:02:16.280 I went online and I see these photos of these babies. Well, then I read an article about Cesare

00:02:23.180 Santangelo and how the police not only didn't arrest the doctor who had brutally murdered these babies,

00:02:29.680 but arrested the activist Lauren Handy instead. And so I not only felt like it was something I should

00:02:38.700 do. It felt like a duty, like something I had to do. I felt convicted. And so I'm sitting at home.

00:02:46.100 I'm a poor college rock climber, still am. But I'm thinking to myself, you know, if politics are downstream

00:02:51.580 of culture and I want to change the culture, then the best way to change the culture is to somehow

00:02:57.320 become a part of it. And there was this guy, his name's Alain Robert. And in the 90s, he had climbed

00:03:02.860 all of these buildings around the world. And a movie came out during quarantine about him. It's called

00:03:08.140 My Next Challenge. And I watched it and I thought, you know, I think I can do that. I'm a good enough

00:03:13.180 climber. And so, you know, I started planning this. And it was really hard at first because I knew if I

00:03:20.620 was going to do it, I was going to have to do it right. I was going to have to raise the money

00:03:24.320 to get professional photographers so that I can really put it out there. And I determined that the

00:03:29.440 cost was going to be around $8,000. So I emailed every pro-life organization, every conservative

00:03:35.060 organization. And, you know, I was either ignored or denied. And I really, I felt like a Nigerian

00:03:41.360 prince. You know, I was like, I'm going to climb skyscrapers and raise all this money.

00:03:45.940 But I finally, I had asked my boss, and at the time I was working construction for a company called

00:03:52.080 Ninth Island Woodcrafters in Las Vegas. And we build like cabinets and stuff like that and custom

00:03:57.420 woodwork. But I was his apprentice. And so he's like a father figure to me. And he said, you know, Mason,

00:04:03.100 I believe in you. And if this is what you believe in, then I'll fund it. And so that's what got it

00:04:10.480 off the ground. And so I bought all these plane tickets to go to San Francisco, then Detroit,

00:04:16.440 or New York, then Detroit, rather. And I bought him a month in advance, right? And the morning I wake up

00:04:23.300 to fly to San Francisco, I get a notification on my phone that the Roe v. Wade draft was leaked. And I

00:04:29.700 didn't plan it. It was just this divine timing that occurred. I can't explain it. But that really

00:04:36.580 blew up the story. Wow. That does happen. You know, these things sort of come together. It's

00:04:41.780 almost as though providence exists, you know, and the world is just rich in symbols. That's an amazing

00:04:48.740 story. And it's a really beautiful thing in that you seem to have learned the lesson from Trump and

00:04:58.400 kind of Trump era, which is that when you want to get things done in politics, you have to shake up

00:05:05.120 the system a little bit. If you just go along, if you are losing, if your side is losing, and you just

00:05:10.900 keep playing by all the rules that all the other people on your team are playing by, you are pretty

00:05:15.220 much guaranteed to lose. You've got to shake it up. And I would never have thought, okay, the way to

00:05:20.040 reinvigorate the pro-life movement and to raise money for crisis pregnancy centers is to climb a bunch

00:05:24.740 of buildings. But that's exactly the sort of thing that you've got to do. You've got to kind of,

00:05:29.920 I don't know, throw a wrench into the machinations of the system such that people look at you as they

00:05:35.620 have looked at you and say, oh, wow, wait, what's going on? This kid is climbing 1,000 feet up high

00:05:41.320 in the air to raise money for what is, oh, for crisis pregnancy centers. Okay. You know, I'll give

00:05:45.620 some money to that. If he's willing to put his life on the line, I'm willing to raise a little bit of

00:05:50.420 money. So then I've got to ask you, you get to the top of these buildings, how do you handle it?

00:05:58.240 I know I sound like I'm so naive. I sound like I'm probably a chicken, but I get up 50 feet in the

00:06:04.880 air and I start feeling a little weird. Okay. I get, if I'm, if I'm up walking, going for a hike,

00:06:10.740 and I see a big drop, I get just this visceral reaction. Are you just missing that gene?

00:06:16.640 Uh, no, I don't think so. You know, the climbing on buildings is a lot easier than on rock. Like

00:06:25.320 on rock, I'm gripping holes the size of credit cards, where on the buildings, I'm able to stick

00:06:30.180 my hands all the way around it. So I never feel like I'm going to fall at all. But if I were to

00:06:35.640 describe what climbing skyscrapers feels like, taking the technical aspect of climbing out of it,

00:06:42.260 you know, you have police cars everywhere, you have helicopters, uh, circling around. I think I

00:06:47.440 counted one time, I had five news helicopters filming me. And I like to say, it feels like

00:06:53.880 playing the game Grand Theft Auto, but in real life, it's so strange. And honestly, like I get so

00:07:01.060 nervous before I go climb these buildings, but it's, it's not from the climbing, it's from the,

00:07:05.900 the security and, and all of the, the other things that go with it. But, you know, when I get to the

00:07:11.560 top of these buildings, it's so funny that the police, they're never mad at me. They're always

00:07:16.980 really impressed. And, and so, uh, you know, I've never really treated like a criminal. They'll,

00:07:22.640 they'll throw me in the police car all angrily for the, for the news cameras. But we get back to the

00:07:27.440 police station and, you know, they're coming down to take selfies with me and, and I'm signing

00:07:34.120 autographs with my hands behind my back. And I say, it's pretty hard at first, but you do enough of

00:07:38.160 them to get pretty good at it. And the funniest moment was one time, uh, you know, I was like,

00:07:43.520 I kind of want some coffee right now. That'd, that'd be really nice. And they came and they

00:07:48.020 brought me some coffee. And so I'm never treated like a criminal. Um, but you know, I get, I get

00:07:54.300 criticized a lot because when I do this, I am arrested. It's, it's not actually illegal. Like

00:08:00.300 in Detroit, it's so funny. There's a law that says you cannot leash your pet alligator to a fire hydrant,

00:08:05.940 but there's no law that says you can't climb the Renaissance center and the way trespassing

00:08:10.620 laws work, they're able to arrest me. And then eventually it all just gets dropped because

00:08:15.200 there's, there's no way to really prosecute it. They just want to make an example so that no one

00:08:19.580 goes and repeats it, which I think is fair. But, uh, you know, you're reminding me of just the perils

00:08:25.300 of big government taking away all of those simple joys in life, like a man trying to leash his

00:08:32.240 alligator to a fire hydrant. Here come the liberals yet again to quash that sort of joy.

00:08:38.920 Uh, it's funny you mentioned this though, because I would imagine it requires, it would at least

00:08:44.500 require in me some concentration to climb up a thousand foot skyscraper. Uh, maybe you, it's a

00:08:49.740 little bit more second nature, but you would think if these cops and everybody want to make sure that

00:08:55.340 you're safe and don't fall, they wouldn't just start grazing you with helicopters, sirens everywhere.

00:09:01.680 Seems like that might be a little distracting. Uh, yeah, it's a little bit distracting,

00:09:05.880 but it's, it's a part of it. You know, like one of the things I learned when I started doing

00:09:09.660 activism is, you know, you really have to focus your activism on gaining this sort of media attention

00:09:17.060 and learn how the media works. Because if you only reach the people that are there, uh, it's not as

00:09:21.820 effective and you don't reach the people of the world. Of course, of course, that that's so true.

00:09:26.800 I mean, this is true in any political system, but especially in one that is notionally self

00:09:31.260 governing. It's all about the media. This is why the libs have taken such efforts to control the

00:09:36.660 media specifically to control the narrative on pro-life activism. So then I got asked two

00:09:42.100 questions going way back. And you know, this was not a setup. I had no idea that you listened to my

00:09:47.960 show. I'm very honored that, that I could have played some role in this, but how did you become

00:09:51.560 pro-life? Was it just the Cesare Santangelo story or was, were there inklings of pro-life activism

00:09:57.540 before that? And then how did you get into climbing at all? Yeah, you know, I, I grew up Catholic, so I,

00:10:04.620 I was just around other pro-life people. I hadn't, you know, cemented those ideas in my head, but

00:10:11.420 listening to people like you, Ben Shapiro, Stephen Crowder, you know, you just hear the arguments on the

00:10:17.640 side of life and they're really hard to debate against. They are just so concrete. I mean, a baby

00:10:24.740 in the womb is a life that is separate from the mother. It has its own DNA from conception. If you

00:10:30.700 go and dig up bodies at a mass grave site, you can tell the difference between these bodies based off

00:10:36.300 of their DNA. It's the most like, I guess, basic separation between people. Of course, it's funny

00:10:43.580 because digging up grave sites also pokes a hole in the transgender argument. You'll, you'll see

00:10:52.060 forensic investigators, they'll say, okay, we found the body of a woman. And, and the reaction to that

00:11:02.260 would of course be, oh yeah, how do you know she's a woman? How do you know? Did you ask her? No. How

00:11:07.100 did you know? Hold on, so I can know that a cadaver was a woman, but I can't know that a lady walking

00:11:10.840 around as a woman doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And obviously this is all the more true

00:11:14.620 for the pro-life cause, obviously. And if you talk to an abortion advocate who's willing to be candid

00:11:20.560 and honest with you, they will admit, they will say, yes, the baby is living, has all the

00:11:27.900 characteristics of life. Yes, the baby is an individual. It's not, not a fingernail, not just

00:11:33.620 a kind of cancerous tumor on the mother. Yes, that's true. And they'll usually give the argument

00:11:37.820 if you're, if you catch them in a candid way and they're, they're, they're not afraid of admitting

00:11:42.360 things on camera. They'll give the argument that Naomi Wolf gave in the nineties, which is

00:11:46.200 the baby is a baby. The baby is alive. And for women to have equal feminist political rights,

00:11:53.540 the mother needs to be able to murder her child and all of his humanity, which is ghastly, but at

00:11:58.520 least that's what they're saying, right? And that's why they can't say that publicly very often is

00:12:03.440 because people would recoil from it. The reality of it is so obvious for anyone who's willing to

00:12:08.740 look at it. Yeah. You know, and that's why, you know, I do what I do. I think the re with the

00:12:14.480 reality of abortion, we should do everything in our peaceful means to, to, to stop this and sort of

00:12:21.240 regardless of, of the consequences. Like I get criticized a lot or like Romans 13, Romans 13, but

00:12:26.760 you know, you look at where Romans was written and not only who wrote it, uh, Romans was written,

00:12:32.900 I believe in a jail cell by Paul, who is later beheaded for crimes against the state. And so I,

00:12:40.420 I think again, like we should do everything within our peaceful means to stop this evil that's going

00:12:45.720 on. And, you know, I, uh, I like to tell jail stories. They're kind of fun. Please. I hope you're

00:12:52.540 not beheaded for them, but please, uh, Oh no. How's it been? No, it's, it's so funny. Like jail

00:12:57.520 was really scary at first. And I, when I got arrested in Detroit, they were taking me back

00:13:02.460 into, uh, the holding cell. And this is a dirty jail. It's, it's, I mean, Detroit, it's, it's so

00:13:08.740 already impacted, let alone defunded, uh, after black lives matter. And so this, this jail is just,

00:13:16.040 you know, a scary place. And they're walking me back in the cell and you've got the crypts on one side

00:13:21.140 and the bloods on the other. So it's like crypts, bloods, pro-life Spider-Man, you know,

00:13:25.480 and it's mother's day. So I climbed the Renaissance center on mother's day. So if you're in jail on

00:13:30.500 mother's day, you are a real criminal, you know, these guys, and they have teardrops and ice cream

00:13:36.980 cones tattooed on their face. They've been there before. And I'm walking in there and I'm thinking

00:13:42.080 like, what did these guys do to get in here? And it's so funny because they were thinking like,

00:13:48.460 what did this white kid do to get in here? You know, this is, this is actually the plot of

00:13:52.540 Alice's restaurant. I don't know if you know the old Arlo Guthrie song, but it's this guy who gets

00:13:57.140 arrested for littering and then he ends up at the draft board. And the whole thing is, you know,

00:14:00.620 I was sitting there on the bench with all these criminals. We got mother rapers and father stabbers

00:14:07.880 and father rapers. And there was me. They said, kid, what are you in for? I said littering.

00:14:13.140 And that's basically what you're doing. What are you in for? Oh, I climbed a building.

00:14:15.980 Uh, what? Yeah. And that's the funny thing is like, they're all wondering what I did. And as

00:14:21.600 soon as I tell them, you know, all the gang beef just goes right out the window and they're laughing

00:14:26.540 and they're asking me questions. And so I like to tell people that I'm one of the few men to ever

00:14:31.440 bring the Crips and the Bloods together, even if it was just for a moment in jail. But my favorite

00:14:37.180 jail story was from Oklahoma City. I was in Oklahoma County jail. And whenever I go, I like to evangelize.

00:14:44.860 Again, like looking at people like Paul in the Bible, they, they, uh, they get arrested and put

00:14:48.900 in prison and they say, I'm going to grow my ministry. And so that's what I, I try to do in

00:14:54.040 jail. And I tell them, you know, why I'm in there and why I'm doing it. And one of the guys, he

00:15:00.720 actually told me, he said, uh, his girlfriend was pregnant. And what he didn't tell me was that

00:15:08.320 they were planning to have an abortion. And about a week went by and Nathan Burning, the CEO of Let

00:15:15.600 Them Live, the, the charity I raised money for calls me on the phone. And he says, Hey man,

00:15:20.180 I just got a phone call from a woman who said that their boyfriend met you in Oklahoma County jail

00:15:26.000 and they want to choose life. And so, you know, it was again, like this divine timing. Like what I do

00:15:33.900 is such a farce, you know, like climbing buildings. It's just so silly. It's pretty cool. It's this

00:15:38.360 mechanism that I've used to be able to make a difference in this movement. And I just feel

00:15:44.980 blessed, honestly, that, uh, you know, I'm able to be the vessel for the Lord's work with something

00:15:50.780 so silly as climbing buildings. That's, that's amazing because wow. You think for most people

00:15:58.440 in their lives, if that's all they ever did, if that's all you ever did in your whole life was you

00:16:05.020 sat in jail with this guy and convinced him not to kill his kid, that would be a life well lived.

00:16:11.880 Like you would have done it. You would have accomplished more in your life than pretty much

00:16:15.360 anybody. And how many of those stories are there? And, and, and, and it's inspirational in the sense

00:16:21.980 that we can do that too. I can't climb a building. I can barely climb to the top of my ladder to change

00:16:27.660 a light bulb on the second floor of my house. But, but what can we do? You know, you, you, it's not

00:16:33.920 just big stunts that do these sorts of things in your quotidian experience when you're just sort of

00:16:38.760 having lunch with somebody. If you can just plant that kind of seed, obviously you could never have

00:16:43.880 planned it to say, I'm going to get arrested, to go to the Detroit jail on this day so that I can

00:16:47.760 talk to this guy so he can tell his girlfriend not to have an abortion. But, but it happened. And now,

00:16:52.880 you know, God, God willing, pregnancy goes well and everything. There's going to be a human being

00:16:57.300 who can come up and say, Hey, thanks, man. Thanks for convincing my dad not to kill me.

00:17:03.280 Yeah. You know, I, uh, that was part of, I guess, the messaging. And, and when I started this project,

00:17:09.220 it was, you know, you guys can't all climb skyscrapers, but you can go out and do something.

00:17:13.940 And I, I tell people on every interview I do, I say, I get called a radical, but the most radical

00:17:20.360 thing you can do in the pro-life movement is do nothing. So I hope that people can look at what I

00:17:26.640 do and, and be inspired and go out and, and do something because abortion is, you know, the evil that

00:17:33.560 all evil is standing on. Of course. I mean, you, you think of, of radicals, you know, at the time

00:17:41.440 of say chattel slavery or something like that. And, uh, at the time, the people who say, Hey,

00:17:46.160 maybe we should, you know, kind of unwind this institution here, you know, kind of get rid of

00:17:50.760 this whole thing, you know, they, they would have been called radicals. But now with the, the,

00:17:55.140 with hindsight, you look and you say, no, it's the people denying humanity to a large number of

00:17:59.980 people. They, they would seem to be much, much more radical. And so a question then becomes,

00:18:03.880 what, what are people going to say about us? You know, there, there is, there is no neutrality.

00:18:08.820 There's no middle ground here between, do we kill 850,000 babies a year or do we not kill? I guess

00:18:15.120 the middle ground is we kill 400,000 babies a year, but that's not much of a middle ground. You know,

00:18:19.660 King Solomon talked about this too. Uh, so, uh, you know, which side are you going to be on? If you

00:18:26.240 throw your hands up in the air, you, you've made a decision. If you just sort of allow this sort of

00:18:31.540 thing to happen without any pushback at all, you, you have absolutely made, made a decision. Can I

00:18:37.200 ask for, well, I want to ask two things before I let you go. One, and I asked you this a little bit

00:18:43.300 earlier, but we got off track. How did you learn to climb? I mean, how did you start? How, you know,

00:18:47.460 you're a pretty young man right now. When did this start? Yeah, this started in high school. I grew up in

00:18:53.060 Michigan hunting and fishing and, you know, I was outside every day and then, uh, my dad,

00:18:58.760 he was a carpenter and it just got hard on his body doing construction. So we moved to LA and

00:19:05.040 California, the hunting's just so much different than Michigan. So I needed something else outdoorsy

00:19:12.300 to do. So, uh, my dad, he, he bought me a rope, some quick draws and a harness, and I learned how to

00:19:18.700 rock climb off of YouTube. And we would go out on the weekends, maybe once a month, uh, and go rock

00:19:24.000 climbing. But when I graduated high school, I actually skipped my graduation and I moved to

00:19:28.600 Yosemite. And that was where, you know, Yosemite Valley is just the gauntlet. It is the mecca of rock

00:19:34.440 climbing. So that's where I really got my feet wet. And, uh, you know, it's so crazy. I never thought

00:19:40.980 I'd be climbing skyscrapers. Uh, or like the other day, someone approached me and they want to make a

00:19:46.700 comic book out of me. And I'm like, I never in my life did I ever think I would have my own comic

00:19:51.520 book, but here I am. And I'm so grateful that everyone is supporting me and, and, uh, you know,

00:19:57.500 donating money to let them live.org. I think it's just absolutely fabulous. A total inspiration.

00:20:03.960 Everybody should go check out, let them live.org. Everybody should keep up with Mason's work,

00:20:09.000 obviously. And I want the comic book. When can I go buy this comic book?

00:20:13.380 You know, it's a work in progress. It's, it's a hard thing to make a comic book about abortion.

00:20:19.800 So we're trying to work out a way to do it. We're, we're maybe going for a Johnny the Walrus

00:20:25.980 kind of angle, you know, like, like make it about abortion, but not.

00:20:30.920 Yeah. With a lighter touch. But I, I agree that it is tough. It is tough to make a cartoon or, or a,

00:20:38.020 a comic book about it. But listen, you've done harder things. Okay. You've climbed a thousand foot

00:20:42.920 building. All right. So, so, uh, I, I have no doubt that it will happen. Mason, incredible work,

00:20:48.100 really keep it up. Just so inspirational and everybody go keep up with Mason Deschamps,

00:20:54.400 the pro-life Spider-Man. Thank you, Michael.

The Michael Knowles Show - January 02, 2023

The Pro-Life Spiderman ｜ Maison DesChamps

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