Friendly Fire: Fauci's Fabrications, A Socialist Repents & Blowing Up Bus Lanes

Summary

The Ben Shapiro Show

Episode: Friendly Fire: Fauci's Fabrications, A Socialist Repents & Blowing Up Bus Lanes
Date: July 30, 2026
Host: Ben Shapiro with Michael Knowles, Drew, Matt Foldy, Sonny Joy Nelson, and guest Evan Barker

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into contentious debates over pop culture and politics, focusing on themes of cultural decay, the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, socialist disillusionment, and suburban policy battles. The panel discusses the Christianization of classical stories in Hollywood, the reckoning (or lack thereof) over Anthony Fauci and the COVID response, the rise of socialism within the Democratic Party, and lighter fare like banning bike lanes. A former socialist campaigner, Evan Barker, joins to reflect on her political transformation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Hollywood's “The Odyssey” & The Christianization of Greek Myth

[01:29–12:37]

- Nolan’s Odyssey Reimagined:

• The panel debates Christopher Nolan’s new film "The Odyssey," critiquing its overt Christian themes and deviations from the original Greek narrative.
• Ben Shapiro: “He was taking sort of the ghost of Christian morality and pouring it into the vase of a Greek story” (03:03).
• The group discusses the tension between pre-Christian "brutality" vs. bringing Christian morality into storytelling.

- Woke Casting & Reaction:

• The casting of diverse and trans actors is viewed as “overly in-your-face” and intended either for manufactured controversy or publicity.
• Drew: “Every woke decision he made was bad. It did bring the movie down a little bit… but the idea that Ellen Page is a mentally ill woman who’s pretending to be someone she’s not, that defines every actress.” (08:11).

- Conservative Tactics in Cultural Critique:

• Ben argues conservatives overreact to "woke" elements, sometimes undermining their own positions with grandiose boycott rhetoric.

Notable Quote:

• Ben Shapiro [07:04]: “Are we supposed to think...people who are part of the Judeo-Christian biblical tradition...are somehow angry at the Christianization of Greece? Like, some of us actually wrote books on why that was a good thing.”

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2. Fauci’s Reckoning (Or Lack Thereof) & Media Accountability

[12:37–26:06]

- Capitol Hill Grilling:

• Fauci is "humiliated" on Capitol Hill but little real consequence is expected.
• Michael Knowles: “He pled the Fifth to everything, even though he had a blanket pardon.” (15:20).

- The Limits of the Fifth Amendment:

• Ben explains the complicated legal landscape around pleading the Fifth after a presidential pardon, essentially doubting any prosecution.
• Ben Shapiro [16:34]: “The chances that you get a successful prosecution... probably difficult. I feel like that’s a bit of a stretch.”

- Call for a Real Reckoning – Not Just Fauci:

• Drew calls for a societal ‘reckoning’ for not just Fauci, but the media and institutions complicit in COVID failures.
• Drew [18:20]: “I want to see a reckoning for what the media did and how they contributed to this incredible disaster… The reckoning... just hasn’t come.”

- China & COVID Origins:

• Ben points out that the bigger "dog that didn’t bark" is how the U.S. still tolerates China post-pandemic, despite origin suspicions.

- Trump’s Role:

• Shapiro notes Trump could have fired Fauci; his failure to do so undermines post-hoc criticism.

- Erosion of Trust in Institutions:

• The panel laments the drop in trust for experts and highlights the danger when skepticism becomes reactionary anti-expert sentiment.

Memorable Moment:

• Drew [22:20]: “I'm ashamed of the churches that let themselves be shut down...a lot of failure around the board and I just don't think we've really discussed it on a national level yet.”

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3. The Socialist Repents: Evan Barker’s Journey

[27:35–42:41]

- Special Guest, Evan Barker:

• A former DSA campaigner, now an independent, Evan Barker details her exit from the far left.
• She attributes her departure to personal disillusionment with the movement’s priorities, hypocrisy, and negative views toward America.

- Inside the Far Left:

• Evan Barker [32:37]: “They say that they're socialists. I don't even know if I'd really call them socialists...It's more about having a cultural revolution.... It’s basically socialism for non-white people.”

- Anti-Americanism & Grievance Politics:

• Barker recounts behind-the-scenes moments where contempt for the U.S. and the working class was explicit and constant.
• She shares a personal anecdote about retrieving discarded U.S. flag stickers from AOC’s office trash shortly after her brother died serving in the Navy.

- The Democratic Socialist Appeal:

• Barker confirms that rage and victim-oppressor politics are the main draw for young radicals, rather than material economic policies.

- Incompatibility with Actual Working-Class Views:

• The left’s rhetoric is alien to much of the working class, who often do not share the animus toward the wealthy or the U.S.

Notable Quotes:

• Evan Barker [37:25]: “They don’t love America...They would want to immediately blast out emails anytime Trump did any sort of military action... Why are you trying to make money off of this?”
• Ben Shapiro [34:45]: “Many of the things conservatives like to say are sort of the bugs for the DSA—those are actually the features.”

- Political Realignment:

• Barker voted for Trump in 2024, considers herself independent, and signals a growing rejection of progressive orthodoxy among former Democratic loyalists.

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4. Game Show Segment: “I’m Not Convinced”

[44:09–51:47]

A lighter, debate-style round where co-hosts and guests pitch and challenge ideas:

Topics:

• Voter ID Law (“Save America Act”):

  • Sonny Joy Nelson advocates for federal voter ID requirements, citing everyday scenarios requiring ID (e.g., buying a lighter).
  • Sonny Joy Nelson [45:41]: “It should be common sense that our elections are 100% secure with voter ID.”
  • Drew suggests slimming the bill down to a single requirement to avoid “poison pill” provisions—which Sonny accepts.

• Banning Bike Lanes:

  • Matt Foldy proposes banning bike lanes as part of the “war on the suburbs,” arguing they're underused and create congestion.
  • Michael Knowles and Drew take a comedic swipe at the culture of bicyclists and try to one-up by banning bicycles altogether rather than just the lanes.

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5. 2028 Presidential Politics & Reflections on J.D. Vance

[52:20–56:00]

• Drew is impressed by J.D. Vance’s book, despite concerns about Vance’s recent politics and “tripping over his own feet.”
• Both agree Vance is likely the GOP’s next nominee, despite some campaign turbulence.
• Antisemitism—Ben and Drew call for leadership and clarity denouncing rising anti-Israel sentiment, both on right and left.

Memorable Moment:

• Drew [55:22]: “He [Vance] is at least thoughtful. I hope he can find his way because he may well be the candidate.”
• Michael Knowles [56:00]: “Anti-Semitism... you gotta tamp it down always. But I think [Vance] needs to be really firm on the issues that really matter....”

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Notable Quotes & Segments with Timestamps

• Ben Shapiro [03:03]: “He was taking sort of the ghost of Christian morality and pouring it into the vase of a Greek story.”
• Drew [08:11]: “The idea that Ellen Page is a mentally ill woman who's pretending to be someone she's not, that defines every actress.”
• Michael Knowles [15:20]: “He pled the Fifth to everything, even though he had a blanket pardon.”
• Drew [18:20]: “The reckoning that we have had for the utter failure of our media class and our leadership class and our elite class, it just hasn't come.”
• Evan Barker [32:37]: “It's more about having a cultural revolution in the United States. They kind of just want to demean and denigrate anyone that isn't oppressed by their standards.”
• Sonny Joy Nelson [45:41]: “It should be common sense that our elections are 100% secure with voter ID.”
• Drew [53:32]: “Once you're in office, you don't have time to change your mind...I think he [Vance] needs to establish his principles a little bit more firmly.”

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Overall Tone & Flow

Fast-paced, polemical, and combative, but punctuated with humor and friendly banter—even during pointed disagreements. The hosts blend hard news and ideology with pop culture criticism, reveling in their outsider status and their willingness to critique both the right and left. The language is direct, self-referential, and often tongue-in-cheek.

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This summary covers all core topics and perspectives featured in the episode, providing an accessible guide for listeners who missed the broadcast.

Transcript

[Michael Knowles]

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[Ben Shapiro]

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[Evan Barker]

See terms. Introducing Meta glasses. You have questions.

[Michael Knowles]

They've got answers.

[Ben Shapiro]

Hey, Meta, what's the capital of Peru?

[Sonny Joy Nelson]

Lima.

[Evan Barker]

How do you say where's the restroom in Spanish?

[Sonny Joy Nelson]

Dondes talvano.

[Evan Barker]

Hey, Meta. Is a hot dog a sandwich?

[Michael Knowles]

Technically, no.

[Sonny Joy Nelson]

Spiritually, yes.

[Drew]

Hey, Meta, what should I do with my life?

[Evan Barker]

That's one of life's biggest questions.

[Ben Shapiro]

What do you think?

[Evan Barker]

Ask anything with the new Meta glasses.

[Michael Knowles]

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[Ben Shapiro]

Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with Venmo or using a Venmo debit card.

[Michael Knowles]

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[Evan Barker]

Exactly.

[Ben Shapiro]

Because the more you do with Venmo, the more you get, like, earning up to 5% cash.

[Drew]

Back with Venmo. Stash on a bundle of brands.

[Michael Knowles]

So order more pizza.

[Ben Shapiro]

The meth demands it.

[Michael Knowles]

Get the Venmo debit card.

[Ben Shapiro]

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[Michael Knowles]

Na, I. I just want to know before we begin, because we haven't done one since. Did you guys see the worst movie ever made by Hollywood in the history of images?

[Matt Foldy]

I mean.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, what I've been told. What I've been told is that the Odyssey.

[Michael Knowles]

The Odyssey.

[Ben Shapiro]

The better movie would have been for there to be a man who goes around killing everyone, banging a lady who's not his wife for 10 years and then killing all the chambermaids. That would have been better, probably.

[Michael Knowles]

Now that you put it that way. I am actually coming around to Walsh's point of view now.

[Drew]

I see the flaws in the picture. That's it.

[Michael Knowles]

I just don't know what we're gonna. If I can't complain about the Odyssey for the next 10 weeks, I don't know like, what are we gonna talk about? There's nothing left to talk about.

[Drew]

I got a letter from complaining that. That they had turned. They had turned Odysseus into a weepy girl man. So I sent him the passage in Homer where he weeps like a woman. And I said, you know, you think this is an argument between good people and bad people. It's really an argument between people who know what they're talking about and people who have no idea what they're talking about.

[Ben Shapiro]

What's funny about it is that I feel like we're all having the same argument about, like, that we all kind of agree on what the movie is kind of trying to do. Yeah. We just have disagreements on whether that's a good thing or not. Right. Like. Like, I think that, you know, I heard. I heard your take on it, Drew, and I think it was basically the same take as my take on it, which I think was also.

[Drew]

You were. You were more enthusiastic. I thought you were enthusiastic.

[Ben Shapiro]

I like. I like. I like. I like Nolan. You guys like Nolan? Yeah, I mean, but. But, like, as a. As a. As a piece of. As a piece of, like, morality, what he was trying to do thematically is obviously he was taking sort of the ghost of Christian morality and pouring it into the vase of a Greek story. Because, I mean. And I think we all sort of agree with that. I thought that that's, like, kind of a good thing. Because again, if you wanted, I think. Listen, I get where Matt's coming from because he loves Apocalypto.

[Evan Barker]

Right.

[Ben Shapiro]

Apocalypto is. Here's what pre Christian morality looks like. And then here comes Christianity. Oh, thank God.

[Matt Foldy]

Right?

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, apocalyptic.

[Michael Knowles]

Right.

[Ben Shapiro]

Everything is horrible. And then, oh, thank God the conquistadors are here. And. And I get that. But that wasn't going to happen at the end of Homer's the Odyssey, because no one comes at the end of Homer's the Odyssey to save you from pre Judeo Christian morality.

[Michael Knowles]

Right.

[Ben Shapiro]

You're just stuck in that world where Odysseus is the hero who, again, bangs everything in sight and then kills all the chambermaids. So, like, that's not, like, an amazingly evocative story for a film. So, again, you can make Northman. It's just Northman does no box office.

[Drew]

I don't understand, though. You know, I thought it was an aesthetic problem. Like, I didn't think his take really did quite graft on statically onto it. I just. I didn't believe that Odysseus was saying those Things. Even as he was played in the movie. Even as the character was played in the movie. I didn't believe that those would be his problems. But so what? I mean, so it's a summer movie that's incredibly entertaining for three hours, which is hard to do. And so it doesn't all. You know, it's not the smartest movie in the world, but so what? You know what. What's Nolan supposed to do? Is his job to sort of make everybody feel that their. Their point of view is being represented in his movie. And by the way, I just want to say one thing, Ben. I would much rather hear you overpraise a director that you love, which is a wonderful thing to love a director. There's directors that I love more than they deserve, but I just love their work. I would much rather hear that than a bunch of conservatives cranking that somehow they didn't get the ideological diatribe that they wanted from somebody.

[Michael Knowles]

There's also, on the ideological point, Ben, you're completely right that he's Christianizing the story in a very overt way. He invokes the golden rule. There's a baptism scene. The big turn at the end is literally confession. There is a scrim. And he is confessing, confessing his sins to his wife. Correct. That is part of the Western tradition. And he lets you know he's doing it because the Ellen Page part comes from Virgil. It doesn't come from Homer. It's his character Sinon. And though the Sinon character does kind of take the place of Achilles in the Hades scene. So maybe that's why it was leaking that she played Achilles. But in any case, he's reading the poem through Virgil, through Dante in particular. The fact that Ulysses sail or Odysseus sails off at the end is a part of Dante's telling of it. And so Dante is obviously Christianizing the story. But the difference is when Dante does that, he puts both Sinon and Odysseus in like, the deepest depths of hell. And here you get Odysseus at the end sort of whining and crying, and then he goes off to sail into the sunset. But it's like it is the most Boomer lib version of that, which is he's really upset for the whole movie, and then he cheers up when he takes his wife on a cruise. So you don't get that.

[Ben Shapiro]

Did this too.

[Drew]

You know, the Greeks identified with the Trojans too. They wrote the Trojan women. They, they, you know, Odysseus cries for the Trojan women. In the. In Homer, they identified with the defeated.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, here's the thing that annoys me. I'm just. Are we supposed to think that Christians living in the United States or Jews living in the United States, people who are part of the Judeo Christian biblical tradition, shall we say, living in the United States in the year 2026, are somehow angry at the Christianization of Greece. Like, some of us actually wrote books on why that was a good thing. Right. Like, I think all three of us may have written books on why that's kind of a good thing. And so, like, the idea that, like, what we needed was, like, the pure Greek brutality. Well, we weren't fans.

[Evan Barker]

Okay?

[Ben Shapiro]

Like. Like, like my. My people have, like, entire fast days dedicated to the Greeks destroying things. Right. We have entire holidays around.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Ben Shapiro]

Jewish revolt against the Greeks. Right. And it turns out that Christianity is largely built around the idea that Greece had to be Christianized, that Greek morality was not enough.

[Matt Foldy]

Right.

[Ben Shapiro]

I mean, this is what Paul is doing. Not to lecture people on Christianity, but this is why, like, when I see Christians who are very upset about. I'm like, listen, I get all of the Ellen Page of it, and it's ridiculous and stupid. And I agree with all of that. And I also. Listen, I sort of get the Lupita Nyongo, although that didn't bother me very much. The thing about.

[Michael Knowles]

No, I'm sorry. I'm getting. I'm taking you off course.

[Matt Foldy]

Yeah, sorry.

[Ben Shapiro]

Because she's in the movie for three minutes. And also, I'm just telling you, Diane Kruger does not look like a Greek chick.

[Evan Barker]

Okay?

[Ben Shapiro]

Diane Krueger, who. Everyone's like, wow, shouldn't Helen look like Diane? I don't know. Was Diane Kruger, you know, like a Hun?

[Michael Knowles]

In a way?

[Ben Shapiro]

She's a German. I'm pretty sure that the people from, like, the. The Teutonic forests of Germany were not great resemblances to these short brown women of Greece in the. In the year 1500 BCE, right. Or B.C. like, it's just silly.

[Drew]

I was. I was saying to Knowles before you showed up that the attack on Ellen Page. And I agree with you, Ben. I thought it was very brief, but every woke decision he made was bad. It did bring the movie down a little bit. But the idea that Ellen Page is a mentally ill woman who's pretending to be someone she's not, that defines every actress. If you take that out, there are no actresses left in Hollywood. Maybe Meryl Streep, she looks a little sane, but all the rest of them, they're Mentally ill people pretending to be what they're not.

[Ben Shapiro]

But here's the thing. There's a broader point here, Drew, that I wanted to ask you about, and that is, I think that conservatives, at a certain point, culturally, we have a tendency to huff our own farts. It's like, oh, my gosh. I don't like that Ellen Page is in this movie, therefore will do zero business. It's like, no, this movie is always going to do gigantic business. Can we please stop with this? And this is a matter of tactics, which I think will appeal to you, Knowles, because you're very big into. Like, you should launch wars that you can win.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Ben Shapiro]

You should not launch wars that you are going to lose. Okay? Like, this movie was always going to make a fortune because it is beautiful to look at. And the last one hour of it is actually incredibly well done and exciting. And even if you think that the first couple hours are slow, the last hour of it is really compelling. And the. And it's Christopher Nolan, and he's got every major star in the world in this film. It was always going to do big business. And so this kind of bizarre thing that the right did, which is like, Ellen Page is in it, therefore, we'll do no money. And therefore anyone who even says that they kind of like it must be cast out. Must be thrown out of the. Like, what are. What are you doing? Like, just on a tactical level, even

[Drew]

on this point, it's also a category error. It's a. It's a category error, though, because it's not like putting that clown trans guy on a beer can, which is essentially endorsing the fact that he's wearing woman face and really disrespecting women by pretending to be one. These are actors. They're all nuts. They all have, like, weird lives and all that. They go on and they pretend to be someone else. That's part of the arts. I mean, men were playing women in Shakespeare's day. You know, they've done it before. It's like, it's part of the arts. The arts are weird and they're crazy. It's not the same thing as selling beer or selling some object. So the entire thing is ridiculous. What is. Is Ellen Page, because she's got problems. She's never supposed to work. I don't care if she's in a movie as long as she's. I didn't think she was very good in this, but I think, you know, I don't mind her working. What's that got to do with Me.

[Ben Shapiro]

Why did I feel it? Sorry, go ahead. No, Anusi.

[Michael Knowles]

I have a kind of Straussian take on this. And it's like the esoteric reading is always. The line between that and wish casting is very, very thin, kind of intrinsically. But on all the woke stuff, which you point out Drew, like, all of it, every bit he did was just so insane and it all blew up. But, you know, the story ultimately is about the greatest trickster ever. The story is about the greatest dece fraudster trickster of all time. And you didn't really get that in the Odysseus character. One of the critiques of the movie is Odysseus just wasn't Odysseus. It was like Oppenheimer, too. It wasn't really Odysseus. But I wondered if. Because Nolan didn't just go a little bit woke. It wasn't like he didn't just pick an ethnically ambiguous Helen of Troy. He picked a woman who called herself Dark as Night. Like, he picked a very, very black actress. He didn't just pick a gay guy. He picked the tranny lady to play the stand in character for Achilles. It was so in your face. And I wondered, did he go that far to make a point? Was this his own kind of Odyssean, trickster way to generate publicity to win an Oscar with a dei? I don't know. I'm just. Maybe I'm reading too deeply. But he's a very smart guy to

[Drew]

be rage publicity was probably a point in his mind. I think it may have been, you know, just to get everybody angry and talking.

[Ben Shapiro]

But the general point of the film, which, again, I think you can boil down the morality to the film too, there is a golden rule that was instituted by. In the movie, it's the gods, but God. Right. In our conception, there's a golden rule that God said to do. And if you violate that rule, then sin is infectious and it actually has externalities, and those externalities come back and bite you. And sometimes the only way to put the genie back in the bottle is to sin again. But that's a sin that causes you to go into exile. That is an incredibly biblical message.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Ben Shapiro]

That is not that. That is actually like. That was the thing that got me about again. You can even quibble with all these things. And I agree with a lot of the critiques of the film. And. And if I were going to rank Nolan films, this one comes in, like, top of the second tier of Nolan films for me. This isn't like one of his top three films, but again, the sort of the overblown, like, we must. We must have a malice. Struggle session over the Odyssey.

[Drew]

It's so ridiculous.

[Ben Shapiro]

It's so ridiculous.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, speaking of struggle sessions, you know, there was one on Capitol Hill today with Fauci also speaking of great deceivers and one of the worst fraudsters. So we'll get to that. It's friendly fire. Hey, hey, Ben. Before we get into Fauci, I do have to ask, why are you dressed in a Vladimir Zalinsky costume?

[Ben Shapiro]

Okay, here's the actual honest answer. The actual honest answer is that it's really, really hot where I am. So we just filmed a show, and we are in, like, an old mansion in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it's like Europe here. There's no air conditioning, and so I cannot wear a jacket. And so they gave me the shirt, which normally I'd wear with a jacket. And then I just decided, just because I have to flex, that I was not going to wear the jacket. And also because I want to fire drones. Yeah, exactly. I just wanted to fire some drones in Moscow. So I decided that in honor of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's meeting with the president, and the president shifting back to the side of good against Russia, I'm gonna dress up like Vladimir. The real answer is I'm in, like, a cloak closet in Cincinnati is the actual real reason.

[Michael Knowles]

So what are you doing? Can you tell us why you're in Cincinnati, or. No, this is very secret project.

[Ben Shapiro]

It's not like the most secret project, but we are doing a new show where I'm interviewing the top names in business and finance about sort of the future of the economy and AI and technology. And so I was interviewing somebody for that. So it should be a great show. All right, that's coming out soon. All right.

[Michael Knowles]

That's exciting. Can we beat up on Anthony Fauci? He was on. Oh, I think we have a. Do we have a clip from the show?

[Ben Shapiro]

Here's a simple truth almost nobody wants to say out loud. The world you're living in right now is about to disappear. Not in a century, not in a generation.

[Drew]

Soon.

[Ben Shapiro]

Artificial intelligence, biotech, energy, capital markets, Every foundation of the modern economy is being ripped up and reported at the same time. One day in the very near future, we're all going to wake up, and the world around us will be unrecognizable. Now, a lot of people are terrified of that. We understand. They look at the horizon, they see a dystopian hellscape And a handful of tech CEOs make trillions, while everybody else is managed by the machines, your job automated, your choices decided by algorithm. A world where everything is provided for you and nothing is up to you. But that's not really the truth. This could be the greatest era of human flourishing in history. Free people, free markets. Armed with the most powerful tools ever created, making life longer, richer, and freer. But that outcome is not automatic. It does have to be built. The people building that future are not waiting for permission. So instead of speculating about them, I'm going to sit down with them. The founders, the CEOs, the investors, the people actually making the decisions that will decide the next decade, the next century. What are they building? Why are they building it? What should the rest of us be doing about it? This is Titans on Tomorrow. It's about to be a new world out there. Let's get ready for it.

[Michael Knowles]

I look forward to my investigation.

[Drew]

I missed the hellscape, though. I was hoping it'd be like doom.

[Ben Shapiro]

You know, I think the one thing we can conclude from that preview is that I look better with a jacket on.

[Michael Knowles]

Now, Mr. Fauci, Dr. Fauci did not look good on Capitol Hill today. He was totally humiliated by Josh Hawley, by Rand Paul, by. I mean, they were just raking this guy over the coals. He pled the Fifth to everything, even though he had a blanket pardon. So our friends over at Kalshee ask whether or not these people will be arrested this year. Right now, other than Fauci, we have John Brennan, 37%, Mahmoud Khalil, 27%, James Clapper, 20%. It'll all be great. But I'm really sorry to tell you, 11% say that Fauci will be arrested. I don't know who the 11% are that don't know what a blanket presidential pardon is, but that seems a little high to me. So two questions. One, will this do anything? It was satisfying to watch him squirm and to hear the great questions. But will this do anything? And two, did Fauci have the right to plead the Fifth given that he received this presidential pardon?

[Ben Shapiro]

So on the legal question, that's actually a pretty complicated legal question because the question is sort of what the Fifth Amendment is for. The typical idea is that you do not have a right against self incrimination for a crime that you cannot be convicted of.

[Matt Foldy]

Right.

[Ben Shapiro]

So can you take sort of a preemptive fifth, meaning that he knows that the whole thing here is going to be what he considers to be Perjury traps, right. People asking him questions to get him to conflict with testimony they gave at other times. Does his pardon cover his testimony from other times or testimony that gives now that conflicts with testimony that he gave it other times? None of this is particularly clear. The chances that you get a successful prosecution for perjury or for violation of the use of the fifth Amendment, you get a contempt and that, that amounts to jail time. Congressional contempt. Probably, you know, probably difficult. I think I feel like that's a bit of a stretch. So I don't think the calcium markets are wrong on that one. It does go to show you that this is not a man who is eager to speak exactly with the Senate. I understand why he's suspicious that every Republican is, is chomping at the bits. Put him in jail. I think that, you know that it does say something that he's unwilling to answer literally any of the questions, given the fact that his diaries are out there. And we now know that many of the suspicions that people held about him for years have been now fully justified by the insane stuff that's in his diary. Those diaries are crazy, by the way. That's wild stuff.

[Michael Knowles]

They're delightful.

[Drew]

They're really funny. I love. Julia likes me, you know, saying to Knowles, it's like watching 14 Year Old Girl in a pink, fluffy pink dress dancing around the room going, I'm so beautiful. I'd be. The prince will love me.

[Michael Knowles]

I'm going to the well, because the diary entries did. I mean it was things like, I got a really beautiful picture on the Washington Post today. My hairline was looking really, really good. Love, Gossip Girl or whatever, you know, and it was like all of that was the whole diary. But nothing's gonna happen.

[Drew]

The one thing I wanna see though, Knowles, I wanna see. I wanna see. I don't care whether he goes to jail. He's an old man. I really don't care what happens to him. I wanna see a reckoning for what the media did and how they contributed to this incredible disaster. Really. The worst failure of leadership since World War I. That killed the economy, that sent these poor children, these poor, poor children into a tailspin in their education that'll never be caught up with. And every time Donald Trump opens his mouth about the election that he feels he won, the press reports, oh, you know, this unfounded claim is always unfounded in the reporting of Trump talking. But what about the unfounded claims about Hunter Biden's laptop? What about the unfounded claims about where the virus came from? What about the unfounded claims of Russian collusion, the reckoning that we have had for the utter failure of our media class and our leadership class and our elite class, it just hasn't come. It's kind of dribbling out over time because people saw it. They're not going to be lied to. And so the trust in our institutions has vanished, as it should have vanished. Our institutions failed us. But why can't we just bring it out into the open and talk about it so that like, rip the band aid off and have the reckoning and fire the people who need to be fired, rejigger the press that needs to be rejiggered. Instead of this kind of slow bleed where the press is pretending, is hoping it's all going to go away. It's not going to go away. As Ben was just saying in his show, it's a new world where they're not going to be able to hide.

[Ben Shapiro]

Here's the thing. I think that the press already paid the price. I think that the press is basically a defunct institution. That doesn't mean that they can't have impact. But what has happened to the press over the course of the last three years is catastrophic. I mean, truly catastrophic. The ratings do not exist on cnn. Many of the major institutions have been taken over by people who the press disagrees with overtly here. I'm thinking of CBS News. Obviously there have been some significant change. Jeff Bezos has reshifted even the editorial page of the Washington Post. Like things have happened. I think there are two things that to me are the dogs that they never barked. One is how is it that we are still playing ball with China? I mean, like the real story about COVID I understand that we botched it. So did pretty much everybody else on Earth. Okay. Like the only country that didn't really botch it particularly badly was Sweden. Pretty much everybody else botched this thing pretty horribly. And on a state to state level. People botched it at sort of different levels. But you understand that, you know, dealing with a once in a century pandemic where nobody knows what to do, people make mistakes on both a governance level. The thing with Fauci is that he knew what he was doing, right? That's what makes what Fauci did so terrible, is that he knew exactly what he was doing when he was going after Jay Bhattacharya and the Great Barrington Declaration or when he was shutting down investigations into Wuhan. How China has been able to get away with unleashing a virus on the planet that killed legitimately 5 to 10 million people planet wide and somehow they just keep on trucking and nobody says anything about it. And the President even said they're trying to steal our election. He's still not really doing anything about it. That's one dog that didn't bark and the other dog that didn't bark. I gotta say it, cuz it just happens to be true. One of the reasons President Trump lost the 2020 election is because he really did not handle this well. Anthony Fauci was a Donald Trump appointee. Hey, Donald Trump could have fired Anthony Fauci at any minute and he would go on Truth Social or X at the time because he wasn't banned yet and he would rip into Anthony Fauci. But he worked for President Trump. If President Trump wanted to fire him, he could have fired him. And so I think that because he didn't, and again, I understand why he didn't, there were all sorts of political crosscur. I get all of that. But in the end, if you're the president and the guy works for you, it is very difficult for you then to be the lead attack point against the guy who you kept employed the entire time and you were using as sort of your figurehead as you tried out COVID policy. So the battery was,

[Drew]

I think the argument you made before though, about the leaders who didn't see it coming and they didn't quite know what it was and they were afraid and they panicked. All of that applies to Trump a lot more than it applies to Fauci and a lot more than it applies to the press whose job it is to ask questions and to say, is that true? And how do we compare these two ideas? And instead hounded Jay Buttuche from pillar to post. I mean, what they did to him was absolutely disgusting. So I agree, Look, I agree that the minute Trump won the second time, the press was doomed. And I think that never happened to a nicer institution. But I do think we still have not had the conversation at the level of this is what went wrong, this is what we ought to do next time. I'm ashamed of the churches that let themselves be shut down, especially those Catholic churches that let them shut up, be shut down, that denied the host to people, that denied the body and blood to people and didn't have the guts to just say as what his name did in California, I'm staying open. I don't care what you do. To me, a lot of failure around the board and I just don't think we've really discussed it on a national

[Michael Knowles]

level yet it's amazing to see, especially for the non sacramental shades of Christianity. They can say, well, it doesn't matter, the church isn't a real place. It's just kind of in the air and we can watch it on TV or whatever. But for those who have sacramental theology, notably including the Catholic Church, you need the sacraments. And I remember in LA when some of the churches were going real weak need and shutting down or trying to change things, there was this old, he was kind of a left winger, but he was this really old Dominican priest who, it was 92 or something, he was still hearing confessions from the side door of the church. Cause he knew that you can't do that. You know, he was of a certain generation that just understood you need to be there for people, especially at moments of crisis. And I think you're right, Drew, that we've had this national and international trauma that we're recovering from still. And so that's why you need the reckoning. It's just the problem is, okay, we're gonna go humiliate Tony Fauci on Capitol Hill. All right, that was a good, we're gonna get some good podcasts out of it and then that's gonna be it.

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, you know, one of the things that I think that has been under discussed is the failure of forget about the reckoning from, you know, people like us, who many of us were critical of Fauci very early on. Michael, you were super critical. Drew, you were critical of Fauci. It took me a little longer to get to critical of Fauci, but by the middle of summer of 2020, I was pretty critical of Fauci. You know, the, the, the thing that, that is really amazing about the lack of self critical, right? It's a self critical thing. It's not that they need to be batted about by members of the Republican Congress. The, the problem, the biggest problem we have right now in sort of the science of the community is the lack of rigor with regard to policing your own. If you don't police your own, then what ends up happening is that the trust in the institution of science really does decline. Right? It is not that people like Josh Howley or Tom Cotton or you or me or any of us were attacking Anthony Fauci and that was attacking the science. That was not the problem. The problem is that Anthony Fauci didn't give a crap about the science and neither did any of the people who were following Anthony Fauci. And yet they stood for the science. And so the natural reaction to that was a counter science revolution. Right. We moved from we should be skeptical of the experts to we should be completely non skeptical of the non experts.

[Matt Foldy]

Right.

[Ben Shapiro]

Which is, which is not the same proposition. Right. Like we should be skeptical of the experts and we should ask them difficult questions and we should force them into wall and demand like all those things for sure. But the contra positive of that, to distrust the experts is not trust the non experts, which is, I think, where so many people ended up going. And that really is kind of a dangerous thing. And, and I think that, you know, if the scientific community wishes to get back on the, on the horse here, they're the ones who need to do this. It doesn't need to be Republicans who are grilling Anthony Fauci. It needs to be members of the scientific community who are grilling Anthony Fauci as opposed to doing what they all are doing today, which is relighting their Anthony Fauci Fauci votive candles over on msnbc. They really were, they were doing this whole like, we're in mourning. It was so terrible how Anthony Fauci was treated. If you guys had asked those questions, maybe we could have come back to some sort of scientifically based rigor. But you're not asking those questions. So, you know, the consequences are a complete reactionary shift in a direction that frankly, I don't think is universally wonderful.

[Michael Knowles]

And you know, by the way, when. Hold on one second, Drew. I wanna hear what you have to say, but I just wanna point out that when Anthony Fauci was lying down on his bed, kicking his feet in the air, writing down, dear diary, I'm still beautiful. Well, he was doing that on his bed. I'm sleeping soundly on my bed because I have a Helix mattress. I don't just have a Helix mattress. I have multiple Helix mattresses. In fact, I just ordered another Helix mattress to improve the mattress room because I am a very courteous host. You can get your Helix mattress too. Helix has over 20 mattress models with cooling upgrades built for nights that we're all experiencing right now, especially in Tennessee. Free shipping anywhere in the US a 120 night sleep trial, a limited lifetime warranty. That is the happy with Helix guarantee. The most awarded mattress brand in the country. Recognized by Forbes, Wired, who cares what they think? Recognized by me, by everybody on this panel, on this show. Right now. It's the bomb dot com. None of the bedtime horror stories have to be reality. You can go right now. It'll ship for free. 27% off. Helixsleep.com DailyWire exclusive for the listeners to this show. Helixsleep.com Dailywire 27% off. Sitewide exclusively. Did I tell you the URL? I'll do it. You know what? We'll have a synthesis here between the thesis and the antithesis. You go right now to helixleep.com daily wire. Drew, you were saying.

[Drew]

Yeah. You know, especially with this uprising from the dsa. I was talking to Molly Hemingway last night, and she and I are the only two people who say, you know, the only difference between the DSA and the Democrat Party is the dsa. The socialists are honest. They're like, we hate your country. We're going to destroy it. Where the Democrats run on the policy that they're going to be moderate. And then they hate the country. Then when they win, they hate the country and they want to destroy it. But. But the lack of information about socialism and what it does and how it works. There is now no source in the country that young people can trust or feel they can trust to become educated.

[Ben Shapiro]

They don't.

[Drew]

You know, the guys, most of these kids who are voting for socialists, they have no idea what they're voting for. They've never read a book about socialism. They don't know any history about it. They've been taught in college, if they went to college, that socialism is great. The level of induced ignorance in the country is so high. And now who can you turn to to get like, just an honest, you know, here's the news. This is what happens. This is what happens when you have socialism.

[Michael Knowles]

I know who you can turn to, Drew, if you want to get the promotion of socialism. Yeah. Besides. Well, you can turn to us, but if you want to get the kind of pro socialist side, you can turn to Evan Barker, our guest, who is the author of Nothing Left. Yeah, we have a socialist on the show. Semi reformed, quasi reform.

[Ben Shapiro]

I don't know.

[Michael Knowles]

Evan, nice to see you. Former, former, former. You've been reformed.

[Evan Barker]

Thank you so much, you guys, for. Oh, go ahead.

[Michael Knowles]

No, you got the goods. What's. What is it? What are the youths thinking? I know they're eating Tide pods and they're going to the sock hop with their honeys, but tell me, what is the voice of the youth?

[Evan Barker]

Okay, so first of all, correction, former socialist. Thank you guys so much for having me on the show today, by the way. Yeah, so I worked with DSA aligned candidates for a long time, you guys. I worked at a firm out of Washington, D.C. called Left Rising. And we were behind some of the biggest names on the far left. Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Jamal Bowman, Jasmine Crockett. The list goes on and on. I worked for Abdul Al Said, and I ended up leaving the progressive movement in 2024, right after the DNC. I had enough, and I left. And today I've got a book out, and I wrote all of the juicy, exciting details about what it's like inside that movement, inside the book.

[Drew]

What changed your mind?

[Evan Barker]

So many things. So it was actually kind of a long, slow disillusionment for me. I first got activated in democratic politics in 2008 because I have a lung disease similar to cystic. Similar to cystic fibrosis. And Barack Obama promised me health care. And in all actuality, the Democratic Party was a lot different back then. I mean, I think Barack Obama, by today's standards, probably wouldn't even fit in. I mean, he deported people. He was for a closed border. The Democrats were a lot more normal back then. And over time, you know, I ended up getting disillusioned with the establishment when of the party in 2017. And that's how I found the Bernie Sanders movement. And I thought that they had all the answers. And then in 2020, things got even more insane. I ended up working with a criminal justice reform pac. You guys have probably heard of this guy. His name is Sean King. And that's when I started to feel very uneasy about the things that I was seeing and the things that I was hearing behind the scenes. And by 2021, it all kind of hit me what the far left was actually about. And in 2022, I had a baby boy. He's 4 years old now. And I think he made me a little bit more conservative, too, to be honest with you. Becoming a mother kind of reframed some of my political beliefs. And then I kind of stayed out of politics for a few years after that, but just focused on being a mom. And then in 2024, I did go to the Democratic National Convention. I was kind of interested, intrigued, just because of the whole Joe Biden debacle debate. I was hoping that maybe the Democrats would remake themselves, that there would be some sort of open convention. And instead, when I got there, I just saw the coronation of Kamala Harris. And at that point, I went home and I thought I was posting a resignation video on my TikTok to 40 followers. And. And instead, I woke up the next day, and there was about 2 million views. And so at that point, I just decided, screw it. I'll just Keep telling people everything I saw.

[Michael Knowles]

Now, you said, Evan, that you figured out what the far left was all about. How would you summarize that? I mean, what was it all about?

[Evan Barker]

Yeah, so I would even say it's funny because they like to cloak themselves in the cause of the working class. Right. And I actually come from a working class union family in the middle of the country. I've kind of watched over time as how most of my relatives have stopped supporting Democrats and now all love Donald Trump. I was kind of, I was kind of like the last one. But, you know, to, to, to leave the, the Democrats behind. And, you know, they say that they're socialists. I don't even know if I'd really call them socialists because they don't really even focus that much on economics. It's more about having a cultural revolution in the United States. They kind of just want to demean and denigrate anyone that isn't oppressed by their standards. And if they do actually support socialism, I think it's basically socialism for non white people. I think if you guys saw. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

[Michael Knowles]

No, no, I was, I was chuckling and agreeing with you. I think that's a good diagram.

[Evan Barker]

Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, if you saw Zohran Mamdani, he ran on like, let's tax rich and whiter neighborhoods more. It's funny when I ask my friends who are still Democrats about that, they like to give him a lot of leeway and they're like, well, you know, he just, he just was being overly descriptive. You know, he's not actually talking about poor white people or anything like that. But that's not true. I mean, that language is incredibly intentional. And Democratic elites, like, they, they push that kind of language onto politicians. That is actually what they mean. And so it's, it's kind of a movement that's based in racial grievance and grievance for anyone that, you know, just basically doesn't fit into what they believe is, is, you know, marginalized. I guess it's kind of crazy. It's, it's, it's. They basically pushed everybody else out of the movement.

[Ben Shapiro]

Yeah. Evan, one of the things that I've been saying for a while is that many of the things that conservatives like to say are sort of the bugs for the dsa. Those are actually the features that we on the, on the right will say things like, well, you know, Mamdani's only popular. You see Jon Stewart do this, and he's not on the right, but he's sort of more traditionally left. He'll say, you know, the reason Mount Donnie's popular among DSA types is because of his talk about affordability. And all the rest of this stuff is just sort of the. The chaff. The real wheat is the affordability argument. And I've been saying for a while that that's nonsense. That actually the affordability is the stuff that allows dupes like Jon Stewart to swallow the medicine.

[Matt Foldy]

But.

[Ben Shapiro]

But the actual thing that most people who are sort of DSA aligned are into is the grievance politics. It is the anti Americanism. It is the sort of radical victim. Victimizer, oppression matrix.

[Evan Barker]

Yeah, I think I. I think that is. I could not put that more aptly. I think that's exactly right. It's just. It's just a. It's grievance politics. I mean, they. They don't like America. You know, I actually. I lost my brother on the USS John McCain in 2017. That was actually another little thing that I. That I write about in my book, actually. It was a huge thing. But it was, you know, when I went to AOC's office for the first time in 2018 to visit her, it was about a month after she won her election against Joe Crowley. And I went in and I found these, like, American flag stickers. And I know this might seem. This might seem insignificant to some. It was. They were crumbled up. It's like somebody intentionally took them and crumbled them up and just threw them at the bottom of the garbage can. And I remember reaching down. It was about a year after I lost my brother, and I was like, I was about to go visit his kids and I pulled them out of the trash can and I was like, it was a constant thing. I would be behind the scenes on campaigns, and they would be so reactive to Donald Trump that they would want to just immediately blast out emails anytime Trump did any sort of military action in the Middle East. And I remember one time there was a threat actually towards US Troops abroad. This was back in. I think it was in 20. Around 2019, 2020. And they were sending out fundraising emails. And I was like, the only person around that was like, you guys, you don't know what's going on with our troops right now. What are you doing? Why are you trying to make money off of this? You should just be saying that you're praying for them and nothing else. And, like, they don't love America.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, they're open about it.

[Evan Barker]

I think all of these things, if

[Michael Knowles]

you, like, speak to them directly. Like, if you get them after a drink or so, they are pretty candid. I don't think we're slandering them at all here. And you even see it's on their website. Yeah, it's on. Right. And even like on the Mamdani point, you know, Mamdani said he wants to just help poor people or whatever. He's gonna tax 31,000 people who don't even really live in New York. They just have pied a terre. They're. It's extra homes, whatever. And then what happened this week? That 31,000 number went up to almost a million New Yorkers. And not only did he say he's gonna take their property, he doxxed them. After whipping up the mob against these people, he put out their names and addresses and more or less said, go get em, you know, and you just think, oh, wow, this is not about helping poor people. It's really just about hurting rich people. It's not, you know, it is, like, just profoundly unpatriotic.

[Evan Barker]

What drives me nuts about this, by the way, is that, you know, my family back in the Midwest, my mom, like, she's really struggling right now. I've had to pay for her rent or help her with her rent the last couple of months. And, you know, if I asked her about Zohra Mamdani and like, what she thinks of his policies, what she thinks of free grocery stores, she hates it. Even if she's like struggling to pay for her groceries right now, like, she thinks government run grocery stores are like an absolutely terrible idea. If you ask her, like, what she thinks about Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or any of those guys, she doesn't hate them. She doesn't have, like, envy of their success. She actually likes them and, like, looks up to them and thinks it's amazing that they're building jobs. And I think that that's a common thing. If you talk to actual working class people, not people in New York City who are highly educated, who have rich parents and, you know, have five college degrees and can't get jobs, you know, making more than six figures. Not those people. They have a lot of grievance, right, towards the rich. But if you talk to actual everyday, ordinary Americans. So Ron Mandani does not represent their politics.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, that's right. I know we have to let Ben go because you have to go drone Kiev. Sorry, the Kremlin, not Kiev. You would not know. You're not droning them. Ben, good to see you. I want to keep Evan Around. This is like a big trade up. Hold on. We're going from Ben to Evan. I want this to be permanent. Ben, good luck. Looking forward to the new show.

[Drew]

Yeah, I wanna see the new show. Looks great.

[Michael Knowles]

Before I let you go. So there's this new poll out that shows that the dsa, the Democratic socialists, are more popular with rank and file Democrat voters than Democrats in Congress. So I guess it's kind of a low bar for the dsa, but obviously the candidates are doing pretty well and the DSA seems to have a bright future, at least in the primaries. What does that say? I mean, what does that mean for the midterms and maybe for 2028?

[Evan Barker]

You know, it's kind of crazy, but I have seen the people in the Democratic Party, not just the people that work in the Democratic Party, but the actual voters in the face of the Democratic Party get more radicalized over the last 10 years. I mean, people that I knew in 2016 that really liked Hillary Clinton, like these days they're all in for Abdul Syed and think that Haley Stevens is terrible. So it's, I think that the base of the Democratic Party is honestly just really fed up with the establishment and you know, they have a reason to be mad at the establishment. The establishment has lost many times now to Donald Trump and has lost pretty key elections. But I think because the progressives, the DSA wings are the only built in alternative that they have, unfortunately it means they are looking to them as their answer to countering Donald Trump. But I think that this is completely misguided and will actually push them in an even worse direction.

[Drew]

Evan, One of the things I started out as on the left too and one of the things that changed my mind was just the revelation. The one thing all liberals know is that right wingers are evil. And when I started to realize, oh, they're not evil and start to question their ideas, their ideas were pretty good. Is there anyone on the right that you think, yeah, I would vote for this guy. Here's a conservative or Republican that I would vote for.

[Evan Barker]

So, okay, so I do consider myself an independent now. I did vote for Trump in 2024.

[Michael Knowles]

Let's go.

[Evan Barker]

I've already done it.

[Michael Knowles]

Love that.

[Evan Barker]

Yeah, I voted for Trump in 2024. You know, I like.

[Drew]

He's a moderate.

[Ben Shapiro]

Policy.

[Evan Barker]

Yeah, yeah. I'm from Missouri. I really like the center of Missouri, Josh Hawley. There's still some Democrats I like too though. So, you know, it really, it just depends on the person. I just, I think that the Democrats have, you know, they've just gone so far to the left. Like if Kamala Harris is the nominee in 2028, I'm not gonna vote for her. And I don't think anyone in my family would either.

[Michael Knowles]

I don't think Doug Emhoff's gonna vote for her. I mean, I, you know, I think she's pretty much done as she's put a fork in her. Evan, the book is nothing left. Everyone needs to go get the book. We need to fire Ben from this show and just have Evan on. This is so much more pleasant. This is great. Wonderful to see you. Where can people follow you?

[Evan Barker]

I'm on X at evanwch.

[Michael Knowles]

All right, Evan. Wch go see her at X. Thank you, Evan. Now, I want to talk to all of you before we go and before we get to our game show segment, I want to talk to you about. Talking about. I want to talk to you about PureTalk. In a recent industry survey, PureTalk was the only wireless company to receive five stars in every category, coverage, support, value and Data. You deserve five star wireless service. Now PureTalk has an invitation for you. Switch to PureTalk for just 15 bucks a month for a limited time. Any plan including their top shelf unlimited data plans. Just $15 a month for your first three months. No contract needed. Just an insanely low offer to switch to a top rated company. You know how you get 5 stars for support? A dedicated US customer service team that speaks English in words that you can understand without a thick accent. You know how you get five stars for value? You save the average family over $1,000 a year versus big wireless. There is a better choice out there for wireless. At just $15 a month for your first three months on any plan, now is a great time to choose PureTalk. Simply go to PureTalk.comKnowles K A W L ESC to claim this offer. That's PureTalk.comKnowles K N A W l e s To start saving today, it's down to me and Drew. No Ben, no Matt, no Evan. Father time peeking around the corner. Yeah, this all right. This is it. Hopefully I won't be alone. I think we're doing that stupid game show again. Is that right? Did you.

[Drew]

Oh, my God. Come on.

[Michael Knowles]

Do we have it? I want to do it. It's called. The producers are telling me it's called. I'm not convinced.

[Drew]

I love. I've been waiting for this all.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, No, I want. Hold on. I want to do a stinger. I want them to. The game show is called I'm not convinced.

[Drew]

There we go.

[Michael Knowles]

They don't. All right. Well, all right. They'll fix it in post, the first guest, Sonny Joy Nelson. Hello, Sonny.

[Ben Shapiro]

Hey.

[Sonny Joy Nelson]

Thank you for having me.

[Michael Knowles]

What's your pitch?

[Sonny Joy Nelson]

All right, here's my pitch. It's very on brand, you're going to say, wow, of course. Very unique here. My pitch is a serious one and it is the immediate passing of the Save America Act. Most specifically, the portion that says you have to show your ID to vote. You have to prove that you are an American citizen to vote. And here's my reasoning in that. Last week I went to TJ Maxx to return some clothes that don't fit me anymore because I'm seven months pregnant and I had to show my ID to prove who I was to return some clothes to TJ Maxx. When I left there, I went to Target to buy a lighter for my 3 year old sparklers for the 4th of July. I had to show an ID to buy a lighter. Now, this is absolutely crazy. We have our priorities totally mixed up in America right now. It should be common sense that our elections are 100% secure with voter ID.

[Michael Knowles]

Okay, yes, we all agree. We all need to pass the Save America act. This is an 8515 issue at least. But in order to get it done, you need to end the filibuster, which is not part of the Constitution. It's not intrinsic to the Senate, but it is this great Senate tradition that gives the minority party some power when they're out of power. Would you blow up the filibuster over this?

[Sonny Joy Nelson]

I believe that I would. And the President has been very clear about the filibuster and what the Democrats are going to do once they become in power, going to stack the Supreme Court, they're going to do away with what little security we have in our voting system right now. So this is something that needs to go and it's something that is important for Republicans this go around.

[Michael Knowles]

Drew, you're older than the filibuster. Would you blow it up?

[Drew]

Before they blow up the filibuster, I would like them to pare down the Save act to exactly what we're talking about right now. The SAVE act is littered with a bunch of things that put some people off. You know, Susan, I'm sorry. It was Murkowski who was complaining that it puts special burdens on people in Alaska who have a hard time getting to the polls. I think all of that would be cleared up if they would just put the whole act could be one sentence. You need picture id, official picture ID to vote in America. And I think if they would boil it down to that, I think there's a possibility they could even beat it without getting rid of the filibuster, which we have to admit is a dangerous thing to do. Power never stays in one hand in America. It's gonna go back to the Democrats at some point. And once they have the power, without the filibuster. And I know the argument. The argument is they're gonna do it anyway. But before we take that risk, I would like to just see them pare down the SAVE act to this one thing. Of course, you need ID to vote, and I would like to see Democrats vote against that, because they made it just too easy for the Democrats to wiggle out of it by adding all this other stuff.

[Michael Knowles]

Sonny, what do you think? Are you going with Drew's version or are you sticking with your own? The Save America act, as is, must be passed.

[Sonny Joy Nelson]

Hey, I have to say, it's a solid point, and I totally agree with it. I'm of the mindset that whatever works to get voter ID universally accepted in a federal rule in our elections. Let's go with that. I totally think that we need to get that passed and everything else we can focus on after that. Because if we don't have secure elections, we don't have a country. The President said that many times. But when you look at the voter fraud, the voter interference, the foreign interference that happens in our elections, these are things that happen in third world countries. America is the greatest country on the planet. We all agree on that. We deserve to have the most secure, safe elections on the planet as well.

[Michael Knowles]

Yes. I think that Drew's addendum to your point, Sonny, is good, so I'm persuaded by that. But you sound and look much better than Drew in every single way, so I think you both win. I'm convinced. Thank you, Sonny. We now have Matt Foldy. Matt, what's your idea?

[Matt Foldy]

Hello, guys. I want to win not the war on the suburbs with you, but I want to win a battle in the war on suburbs with you. And the way that we can solve this is by doing something very simple. It is banning bike lanes. Bike lanes, as we know, are not used by anyone. They are certainly not used by bicyclists. And all that they do is they add needless congestion to suburban Americans who use cars. I was just in Australia. Other countries, they don't love cars in the way that Americans do. We have had a love hate relationship with our cars since they were first created. And bike lanes serve basically no purpose. What do they do? They take up a lane of traffic that should be used for cars. And you still have bicyclists in. In the car lanes. So my proposal is that ban bike lanes.

[Michael Knowles]

Are bike lanes a big deal in the suburbs? I thought they're just in the cities.

[Matt Foldy]

They're in the city because they are part of the war on the suburbs.

[Michael Knowles]

They are part of the war on it. Yeah. Okay, now I understand.

[Matt Foldy]

And I will say, and look, in the suburb that I'm from, in Montgomery County, Maryland, they are now spreading. So I think that, you know, in the same way, you got to kill them over there, so you don't have to kill them over here. Stop the spread now before they come to a suburb or to an exurb near you.

[Michael Knowles]

I have to disagree. I'm not convinced because I agree with you. The bikes thing is ridiculous and nobody should ride them. But when I travel to cities in the United States, especially D.C. when I travel to cities around the world, I could be in Budapest. My chief mode of transportation, my favorite one, it's not a bicycle, but it's not a car and it's not a subway. It's those stupid scooters that are clearly a nuisance and probably carry diseases. But I love them. They're really cheap, they're easy to get around on. And I like the bike lane for that reason. And so I'm not convinced. Drew.

[Matt Foldy]

So, Michael, it's just you and Venezuelan gangbangers.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah. And really, you repeat yourself. Drew, what is.

[Drew]

I don't want to ban bike lanes. I want to ban bikes and bicyclists. I don't know what it is about people when they get on a bike that they suddenly lose all of their manners. They think they have the perfect right to scream at you to. To give you the finger because you didn't see them in your side view mirror. They're impossible to see and they're fun to run over. So it's an additive incentive to just drive right over. I also want to see a picture of you on one of those scooters so I can prove that you're not heterosexual.

[Michael Knowles]

Sometimes people snap them. If I'm driving by, occasionally I'll get someone shout out a window like, hey, I'm just there, full suit on, just going down the road. But I to your point, on bicycles.

[Drew]

You're so gay. I'm sorry, no.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, but actually, this relates to my big objection to bicycles, which is bicycles don't really exist. There are straight cycles, there Are gay sickles. But is there really any such thing as a bicycle or are you just like, you don't want to admit the whole thing? So anyway, I don't know if that

[Matt Foldy]

is reaffirming a transportation binary.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, I am. I certainly am and I don't. Yeah, so we're just gonna throw them off a rooftops or whatever, I don't know. Before it's really going downhill. I don't know if that means that I'm convinced by you, Matt, or not convinced, but in any case, this whole segment's been very, very gay. Thank you, Matt. I appreciate that.

[Ben Shapiro]

Do we have any other names you

[Matt Foldy]

guys are talking about? Other battles in the war for the suburbs. So I think that ultimately we are all in agreement. Whether or not it's banning bike lanes. Banning bicycles. We're coming at it from the same heterosexual standpoint.

[Michael Knowles]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[Drew]

That's the important one.

[Michael Knowles]

As long as we on that. Do we have any other heterosexual, homosexual. And no, we don't. It's just us. It's just us. And we contain multitudes. Okay, that's all I wanna talk about. Drew, do you have anything else you need to get off your mind?

[Drew]

I have one. Yeah, I have one. I finally finished J.D. vance's book. I texted you about it. I don't know if you got my text. I was really impressed with that book, I have to say. I think he's been. I know you love him and all this stuff, but I think he's been tripping over his own feet lately. And I think he's looked pretty bad in this Iran thing and some of the ways he's handled it, but I feel like there is this person there. I wish we could extract him. You know, I said before that he needs a tuckerectomy and I think that really is true. I think he needs to show some leadership on this issue. You know, Tucker is the one. I never get panicked about these media figures. They come and go. Tucker is doing something wicked and I think he's dangerous in this low information atmosphere that we're in. But Todd really was interested in this book. I actually thought he said some very self searching things and some of the things, my objections to whose personality he actually put in the book. Some of the things that I worry about in his personality, that he follows people too easily and then he gets angry at other people who suggest he might be wrong too easily. But I think he's at least thoughtful. I hope he can find his way because he May well be the candidate.

[Sonny Joy Nelson]

Yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

It's funny, because I agree. I think he is the presumptive nominee. Now. I think there are all sorts of campaigns to try to displace him, but it's just not showing up in the polls or in the scuttlebutt around Washington. But I really like your point there, Drew. Cause a lot of it, there are these descriptions of Vance, who I do like. I really do try to not get involved in primaries. I don't think it's my job, but I do think. Do we have a Kalshee? Yeah, we do. We have a Kalshee report on who the nominee's gonna be. What are they saying right now? Okay, right now, Kalshee's saying Vance, 40, Rubio, 30, DeSantis, five and a half, which is actually.

[Drew]

So that's Ruby on the rise, though.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, well, it's closer than the public opinion polls, but the public opinion polls are diverging. And there was just another one. It put Vance somewhere like, around 49 or 50, Rubio below that, followed by DeSantis and Ted Cruz, who I actually think has Elaine in the race. But then when you go Vance, Rubio, head to head, it actually goes apart even further. So I think it's like 60, 30 or 60, 29. And I also just don't think Rubio's gonna run against him. But because there's this campaign on, I do think people are projecting onto Vance these simplistic ideas that he does not really hold. And so I have the same impression that you have from the book, which is, this is a really sharp guy. He's a thoughtful person who really is interested in ideas. When I interviewed him a few weeks ago, he gave me an hour, and So I spent 45 minutes of it or something talking about religion. I knew I had to get a couple questions in there for the headlines about AOC or whatever, but I said, no, no, no. This is the rare politician with whom you can actually talk about the differences between the Dominicans and the Jesuits and syndicalism and distributism. And. I don't know. He's like, a really thoughtful guy, so. So, yeah, I'm glad you had that reaction, because that's mine, too.

[Drew]

Yeah, no, it lifted him in my. You know, I'm rooting for him. I've been rooting for him from the beginning, but I do think he's bumbled around a little bit and bumped into the walls a bit. And I think he needs. I think he does. You know, once you're in office, you don't have time to change your mind. You gotta act on the principles you have. And I think he needs to establish his principles a little bit more firmly. And one of the things he could do is speak up against the rampant antisemitism and anti Israel idea. You know, I don't care if you think we shouldn't be that involved in the Middle East. That has nothing to do with it. But the anti. To be against the one free country in that area smacks of antisemitism. And I think he needs to get his head around that.

[Michael Knowles]

It's interesting because anti Semitism certainly has been on the rise, and you do see it on the right. I mean, Yoram Hazoni made this point. He said, look, I didn't predict it. I didn't think you'd see it rise on the right. And it has to some degree. But of course, it's so much more pronounced on the left. I mean, it's like, not even comparable, you know, so it's true, though. You know, it crops up throughout history, and you gotta tamp it down always. But I think he needs to be really firm on the issues that really matter. Like, I just mentioned Dominicans versus Jesuits, and I know where he stands on that. I know that for a fact. Okay, that's friendly fire. Drew, good to see you. Now it's just gonna be me yelling into a room by myself. Bye, everybody. See you later. I'm Michael Knowles. We'll see you next time.