Michael Knowles (35:23)
Okay, Joy Behar once again is very confused. The reason that Trump is said to have a mandate here is not because he won the election by 1.6%. He didn't win the election by 1.6%. He won the election in a landslide. He got 312 electoral votes. Electoral votes is what determines who wins the presidential election. He only needed 270 to win, and he got 312. He totally destroyed Kamala Harris. That number. The 1.6 or 1.8% that she's referencing is the popular vote. Trump also won the popular vote. First time a Republican's done that in 20 years. Democrats have an advantage in the popular vote because Republicans generally don't campaign in the big Democrat states, New York and California, because the Democrats are gonna win it anyway. It's a waste of campaign dollars and time. If they did campaign there, they'd win the popular vote by a lot more, presumably. So it was the fact that he won the popular vote at all means there was a mandate. But even beyond that, the reason there was a mandate to govern is that the voters gave the Republicans unified government. The House, the Senate, and the White House. And the conservatives already have the Supreme Court. That's why it was a mandate. Then she compares it. She says, well, Biden won by a far greater number than the popular vote. Well, yeah, sort of. The Democrats changed all the election rules, and there were a lot of, a lot of sketchy changes to how elections were conducted there. And when the rules started to go back in the other direction, Kamala lost in a landslide then. Furthermore, she complains that Trump picks people who are good on tv. Yeah, look, this is responsive government, okay? In a popular government, government of the people, it's very important for politicians to be able to communicate. So Trump picks people who have good credentials, generally who are really talented, people who have achievements under their belt and who also happen to be able to communicate good. That is a vindication of popular government. That is what the people asked for when they gave Trump a mandate to govern. There's so much more to say first, though. Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Knowles Balance of Nature Fruits and veggies. It's the most convenient way to get whole fruits and vegetables daily. Nature is pretty good at giving us the nutrients that we need through fruits and vegetables. Balance of Nature takes fruits and veggies, freeze, dries them, turns them into a powder, and then puts them into a capsule. You take your fruit and veggie capsules every day, then your body knows what to do with them. Balance of nature is just one ingredient of a balanced lifestyle. Has no intention to replace a healthy diet, exercise, sleep, or any other healthy habits. It is intended to be used in concert with other healthy habits. I really like this, especially as someone who goes on the road a lot. You don't always get your fruits and veggies. Sometimes you're doing a little bit of fast food. It's nice to know. Okay, good. You're taken care of. As long as your producers don't steal all your balance of nature. Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Knowles K L A S for 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus get a free bottle of fiber and spice. Very simple. Right? Now go to balanceofnature.com then use promo code K N O W L E S and you can thank me later. My favorite comment Yesterday is from Caseman 434, who says, so funny that on this video we're seeing a YouTube note from the Associated Press. Haha. Yeah, I know. It's the AP and all these guys, the New York Times and Washington Post, both trying to pressure YouTube to take our shows off the air. Because the only way these guys are going to cling to relevance is by coercion, by force. They're going to insist on being the trusted sources. They're going to insist on making people read them. They wouldn't read them of their own accord. At least one person in America has learned a lesson from the 2024 election, and that would be Ann Selzer. You remember Ann Selzer. She's the Iowa pollster who actually has a relatively quite accurate record. She's got pretty high accuracy scores, but she totally Lew it in 2024. She said that Kamala was going to win Iowa by 3 points and then Trump won Iowa by 13 points. It was a pretty big swing. And Ann Selzer, now, just a couple weeks after the election, has announced she's done, she's retiring, she's out from election polling. This is a classy move. She says, look, I've had a good career. I've got an A or A plus rating on my accuracy. Wish I'd gone out on a good poll, but anyway, I'm done. I think this is the political equivalent to seppuku. The Japanese say, I have dishonored my trade. You put the samurai sword right in you, but it's a dignified thing to do. Okay, I'm done. Got it wrong. I've had a good career. I guess I'm starting to slip. I'm out. That's the right move for most pundits. For most people, especially on the left, they're gonna say, okay, we got everything wrong in 2024. We were wrong about Trump. We said he was Hitler. He's not. We said he destroyed democracy. He won't. We were wrong about what the voters want. We were wrong about America's priorities. We were wrong about everything. That's why you need to listen to us now. And CNN's ratings go down the tube. MSNBC's ratings go down the tube. No one wants the AP. No one reads the New York Times. Doesn't matter. They're going to stick to their guns and they're going to try to force you to continue to listen to them. Ann Selzer here showing a bit of class. Okay, you know, guess Time's up for me now. Speaking of changing of the guard, this is a story that I've been meaning to get to for a few days here. I want to get to it. A story out of cnn. I guess I'm the last person to read cnn. But observing a good trend, or not a bad trend, but an interesting trend, there is a rise in atheist chaplains. What is an atheist chaplain headline? Atheist chaplains are forging a new path in a changing world. I won't read through the whole story, but a growing number of atheist chaplains says being an atheist, non believer, unaffiliated, whatever you want to call yourself, lends itself really well to chaplaincy because we naturally don't project our own stuff on the people. He isn't there to teach, to preach or pray. He just reassures people. He'll go into hospices, speak to people who are dying, and just say, hey, yeah, I'm not here for any particular reason. I'm just going to. I can't really comfort you all that much. I'm just trying to be. I'm going to be nice. But he, like so many people in America, doesn't really have any clearly defined religion. What's the point of an atheist chaplain? I like this story, and the reason I like it is I puff on my delicious Mayflower compact here. Mayflower Dawn, Petit Corona. The reason I like this story is not that I think this is good for people. It's not that I think the atheist chaplain is even a coherent category of occupation. It's that it's a reminder that you can't stamp out religion. You can't do it. Atheist chaplains, in a way, have already existed for a long time, and we just call them psychiatrists. It's just people who have often, sometimes purely psychiatric problems. Usually, though, it's deeper spiritual problems. And they go and they want to. What they really want is to go confess their sins to a priest. But they can't bring themselves to believe that or think that that would be a worthwhile endeavor. So instead they go and confess their sins to a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist, unlike the priest, who can give you the absolution of God, the psychiatrist just gives you drugs to numb the pain and blur up your head a little bit. But they do that. People need to talk about their problems. People still have the eternal questions on their mind. What am I? What am I here for? Am I here for anything at all? What happens after I die? People will always demand chaplains because people will always die and the ultimate questions will always be before them, no matter how many drugs they take, no matter how much they try to get it out of their heads. There's always going to be a demand for chaplains. There's always going to be a demand for priests. And so we can have harmful, unhelpful versions of chaplains and priests, self help gurus and modern liberal yoga teachers with face tattoos. You can have that, but you're still going to have that longing. Because man is fundamentally a religious creature and because man is made in the image and likeness of God, we're always going to have that longing. We're always going to have that there. So the question is not, as I say this for the Republicans at the top of the show, bring it full circle. The question is not will you deal with the transgender issue on Capitol Hill or not. The question is just what are you going to do about it? Either you're going to let the man into the woman's bathroom, or you're going to protect women's bathrooms. But you have to pick one because the guy's got to go to the bathroom. The question isn't, are we going to have priests and chaplains? Are we going to talk about our problems? Are we going to try to find solutions to the eternal questions? The question is just how are we going to do it? Are you going to go talk to some atheist chaplain while you lay dying, or are you going to talk to a priest? Are you going to go confess your sins to some liberal with a medical degree who's going to give you Prozac, or are you going to go confess your sins to a priest? Are you going to go, are you going to go bring your questions ultimately to God? But you're going to have to figure it out because you're a human being and you are going to die and you're going to have to face those questions. Now, speaking of causes of anxiety and psychiatric issues, Australia is doing a very good thing. And Australia is a huge lib government. They have all sorts of problems. But you got to give credit where credit's due. Australia has a proposal to ban social media for kids under 16. Children and teenagers under the age of 16 could be banned totally from social media after the labor government announced it would back this higher cutoff limit. The government had previously said that it would introduce legislation that would get kids off social media by the end of the year. Now they're kind of trying to work through what the proposal looks like. This is so obvious. This might be a little bit of a point of departure between the Conservatives and the libertarians, but I doubt it, actually. I think people realize how pernicious social media can be, can give kids all sorts of body image issues, all sorts of anxieties. It can do that to adults too. Everyone's comparing their lives to the picture perfect curated version of life that we all see from everyone else. It feeds on envy and it helps to encourage envy and pride and vanity and sloth and all sorts of bad stuff. And you think, okay, even if you're the most hardcore libertarian, do whatever you want kind of person, we all still believe that you can have an age cutoff for buying cigarettes or cigars for that matter. We all believe in an age cutoff for buying booze or for pornography. At least we should. I mean, if you want to go buy a Playboy at the magazine store, you have to show an id. You don't have to do that in most states now for online high speed porn, but in some states you do. Increasingly, we're recognizing this is crazy, that we're just allowing little kids to be exposed to this. This is really bad for them, for goodness sakes. We can ban scary movies for minors. We have an R rating on scary movies. You're not allowed to go see a horror film if you're 12 years old, but you can go use TikTok, Instagram. Totally crazy. Really, really dangerous stuff. We need bills like this too. And it's going to upend the way that Republicans think about government. But you're seeing this really in the Trump fight right now. You've seen this even in the pics, in the internal roilings within the presumptive Trump administration, this rift on the right. Are we going to double down on the old country club policies of you, do you? We're not gonna deal with the social issues. We'll let men do whatever they want. They can put on a dress, go into the women's room, just don't bother me and don't raise my taxes. Are we gonna go to that kind of Republicanism or are we gonna think a little bit more about what kind of society we want to live in? Standards, norms, virtue, dare I say, the common good. Are we going to actually dig in on these issues and say, hey, we're not just going to have fights about procedures, how bills are going to be passed if the federal government's going to take up an issue or if it's going to be left to the states. We're actually going to also focus in on the substance of those issues. Should kids really be allowed into the wild, wild west of social media, is that good for them? Probably not. All right, so even, you know, every man is my teacher and I can learn from him. Even Australia, which is so nuts, I mean, it's a nation that was founded as a penal colony and they've, you know, they've had extremely far leftist policies, but here I think they've stumbled on something right and conservatives should take that up too. As we deal with the substance, as we deal with the issues, what is a person, what is good for a person's flourishing? How are we going to live well as a society? How are we going to come to some common agreements on even what the meaning of the word woman is? Well, this would be a good place to say, okay, maybe there's an age limit. No more 12 year olds on TikTok.