Michael Knowles (24:10)
What did he say? Watch a full episode now on the Michael Knowles YouTube channel. Do not forget to subscribe for the ad free version On Daily Wire plus, speaking of social issues, I recently irritated libertarians, which happens sometimes. Look, I love libertarians. Some of my best friends are libertarians, but I'm not a libertarian. So sometimes I irritate them. And the way I irritated them was because I questioned the pardoning of Ross Ulbricht. I didn't even really question the pardoning of Ross Ulbricht. I questioned the philosophical arguments in defense of the pardoning of Ross Ulbricht. The pardoning of Ulbricht as a political matter, I get, but as a philosophical matter, I didn't quite get. For those of you who don't even know who Ross Ulbricht is, Ross Ulbricht is this guy, he's in his 30s. He founded a website called the Silk Road. And the Silk Road was a website not on the regular Internet, but on the dark Internet, the hidden Internet, the Internet where you need to download a bunch of tools to even log into the thing. And the whole purpose of it is to evade detection, to be anonymous, to do things that maybe you don't want people seeing. And I'm not just talking about, you know, reading a right wing political site or something like that. I'm talking about really illegal stuff. So you had this website, the Silk Road. And I've got a screenshot of it here. The screenshots have been going around the last few days. The Silk Road was an anonymous marketplace, as they say. And you could shop by category in the marketplace. And so what's the category? Category is top one up there. Drugs. 687. 687 drug products on there. It was all sold in bitcoin because bitcoin is anonymous. Or bitcoin can be anonymous drugs. Top one. Cannabis. Okay. Most people are pretty loose on pot. Ecstasy, it's a little more serious. Disassociatives. Dissociatives. I don't actually really know what that is. Is that like pain medication? Psychedelics. Okay, that's a little more serious. Opioids. Whoa, okay, hold on. Sound like opium. Oxycontin, Heroin, maybe on there. Yikes. Stimulants. What's that? Cocaine. Other benzos. Benzos is pretty serious. So that's a lot of drugs. It's the top category on this marketplace right there on the website. And there's more, by the way. There's lab supplies, digital goods, money. How do you buy money? Like foreign currency, I guess. Weaponry. Okay. Home and garden. That's kind of wholesome drug paraphernalia. Xxx now that really raises an eyebrow. Cause you say, oh, Xxx so it's pornography. But it's pornography specifically on this really hidden Internet that's anonymous. So you're not just talking about the whole regular Internet is full of porn now? Basically. So if you're talking about stuff, you gotta go on a secret hidden Internet for perhaps illegal pornography. Yikes. Okay, hold on. Wait. What are we. That could be really bad. That could be really, really bad. Computer equipment, art, musical tickets. Okay, then you got some. Those things seem basically fine. Forgeries. Okay, forgeries. Even the stuff that seems fine, though. I don't know. You wonder if it's anonymous. It's totally anonymous. If the whole point is to evade any detection. Are these stolen goods? Maybe. Why would you put it here rather than on a much more traceable marketplace on the regular intern, like, I don't know, Facebook marketplace or Craigslist or something like that. And all these drugs. So anyway, Ulbricht gets sentenced to life in prison. I think it was actually like two life sentences plus 40 years. Now, during his various trials, it was suggested that Ulbricht not only engaged in running this enterprise where all illegal goods were sold, but he also might have ordered multiple hits, murder for hire on people. Now this was never proven. It was never proven beyond reasonable doubt. There did appear to. It was found by the court that there was a preponderance of evidence for it. You can see the chat logs, the supposed chat logs as published in various media outlets. It doesn't look great. But that's not why he was sentenced. That has nothing to do with his sentencing. Sentencing was for distributing narcotics. Distributing narcotics by means of the Internet. Conspiring to distribute narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, conspiring to traffic and false identity documents, and conspiring to commit money laundering. Okay? And the DOJ argued that the narcotics distributed on Silk Road have been linked to at least six overdose deaths around the world. Now, I get why libertarians support this guy. He is a pioneer of using Bitcoin to actually buy stuff. And people really like Bitcoin. He doesn't have any respect for laws and regulations from the government. I get that libertarians don't really have much respect for laws, regulations by the government. He clearly supports buying and selling drugs. Libertarians usually support buying and selling drugs on the free marketplace. Even if they don't do it themselves. They support the supposed right to do that. Okay, whatever. I get it. This guy apparently made a lot of money profiting off of the sale of drugs and this other stuff. Xxx pornography, weaponry, Okay, I get it. I understand why libertarians like him. What I'm wondering is, is there a non libertarian reason to support this pardon? I even politically get it. President Trump. I was at the bitcoin conference. President Trump came out and he promised if libertarians voted for him, he would free this guy. Okay, I get it. He made a deal with libertarians, who are an important part of the political coalition. Whatever. That's cool. I totally get it. In political campaigns, you gotta make deals. I support the pardon. Power for the president. Fine. But should we really celebrate it? Even if it's politically prudent, even if a lot of people support it? Is this the sort of thing that conservatives should be celebrating? Because at the end of the day, it seems to me that this guy, once you get past all the ideological ornamentation and all of the manifestos and declarations about the free market and the supposed rights that the government is trampling on, you know, the right to do heroin or whatever, it seems to me that this guy's just a profiteer from the drug trade that he just dealt. And some people say, well, what's the difference between this guy and the guy who owns the phone company? Or this guy and Mark Zuckerberg who owns Facebook? Well, I guess the difference would be, yes, illegal transactions happen across all of those various means of communication, but this one was set up for the very purpose of people committing these crimes. Yes, people sell drugs and things on Facebook or over the phone, perhaps, but that's an accident. That is a byproduct of the means of communication. The phone company or Facebook are not intentionally impeding the enforcement of laws, whereas with this one, the whole point of it is to be undetectable. No trace whatsoever. So, of course. And by the way this guy set up, some people are arguing, well, he had rules on the website, so you couldn't sell really hideous things like child pornography. Okay, well, then if you're acknowledging that he had rules and he set certain limits, then the very fact that he's selling all, or he's listing all of these drugs right here at the top of it, shows you that he was intentionally facilitating the sale of drugs, which would be a criminal enterprise. So you might say, well, I don't like those laws against drugs. Okay, well, maybe you do, maybe you don't. But there's no question to me that the guy broke the law in a pretty serious way. Even if you take the allegations about murder for hire and the really crazy stuff, just the most basic things that he was convicted for, that no One really disputes that is bad, right? Like we don't. I don't know. Look, maybe it's. Maybe I'm just conservative. Maybe it's just because I'm not a libertarian, I'm not an anarchist. I support just imprudent regulation within limits. The only argument I could really see for the pardon philosophically is that the sentence was perhaps excessive. Or this guy gets two life sentences but other drug dealers are getting off the hook. Or this guy gets two life sentences and other pornographers or people who distribute pornography are off the hook, the punishment doesn't totally fit the crime. Or that the DOJ is corrupt and they really railroaded this guy. The DOJ has been corrupt and has gone after a lot of people. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here, folks, okay? It's fine. I'm not gonna lose sleep over the guy getting the pardon. Politically, it was probably prudent, but drugs are bad. Drugs are bad, m'kay? It is good for the government to be able to enforce some laws. Just laws and unjust laws are not the same. Because while people are prattling on about rights here, the supposed individual right to sell black tar heroin on the Internet without being detected or whatever, don't forget that every time we assert such a supposed individual right, we are denying a political right that we have long cherished in America, namely the right to self government. America is founded on the premise not of radical maximal individualism. It's founded on the premise of self government that we the people can elect representatives to pass and enforce laws. We the people can elect people who can pass laws against black tar heroin or against opioids when opioids are poisoning. Hundreds of thousands of Americans in our communities, can pass laws against pornography, can pass certain regulations over weapons, that we have a second amendment which provides a robust protection for the right to keep and bear arms. But we have political rights too. So we want not merely a licentiousness masquerading as individual liberty, but really what our founders at Framers gave us was a more exalted kind of freedom. An ordered liberty. The only true liberty, the only liberty that will really set you free. You know, the Daily Wire gave you front row seats to history during the inauguration weekend. Covering everything from the pageantry to the political highlights. We were there to bring you the dawn of America's golden age. The Daily Wire is where politics and culture collide with live, uncensored ad free daily shows. From the most trusted voices in America to our growing catalog of premium entertainment that's reshaping culture. We are leading the charge. What we do matters, darn it, but we can't do it without you. Join Daily Wire plus today. Save 47% with code 47, celebrating America's 47th president, Donald John Trump. There's never been a better time. To join, go to dailywire.com subscribe. Save 47% today with code 47. My favorite comment yesterday is from Abbaslazem801 who says, I'm a Muslim and completely agree that the Islamic call to prayer has no place in a cathedral or church. Many Muslims I know wouldn't want to be seen dead in a cathedral. It's amazing how tolerant other religions are compared to Islam. Anything like this would be absolutely prohibited in a mosque. Right, because the Muslims at least have a reasonable sense of what a religion is. Exactly. This is my point. Yesterday I said, please don't misinterpret me to think that I'm just beating up on the Muslims here. I said, you know, in many ways, I can have a much more reasonable conversation about religion with a Muslim than I can with some decadent secular Western leftist. But why do we have the Islamic call to prayer in the national Cathedral? Why do we have a reading from the Quran in the cathedral? The Quran denies the crucifixion. St. Paul writes in inerrant scripture that there are many, and I tell you now, even weeping, who deny the cross of Christ. These things don't go together, okay? And when you get even deeper into the theology, you see major, major differences. For starters, that Christianity identifies God with the Logos, with the divine logic of the universe, that faith and reason go together. Islam, certainly, since what, the 9th or 10th century, rejects that view for Islam. As Pope Benedict quotes Ibn Hazm, the Islamic writer, the medieval Islamic writer, Islam adopts a voluntarist view of God that says that Allah is totally transcendent. He's pure will, not necessarily tied to reason. So whatever your mileage may vary, you might come to different conclusions, but. But those are just different views of God. Those are different religions. And a national cathedral only makes sense if the nation agrees on at least some religious principles. But a cathedral that worships every kind of God, that brings in every kind of person with every kind of religion, that's no cathedral at all. That's just a big incoherent building. And that was essentially where we were all sitting on Tuesday morning. A big incoherent building. And because culture and cult come from the same root word as we deny even the basic limits of our national belief. We have an incoherent country that's at the root of a lot of our political problems. So so far, look, it's all been hits from the Trump administration, even the Ross Ulbrich pardon. As I've said, as a practical political prudential matter, I totally get it. I think it was probably smart for Trump to win over the bitcoiners and the libertarians. And so I'm cool. I get it. There's only one thing that the Trump admin has done so far that I think is maybe not the best idea, and that it just came out yesterday. They pulled John Bolton's security detail. John Bolton was President Trump's national security adviser in the first term. He became a major Trump critic after he left the White House. Trump is, you know, punches back a little bit, and so they've bickered a lot in public. However, Iran has been trying to murder John Bolton ever since he was in the White House. And that's because the Trump White House took out the top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani. So since then, Iran has been trying to murder President Trump, and they've been trying to murder John Bolton. In 2022, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian forces, was charged, was actually arrested and charged with a plot to murder John Bolton. Bolton said he was told by security officials as recently as a few days ago that the threat against his life remained high. And so I get the impulse of the administration to say, look, this guy's a huge critic. We're not giving him protection forever. We're gonna pull his security from him. However, even though I know John Bolton is not all that popular anymore, he used to be very popular on the right. He's not that popular anymore. There is no question Iran is trying to kill him. I think everyone would agree with that. So Iran definitely wants to kill him. That is why the White House offered him security in the first place. If you pull the security just because of a political dispute or something, one is a matter of making policy that could discourage other national security officials from taking decisive action. Action that was really popular even for the president. You know, taking out Soleimani, it was a popular action. And I think it also really helped Trump's foreign policy and his foreign policy chops, in that it played into his great foreign policy strength, which is that he's totally unpredictable. He's talking like a dove. One day he drops the moab, another day he's palling around with Kim Jong Un. One day he's Blowing up the Iranian general the next day, you don't really know. And that gives you a lot of strength, a lot of power. So you don't want to do things that will discourage your national security officials from taking bold and ambitious and decisive action. But then the third political reason here for the White House to consider giving Bolton a security detail back is God forbid something happens. God forbid some Iranians actually do succeed at killing John Bolton. That would look terrible politically. That would cost the White House a lot of support. It would be an unforced error. It would be bad. It would be very bad in itself. But politically, it would be really bad for the White House too, for the relatively low cost of just giving Bolton some Secret Service protection. I don't know, it seems to me if I were advising the President, if I were in the White House, I'd say you are absolutely crushing it on everything. Your agenda is being implemented so quickly. Don't let this personal grudge potentially derail what your administration is doing. Because it's now, without question, an historic administration, non consecutive second term. Unbelievable. Wins the popular vote as a Republican for the first time in 20 years. It's just you're in the history books and you're already day three, day four, changing so much, restoring so much common sense to America. I would just protect against things that could needlessly derail that. Now, speaking of firing staff, CNN is going to lay off hundreds more employees. And I actually don't celebrate this stuff. These are people, they have families, even if they're libs. Not all of them are libs, but some of them are libs and they have families. And I don't celebrate when people lose their jobs. However, I do celebrate the political conditions that would cause them to lose their jobs. It's not my fault that the CNN employees are losing their jobs. It's not even Trump's fault that the CNN employees are losing their jobs. It is the fault of CNN leadership, which decided to run so much fake news, which decided to lose so much credibility, which decided to be so deceitful for so many years, that people tuned them out. They just got too much wrong. And when they were proven to have gotten too much wrong, people tuned out. People were already tuning out of tv, but they've been tuning out of all those CNN properties. That's why the company is in bad shape. That's why they're laying out off people in addition to the 100 people they fired over the summer. And it's not just NBC or it's not just cnn. Rather, it's also NBC. NBC News is reportedly planning cuts for later this week, though it won't be 100, it'll be well under 50. And this is according to reporting from CNBC. So it's not even just rumor mongering. And NBC property is already reporting this. The bleeding continues. The corporate bleeding will continue until morale improves. Okay. Or until honesty improves. Until ethics in the newsroom improves. This is the conservative consolation, that reality reasserts itself in the end. You can only lie to the people for so long before there's some consequence to this. Daily Wire looking pretty strong. Daily Wire, our business, pretty robust. Fox News, their business, pretty strong. Pretty robust. You look over on the right, the Blaze, you look over at these media companies on the right, we're looking good, man. This is not just a general shift in the media. This is specifically something that's going on in the liberal media because the liberal media have offended their viewers with their dishonesty, with their misinformation, you name it. And the viewers are tuning in. Now, speaking of tv, the media, they never give up. They're trying however they can to attack Trump. And he's been so successful in his first week in office, he was so successful during the election, the transition was great, and that the best they can do is this. This is from a local Fox affiliate in Oregon. Don't forget, Fox News and the Fox affiliates are different entities. Fox affiliates tend to be a little bit more liberal, more in line with the rest of the establishment media. This local Fox affiliate in liberal Oregon says estimated 24.6 million TV viewers watched Trump inauguration coverage. Smallest audience since 2013. But you notice two really important letters here. TV viewers. TV viewers. First of all, the fact that it's not the smallest ever is impressive. Why? Because no one really watches TV anymore. I basically never watch tv. I'm on screens a lot, but I'm scrolling. I'm listening to podcasts, I'm watching YouTube. Maybe I'm streaming something on some device. But watching TV, like network TV, you'd expect it to be the smallest ever, but it's not smallest in a dozen years. Okay, but are you gonna tell us how many people listened on the gramophone? Are you gonna tell us how many people were feeling the vibrations from their telegraph to. No, that's just not how people consume media anymore. What's the number on total viewers? That's what I wanna know. I was on air during the inauguration. We weren't watching, like, tv, like, you know, you get your rabbit ears out. That's just not how it works anymore. People stream. People were streaming our show. This seems really, really silly. It's like they're grasping for straws, but they have to grasp for straws because on every other front, Trump has been so successful. Now, speaking of popular media, really great story out of sports. I had to consult my sports experts. The official Michael Knowles show. Senior sports analyst Ben Davies. I said, Mr. Davies, what's this story about Jaden Daniels. Jaden Daniels is the Redskins quarterback. We can't call them the Redskins anymore, though. Now they're the commanders. But no one really says that. They also just say the Redskins. Still, this is one of the most liberal teams in professional sports. This is a team that was absolutely terrible. Mr. Davies, you told me they were, what, the worst team last year. They were the second worst team at the second overall pick in the draft. Okay, second worst team, second overall pick in the draft. And now they're one game away from the Super Bowl. This guy, Jaden Daniels has the best rookie season of any quarterback, maybe ever. Potentially. He could be the first rookie quarterback to go to the Super Bowl. And what is this, man? What is the sort of thing that he says and he does, well, the Washington Redskins are taking the knee for George Floyd. Well, the whole NFL got so far left. Colin Kaepernick, all this nonsense, you remember, the whole league had gone so far to the left. Here is this rookie football player. What did you in this group know that seemingly no one else did?