Michael Knowles (0:00)

Is a new Republican law about to stop married women from voting? Because that would be terrible, right? I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. Look at this smoke just kind of coming up, filling my room. I don't know what I want to light. I want to relight. I want to de wick. I want to clip my wick. There's a lot to get to today. We'll also have fake headline Friday in the Membrum segmentum for people who aren't in the hoi polloi, who are part of the creme de la creme. Also, you know the stages of grief, you know, there's like denial and then there's anger and there's bargaining. Stephen Colbert represents the American left in the bargaining stage of grief for the new Trump administration. He's now begging the deep state to come in and stop Trump. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to helixsleep.com knowles you know how much I love Helix sleep. I have had my Helix mattress for at this point, going on five years, I think. And you know what I just did because I'm a good father, I just ordered a second Helix mattress for my kids. The second helix, forget about for me, even for my kids because I'm such an indulgent and good father. When my first boy went from his crib to his bed, I got him a nice helix. And the same is true now for my middle son. What makes Helix different is their personalized approach. They actually take the time to match you with the perfect mattress for your specific needs. So I'm not gonna wanna sleep on exactly the same kind of mattress as my four year old boy, am I? No. But I'll tell you, everyone loves their Helix. I cannot wait to get this next one. And then I guess that means I'm gonna have to get one for my third son. Right now. If you are ready to make the most of your sleep, go take advantage of their spring savings event. Go to helixsleep.com knowles for 20% off site wide. Take their personalized mattress quiz today. Start sleeping better tonight. Helixsleep.com knowles for 20% off site wide. Helixsleep.com knowled all right now, folks. Now without any further ado, I'm going to relight my beautiful Smells and Bells candle because today is the last day that you can order the smells and Bells candle and get it in time for Easter. I think this is an essential Easter home product to make your home smell like a 12th century monastery. Lit beautifully with The Mayflower triple flame Lighter. You know who loves candles? Women. And you know who supposedly won't be able to vote anymore because of a new law passed by Republicans in Congress? Women. That's right. That's what you heard if you read Newsweek yesterday. The SAVE act was passed by the House, obviously still has to go through the Senate. The SAVE Act, Republicans are saying it's just a way to protect the integrity of our elections. But Democrats and the establishment media, but I repeat myself, they know the real story, which is that this is about stopping married women from voting. Headline, Married women could be stopped from Voting under the SAVE Act. That's a story by Sophie Clark, USA Today. What is the SAVE Act? Here's what it could mean for married women and voting rights. On and on. There are a number of. Glamour magazine ran a piece titled the SAVE Act Could Stop Millions of Women from Voting. Here's what you need to know. Now, what does this legislation do? It says that you need to prove that you are who you say you are to vote. That's all it says. This legislation passed by Republicans says you need to prove that you're an eligible voter if you want to vote. This is basic stuff that any sensible country in the world requires. The legislation further direct states to, quote, provide reasonable accommodations for disabled Americans and applicants that have discrepancies on their documentation due to a name change. So you see, this is where the Democrats are so good at this. They find one little thing in a law that they can twist and pervert beyond all recognition and try to pretend that that's the essence of the law. What they're saying is, look, if you have to prove that you are an eligible voter in order to vote, then you need to provide some documentation of your identity. However, if you're a married woman, sometimes you take your husband's name, you're supposed to take your husband's name, and sometimes you don't. Update all of your documentation. So what happens if Sally Smith marries Bobby Jones and now she's Sally Jones, but her ID still says Sally Smith. Does she not get to vote anymore? No, I'll just use my own experience here. I have a wife. She took my name. She stole votes just fine, even though she has to provide ID because we live in a sensible state called Tennessee. Millions and millions of women take their husband's name when they get married and have no problem getting some proof of who they are. It's not that hard. It's a little bit of a headache. Maybe it takes a week or two, but it's not that hard. Furthermore, the way you know that this story from Democrats is completely bogus. If Republicans were going to try to suppress the vote of anyone, it would not be married women. We win married women. Maybe you could say Republicans would prefer to suppress the vote of single women or something. Again, there's no evidence that they actually want to do that, but. And by the way, we won 40% of women under the age of 30 in the 2024 election, so we probably wouldn't even wanna do that. But the last group of women that we would wanna suppress from voting would be married women, because married women vote Republican. The headline should just be, hey, Republicans require that you actually be able to vote in order to vote. Total nonsense. Not even a plausible fear mongering campaign on its own terms. So you can ignore that. Now, speaking of women, we turn to the latest allegation against Internet star Andrew Tate. Not because I care that much about the gossip about Andrew Tate, but because of the political implications headline, Andrew Tate told woman I'm debating whether to rape you. Court papers allege claims by four women are filed at high court, including of rape, coercive control and assault and battery. I don't think anyone is denying that Andrew Tate has said things like this and engage in acts that looked like this. There's this video of him smacking a woman and screaming all sorts of things at her and branding them with his tattoo of his name and saying all sorts of really disrespectful things like I own you, I'm going to rape you or whatever. There are all these. I don't think anyone, including Andrew Tate, denies that these things have been said. The defense of the Tate is that it's all just kind of kinky. It's all totally consensual. And in fairness, the woman who I guess made this allegation did go back and visit this guy for a long time afterward. So it wasn't like he was lurking in a dark alleyway or something and she kept going back and I guess was dating this guy or something like it. So I think that that whole tit for tat totally misses the point here. One side says, this man when he was smacking women and saying he owns them and wants to rape them and wants to beat them and that that was rape and assault. And then the other side says, no, no, no. When Andrew Tate did all of those things, it was just consensual. It was like a kind of fun game. It was a role play, it was kinky, it was all. He was just expressing his animalistic desires. And she was on board with it too. Even if she said she wasn't, she was cool with it. The actual issue here is regardless of consent or not. I mean, consent is a serious thing, but it's not the only criterion of morality. The deeper issue is one should not have these desires, even if it was just like a kinky role playing thing between a boyfriend and a girlfriend. I'm a little skeptical of that. But even if that's what it was, the boyfriend should not want to beat his girlfriend. Even in a fantasy, even in a fun little role playing game. The boyfriend should not be titillated by saying things like I own you, by saying degrading things to his girlfriend, by putting his name as a tattoo on his girlfriend, or hitting his girlfriend, or any of those things. That should not even be the sort of thing that one desires. Now, you can criticize Tate for all sorts of reasons. If, however, you actually want to criticize Tate in a coherent way, then you need to go all the way and say, okay, his very desires, regardless of whether or not these actions were consensual, his very desires are wrong and perverse and need to be changed. They need to be sublimated so that you take dark, low desires and sublimate them and point them in the right direction. That's what you need to say. But many of Andrew Tate's critics will not do that because that has implications for all other sorts of behaviors. If we are willing to establish that certain desires, certain sexual desires are wrong and perverse and disordered, then we need to apply that evenly and across the board and say, well, okay, how about you check in on your own desires? How about we check in on the desires of our communities? How about we recognize that certain behaviors are better than others? Having a loving marriage where you are open to the possibility of life, and when you do that thing that married couples do, it's actually loving and produces children. That's actually better than, you know, whips and chains or whatever. That's better than random hookups. That's better than strange arrangements that involve, like, three dudes, five chicks, and a billy goat or whatever, you know, modern people do today. There are better and worse ways to engage with our sexuality, which is an important part of human nature. There is such a thing as sexual ethics and morality, and we ought to encourage certain behaviors and discourage others. That's what is underlying all of this Andrew Tate stuff. Because if the debate just remains, hey, Andrew Tate did these depraved things and it wasn't Consensual versus Andrew Tate did these depraved things, but the girl was consenting. The debate's not gonna go anywhere because the people who recognize that this kinds of behavior is just vile and despicable are going to say, well, the woman couldn't really consent because she was too young or she was too dumb or she was too helpless or she was too vulnerable or she didn't speak the right language or what? You can find a million excuses and they're all kind of somewhat persuasive, but they're ultimately missing the point. The thing is, nobody, consensual or not, should be engaging in this kind of behavior because the very notion of consent is problematic. To use a favorite term of the left, the very, very notion of consent is problematic because when our wills become compromised by ignorance or by vice and giving into temptation, then we can't really consent. Just like Hunter Biden can't really consent to smoking the fifth crack pipe. You know, he's an addict. He's compromised his intellect and his will, certainly his will, and by engaging in sin that clouds his intellect. So even the very notion of consent in a society that's convulsed by grave mortal sin all the time is a dubious concept. You want to criticize Tate, Criticize Tate all day. But do it for the right reasons and apply it evenly. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to takelean.com, use code Michael20. Have you ever found yourself in a yo yo dieting cycle? You lose weight, you feel great, then you watch as those pounds creep back, plus a few extra. Then you start all over again. This is not just frustrating, it is potentially harmful to your health. America faces a health Crisis with over 96 million people in the pre diabetic category. Studies have linked yo yo dieting patterns to increased risk of type 2 diabetes and other serious health conditions like heart attack and stroke. Breaking free from this cycle is exactly why doctors developed Lean. 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The right wing party Alternativ for Deutschland is now the most popular political party in Germany. You'll remember afd, the right wing party there, did pretty well in the elections, recent German elections, but they're not governing well. There was a poll that just came out yesterday. Alternative for Deutschland is not only popular, it is now the strongest party in Germany. Germany, like a lot of European countries, unlike the United States, has more than two political parties. So to govern, all these different political parties form coalitions and governments. And right now AFD is polling at 25% nationwide, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you have a billion political parties, that actually is a lot. Cdu, the Christian Democratic Party and csu, the. Forget what that one stands for. I guess that's a little more socialist or something, are both lagging. Afd, this is the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany that those parties are in second place to a party that is not the Social Democrats. Now, the right wing party is still not gonna govern. And the reason it's not gonna govern is something that J.D. vance was talking about when he scolded the Europeans at Munich, namely that the Germans have a firewall against the far right. Again, I'm not convinced that Alternative for Deutschland is the far right, because Alternative for Deutschland, rather than being run by a fascist or an authoritarian or a monarchist or something, Alternative for Deutschland is run by a lesbian libertarian who said that Hitler was a communist, famously in an interview with Elon Musk. So it doesn't seem that far right to me. But in any case, the other parties in Germany say we will not work with this party. It's too far right. We're going to maintain our firewall. We're not going to give the people what they want. And I guess my question for the German government and for the European elites and elites, even in our own country, is how much longer can you keep that up? How much longer? AFD keeps getting more popular. The right wing, increasingly right wing. Seriously, right wing populist parties that object to globalist liberal rule, they keep growing in popularity. Brexit in the uk, the election and continued popularity of Viktor Orban in Hungary, Giorgio Meloni in Italy. Strong moves from the Vox party and the right wing in Spain. AfD in Germany. It keeps growing, right? Donald Trump getting elected in 16. Donald Trump is politically assassinated, almost literally assassinated after that. And yet he comes back and serves a second non consecutive term. I don't think you guys are gonna be able to maintain your firewall for very long, certainly not forever. There is a persistent movement, call it populist, call it nationalist, call it far right if you want. It is persistent. It is growing in popularity, not just here, but around the West. It is growing for a reason, in response to real political problems like mass migration, like dying societies that don't have babies, don't make families. Social problems that have been caused by the liberal elites that we conservatives now want to supplant. It's not just a blip. It's not just a little fever that people had in 2016. Okay, well, we just gotta get over this hump and then we can go back to globalist liberal rule. This shows no sign of stopping. Now, speaking of attempting to stop certain ideas back in our own country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement just posted an infographic, posted a little advertisement, and then took it down from social media very quickly because it caught a lot of flack. The infographic says if it crosses the US border illegally, it is our job to stop it. And what's listed is people, money, products, ideas. And the fourth one is the one that got them in trouble. No reasonable person thinks that we shouldn't stop people from crossing our border who shouldn't be allowed to cross the face, tattooed Mexican gangsters. Okay, money. Yeah. We don't want criminal cartel money crossing our borders. Certainly not. We got to know the money that's crossing our border. Products, fentanyl, guns, all sorts of drugs, even going back to people human beings were being smuggled across, which happens a lot for sex slavery and other kinds of nefarious activities. But then the fourth one, ideas. That's what caught all the flak from all the libs. And I'm sorry to say ICE pulled it down. And the Assistant Secretary for Public affairs over at ICE said, said in a statement that post was sent without proper approval and should not have been shared Ideas, should have said intellectual property, respectfully to dhs. They should have kept it up. We do need to stop ideas, certain ideas from crossing our border. There's nothing shocking about that, nothing authoritarian. That's just how nations operate. Think about during the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union were constantly trying to propagandize into each other's country. And we had agencies of the government designed to stop that propaganda from entering into the country. There are plenty of ideas. I don't want entering into the country. I mean, when we say that we want to stop radical jihadis from entering into our country, members of ISIS have crossed our border into the country illegally. Okay, why do we want to stop that? We want to stop that in part so that they don't commit acts of violence. We, we also want to stop that because we don't want their ideas spreading. There are ideas that should be excluded. There are ideas that we're opposed to. William F. Buckley, Jr. As Urbane, a conservative as ever there was, famously said on his public affairs show in 1966 that he's an epistemological optimist. We can come to certain conclusions, we can make certain exclusions. There's no reason to protect the liberties of a Nazi or a communist at the very least. At the level of those ideas, we don't need to let communism into our country. That was true in the Cold War, it's true now. We don't need to let Nazism into our country. We don't need to let jihadism into our country. Why do we need those ideas? Because it sounds very illiberal to say we're going to stop ideas. And so DHS spins, it says, well, it should mean intellectual property. No, it should mean ideas. It's okay. We don't need to apologize to the libs for, for basic enforcement of our border. We don't need to kowtow and pretend to. We're the real liberals. Actually, no, we totally support the free. I don't support the total free exchange of ideas from a bunch of face tattooed, Satan worshiping gangsters. Not at all. We can know things. We can make exclusions. We know what we believe. And if your mind is too open, your brain is gonna fall out. It's all right. Stand firm, guys. Don't worry. People are on your side. You don't need. DHS doesn't need to be making any apologies. Now. Speaking of foreign invasions, President Trump is serious about taking Greenland. People thought he was joking on the campaign trail when he said, we want Greenland. Look, we, maybe we'll take, maybe we'll annex Greenland. We're gonna buy it from Denmark. Maybe we'll invade. And everyone thought he was kind of joking. He is not joking. President Trump said we need Greenland for national security, even international security. And we're working with everybody involved to try and get it. One way or another, we're going to get it. Remember, we are the United States of America. We've been looking at Greenland as a strategic spot and trying to acquire it since the middle of the 19th century. This has been a priority of the State department for over 150 years. Truman tried to get it after World War II. This is nothing new, nothing crazy from Trump. And the New York Times is reporting that one way we might get it is through financial incentives. So right Now, Denmark gives $600 million in subsidies to Greenland every year. And so one idea, according to the New York Times, that Trump is floating, is just replacing that annual payment with about $10,000 per green lender. A lot of money. But we're a rich country. What is this about? According to Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, this is about critical minerals. This is about natural resources, rare earth minerals, copper, gold, uranium, oil. Especially as we're starting this trade war with China, especially as global conflicts seem to be growing in their seriousness and extent. Chinese soldiers being caught allegedly fighting with Russia in Ukraine, obviously the Israel Gaza conflict. What's interesting about this story to me is not just that America is going to acquire some Eskimos. It's not just that it's going to be a great way to just trap America's evil top hat so we can make Canada the 51st state. It's not any of this kind of funny stuff. It's that we need Greenland because it's strategic land and it has natural resources. And that's why we want it. And that's the whole reason that we want it. We don't want it to liberate the Greenlanders from their oppressive Danish overlords. We don't want it to spread democracy abroad and so that we can have a new Madisonian spring in the Arctic. We want it because the land is important and because they have copper. And we forget, in our highly ideological age, highly liberal ideological modernity, especially after fighting one of the most clearly ideological wars ever fought, that would be the Cold War between liberalism and communism. Before that, the Second World War, which was this weird hodgepodge of initially liberalism versus Nazism, fascism and communism, and then eventually the Communists switched sides and it was liberalism and communism versus Nazism and fascism. And we can think of those things ideologically. There is no ideology in the acquisition of Greenland. And by the way, most wars in history have been fought for these kinds of reasons. Most wars in history have not been fought for ideology. Most wars in history have not been fought for the spread of an idea in an abstract that will melt away borders and change the way that human nature works. Most wars in history have been fought for like that hill over there. And because I want access to that sea and because that guy has a lot of copper. That's it. And what we are seeing, this is one of the hallmarks of the Trump era and just kind of waking up from the dream of the Cold War and that brief post Cold War era of the 1990s when we thought the world was flat and history had ended. We're seeing a return to normal. Return to normal people behaving in normal ways. None of the weird drag queen story hour stuff. We're seeing a return to normal people wanting normal immigration policies, not just completely open borders. A return to normal people caring about their communities. Not just global trade in the abstract. And a return to normal conflicts. History remains undefeated. Human nature remains undefeated. Ideology goes down. We want the copper. There's so much more to say first though. Text KNOWLES to 400. 400. Summer is near and you're gonna wanna make sure that that little door that you got with the gap between the frame and the door and you're gonna want to seal all that stuff up. Okay? You're gonna wanna make sure you're energy efficient. You're gonna wanna make sure you don't have water damage and the door when it swells up isn't pulling and so you can actually get outside in the summer. Look, you're gonna wanna do all that because I realized I have to do all of that with my old doors. Which is why who did I call? Renewal by Anderson. Called up Renewal by Andersen. Met with their team super duper easy. And hopefully we're going to get started really quickly on that so that I can save money so that there's no gap between my door and my wall. Right now. Renewal by Andersen is offering this special offer during their spring savings event. Buy one window or door get one 40% off plus an additional 45 bucks off each window door with a minimum purchase of four text nulls to 400. 400. Get a free in home consultation like I just got on quality affordable windows and doors for no money down, no monthly payments, no interest for one year. That is Knowles Kwles to 400. 400 for this great deal on replacement windows and doors. Hurry. These savings will not last long. Be sure to check it out by Texting Knowles to 400. 400. That's K N O W L E S to 400. 400 texting Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions posted at Textplan US texting enrolls for recurring automated text marketing messages. Message and data rates may apply. Reply stop to opt out. My favorite comment yesterday, this one was picked by the producers. So I don't know if this is gonna be my favorite. We'll see. It's from Voltron RIP to the Chinese advisor who told Chairman Xi that retaliatory tariffs were a good idea. Maybe. It remains to be seen. China might do very well in this. I understand the American spin right now is, yeah, we totally destroyed China. Like, ha ha, it's over. This is not over. This trade war is just beginning. We'll probably win. We're still much stronger than China and Trump is a very good president, so we'll probably win. But don't underestimate the Chinese and don't think this is over. This 90 day pause with the tariffs. This is the beginning of a long, long negotiation. Now, speaking of Trump initiatives, RFK Jr. Secretary of Health and Human Services says that he intends to root out the autism epidemic in a matter of months.