Ep. 1743 - Antifa CRASHES Prayer Rally for Children

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Michael Knowles Show – Ep. 1743: "Antifa CRASHES Prayer Rally for Children"

Release Date: May 28, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 1743 of The Michael Knowles Show, host Michael Knowles delves into a series of pressing political and cultural issues. From academic dishonesty at Harvard to the disruption of a prayer rally by Antifa militants, Knowles provides incisive commentary on the current state of American society. This summary captures the key discussions, insights, and conclusions drawn during the episode, enriched with notable quotes and timestamps for reference.

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1. Harvard Professor Fired for Data Manipulation [00:00 - 07:55]

Michael Knowles opens the episode by addressing a recent scandal at Harvard University. Francesca Gino, a renowned behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School (HBS), was terminated and stripped of her tenure for manipulating data in multiple studies concerning honesty.

• Key Points:

  • Academic Fraud: Gino allegedly tailored data in four studies to better fit her hypothesis, undermining the integrity of her research.
  • Historical Significance: This incident marks the first time since the 1940s that a Harvard professor has lost tenure under such circumstances.
  • Replication Crisis: Knowles highlights the ongoing replication crisis in the social sciences, questioning the reliability of peer-reviewed studies.

• Notable Quote:

  “It's funny that there's dishonesty in a study on honesty. I mean, that makes it particularly funny and newsworthy.” [02:15]

• Analysis: Knowles criticizes the broader academic environment, suggesting that dishonesty is rampant and that peer review processes are inadequate in preventing fraudulent research. He ties this to a perceived decline in the value and credibility of university education.

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2. Critique of Universities and Social Sciences [08:00 - 14:28]

Continuing his critique, Knowles discusses the detrimental impact of academic dishonesty on higher education institutions and their societal role.

• Key Points:

  • Erosion of Trust: Universities are failing their pedagogical missions, producing unreliable research and fostering elitism disconnected from mainstream American values.
  • Political Neutrality: He argues that institutions like Harvard are insular, serving as bastions for liberal elites rather than centers of balanced education.
  • Call for Accountability: Knowles emphasizes the need to reassess funding and support for universities plagued by dishonesty and ideological bias.

• Notable Quote:

  “They're not even furthering the academic mission of growing human knowledge. They're creating sinecures for liberal elites to be insulated from you and from the consequences of their choices and their lifestyles.” [05:45]

• Analysis: The segment underscores a broader distrust in academic institutions, positioning them as corrupt entities that prioritize ideological conformity over genuine education and research integrity.

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3. Scott Pelley's Commencement Speech and Media Critique [07:55 - 16:35]

Knowles analyzes Scott Pelley's commencement address at Wake Forest University, labeling it as tone-deaf and representative of liberal media's disconnect from the American populace.

• Key Points:

  • Perceived Hypocrisy: Knowles juxtaposes Pelley's speech with the disrupted prayer rally, suggesting inconsistency in liberal critiques of educational institutions.
  • Redefinition of Terms: He contends that liberal media manipulates language to redefine reality, citing examples like the 1619 Project and terminology changes around immigration and gender.
  • Evangelical Critique: The disrupted Mayday USA prayer rally, aimed at opposing transgender influences on children, is highlighted as a symbol of leftist antagonism toward religious expressions.

• Notable Quote:

  “Is this a Saturday Night Live bit? We'll get to the final point in a moment.” [09:01]

• Analysis: Knowles criticizes what he perceives as the liberal media's lack of authenticity and integrity, arguing that their attempts to control narratives are both manipulative and detrimental to public discourse.

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4. Antifa Disrupts Mayday USA Prayer Rally [15:41 - 16:35]

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the interference of Antifa militants at a Christian prayer rally organized by Mayday USA, which aimed to protest against transgender influences on children.

• Key Points:

  • Disruption Tactics: Antifa activists attempted to sabotage the event by throwing water balloons, menacing attendees, and rushing the stage.
  • Liberal Opposition to Religion: Knowles interprets the attack as part of a long-standing liberal opposition to the Church and religious institutions.
  • Historical Context: He references the origins of the political left's antagonism toward the Church, tracing it back to the French Revolution.

• Notable Quotes:

  “This is just tired. This trans fight. It's tired. We fought it. We won.” [15:41]

  “The left is always ultimately going to oppose the Church. That's just the way it is.” [16:10]

• Analysis: Knowles frames the Antifa disruption as symptomatic of a deeper, ideological conflict between liberalism and religious conservatism, suggesting that such attacks are predictable outcomes of long-standing cultural battles.

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5. Abortion Pill Safety Claims and Pro-Abortion Slogans [16:35 - 25:56]

The discussion shifts to the safety of the abortion pill, challenging claims made by pro-abortion advocates that it is safer than over-the-counter painkillers like Tylenol.

• Key Points:

  • Challenging Safety Claims: A study from the Charlotte Lozier Institute published in Biotech disputes assertions that the abortion pill is safer than Tylenol, highlighting potential risks.
  • Critique of Pro-Abortion Rhetoric: Knowles argues that pro-abortion slogans are misleading, often presenting a distorted view of the reality surrounding abortions.
  • Historical Deception: He references Bernard Nathanson's admission of inflating abortion statistics to manipulate public perception.

• Notable Quotes:

  “When the one political side in particular uses euphemisms to deny and in fact invert the truth, when the abortion industry can barely say the word abortion... it's just ... dishonest language to lie about what it's doing.” [21:10]

  “They say my body, my choice. But of course, the controversial aspect of abortion is not the woman's body, it's the baby's body.” [22:15]

• Analysis: This segment underscores Knowles's stance against abortion, emphasizing perceived misinformation and ethical concerns. He contends that the discourse around abortion is manipulated to obscure the moral implications of the procedure.

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6. Political Trends: Republicans Gaining, Polarization Lessening [25:56 - 36:39]

Knowles discusses recent political shifts indicating a resurgence of Republican influence and a decline in national polarization.

• Key Points:

  • Triple Trend Counties: A New York Times report indicates that 14-33 counties have shifted towards the Republican Party over three consecutive elections, representing half of all counties.
  • Public Sentiment: Rasmussen polling reveals that for the first time in 29 years, 50% of Americans believe the country is on the right track.
  • Declining Polarization: Contrary to narratives of increasing division, Knowles argues that the nation is coalescing towards conservative values.

• Notable Quotes:

  “According to the Times report, it's like everyone, everyone seems to be trending more conservative. That's a big win.” [32:11]

  “The country is becoming less polarized, it's becoming more right-wing, it's becoming more Republican, it's becoming more conservative.” [33:08]

• Analysis: Highlighting positive trends for conservatives, Knowles interprets these shifts as evidence of waning liberal dominance and growing alignment with Republican ideologies among the American electorate.

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7. Sam Harris's Comments on Biden and Democratic Corruption [36:39 - 40:49]

The episode critiques Sam Harris's statements regarding President Joe Biden's mental fitness and the Democratic Party's integrity.

• Key Points:

  • Biden’s Competency: Harris suggests that Biden may be incapacitated, preferring a committee of "normal people" over an "evil" president, which Knowles counters by highlighting alleged corruption within Biden’s inner circle.
  • Democratic Malfeasance: Knowles accuses Democrats of engaging in undemocratic and corrupt practices, contrasting them with Republicans' transparency.
  • Consequentialist Morality: The discussion touches on the left's willingness to employ unethical means for perceived ends, including personal or political gain.

• Notable Quotes:

  “I would rather have a president in a coma where the duties of the presidency are executed by a Committee of just normal people.” [32:11]

  “The Democratic Party is famous for that. They do this stuff all the time.” [40:49]

• Analysis: Knowles portrays Democrats as fundamentally corrupt and ethically compromised, suggesting that their internal dysfunction and illicit activities undermine democratic principles. He juxtaposes this with Republican integrity, reinforcing his viewpoint of a clear moral divide between the parties.

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Conclusion

In this episode, Michael Knowles navigates through controversies plaguing academic institutions, critiques of liberal media narratives, disruptions by Antifa militants, and debates over abortion ethics. By weaving these topics together, Knowles presents a cohesive argument defending conservative values against what he perceives as liberal overreach and moral decay. The episode emphasizes themes of integrity, accountability, and the resurgence of conservative influence in American politics.

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Note: This summary omits advertisement segments and non-content sections to focus solely on the substantive discussions presented in the episode.

Transcript

[Michael Knowles]

This is Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Watch Parenting, available exclusively on Daily Wire Plus. We're dealing with misbehaviors with our son. Our 13 year old throws tantrums. Our son turned to some substance abuse. Go to DailyWirePlus.com today real quick before we start the show. For a limited time, you can save 40%, 4 0% on your new Daily Wire plus membership. You go to DailyWirePlus.com, use code DW40. As liberals whine that President Trump is stripping billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies away from Harvard University, a Harvard professor has been caught in a scandal emblematic of the era. A celebrated social scientist, one of the most celebrated professors at Harvard has been fired for manipulating data for lying. That is in a study about honesty. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. Welcome back to the show. You have probably heard, if you've listened to Democrat politicians or the media, you've probably heard that the abortion pill, which now accounts for most abortions, is safe, totally safe, in fact, safer than Tylenol. New study out shoots that talking point way, way down. There is a fire hose of information to get to today. But first, made in America means something to our country's private equity investors. When you invest $700 billion annually in American companies and the 13 million workers and families they support, you're investing in the success of Main street. Over the last eight years alone, America's private equity investors have contributed $5 trillion to the US economy. That is money powering growth in manufacturing, tech, energy and innovation, from strengthening supply chains to helping America lead in artificial intelligence. That kind of investment shapes our future. And it starts with private equity backing American ambition. Because investing in our people, our businesses and our communities is not just good for the economy, it is good for the whole country. Learn more about how private equity keeps American small businesses growing and [e-mail] Head on over there. Right now, that is investmentcouncil.org paid for by the American Investment Council. Investmentcouncil.org this study is just perfect. The timing is just perfect. It all feels providential because providence does govern the course of history. And I guess this is just part of that. While Harvard is whining and shrieking and screaming because Trump is taking $3 billion in federal subsidies away from a university that has a 50 plus billion dollar endowment, a Harvard professor is fired and stripped of tenure for lying in a study about honesty. It's perfect. It's just perfect. This is the first time since 1940 that a Harvard professor has been stripped of tenure. What happened? This woman, Francesca Gino, a celebrated behavioral scientist at HBS Harvard Business School, apparently tweaked some data in four studies. This is according to reporting by ghb. And she tweaked the data, reportedly, allegedly, because the data didn't totally back up her hypothesis. This woman has authored 140 scholarly papers. This woman has won multiple awards. There were some rumblings a couple years ago about her dishonesty. There was evidence accusing four of her papers that had been published between 2012 and 2020 of using fraudulent data. Even earlier in 2021, there was a study on honesty pledges that was definitively retracted due to evidence of data fabrication. A lot of evidence. This lady just lied. And Harvard, while at the one hand saying we need all this federal money, even though we have a $50 billion plus endowment, we need all these federal subsidies because we stand for truth, we stand for science, we are illuminating the human mind. We are. And then on the other hand, they're having to fire professors for dishonesty. Even some of their most celebrated professors. Hmm. This woman seems like she really deserves to be fired and stripped of tenure. How many others are there? I don't think it's just about this woman. This woman might become a scapegoat. But how long have we heard about the replication crisis in the social sciences? I was hearing about that 15 years ago. Ten, 15 years ago, that there's a replication crisis in. In the social sciences whereby all these papers scholarly, peer reviewed. Peer review is a bunch of BS too, by the way. Peer review is just when a professor sends a paper around to her professor friends, and then the professor friends get their graduate students to kind of look at a paper or whatever, give it the stamp of approval. But even the peer reviewed papers can't be replicated. That is, throughout psychology, throughout the social sciences, all the way up to the top universities, supposedly top universities. Wow. What do you know? It turns out there's fraud. It's funny that there's dishonesty in a study on honesty. I mean, that makes it particularly funny and newsworthy. I don't think that this Harvard lady's dishonesty is all that notable. In fact, I think this is widespread throughout the academy. It gets back to something we were talking about yesterday. We talked about the commencement speech at the University of Maryland. These graduates have paid a lot of money for their degrees and they've gone through years of what is supposed to be a rigorous education. And. And their commencement speaker is Kermit the frog. And I said, that shows you the value of a university education. Today. I support university education in principle. I'm one of the few conservatives who defends liberal arts education. I think it can be great. I love the university tradition going all the way back to the Middle Ages, but what we have today is not that. And that's true at the University of Maryland, and it's true at Harvard, in fact. Wow. It's just occurring to me, this might have been a little Nostradamus moment. You know, I hate to say I told you so. I said, look, we, we're focusing here on the University of Maryland. I don't think it's much better at Harvard. Bam. Immediately there comes a news story that Harvard has to fire one of its top professors for dishonesty. This is what you're getting. This is your university today. So why are we funding these schools? Why are your taxpayer dollars going to fund these schools when they are not properly educating students? So they're failing in their pedagogical mission. And, and they're not even producing replicable scientific studies. They're producing BS and nonsense and manipulating data. So they're not even furthering the academic mission of growing human knowledge. And they're not. What are they doing? They're creating sinecures for liberal elites to be insulated from you and from the consequences of their choices and their lifestyles. In reality, that's what they're getting. They're getting a cushy club and a perch from which to condescend and express their contempt for most Americans. If they want to do that, fine. I guess, whatever. We should not have to pay for that. Once again, Trump just picks the perfect enemy, and then he gets all of his political opponents to have to defend that really unpopular institution, the indefensible. In this case, Harvard. Now, speaking of universities and speaking of the indefensible, Scott Pelley, who's from 60 Minutes on CBS, he just gave a commencement at Wake Forest University in Carolina. And this, this was maybe the most tone deaf commencement address I've ever heard. This made. This made Kermit the Frog look insightful and erudite. Take it away.

[Scott Pelley]

But in this moment, this moment, this morning, our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack. Freedom of speech is under attack. And insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts. The fear to speak in America. Power can rewrite history with grotesque false narratives. They can make criminals heroes and heroes criminals. Power can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality.

[Michael Knowles]

Is this a Saturday Night Live bit? We'll get to the final point in a moment. Is this a Saturday Night Live bit? He says power, this tyrannical, awful power can rewrite history. Oh, you mean like you guys did with the 1619 project? We journalists are under attack because the powers are trying to rewrite history. You mean like the New York Times did what with the 1619 project, which said that the American Revolution was fought to defend slavery? A claim so outlandish that even left wing academic historians shot it down? And the New York Times kept funding that 1619 project? Is that what you're talking about? You big libs rewriting American history, toppling statues left and right? Power. These powers that threaten us journalists, the power they have. The ability to turn criminals into heroes and heroes into criminals. You mean like St. George, Floyd, the guys you all martyrdom marched for and burned the country down for eight months over. I mean like Michael Brown, this criminal who robbed a liquor store and then charged a cop, grabbed at his gun. That guy, you rewrote him to become a hero. You guys make heroes out of criminals all the time. How have we done that? We want to put the criminals in prison. You guys want to abolish prisons and you want to let the criminals run free. Illegal aliens, criminals, people who have the one distinctive thing they've ever done in America is commit a crime. You're turning them into heroes. You call them dreamers. You mean like that? Well, what you don't understand is we journalists who are under threat by the powers that be, we recognize that power can redefine words. You mean like that thing I wrote a book on called speechless Controlling words, controlling minds. Thank you very much, you guys. You journalists who. I'm just going to use the AP style guide as an example. Ban phrases like illegal alien, not because they're not precise, not because they're not accurate, but because they are contrary to your political agenda. So now we have to call them what? Undocumented Americans. But that's a lie. Redefine words like woman. And now you redefine woman to mean man. Sometimes these people, they want to redefine words like babies. You redefine them as clumps of cells, fetuses and embryos and blastulas and zygotes. And you mean like that? He is accusing Trump. Really? And all the conservatives who voted for him, and I guess most Americans popular vote, you're accusing him of exactly what you have done. Not just you liberals, not just You Democrats, specifically the liberal journalists on whose behalf he's supposedly speaking. And then you want to know the cherry on top in the same breath. I'm not really making edits here. This goes straight from what he's talking about, about all the threats to free speech.

[Scott Pelley]

He says this diversity is now described as illegal. Equity is to be shunned, inclusion is a dirty word.

[Michael Knowles]

He goes from bemoaning, he goes from bemoaning the loss of free speech to defending dei. Dei, which is the justification for censoring speech. I have personally been disinvited from university campuses on DEI grounds. Specifically at the universities. DEI is used to shut down speech, fire. The foundation for Individual Rights and Education had a study on this come out somewhat recently about the way in which DEI restricts speech on campus. Not just on campus, though, it's speech at the office, it's its speech. In politics, it's speech. Certainly on social media, DEI is used as a way to censor speech. Now, of course, the real fight over speech is not between free speech on the one hand and censorship on the other. It's a fight between competing standards of norms. But by this guy's own logic, he says we must defend free speech and we must defend the thing that restricts free speech. What a freaking joke. What a joke this man has become. What a joke his show 60 Minutes has become. And also what a joke the news profession has become because the libs have been so dishonest even in this speech, to say nothing of not knowing the moment. Like, hey buddy, you're there for the graduates to congratulate them on graduating. But unfortunately, they, being American university students in the year of our Lord 2025, are receiving degrees from institutions that have lost their credibility. And so it's all just a big joke. It's all kind of a big joke. Unfortunately. Unfortunately for the people who have paid into it, the taxpayers, the people who paid their tuition, the people who want to have a normal country, our elites have failed us. They've succeeded at destroying the institutions that they had stewardship of. And now they're whining and screaming when the people don't want to listen to them anymore. Now, speaking of speech and speaking of left wing militants, Antifa just came in and shut down a prayer rally. No surprise whatsoever. We'll get to that in one moment. First, I want to tell you about Chevron.

[Dan Goldman]

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[Michael Knowles]

A little hat tip here to TPUSA Frontlines, which covered this video. Antifa military. Is antifa still around? I guess they are. Some antifa guys tried to blow me up a couple years ago. They've tried to blow up a lot of right wingers. They seem to either be in jail or just have gone home. They're not getting a lot of traction. Well, they showed up to a Mayday USA prayer rally. This was a rally specifically against transing the kids. And they're standing on stage, all of these Christian people singing sort of nice happy evangelical praise songs. And that was too much for Antigua, which decided to attack them.

[Francesca Gino]

Hundreds of Christian worshipers flooded Seattle's Calenderson Park Saturday afternoon to pray for the city and take a stand for traditional family values.

[Michael Knowles]

You will not disrespect the blood of.

[Francesca Gino]

Jesus Christ, Especially against transgender ideology targeting children. All part of the Mayday USA revival movement sweeping across the nation.

[Michael Knowles]

And the Lord says, sound the alarm. Sound the alarm. Lift up your voice.

[Francesca Gino]

But a time of blessing and praise quickly devolved into chaos. Far left activists and antifa militants tried to disrupt the concert. Pushing cops, fighting absolutely insane, throwing water balloons at the crowd, menacing attendees. And some activists even tried rushing the stage.

[Michael Knowles]

Okay, so nothing surprising here whatsoever. It's even the antifa guys. To me, it's all tired. This trans fight. It's tired. We fought it. We won. We won. Okay? And we had that New York Times story on the show yesterday. Triple trending counties, counties that have moved toward the Republican party in each successively of the last three elections. It's 14, 33 counties. It's half the counties in the country. Almost number of counties that have triple trended toward Democrats is like 57, basically nothing. Okay, we won. We won. On the trans issue, we've convinced people we won. On the immigration issue, we've convinced people we still need work at instituting those wins. But we won. It's over. These guys are a joke. It's over. But they're still expressing their anger and specifically against this prayer rally. I think this really throws into stark relief because you heard the singing there. It's this kind of like happy, relatively anodyne evangelical worship music. This is not exactly Deus Volt, like, you know, Crusading to the Holy Land to slay the Saracens. Okay, this should be about as inoffensive as it gets. And yet these pro trans, pro antifa radical leftists really, really hate it. And that should not be surprising. The left has always been opposed to the Church. That's where the left comes from. The left, the term left and right comes from the French Revolution, the National assembly, where the Catholics and monarchists sat on the right and the liberals and Republicans and atheists sat on the left. So it's always been about taking down the Church. That's what the French Revolution was chiefly aimed at. Aimed broadly at taking down throne and altar, but with a special emphasis on altar. The left is always ultimately going to oppose the Church. That's just the way it is. That's how it's worked for 250 years now, and it's how it's going to work into the future. And as our political debates become increasingly clearly religious, expect those attacks to ramp up for a while. We could say, oh, it's an attack on classical liberalism. Eh, not really. Oh, the left, their chief object is to attack the Constitution. Yeah, a little bit. Not really. It's really what they're after is the Church. Because what they really hate is not just classical liberalism or the Constitution or our country, or they hate God and that's really what they're after. And they hate God's representatives on earth and they hate orderly society, which is good and conduces to our natural happiness as the Church helps to lead us toward our supernatural happiness. But that's what they're after. Okay? And I think our political debates are becoming more obviously religious. It's not that they're becoming more religious because human conflict is always ultimately theological, but they're becoming more obviously religious. Joe Rogan is speaking about religion and the new atheism is passe and deader than disco. And we're just in a more religious moment. The decline of Christianity has leveled off. It's stopped. Decades long decline has stopped. And so as that happens, expect the attacks from the left to be a little less partisan. Expect the debates to be a little less, you know, R versus D, though R is one. The triple trends are all in our direction. It's expect these debates to become more religious, which ultimately is what they always have been. Now, speaking of morality and child abuse, there's a new study out about the abortion drug. The abortion drug is not just one way that abortions take place. It now accounts for most abortions, on the surface at least. 60% of abortions. I was speaking with a very prominent anti abortion advocate who's really plugged in and she seems to think that it's over 75% of abortions are now the abortion drug. One line that we have heard from the abortion industry and all their lackeys in the Democrat party for years at this point is that the abortion drug is totally safe. In fact, it's safer than Tylenol. Here's Dan Goldman, this Democrat member of Congress parroting this line.

[Francesca Gino]

24 years ago next week, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of mifepristone, authorizing it as a safe and effective means for women to end a pregnancy through medication. In the ensuing two decades, there has been no evidence that it is not effective, nor that it is dangerous in any way. It is actually safer than Tylenol.

[Michael Knowles]

It's safer than Tylenol. Safer than Tylenol. We'll told it. Okay, so there's a study just came out from the Charlotte Lozier Institute. It's a peer reviewed article published in the journal Biotech. So we're told that we have to respect peer review. This is peer reviewed and it shows that that claim is totally bogus. There is no evidence whatsoever that the abortion drug is safer for women than Tylenol. And there is a lot of evidence that it's much less safe than Tylenol. It's obviously less safe, by the way, for the baby whom it kills. No surprises again here that the pro abortion movement would lie. But it does strike me that the pro abortion movement in particular relies on slogans. Slogans take place all over politics. But the pro abortion movement in particular relies on slogans. And that the slogans in the pro abortion movement are just completely false. They are just lies, everyone's sloganeers. And sometimes they stretch the truth and sometimes it's only a partial view of the truth. But when it comes to the abortion industry, they say my body, my choice. But of course the controversial aspect of abortion is not the woman's body, it's the baby's body. And that's not the woman's body, that's the baby's body. When they say the abortion pill is safer than Tylenol, that's just a lie, that's just completely made up. When they say thousands of women died before Roe v. Wade annually of abortion, that slogan that's just made up. In fact, Bernard Nathanson, the leader of the pro abortion movement who then became a pro life advocate, he was an abortionist himself. He admitted, he said we just Made that number out of thin air. The thousands totally made up the back alley abortions and the coat hangers and all that. It's just that sort of slogan, that this was an epidemic is just totally made up, not. Not in reality. And when we talk about what Scott Pelley is so afraid of, you know, the 60 Minutes guy in his commencement speech, he says people are manipulating language to redefine reality. Well, who is most guilty of that? We all use euphemisms to some degree, but there's a big difference between saying that an old woman is a woman of a certain age, which is true, but a soft truth, rather than saying that she's a young man, that's a lie. And when the one political side in particular uses euphemisms to deny and in fact invert the truth, when the abortion industry can barely say the word abortion, never says the word baby, just about has to constantly be using manipulative language, dishonest language, false language to lie about what it's doing. I think it probably shows you that. That that industry is doing something wrong, that political movement is doing something wrong. They're trying to hide something from people. And right now, the people seem to have caught it. And I think the jig is up. And that's why the Democrats are in this terrible, terrible problem right now, which is great news for the country. Much more to get to, of course. But first, go to expressvpn.com knowles Back in the 90s, the Internet promised a virtual world of equals, free from government and corporate control. Where are we today? That's not quite how it panned out. Big tech and advertisers have hijacked our devices with companies like Facebook, not just selling ads, but actively manipulating what you see to influence your votes. The original Internet was supposed to put you in control of what you learned and experienced. But there is still a way to reclaim that freedom and take back control. ExpressVPN. Every time you go online, your Internet service provider tracks and records everything you do, building a detailed profile that data brokers sell to advertisers and government agencies with. We are constantly being watched, monitored, and manipulated. ExpressVPN changes all that. All your online traffic flows through secure, encrypted servers, so no one, not even your ISP, can see what you're doing. ExpressVPN also masks your IP address, that unique address that identifies you online. Without it, companies cannot track you or manipulate your data. I've used ExpressVPN for years. @ this point, I love it because it's simple. Enough even for me on all my devices, just click, boom, one button, you're done. Laptops, phones, tablets, smart TVs. Right now you can get up to four months for free. If you go to expressvpn.com knowles exp r E-S-Vpn.com knowles get an extra four months for free. Speaking of abortion, there's some crazy actress lady. Yeah, she's, I want to be as charitable as I can, but she sounds kind of crazy when she says stuff like this. I hope that she's more grounded and she becomes more grounded over time when she hears my commentary on what she said. Because what she said is nuts. She was at the Spirit Awards, this is for independent films. And she described how one of the things that keeps her up at night is that In Trump's America, 12 year old girls can't get abortions.

[Unnamed Actress]

You know, it's very weird to have like a showbiz guy in charge is surreal, I mean, because, well, I'm actually pretty horrified by how strategic and effective this whole thing has been. And I think there's a real disconnect in all of the noise around, like the individuals that are going to be really taking the hits on a individual, like a human basis in the trans community, gay community, black community, you know, women. Like when I think of the kids or like the 12 year old girl that can't get an abortion or something or, you know, that's what really like rips me apart.

[Michael Knowles]

That's what really rips her apart, that a 12 year old can't get an abortion in America. That's what rips her apart, the fact that 12 year old girls can't be pressured into ripping apart their babies. Which of course, by the way, vast majority of abortions are not 12 year old girls. The vast, well over 99% of abortions are not women who have in any way faced duress or health issues or anything like that. It's elective abortions. She says. She just, I don't know, America to her is every 12 year old girl in America, we need two cars in every garage, a chicken in every pot and an abortion for every 12 year old girl. Ah, that's not my America. What she says at the end there is just totally nuts. What's interesting is that what she says at the beginning is quite sensible. She says, you know, it's weird to have a showbiz guy in the White House. Donald Trump is a showbiz guy. Donald Trump was number one on network TV, has dominated tabloids for decades for like 40 years at this point has been in movies, has been sung about, and pop songs and rap songs. And he's just a big pop culture guy. He's a showbiz guy. And she's horrified by how effective he has been. That part is really sensible. And more of Hollywood should have picked up on that, but they didn't, which is fine by me. He's been very effective. And he's effective in large part because he's a showbiz guy, because he knows what sells, because he's very good for the ratings, because he speaks to people in a popular way. Not just for the graduates of Harvard who hear Kermit the Frog giving their commencement addresses and who study all sorts of irreplicable scientific studies, but who nevertheless get jobs in fancy, wealthy enclaves. The only couple dozen, few dozen enclaves that are trending Democrat. Rest of the country trends Republican. Because of how effective he's been. Democrats don't seem to be able to learn from that. If they were smart, they would try to take some of that juice. If they were smart, they'd try to grab some of that mojo. That's what Gavin Newsom was trying to do when he launched that podcast and then tried to get a bunch of right wingers to normalize him. So he says, okay, I'm gonna sit down with Charlie Kirk. And Charlie Kirk took advantage to nail Gavin on a few things. But what was Gavin. Gavin knew that Gavin knew Charlie was gonna take advantage. He said, it's worth it because Trump is popular. He won the popular vote. The people around Trump clearly know something that I don't know. So I'm gonna try to talk to Charlie Kirk, who's famously close to Trump, or Steve Bannon, who is the chief strategist in the White House under Trump won. I'm just gonna try to get some of their mojo. Whereas the rest of the Democrats insist that 50 million Frenchmen must be wrong. It's very effective. According to the polls, Rasmussen has just come out say that 50% of Americans finally say the country is on the right track. That doesn't seem super high, I guess, for a lot of people. This is the first time in Rasmussen's 29 year polling history that it has shown that 50% of the country believe that America's on the right track. That's compared to 45% who say it's on the wrong track. That's big. And it has become fashionable to say in the last 15 years that America is becoming more and more polarized. Actually I'm not sure that's true anymore. America was becoming more and more polarized. Now I think we're becoming less polarized because the country's just becoming more Republican because of the New York Times survey on the triple trend counties, because Trump won the popular vote, because the Democrats don't even know what they're running on anymore. They're getting blown out of the water. The country is becoming less polarized, it's becoming more right wings, it's becoming more Republican, it's becoming more conservative. Trump, weirdly, shockingly, in the minds of the liberal media, is a unifying figure. Because when you dig in, I'm really taken with the New York Times report, as I think everyone should be. It's great news for us and the libs should be pulling their hair out over it. I was talking to sweet little Elise about it last night. No, I was talking to some of my colleagues around here today about this. Said. Well, hold on, dig into the details. Is it just that he's really gaining among white people or he's really. I said no. According to the Times report, it's like everyone, everyone seems to be trending more conservative. That's a big win. That's very effective. The left should be scared. The smart ones are trying to adapt. The less prudent ones are doubling down. Like Sam Harris, one of the four horsemen of the new atheist movement. This guy, you know, Sam Harris, really not aging well. I'm not saying that physically he looks perfectly fine, but his ideas are not aging well. That new atheism is a joke, man. They went from being the really cool, you know, so much smarter than everybody guys, to just being the fedora tipping Reddit atheists. You know, it's just, that's not, it's cringe, it's lame, it's deader than disco. So his one big idea, if you can call it that, is totally passe. And his political affiliation, which is lib Democrat, defend Biden. Trump's always awful. If only Trump were taken out, that's passe too. Here's what he has to say.

[Sam Harris]

I think it's quite possible that he was just checked out to a degree that I did not suspect at the time. But to close the loop on this whole scandal, even that is preferable to me and to, I think, many Democrats than having someone who we consider to be genuinely evil, genuinely 100% purposed to serving himself in the office of the presidency. I would rather have a president in a coma where the duties of the presidency are executed by a Committee of just normal people. Right? So that, that's the, and that's the choice that many of us believe was before us. And so therefore not much materially changes once you reveal just how insane and despicable this cover up of Biden's infirmities, actually.

[Michael Knowles]

But how you get there matters. And it would be one thing if those people told the American people, hey, he's not compost Mentis, we're going to take it from here. We know what we're doing, we're fine. But that didn't happen. And I mean, just this, it didn't happen though, did it? So I should have mentioned at the top of that, I think you probably intuited it that he's talking about the reports that have come out that Biden actually wasn't in his right mind. Actually there was a little politburo around him of some top aides and family members, including his corrupt son, Hunter Biden, that were really kind of running the country. And Sam Harris is saying, yeah, but I don't care. I would rather the guy that I want be the face of the government in the government, really just be run by a committee of normal people rather than this man that I think is evil. Donald Trump run the country. And in defense of Sam Harris, I get the logic. I would rather a committee of Republicans run the country than a single effective Democrat. Certainly assuming that we were all legal and on the up and up and moral and everything. But the problem here is they didn't have a committee of normal people. They had a committee of people who were totally out of touch with what people wanted, totally out of touch with reality, what people wanted on immigration, on sexual ethics, on education, on everything. And he says he accuses Trump of just enriching himself or something, turning the government to private interest. That's what Biden did. That's not really what Trump has done. Biden was the one whose son was going around with the open bag to all the most corrupt people around the world taking bribes on behalf of the enrichment of the Biden family. Trump hasn't done that in as much as Trump's ventures and properties have increased in value over his time in politics. One, he had four years in the wilderness where he was forced to found a technology and media company because he was booted off of the tech and media platforms that he used to speak on. But two, he's totally open about it. He's totally transparent about his business interests. He has longstanding, decades old business interests and he has sacrificed a lot of that for his political service, he hasn't really enriched himself relatively all that much, certainly compared to other guys like Joe Biden. Joe Biden entered the vice presidency with something like $100,000 net worth. Now he's worth many, many millions of dollars. And Hunter Biden, who really should not have made any money at all, has made many, many millions of dollars. A lot of it recorded on his laptop and on video. And according to his texts and emails, he kicked back a lot of it to the big guy, Joe Biden. So it just doesn't, it doesn't play and it makes these guys look really bad. I guess we shouldn't be surprised that an atheist would be willing to put morality to the side. But that's what he's saying here. He's saying, yeah, I'd rather just kind of. We all pretend. We all just sort of lie about Biden being mentally sufficient because you're not really. The Constitution doesn't let you have government by a committee in the executive branch. It's supposed to be by a president. But we'll all just kind of lie and we'll all pretend and we'll all have this committee run. Well, the committee is not made up of normal people. It's made up of very corrupt people who are out of touch and they got booted out. Just like a lot of these ideas from the left. The new atheism, this leftism, the coalition of the ascendant, all this stuff has just been booted. My, how quickly things can change.

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[Michael Knowles]

All Daily Wire plus annual memberships are 40% off, including all access memberships. That means ad free daily shows from the most trusted and handsome voices in conservative media. Access to our full library of original films, documentaries and series, early access to offers and announcements before anyone else. End members only. Content you will not find anywhere else. Now is the time to join save 40% dailywireplus.com, use code DW40 now. My favorite comment yesterday is from Linda LJH1 who says, My husband and I both had drunken parents who fought. My parents divorced when I was 11. His stayed married. I envied him for not having to go through a horrible divorce. We both fought like mad to keep our marriage for our kids, and we made it. Thanks be to God. Really beautiful comment. Sorry you both went through bad upbringings, but I hear this sometimes. People will say, we talked about it on the show yesterday. Well, it's better for the kids if the parents divorce because then the parents will be happy. Better for the parents to divorce than for them to be unhappy in a marriage. That's just not true. It's just not true. There was that study that came out about how parents, first of all, a third of Americans are gonna see their parents divorce before they reach adulthood. And how this is now out of UC Merced, how children whose parents divorce before they turn 5 are more likely to face incarceration, poverty and death. No surprises there whatsoever. And I like how you're saying, look, I grew up, it was a bad marriage and my husband's parents were in a bad marriage and mine divorced and his didn't, and I envied him. So I think that's the reality of it. And if a third of Americans are dealing with that, this is an issue whose reckoning has come. Okay, speaking of Biden being out of it, the reckoning that has come from the media here, Jake Tapper co authored this book with Alex Thompson about how Biden actually wasn't all there. Lights were on, but no one was home. Something that conservatives said and we were called liars and deceivers and conspiracy theorists by the liberal media, including people like Jake Tapper. And now he's making all this money on this book, Original Sin. So Alex Thompson, who's Axios reporter who co wrote the book with Tapper, he seems to be like a pretty straight shooter and he is just giving out a lot of details that he's uncovered about the Biden administration, namely that the Biden aides felt justified in doing undemocratic things to stop Trump from being reelected.

[Alex Thompson]

Well, and it did seem like there's so many people who you would have thought would have access to him who didn't because of this inner circle that really much managed his schedule and his time and his access in a way that didn't give a lot of people, you know, one on one time with him. In the book, you quote a longtime Biden aide basically admitting he shouldn't be running again. They said to you on page 85, he just had to win. And then he could disappear for four years. He'd only have to show proof of life. Every once in a while, his aides could pick up the slack who would have been running the White House in a second Biden term.

[Unnamed Commentator]

This person went on to say that when you're voting for a president, you're voting for the aides around him. But these aides were not even Senate confirmed aides. These are a White House aides. These were unelected people. And one of the things that really, I think, comes out in our reporting here is that if you believe, and.

[Michael Knowles]

I think a lot of these people.

[Unnamed Commentator]

Do sincerely believe, that Donald Trump was and is an existential threat to democracy. You can rationalize anything, including sometimes doing undemocratic things, which I think is what.

[Michael Knowles]

This person is talking about, and including murder. That's the other part of this that is left unspoken here. But yeah, of course these guys were willing to do undemocratic things. I mean, the Democratic Party is famous for that. Democratic Party in its own primary has superdelegates, just as one example. They have ways to rig the primary against the desires of voters. Republicans don't have that. Democrats also were caught cheating in the primary between Hillary and Bernie Sanders, giving debate questions to Hillary Clinton ahead of time. So they do this stuff all the time. They're obviously willing to do undemocratic things. Also, because the left takes as its enemy the church, and because the left has a little more of a loosey goosey relationship to morality than many on the right do. Yeah, they're willing to subvert democracy for sure. But it goes further than that. You say if you believe that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy and an existential threat to the country, you'd be willing to do some undemocratic things. Yeah, you'd also be willing to kill him, which is really what happened because Trump was nearly killed twice. One time it came really, really close because it hit him in the ear and nearly blew his brains out on a stage in Pennsylvania. And the Democrats justified that. They justified that before it happened. Joe Biden justified that when he launched his presidential campaign and said he posed an existential threat to the country. If someone poses an existential threat to you, you are justified in killing that person. That would be self Defense. That was the point of all the rhetoric. An existential threat. Yeah. The point of that is to create the conditions by which this man either could be taken out through lawfare or could be taken out by a bullet. That's really what it was. And if you have the kind of loosey goosey morality that the left has embraced in recent years, a consequentialist morality, a utilitarian moral, a morality that says that the ends justify the means, then you can in your own twisted way justify any action, no matter how immoral. These are people who are willing to kill babies in the womb, okay? They're willing to do anything. No surprise. And now we have to all pretend to be shocked. There shouldn't be. I guess that's the theme of today's show. No surprises. None of this should be surprising to people who have paid attention. This is why, by the way, when people make predictions about what's going to happen, it's not because they have a crystal ball and can see the future. People are called prophets sometimes, not because they can predict. This is true even of prophets in the Bible. Not necessarily because they can predict the future, but because they can. And my friend Father George Rutler put this very well. Because they can warn of the consequences that will come in the future from denying the truth. That a prophet primarily tells the truth. And the appearance of predicting the future is a derivation of seeing the truth and seeing the consequences of denying the truth. And that's what's happening for the Democrats now. They in particular, all sides can get a little bit sus in politics, but the Democrats in particular have lied so egregiously, so formally for so long that the chickens are coming home to roost for them. And that's why their ratings are collapsing on their TV networks. That's why people are tuning them out. That's why they're losing elections. That's why the counties are not trending in their direction. They've kept up a lie for a while. Deep philosophical lies, deep anthropological lies about what human nature is. Deep, deep lies about the operation of government, who the effective president is. They've just lied so egregiously, so in your face for so long, they're not gonna be able to turn that around overnight. Very happy news. Today's woke Wednesday. The rest of the show continues right now. You do not wanna miss it. Become a member and use code Knowles Canada WLAS at checkout for two months free on all annual plan. Sam.