← The Michael Knowles Show
The Michael Knowles Show
Ep. 1849 - Democrats Pin Their Election-Day Hopes On Communists, Muslims, And Psychos
00:52:53
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- [00:00]
Michael Knowles
It's election Day and before any results are in, conservatives have achieved a monumental victory already. After more than six decades in politics, Nancy Pelosi will reportedly retire from Congress, presumably to run for president in 2028. I'm joking. Am I joking? Am I joking? I don't know. She's probably one of the leading candidates right now for the Dems. Nancy Pelosi began her career interning in Congress in the early 1960s. I am reminded of Rose in Titanic who famously observed that it had been 84 years since the ship sank. Here, for those of you listening, I'll describe this photo to you. We see a 20 year old Nancy Pelosi posing for a picture with President John F. Kennedy at his inauguration. It has been 64 years since one of the worst figures in modern political history has been inflicted upon us. And as we look ahead to the election results tonight, mirabile dictu, it seems the worst is yet to come. I'm Michael Knowles, this is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. Speaking of elderly politicians exiting the political stage, Dick Cheney died. So we say a requiescat in pace for Vice President Cheney complex legacy. Not only on the left, which always hated him and then started to like him a little bit more at the end because he didn't like Trump and then the right used to like him a lot, but then the right doesn't like him anymore. Anyway, what we'll get to the Cheney legacy because I am dead certain of one fact about the Cheney legacy that I haven't heard anyone mention yet. We'll get to that. First, I wanna tell you about balance of nature. Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code Knowles K N O W L E S. We all know that we should be eating more fruits and vegetables, right? But what are we actually doing? If you're like me, you're eating more cheeseburgers at the airport. Getting fat when you're hitting the road all the time. And then Elisa says that you don't look as good in your clothes anyway. I'm divulging too much. One way that you can get the great benefits of more fruits and veggies. Balance of Nature. Balance of Nature's fruits and veggies supplements are the original way to get a balance of color, taste and smell from whole foods in a convenient form. What makes them really versatile is that you can take them. However works best for you. Swallow the capsules with water, chew them, even open them up and mix the powder into your food or drinks. Inside each capsule you will find ingredients from 16 whole fruits and vegetables. Sorry, 16 whole fruits, 15 whole vegetables that have all been freeze dried and lab tested. No binders, fillers or flow agents. Just pure whole food ingredients ready to go wherever you are. It's really great. Our team loves this stuff. If you want to be a gigachad like Mr. Davies or even me just clawing to some opportunity for some health even as I'm on the road, go check out balanceofnature.com get get your free fiber and spice supplement plus 35% off your first set as a new preferred customer by using discount code Knowles. You want to talk about vibrant bodies and health? We got to give a shout out to the heroic crew at Prageru. I'm in town. I'm filming some episodes of my book club show here. I was giving a speech last night at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. I think you can find that speech online. And the heroic Prageru staff showed up at. By my. I think it's like 2:30 in the morning right now, hours before work begins to produce this show. Greatly, greatly appreciate that. You know who I don't appreciate? Nancy Pelosi. And you know who Nancy Pelosi doesn't appreciate? Donald Trump. Pelosi as her valedictory to the political world. After over six decades in politics, including on Capitol Hill, Nancy Pelosi has a message. Maybe this will be the epitaph on her headstone someday.
- [04:15]
Democratic Supporter
He's just a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the earth. But anyway.
- [04:20]
Conservative Commentator
You think he's the worst thing on.
- [04:22]
Michael Knowles
The face of the earth?
- [04:22]
Conservative Commentator
I do.
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Democratic Supporter
Yeah.
- [04:24]
Michael Knowles
I do.
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Conservative Commentator
Why is that?
- [04:26]
Democratic Supporter
Because he's the President of the United.
- [04:27]
Michael Knowles
States and he does not honor the Constitution of the United States.
- [04:32]
Democratic Supporter
In fact, he's turned the Supreme Court.
- [04:34]
Michael Knowles
Into a Roe court.
- [04:36]
Democratic Supporter
He's abolished the House of Representatives.
- [04:40]
Michael Knowles
Speaker Pelosi, after your amazing six decade plus career in politics, what would you like to say? How would you like people to remember you? He's a vile creature, that Trump. I'll get him. I'll get him. And then Alex Michelson, Excellent interview. Great to see him on cnn. Alex says he's the worst creature on earth. Why is that? He abolished the House of Representatives. Mrs. Pelosi, have you had your medicine today? He abolished the House of. He did. And he shoots laser beams out of his finger. What is she talking. I guess she's talking about the government shutdown, which was entirely a product of the Democrats. And the Democrats did it because it was a hail Mary Cuz they're losing on virtually every political issue. And they thought that health care was the only one they might win on. The only tactic that they traditionally can reliably look to is government shutdown. And even that's not working. It's not working. So she's leaving a few decades too late, but she's leaving at a real low point for the Democrats. And that gives me satisfaction. It is nice and comforting to know that Nancy Pelosi's political career is ending in rejection. She lost the speakership of the House of Representatives when the Republicans took over. And the Democrats nationally have never looked worse in our lifetimes. And the Democrats in the House of Representatives specifically are somehow bungling the most reliable weapon that Democrats have had, namely a government shutdown. It just all flopped. I don't wanna be too triumphant here. I wish we could be. I wish we could sincerely be more triumphant. Cause Nancy Pelosi and the libs have notched a bunch of victories over her time in politics. But right now she's losing everything. She's leaving in rejection, as is fitting, as is seemly. Now, speaking of politicians ending their public life and their life generally, Dick Cheney died. Woke up to that news this morning and it's very strange political moment. We're in this seismic shift. This was largely the, the topic of my speech at the Nixon Library last night. And so we're in this weird moment where the left is probably gonna be sorrier about Cheney's death than the right. I'm old enough to remember when the left thought that Cheney was not merely Hitler, but actually the devil himself. When the left thought that Cheney was significantly worse than George W. Bush. George W. Bush, whom they also compared to Hitler. And I'm old enough to remember when the right loved Dick Cheney. And in fact many liked Cheney more than they liked Bush. Cuz Cheney was sort of cartoonishly tough and Bush seemed like a real nice guy. Now that's flipped because Dick Cheney's daughter was a political opponent of Trump within the Republican Party. And Cheney, good father stood by his daughter and that made an enemy of Trump. And so he seemed to kind of flip sides. And also because Cheney was the representative of an expansionist, hardline neoconservative foreign policy, a driver of the wars in the Middle east, which the American right loved in the 2000s, the American left hated in the 2000s. Now they basically flipped and the American right hates them and the American left still doesn't love them. But you'll see more defenders of the imperial wars on The American left and the whole political situation's topsy turvy. I, however, believe that. Well, one, because Dick Cheney is our fellow man, but also because Dick Cheney is a fellow Republican. He's a longtime conservative guy who came basically from nothing and had all sorts of personal problems and then ends up at a very young age. I think he was 31 years old. He was chief of staff to Jerry Ford and worked his way up in politics. Was the defense secretary under Bush 1. Then was the vice president under Bush 2. Very powerful vice president. I think we pray for Dick Cheney also because I'm Catholic and we pray for the dead. I think we should pray for Dick Cheney. We should say a little RIP Requia materam dona ei Domine e lux perpetua lacet e requiescat in pace Domini Patris etfiliet Spiritu Sanct di Amen. If you say that you don't pray for the dead, by the way, and you use the initials R.I.P. then you are in fact praying for the dead, because that stands for requiescat and pace, which is may he rest in peace. In any case, what's the good stuff that we should focus on about Cheney? There's one line from a book about him, the World According to Dick Cheney, that really sticks with me. He was asked if it bothered him that for the eight years he was vice president, he was called Darth Vader compared to the devil. So much so that he even put a little Darth Vader mask on the back of his truck, and he said no. He said if he wanted to be loved, he would have been a movie star. But sometimes it's more important to be successful than to be loved.
- [09:37]
Conservative Commentator
It is a wartime situation, and it does require tough programs and policies if you're going to be successful. And it was more important to be successful than it was to be loved. Are you going to trade the lives of a number of people because you want to preserve your honor, or are you going to do your job, do what's required, first and foremost, your responsibility to safeguard the United States of America and the lives of its citizens. Now, given a choice between doing what we did or backing off and say, we know, you know, the next attack against the United States, but we're not going to force you to tell us what it is because it might create a bad image for us, that's not a close call for me.
- [10:26]
Michael Knowles
So Dick Cheney here is speaking specifically about the United States use supposedly of torture, or at the very least, enhanced interrogation tactics. And Just want to make a point here. I'm not a neo conservative. I'm very, very skeptical, very opposed, actually, to ideological wars to spread democracy around the world. That is not my flavor of conservatism. However, everything that Cheney was just defending here is totally right. First of all, the enhanced interrogation techniques that the United States used in the 2000s during the global war on terrorists were not really torture. And one of the ways that we can know this is that we used many of these techniques on our own troops as part of training. And unless you think that we were just torturing thousands of American troops, there's a distinction between these two things. However, to take it a little further, there is nothing in principle wrong with the use of torture to get information from terrorists. There's nothing in principle wrong with that at all. There is something wrong with using torture against enemy combatants who are wearing uniforms and who are abiding by the Geneva Conventions, which exist to protect civilians in times of war. But as Marc Thiessen pointed out famously some dozen or so years ago, if you extend Geneva Convention protections to terrorists, you entirely undermine the Geneva Convention because you are taking away any inducement that a terrorist might have not to target civilians. There's nothing wrong with that. And as Antonin Scalia famously pointed out with Lesley Stahl, while it might be wrong, immoral to use torture to punish somebody, there is nothing in principle wrong with using torture against a terrorist to extract information, because that wouldn't be cruel and unusual punishment and it would be easily defensible anyway. All of that to say, how should we think about Dick Cheney today? I know he's very unpopular in the Republican Party right now after having been unpopular by the end of Bush's second term, having been quite popular at the beginning of Bush's second term, having been one of the most popular men in America when he was Secretary of Defense under George Bush. The first. What I'm going to tell you, and this ties in directly with my Richard Nixon library talk last night. There will be a day to come when the right loves Dick Cheney again. There will be a day to come when Dick Cheney's kind of grisly tough talk about defending American interests will be really cool. And it will get aura cuts on TikTok and the kids will think he's the rizzler. That will happen. He will come back into fashion. There will be wisdom that the American right, and maybe the American left, learns from Dick Cheney. That will happen in much the same way that we have seen happen with Richard Nixon. When I was a kid. Frankly, until 10 years or so ago, Richard Nixon was a footnote at best in the history of conservatism. He was an embarrassment at worst, he was essentially written out of the story of conservatism. Reagan could do no wrong. Richard Nixon could do no right. And now that situation's changed a little bit. And it's changed in part because of changing political circumstances. It's changed because we've seen how the media and the government have worked on Trump. It's changed because of the world order order shifting. For whatever reason, Reagan's lost a little bit of his shine. Old tricky Dick has come back up in the public imagination. The same thing's gonna happen for Dick Cheney. Take it to the bank. Mark my words. I don't care how much you inveigh against the wars in the Middle east or the neocons or whatever, people are gonna think Cheney's cool again at some point. We can pray for him in the meantime. All right now, speaking of scary figures. So Run Mamdani might become the mayor of New York. And we got a little preview of what New York can look forward to. First though, I want to tell you about Birch Gold. Text Knowles KWLAS to 9898 98. You might have been reading in the news that gold hit $4,000 an ounce for the first time ever. And gold is currently up 50% for the year. And as I may have mentioned, I'm a little bit of a gold bug, you know, and so I'm feeling great about that. If a portion of your savings is not diversified into gold, you're missing the boat. Here are the facts. Inflation is still too high, the US dollar is still too weak, and the government debt is insurmountable. This is why central banks are flocking to gold. They're the ones driving prices up to record highs. But it's not too late to buy gold from Birch Gold Group and get in the door. Now. Birch Gold will help you convert an existing IRA or 401 into a tax sheltered IRA. In gold, you don't pay a dime out of pocket. You just text Knowles Knewles to 98. 98 98. Claim your free info kit. No obligation, just useful information. Best indicator of the future is the past. And gold has historically been a safe haven for millennia. What else can say that? Can some random crypto thing say that? I don't think so. Text Knowles Canada WLAS 298-9898 right now to claim your free info kit on gold. That's Knowles Canada Wles to 98. 98. 98. Protect your future today with Birch Gold. As New Yorkers go out to vote, the polls are actually quite tight. There is a chance that Cuomo pulls it off. Had the Republican Curtis Lewis dropped out, Cuomo almost certainly would have won the election. Now it's probably the case that Mamdani is gonna win, but it's close. We don't know exactly. Some of the betting markets have Cuomo up, rising up. If Mamdani does win, the first thing that New Yorkers can look forward to is a lot more, you guessed it, violence.
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Zoran Mamdani
Oftentimes we've even found as legislators when we go into these courts, the term violent crime is even used when people are stealing packages. Violent crime is even used when people are accused of burglary and there happens to be a housing unit in that same dwelling. So violence is an artificial construction. And we have to be very clear that what is happening here with these district attorneys, that is violence. That is violence of the highest degree.
- [16:31]
Michael Knowles
Two groups of people are going to elect Mamdani. Primarily it's foreigners, non native New Yorkers. So they're probably used to violence in their terrible countries anyway. That will not be a shift for them. And yuppie wealthy female whites. And we'll get to those cross tabs in a moment, but those are the two. And that demographic is gonna be really, really surprised to learn that violence is not merely a social construct. Violence is a physical construct. It is actually a physical action that hurts a lot and can really damage your life and kill you. That's what they're. I don't mean to laugh at it, but that's what they're gonna find out. The ethereal, abstract construction of violence, man, when you really think about it, man, you know that is going to collapse into the concrete reality of assault and murder quickly. Or Mamdani will abandon his campaign promises. But frankly, I don't think there's any evidence that he is even competent enough to abandon his campaign promises and keep the city safe. If this guy is elected, whether he does what he says he's gonna do or not, probably New York is going to to become a lot less safe. In any case, New York's gonna put the theory to the test. Is violence a social construct? Bookmark that clip. Let's see how the numbers bear it out. Okay, so the first thing that New Yorkers can expect if Zoran is elected is a lot more violence. What's the second thing they can expect? A lot less money.
- [18:14]
Democratic Supporter
So when people say democratic, socialist, right.
- [18:18]
Michael Knowles
And I'm curious what you think this means. I mean, do you like capitalism?
- [18:22]
Zoran Mamdani
No. I have many critiques of capitalism. And I think ultimately the definition for me of why I call myself a democratic socialist is the words of Dr. King decades ago. He said, call it democracy or call it democratic socialism. There must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God's children in this country. And that's what I'm focused on, is dignity and taking on income inequality. And for too long, politicians have pretended that we're spectators to that crisis of affordability. We're actually actors and. And we have the choice to exacerbate it, like Mayor Adams has done, or to respond to it and resolve it like I'm planning to do.
- [18:58]
Michael Knowles
Do you like capitalism? No. As we said, no. Period. He's not even just running for mayor of Palookaville or mayor of Paris or something like that. Mayor of Moscow. He's running for mayor of New York City, the most famously capitalist city in the world. Is there a second? What's the second most capitalist city? London. Maybe London's kind of socialist. What's the second most? I don't know. I can't think of one. Now, to be fair to Zoran Mamdani, there are plenty of valid critiques of capitalism. I have plenty of critiques of capitalism. In fact, while we're saying nice things about the neoconservatives, you know, the early neoconservatives like Irving Kristol. Irving Kristol had a great line. He said, two cheers for capitalism. It's not three cheers, because capitalism is a modern liberal ideology that, if taken to its logical extreme, would make an idol out of money. It would actually worship filthy lucre and mammon. That would not be good. You know, the Bible tells us not to do that, but there's much to recommend. Capitalism and markets and the allocation of resources according to the impulses of the market. And obviously there's a lot to recommend, private property. But there are critiques of capitalism. The problem is Mamdani's critiques of capitalism are all the wrong ones. The real critique of capitalism is that it can weaken social institutions and social solidarity, and it can put the cart before the horse, and it can weaken bonds within the community, and it can weaken bonds even within families, which is the bedrock political unit and has to be protected. Zoran Mamdani's critique of capitalism is communist. Basically, he is an avowed socialist and maybe a communist, and he's even what we now call, like a gay race communist. He's not Even like the old school Bernie Sanders kind of socialist. He's not like that old school class warfare, Karl Marx kind of socialist or communist. He's. He's the kind of communist who tweets about queer liberation, who tweets about the need for justice in Palestine or whatever. As a matter of the economic order. It's not. Oh, man, it's gonna be bad. I'm all for critiquing capitalism. If it means you're gonna strengthen the family, if it means you're going to maintain traditions, if it means you're gonna have a cohesive society. Yeah, get a healthy critique of capitalism. But it's like the Anakin Skywalker meme. I'm gonna critique capitalism. Oh, you're gonna critique how it is acidic and corrosive to social institutions and the family and norms and the natural law. It's just Zoran Anakin smiling there. Mm, mm, mm, mm. It doesn't destroy the family enough. It doesn't liberate the queers enough. Okay. Gonna be a total disaster. But there's an irony to Mamdani's critiques of capitalism. Namely, he's most popular among wealthy New Yorkers and wealthy non New Yorkers, I should say. We'll get to that in a second. 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It lived there since the 50s, I think. And he had this beautiful classic a department fair market value would have been like eight grand. He was paying $800 a month. So there are all these distortions to the market. So you would expect the people who would support Mamdani, if you just buy him at his Marxist rhetoric, you would expect it to be the rent controlled New Yorkers, the underclass, the proletariat, right? No, Mamdani does better with transplants, the rich and market rate renters, per Jeremiah Johnson. If you look at Sliwa, the Republican in Cuomo, the, I guess more moderate Democrat, he's the guy who lit up Freedom Tower pink to celebrate infanticide. We have to call him the moderate in this race. Disgusting. You see, they both do better with people who were born in New York than people who were born outside New York. Only Mamdani does worse than with actual New Yorkers compared to people born outside New York City. You look at all of the cross tabs, it shows you that. And I'm not surprised by this. Some people will be surprised because they think of New York as monolithic and liberal and awful. Having spent the first 24 years of my life in and around New York within a commuter rail line of Grand Central, I tell you, there is a deep conservatism to New York. Not enough to beat the Democrats in elections generally, but there's a deep kind of conservatism. And actual New Yorkers are not voting for Mamdani. In fact, I don't want to tell tales out of school. I still have many liberal friends and family members in New York. Some very liberal friends of mine will not vote for Mamdani. New Yorkers, however, rich transplants are gonna vote for him. And foreigners. Foreigners and rich transplants. That's very sad. But you know what this means is that even New Yorkers now have to feel the hideous effects of mass migration. Because New Yorkers, they don't really care that much about mass migration. Yeah, okay, maybe Minneapolis is gonna be overrun by Somalis and that's gonna create problems and a lot of crime and social discord, but whatever, you know, they gotta deal with it. Too bad. Okay, maybe mass migration is going to turn California blue. Yeah, good. All the better. New Yorkers are basically fine with that. Yeah, look, okay, maybe some migrants are coming to New York. Now that's a little annoying. Even Eric Adams, Democrat mayor, he said mass migration is going to ruin the city. Okay, but whatever. New York's generally always kind of Democrats, no big deal. Will now mass migration, not just illegal immigration, but legal immigration too, is gonna tell New Yorkers, you don't get to pick your own mayor. Actual New Yorkers, you don't get to pick your own mayor. You want Andy Cuomo for whatever reason you want. Maybe Curtis Sliwa. Too bad. Even Andy Cuomo though, you regular Democrat New York, you don't get him. You have to get a Muslim communist who's gonna raise your effective tax rate to 52%, who's going to take over your grocery stores and who's gonna buy up private apartment buildings and create a bunch of communes that are gonna decay into even more projects where there's gonna be even more crime and even more drugs and. And it's going to be unlivable. You said diversity is our strength, so that's what you get. You said we needed to have lots of legal immigration, even if it's not illegal immigration. We need endless legal immigration. Okay? That's what you get. You get Zorran Mamdani. The conservatives have seen that happening for a while now. When I was a kid, there were two views you could have on immigration. You could have total open borders. Legal's good, illegal's good, bring it on. Or you could have mostly open borders and you say illegal's bad, but legal immigration's really good. We all want more migrants, just gotta do it legally. Some of us, for many years now, have been calling to drastically reduce all migration for purposes of social solidarity. It's only been the right that's called for that. The right. And Bernie Sanders in his defense. Cause he's an old school socialist and he recognizes that mass migration is bad for the working class. Other than that though, no one seems to have noticed. Now they're gonna notice. It's too bad. I love New York. It's too bad to see it happen. There is only one Dem in the country who seems inclined to moderate, and that would be the Democrat who has recovered from a brain injury. That would be John Fetterman. Here he is on cnn, not merely inveighing against the far left wings of his party, but admitting what every reasonable person knows, namely the Democrats are responsible for the government shutdown. I'm deeply, deeply distressing to know that 42 million Americans are going to lose their SNAP benefits. And now that's one of the big reasons why I refuse to shutting our government down. And again, I feel like the Democrats really need to own the shutdown. I love it. I've gotten more of a kick out of John Fetterman every single day. I pointed out, though, at the Nixon library last night, there's a civil war on the American right. Everyone talks about it, especially online and in very politically nerdy circles, always. Are you in this faction or that faction? Are you with this guy or that guy? And the thing is, there's always kind of a civil war on the American right because the American right is divided into lots of different camps. The neocons and the paleocons and the libertarians and the traditionalists and the religious right and the country Club Republicans and the New Right and the New New Right. And me, I was on the New Right, but now I'm older, so I'm on the paleo New Right. I gu. That's the right. The left used to be divided between progressives and Blue Dog Democrats. And the Blue Dog Democrats were people like Daniel Patrick Moynihan years ago, or people like Joe Manchin more recently, or Kyrstin Sinema or there were these kind of moderate Dems. Now the Democrat party is divided between progressives and super progressives. And John Fetterman. John Fetterman is the only. Only one. A dying breed. So who do the Democrats have mentioned yesterday, this strange situation. Even CNN had to admit it, which is that in 2000, 2004, Democrats had a front runner. Al Gore was pulling above 25% at this time in the presidential cycle. So they knew. And Al Gore got it in 2000. He didn't get it in 2004. But they still had a clear sense of what kind of candidate they were gonna have. Same thing with Hillary in 2008, 2016. Same thing with Joe Biden in 2020. Now there is no candidate polling above 25%. Nevertheless, Kamala Harris insists that the Democrats have a really deep bench. So many stars in their party.
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Democratic Supporter
We have so many stars in our Party. There are so many stars, and let's not be afraid of them. And, you know, you talk about Mamdani. I mean, he's exciting. This group of people who otherwise don't think of themselves as being aligned or apart or even seen by the system. You just look at the range of what we have. So many. Jasmine Crockett, who I just talked to recently, I mean, we have so many stars.
- [31:37]
Michael Knowles
So that's it. They have so many stars. Who are they? Zoran Mamdani and Jasmine Crockett. This woman was the vice President of the United States. She was the presidential nominee 10 months ago. She says that the future of the Democrat Party, the most exciting people they have right now, a Muslim communist and a woman who is politically schizophrenic. A woman who one day she gives an interview and she just sounds like a totally normal person. She says, oh, yeah, well, here are the tax policy in this area, and this is why. But then she goes in front of another audience where she wants to pander to black people, and she sounds like she's in a WB sitcom. She's like, mm, all right, now listen here, man. You know. You know what I'm talking about, honey. You know? Mm hmm. And you think all that. Wait, you were just talking normal like five minutes ago. You forget about the ideas. What idea has she offered? All she has tried to do is emulate some of AOC's provocations. That's it. All she's tried to do is just, like, really hit Trump. All she's tried to do is get nice viral clips on the Internet. That's the best. Say what you will about Mamdani. At least he's a communist. Say what you will about Mamdani, at least he has an idea. Kind of. At least he might be a jihadi. Great. Okay, I can work with that. There's something to engage with there. What about the rest of the day? And those are the best. And it is amazing to think as some of these elder statesmen pass away or retire from politics. Cheney exits stage. Nancy Pelosi prepares to leave politics. You think, wow, will there be a day to come that we miss Nancy Pelosi? Are things just getting worse? I'm not a pessimist, exactly. Many of my colleagues are pessimists. I'm not an optimist either, because pessimism and optimism are just feelings. They're cheap little sentiments. They're two sides of the same coin. I have hope, which is a theological virtue. I have hope, which I'm commanded to have and which I have based on the fact of the resurrection. But if you asked me to put money down, will the political situation in America over the next five years get better or worse? I would say long term, we're poised potentially to have a renewal. You see this in the Trump revolution. You see this in the very likely J.D. vance Marco Rubio ticket. You see this in a return to religion among young people especially. There are really good signs. Gen Z becoming substantially more conservative. Okay. They're good signs. You know, in the short term, there's gonna be a lot of Jasmine and Zoran and it's gonna be ugly. It's gonna be ugly. Okay. Speaking of President Trump, he's fielding all sorts of criticism from people who are saying he's going too far. His response? I think we should all emulate. We have less than 2,000 daily wire lifetime memberships remaining. I met actually a number of lifetime members over the past few days, including out here in Southern California at the Nixon Presidential Library. Turns out having all access benefits for life with no renewals is something everyone wants. So here are your options. You could buy one while they're still available, or you could win mine. That's right. I have my very own lifetime membership to give away. I made it very easy to enter. You download the free Daily Wire app in the app store. You open it, you tap follow under my beautiful picture and that's it, you've entered. Who knows? I could be calling you to give you my personal lifetime membership. I can say, hey, hey, you up? Hey, what's going on? Hey. But before any of that happens, you need to download the Daily Wire plus app and follow me in the app.
- [35:29]
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- [36:16]
Michael Knowles
My favorite comment yesterday is from Edicius. New Yorkers never forget. Also New Yorkers we forget. I know it's really not just. I would hate to sound like an Islamophobe, you know me, I would hate to sound like that. But this is to borrow a word from our Yiddish friends, as there are many of them in New York. This is a shonda. This is a shonda. This should not be in the conversation. I don't even think Mamdani. I don't think there's a lot of evidence that he's even particularly Muslim. I think it's worse. I think he's just like a cringe millennial. A liberal Obama era cringe millennial. But should not happen. I remember they were gonna try to build a mosque at Ground Zero. This was about 15 years ago. And at the time, the Republican Party, the conservative movement, was really enthralled to libertarian ish principles. You know, totally small government. You can do whatever you want. We're gonna have neutrality in religion. It was quite secular at the time. And it was very difficult to explain why there shouldn't be a mosque at Ground Zero. Everyone knows there should not be a mosque at Ground Zero. There should be city, state and federal statutes prohibiting mosques at Ground Zero. And you should be deported if you suggest that there should be a mosque at Ground Zero. We all know that in our guts, but no one knew how to say it. Charles Krauthammer had a great column on it. He was a very moderate, respected figure. And he said, it's not that you can't build a mosque anywhere, but just not here. That's not right. He basically said, trust your gut, guys. We all know and there's some wisdom to our guts. And it's not right. It's not right to have a guy named Zorramadani be the mayor of New York. It's just he can be the mayor of some other place. It's not right to have him be the mayor of New York. Okay, Speaking of immigration and assimilation, President Trump doing a very good job on the deportations, on ending illegal immigration. He's doing a much better job than he's getting credit for. Not only from the left, but also even from the right. You know, not only the deportations by ice, Tom Holman, Kristi Noemi, but also the self deportations, also the inducements to get out of the country on their own. So it saves taxpayer money and resources. Anyway, some have taken notice in the media. Trump was doing an interview on 60 Minutes. He was called all sorts of terrible things. He was asked if his policy was going too far. More recently, Americans have Been watching videos.
- [38:50]
Democratic Supporter
Of ice tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential.
- [38:56]
Michael Knowles
Neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows.
- [38:59]
Democratic Supporter
Have some of these raids gone too far?
- [39:01]
Michael Knowles
No, I think they haven't gone far.
- [39:03]
Conservative Commentator
Enough because we've been held back by.
- [39:06]
Michael Knowles
The judges, by the liberal judges that.
- [39:08]
Conservative Commentator
Were put in by Biden and by Obama.
- [39:13]
Michael Knowles
This is the answer when they ask you, well, don't you think Trump's going a little too far? You just don't understand the political situation at all. Don't you think this is the stage in the presidency, almost done with the first year, when the enthusiasm of the election is supposed to wear off, people are start to swing back a little bit in the other direction. We're looking ahead to the midterms, which the other party is supposed to win. And, you know, the president is supposed to be losing popularity. And this is the point at which you say, you know, maybe he's gone a little too far. That's not where the country's at. The Democrats are not looking. We'll see what happens in New York and Virginia tonight, obviously, and New Jersey. But the Democrats are not nearly as strong as they should be in this stage of the cycle. They're not looking as strong for the midterms. The Democrats are losing the shutdown battle. First time in my lifetime. The only complaint the American people have about the Trump administration on immigration is exactly the complaint Trump himself just voiced. Namely, it's not going far enough. We have not nearly exhausted the enthusiasm for the Trump campaign promises. We are not nearly through with the excitement for what the guy who won the popular vote as a Republican for the first time in 20 years was promising. This has got to be your response. No going soft, no weak at the knees. I want to minimize the infighting on the right, which is a perennial feature. And even when we're talking about right wing coalitions, when there's a reason to exclude somebody or to sideline somebody, whether for moral or purely electoral reasons, we need to act like grown men and do it behind the scenes. Okay? We gotta do it. I'm really inspired by Richard Nixon, having been at the Nixon Library last night. Sort your problems out behind the scenes. None of this whining infighting inside baseball, none of that eyes on the prize. There is still so much energy for what we were told was the radical Trump promises. And the hour is so late and the problems are so dire. And the Democrats are poised to elect a Muslim Communist in New York and a man who wants to murder Republicans and our kids in Virginia. And we gotta stay focused folks because we're only guaranteed another what, Another year before the midterms. So we get another 14, 15 months. The Republicans are guaranteed to be able to do stuff in the legislature, even that's hard cuz it's a razor thin majority. Then we only get another three years guaranteed as Trump. Trump is president. I hope we get two terms of JD Vance and then obviously Barron Trump can just become the first citizen. Abolish elections, inaugurate the Augustan Trumpian age. But that's down the line. All we have is this. Gotta focus, gotta focus, gotta keep moving forward. Only problem is it doesn't go far enough. Now speaking of families, there's a video gone viral, actually a number of videos gone viral. As the government shutdown continues on, there are finally some cuts to food stamps, ebt, the SNAP program. And you've seen people, I mean there was one woman, I think she was 65, she said she's been on food stamps for 30 years and she looked fine, she looked able bodied. These are not programs that generally speaking you're supposed to be on for decades at a time. They're supposed to get you through tough spots. For some people who are severely disabled, it might be a longer term deal for them, but there's clearly a ton of fraud and abuse in the food stamp program and it's clearly driving up the cost of groceries for everybody else. Some people can't even imagine life without food stamps. As these who have gone viral. Ever been to the food bank before?
- [43:07]
Democratic Supporter
No, we never have. This is your first time here, correct?
- [43:10]
Michael Knowles
Are you scared?
- [43:11]
Democratic Supporter
Well, highly afraid because I mean we didn't ask for these kids to come and what are we gonna do? Deny them? We have them, we have to take care of them, we have to find a way. And it's hard right now with everything that's going on. People are even afraid to come out of their houses to work. It's really bad. And especially with everything going on with the new, with the President saying that we have to hang in there, how are we going to hang in there with the kids? Like there's no way at all Thanksgiving coming up, especially imagine the people. It's not fair for anybody. What is your message right now to the federal government? I mean, what can we say?
- [43:54]
Michael Knowles
Did you catch the line? I actually do feel for this woman. I know most conservatives are not going to, they're going to say, are you kidding me? But I feel for her, feel for her. She's clearly not the sharpest tool in the Shed is confused about a lot of things, but there's one line in particular that really gets her. She said, we didn't ask for these kids. Do we need to go back to seventh grade biology class? You didn't ask for these kids. We didn't ask for these kids. Not only did you ask for these kids through a specific action that you undertook, but living in our contraceptive culture, the fact that you didn't use artificial contraception, which I'm not recommending, by the way, I'm not in any way encouraging artificial contraception, but the fact that you presumably did not use that means that you asked for the kids twice. You did the thing and then you didn't use the thing that sometimes goes with the thing that can stop the consequence of the thing. This one person at the beginning of that video said he'd never been to a food bank. He just was on the government cheese. Didn't even think of availing himself of other charitable resources. So, one, this is evidence that even in charity to these people who maybe aren't totally with it and aren't the most resourceful, and that exists in society, the poor will always be with you, and so you have to take care of them. But if you do legitimately have charity for them, it's not always good to just stick them on ebt because that can crowd out other resources like the church, like private charities. It can get them hooked on these programs to the point that they don't even know how to go to a food bank, much less go out and find gainful employment. And also, though, and this is gonna be the controversial part, this is the consequence of contraception. This is the consequence of a contraceptive culture. You will say, well, Michael sure seems like she wasn't using contraception. No, no, this is the consequence of a contraceptive culture. A culture in which condoms in the birth control pill are normalized and even encouraged in our schools all the way down to sixth grade, fifth grade in some cases. Because just the introduction of that and the normalization of contraception in our culture divorces, in the public imagination, sex from procreation. It says that there's not necessarily a link between those things. In the old way of thinking, we. We used to say love and marriage. Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. And what happens after the horse and carriage? The baby carriage. That's in the second verse of the song. There's a connection between love, marriage and the baby carriage. Now we divorce all three of those things. And our birth rate problem comes from Contraception. Our mass migration problem in many ways comes from contraception because we don't have an above replacement birth rate. And so we're told that we have to import the third world because it's the only way to keep our population up and our GDP up. A lot of problems come from this. And I know the right is going to be largely unified when I say abortion is bad. I know the right is going to be a little more fractious when I say that IVF is bad because it practically speaking entails abortion and for other reasons too. But when I say contraception is bad and we should discourage it. And it actually was illegal or at least heavily limited until Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s and 70s invented some constitutional right to condoms. And when I say that, that's when I'm going too far. That's when I'm a knuckle dragging theocratic troglodyte. That's where, hey, Mike, you got to cool. But I'm just telling you facts. When a woman says, hey, we didn't ask for these kids, she is expressing an intuition that we're all at least pretending, which is that sex does not necessarily entail procreation. Okay? Really important. There is something very positive in the culture. Well, it's a positive sign from a really negative thing in a foreign culture. We don't have time to get to it. I'll give you a little tease. Nicki Minaj. Nicki Minaj is sounding the alarm on Christian persecution in Nigeria and is thanking actually the Trump administration. And she's great. And Trump is now using some of her songs. And it's awesome. I don't have time to get into the story today. However, it is perhaps providential. I'm sitting here at the Prageru Studios. My friend Xavier Derusseau was the first one to Minaj pill me. He turned me into a barb. And the barbs are completely vindicated. She's standing up for the hideous persecution of Christians that is happening in Nigeria. We've talked about that on the show before. We'll get to it a little bit more because the United States might get involved. We'll get to that. We will not get to the membrane segmentum today because I got to film two things and then I got to fly back to Nashville. So I will see you tomorrow back in Nashville. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you then.