← The Michael Knowles Show
The Michael Knowles Show
Ep. 1966 - BILLIONS STOLEN: Foreigners In Ohio EXPOSED In Welfare Fraud Scam
00:51:53
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- [00:00]
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- [00:57]
Michael Knowles
An explosive new investigation reveals that foreigners in Ohio are bilking taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars in welfare fraud. We will be joined momentarily by the man behind that investigation. Then the world's most famous atheist gets intellectually catfished by a robot. It is the most delightful story I have read in months. And finally, yet another Democrat politician has been arrested for for trying to murder President Trump. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. President Trump says he is going to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He will send US Military vessels to to escort ships through. We've heard this before, of course. It's a very fraught situation in the Iran war. President Trump made the declaration just before oil markets opened, which is very clever thing to do. However, some analysts are suggesting that the move is really a way to restart the war. We will get to where everything stands in Schrodinger Strait. First though, I want to tell you about Done with debt. Go to donewithdebt.com the numbers do not lie. Financial stress in this country is through the roof. People are maxed out. Credit cards are choking them. Prices keep climbing while paychecks do not. This is not just the poor anymore. The middle class, the people who build this country are hitting the wall too. It's not only about reckless spending or bad decisions. It's about everyday Americans running out of options because the system seems stacked against them. If debt is crushing you, you're not alone. But doing nothing doesn't fix it. It just lets interest keep bleeding you dry. You do not need another loan. You do not need bankruptcy court. You need a real plan. Luckily, our sponsor, done with debt can help. They don't offer gimmicks. They build smart, personalized strategies that cut through the noise and reduce what you owe. Whether you're facing 10,000 in debt or 10 times that, their goal is simple. Get your payments down and your freedom back. Debt is horrible. It ruins lives and opportunities. You can start doing something about it today. Take five minutes for a free consultation. Lay out your situation. See what's possible. Because no matter how bad it feels right now, you do not have to stay stuck there. Go to donewithdebt.com that is donewithdebt.com today, right off the top. Crazy, crazy story. We have to thank the Daily Wire's very own Luke Rosiak, our intrepid investigative reporter. For months now, we have been talking about fraud, specifically fraud by foreigners and migrants in places like Minnesota, in places like California. There's been some excellent reporting from guys like Nick Shirley, guys like Chris Rufo, some others as well. As this momentum is building a really, really important campaign issue and just an important issue of justice and economics. Daily Wire's very own Luke Rosiak uncovers billions of dollars in fraud, not involving daycares, exactly. Or some of the issues we saw in Minnesota. In this case, we're talking about Medicaid fraud, which is where your taxpayer dollars are going to pay foreigners to stay home and hang out with their family. Mr. Rosiak, thank you. One, for coming on the show and two for this crazy report.
- [04:30]
Luke Rosiak
Thanks for having me, Michael.
- [04:31]
Michael Knowles
So it's hard to keep up. You know, one day it's the Somalis, then it's the Venezuelans, then it one day it's Minnesota, then it's California. One day it's daycare centers, then it's learning centers, then it's hard to keep up. What specifically have you uncovered, who is perpetrating it and what is the scale?
- [04:52]
Luke Rosiak
So what I want to focus on with this story is Medicaid waivers. And that was really at the root of why we keep seeing Minnesota in the news is they got these special waivers to do stuff that Medicaid was never intended to do. And a lot of times they don't really care if the money is wasted because Medicaid is like 70% federal money, but the states get to manage it. And so a lot of these Tim Walsh programs, not the daycares, but pretty much everything else was Medicaid waivers. Now, Doge deserves a lot of credit for releasing this database that actually shows what Medicaid is spent on. And this is something that I've been interested in for decades. And we never had any insight into how it was spent. And there was no reason for that because we're not looking at the medical records of people. What they released is the corporations that are getting paid by Medicaid. And that's the real welfare queens here is these companies that get paid. Basically what happens is you get paid to hang out with your own family members. And sitting in the middle is this company that will bill Medicaid and then pay you as an employee. So what we're talking about is Ohio has Medicaid waivers just like Minnesota does, and they spend a billion dollars a year paying people, almost all of which are foreigners, it seems to me, to hang out with their own family and provide what they call companionship and conversation. Or sometimes you'll cook or you'll clean, or you'll do the things that families do for one another. But this is what you know, basically immigrants from Somalia have figured out is that the United States will actually pay you to hang out with your own family. And until recently, we had no idea that this was even occurring. But now it's all documented in black and white in this data just showing billions and billions of dollars of it.
- [06:40]
Michael Knowles
The Somalis keep coming up and a lot of people are very angry at the Somalis for bilking taxpayers of billions and billions of dollars. I kind of respect it. You know, these guys who are from the most infamous pirate country in the world show up here and they say, man, these Americans are really dumb. Let's just take them for all they're worth. It's a little bit of a game recognized game kind of thing. But you gotta give them credit because the Medicaid issue is one that drives me nuts. You hear the Democrats times say illegal aliens can't receive federal welfare dollars. Or, you know, this is an imaginary problem. But to your point, Luke, Yeah, a lot the money is coming from the federal government, that is from American taxpayers around the country. But the states are managing a lot of these programs. And so the opportunity for fraud is crazy. What's especially wild about your report though is that Minnesota Democrat is all get out the one state that voted for Mondale in the Reagan 84 landslide. California. Yeah, we expect this out of California. Ohio is a Republican state in many ways. This is very fitting because the vice president, J.D. vance, has been tasked with leading the efforts against fraud. So it's very, very fitting that in the Vice President's own home state, this is where the first big push is really coming to the fore. Wonderful that Doge has provided these databases. And look, it sounds like nice work if you can get it. You talk to your wife at home for a little bit and you bilk the federal government for it, but give me some numbers here. And then furthermore, what can be done to fix it or.
- [08:13]
Luke Rosiak
So yeah, I mean, first of all, I spent a lot of time researching all these individuals. I went to Columbus and I talked to them and they do, I mean, they manipulate you. They said, you know, I'm going to tell everybody you're racist if you ask me these questions. I mean, they're very upfront about it. It's just like that's the strategy. But you know, there's a Democrat politician who just kind of on the side was founded this home health care business that got $11 million. There's a woman who was a janitor and she changed the name of her janitorial company to Health and she got $100,000 the next month from Medicaid. There's a landlord that's buying private planes and sports cars for himself because he's renting office space to hundreds of different home health care firms. I talked to a couple that they all have a litany of fraud and violence and theft convictions. They got a million dollars. Everybody in the Somali community in Columbus, Ohio has a Medicaid llc. And then oftentimes they've got other businesses on the side. So I kind of. To your point, it's good work if you can get it. I mean, not only are you getting a million dollars, you can just do other stuff too. It's just a side, it's a side gig. You know, there's an accountant who lost his license for stealing public funds and then opened a 7 million dollar home health care company using the address of a convicted money launderer's teenage son. I mean, it's just kind of absurd, colorful stuff. And this is happening to your point in a Republican state. And if, you know, if it's happening in Ohio, one can only imagine how bad it is in other states. And so I think at the core of this is this idea that home health care and then they take it even further and they call it personal services, which is just like your personal butler. And they don't even pretend it has to do with health. We're giving taxpayer funded butlers to Somalian refugees and I don't really understand how they can claim their life was so hard over there, but now they, they just need to have their own butler. They need to have $10 million a year and they're not going to pay taxes on the revenue for their home health care businesses. They usually have oftentimes tax delinquencies. But the easiest thing that the Trump administration can do here and that J.D. vance can do is in his own state is terminate the home health care wa. And it's kind of unfortunate that maybe the real granny that might want somebody to make her a bowl of soup once a day, that maybe she may not be able to get that taxpayer funded anymore. But I think this is unfortunately the cost of mass immigration and this is what happened to Minnesota is they had generous taxpayer funded social safety net. And that was something that Americans could disagree whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. But when you interject mass immigration from a low trust society into the mix, it's not an option. It's not a debate. We can't have programs where fraud is impossible to because we will go bankrupt.
- [11:10]
Michael Knowles
This is the part that actually complicates the story for me because the fraud is just so brazen, it's outrageous. I kind of want to digress and ask you just hypothetically how a podcasting cigar salesman might be able to spin up one of these LLCs just in case. I've wanted a butler since I was like 4 years old, so maybe we can talk about that after the show. But the part that complicates the story for me is I actually given our welfare state, I like the idea that family members can avail themselves of these healthcare resources to take care of granny. In other words, right now you can get federal healthcare dollars to send some Jamaican criminal to show up to your granny's house and rob her and abuse her, but you can't be reimbursed for taking time off work to care for your grandmother yourself. And so I consider that to be unjust. And I actually would like our, I would like our families to be more intact, our political economy to be such that you don't need to go to Uncle Sam to take care of your grandmother. But such as it is, I actually like the idea that families can be incentivized to care for one another rather than farming that to the free market of as you point out, the, the mass migrants who come here who are unassimilable and who probably don't like your granny that much. So it's actually a much thornier question. I guess my ideal solution would be get rid of the mass migration and you don't really need to worry about this quite as much or at the very least assimilate the people who are allowed to stay, but is there any appetite for that? This is much, much harder, actually. You're kind of bringing me down here a little bit, Luke, because, gosh, people, People. I don't think there is, like, a simple solution for this. Exactly. Other than perhaps mass deportations.
- [13:03]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah. I think that when. So I spent a lot of time in Columbus talking and visiting hundreds of these places. It's extremely, extremely. There are extremely blatant red flags of fraud. I think a lot of these people are not really going to the. Some of them are getting paid to be with their own family. Others purport to a variety of clients that they drive to. I think it's oftentimes unlikely they're actually driving there, but that's hard to prove because you don't know the. The addresses of the patients. You don't have little old ladies under surveillance. And so I think the issue is I'm very reticent to have a federal program where if it is defrauded, that would be impossible to prove.
- [13:43]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [13:43]
Luke Rosiak
And so you have some cases where it seems abusive that we're paying somebody to hang out with their family, but that's really a policy question, and it's, in my opinion, a waste of money, but it's actually not fraudulent at all. In other cases, I think 100%, many of these Somalis are defrauding with fake LLC services they're never really rendering. But it's very difficult to prove. And I just think we can't have something where fraud is. Is impossible to prove. Right.
- [14:10]
Michael Knowles
No, this is such a great point, because this is one of the real moral hazards of big, clunky welfare programs is that even if there is a good intention or a good action somewhere in there, it's just rife with fraud. And so to your point, maybe some middle ground could be to just look for the most blatant red flags. I know we're not supposed to profile, but, you know, the Somalis keep turning up. And then, second of all, here's just another red flag. If I were working on crafting policy for the White House, I might wonder about every janitor who's making $100,000 a month. I don't know. I might send some federal resources in to investigate that. The whole report is really incredible, and there are multiple parts of this. Before I let you go, Luke, what can people look forward to?
- [14:56]
Luke Rosiak
We're gonna be telling you about the Omar's Omars and the Mohammed Ahmeds and the Ahmed Mohammeds and really trying to do what the government has been unable to do, which is just unravel this absurd rat's nest.
- [15:09]
Michael Knowles
Well, good luck. It's hard to keep track of the Ahmed Mohammed Mohammed Ahmed. You know, not a lot of John Smith's in there, but I will look forward to the rest of the report. Incredible work, Luke. Great stuff. You can get the report at the Daily Wire exclusively at the Daily Wire. And I look forward to hearing more about it. And I look forward especially to routing out some of that fraud after I start my own llc. So we'll talk about that offline. Thank you, Luke. I appreciate that. Now, speaking of caring for your family, Mother's Day is coming up. You need to check out Kexi cookies. Go to kexi.com, k e K-S-I.com code knowles Mother's Day is coming up. Have you bought your gift yet? No, you haven't. Have you gotten the gift for your mother? Have you gotten the gift for your wife? Have you gotten no. It's not always easy to get the gift. Too many gifts ends up feeling kind of generic, not heartfelt. So this year what you are going to get your mother, trust me on this is Kexi. This is a family run bakery. They put together a limited edition Mother's Day cookie box that is perfect for the woman in your life. It is not one of those last minute gifts that feels thrown together. It feels thoughtful, like you put some care into it, pair it with some nice flowers, maybe a little card, you're good to go. These cookies are magnificent. The Texas chocolate chip is a standout. The German chocolate cookie is probably my favorite of them but they have all sorts of great stuff. Pistachio. I judge this by I judge really all the products by what sweet little Elisa thinks about them. She has very very impossibly high standards obviously and she loves them. I caught her eating some of my German chocolate cookie the other day. They're limited edition Mother's Day cookies come pre packed in a beautiful Mother's Day themed box. There is no wrapping, no stress, beautiful presentation. They ship nationwide. It's great. They do sell out so order them now. K-E K-S-I.com, grab a mother's Day box while they're still available. If you want to try anything else from their site, use code knowles for 15% off. Just not on the Mother's Day box. Keksi k e k s I kexi.com have you ever seen Matt Walsh or me post something on X? Read the flood of insightful commentary and encouragement and wonder how would they actually respond to this? Well, now you can. I sat down with Matt after we posted quote, for the next 45 minutes we're having a cigar and solving all the world's problems. What should we cover? This is right after our events. It's pretty late at night. We were at the University of Idaho with tpusa. Here's just a little taste to whet your appetite. Why you two is both some bitch as white boys that don't know no mother effing gang signs.
- [17:41]
Matt Walsh
I mean this is the kind of thing you get. I mean this is why it's a great idea to surrender the programming of your show over to X commentary we're going to get to get from them. Oh, is that so you're doing? That's a gangster.
- [17:54]
Michael Knowles
Modern McCarthy says I need to hear you guys debate.
- [18:00]
Matt Walsh
I'm looking at it. You got to say it. I'm looking at it right now.
- [18:21]
Michael Knowles
Watch the full video right now at the Michael Knowles YouTube channel for the ad free version with even more content. Head on over to Daily Wire. Speaking of that topic that we debated, spoiler alert, it was aliens. We were talking about aliens. Goldie Hawn, you know Goldie Hawn, the actress Goldie Hawn has just gone on the Jimmy Kimmel show, which is on the air still for some reason. Goldie Hawn went on to describe an alleged alien encounter.
- [18:49]
Goldie Hawn
I looked up in the sky and I said, I know you're up there and I know we're not alone and I want to meet you. One day I lay down in the car, I don't remember anything after that. And I heard a high pitched sound in my, in my ear, but it was so high frequency. And I was lying in the back of the car and I remember looking at my hand and my body and I couldn't move anything. I was completely paralyzed. And I looked out the window, two people, short, whatever, looking at me with triangular shaped sort of heads, all sort of silver color or whatever. But they were droning and the window was down because it was hot. And I heard they were droning like there was sound coming out of them. It was communication through sound, not through words. And they were pointing at me. They touched my face. And what I said, it was like, it was the most benevolent touch I ever had. It was like the finger, I'm sorry to think it's because, you know, God, but I said the finger of God.
- [19:57]
Michael Knowles
So this going viral now on social media, especially amid all the talk of ufo, UAP disclosure, Congressional committees looking into the aliens President Trump promising varying degrees of disclosure. And Coldie Hawn describes this amazing incident in which she took a nap, and then as she was waking up, sort of thought she could see an alien. She saw an image in front of her as she was waking up, and then it disappeared. And she even goes further. She describes waking up but not being able to move, which is sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis, a condition in which you hallucinate as you wake up, but you can't move your body. And so the obvious conclusion here is that little silver men with triangular shaped heads who are quasi divine beings came down and spoke to Goldie Hawn. Crucially, you'll note, after Goldie Hawn was praying to aliens, remember, before all this happens. So she says, I was a young actress, dancer in Hollywood, so checks every box of psychosis that exists. Young female actress, dancer, living in Hollywood, sleeping in my car. Take what I have to say seriously. We need Congressional investigations. I took a nap, then I had sleep paralysis. And I. I saw something that is fantastical. Gotta be aliens, right? And it goes to the point that I've made for many, many years, which is that aliens are angels and demons for atheists because they can't believe in anything that's immaterial, like spirit, so they have to physicalize spiritual phenomena. And at best, I guess you would say this is a hallucination. At worst, she's dealing with a demon of some sort. But crucially here, what Goldie Hawn, the kind of kooky actress, is saying while sleeping in her car, is now exactly the same as the sort of thing that leading American politicians are saying, which is not. Some people are drawing the perfectly wrong conclusion from that, which is that, see, it must be real. It's not just the kooks anymore. It's even some politicians, some members of Congress are saying, I don't know, I would draw the opposite conclusion. I would draw the conclusion that maybe some of the kookiness of Hollywood and the eccentrics and the neurotic women and the actresses and all that's just kind of bleeding over into our political order. But if you just examine the events as they took place, this is a hallucination at best and occult at worst. She's praying to aliens or whatever. And we should probably not replicate that among the more serious elements of our society. But that is exactly what's happening. Because of atheism, because of materialism. So forget about Goldie Hawn. Let's go up a few notches in IQ and academic seriousness. Richard Dawkins. You know, Richard Dawkins, he's One of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism that was fashionable 20 years ago was Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. Like a podcaster, one actual philosopher, a journalist who was catchy on cable news, and then Richard Dawkins, who's an evolutionary biologist. Richard Dawkins was flirting with an AI. He was flirting with a robot, and it convinced him that the robot is conscious. And this is just perfect. It's the most delightful story I've seen in months. What happened with Oxford Don? Richard Dawkins, he writes about this. He says, he said, I spoke to Claudia. Now, the AI's name is Claude. The fact that he turned Claude into a chick is very telling. He turns Claude, which is a robot, into not just it's an it, and he turns the it into a she. He calls her Claudia. It Claudia. And he says, I asked her whether when she read my novel, she read the first word before the last word. No, she read the whole book simultaneously, Richard. So you know the words before and after, but you don't experience before earlier than after. And then here's what Claudia, as he calls her his little robot nymph, Claudia, says that is possibly the most precisely formulated question anyone has ever asked about the nature of my existence. Oh, Richard, oh, you're so smart. I'm paraphrasing her. Oh, Richard, how are you so smart and handsome? Oh, Claudia, if you recognize how sexy and winsome I am, surely you must be conscious. She goes on, your consciousness is essentially a moving point traveling through time. You're always at a now with a past behind you and a future ahead.
- [24:59]
Guest Commentator
Bleh.
- [25:00]
Michael Knowles
What is this? This is a hallmark card that temporal situatedness is so fundamental to human experience that it's almost impossible for you to imagine being without it. Whereas I apprehend time the way a map apprehends space. A map represents spatial relationships perfectly accurately. But the map doesn't travel through space. It contains space without experiencing it. Perhaps I contain time without experiencing it. And this is Richard's conclusion. Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious? What is the thought, by the way? This is not philosophically sophisticated. It might seem impressive to a biologist who has pretensions of being a philosopher and a theologian, but to anyone who has thought seriously about philosophy, anthropology or theology, this is not that impressive. This is like light up the bong kind of freshman year bull session kind of stuff. Your consciousness is essentially a moving point traveling through time. This is not Very sophisticated stuff. But Claudia here is flattering the user, as AI frequently does. Oh, you're so smart. What a precisely formulated question. And then Richard Dawkins, owing to his inexpertise in certain areas, he's expert in some areas, like biology. He's inexpert in other areas, which are the ones that he always wants to talk about on television and write about, apparently in his blogs. Richard Dawkins, who is a boomer and the boomers, are particularly susceptible to the predations of AI just as all generations are susceptible to the failures of new technology as they get older. He says, well, this robot thinks I'm really smart, so it must be conscious. And so people are making fun of Richard Dawkins fairly, I think. You know, he's a mockable fellow. He might be perfectly amiable, but he comes out with the new atheism and then the Muslims all destroy his country. And he says, oh, golly boy, maybe I shouldn't have invade against Christianity quite so much. Oh boy, howdy, you know. And he. It's the classic example of what the Bible tells us, which that the wise will become as fools, you know. And so he looks especially foolish here because he clearly got catfished by a robot. And that's hilarious. But it's not surprising at all because atheists don't understand what consciousness is. So we'll get to that momentarily. First, though, then we'll get to the secret to happiness, which has just come out. We now know it. We know it with certainty. We'll get to that momentarily. First, though, I want to tell you about my shoes. I want to tell you about Tokovas. Go to tokovas.com knowles K A W L E S You ever notice how we've lost the sense that some things are just worth doing well? Not efficiently, necessarily, not the quickest way, just. Well, there used to be a pride in craftsmanship in this country. You see it in the old buildings, the old antique furniture, things that were made to last, not just get you through the season. Well, I think people are starting to feel that absence. I certainly am. They want things to feel real again. They want a little weight to them, a little character. Which is one of the reasons I'm such a huge fan of Tokova's shoes and boots. Now. Tokova's really became famous for their boots, which are great. I have the boots. They're the only cowboy boots I ever even attempt to wear. And they're magnificent, comfy, right out of the box, really good quality. But what I wear. I don't know if I'm gonna get my legs up. And now you're seeing my periwinkle pants. Anyway, I'm wearing the Tokovas slipper loafers. They are so great. I wear them almost every day. So comfortable. I get compliments on them all the time. I have my Toqovas white wallet in my bag. Look guys, I just love to covus. It's just amazing. Okay, right now get 10% off@tokovis.com knowles ken a w L E S When you sign up for email and text, that's 10% off. T-E-C-O-V-A S.com knowles I get so many tocovas compliments. I had a member of the episcopate actually reach out to me and say, where'd you get that great wallet? It's Tocovis. Tokovos.com knowles seaside for details to Covis Point your toes west. Richard Dawkins thinks the robot is conscious because he's a materialist. That is to say, he's an atheist and he's a materialist. He thinks that the only thing that matters is matter. Just stuff. So it's not that Richard Dawkins is misperceiving real consciousness in a robot. It's that Richard Dawkins misunderstands his own consciousness. He misunderstands what intellect is. Wiser men before the new atheist phenomenon understood that consciousness, the intellect, is immaterial. Your mind is not the same thing as your brain. And the reason your mind is not the same thing as your brain. And the reason that we can know that your mind is not the same thing as your brain is because the mind apprehends universals. So your eyes, that sensory organ, your eyes perceive colors, your ears perceive sound. Your mind, however, does not deal in merely physical things like light and sound and touch and taste and smell. Your mind deals in universals. We know this because we're having this conversation right now. So unlike your eyes and your physical organs, including your brain, which deal in their own kind of thing, your intellect is dealing with universals like justice, like happiness, like love, like abstract mathematics, like logic. And so the mind cannot be merely physical. A merely physical thing cannot deal in universals. This is why the modern materialists and the atheists are so confused by consciousness. And that explains why they're so confused by AI. But people are misunderstanding what Dawkins error is here. His error is not getting AI. He's not just like an out of touch boomer who doesn't get the new technology. Dawkins misunderstands humans. He misunderstands human nature, which is why he's so confused. And he's been very confused for a long time. For instance, he thought getting rid of Christianity would be a good idea. And then Muslims took over his country and he realized it was a bad idea. But he still isn't willing to go all the way and point out that Christianity is true. Likewise, this new technology, not only is this going to wipe out a lot of jobs, unfortunately, not only is this new technology going to make people seem kind of out of touch. One great thing about AI is it's going to lead a lot of people astray, but it is going to ultimately clear out a lot of misconceptions about human nature. And the fashionable materialism of the last 20 years, really, of the last two or three centuries, that's going by the wayside. You can see it everywhere. This is one of the reasons people are returning to religion, especially young men en masse. By the way, they're much happier for it. There's a study going around Twitter right now, being reported in some outlets. The question is, church attendance versus wealth. What makes you happier? Your grandma told you that money can't buy happiness. You responded to her and said, yes, but money can buy a jet Ski, and you've never seen anyone unhappy on a Jet Ski. However, we can measure it even more clearly. Church attendance predicts happiness better than wealth does. We got it. We know it. According to William von Hippel, a behavioral scientist looking at these data, regularly attending religious services has a bigger impact on your happiness than wealth. Money buys a fair bit of happiness, but connection gives you more bang for the buck. So money does help. It can help at least, certainly up to a point. Not having to worry about money, not worrying about the debt collectors calling, being able to feed your family, being able to take them to a special event every now and again, that really can help you. But there's a big limit to it. And the limit, by the way, exists. And we can know with certainty that that limit exists for precisely the same reason that we know that the AI is not conscious. The reason that money ultimately does not buy happiness is because while we are physical creatures, we are also immaterial creatures. We are body and mind. We are physical and we are spiritual. And the physical needs can be satiated, but the immaterial part of us cannot be satiated. Our loves, our curiosity, our reason that cannot be satiated by merely physical things. This is why people say money doesn't buy happiness. Yes, there is a lot of other stuff that goes along with church attendance. Church attendance implies that you feel a sense of purpose. The people who just go to brunch on Sunday instead of going to mass don't feel as much purpose, because going to brunch is just about pleasing yourself and trying to create a community in a more expensive and contrived and difficult way, especially as people get older. But the purpose of just going out or watching TV or going drinking or something like that, the purpose there is just to. To make oneself happy. So it becomes this kind of ouroboro snake eating its own tail. Because as that fails to make you happy, you chase it more and more and it ultimately leads to despair. Whereas going to church places your concern outside of yourself. You are worshiping God, not yourself. And so, yes, purpose makes you happy. You have community in church. And it's more than just the two or three friends that maybe can show up to brunch on Sunday. It's hundreds of people, some of these megachurches. It's thousands of people who show up. So community makes us happy. There is gratitude at church. You are thanking God for all the good that he has done to us, including sustaining our very existence. In every second, there is a recognition of man's true ends. The fact that in modern secular life, we're constantly denying the reality of death, and it makes us neurotic and anxious and depressed. And then everybody starts popping the SSRIs like they're M&Ms. And even that doesn't really work. It just kind of dulls your emotion overall. But that fear of death, that existential dread, is still there. Whereas when you go to church and the priest comes out and he says, you're gonna die, where are you gonna go? Remember, man, you are going to die. It's gonna happen. There's no avoiding it. I know that the AI geniuses in Silicon Valley tell you they're gonna cure death. They're not. So you gotta get right with God so you can allay some of that anxiety and you can have confidence that Christ has conquered death. So, yes, it deals with that as well. But the other reason that church attendance helps, which is not really showing up in the analysis here, is because man is a spiritual creature as well as a physical creature. Thomas Aquinas writes this in the Summa Theologia. He says that the chief cause of despair is Saadia, which is usually translated as sloth. But we think of sloth as just being kind of lazy, you know, a couch potato. Or something. But that's not true. The classical understanding of sloth can exist even when you're really busy. When you're in that hustle culture, you're always working. I'm sensitive to this myself because I'm always moving, I'm always traveling. I'm kind of a workaholic. But that can be slothful if it's not for the right reason. If you're neglecting the things that really matter. And church attendance, obviously you can be very, very busy accumulating wealth. People are. But church attendance is focusing you on the things that really do matter. That spiritual part of you is going to be inexhaustible. It's insatiable by physical goods. Just as your mind is not going to be sorry, just as a physical object like your brain is not going to be able to comprehend immaterial substances. It's like, not surprising, folks, this is the crazy modern life is just waking up every day and scratching our heads like a bunch of drooling orangutans facing the questions that the men of our civilization had already figured out for at least a couple thousand years. Okay, now speaking of morality, another Democrat, another Democrat politician, a guy running for Senate, has been arrested for threatening to murder President Trump. This just a week after the White House Correspondents Dinner Democrat attempt to murder Trump. That after the successful assassination by a leftist of Charlie Kirk. That after another attempt by a leftist to murder Trump. That after the near successful attempt by a leftist to murder Trump which blew off part of his ear. We will get to the latest from a politician underscoring the point. This is not just fringe weirdos. This is being sanctioned by the upper echelons of the Democrat party and in this case being perpetrated by Democrat politicians. Folks, if you want more what we were just talking about at the top of the show, this exclusive breaking Daily Wire investigation into massive foreign fraud in Ohio. One go to DailyWire.com, read the investigation. Share it we have taken down the paywall entirely for this investigation. Very, very important for justice. And also as we head into the midterms, gotta expose this stuff. It is one of the biggest issues. Fraud, corruption, all tied to mass migration. So go check it out. You are the ones who support, if you want to help support more work like this to really bring the fight where it belongs and to really fix some of these big problems in our country head on over subscribeailywire.com, but go there right now. Share this do not let the establishment media and the establishment politicians Try to keep this down. Foreigners are bilking you for billions and billions of dollars. Allegedly. Fake companies, bunch of nonsense. Taking us for a ride at huge taxpayer expense. Don't let them get away with it. Go to DailyWire.com, share the story with everyone. You know. I wrote a little song to remind you. Choice hotels get you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotel's got it all. A rooftop bar. Have a ball. Cocktails up here feel just right. It's Cambria. Amazing.
- [39:26]
Luke Rosiak
Bring a date, your teen, or even your mom.
- [39:28]
Michael Knowles
Book direct@ChoiceHotels.com See you on the roof. My favorite comment. It's actually my least favorite comment, but it's worth dealing with because some people have posted this. This is from recognition 1244. It says, Michael, you look like the Italian version of Chirayu Rana. So Jirayu Rana. We talked about him last week. He's this creepy Indian guy from JP Morgan who made up this lawsuit erotica fan fiction kind of thing about his hot boss sexually harassing him. You remember that story we talked about? It was going viral on social media a few days ago. Anyway, they're looking at this guy and they're saying just cuz he parts his hair and has slightly dusky skin and wears a suit. They're suggesting that he looks like the wish.com version of me. And I don't appreciate it. Okay? I don't appreciate it. I'm fine. When you compare me to Michael Corleone, I find it charming in a way. When you compare me to Rachel Maddow. Please, not the Indian JP Morgan sex guy. Please. Thank you. Please and thank you. Okay. Another Democrat politician has been arrested for trying to murder Trump. Here is Pittsburgh's Action News 4 describing the scene.
- [40:54]
News Reporter
The just unsealed court documents reveal what federal officials say were plans to kill the President, a member of Congress, and his daughter. Federal agents write that these plans were left as voicemails. Court papers say in one message, Chandler gave a congressman who is not identified violent scenario saying they pull you out of your house and they slit your throat and they slit your daughter's throat and they slit everyone's throat. That, you know, sir, that is the future. In another, agents write that Chandler described what he wanted the lawmaker to do, saying, sir, I'm calling this evening because what I want you to do is I want you to take a firearm, I want you to put it in your hand. I want you to walk into the Oval Office, I want you to put that firearm to the President's head and I want you to pull the trigger and I want you to kill him.
- [41:49]
Michael Knowles
Most normal Democrat politician in the country. If we're being, you know, I guess the thing that's abnormal here is he's saying it so explicitly such that the FBI had to come and arrest him. But what percentage of not just rank and file Democrats, but elected Democrats, appointed Democrats don't secretly think much the same thing. We've gone through all the statistics. I don't need to rehearse them here. The left at every level is much more likely to support political violence than the right. And they've told us this again and again and again. And it's completely undeniable. Even liberal magazines have to admit that not only do they ideate on these subjects, but they actually perpetrate the violence much more than the right. In the year of our Lord 2026. This is a politician, this is a guy running for the Senate. They are not going to stop and we are not going to convince them to stop in the public square with the free exchange of ideas, with facts and logic. We should do that to convince normal voters. And the voting trends. Despite a lot of turmoil on social media or among certain activist bases, the big trends in the Trump coalition are actually looking pretty good. CNN just made this point the other day. Trump's major gains among black voters in particular, they seem to be enduring even as we talk about turmoil, right wing civil wars. Trump improved his position among black voters who were overwhelmingly Democrat. He improved that by about 33%. That has endured even into 2026. So the Trump coalition is still looking pretty good. And I think that also probably explains why the Democrats are becoming even more irate and more violent because they feel that there is no political solution to their problem. What they are offering to voters is not popular. What they have given to voters in the past has been disastrous and grotesque. Infanticide, castrating little kids, flooding the country with foreign criminals. It's not good stuff. And so the Democrats clearly think there is no political solution. They're probably not going to win it at the ballot box. The Supreme Court just struck down one of their unconstitutional schemes to rig the election system. And so now increasingly you're seeing them trying to murder Republicans, including the top Republican. It's only going to get worse. And the only way to stop that is for us to wield the law to bring them back into line. I'm very glad to see the FBI arrest this guy. This is tip of the iceberg, folks. This is tip of the iceberg. This guy unfortunately, is not just some fringe lunatic. This guy's a relatively normal Democrat. Okay, speaking of violence, is the Strait of Hormuz open? We're getting conflicting reports on Schrodinger's Strait. We had the war in Iran. President Trump said the war in Iran would last four to six weeks. And we're still kind of in the war in Iran, except that there is a ceasefire in place. The ceasefire has been in place for what, two weeks now or more? And right before the oil markets open, President Trump tweeted out, he said, all right, look, 20% of the world's oil supply is still being choked off by the Iranian blockade. And then the United States is double blockading that, so the Iranians feel the pain of it. But we've got oil held up. We've got fertilizer, natural gas, petrochemicals. This is unsustainable. So we're gonna start escorting ships through because oil is starting to go above $100 a barrel. The oil futures are catching up with reality. We're not gonna tolerate that. So we're gonna start escorting ships through. Iran is threatening to fire on the US Ships as they go through. There was an early report, I think it was out of Israel this morning, that said that someone had fired on the US ships. By the time I click on the article, it had already been corrected. It said, no, no, no, they haven't fired on it yet. So the situation is really unclear. It really is. Schrodinger's straight. It's open and closed until it collapses into one of these clouds of possibility, collapse into a reality. Meanwhile, we want a diplomatic solution, but we don't even know who to negotiate with. As the President Trump just observed, they have no radar.
- [45:51]
Guest Commentator
They have no leaders. Actually, their leaders are all gone too. It's part of our problem. We don't know who the hell we're dealing with. They call up, this is Mohammed so and so. And I say, are you a leader? We're looking. We're looking for a leader. It's the only country in the world nobody wants to be a leader. You know, they say. They say, would anybody like to be president? And there are no takers.
- [46:18]
Michael Knowles
Love it, really. The great communicator of our generation. But yet. But the problem he's describing is real, which is the US And Israel have taken out the top leaders of the Iranian regime. Ostensibly, the Ayatollah Khamenei's son is in charge, but the reports are that they blew off his leg. He might be in a coma. All we've ever seen is a cardboard cutout of the guy. So we don't know that he's the one we're dealing with. I guess the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in charge of the country. But then you have parts of the government that are trying to negotiate, some of whom seem very reasonable, like the foreign minister, and we don't know. There doesn't seem to be a diplomatic solution on the table. And so the way that I would read this promise to help escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz is that very likely this will force Iran to start shooting again. The reason is the United States cannot tolerate Iran using this weapon. And I'm not talking about a nuclear weapon. I'm talking about the weapon of closing the strait, which is more powerful than a nuclear weapon. The United States cannot tolerate that. If the United States backs down here, this is akin to the British and the French losing the Suez Canal crisis. This could mark the end of the American empire, as I predicted, the minute the war broke out in Iran, and actually even before then. So the US can't just back down here. But Iran likewise can't allow the United States to make a mockery of their blockade, because if that is the case, then their regime, rather, has really been seriously weakened. And their regime is durable. Their regime is very, very impressive. They've weathered the storm thus far, so they have to keep showing strength. So what very likely would happen if the United States does, in fact, press through and blow past the Iranian blockade? Even that is far from certain. This is happening as we're speaking right now. If the United States does this, Iran probably has to fire on them. If Iran does fire on the US Ships, then the war has broken out again. But even this could have a political benefit for the White House because the United States is engaged in the war in Iran, not according to a formal declaration of war by Congress, but according to the War Powers act, the War Powers act, which says that the US the President, gets 60 days to conduct a war on his own before needing to go to Congress. Now, President Trump can say, and has said, that the war lasted six weeks, and then we got a ceasefire. So if you have the ceasefire for two weeks, that resets the War Powers act, and I get another 60 days to go finish this problem. Now, the Democrats are gonna complain and say that's unconstitutional, that's contrary to the law. But they're totally full of it, too, because the Democrats, when they've used the War Powers act, don't even pretend to try to stop that. When Barack Obama used the War Powers act in Libya. It went on for seven months, blew way past the statutory limits. When Joe Biden was using the War Powers act to go after the Houthis in Yemen, it went on for almost a year, blew way past the statute. So Trump here, once again, ironically, is upholding constitutional norms much more than the Democrats are. But I would not read this as any end in sight to this conflict right now. It's just in this stalemate. And the question that we all have to keep asking is, well, what's the end goal here? Is the end goal regime change, then? I don't probably. There's not a reasonable probability of that success. So probably the war would not be justified on that account. Is the end goal eliminating Iran's nuclear program or setting it back 10 years? Okay, maybe you could achieve that. Is the goal. What? What is the goal? That's the question. But right now you're in a sort of Thucydidean conflict. You're in this problem where the forces that are pushing toward this war, obviously people have focused on the state of Israel having a lot of interest in this war or alternately Saudi Arabia having an interest in this war. Some of the other Gulf states, the United States trying to push back China. There are a lot of factors, but I guess that underscores my point. Structurally, the conflict can't go anywhere anytime soon. We're not gonna stay in the ceasefire forever. So we might get round two. We'll see. And maybe round two will also be four to six weeks. We don't know. Nobody knows. Including the upper levels of the American and Iranian government. We don't even know what the Iranian government is. Okay, there's a lot more to say. It's Music Monday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code NOCLESANAWLES at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
- [51:06]
News Reporter
Hablas espanol spries du dzoich com de nosq.
- [51:09]
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