← The Michael Knowles Show
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every home this episode is brought to you by good ranchers delivering 100% American beef, chicken, pork and seafood straight to your door from local farms and ranches. This summer, support the American Ranchers keeping agriculture alive by going to goodranchers.com using code knowles knes at checkout. You will get free meat with every order and $50 off your first order when you start a plan. Goodranchers.com, american meat delivered. The author of the most liberal feminist translation of the Odyssey ever weighs in on Christopher Nolan's film, which was apparently too liberal and feminist even for her. Then speaking of interminable wars in West Asia, a new front opens up in the Iran war as Iran backed proxies fire on Saudi tankers in the Red Sea and a clear front runner emerges in the 2028 Democrat presidential nomination. In that big race coming up and the polls are absolutely horrifying. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. One of the leading Democrat influencers, pundits, a real prominent thought leader, Hasan Piker and has just debuted a new image on his set. It is a headline, a newspaper headline right after 9 11. So this is Hasan Piker doubling down on his previous statement that America deserved 9 11. This is the guy that Democrats turn to, guys like Mamdani AOC when they want to campaign, when they want support from the young and activist left, this is one of their leaders. So we'll get to that momentarily. Before I get to any of that though, I wanna turn to a rising star on the American right in Congress. That would be our pal Brandon Gill. They're calling him Brandon Grill for what he's doing to these poor unsuspecting liberals when they come up to testify on Capitol Hill. Before I bring Brandon on, I gotta give the latest hit. This is Brandon absolutely obliterating the head of the American Bar Association. This clip going viral just yesterday.
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C
According to the ABA's website, quote, all of us have implicit biases Would you agree with that statement?
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D
The ABA believes that diversity, equity and inclusion improves the.
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C
Would you agree with the statement that, quote, all of us have implicit biases from the ABA's website?
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D
The ABA believes that diversity in all of us.
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C
Is that a yes? Can I take that? It's a yes or no question. Do you believe that all of us have implicit biases as your website says?
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D
The ABA looks to remove barriers and we examine.
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C
That's not my question, ma'.
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A
Am.
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C
Do you believe that all of us have implicit biases?
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D
I've expressed, I've expressed what the ada is doing.
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C
That is, that is the ABA's position as expressed by their, their website. Against which groups do you have implicit biases?
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D
The ABA believes that it's important to always.
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C
Are you going to filibuster? Because it doesn't make you sound very good? I'm going to ask you again. Which, against which groups do you have implicit biases?
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D
It's important to always examine everyone's point of view and where they may need to consider it is.
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C
What about your point of view?
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D
I am here as the president of the American Bar association and I'm asking
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C
you what your implicit biases are.
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D
The ABA is an entity.
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C
Have you reflected on your implicit biases?
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D
I think about how I. What are they world Constantly.
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C
Would you like to explain to us what they are?
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D
I am here speaking on behalf of the ABA and the aba.
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B
Congressman Gill, did you have heartburn yesterday after you devoured the head of the ABA for lunch?
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C
It's amazing because this is somebody who's president of the American Bar association who's been promoting all this kind of left wing nonsense for a long time. And I mean they really ideologically connected to this stuff and she can't even answer a simple question. I mean all of this DEI nonsense just completely crumbles under even the slightest scrutiny. If you're going to say outright that everybody has implicit biases, I think you ought to be able to elaborate in some way on that. But they can't. And that's the result.
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B
This is what I love about your approach is a lot of guys on the right elected people, people in the media intellect. They'll come in real hot and they'll just, they'll start, you know, I don't know, they'll get on their soapbox and just start inveighing against the leftist who's being questioned. You're not doing that. You're asking very simple, I think objective, very moderately stated questions. Just asking them to elaborate on the Beliefs that they have offered, they volunteered these beliefs. They never do. I mean, this is just the latest example. But you've been doing this for months now. And why can't they answer?
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C
Well, I think that the left has, and for the past decade or several decades they've built up so much institutional power, it's sort of the culmination of the long march through the institutions where the left has really never had the answer for anything for this kind of nonsense that they spout because they've had the ability to just coerce people into believing things that are nonsensical. You know, if you're, everybody can relate to. If you're in college or you're at work and your head of HR comes up to you, or the college diversity group comes up to you and makes you sit through some diversity seminar and they tell you, why don't you sit down and reflect on your own inherent racism or your own implicit biases? Because everybody is racist. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that they put us through and we've never been able to sort of make them answer for it, make them actually kind of explain what they mean by this. Because the obvious follow up is if everybody is inherently racist or inherently biased, you know, why doesn't the left tell us who they're racist against or who they're biased against? But I think that the problem is again that the left has had so much institutional power that is now finally starting to erode as sort of Peak Woke has is behind us, that they've never actually had to elucidate any of this. They could just say things and coerce people into believing it. And if you pushed back even in the slightest degree, they would label you as racist or kick you out of college or fire you from your job. And now that that sort of pendulum has swung the other way, it's time for us to hold them to the standards that they set.
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B
Yeah, it doesn't take the intellect of Socrates to see how the syllogism's going. If the, if the major premise is everybody is racist, every person is racist, and then the minor premise is I, the head of the aba, am a person. The inescapable conclusion is I am racist or I have these biases. So what are they? They don't wanna answer them. And I wonder, it pertains to what you just said about Peak Woke. We all feel like Peak Woke is behind us. Maybe that was 2022, 2023. The American people really reacted against it. This is why an issue like transing to kids. We was so prominent in the 2024 election. It's not that it's the most widespread problem in America. It's just so insane. It's so extreme. The left uniformly embraced it that it really sheds doubt on their judgment about anything. So they wanna run away, they wanna filibuster. This woman doesn't have the integrity. None of these guys that you're grilling have the integrity to say, yeah, I did say that. I did volunteer that and I stand by that. Likewise, they don't have the reflection to say, you know what? Peak Woke was crazy. I reject that. We don't wanna trans the kids. We don't think everybody's racist. We don't whatever. So they're just obfuscating now. And I wonder if what that implies is, yeah, peak Woke at the moment has really declined. It's true, we're in a different spot publicly, but the left hasn't actually given it up. So now they've lost some of their institutional power. The Republicans have unified government. If the midterms go the Democrats way, if 2028 goes the Democrats way, are we gonna be right back to where we were in 2023?
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C
100%. I mean, it is. I think we like to say that WOKE is dead. And I do think that we're behind Peak woke because the left has a little bit less institutional power. But woke is not dead. It's just dormant. And you can see it at the aba. You can see it at the Smithsonian Institution. We had a hearing earlier this week about leftism and how it's really infected almost all of the American Museum of American History, Smithsonian Museum of American History. As soon as they get power back, whether it's in Congress or definitely in the presidency, you're going to see a resurgence of this. You're going to see a resurgence of DEI across the entire country and businesses who want to follow the lead of the president. You're going to see it in universities who believe, who, if there's a Democrat president in office or a Democratic Congress, believe that they're going to have a lot more leeway to discriminate against people on the basis of race. Our job right now should be one, to make sure that they don't get that institutional power back, that Republicans continue to win elections, but two, to make sure that we can hammer home as aggressively and thoroughly as possible to the broad American public how evil these ideologies are. I mean, what you saw yesterday, I mean, remember, this is somebody who's the president of the American Bar Association. I've never been to law school. This is somebody who's been practicing law for longer than I've been alive. She ought to have been able to answer very basic questions about her own organization's ideology. And either she is too intellectually vapid or the ideology is completely indefensible. And it's probably a mixture of both, I think, but she was completely unable to do that. We've got to keep pressing on these people and we've got to show how absolutely indefensible this stuff is. So that down the road, if we do ever get into a position where Democrats have a bit more institutional power, it's much more difficult for them to push this stuff on the American people.
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B
Yeah. This was not a gotcha question. It's not like you said, hey, head of the aba, do you still beat your wife or husband or whatever? In this case, you just read from their website. So this is as fair a question as it could be. And yes, they wanna obfuscate on it. You bring up 2028. There's a new poll out that shows a clear leader in 2028 for the Democrats and it happens to be one of your colleagues in the House of Representatives. I wanna get your opinion on that real quick. First though, I wanna tell you about good ranchers. Go to good ranchers.com, use code knowles K A W L E S July is national grilling month. In the summer, no one wants an elaborate meal. No one wants two hours in the kitchen. If your sweet little Elisa be like six hours in the kitchen, everybody wants to throw something on the grill, sit outside, pretend they aren't checking the news every five minutes. Well, when my wife, sweet little Elisa is grilling, it's always good ranchers. I'll confess to it. I don't do the grilling in the house. Sweet little Elisa does the grilling. She's better at it than I am. She's better at it at many things than I am. And when we grill, it's good ranchers, it is so delicious. 100% American meat directly from American farms and ranches to your door. No wondering where your food came from. No weird injections. No mystery meat. High quality beef, chicken, pork and seafood that is ready whenever you are. Look, I love that it's a great company. I love the people who run the company. I love that it supports American ranchers and everything. I love that the prices can't be beat. What I mostly care about is the quality. What I mostly care about is the taste. It's the best meat you're gonna get. This July, Good Ranchers is celebrating all 50 states. With 50 bucks off your first order, go to good ranchers.com, use code KNOWLES, Ken Wlas. Check out 50 bucks off anything on their site, code KNOWLES for 50 bucks off. Also, you can get free meat for life with every order on top of the $50 off. If you decide to start a plan today, this summer is one to savor. Goodranchers.com, american meat delivered. Okay, Brandon, before I let you go, there's this poll out from University of New Hampshire, and it backs up something that I first heard from the vice president. Vice President Vance was on this show a few weeks ago. I said, hey, before I let you go, who do you think the leader is for the Dems? I thought he was gonna say Gavin Newsom or something like that. He said, michael, there's no question it's aoc. And had I been drinking a glass of water, I would have done a spit take. I said, what? You really think it's aoc? He said, yeah, there's no question, and made headlines. People didn't know if he was being a little provocative or something. Well, look, the University of New Hampshire poll right now says that AOC is leading the pack with 22% support. AOC's got it. Our sponsor Kalshi says that 44%. Right now, the prediction marks are saying 44% chance. AOC announces a presidential run before October 1st, 2027. Behind AOC is Pete Buttigieg. He is relatively. He's actually pretty close to AOC. Then you get to about, what, 10% support or less for Gavin Newsom, Mark Kelly, Bernie Sanders. So aoc, she's only a little ahead of Buttigieg. She's way ahead of guys like Newsom, Kelly Sanders, Kamala Harris. She's got 5% support. We'll get to the GOP side a little bit later. 1. Do you agree with the VP? Do you agree with the University of New Hampshire? Is AOC the leading Democrat in 2028?
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C
Of course she is. I mean, she's the one who is driving the Democrat messaging narrative. She's the one who is driving the Democrat Party's ideological shift to the left. Remember, I mean, it wasn't that long ago whenever AOC first came onto the political scene. I think she was elected in 2018, if I can remember. Right. She was the face of the radical left at the time. She was the sign, you know, the Institutional Democrats were trying to keep her out as much as Possible, because she was even whether she said it or not or admitted it or not, she was the socialist leader in the party. And now you can see that her views are pretty mainstream amongst elected Democrats. You know, we talk a lot about the Democratic Socialists of America. What it really is is just sort of the culmination of political leftism. But she's been the head of it for quite some time now, and I think the Democrat Party realizes that. We'll see how much the donor class on the Democrat side embraces her, whether they embrace her. But she is the leader of the party. Without a doubt, she is.
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B
I mean, there's no question we were talking, and we'll get to it a little bit later in the show. But in terms of the thought leaders of the left, the journalists, the pundits, the intellectuals, you know, I'm using that word a little liberally here, but it's no longer the guys writing in the Washington Post. It's no longer the stuffy guys who go on the network news. It's Hasan Piker. And Hasan Piker just put up a sign behind him on his set celebrating 9 11, which is just reiterating claims that he's made for a long time that America deserves 9 11. You look at the leading politicians, it's no longer even Chuck Schumer. It's no longer Nancy Pelosi. It's aoc. Very, very scary. Hate that very much. Last question before I let you go. What do you think the Republicans need to focus on right now? They're big vulnerabilities. The polls are looking shockingly good for the Republicans in the midterms right now. There was, I think it was an Ipsos poll came out a few days ago, showed Republicans basically running dead even, with Democrats in some cases even a little ahead of them in the midterms. That's insane. Historically speaking, Republicans should get blown out of the water in the midterms. The leader, Mike Johnson. Sorry, the speaker, Mike Johnson, said to me during an interview a while ago, he said, I think we're gonna keep our majority. We might even grow the majority in the midterms. I said, whatever you're drinking, whatever you're smoking, give me a little bit of that, too, please. It sounds great. The polls now are proving him correct. Big vulnerabilities, though. A new front was just opened in the Iran war. The Iran war has obviously dragged on for a very long time. There's still some economic shakiness. They're good indicators, but it's a mixed bag. So what do the Republicans need to focus on from now through the midterms and afterward.
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C
Well, first of all, I do think that we've got a real chance to defy history and keep control of the House. And if we do, it will be an historic victory for Republicans and will allow us to do a lot of really good things and continue the great work we've done this Congress for another two years. I think that we've got to exploit the socialist shift on the Democrat side. And there's two ways that we can do that. One is we can point at the Democrats and we can say these people are communist and communism is evil. And communism has created more misery than any ideology ever in American history and in world history. And we can show all the examples and say we don't want that here. All of that is true and we should make that case. But I think we also have to make the case to the American people that the Democrat Party today, which is totally different than the Democrat party of 30 years ago, the Blue dog Democrat Party to your point, is dead. We've got to make the case that is the Democrat Party that is selling away Americans birthright. They're the ones who are flooding our country with illegal aliens, who are flooding our hospital system, flooding our schools, that are making our social system destroying the economic viability of our social system, that are making our streets less safe. Those are the Democrat Party of today is the one that is spending more money than we're taking in and driving up inflation for working class people. They are the ones who are throwing away the America that we all know and love in order to create what they believe is sort of a left wing utopia. In other words, they are throwing away our children's birthright. That's the case that I think we need to make to the American people, especially to younger Americans who are living in a country where it is difficult to buy a home, where inflation is still harming. Even though it's come down quite a bit, it still does make it a pretty difficult economic situation. I think that we continue to win on immigration and we can continue to win on economic issues as well.
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B
I think you're right about that. AOC in particular, Mamdani also, they're trying to shift back. They say wokeness is unpopular. No, no, we're just working class. We're working class heroes. To your point, the Blue Dogs are done and the people still exist, but it's shifted to the Republican Party. The party of labor is the Republican Party right now. Not just in rhetoric, but in really hardcore ways. If you're flooding the country with cheap foreign labor like the Democrats doing, you are not for American labor. You are not for the American working class. If you're spending all your time focusing on pushing weird sex ideologies on kids, you are not focused on the American working class. You're just not. And so that was reflected in 2024. Frankly, you saw an early stage of it in 2016, but it's been 10 years now that shift has happened. And if you were an ordinary common sense working class Democrat back in 2015, 2016, you're not a Democrat anymore. It's just a fact. I agree. That's a very tangible argument. Congressman Grill. Congressman grill him to death on Capitol Hill. I have to let you get back to your very important work, but thank you. Always good to see you and thanks for coming on.
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C
Thanks for having me.
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B
All right, now, on this point, I wanna get to the Odyssey in a moment, but I do wanna finish up on this presidential point because while we have a clear front runner in the Democrat Party, I know there's a lot of consternation on the right. Who is the Republican going to be? It's mostly among the chattering class. Well, we have the numbers here from the University of New Hampshire. We'll get to that momentarily. First, I want to tell you about Armra. Go to armra.comknowles k w l E S There is a strange tendency in modern life to assume that feeling tired, sluggish, bloated or rundown is just part of getting older. Maybe it is. Or maybe we've simply gotten used to living in an environment that's constantly working against us. Processed food, stress travel, artificial light, bad sleep. It all adds up. Okay, so let me tell you about Armor of Colostrum. Armor of Colostrum is a bioactive whole food packed with more than 400 bioactive nutrients that help fortify gut health, support fitness recovery and strengthen immune health. It's not about chasing the latest wellness trend. It's about giving your body better inputs. One thing I love about Amra, it's super easy to work into a routine. You don't need to be a total health nut to do it. I have been colostrum pilled by sweet little elisa and by Mr. Davies. Okay? And one is the pinnacle of insight when it comes to health and wellness. And the other one is, I gotta admit, kind of a giga jet. We will work at a special offer for our audience. You will get 30% off your first subscription. Order armor.comknowles Enter code knowles get 30% off your first subscription. Order a RMRA.com knowles that same UNH poll that puts AOC at the top of the heap for Dems. They are looking at the Republican side right now. Not surprising to me, probably not surprising to most of you, but maybe surprising to some political activists or people on Twitter or something. The vice president, J.D. vance, is leading the pack. He's got 36% support. He's followed by Rubio, but Rubio's 10 points down. Rubio's at 26% support. Then all of the other GOP candidates had less than 10%. So that was led by Rand Paul, who was on the show just a few days ago, who I pointed out. He's got a real lane. He's got that libertarian lane, but Rand Paul's got 8%. The rest of the pack has less than that. So it's pretty clear there's not. There's a long wait till 2028. But it is clear that the vice President is the heir apparent. That was implicit when the President picked him for his non consecutive second term to be his running mate. Rubio, no surprise there, is the number two candidate, but he is substantially lower in terms of support, even as Rubio has dominated all the headlines. It's no knock on Rubio. He's doing a great job. It's just that's the way it's set up. This is how administrations and elections work. And Rubio, for his part, has already endorsed the Vice President. So I think people are trying to put those two guys at odds. They're really not at odds from what I can tell from the outside, at a personal level and at a political level, they're really not at odds. So you've got a very stable GOP primary field right now, and for the Dems, it's closer. But the two leading candidates, AOC and Pete Buttigieg, aoc, who is openly the face of radicalism, and Pete Buttigieg, who is the kind of nicer, softer, quieter face of extreme radical ideologies, as we saw when he ran and as we see just in his own life. Okay, now, before we get to more hot political issues, before we get to the Iran war, I wanna get to a much older war that is the Trojan War, because everyone's still chattering about Christopher Nolan's new Odyssey film. Ben Shapiro, my friend and colleague, Ben calls it a masterpiece. Matt Walsh, my other friend and colleague over here at dw, he says it's like the worst movie ever made and irredeemably woke and just totally sucks My own opinion is somewhere in the middle of those guys combines a little. I don't think it's a masterpiece. It's not a masterpiece. It's like a pretty good movie. But I don't think it's the worst movie ever. But you don't need to just take our words for it. We now have the translator, the liberal feminist translator of the Odyssey, Emily Wilson. She has rendered the most liberal feminist translation of the Odyssey ever. Kind of famously or infamously. That was one of the real source texts for Christopher Nolan's film. She sees the movie and she concluded that the movie is too liberal and feminist even for her.
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E
I mean, the film has these flashbacks to the Trojan War. I'm not sure if I see it as an entirely anti war film, but it certainly presents us with an Odysseus who feels very bad about certain things that he's done in war and is struggling to process them in a very, I would say, very modern, psychiatrized way. He seems to feel bad about being a warrior. And we never actually get to see him doing much warioing. Which I thought in a way was a bit of a shame. I mean, we do get to see the boat, which is lovely. But I think in some ways, I mean, I was realizing having thinking about the film, there's a tolerance for ambiguity in the world of the Odyssey, which I don't think there exactly is in the world of Hollywood blockbuster. He wants glory and he wants to get spoils from the sack of a city, which is. You'll see what Nolan does with all of that, but it's different things from what Homer does. I kept looking in vain for a sense that this was a film about glory. I think it's a film that has some interest in shame, but I don't think it has any interest in glory.
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B
I didn't expect to say this, but I totally agree with the translator's critique. There are lots of good. Look, I think the movie was pretty good. I would go see it again. I kind of wish I'd seen it in imax. But the biggest critique. There's a lot of good stuff to say about it. The fact that people are buying the Odyssey now. It's one of the top books on Amazon. And the Fagels translation's very good. The Lattimore translation's very good. There are a lot of very good translations. Who knows, maybe you can read Emily Wilson's from what. I haven't read the whole translation. From what I've read of it, I don't like it as much. But nevertheless, she's spot on here because the chief critique of the Odyssey, the best critique of the Odyssey, is not the wokeness or the casting. It's that it's not the Odyssey. It's a Christopher Nolan film, but it's not the Odyssey. It has more in common with Oppenheimer than it does with Homer's poem the Odyssey. And you see this expressed because Odysseus doesn't really seem to want glory. He doesn't really seem to love being a warrior. He doesn't want the same things. He doesn't have the same motivations that he does in the poem. And so why is that? Well, something that I really got a kick out of or really clued me in to, what Nolan is doing in the Odyssey is that he is reading the Odyssey through Western Latin and later, even medieval Christian readings of the Odyssey. That's a part that Ben gets right in his review, is that it is the Odyssey seen through a Christian lens. The inclusion of the character Sinon, who kind of takes the place of Achilles in the Hades scene, Sinon, played by the trans identifying Lady Ellen Page. The fact that Nolan includes Sinon means that he's reading the poem or the story through Virgil and through Dante, because Sinon doesn't appear in Homer's Odyssey, but Sinon is a character that comes out of Virgil's Aeneid. And actually probably the version of the Odyssey of Odysseus character that Nolan is most clearly reading is through one of my main guys, Dante. Because in Dante's Divine Comedy in the Inferno, he puts Odysseus and Sinon in hell. And he actually puts them in the lowest circles of hell in the realm the Malebolgia, in the bulges, where the fraudsters are the counselors of fraud. Because this is who Odysseus is. He's this genius rhetorician. A buddy of mine just pointed out he's sort of like ancient James Bond. You know, he. He'll be tough when he has to, he'll shoot and punch when he has to, but he really uses his words, he uses his charm, he uses his deceit and cunning in order to get out of scrapes. And so Ben's point is, right, that Nolan is reading the Odyssey through a Christian lens. It's so on the nose. I mean, he talks about the golden rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated. The real culmination of that movie is when Odysseus is confessing his sins to another person through a screen. It's like an actual Catholic confession scene. There's a. But the issue is, when Dante reads Odysseus through a Christian lens, it means that he's got to put Odysseus in hell, because Odysseus is a fraudster, Odysseus is a liar. And Odysseus has so much ambition, so much desire for glory, and so much pride and so much curiosity that he transgresses God's limits. And he ends up. Nolan uses this in the movie. Odysseus finally makes it back to Ithaca, but then he leaves again very shortly thereafter. And so you see this in Dante. He gets back to Ithaca. He doesn't stay there very long. He goes after. Because he's got to transgress the limits. And he goes too far and he winds himself up in hell. The problem for Nolan, though, is Nolan wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Nolan wants both worlds. He wants Odysseus to be the hero, the good guy. He wants to combine all of those elements from Homer, but he wants to read it through the Christian lens, like Dante. But he doesn't want to put Odysseus in hell. And so what you wind up with is not exactly a Christian morality. You wind up with this kind of liberal Boomer morality. You wind up with this liberal Boomer morality that Emily Wilson, the translator, is getting at here, where you don't. It's unclear what he wants in other parts of that interview. She says, he kind of wants to be like. Does he just want to be like a suburban dad? That's not in the poem. But does he really want to go home? That's unclear in Nolan's movie, too. When he's with the sirens, he says, I realized I don't want to go home. But he does want to go home. He does take off at the end, but he doesn't go off on a quest for curiosity and glory. He goes off in the end to basically just go on a vacation with his wife. So you end up with this confused Boomer morality where at the end of it, your protagonist just feels kind of bad and then cheers up when he takes his wife on a cruise. I mean, it is a movie for our times. I'm not even knocking the movie as a movie. I thought it was pretty good. I enjoy it. I'm glad it's sparking curiosity in the Odyssey, but it really does highlight the incoherence, the confusion of the lib Boomer morality, which comes out of Christianity, but which doesn't have the boldness or the clarity or the courage of Christianity. And so you just end up with bleh and that way. Nolan's a really great filmmaker. Cause he really is. Not only is he making a modern American adaptation of the Odyssey, it's a kind of indictment of modern liberal America. Okay, now, now, speaking of all sorts of wars and things like that, I do want to get to the modern war that we have in West Asia, which is a huge development in the Iran war, which I don't see a ton of people covering. But a new front was just opened up in the Iran war, just as we were hoping that the Iran war would, I don't know, wrap up. We were hoping that MOU might lead to a peace deal, or at the very least, we were hoping that some major military strike would just wrap the whole thing up. It's not. It's actually expanding now beyond the flash point of the Strait of Hormuz into another strait. It's now expanding into the Strait of Bab El Mandeb, which is in the Red Sea. So you've got the oil that's getting choked off in the Strait of Hormuz. One of the alternative routes is through the Bab El Mandeb Strait. Well, Iranian backed Houthis are now firing on Saudi vessels in that strait. This is according to reporting from the Telegraph. The sources told the Telegraph last week that the Houthis were trying to shut down the strait, which is this choke point between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. On behalf of Iran, all of this saying, how long did the Trojan War last? Trojan war lasted about 10 years. And it begins, as we keep quoting Machiavelli. It begins at the will of one man. But wars don't end at the will of any particular man. There really does not appear to be any end in sight for this. There's no clear path. The people who are pushing for diplomacy are coming up short because the Iranians don't want diplomacy because they feel like they still have a ton of leverage over us and the people who were attacking the MOU and trying to pretend that this war could be wrapped up easily with a few more bombs. I don't see any evidence of that either. This is why I was very skeptical of the war before and at the launch of the war, and remains so now. It's a brutal position that the administration is in, but it is the chief vulnerability I think, right now for the Republicans in the midterms, all the way up to President Trump's legacy. In the short run, what it means is we need to minimize the importance we need to try to keep the oil markets got a little spiked with this issue in the Red Sea. I think oil right now, oil's about $91 as of this morning. But this could really jump up. This could be a big issue we have between now and the midterms. Republicans are looking good right now, but I don't know that that could hold. Iran does, in fact have some leverage here. America's enemies abroad, Russia, China, other people who are involved, they do have a lot of leverage here. And so I think the best thing the administration can hope for from the standpoint of American grand strategy and the elections, which are inseparable, is just to keep the issue itself at bay. But anyone who's hoping for a quick resolution to the conflict, I got a bridge in the Strait of Hormuz to sell you. Okay? Now, speaking of Islamic terror, the thought leader of the left, one of the most prominent. It's hard to call him an intellectual, but he's a guy who's shaping left wing thought, who's campaigning for Democrat candidates, who's shaping their rhetoric. And he's one of the biggest broadcasters, Hasan Piker. He is now doubling down on his support of 9 11, his belief that America deserves 9 11. We'll get to that momentarily. First, though, the producer's favorite comment yesterday. I didn't pick this one. We'll see if they did a good job. This is from Stephen. I don't even know. Did he comment on YouTube? Did he comment on Spotify? Maybe you need to leave your comments on both. He said, my wife and I saw the Odyssey over the weekend and when Odysseus talked to Sinon in Hades, she said she must really be a woman. She keeps bringing up the past. Yeah, that would be one. The Sinon scene in Hades, he's really taking the place of Achilles when Achilles is is talking to Odysseus in Hades and Odysseus is trying to console him about his death. And Achilles says, don't console. There's no consolation in death. Death just kind of sucks. A really important observation of the ancient Greek cosmos. Different obviously in the Christian understanding. But there that would be a big break because Achilles is all a man. And Sinon in Christopher Nolan's movie, you're definitely a woman. That's good evidence of that. Okay, we'll get to Hasan Piker. First, though, I want to remind you to join Georgia Howe and John Bickley's debate over the Odyssey, which is going to be available very shortly on behind the Wire.
- [35:44]
C
Hopefully it's good. Two hours later. Let's just say my enthusiasm has waned. I don't like being the negative one. I've got a lot of comments on Christopher Nolan being the screenwriter. I think you should not have written this.
- [36:02]
B
I loved it.
- [36:03]
E
I loved it.
- [36:03]
C
I loved it. I'm actually very surprised how I feel about this movie. We'll talk about it soon.
- [36:20]
B
Why am I promoting Ben Davies's show on this show? What are we doing? I hope he's buying ad space. Okay, go check it out. Right now, behind the wire we have behind the Odyssey back to Hasan Piker. The intellectual, as it were, thought leader of the left is now doubling down on his support of 9 11.
- [36:42]
F
Also, you might have noticed something. Some changes behind me. I finally framed the Cutie Cinderella newspaper from 911 the morning of 9 12. The newspaper right there, the newspaper that covered 9 11. It's now officially sitting behind me. And I moved the North Korean poster up in in place of the fan art. We're going to find a new place to put all the fan art, don't you worry. Ok? But in any case, ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls and Enby's, that's a PSA 10 by the way, that 911 poster or not, the 911 news article is a PSA 10.
- [37:33]
B
All right, so he's leaning in. Hasan Piker infamously said, America deserves 9 11. F it. I'll just say it. America deserves 9 11. He said he's moving the North Korea poster to his fan art. And then he really lets it slip when he says, yeah, I've got that 911 poster behind me. I guess it's not a poster, it's a newspaper headline. But he's viewing it like a poster. He's viewing it as something really great that he wants to celebrate, which he's already said before. This guy. I'm not overstating it when I said he's one of the thought leaders of the left. This is not just me taking a kind of cheap shot, trying to wishcast some radical into prominence in the Dems. They have done that themselves. Hassan Piker is a regular subject of and contributor to the New York Times, which is the most prestigious house organ of American liberalism. Hasan Piker has written twice for the New York Times. He's been profiled twice for the New York Times. He has been featured in an additional op ed by the New York Times regularly. They feature this guy in his own words or in an interview as someone who's really shaping left wing thought, more so maybe than anybody and the guy who's leading left wing discourse right now, who campaigns with guys like Mamdani and AOC and all the rest of them, says America deserved 9 11. He openly hates the country. You kind of gotta give him credit for honesty. Cuz I think a lot of the left hates the country, but they're subtle about it. When Barack Obama says I wanna fundamentally transform America, he's saying I hate the country, but he's being subtle about it. Hasan Piker's not being subtle. He says, I hate America. America deserves 9 11. We need to kill Republicans, including Republicans in the Senate. And by the way, did you hear me? I said America deserves 9 11. I just put a poster of 911 behind me. That's the left you're dealing with. And if AOC really is the Democrat nominee in 2028, she's currently leading, that will be the apotheosis of this ascent of explicitly anti American liberalism. The American left has always kind of been anti America. That's just how it goes. The left is always kind of anti your own country and anti the good, the true and the beautiful. But this is explicit. So this is a change. And no one is pushing back. The one pushback you would expect would be from the mainstream establishment Democrats who realize, even if they agree with him, they realize it's a bad look. They're not pushing back. The New York Times is featuring him. Okay, Speaking of unspeakable actions by the left, Governor Tim Walz, the man who was almost vice president of the United States, almost one heartbeat away from the presidency. Tim Walz is in hot water for pardoning a child rapist. Sorry, I should be more specific. Tim Walls, the man who Democrats picked to be their vice presidential nominee like five seconds ago, just pardoned an illegal alien child rapist in order to stop the Trump administration from deporting him. So who is this guy? This guy is Tu Lu Vong. He's a Laotian. He's ethnically from Laos. He was born in a refugee camp in Thailand. He made it to America and then he raped a child in really, I guess always would be really, really hideous. But the particulars of this case are especially extreme. It's a family show. I'm not gonna get into them. Suffice it to say, this is like the worst thing you can do. Just about. He did it to a 10 year old child. He then defended it when he was brought in by police. He said, oh no, it's just my culture. In my culture we rape children. So it's just my Culture. He didn't express remorse when he was brought in by police. This raises a question. If a culture condones child rape, probably we shouldn't bring people from that culture over here. Nevertheless, he was convicted and then released almost immediately. So this was all the way back in 2006. He got a slap on the wrist for raping a 10 year old. And then he's just been living his life here. Now the thing is, even if he had legal status when he first came to America, when you're convicted of a crime like this, you lose your legal status. So he could have been deported. Whenever the Dems didn't want to deport him, Trump has moved to deport him, which is why Tim Walls in Minnesota just pardoned him. It's not to get him out of jail. He's out of jail. He's out of prison. They pardoned him specifically because Tim Walls and the Democrats in Minnesota, probably nationally, actually, we know this nationally, cuz they're doing similar things around the country. They are willing to spend political capital to keep a child rapist from being deported. He should be deported. The law says he should be deported. He should have been deported long ago. They're willing to spend real political capital to do this, and they're being applauded for it by their own side. The Minnesota Star Tribune says the governor refused to back down from his vote to pardon a Hmong man convicted of felony sexual assault in 2006. It's significant that Tu Lu Vang needed only two of three votes for the State Board of Pardons, but he received unanimous support. The Liberal Board of Pardons in Minnesota gave him unanimous support. Of course he needs to stay. So this is not based on his behavior in prison, as parole can sometimes be. He's been out of prison for a long time. He was barely in prison. No, he got the unanimous support because the Democrats say we can't deport anyone. The Dems are gonna wanna say that they oppose the deportation of the nice abuela who's lived here for 30 years, who's never harmed a fly. They oppose the deportation of these people who were the dreamers, who were brought here as children, who are just, they just wanna be Americans and they don't wanna commit any crimes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The Democrats specifically oppose the deportation of the most heinous criminals in the country who have no right to be in the country. It's blanket. This is blanket open borders with special care given to the very worst of the criminals. Okay, speaking of criminals, I really want to get into the arrests of Andrew and Tristan Tate. Their lawyer has just come out and blamed their arrest on political deep state actors in the uk Even elected officials. He's trying to tie the arrest to the ousted Labour prime minister of the uk. I really want to get to that some claims of hypocrisy in the arrests of the Tates. I really want to get to important story which is relating to Gen Z going back to church and the church's support of conservative politicians like Trump. I want to get to all of it, but I don't have time. Today is Theology Thursday. We will talk about the church, but we will talk about the church with apologist Frank Turek. The show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member using code Knowles K N A W L E S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.