The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1303 - Elon Protects Conservatives & Megan Rapinoe Kills USA Soccer

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Elon Musk offers to pay legal bills for people who get canceled over tweets, Al Sharpton accidentally shreds the January Sixth narrative on MSNBC, and conservatives cheer on the loss of the insufferable U.S. Women’s Soccer Team.   Ep.1303    - - -     Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEl   - - -    DailyWire+:   Become a DailyWire+ member to gain access to movies, shows, documentaries, and more: https://bit.ly/3jJQBQ7   Get 20% Off Select Jeremy’s Items: https://bit.ly/3ObQOqg   Get your Yes or No game here: https://bit.ly/3X6tlKY    - - -    Today’s Sponsors:   Birch Gold - Text "KNOWLES" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation, FREE information kit: https://birchgold.com/knowles   PragerU - Join Club5 at PragerU.com/Club5     - - -   Socials:   Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3RwKpq6   Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3BqZLXA   Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eEmwyg   Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3L273Ek Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elon Musk is once again putting his money where our mouths are. Elon has just announced that for the first time in the history of big tech, quote, if you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill. No limit. Please let us know. The tweet or Zit or ex post or whatever I don't, whatever they're calling it now, it doesn't matter, came in response to reports. that a NASCAR driver was suspended by his league for liking a meme that referenced George Floyd. We'll get to that story in just a moment. Elon's offer is welcome regardless of this particular story that caused it because Elon is proving a hugely important point about free speech that the right has largely

missed. The right misunderstands a lot about free speech. For at least a couple decades now, the right has defended free speech in the abstract without getting into the nitty-grity of substance. What exactly it is that we want to say? We pretended to be neutral, and this was always foolish because all societies have standards, and free speech in the abstract means nothing to people who have nothing to say. But Elon here is proving another important point, which is that free speech in the abstract, any kind of speech standard, really, means nothing to people who have no power to enforce it. So we bleat on and on about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the free marketplace of ideas. And then the left censors us. And then we whines some more. And then what happens? The left

censors us some more because the Libs have the power to do it. This is why Elon is so great and revolutionary for the right. He doesn't just pull out his pocket constitution and explain how, you know what Google is doing is actually very wrong, because if you look here in paragraph three, Elon puts up $44 billion, and a lot more to come, it would seem, to make sure that conservatives, at least, have a shot at saying the true, normal things that we want to say, both in principle and in practice without losing our livelihoods for it. I'm Michael Knowles. It's the Michael Nulls show. Welcome back to this show. Megan Rapino, who is the soccer lady. She doomed her team, the U.S. Women's Soccer Team, to lose the big game for the big thing. I don't know. I've

never watched a soccer game in my life. And all red-blooded American Patriots are cheering the loss of the U.S. women's team. So we'll get to why that is in just a second. Because it's a little odd, isn't it? Patriots cheering the loss of the U.S. team? It's a paradox, but it does make sense. We'll get into it in a second. First, I want to turn to another sport, NASCAR, where a guy got canceled for liking a meme. This guy, it's Noah Graggson. He was suspended from the league by the Legacy Motor Club and NASCAR because he appeared to like a meme that made a little bit of a joke about George Floyd. So he's out and he's already owned up to it. He's posted his public apology for the Stalin show trial to beg forgiveness. I'm disappointed in myself,

he says, for my lack of attention and actions on social media. I understand. I understand. the severity of this situation. I love and appreciate everyone. I try to treat everyone equally, no matter who they are. I messed up plain and simple, please don't kill me. It's like, it's like a North Korean prisoner begging, begging for clemency. It's very, very sad. And it shows you an important distinction that a lot of the squishy conservatives haven't gotten. It's the distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. This word, authoritarian, which I think should probably be crossed out of the English language because the way it's used in America doesn't mean anything anymore. But the word authoritarian, I guess it would refer to a government like,

I don't know, Franco's Spain, I guess, would be authoritarian. Today, the Libs say that Hungary, Orban's Hungary is authoritarian, which I was just over there, it's not. It's absolutely preposterous to call that place authoritarian. It is illiberal, though. So, okay, what does it mean? What are the Libs meaning when they say it's authoritarian? They mean that the government has clear standards, clear limits in certain well-defined areas of law and society. So let's say, hey, no pride parades, no weird curricula in the schools, no degenerate behavior on the streets. But what you want to do in your private life, we're not going to pay much attention to. That's what they say.

They say, look, our government, our society, it's not going to be a liberal society, it's not going to be a progressive society, it's going to be a Christian society. Christianity is going to animate our public life. But the government will say this openly. They'll say, we're not talking about people's individual faith. You can pursue your individual faith as you see fit. We're not going to send in the purity police into your bedroom and into your living room to enforce your religious behaviors. We're just saying as a political matter, the Christian view, the Christian morality, that's what's going to define our culture. Same thing John Adams said at the founding of America. Totalitarian is different. Totalitarian does not have very highly defined narrow limits in which the government is saying, okay, this is going to be our standard. In totalitarian societies, it's everything. It's everything. Such that if you sitting on your couch accidentally linger too long, on a meme, on your private little app, on your phone, and maybe you laugh a little too hard at it, you're going to be canceled. You're going to lose your livelihood. Maybe you'll be prosecuted. You'll be ostracized. You're out. Big, big difference. And the irony of it is that in our liberal

Western societies, all the big lib societies of Europe and the United States, we're told this is freedom. Oh, we live in free. You can do whatever you want. We're not like those authoritarian societies out there in Eastern Europe, the authoritarian societies even further east. No, no, sir, we're liberal. People are much freer in supposedly authoritarian regimes than they are in the liberal West very often, because the liberal West, ironically, is totalitarian. Now, when you want to preserve a little something for yourself, especially as the political order gets crazy, you got to check out Birch Gold. Right now, Tex-Noles to 98-98-98. We are now, Days away from the Durban Accords, Durban Accords could be the greatest threat to the U.S.

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Birch gold has an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, thousands of happy customers. Text Noles to 98-98-98-98. Get your free info kit on gold. It'll be nice to have some gold to depend upon again as things collapse. Text NOLES, KNAWLAS to 98-98-98. Speaking of debate in the free marketplace of ideas, Governor Gavin Newsom over there in California, Gamora by the Sea has challenged Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to a debate. And Ron DeSantis accepts the challenge. You heard Gavin make the offer. Your answer is?

Absolutely. I'm game. Let's get it done. Just tell me when and where. We'll do it. And here's the thing, Sean. I mean, in one respect, the debate between California and Florida, you know, has already been had, as you suggest, people have been voting on that. they've been voting on it with their feet. They have fled California on record numbers. Florida has been the number one state for net in migration. We have the number one ranked economy, number one now in education, crime rate at a 50 year low. But in another sense, this is the debate for the future of our country. Because you have people like Joe Biden, they would love to see the Californication of the United States. Biden may not even be the nominee. You could have Gavin Newsome. You could have Kamala Harris. And I think if we go down that direction, that's going to accelerate American decline.

We can't see America decline anymore. We need to reverse American decline. There we go. Here's the pitch, and it's going to be a good debate. And he's right. DeSantis is totally right. The debate between Florida and California has already been had, and the way you can tell who won the debate is which way the U-Hauls are moving. The U-Hauls are leaving California. They're going to Florida. Okay. So this is a great idea. I think it would be. instructive to a lot of people to see the difference between good government and bad government, smart policies, bad policies, great. The downside of this for DeSantis is it suggests that he is not focusing on beating Trump for the nomination. Because if he were focused on beating Trump for the

nomination, he would just be debating Trump all the time and focusing on trying to get Trump to debate the debate DeSantis and the rest of the 2024 primary field. This, debate between DeSantis and Newsom feels a little bit like the second-tier debate. It feels a little bit like the Cruz versus Bernie Sanders socialism debate that happened just after the 2016 election, which is very instructive. You've got Cruz, who's got very clearly defined political views, and you've got Sanders, who's obviously the biggest socialist in the country, and they're going to have the debate out. That's a very instructive debate, but it doesn't feel like the stakes are very high here, because as of now, Joe Biden is the Democratic.

nominee for president. And frankly, as of now, Trump is the Republican nominee for president. And this doesn't help DeSantis look like he's on the cusp of dislodging Trump. Now, on the other hand, this is smart in that because of age and prosecutions, persecutions, there is a significant chance that Biden is not the Democrat nominee and Trump is not the Republican nominee. So in that case, there will be clear frontrunners in the shadow race. But it does seem as though, by a accepting this debate, DeSantis is accepting his second-tier candidate status and then putting all of his chips on second-tier. Okay, yeah, we're not looking like we're going to dislodge Trump anytime

soon, but I'm going to cement my place as the clear-in-away number two choice should something happen to Trump. Now, Newsom, for his part, is apparently furious that DeSantis accepted the debate. So he made all these stipulations. Desantis agreed to... to pretty much all of them. And even on some ridiculous ones, you know, DeSantis wants to put the debate off, or rather, Newsom wants to put the debate way, way into the future. DeSantis wants it to be relatively soon. But he says, okay, I'll accept the earliest date that Newsom has to offer, except basically the format, the moderator. Newsom has all these stipulations that DeSantis is trying to accommodate. And then Newsom comes back and he says, what a joke. This according to a

Newsom's spokesman. Desandes' counterproposal is littered with crutches. to hide his insecurity and ineptitude, swapping opening statements with a hype video, cutting down the time he needs to be on stage, adding cheat notes in a cheering section. Okay, that's pretty unfair. DeSantis did propose a video statement for each candidate rather than an opening statement.

So, okay, maybe they cave on that. Cutting down the time they need to be on stage, well, okay, they can set the time, whether it's an hour, whether it's three hours, you're going to get the point. They're both going to show up. And then adding cheat notes, it's perfectly ordinary to have notes on stage.

But, okay, maybe they lose that one, too. in a cheering section. Well, the cheering section proposed by the DeSantis campaign was that there'd be a live audience and the audience be split 50-50. So it's not just that, yeah, you're going to flood the audience with DeSantis supporters. Newsom can get his own supporters too. The reason that Newsom hates that is because DeSantis has a clearly defined base within the GOP that would prefer DeSantis over Trump. Obviously, it's not the majority of the GOP right now where DeSantis would be the frontrunner. But there is a strong core of DeSantis supporters, at least enough to fill an auditorium. For Newsom, it's not quite the case, because Newsom is technically not running

for president yet, and he's not being all that aggressive against Biden. So his base, a little unclear, if he can really tap into those kinds of people. The other thing here that's good news for DeSantis is it shows Newsom thinks that DeSantis will be relatively strong in a debate. So it was a big bluff. DeSantis comes out of this looking really good if Newsom will not debate. although if the debate does happen, ironically, I think it will probably diminish DeSantis as a candidate because it's going to show that this guy's running for number two. Now, DeSantis doesn't want to run for number two, so he's getting more aggressive against Trump. According to a report from the New York Times, while DeSantis was just addressing a campaign event in Iowa, he came out finally and answered pretty clearly

his view of what happened in the 2020 election, and his view is the election was not stolen. And DeSantis, along with a number of other GOP candidates, have kind of been dancing around this question because they don't want to irritate the base, but they also don't want to give Trump credit, but they also don't want to look like conspiracy theorists or whatever. So here's what DeSantis said. He said that the theories that were put out following the 2020 election did not prove to be true. And he said, it was not an election that was conducted the way I think that we want. to, but that's different than saying Maduro stole votes or something like that. Those theories, you know, proved to be unsubstantiated. Okay.

What's that mean? It means he's saying the election wasn't stolen. It wasn't even all that rigged. He's saying, well, it wasn't conducted the way we wanted to be conducted. But that's pretty mild language here. He's not even now saying it was a rigged election against Trump. And the reason that he's coming out and saying that is because if he says the election was rigged against Trump or the election was stolen by the Democrats from Trump, then it would seem that he should endorse Trump and say, yeah, Trump actually won. So the chief argument against Trump's nomination, which is that he can't win the election, that argument goes away, maybe.

they could say at least, well, he won if it were a fair and swear race, but they managed to steal it from him, and I won't let them steal it from me. But when you're talking about a candidate, DeSantis, just like all the other candidates, doesn't control the elections in Pennsylvania, in Arizona, in Georgia, in Michigan. Neither did Trump when he was president. So it's kind of, you can't really blame him for that. Then if you say, well, he really won fair and square, the argument for I'm much more electable than that guy is, goes out the window. So he can't say, you can't say, you can't say, say that, but he also can't come out and say, it was complete BS, Trump is full of it, the election was totally fine, he lost fair and square. Because if he does that, he's going to irritate a large

part of the Trump base. And a lot of people are just not going to believe it. I don't know people who really believe that election was fair and square. And yes, I know there's shenanigans in every election, but there are shenanigans and there's shenanigans. Okay, there's shenanigans in that sometimes the unions busts some people out of district to vote more than once. And there's shenanigans like, we're going to completely remake the electoral system to have widespread mail-in ballots in all the places that really count. We're going to take days and weeks to count the ballots. And we're going to violate the state constitution in some cases. And we're going to have pipes burst in the middle of the night. That's a different level

of shenanigans, okay? So different that I think it's probably different, not only in degree, but in kind. So what's he going to do? DeSantis is in this impossible spot. I'm not saying he's doing anything wrong or unwise as a candidate. It's just this was always the problem built in for a strong Republican governor running against Trump this time. The deck is just so politically stacked against a challenger. And part of the reason that nobody wanted to hear when I was saying it is that this is not like an ordinary open primary. Trump is running effectively as the incumbent because it's the first time since 1888 that we've seen a former president run for a non-consecutive second term. And on top of that, Republican voters care deeply about election integrity. So does Ron DeSantis.

That's why after the 2020 election, Ron DeSantis changed all those election rules to tighten it up because he saw what the Democrats did in 2020. So DeSantis signed into law widespread restrictions on absentee ballots, on mail-in voting. Limitations on the use of those ballot drop boxes, which were obviously rife with fraud, and he increased the identity requirements. So you might say, well, that's good news. That means DeSantis knows how to run the election. Yes, it does. But it also shows that he knows, just like the rest of the GOP knows, that the Democrats rigged the thing in 2020. Well, if the Democrats rigged the thing in 2020, then there's a shot that Trump isn't quite so unelectable as they're all saying, which seems to imply that people ought to rally around Trump. So it's this perfect knot. There's really no move here that, forget to Sandus, that any of the

the candidates can make against Trump that is going to be a clean victory. Either way, you're going to be irritating some large part of the GOP base. And by the way, all these prosecutions, now the big prosecutions that they're talking about, all stem directly or indirectly from January 6th. What happened on January 6th? We have a new novel theory of January 6th from Al Sharpton on MSNBC. One day, our children's children will read American history. And can you imagine our reading that James Madison or Thomas Jefferson tried to overthrow the government so they can stay in power? That's what we're looking at. We're looking at American history.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine if Thomas Jefferson tried to overthrow the government? Like if he did it by writing, like a declaration. let's say, where he declared, we're not going to recognize your government anymore. You know, let's say they had some other kind of guy. They didn't have the government that we have now. Let's say they had like a king or something, right? And he wrote and said, I'm going to overthrow your government. I'm not going to be dependent on you guys anymore. I'm going to declare myself to be independent. Could you imagine that? And if they wrote up like a whole new constitution, let's say, for this new government.

And then, like imagine if Thomas Jefferson then became a president in that new government. after they overthrew the old one. Could you imagine? So weird. I love it when the libs accidentally make our points for us, when they accidentally admit that their arguments aren't as strong as they say that they are. This is not just a problem, though, for the Trump insurrectionist, MAGA coup d'etat people. And it's not even just a problem for the BLM insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the government for eight months. This is a problem for our understanding of American history. because we're told it's absolutely the word January 6th is the worst thing ever because you're not ever allowed to rebel against your government because this is America a country that was founded in a very famous probably the most famous ever rebellion against a government

how do we make sense of that we'll get we'll get to that one second when you want to make sense of a whole lot of questions in the country though you got to check out prager you right now go to prager you dot com slash club five our country might be headed in the wrong direction but prager you videos could help save the future of america You makes educational pro-American content that has been changing people's minds for over a decade. Their impact is pivotal in these times. Our friends at Prager You are reaching millions of people with their educational videos. They have a long way to go. You can help Prager You reach thousands more people by joining Club 5 for just five bucks or more per month. Go to prageru.com slash club five now to join. Your gift will ensure that Prager You has the support it needs to be here for

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Prageru.com slash Club 5 today. The greatest interview show on the Internet, yes or no, is back with an all-new episode. this time Candace Owens is on the hot seat, sipping drinks. Was Princess Diana's death, a little bit suss? Have either of us cried in the past year? Find out Candice's answers in our episode. Check out this teaser. Men who don't work out are like women who cry on TikTok after their pet bunny dies. It's disordered, weak, and hard to look at. That's just funny. The yes or no game is now back in stock. Finally, you go to Dailywire.com slash shop to get your game today. The game go very fast. They always sell out. Yes or no is hands down the best way to delve into the most

thought-provoking topics of our time with family and friends. Go to dailywire.com slash shop and order yes or no today. Did you imagine if Thomas Jefferson overthrew the government? Yeah, I can't imagine that. So how do we make sense of that? How does the left make sense of its pearl clutching over January 6th when our country was founded on a major revolution that took many, many lives because the colonists in America felt that taxes were a little too high. How do you make sense of that? And vice versa. How do the conservatives get all in a tizzy about BLM burning the country for eight months when our country was founded in a violent revolution? Not quite so violent and unreasonable as the French revolution, but a revolution nonetheless. It's a hard question. It's a really hard not,

especially for conservatives. I think the solution here, though, is to ground American patriotism, in a deeper context. For the last, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 years in American politics, we've had almost an exclusive focus on the right on the American founding era of the 1770s, 1780s, 1790s. That was considered to be the true essence of America. That hasn't always been the way that we viewed ourselves in this country, but that's what's happened in recent decades. And I don't think we need to throw that out. A ton of great men. in that founding era, wonderful events. I've got two ancestors of mine fought in that revolution. John and Simon Knowles fought a battle of Bunker Hill. John died from his wounds of bunker hill.

Simon went on to Valley Forge, went on to White Plains, fought with Washington. I like it. And we have civic associations in America, like the sons of the American Revolution, sons of the revolution in New York and other states, that preserve that. And you can't have a country that is in any way conservative if you just totally diss your forebears. But I I think the way that we can do it is by deepening that context and saying, well, America didn't just begin at a thin air in 1776 or 1775. It began, it started, the American identity was forged in the French and Indian War, which came 20 years before that. The American identity was formed much longer, actually. It was about 140 years before that, 150 years before that, at Plymouth Rock,

with the Mayflower, with the Pilgrims, with the Puritan colonists in Massachusetts, with the negotiations and wars with the Indians, with the arrival of new settlers, with the settling of the south, with, well, and in the 19th century, and in part of the 20th century, I think you've got to deepen that. You go even further back. America didn't just pop out of thin air, as I know a lot of liberals want to say. There's a context that goes back to the old country. You know, we were founded as a Christian nation. Where did that Christianity come from? Came from a particular perspective of Christianity. came out of the Puritans at Leiden, who had left England. They were nonconformists there. Where did that tradition come from? Well, it came out of England. Where did that tradition come from?

You know, Britain was a Roman territory. There are deeper wellsprings here. Same goes when we think about the American people. Same goes when we think about our geography and our place, what makes us unique. A country is not just an idea floating in outer space. A country is not just a piece of parchment called the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, those documents are terrific, all well and good. I'm not dissing the documents at all, but a country's more than that. A country is flesh and blood and lived traditions and beliefs and a connection throughout the generations. That's going to be the way that we get around the Al Sharpton trap so that we don't sound quite so incoherent as he does on MSNBC. Now, speaking of

patriotism, I am thrilled that the U.S. women's national soccer team lost their match and are not going to the next big match. I guess it's for the World Cup is what comes next. I'm thrilled. And I'm thrilled that the final kick of the career of Megan Rapino, one of the most odiously unpatriotic anti-American athletes ever to wear an American jersey, ended with her missing the kick. I'm thrilled about that. And I'm thrilled that she ended her career whining on camera. Yeah, I thought we played really well. I thought we played really well. I'm so happy for us that we went out like that. Can you put a pause there, please? Hold on. Before we, we'll keep going for a second. But this is just such a liberal woman thing.

This is such a liberal white lady thing where she says, I'm so proud of us. We did so well. We're so good. We're the best ever. I'm so proud that we lost. I'm so proud that I totally blew it at the end. Why?

Why are you? It's okay. You don't need to be beating yourself up over it. You don't need to be flagellating yourself. But you lost lady. Don't be proud of that. You didn't play that well. That's the problem.

If you'd played better, you would have. won the game and gone on. I think, man, growing up in the 90s, I'm watching the New York Yankees. Paul O'Neill, heart and soul of the New York Yankees in the 90s, this has got one of the great baseball players of his era. Paul O'Neill, if he would, let's say, you know, fly ball to the outfield and he only got one RBI instead of two RBIs there, you know, and he didn't, you know, the guy catches the ball, whatever. Paul O'Neill would rip the telephone out of the dugout wall. He would knock over the Gatorade cooler. He'd scream and yes. and throw his bat on there. He just, he was so furious. He took any loss or failure of performance

so personally. And this lady who completely blows it and loses it for the team, I'm so proud, we're so great. We deserve 10 parades. Please give us trophies. And okay, all right, rant over. Keep going, Mrs. Rapino. Ms. Rapino. Playing the way that we did and, you know, having a ton of joy on the ball. I mean, this is like a sick joke. For me personally, I'm just like, this is, dark comedy, I missed a penalty. This is the balance to the beautiful side of the game. I think it can be

cruel and just not our day, but yeah, I still just feel really grateful and joyful and I know it's the end and that's sad but you know, to know that this is really

the only time I've been in one of these this early says so much about how much success I've been able to have, and just how much I've loved playing for this team and playing for this country. And, yeah, it's been an honor. There we go. So then she cracks. I'm really proud. We did great. I'm awesome. I'm the greatest ever. I'm so, but I blew it. It's so dark. Why did I blow it? I know. You did. You did. The first step is, the first step in grieving is acknowledging reality. Okay.

Why am I so happy that this lady lost? Isn't that unpatriotic of me? Because it's the U.S. women's soccer team. Isn't that unpatriotic? Well, it would be, except the team is very unpatriotic. I know that's a paradox, but a paradox is not just an incoherence or a contradiction. It's an apparent contradiction that can reveal a deeper truth when you work it out. And when you work it out here, you see, that the team that is supposed to represent the United States consistently undermines the United States. Protests the national anthem, the star-spangled banner, the symbol of the whole country, is actively anti-patriotic. And so it is...

You cannot say that patriotism requires us to applaud the people who are deeply unpatriotic. That would undermine it. It reminds me of a line from Chesterton. Chesterton said, there is a thought that stops thought, and that is the only thought that ought to be stopped. There is a patriotism that undermines patriotism, and that kind of pseudo-patriotism really ought to be stopped. As far as I'm concerned, the U.S. women's soccer team could just be abolished. Cancel it.

I don't know. Maybe there are some patriotic people on the team. It's too bad that the loudest mouth on the team, Megan Rapino, has so. consistently attacked our country, but just abolish it. What is the point of the U.S. women's soccer team? It's not to kick a ball around. It's not to make Megan Rapino feel good. It's to represent the United States to bring glory to our country. That's the point of the team. So if they're actively undermining that, then they have no purpose. And if the salt loses its savor, then it's good for nothing and ought to be trodden underfoot. Maybe now that this lady's gone and can go off

into the sunset, maybe the team will remember what their job is and they can salute the flag and stop being so deeply unpatriotic. But until then, get rid of it. I mean, this is a big, big political problem because you've got huge swathes of America and hate the country. And they hate traditional notions of patriotism. And inasmuch as they love the country, they love the country because they say the country stands for, I don't know, LGBT rights. That's the deepest meaning of America. People who really believe that the rainbow flag is our national standard or ought to be, who would be much more likely to salute the rainbow flag than to salute the American flag. Then you got the other more than half of the country that still believes in

the red, white, and blue and doesn't believe in all the craziness that Rapino and the libs do. But that's a big problem, because if you don't have shared beliefs, if you don't have shared sacred objects, if you don't have shared. language, if you don't have shared behavior, if you don't have any shared culture, then you don't have a country. It doesn't matter which team is representing your country. You don't have one to be represented in the first place. So on this point of patriotism, I've had this question in recent days, which is why some people on the right have exalted a British pimp? Why parts of the Christian conservative American right have exalted a British muslin,

pimp who seduced women and played with their emotions to turn them into prostitutes so that he could steal most of the money. I'm talking, of course, of Andrew Tate. And so my friend Zubi tweets out. Well, it got me thinking about this. My friend Zubi tweets out. Andrew Tate has positively impacted the lives of millions of young men objectively. If you can do better, then do better. I am doing my best with my platform, talents, and influence. Curl clutching and finger-wagging is tedious and disingenuous. I guess my question to Zubi's declaration here is, has he? Has Andrew Tate positively impacted the lives of millions of young men?

How? Is he told them to, you know, go out and make some money or something? Go work hard. They say that Andrew Tate has moved on. I don't know much about Andrew Tate's biography. They say, oh, no, it was years ago. Ten years ago, he was a pimp. but now he doesn't.

Now, from what I've seen, the evidence is he's been pimping until pretty recently. They say, well, the charges in Romania have nothing to do with him being a big pimp and seducing these women and selling their flesh. And I say, well, I don't know, it looks to me like the charges have quite a lot to do with that. But let's say even he was doing this until a few years ago, two years ago, I don't know, whenever it was. But then he converted, he said, I'm done with this. I repent. This was wrong. okay, well then maybe like chill for a little while. You know, if you've been doing something that is

egregiously evil and scandalous and very destructive to people, not just people's bodies, but souls for years and years and years, and you've enriched yourself on that, then maybe you ought to take a moment, process your supposedly major change of heart, maybe make some reparation, try to make some reparation with some of those ill-gotten gains, and then maybe come back in a few years and explain, you know, how you've seen the light. I haven't seen Andrew Tate do any of that. So what does Zubi mean? I don't know. Admittedly, I don't know Andrew Tate. I don't think he's the worst guy in the world, but he's a degenerate. For everything I've seen about this guy is that he's a total degenerate. And if he's repented, great, but I haven't, you got to like take a pause

there, man. So what is it? What is it that he's done? Obviously, Zubi's not saying it's good that he's a big pimp, that that's helped women's lives. So what is it? And then it got, I think it got to the point that I understood, which is Andrew Tate is an internet self-help guru. And he's not just one who dispenses good advice for free. He charges people, or has charged people to be part of his fake kind of academy. He says, give me a bunch of money, and I'll teach you how to be a big player, and, you know, I'll teach you how to be really rich and powerful and pick up women and all this stuff. So he's at best, I think, an internet self-help guru scam artist, which is not much better than being a pimp. And as a public matter, it's

probably worse. And it's not just Andrew Tate. I know I'm beating up on Andrew Tate here. There are so many of these guys, and so many of these online guru scammy artist type people are either useless. They might sincerely believe they're helping, but they're not, or they're frauds. They're just deceiving people to get money to pretend they're selling it. But it's, this stuff is always snake oil. And the reason it's always snake oil is there is one way to improve yourself. And the way to improve yourself, there's a natural component and a supernatural component. The natural component is to practice virtues and to stop practicing vice. And the supernatural component is to accept the grace of God and your Lord and Savior,

who took on flesh and dwelt among us. That's it. That's the, the only self-help book you will ever need is the Bible and the books that have come out of the Bible and the religious tradition that compiled the Bible and remains the bride of Christ, the living God. That's it. That's the self-help. And all these other guys who try to do it, who try to divorce God from goodness, who try to divorce religion and morality from self-improvement, they're always going to leave you high and dry. This is why it is the, I mean, my most miserable friends in New York and L.A. are the ones who have read the most self-help books. I just don't see it, man. How does that positively impact the lives of millions of people? Oh, I don't see. It's kind of weird.

Now, are you planning to send your kid off to college this year? Listen, I've been on many campuses. I've seen firsthand how woke ideology has infiltrated and polluted these once great universities. Give your kids a fighting chance by sending them off with Jeremy's razors. Right now, get up to 20% off select razor and men's care bundles, like the shampoo, body wash, and conditioner, all paraben-free, sulfate-free, woke-free, and made in the USA. And get him a precision-5 razor with welded steel blades and a flip-back trimmer that will groom his face, not his worldview. Help your son escape academia's leftist indoctrination by more than just a close shave. Go to jeremy's razors.com for major deals and give Jeremy's back-to-college bundles a full ride today. My favorite comment on Friday is from Skyhawk 4526 who says,

I'm trying to figure out which is more absurd. Mia Khalifa trying to give women marriage advice or Antony Blinken lecturing the world about the wrongfulness of political prisoners. Great point. You're referring, of course, to the world's two oldest professions, which Ronald Reagan pointed out, bear a striking similarity to the two of them, politics and prostitution. I don't know if I had to spell it out for you.

You know, sometimes it's confusing to figure out which is which. Speaking of weird sex stuff, former Democrat mayor was just caught with child pornography. This is Patrick Wozjohn. He's the Democrat ex-Mayer of College Park, Maryland. He pled guilty to 140 counts of child porn possession and distribution in a deal that stipulates the former politician. Serve three decades in prison.

I could very easily make jokes about the Democrats, all being pedos, and how I could point. point out that maybe this is more pronounced on the left, and I suspect it is. But I don't want to be a hack, okay? So I'm going to observe, yeah, sometimes right-wingers get caught in weird sex stuff, including in this, which is about as egregious as it could possibly be, child pornography, child exploitation. And it's not just the atheist, sometimes it's religious people. And it's not just the politicians, sometimes it's, I don't know, people throughout all of society. Okay,

It's very pervasive. My main takeaway from this issue is I strongly suspect that this problem is much more widespread than people want to admit. And I had that hunch, so I just Googled it. I said, what is the prevalence of child pornography? One of the first results that come up is from a group called the Demand Project. Here's what it says. Child porn is one of the fastest growing crimes in the U.S. Nationally, there's a 2,500 percent increase in arrests in the past 10,000.

years, that's according to the FBI. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reviewed 17.3 million images and videos of child porn in 2011. That is four times more. It's an insane number. But for our purposes, what matters is it's four times more than they reviewed in 2007. So in the span of four years, you get four times more child porn. What psychologists have learned, apparently, is that when someone becomes addicted to child pornography, they progress to younger and younger children and more sadistic and extreme cases of this stuff, which of course makes sense, because that's how all pornography works, because that's how all addiction works. You start out with a little puff on the devil's lettuce, and pretty soon you're

smoking, you know, the hunter rocks out of a glass tube on Skid Row. These things, you either break addictions in bad habits, or they get more and more extreme. this is all according to the demand project. I assume there are many other sources on this. It's literally the first thing I clicked on. 2006, U.S. attorneys handled 82.8% more child porn cases than they had in 1994. Huge increase, obviously. An estimated 50,000 people in the United States are believed to, quote, be consistently trading illegal images involving children at any one time. At any one time, 50,000 people consistently dealing in this stuff. And furthermore,

63% of teens said they know how to hide what they do online from their parents. So a lot more, those are just the bullet points that jumped out at me. Which tells me, yes, this guy,

this Democrat mayor of College Park, man, he has got into some dark stuff and doesn't exonerate him in any way. But I don't want to especially knock him because this is also obviously a political problem. It's not just the cultural,

well, we've got to route the bad guys out. there's obviously a political problem here. How do you explain those numbers increasing? We've talked about this with other ideologies that we're not allowed to mention on big tech, certain identity ideologies that have exploded in recent years, three times the rate of identification with certain sexual ideologies in recent years. You say, okay, well, that can't just be an individual problem. That can't even just be an environmental problem unless there's something in the water turning the frickin' frog's gay. That's obviously got to be a pervasive cultural and political problem. It's a technological problem. Why did the numbers spike from the 90s to the 2000s?

Do you think it has something to do with the internet coming around? Yeah, obviously. How could you fix this then? You could shame these people. Yeah, good. You could, I don't know. I don't know how you shame them more. It's already the most shameful thing you could possibly imagine. I think you need to regulate this stuff. And you say, well, the child pornography is already regulated. Yeah, but the internet largely isn't, and pornography generally isn't at all. It's not regulated at all. The American people have tried to regulate it on multiple occasions, Republicans and Democrats. Child Online Protection Act and the Communications Decency Act in the 90s and early 2000s, passed with majorities, and signed into law by Democrat president. Then liberal judges shoot it down. So now you've got to the point

where the porn stuff is basically unregulated. Well, if you only focus on this most egregious, horrific version of porn, you're probably not going to catch it. The numbers are going to keep growing. If you, however, cut off the main supply of people who get into the funnel where eventually, I guess it could lead to this stuff, I think you're going to have much more success. And what's going to be required there is a less liberal view of porn and speech even. I don't think obscenity of speech. But you're not, you're not to have a more illiberal view and say, no, you're just not allowed to look at this stuff. And it's going to choke off the industry. And big porn is terrified of this. This is why big porn just, we'll get to the story tomorrow.

This is going to be my little tease for tomorrow. Big porn, a porn hub and its parent company, Mind Geek, just cut off Arkansas. This is just the latest state to be cut off from this porn website because Arkansas insists on verifying people's ages. And big porn is so afraid of age verification that they would rather shut off their service in that state than comply with the law. What does that tell you? It tells you they're trying to hook people when they're very young, just like any drug peddler on the street. and they know that children, that minors are very important to the way the whole business operates. So you're not going to, you're not going to, this is my somewhat vindication of Andrew Tate, or not really, I'm just trying to be a little softer on them.

You're not going to stop this problem by just going after the random mayor in College Park, Maryland. You're not going to stop this problem by getting some low-level webcam pimp like Andrew Tate. You're going to stop this problem by arresting and imprisoning the CEO of Mindgeek, the owners of the biggest porn companies in the world, and shutting off the service. that's how you're going to get serious about him. As long as we don't do that, as long as we pretend there's some civil right to look at smut or something,

the problem is only going to get worse, and those numbers are going to continue to explode by multiples and orders of magnitude. Now today, my friends, is Music Monday. Rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member, Use Code Knowles, KNAW, LAS, and check out for two months free

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