The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1406 - Can Christians Vote For Trump?

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

ABC News cancels the next Republican primary debate, Bernie Sanders comes out against the liberal idea of "equity", and pro-terrorism porn lady Mia Khalifa goes viral for being insulted by a supposed fan.   Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEl   Ep.1406   - - -    DailyWire+:   Unlock your Bentkey 14 day free trial here: https://bit.ly/3GSz8go   Become a DailyWire+ member to gain access to movies, shows, documentaries, kids entertainment and more: https://utm.io/ueMfc   Get your own Yes or No game here: https://bit.ly/3X6tlKY      - - -    Today’s Sponsor:   Ramp - Get $250 off when you join Ramp. Go to http://www.ramp.com/Knowles   - - -   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

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Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold. I'm juicy. throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me and baby I'm a whole meal. And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet. No, crispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley 36, 2326, participating stores only while supplies last the app for full terms. ABC News and WMUR have canceled the next

GOP presidential primary debate after only Ron DeSantis agreed to show up. Four candidates, Trump, Haley, DeSantis, and Chris Christie, remember him. They, qualified for the debate. Christy has already dropped out. Now, Nikki Haley is refusing to debate unless Trump shows up, which he's not going to do because he hasn't gone to any of them, because he's leading the pack by just under 50 points nationally. Haley is smart not to debate, only DeSantis, because debates are always a risk, and she has nothing to gain. Nikki Haley is currently leading DeSantis in the next state, New Hampshire, by almost 23 points. The numbers are 23 point, I'm sorry, 29.3% to 6.5% for DeSantis. A debate before New Hampshire would be all

downside for Haley with no upside. Haley also has no incentive to debate before the following state, Nevada, because she's not even competing there. A few years ago, Nevada legislators moved to replace the state's caucus system, which is similar to what we saw last night in Iowa, with a primary system, which is more in line with what the rest of the country does. The Nevada GOP opposed the move, so it's holding a caucus anyway, and says that anyone who participates in the primary can't participate in the caucus. But while all the rest of the GOP candidates opted for the GOP-run caucus, Nikki sided with the state and filed for the primary, so Nevada doesn't even matter to her. And Trump is currently polling at 69% there, nice,

so it doesn't matter anyway. Next up is South Carolina. That's obviously Haley's home state, where she is currently in second with double the support that DeSantis has. So no reason for her to debate before that one. And then finally there's Michigan where DeSantis has a slight lead over Haley, but it's doubtful that the governor will even still be in the race at that point.

And even if he is, Trump currently has over 61% support in Michigan. That's all before Super Tuesday, when 16 states and territories will vote, most if not all of which are certain to go to Trump. All of which is to say, we're not getting an ABC News debate before New Hampshire. And we're probably not getting a CNN debate either. And we're probably just not getting any more debates at all because the 2024

GOP primary is, for all intents and purposes, over. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Nulls show. Welcome back to the show. Breaking News, a porn actress, Mia Khalifa, was insulted in public. She's gone viral for this. She usually goes viral for promoting the Palestine liberation movement and supporting terrorists and things like that. But she's gone viral here for a different reason. Shockingly, she was insulted in public. We'll get to that very important story in just a moment. First, though, the fact that the political media are still reporting on the primary as though it were some hot contentious thing is crazy. I'm happy to talk about the primary a little bit because it does matter who the nominee is and who's going to be the next president and whether or not we're going to send the next nominee

of the Republican Party to prison and whether we're going to fall into civil war and whether the American Republic is going to cease to exist and all of that stuff matters. But most of the political media are still reporting on this GOP primary as though it could go another way. It can't. Unless a bolt of lightning comes out of the sky or out of the hands of a Democrat, it's over. It's Trump. But here's how they're reporting on it. The Libs, and some places on the right even, are trying to suggest that Trump's win in Iowa doesn't mean all that much. And what they point to is they say there was low turnout in Iowa, only something like 110,000 people caucused.

that was down from an all-time high back in 2016 that I think was around 170 or 180,000 people caucusing. So they're saying only 14% of the Iowans came out and only half of them voted for Trump. So it's not really a big victory. And 14% is a pretty low number, sure. But I don't think it's really a knock on Trump. I think it's probably more a knock on the other campaigns. Trump already seemed to have the state locked up. Also, it was negative nine degrees outside. So the fact that anyone showed up at all is pretty impressive. Negative nine degrees is bad. It's currently 10 degrees here in Nashville and we're still not allowed to go back to work at Daily Wire because there's a little bit of snow on the ground and the whole city is shut down. So negative nine degrees, that's pretty intense. And more to the point, people are not really that incentivized to vote if they think that the things that the thing is already done. Trump was polling at 52% in Iowa before the caucuses. So the incentive for

anyone to show up, for a Trump voter, certainly, or even some of the supporters of the other campaigns, is going to be greatly diminished. This was the story in 2016. Do you remember? The Democrats said, well, the reason Trump won in 2016 is because everyone thought Hillary was going to win. So the Democrats thought that they didn't have to go vote, and Democrats who would have supported Hillary stayed home because they thought there was no reason to do it. And, but they and then the Republicans were more motivated, and the Republicans won. So using that logic, then what that would suggest is the other candidates would have had much more of an incentive to show up. The fact that the turnout was low is actually a knock on the other campaigns for not getting out the vote.

Because the Trump supporters would have already thought that they had it in the bag, if you're going to compare it to something like 2016. But I think probably what happened is that a lot of GOP voters, one, didn't want to go out and freeze, but a lot of GOP voters are treating this as though the primary is just fake, that it's a fait accompli. It's been done from the beginning. As some of us perhaps predicted early on, you know, I hate to say, I told you so, I think a lot of GOP voters are just treating Trump as the incumbent in this primary. and that's how it turned out last night in Iowa.

All of the other candidates could have consolidated around one, one anti-Trump candidate. Every single campaign just put all their resources, all their voters, all their money, put it together, gone up against Trump. Trump still would have won Iowa last night. And I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying it's bad.

I'm not saying anything about who should win. I'm just saying the guy is basically an incumbent. And the polls were proven correct in Iowa, which to me implies that the polls are likely to be about right in the other states, which implies that the primary is over. So now we turn our attention away from the GOP infighting, and we focus our attention on beating the left. And there's a clip of a very prominent left winger that is going around now. Bernie Sanders, Bernie, the leader of the socialist wing of the Democrat Party, at least for decades now, maybe some of the young guns and the squad are, are,

taking that position from him. But still, he's probably the most prominent socialist on the left. And the clip is going viral because Bill Maher tricked him in a debate over equality versus equity. You've got that equality, which a lot of people agree with, versus this new leftist socialist view of equity, you know, which is everyone having the same outcomes, not just the same opportunity. And even that socialist Bernie Sanders said that he supports equality. D-E-I, are we confusing equality of opportunity with trying to guarantee equity and outcomes? Okay, that's interesting because I think this word equity has come into the language in the last few years, and before that we didn't hear it a lot. And I think a lot of people hear equity and they hear equality.

It's the same word, and it's not the same word and the same concept. So how would you differentiate between equity and equality? Well, equality, we talk about, I don't know what the answer to that is. Come me to think of it, you know, equality is equality of opportunity. We live in a society, we want all people to have whatever color your skin is. Equity, I think, is more guarantee of outcome, is it not? Yeah, I think so. I think that's fine. Okay. So which side do you come down on?

Equality. Equality. Yeah. Okay. Ha-ha. They got him. That liberal is a classical liberal, though, Bill Maher, you know, he's the good kind of liberal, Bill Maher. He supports equality. A lot of people support equality of opportunity. But Bernie is a socialist, he's supposed to support equity, equality of outcome. But even Bernie, even a radical like Bernie, says, that's too much. And so those DEI people, those woke people, the squad, the ones arguing for equity, therefore meaning, equality of outcome, rather, they're crazy. And you know what I say? I actually don't think there's much difference between the two, which we'll get to in one second. First, though, we're talking about our economy. We have to talk about Ramp. Right now, go to Ramp.com slash Noles. When you are running

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I don't think those are actually opposites. I don't think that's much of a debate at all. I actually think they're kind of the same thing, ultimately. It's a battle between liberalism and communism. And in recent decades, the conservatives have made common cause with the liberals. Some have gone so far as to say that we conservatives, we're the true liberals, or we're the classical liberals, or whatever. I'm not a liberal. I'm not a modern liberal. I'm not an old liberal. I'm not a middle ground liberal. I'm not a

liberal. I don't believe in liberalism. So I don't really, I'm certainly not a communist. So I actually think they're both kind of wrong. I think equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. They're both just fantasies and they're both ultimately wrong. I want people to have their just due. I want people to have every good opportunity they possibly can have. But there's no such thing as equality of opportunity. Some people are born a little smarter than others. And there are people who are born with a high IQ who squander their natural advantages and totally neglect their education, and they might end up worse off than someone who's maybe born with a little bit of a lower IQ, but they work really hard and they're really diligent and they cultivate good habits.

That's certainly true. But they still started from a different place. There is no actual equality of opportunity. Let's talk about something that might be more important than IQ. Having two parents who are married to one another in a loving, stable household. Not everyone gets that equality of opportunity. What are we going to do?

How are we going to level out that playing field? There are a lot of people who are born at a wedlock, who are born with absent fathers, who are born in bad family circumstances, who are born without a mother or father, maybe that's two fathers, three fathers now, five fathers and a billy goat, whatever. They're suffering from a natural disadvantage

compared to someone who's born to a love of, loving mother and father married in a stable household. What are we going to do? Are we going to in order to level that playing field, so everyone has the same equality of opportunity, are we going to break up the stable marriage? Probably the left would like to do that now. No, that doesn't seem like a good idea. Are we going to force the couple that had the kid out of wedlock to get married? I would be fine with that, but the liberals, the classical and otherwise who push for equality of opportunity, they're not going to do that. There's no one's calling for that. It's just a natural disadvantage. Some of these are more socially constructed. Some of these are just natural,

like IQ. So what are we going to do then? Well, what's going to happen is because equality of opportunity is a fantasy that can never exist in real life, then there are going to be inequalities that persist. Equality of opportunity is going to be shown to be a failure. And then guess what's going to happen? People are going to demand equity. They're going to demand equality of outcome because equality of opportunities and impossibility. And they're going to be right when they point to that. But equality of outcome, well, that's just communism. That's not going to work either. That's going to be a monstrosity. That's going to be a terrible injustice. So then what do we really want? We don't want equality or equity in the liberal sense of the term.

I mean, for goodness sakes, equality is part of the motto of the French Revolution. Liberte, egality, fraternity, or mort. You know, liberty, equality, equality. and fraternity or death, and then they lop off everybody's heads. That's extreme liberalism. That's not, we don't want either of those things. The true equality that exists is a spiritual equality before God

because there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free, nor male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus. That's a true equality, an equality before God because there is human solidarity. We all descend from a common ancestor. We are all made in the image and likeness of God, and we are redeemed by the very same God. The only begotten son of God who comes down to earth, God sends the son to die so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.

That's true equality. It's an equality of opportunity for everlasting life. It is not an equality of opportunity for everyone to go become a CEO someday. Anyone can be president. Anyone can be an astronaut. That's not true. I'm not going to be a basketball player. I never really wanted to be a basketball player and I won't be one. And I never had a chance to be one. It drives me crazy. No, it doesn't drive me crazy, but that's just my state in life. The conservative view is not the liberal view, and it's not the communist view. It's a view that respects natural limits and is diligent and pursues good and wants all sorts of good stuff, but recognizes that there are natural limits, and there are natural inequalities in the world. And we can either bury our heads in the sand, we can deny that. But when you deny truth, when you deny reality,

leads to more radicalization. The liberal law, liberalism is going to lead to communism. In fact, that's exactly what happened in the history of ideology and the history of politics. So if you want to avoid that, it's much better to allow yourself with reality and with the truth. Quality before God is a good thing. It's much more important. Now, speaking of God, Mr. Meathead, Rob Reiner, most famous for, one, having a very famous and talented father in Hollywood, and two, playing a guy named Meathead on All In The Family, one of the great sitcoms of all time. Rob Reiner, who's a big lib, has just come out, and he's asked how a Christian could possibly

vote for Trump. Reiner says, Jesus told us to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. How in God's name can anyone who believes in the teachings of Jesus support Donald Trump? We hear this line all the time. Rob Reiner is not the first guy to bring it up. You hear it all the time. But what is he really asking? Is Rob Reiner and all these libs?

Are they asking how a Christian can vote for a sinner? Are they saying that Donald Trump fails to live up to the Christian ideal of life? He's a sinner. And so therefore, you can't vote for him? Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. The central insight of the Christian is that we're all sinners, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and therefore we're not going to save ourselves, and we're in need of a savior. Not a political savior either. It's kind of nice to have good

politicians every now and again, but we need a savior who is not just king of a country, but king of the whole universe. That doesn't make sense. If we can't vote for sinners, we can't vote for anybody. But does Rob Reiner mean how can a Christian vote for a non-Christian? Is he not just saying that Trump, he's a Christian, but he's a Christian? But he's not just saying, a sinner, but he's saying Trump isn't a real Christian. He's not a Christian at all. So how can a Christian vote for a non-Christian? I don't know. Rob Reiner's not a Christian. That mean we can't vote for him? DeVeyrema Swami is not a Christian. That means we can't vote for him. We in our very Constitution learn that there is no religious test for public office. Is he going to throw that

out the window? I don't know. That's pretty extreme. Rob Reiner is saying he should only vote for Christians. I mean, it would be good to have a more Christian-informed government. I'm all for that. But that seems pretty extreme. Is Rob Reiner a Christian nationalist now? I don't think so. Now, you know what I think he is? I think he's engaging in a typical leftist tactic from Saul Olensky. He probably doesn't even know he's doing this, but it just comes. second nature to the lives. He is forcing his opponent to live according to their own principles and their own ideals, principles and ideals that they would never cause themselves to live up to. And that's a very effective tactic, but in this case, it's totally incoherent because he is insinuating

that Christians should live up to ideals and principles that are not intrinsically Christian. It's just totally bogus in this case. It can be very very very. very, very effective when the Libs and the Alinskyites do this, but it's just not effective in this case. There is no Christian principle that says you can't vote for a sinner. We wouldn't have a government anymore. Can't vote for a sinner. You can't vote for a non-Christian. All right, who are we going to vote for? I don't know. Some Republicans are still not sold on Trump. And I understand why a lot of Republicans don't like him. I like the guy a lot, but some Republicans don't like him. Even the Republicans, though, who are not sold on Trump, seem to be sold on who they

will not vote for. Enter Rand Paul, who says he has a major political announcement to make with regard to 2024. It's not who he's going to endorse, but who he anti-endorses, who he condemns. I've had a long relationship with Donald Trump, and there's a lot to like there. I'm also a big fan of a lot of the fiscal conservatism of Ron DeSantis. I think Vivek Ramoswamy has been an important voice. Also have listened to and met with the independent Bobby Kennedy. I'm not yet ready to make a decision, but I am ready to make a decision on someone who I cannot support. So I'm announcing this morning that I'm Never Nikki. If you go to nevernicki. If you go to nevernicky.net, you can let her know that you're not a supporter either. I don't think

any informed or knowledgeable libertarian or conservative should support Nikki Haley. I've seen her attitude towards our interventions overseas. I've seen her involvement in the military industrial complex, $8 million being paid to become part of the team. But I've also seen her indicate that she thinks you should be registered to use the internet, that people posting ideas anonymously. I think she fails to understand that our republic was founded upon people like Ben Franklin, Sam Adams, Madison, John Jay, and others who posted routinely. For fear of the government, they posted routinely anonymously. Rand Paul's anti-endorsement of Nikki Haley tells us two things about the state of the GOP right

now in the 2024 race. The first one is Nikki Haley has to be the establishment candidate. She has to be the neocon candidate. She has to be the never Trump candidate. Even if she were not so inclined, she would have to be that candidate because that is her role in the race. That's the only avenue available to her. But the second thing it teaches us, and this is something that is a little bit weird and surprising, Donald Trump is a strangely unifying figure on the right. We'll get to why in a second.

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Governor DeSantis right now has no path to the nomination, and Christie's out of the race. I don't think Rand Paul would like Christie very much, and Vivek's out of the race. So by default, that leaves Rand Paul is Trump's guy. But Trump is also popular among the not libertarian parts of the right. Trump is also pretty popular among the traditionalists. He's popular among the post-liberals. He's, you know, it's been said that obscure political monikers are the right-wing version of gender pronouns. You know, everybody's got their own kind of weird version.

But the part of the right that is, I think, unfairly maligned as authoritarian or more will, let's put it in a nicer way, more willing to use state power, I think, in line with the American tradition. Those guys like Trump too. Compact Magazine, founded by So Rabamari, post-liberal outlet, says that Trump's the man. Trump's still the guy for 2024. The American post-liberal. Another post-liberal and more traditionalist-type outlet, they came out and endorsed Trump the other day. And Trump gets the libertarians here.

The people that he doesn't get are the establishment. He doesn't get the Chamber of Commerce. He doesn't get the interventionists who want to bomb every country on Earth. Or to put it in a nicer way, the foreign policy hawks. He doesn't get them. He actually gets some of them because of his tough talk and good track record on ISIS. We're going to go kill ISIS. And he did.

He destroyed ISIS. Or the fact that he took out Iran's top general. But in other ways, he's kind of a dove. So the people who are more skeptical of intervention, they can like him too. You know, he goes and says nice things about Kim Jong-un. Or he says that we need to stop intervening everywhere overseas all the time and focus on the American homeland. He's a weirdly unifying candidate. I don't know. Again, you might hate him.

But we haven't seen a candidate able to unify the GOP, despite his mean tweets, despite the adjada that he inspires in people. We haven't seen that in a very long time. Now, the establishment still does hate him. The head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Suzanne Clark, has just come out. And implicitly, but I think not so subtly, attacked Trump for. for his economic proposals heading into 2024. Let's be very clear.

In a global economy and in fragile geopolitical times, it is in America's best interest for other economies to grow and succeed through free markets. Prosperous nations are stable nations. They become partners, allies, and ballasts against authoritarianism. Like the free markets, the global economy is not a zero. some game. Someone else does not have to lose for us to win. On the contrary, the rise of the rest means new customers, new markets, and new allies for us. Okay. What about China? Is it true? If you're telling

me that it's always in our best interests to open up new markets and tear down barriers to trade and build up other countries. What about China? We're on the brink of World War III. Xi Jinping, who I think has actually been fairly responsible in his more aggressive stance toward the U.S., he said as much just a month or two ago. He said, look, we don't want war,

but you've got to recognize this is about to be a bipolar world. China is on the rise. Our economy is on the rise. Our national strength is on the rise. He's insinuating. We are going to take Taiwan. on, we are going to exert more influence around our country. And if you try to impede that, we're headed for war. This is what the Harvard political scientist Graham Allison refers to as

the Thucydides trap, that when a rising power challenges a hegemon, three-quarters of the time, major conflict ensues. What does the head of the Chamber of Commerce have to say to that? Well, yeah, sure, we might go to World War III, but we get a bunch of cheap electronics from China. At the cost, by the way, of losing our intellectual property because they steal our IP and then rip off the products. And then when they have all of our manufacturing, it weakens us as a matter of national security and we become very vulnerable. And oh, by the way, when China becomes really rich and buys up all of our debt, it's much harder for us to maintain our status as a global hegemon. We lose a lot of leverage to China. What do you mean? You really think a rising tide lifts all ships

all the time. We always need to reduce tariffs. And Trump is the big threat. She's obviously talking about Trump here because Trump broke with what many people consider to be GOP orthodoxy, which is that free trade is always great. Trump said, no, I want some more tariffs. Trump has gone much further in this campaign and said he actually wants mercantilism in the 21st century. And Trump's been inconsistent on this. Back in the 80s, he's got a longstanding track record of being in favor of tariffs. But then Within the last 10 years, he was publishing op-eds. I don't know if he actually wrote them, but they were published under his name, calling for more globalization. But then he'd also say, we need more tariffs again, and we need more protectionism.

But then he would sometimes say as president, well, we want to use tariffs as negotiating chips so that ultimately we can get more free trade. So the tariffs are really just a means to an end and the end is more free trade. But then in 2024, he's come out and said, no, actually, the tariffs are good in and of themselves. So look, the guy, like all major politicians, doesn't have perfect philosophical consistency here and people can try to read the tea leaves of what he really believes. I think the track record is clear. He is much more favorable to tariffs and protectionism. He's much more skeptical of free trade than any Republican in my lifetime.

But that's not throwing out our principles, as some of the modern Republicans would have you believe. ironically, Trump's position is much more in line with the historical position of the Republican Party. The Republican Party was founded on tariffs. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, said, give me a protective tariff, I'll give you the greatest nation on earth. It's not only, economic nationalism and protectionism

is not only more in line with the historical GOP, which only adopted free trade in the middle of the 20th century, and it really only rose to the fore with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who, I will mention, instituted major steel tariffs. So even Reagan, even St. Reagan of free trade also was a protectionist when it suited him. But it's also in line with the American tradition. America was founded on protective tariffs. Our founding fathers were economic nationalists.

Some of our most right-wing founding fathers, I'm thinking especially of Hamilton, were very pro tariff. Probably the GOP should be. take note. I guess the GOP voters have taken note. Some of the interests of the GOP, Chamber of Commerce used to be allied with the GOP, they haven't taken note yet. Maybe they should because the happy platitudes of the last 30 years don't really hold up to the exigencies of 2024, and they don't really hold up to historical scrutiny either. I'm not saying that free markets are always bad. Far from it, I think free markets can be a wonderful instrument for economic growth. But we don't want to let the tail wag the dog here, okay? We're not an economy with a nation attached. We're a nation that needs to have a thriving

economy in order to remain strong and vibrant. But the economy is there to serve the political community, not the other way around. Speaking of trade wars and China, China seems to be pretty bullish on Trump's chances in 2024. The Chinese state-run newspaper, the Global Times, I just came out and told the world, this was before the Iowa caucuses actually, to quote, prepare for the possibility of Donald Trump being reelected as president. And you might say, well, this is propaganda.

If you don't like Trump, you'd probably say, see, China is pulling for Trump. Though they're not really pulling for him. They're just saying, there's a real chance the guy's going to be reelected. And that might be the case. Foreigners sometimes have a better sense of our politics than we do.

I remember back in 2016, seen. Vladimir Putin, America's foe, Vladimir Putin, came out and he said in the early days of the primary, he said, there's no question Donald Trump is the leader in the Republican race. And I thought, oh, that's crazy propaganda, or he's just trying to get in our heads, or he's completely misreading the situation. This was back when all the really smart people thought Trump didn't have a chance. But Putin was right, which makes sense. I mean, you'd think that the dictator of a nuclear former superpower might have a little bit of insight into politics, a guy who came up as a KGB communist in the Soviet Union, he probably understands a little bit about politics,

probably more than your average keyboard warrior pundit. He was right. And China might be right here too. The reason that foreigners sometimes have better insight into our politics than we do is the same reason that you have great insight into all of your friends' problems, don't you? You have really, really good insight. Me too. We all. We have really good insight into all of our friends' problems and everything that they're doing wrong and everything that they're missing. But we don't have quite as much insight into our own problems, do we? No, that's a mystery. We're befuddled by that. Put in a pithier way and a more profound way, we're really good at seeing the speck in our neighbor's eye. We're not so good at seeing the plank in our own eye. And I think that's what's going on here.

I don't think China is running this headline because they're really eager for Trump to get back in the driver's seat. Don't forget before COVID, we were in the midst of a trade war with China, and we were winning, contrary to what the smart set said would happen. Speaking of problems, happening in our families and our communities, Jelly Roll, who I don't really know anything about. I take it that he is a musician. He has a lot of face tattoos.

He's a really interesting-looking guy. And he's an interesting sounding guy. Jellyroll just testified before Congress about the drug crisis overtaking the country. He's a former drug dealer himself. And the way that we talk about that crisis and the way that we talk about crime broadly. I also understand the paradox of my history as a drug dealer standing in front of this committee. But equally, I think that's what makes me perfect to talk about this. I was a part of the problem. I am here now standing as a man that wants to be a part of the solution. I brought my community down. I hurt people. I

I was the uneducated man in the kitchen playing chemist with drugs I knew absolutely nothing about, just like these drug dealers are doing right now when they're mixing every drug on the market with fentanyl, and they're killing the people we love. I'll be honest with y'all. My desire is the only get older and only do better and be better. I believed when I sold drugs genuinely that selling drugs was a victimless crime. I truly believe that, y'all. My father always told me, what doesn't get you in the wash or get you in the rents.

Now I have a 15-year-old daughter whose mother is a drug addict. Every day I get to look in the eyes of a victim in my household of the effects of drugs. Every single day. And every single day I have to wonder, me and my wife, if today will be the day that I have to tell my daughter that her mother became a part of the national statistic. What doesn't get you in the wash will get you in the rinse. I really like that line. I'm going to have to use that line, I think. That's a great insight.

But the best insight that Jelly Roll has there is this term victimless crime. Because first he says, you know, actions have consequences. What doesn't get you in the wash or get you in the rinse. Today, we think that actions don't have consequences. We think that we will totally be immune to the logical and natural consequences of our actions. There's a great meme that was going around for a while. The meme was me sewing.

Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. I love sewing, yeah. Yeah, this is, I love just sewing and planting all these little things and me reaping. Ooh, yikes, how did this happen? Yeah, I don't want to reap what I sew. I just want to keep doing all the sewing.

That's really fun. We know it. We know this about ourselves. We try to divorce. I mean, the clearest example is in sex stuff. we divorce the end of sex from the from sex itself but we do it in everything man we do it in everything now we just i don't know if it's because of a failure of long-term planning or because of a denial of logic i guess that's probably what it is because in logic things have consequences

and we deny logic these days and so we end up with phrases and this is the key phrase that jelly roll used we we end up with phrases like victimless crime we people are People on the right use that phrase, especially the segments of the right that want to go squishy on the social issues. They say, oh, who cares about a victimless crime? Do you hear yourself? Do you hear that phrase? That's a meaningless phrase, because by definition, there can be no such thing as a victimless

crime. We'll get to why in a second. First of all, my favorite comment yesterday is from Bo E. Lute, who says, how is it summarized in two minutes if this is a 49-minute video? Mr. Davies, they're onto us. They're onto all those videos that we title, such and such summed up in two minutes, and it's about 50 minutes, isn't it?

I'm not talking to Mr. Dave. I don't even have any earpiece in right now. But you're onto us. That's true. Maybe, look, the summary is two minutes, and then you get a little extra. You get 47, 48 minutes of extra. I hate the phrase victimless crime.

The libs use it. The libs coined it. The libs popular. it, of course. But now everyone uses it. People on the right use it. Libertarians who argue for the decriminalization of drugs or prostitution or all sorts of weird social stuff. They say, oh, it's a victimless crime. We should stop. There can't, there's no such thing as a victimless crime. Do you know where that phrase comes from? The phrase comes from 1965. The 1960s, when many, many bad things were coined and popularized. This is one of the.

It was coined in an academic paper by a guy named Edwin Schur, and the title of the paper was Crimes Without Victims, Devant Behavior and Public Policy. And you know what his examples are? This is what comes after the colon. Abortion, homosexuality, drug addictions. Specifically drug addictions, exactly what Jelly Rolls talking about. It says it's a victimless crime. Oh, yeah, tell that to the parent who lost a kid to drugs. Tell that to the many, many mothers and fathers in America right now whose kids are dead because of fentanyl and drugs. Victimless crime. Not only are the kids victims, the parents are victims. The brothers, the sisters, the whole political community. You kidding me? Drugs are a victimless crime? It's one of the greatest

examples of victimization going on in our whole country right now. We have we have a overdose epidemic that is so colossal that basically everyone, I think everyone that I know, knows someone or knows someone who knows someone who has died because of this. What about the other ones? Forget homosexuality. We talked about that enough on the show yesterday, two days ago. Abortion is a victimless crime.

You murder a little innocent baby that's a victimless crime? I don't think so. And those are the best examples they could come up with, by the way. Crazy. Because there's no such thing as a victimless crime. Because crime is by definition an injustice. It's an act of violence against someone. It can be an act of violence against your neighbor.

It can be an act of violence against the self. It can be an act of violence against art, nature, and God. But there's an injustice there. There is a victim there. You can't, unless you just deny sin, unless you deny that anything is better than anything else, You know, which I guess some people do. They don't really mean it because it's obviously nonsensical.

The moment someone says, there's no such thing as sin. There's no such thing as morality, man. The question I always ask is, oh, yeah, would you say it's better to bake a pie for a widow than it is to kick an orphan in the head? And they look at me and say, oh, that's a stupid question. Why is it a stupid question? Do you have an answer for it? The smart ones among them, they don't want to answer.

But the answer, yeah, of course, it's better to bake a pie for a widow than it is to kick an in the head. Okay. So if some things are better than other things, then there is a moral order, and there's good, and there's bad. If you would go so far as to say it's a crime to kick an orphan in the head, you are describing that kind of injustice in political terms. You're describing you're describing victimhood. Of course. Now, This phrase, what doesn't get you in the rinse will get you, what doesn't get you in the wash will get you in the rinse. This applies to a video that's just gone viral.

From the porn actress Mia Khalifa. Don't worry, you don't necessarily need to take your children out of the room if they're watching this right now. It's not one of those videos. This woman goes viral all the time for political reasons, which I guess is better than presumably her other videos on. the internet? I don't know though, actually. Because the content of her political activism is so awful that I can only imagine what her actual obscene content looks like. Mia Khalifa has gone viral

in this case, not for her pro-terrorism activism, but because she was recounting a very ugly incident that happened to her at a restaurant, here in her own words. And I get come up to by this guy and his girlfriend, and we were interrupted in the middle of talking and eating, and he I said, hey, Mia Khalifa, can I get a picture with you? And I looked up at him, and I'm like, no, we're eating. And I said it just like that. Like, it was a rude way, but it was also very rude for him to come up while someone was actively in the middle of a conversation.

And after I said that, his girlfriend, who was standing next to him, grabbed him by the arm and said, I told you that wasn't her. There's not enough on her face. Let's go, babe. And I went into the bathroom and cried, and I didn't really know how to handle it, especially because it came from a woman,

and especially because I was there for business, and it was something that had nothing to do with the adult industry. And I was just very dejected and embarrassed and felt like they would never want to work with me again. That must have been really... I kind of feel bad for Mia Khalifa here. Now, obviously, every single person involved in this story is just terrible.

Just everyone involved here is doing something. wrong and disreputable. But I feel bad for her. That's a really nasty thing. First of all, as she says, it was the woman. So think about how many things had to go wrong for this situation to take place. A guy would walk up to a porn performer in public and admit that he watches pornography. So degrading, so creepy, so weird. The guy would would do it in front of his girlfriend. And she's apparently okay with it. So weird, so depraved, so creepy. And then the girlfriend is the one who makes the obscene comment at the porn lady. Now, Mia Khalifa admits, she says, I was very rude to them. They come up to me. They ask for a

picture. They're fans, I guess, and they're willing to admit that. Then I was rude to them. That was wrong. She shouldn't do that. If anyone is going to come up to you and be nice to you and compliment you in public. You ought to be gracious about that. That's a good thing to do. And then what? They were rude back to her. And she was upset by this because she felt shame because they pointed out that she's a hooker. And they described the shameful actions that she boasts about and publicizes and that they are so encouraging of that they would that they would actually approach this woman in public

and talk about how great it is that but the moment that they became hostile toward one another the gal pointed out the shameful acts that this girl does and the girl felt shame for those shameful acts what doesn't get you in the wash will get you in the rinse

believe it or not even in the year of our Lord in 2004 even in modern society. Actions still have consequences. What she's really upset about, she says she's upset that a woman would say this to her in public. What she's really upset about is the shame of prostituting herself and degrading herself and treating herself. She's a human being with a soul made in the image and likeness of God. Treating herself as nothing but flesh to be transformed into glittering pixels on a screen that can then be, that can then incite the lusts of men and women,

apparently, and become fodder for other shameful sexual acts. That's what really bothers her. But she can't admit that. Even as she's speaking openly and vulnerably about this, she can't admit that. We can't admit in our culture that actions have consequences. And so we're always surprised. We're always surprised when we reap what we sow.

And when we're talking about politics, there's that great line from H.L. Mencken, which is that democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. And we're shocked. We're shocked when the totally predictable results of our actions turn out to be true. Wow. Shocking. Totally. What else did we expect? You know what I expect? I expect to see you tomorrow. I'm Michael Noles. This is the Michael Nulls show. See you then.