The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 2007 - Couple Climbs The Empire State Building But That's Not The Craziest Part

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

A couple is arrested for climbing to the top of the Empire State Building, Columbus, Ohio, celebrates Somali Independence Day, and a goth baddie wins a congressional seat. Ep. 2007 - - - Today's Sponsors: Angel Studios - Go to https://Angel.com/knowles. Join the Angel Guild today. Take advantage of our special offer and become a premium member for the lowest price of the season and get two free tickets to see 'Young Washington' in theaters this Independence Day. Fast Growing Trees - Visit https://fastgrowingtrees.com and get 20% off your first purchase when using the code KNOWLES PreBorn! - For just $28, PreBorn can provide one free ultrasound and help equip a new generation of parents to choose life and build strong families. To donate, dial #250 and say “BABY” or visit https://Preborn.com/knowles  - - - DailyWire+: Click here to join the member-exclusive portion of my show: https://dailywire.com/subscribe Becoming a Daily Wire member allows you to see all of our content ad-free. 📲 Download the free Daily Wire app today on iPhone, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung, and more. 🎆 Celebrate Independence Day with a DailyWire+ membership! 🇺🇸 Our 4th of July SALE offers 3-Months of DailyWire+ for $17.76 📜 📘 My book "Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds" is available here: https://dwplus.shop/Speechless 📗 My book "Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide" is available here: https://dwplus.shop/ReasonsToVoteForDemocrats 🕯️ Get your Michael Knowles candles: https://thecandleclub.com/collections/michael-knowles 👕 Don’t dress like a squish. Shop my merch here: https://dwplus.shop/MichaelKnowlesMerch - - - Socials: YouTube — https://youtube.com/@MichaelKnowles Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/michaelknowlesshow Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/michaeljknowles TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@notmichaelknowles X — https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, it's Wayfair here, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app, when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill too? All right, Wayfair's got you covered! With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast experts set up on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick.

BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario.

A man and woman were arrested. after climbing to the top of the Empire State Building, waving a banner with some stupid quote about love, and getting engaged with the man down on one knee at 1,500 feet above the ground, much of the commentary is focused on the recklessness, the danger to themselves, to the first responders, to pedestrians on the street below. But not enough commentary has centered around how the couple is extremely good looking, and the stunt was obviously cool. We will examine the morality of wacky public stunts.

Then, Columbus, Ohio celebrates Somali Independence Day instead of American Independence Day, just one day after the Supreme Court officially destroyed the last pretense of a coherent American identity. The Democrats' top sexual deviant and congressional frontrunner, Scott Weiner, scores another legislative win for sex offenders, and Tucker founds a new political party. There's a lot to get to. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. Welcome back to the show. A goth batty has just won the Republican primary for a Colorado congressional seat.

I can't believe this. You know, sometimes I say, I hate to say I told you so. But this one goes all to Mr. Davies. My producer has been saying four weeks now, he says, Michael, you've got to cover the got to Badi's story. There are these good-looking goth girls who are conservative, who are a Republican. I said, what are you talking about? You freak, you pervert. Stop to, I don't, I'm not, what's the news story about goth baddies? And then, anyway, one of them wins this Colorado congressional primary. So I really hate to say he told me. So we will get to that, what that means for aesthetics

and culture and the new GOP, especially as now there might be a new right-wing-ish political party. First, I want to tell you about Angel Studios. Go to angel.com slash Knowles, KNAWLAS. The story of George Washington did not begin at Valley Forge or Yorktown. It began decades earlier with a 20-year-old facing failure, surviving near death, and being shaped by Providence into the man who would found the greatest nation in human history. Young Washington tells that story. Directed by John Irwin, starring Andy Circus, Ben Kingsley, and Kelsey Grammer. No revisionism, no rewriting, just the truth of who Washington was and what God had planned for him. March into theaters, July 4th. Fourth, help make it the number one movie in America. Here's a smart move. Don't pay 30 bucks at the box office. A premium Angel Guild membership is just $15 a month, 25% off, locked in for 12 months,

two free tickets to Young Washington. Every future Angel release, Brink of War, Runner, Zero AD, plus their full streaming library homestead, the last radio, green and gold, Mike Rose, something to stand for, a lot of great stuff. Join the Angel Guild today. Go to angel.com slash Knowles. Take advantage of our special offer, become a premium member for the lowest price of the season. two free tickets to Young Washington in theaters this Independence Day,

be part of making this film the number one movie in America for our nation's 250th birthday. Biggest story yesterday, I'm traveling all around the country. I was in D.C. I'll get into a little bit more of that in the coming days. Great, great trip to D.C. Obviously, interviewed the vice president. A lot of those clips are going around the world. But the biggest story as I'm on the airplane yesterday, flying back from Idaho, was this crazy couple that climbs to the very typical. top of the Empire State building, the very highest point on the needle. They're at this point,

what, 1,700 feet above the ground. They're waving this flag that has a stupid quote on it. Then they get down to the platform just below the top of the needle. The guy gets down on one knee and proposes. This is going on for hours. The couple is fine. The first responders are fine. No one on the ground was hurt or killed. And the couple has been arrested. Now, all of the commentary around this is about how reckless this was, how reckless, how dangerous it was. It was reckless and dangerous and criminal. It was all those things. Some of the commentary has focused on the sign, the flag that they were waving because the flag, it wasn't an Antifa flag. It wasn't a Palestine flag. It wasn't a communist flag. The flag had this quote. The quote said,

when the power of love beats the love of power the world knows peace and so a lot of the commentary said wait this couple risked their lives to climb to the top and wave around the equivalent of like a live laugh love sign from T.J. Max.

It wasn't even a sign of political import. These crazy people, these idiots, what a dumb political ideology. And the thing is the flag was not the point of what they did. These are not activists. They're not, they don't have a serious political agenda.

It was a stunt. The point was climbing to the top of the Empire State Building and then proposing on one knee at the top of the Empire State Building. The sign was a little add-on. That was nothing. The quote, a lot of people are reporting this quote is coming from Jimmy Hendricks. And I don't know, maybe he said that or something like that. The quote originates with the Victorian-era prime minister of the UK, a William Gladstone,

who started out as a conservative. He ended up becoming one of the most famous liberal. prime ministers ever, though he was liberal in the 19th century, more in a kind of classical sense of liberalism. And it wasn't the exact quote, but it was similar to it. But that's all beside the point. The politics has nothing to do with this. These people, these are not your purple-haired, 5,000 piercings, tatted up everywhere, Antifa guys. In fact, they're very good-looking. This is a theme of today's show, I guess. It's a very good-looking young people. They're actually somewhat famous. This couple, it's Angela Nicola

and Ivan Bukus, they've done these stunts before. There's actually a Netflix movie about them called Skywalker's. What will they risk to touch the sky? And I guess the Empire State Building is their latest stunt. And they're just good looking, wacky, adventurous young people. This wasn't activism. So turn that, it's very, everything's activism these days. So we just read everything through an ideological lens.

One of the things I like about this stunt is, it wasn't activism. It wasn't ideological. It kind of seemed that way almost at first. It's not. It's just reckless young people doing a wacky, crazy, dangerous criminal stunt. And so I grade that totally, totally differently. This should not be imitated. If people imitate this, someone's going to die, maybe multiple people are going to die. It should not be imitated. However, it is wacky, it is fun. And they are good looking. That actually does kind of matter because this was a This was a stunt, and I'm not going to pretend to be angry about it. People do these things from time to time.

Remember the guy who walked on the high wire between the Twin Towers? When was that in the 70s or something, 80s? That was wacky and fun and dangerous and criminal, and he shouldn't have done it. But it's cool. It's obviously cool, and we shouldn't lie about that. It's one of those moments. People will remember it as a wacky, cool, fun thing. and of all the problems that we face, of all the real structural political problems, all of the decay, all of the social alienation, all of the young people checking out from society, some crazy risk takers doing a wacky, even criminal sort of thing.

By the relative measure of what's going on in our politics, I'm not going to complain. It was a fun little news story for the day. it was and it wasn't in your face activism and it was I'm not don't do it don't not to be tried at home I'm not going to pretend to be angry these things happen throughout history and it's it's actually delightful for society that people like this exist it's actually a good thing I will take a society where every once in a while these kinds of people do a thing that is criminal and dangerous over a society of alternately checked out alienated people just playing video games 25 hours a day and Antifa burning our country down and tearing down statues. I'll take the society of the wacky, risk-taking exuberant people any day of the week. Now, that stunt did not make me angry.

Something yesterday made me very, very angry. As you know, I get angry about twice a year, and this really, really made me angry. And the craziest part of the story, the thing that that made me angry this year was Malcolm in the middle. The thing that made me angry this year was a post from Frankie Munez, you know, he was Malcolm in the middle. He was a child actor, and then he became a race car driver. Here's what he posted. Life update. Following a period of separation that we kept private, Paige and I, I guess Paige is his wife, have decided to move forward with ending our marriage. After 10 beautiful years together, we've grown in ways that made us realize our relationship feels most natural and strong as a deep friendship and as co-parents. That's the line that really,

ooh, it'd be bad enough if they were just, you know, they got married, didn't have kids, they split up, that would be bad enough. You know, we just feel stronger, feels more natural if we're just friends and co-parents. We share an incredible son who remains the center of our world, and we're both happier. We're both happier. Who's we here? Who's we? We, I think Mr. Munez is referring to him and his wife. I don't think he's, I don't think he's referring to his son. We are both happier, stronger parents, because of the love and growth we've shared. I'm endlessly grateful to Page for everything she's done for me and our family. She put her own dreams on hold so I could chase mine, and she was always my biggest supporter. That foundation of respect and friendship isn't going anywhere.

Oh, yeah, it's not. We're excited to keep building Munez racing together. I guess that's their company and to co-parent our boy with the same teamwork and love we've always had. We're closing one chapter with gratitude. We're closing one chapter. That's how we refer to divorce, to violating a contract made to the public and to God, to ripping asunder the entire world of the family and the planet on which children live. We're just closing one chapter with gratitude and opening the next with bright futures ahead for us as individuals and especially for our son, especially for our son. You know, we're just, we're closing one chapter. We have bright futures. This is, in other words, this divorce is a really good thing for us as individuals. That is a dubious claim. It's a ridiculous

claim in itself, but it's beyond the pale. This public announcement certainly requires public comment and criticism when someone has the temerity. Either the complete. plead obliviousness or the audacity to claim that, you know, divorce is really good for our son. Thank you for the love and support. We both choose not to entertain any questions in this matter. Please respect our family's privacy during this time. Respect our privacy. Here's a long, here's a long diatribe talking about how great divorces for parents of a young child. But please respect our privacy. And then the cherry on top of this was the initial post included a video of Munez and his wife dancing with joy.

Do we have the video? Yeah, they're dancing. And then there's some text on it. It says, who says you can't stay best friends with your baby mama? Oh, my goodness. And then they put the kid in the video. And what's so tragic is it'd be easy to say this Munez is a really bad guy and he's doing something really awful intentionally and all this.

I don't think that's what's going on here. In fact, I think it's the opposite. And when I posted about this yesterday on social media, Frankie Munas actually responded to me. And we'll get to his response, what's really motivating this, what this means politically, and how we need to think about it.

First, I want to tell you about Fast-Groaring Trees. Go to FastGroaring Trees.com. Use promo code Knowles, K-N-W-L-A-S. There is something deeply satisfying about planting a tree, not in the abstract. I mean, literally planting a tree, You dig the hole, you put it in the ground, you watch something grow over time instead of staring at another screen all day. That is one of many reasons to love fast growing trees.

They're America's largest online nursery with thousands of trees and plants for your yard or home. Fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, houseplants, whatever fits your space. I'm a little miffed because I don't really have much land. I basically have no land at all. And Mr. Davies has just sprawling acres and hills. and he got my fast-growing trees coupon, and so he's getting all these nice trees, getting the blueberries so that his kids get nice, fresh blueberries.

What do I get? I hope, hopefully I'll get some land and then get some myself. Right now, they have great deals on spring planting essentials, up to half off select plants. Listeners to our show get 20% off their first purchase using code Noles at checkout. That's an additional 20% off, better plants and better growing at fastgrowingtree. com. Use code Knowles. Ken to WLAS, a checkout, fast-gring trees.

com. Promocode Knolls. Perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Code Knowles to save today. Offer is valid for limited time, terms, and conditions may apply. Also, folks, my beloved best-selling party game, yes or no, turns four years old today. Can you, that's crazy. What? I didn't know. I'm hearing it for the first time.

Yes or no turns four years old. Ben Davies's idea for like an extra video, which then became a best-selling physical party game, is four years old. That's nuts, man. Anyway, we're celebrating with 40% off the full set, original game plus every expansion pack. No code necessary, only available at dailywire.com slash shop. Four years, that's insane. Very popular game. We've sold out of this game like a billion times. What began is the iconic game show, got put in a box to take home.

Tens of thousands of games and expansion packs are sold. It is still the most reliably chaotic thing you can bring to a dinner party. Really helps you cut to the chase and get to know people and get to further know the people that you thought you knew. Here is what you get. the original game 200 cards recommended for 21 and up. Plus, you get all four expansion packs with over 110 cards in each. You get the All New America 250 special edition pack, the conspiracy expansion, philosophy, politics, and religion pack. Nothing says family reunion like all three of those at once.

Plus you get the dating and relationships expansion. Results, as we say, may vary. 40% off, no code required through Sunday night. Yes or no game only available at dailyware.com slash shop. Don't wait the special anniversary offer and Sunday, July 5th at 1159. Eastern Dailywire.com slash shop today. Also, not, I know there's a lot, there's a lot that we've sold. It's because there's a lot of stuff that you've bought. The Mayflower Dawn of America, this very special edition box for the 250th. It sold out. I told you it was going to sell out.

I didn't know that it would sell out that quickly, but I should have expected it. It did. We're trying to get more boxes on the way. We're doing our best. It's hard. This is a handmade artisanal product. And you all bought them up immediately. We're going to try to get some more. But anyway, for those of you who did get it, I'm really glad you got it. Thanks for getting it. And I hope you enjoy them. Okay. Back to Frankie Munez. I really, really hate this post that he made. I hate it. I hate it. And I really hate the video. But I don't think he's a bad guy. In fact, look, he's a child star. All these people usually end up addicted to crack or, you know, in horrible situations. And it seemed to me like he was one of the people who fared the best. He was a child actor who then became. a race car driver, he had a different career, and like, that's cool. He seemed like a nice guy. Seems like a nice guy. But this is so wrong. This is so, so, so wrong. This exemplifies everything wrong with the way that we think about marriage. And frankly, everything wrong with the way that we think about personal virtue and vice and sin as a public matter. Divorce is simply bad.

I'll go further. It's profoundly evil. It's profoundly evil. It's profoundly evil. It's profoundly evil. evil. Man is a social creature and a coupling creature. So marriage is not just some social construct, as a lot of modern ideologues think it is. It's a natural institution. Men and women are actually made for each other. And furthermore, that union is for a lifelong bond order toward the procreation and education of children, as well as the mutual good of the spouses. That's what it is for. When you blow that up, you are doing a lot more than just closing down an accounting firm, okay? It is especially awful and evil for kids. It just is.

That's all it is. And what I think Frankie Munez is doing here, I don't think he's an ideologue. I think he's an activist. Maybe that's another theme of today's show, too. Those guys in the Empire State Building, they're not activists. I don't think Frankie Munez is either. I think that it's a fallen world and we have a culture that is encouraging divorce and very conducive to divorce.

And I think, unfortunately, his marriage hit the rocks and now they intend to divorce. And what they're trying to do is the same thing that a lot of, virtually every couple that divorces does, which is they're trying to cope and they're telling themselves lies. And one of the chief lies that couples who divorce tell themselves is, this is actually better. It'll be better, not just for us individually, but for the kid. And it'll be better because the parents will be happier.

And if we're happier, then we can be better parents to our kids. And it's just not true. It's just a lie. Divorce is only bad. It's a fallen world. It happens sometimes. There is more that we can do as a political society to discourage divorce. We've had less divorce in the past. We've really opened up divorce in very recent years. New York State only liberalized to a no-fault divorce within the last 15 years or so. Even New York, which is a liberal state. So it's a recent phenomenon that we've been encouraging divorce like this. But no matter if you had the perfect political regime in a fallen world, some people will get divorced. That's a fact. That's what it means to live in a world pervaded by sin and death. However, please don't make me lie about it. Please don't lie to yourselves about it.

For the love of God, do not make me celebrate it. That's what I think people found so, so offensive about this post. It's why it went so viral. It's why Frankie Munez responded to me. Because what he said was, I don't have the exact text here. I saw it on the airplane as I was coming down last night. He said, we're not celebrating it. This is a really bad thing.

It's a horrific thing. But we're just trying to do what's best for the kid and not be acrimonious all the time and yeah, yeah, but you can't have your relationship remain just as strong or maybe even better when you divorce your wife or your husband. It, by definition, your relationship gets worse, gets much worse. And your kid feels that. And it is deeply scandalous. It's one of the most scandalous things you can do to a kid. And it happens. I'm not saying you need to go jump off a bridge or climb to the top of the Empire State Building and jump off, God forbid. I'm just saying you need to accept that. You need to look that in the face. If you're going to divorce your wife or your wife is

going to divorce you, you need to stare it right in the face and say, this is a bad thing. This is bad for us personally. I've never, I've seen a couple say, our lives are going to be so much better when we get divorced. It doesn't happen. Especially when you have a kid, there's really no such thing as divorce. You just go from having a bad marriage to a worse marriage because you're still dealing with the person all the time. You're dealing with them financially. You're dealing with them socially. You've got to go pick up the kids sometimes. Holidays become very difficult. So just if you're going to do it, look the reality in the face and say, I'm going to do something that is very likely going to be bad for me personally. It's definitely going to be bad for my kid. It's scandalous to society. It drastically increases

the likelihood that my kid will get divorced. It will. And if you're going to do it, there are going to be people who just do it anyway. And for whatever reason, marriage can be hard. Life in a fallen world can be very hard. I'm not denying any of that. But be honest about what you're doing. And if you are honest about what you're doing, it might give you a little bit of pause before you actually go through with it. I know plenty of people, friends and family who've gotten divorced, and they think it's going to be sunshine of roses, or they at the very least think it's going to be an improvement over their lives in a state of a difficult marriage. It's not. So know what you're doing. You know what you're doing. going in, maybe take that very seriously. And for heaven's sake, do not make us celebrate it. This to me,

this is one of the problems with the liberal morality. Think about it even. We just ended Pride Month. Now we're in Fourth of July month, but we'll get to the consequences of Pride Month with Senator Scott Weiner, the truest deviant in all of American politics who has just succeeded at protecting even more sexual predators. Another legislative win. But this is the problem with the liberal morality. Most people, most like even very religious people, very conservative people, if you say to them, hey, it's a fallen world, some people are kind of sexually a little bit aberrant, a little deviant, a little different, and they're going to kind of do their thing in the corner of society, and we're all going to kind of look the other way, right? We're not going to

make a big deal about it. Most religious and conservative people would say, yeah, right, we're not sending the Sharia purity police to people's doors. Yeah, of course. But that's not what the activists make us do. That's not what the people who insist on this liberal conception of morality make us do. It's never enough. They lie and they pretend that it's all about just leave us alone, just let us do our thing. Stop caring about what, stop being so nosy. Get out of my bedroom. But that's not what they want. They demand that you celebrate it. That's what Pride Month is. The LGBT activists can tell you day after day, oh no, we just want to be left alone. We just leave us alone. Also, we need a permit so that we can wear leather and parade ourselves through Main Street. Also, we need to

change curricula in the public schools to promote LGBT ideology. Actually, we need to redefine marriage at the level of the Supreme Court. Actually, actually, actually, actually, actually, you need to punish Christian baseball players because they don't want to wear the pride flag. And if they wear the pride flag on their hat, they might cite a Bible verse. And you need to punish them for it. It's never leave us alone. It's always, they always go too far. And they want to pretend that we're the unreasonable ones. The conservatives and the religious people, I think, are much, much more willing than the left to recognize it's a fallen world. Things go wrong. Things are a little weird sometimes. We're all going to try to deal with it together.

It is the left that comes in and says, you're going to celebrate it. It's like the old Seinfeld bit. You know, you're going to wear the pin. You're going to wear the ribbon. You're going to put on the pride flag. You're going to celebrate. We're going to dance for doing. You're going to get up and dance for how great. divorce is four kids. Not going to do it. Sorry. The recognition that that little bit of scandal, that in the little things the rot begins, the recognition that that necessarily leads down that slipperyest of slopes all the way down to a decadent and decayed society. That is why we take these issues so seriously. That is why that post from Frankie Munas went viral yesterday. I feel bad for him because in lying to himself and to the public, he's now only compounded

his grief doesn't have to be that way. Okay. Speaking of sexual immorality, Scott Weiner, Scott Weiner, Noman Estoman. Weiner has, he's running for Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat. He's the frontrun. He just got chased out of the trans march because he's apparently not radical enough. Scott Weiner just won yet another victory for sexual offenders in California. We'll get to that momentarily first. I want to tell you about preborn. Go to preborn.com slash knolls. America is a nation dedicated to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for its citizens. Our founding fathers and the men and women that made this nation great fought for these principles, but every day unborn babies are stripped of the most basic of these rights.

Preborn is here to change that. I love this nonprofit organization because it sees the world through not only my faith values pertaining to the right to life and protecting the innocent, but I'm certain yours as well. Providing a free ultrasound to scared soon-to-be mothers, pre-born has changed many minds and lives. To hear the heartbeat and see the eyes of an unborn child causes over 80% of these women to keep their baby, knowing that they will receive help and care from preborn. It's basically the best ROI you're going to get. Okay.

They also fundraise for their admin separately. So every dollar you give is going to saving babies. You give $28 to preborn. You're providing one free ultrasound. Do it today. For just $28, you equip a new generation of parents to choose life and build strong families. to donate, dial pound 250, say keyword baby. Pound 250, keyword baby, or donate securely at preborn.com slash knolls.

Every gift is tax deductible. Preborn.com slash knolls. Registered sex offenders in the state of California can now rest easy. They are still allowed to run for public office. If you're a chomo in the state of California, if you're child molester, if you're some other kind of, if you're a rapist, if you're some other kind of sexual offender, don't worry, you too can still be in Congress, thanks to Scott Weiner. Scott Weiner was on the panel of state senators that was considering a proposal that would have prohibited child molesters and rapists and other

sexual predators from running for public office. And Weiner, along with some of his Democrat colleagues, killed the proposal. Here is Scott Weiner explaining. This is potentially a very dangerous road we're going to. to say that minor crimes are going to ban you for life for running for office. We live in a democracy where people get to run for office, including people who have a lot of flaws. Minor crimes is the most unfortunate euphemism I think I've ever heard for this subject, minor crimes. Emphasis on the word minor.

The way he explains this, he tries to make it seem as normal as, but, well, you know, I mean, Like totally. I mean, can you even imagine? I mean, people are saying just because you're like a child molester or a rapist, you can't even become the mayor of San Diego. I mean, it's just totally, come on. I mean, people make mistakes. Seriously. Is that, that's what we're doing now? Yeah, of course that's what we're doing. Of course. This guy's chief political achievement. I'm not being hyperbolic. I'm not, his chief political achievement as state senator was reducing punishments for grown men who rape underage boys. Look it up. I mean, I think, you believe me, I think, I suspect in the audience. But some people say, that can't be true. No, that's not,

even on the left. They'll say, no, no, you're exaggerating. I'm not exaggering. That's his actual chief political achievement. Is reducing punishments for grown men who rape underage boys. So yeah, of course he thinks that registered sex offenders should be able to run for public office. What's so crazy about this? The craziest part is using the euphemism of minor crimes. Oh my goodness. But the craziest part other than that is that it's not just him. You say, look, okay, Scott Weiner tries to promote sexual predators.

Like, yeah, breaking news, sun shines. Breaking news, fish are swimming. Yeah, that's what he does. That's his nature, I guess. That's his political nature. but what about San Diego State Senator Sabrina Cervantes? What about Republican? Sorry, sorry, that's not fair.

State Senator Sabrina Cervantes and Republican State Senator Stephen Choi, they're the ones who voted to prohibit the sexual predators. It's Democrat State Senator Scott Weiner, Democrat State Senator Tom Umberg, and Democrat State Senator Ben Allen. they're the ones who all voted to protect the chomos. I don't know that much about Tom Umberg or Ben Allen. They're clearly not quite as flamboyant as Mr. Weiner,

but they voted the same way he did. And it held so now the chomos can keep running. In other words, the majority of this panel of state legislators in California voted to protect the sexual predators. And that recognition that it's, It'd be one thing if it were just this guy. You say, yeah, well, he's a complete freak and pervert, so I'm not surprised. But this is now the mainstream view of the Democrat Party. The mainstream view of California Democrats is to elect child molesters to Congress and to mayoral offices and governor potentially. That's the mainstream. It's not a fringe view. It's not just something that exists on blue sky or something. That is what Democrats have elected people and the duly elected representatives of California say, we want to elect child molesters to public office. It's the same kind of radicalization that occurred within me and within many of us after Charlie was assassinated. After Charlie was assassinated, that was a great

national trauma for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that Charlie in his public life was the gracious, the charitable, interlocutor, trying to talk it out with the libs. He was so mainstream. He was so centrist and they still killed him. I mean, that was a big part of it. But the other part that was so radicalizing is it was all those people afterward who celebrated it. It's not shocking that Tyler Robinson trans-fury lover murdered a prominent conservative. Allegedly, while he was talking about transgenderism. That's sad. It's horrible. Scary. That's not surprising. What was surprising and radicalizing is that the lady who sits next to you at work defended it. And the waiter and the nurse and the teacher and the elected Democrats and the Democrats on cable news and that they were

justifying this. They were minimizing this. They were celebrating this in some cases after the fact. That's what made it such a political trauma. As you say, oh, a huge swath. It's not the majority, but a huge swath of the mainstream of the Democrat Party wants to murder the most moderate and gracious of Republicans. that's the radicalizing thing.

And probably your grandma still thinks that, you know, Democrats and Republicans, we just disagree on a few things. But, you know, at the end of the day, we all want what's best for the country. We want to live in a good civil polity. No, no. That might have been true 20 years ago. That isn't true now. The Democrat Party now in the mainstream wants to elect child molesters to public office and substantially wants to murder the nicest Republican you know. And if I'm being hyperbolic, please prove me wrong. Please show me the, because I've read the numbers. I've seen the statistics.

I've heard the quotes. I've looked at the votes. I don't think I'm being unfair in any way. And that's a very radicalizing fact. Okay. Speaking of radicalizing events, Columbus, Ohio is. is really excited for Independence Day. We all are, right?

We're getting our bunting out, looking forward to hot dogs and fireworks. And, oh, wait, hold on, wait, hold the fort. They're not celebrating that Independence Day. They're not celebrating 1776. Columbus, Ohio is really, really excited to celebrate Somali Independence Day. Columbus, Parks, and Rec. As we celebrate the unification of the trust territory of Somal land

and the state of Somaliland into the Somali Republic in 1960, blah, blah, blah, blah. and they got big picture there of a Somali star celebrating Somali independence. First of all, I guess the funniest thing about this post is that Somalia is not a real country. Somalia has undergone radical political transformation many times over the last century, and it is a failed state of pirates. And indeed, even the liberals, if they were in some moments of Canada, would have to admit this, that's one of their arguments for taking all the Somalis into America.

On the one hand, they say, we have to take the Somalis into America because it's a failed state, and it's an S-H-I-T, whole country, and it's terrible, and it's not even a real nation. But then, out of the other side of their mouths, they say, and we're so excited to celebrate Somali Independence Day. What a great country that is. And why are they doing that? Because the Somalis that we took in, because on the grounds that Somali is not a real country, those Somalis have greater political allegiance to a country in Africa than they do to our own country. And that is just a fact of rapid immigration. It's not even particular to Somalis or Africans or it's not like a racial or ethnic thing even necessarily. That's just how immigration works. That's why the great writers in antiquity

through the Middle Ages up to the modern era have observed that you have to be very, very careful when you're taking immigrants in because they can radically destabilize a country. And it's just a fact that though we have a lot of ideological pretensions in America, and we think that America is just an idea, or we think America is a creed, or America is just, you know, passing a civics test, and then you're as American as anybody. You can't replace a people with a different people and have the country remain the same country. Now, you're not allowed to talk about replacement migration unless you're celebrating it. The United Nations has documents talking about replacement migration. The left has published famous political science papers and even run campaigns about the glories of replacement migration.

And when you celebrate it, that's okay. When you say it's happening and it might be a bad thing, of course, that's a neo-Nazi evil radical conspiracy theory. But it is happening, obviously. It's the Democrats' preferred strategy. And it's been going on for 60 years now. And there have been, there were antecedents even before that. But let's just take it.

What the Democrats have done is not to fully replace the country, but to just radically changed the demographics of the country. And so you're seeing the consequences of it. But let's just take that idea to its logical conclusion. The logical conclusion of the Democrats immigration regime, the logical conclusion of the idea that America is merely propositional or creedal. Let's just say, in an imaginary world, that you had a country and you took all the people of the country out, and you put totally different people in. You still had the same physical constitution, you still have the same geography. You still have the same buildings.

You still have the same roads and streets, at least for some period of time. The question you have to ask yourself is, would that still be the same country? It seems like I'm setting you up. It seems like it's a stupid question. But I think if you really pressed a lot of people on that, especially the ones who insist upon the creedal propositional character of America, they would say, well, yes, it would be. So long as they assimilate.

Asimilate to what? You just took out all the original people. Let's say you just totally replace the people. Would that be the same country? I think a lot of them would say yes. But it obviously would not be because a nation is the people. And the people are informed by ideas and they're shaped by geography and they're shaped by buildings and all that. But the nation is the people.

That's what the nation is. And so one of the real problems with the Somalis is they don't really love our country. the Somalis have a particularly sticky and foreign cultural identity and they are a particularly criminal people. Like it is a pirate country and they have just perpetrated one of the greatest frauds on the American government ever as we're seeing in multiple states, not just Minnesota. But it's not, I don't even really just mean to pick on the Somalis. One of the problems is a lot of these modern migrants from really radical,

I'm not even talking about Latin America. I'm talking about like really radical cultures. they don't love America, they don't have much in common with America, they want to replace American institutions with their own. But even the crazy part is even if the immigrants did love their countries, sorry, even if the immigrants did love the country that they're coming to, really love the United States, really want to be part of it, and there are plenty of immigrants like that. Even if that were the case, too much immigration would still be a major problem. Even if they really wanted to assimilate, right away? You can't. You can't do it. It takes time. St. Thomas Aquinas points out. It takes

generations to assimilate. And he's not the first one. He's taking his lead from ancient Greek political philosophers. It takes time. Think about it this way. You an American. I'll use myself as an example. I love the United Kingdom. I am super anglophile. I was just in the UK for the Oxford Union debate, not that a few weeks ago. I love the UK. Or Italy. I love Italy. My family comes from the UK and comes from Italy. I speak. Italian. I studied Italian literature in college. I've spent a decent amount of time in Italy. If I moved to the UK tomorrow or to Italy tomorrow, I would not be able to really be a Brit or an Italian. I would not be able to preserve their culture and traditions. I would still be a foreigner.

Even though I'm, I descend from their stock, I speak their languages, I love their culture, I would want to assimilate, and I still wouldn't be able to do it because it takes time. It is not, assimilation is not purely an intellectual matter. It's got to be in your bones. It's got to go through generations. The 4th of July is not just about reciting a few lines from the Declaration of Independence. It's about hot dogs and fireworks and what you do and maybe going to the beach or going to a lake. It's about the games that you play with your kids.

It's about playing cornhole, whatever it is. it's these things that have to be learned over time. Mass migration in the best of circumstances would be massively dangerous to the United States. And we happen to be in the worst of circumstances, especially now since the Supreme Court blew up one of the last major potential limitations on immigration. Okay. Now, what does that mean for our political order? It means there's a new political party coming up. Tucker Carlson is founding a new party. 250 years ago, 56 men pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to birth the greatest experiment in self-government the world had ever seen. The least we can do, the very least, is celebrate properly. Daily Wire is marking

America's 250th, with something we've never done before. Get three months of Daily Wire Plus for just $17.76. You get it? Do you get it? 1776. Do you get it? All daily shows. Premium editorial articles, the full content library, brand new collection of American history content we've added specifically for July. Movies and docs that are actually worth. watching on Independence Day weekend. If you've been considering joining DailyWare Plus, this is the first time to do it and the best time to do it. Go to DailyWireplus.com.

First time we've ever done at 1776. Sign up today. Happy 250th America. My favorite comment yesterday is from Toby Breedlove, who says, I'm not sure what this gnome mushroom thing means. You know, these people have taken mushrooms, they see little gnomes everywhere. I'm not sure what this gnome mushroom thing means, but it'd definitely be a portent of something. As Michael is fond of saying, gnomon est omen. Do you get it? It's a pun, and I'm a sucker

for a good. Nomen. The gnomes are an omen. Okay. That's enough. That's enough of that. Tucker is founding a new political party. In commentary to the Columbia Journalism Review, Tucker says, I'm going to help build a third party. There should be a good faith effort to figure out what benefits the country. He says, I mean, if you make $60,000 a year, you're degraded. Your life expectancy has gone down and the promise of your children's lives is likely gone. No one seems to care. It's not even a factor. What about Hamas? I officially don't care about Hamas. The U.S. government should have as its first priority the welfare of its own people. So it's interesting. Right in those comments there, you get this idea, I want to build a third party. Plenty of third parties have cropped up

in the U.S. None of them have worked, but they've cropped up in the U.S. in recent decades. On the left, on the right, okay, want to build a third party, sure. We need a good faith effort to figure out what benefits our country. We need to, you know, care for people who aren't making $300,000 a year. You know, the forgotten men and women of America, the lower middle class, working class, we need to care about them. That's totally right. I agree. This comes up on the left and on the right in third party suggestions. Well, what is going to differentiate this? I mean, what is, what's the secret sauce here? And Tucker kind of gets to it. He says, what about Hamas? I officially don't care about Hamas. So right there you get, okay, it's a party that is going to be defined, at least in part,

by a hostility to America's relationship with the state of Israel, which, given Tucker's recent commentary, is not, not totally surprising. Then he goes on, he says, how could I or any American voter support a political party that's not loyal to the United States? So here, Tucker was a Republican. The accusation is that the Republican Party is not loyal to the United States, and I don't think it takes a Ph.D. in Pollyside to observe. He's saying the reason the Republicans are not loyal to the United States is because they're loyal to the state of Israel, which is the foreign state that Tucker's founding this new party in opposition to. That puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its citizens. There you go.

It's not possible to vote for people like that, and I'm not going to. Okay. So for the kids in the audience, this might seem like a new idea. Even for some of the older people in the audience, this might seem like a kind of a new idea. There is major dissatisfaction with both political parties, as there have been in recent decades even. And so maybe there's an opportunity for a third party. But the American system is not a parliamentary system like in the UK or in Europe. And third parties don't really succeed that well here. But hey, maybe there's a chance. And so this is something new. That's what I think a lot of people are going to look at this and say, wow, Tucker is really starting something new here. But if you're around in the 90s, especially up to the year 2000, you will recognize there is nothing new about this at all. This is the Reform Party. The Reform Party, not to be pedantic for those of you who live through it and remember it, but for those who don't, the Reform Party was founded in 1995 by Ross Perrault. who was the spoiler candidate to take the election away from a George H.W. Bush in 1992. So Ross Perrault runs as a spoiler. Bush violated his promises on not raising taxes.

And he seemed kind of just like a more establishment business Republican. So Rossboro takes a little bit of that cultural energy goes down. But then the Reform Party really starts to hit its stride in the public imagination because of Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan, who ran for the Republican nomination against George H.W. Bush in 1992, they spoke at the convention. Bush, I write about this in my book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, which is available wherever fine books are sold. They weren't ready for the bell. They weren't. Yeah, you didn't expect it. I haven't done it in a while. George H.W. writes about how, now that the Cold War is over, we need to win the peace and we need to win the economic war. And it was just about basically neoliberal globalism for America as the hegemon to regulate trade.

so we don't really fight so much anymore, and it's all about economic issues. Pap Buchanan, on the other hand, gives this great, great speech, one of the great convention speeches ever, which is the culture war speech in which he says, this country's going down the tubes because of the LGBT movement rising up and threats to marriage and the family. So he's given the real cultural speech. But Buchanan loses to Bush. Buchanan then runs again in 96 and then 2000 was really kind of the apotheosis of the Reform Party and the platform of Buchanan 2000 was America first non-intervention overseas skepticism of the American relationship with Israel was definitely part of Pap Buchanan's

political platform a retrenchment and focus on the forgotten men and women of America a great skepticism of neoliberalism and some of the economic agenda of the Republican Party over the last 30 years. It's just, it was advanced by a very popular pundit named Pat Buchanan, a very, very popular right-wing pundit who then left the GOP. The parallels are just perfect. And so when Tucker says he's founding this new political party, this is not just Tucker kind of going crazy or being capricious or something like that. he's doing something that already happened. Tucker's a pretty clever political operator, as you may have noticed. And so it's not like this is just, he's just shooting from the hip here. He sees that there is a part of politics that has not been totally represented, and he wants to pull that up again

and just basically do the Pap Buchanan roadmap. As a pundit, Tucker has become, has really filled in more of the Pap Buchanan Lane. And they're not perfect analogs for each. other, but he's filled in more of that lane. And now he might do that in politics by founding this party, whether or not Tucker actually runs for president himself. It's almost to a T. I mean, really, this new political party is just, it's a party like it's 1999. We're going to have a party like it's 1999. And so I know there are a lot of Republicans who are really, really worried about this. And there's to say, Tucker's going to split the vote. And I just don't think that's going to happen. because this exact thing happened before 25, 26 years ago, they tried it, or really 30 years ago, I guess, because of Perrault's version of it. And they got like five votes. You know, like it didn't work. Perot might have hit around 1% of the vote. Duquesne didn't crack 1%, didn't come anywhere close, didn't win an electoral vote. It doesn't matter. It's not that there's, it's not that there's no appetite for this kind of thing. It's not that the GOP and the Democrats are

perfect, obviously far from it, but we've heard this song before. Now, I guess what Tucker might be betting on is that 2026 is different than 2000. What he might be betting on is the political conditions are now such that this is a time, you know, the Buchanan Reform Party was an idea whose time had not yet come, but now the time has come. I just remain very skeptical of that. I am not one of these people who is constantly complaining about the Republican Party, though many Republicans are like that. I don't want a third party. I don't invade against her two-party system, I think the two-party system is actually pretty efficient. I think the two-party system actually pretty adequately represents the divergent political views and it provides the best

opportunity for most of people's concerns to come to the four. I know we all hate the two-party system. It's the worst kind of party system in the world, except for all of the other ones. But I just don't see this as really doing very much. You know, Kanye tried to start a party. Was it the birthday party? and then Elon tried to start a party, the America Party. I don't know. I mean, Tucker is such a clever political guy. I don't even know that he seriously intends for this to be a major political party or even to have a presidential candidate. This might be like three or four DHS.

I just, I don't know. I don't have a read on his intentions and I'm not going to psycho babble about him. But just from the raw mechanics of it, no. Some things have changed since the year 2000, but not enough. And the trajectory of America has not changed enough. I don't really see this happening. So if you're a, if you're a Republican worried about the demise of the GOP because of this third party, I just think all of history attests that this is not really, really a threat to you. Okay, there's so much more I want to go. Oh, you know what I got to. I'm

sorry. No, maybe this is like the perfect tease. This is like the perfect tea. This is like literally a tease, I guess. A goth batty has just won the Colorado congressional primary. I'm only using that phrase because Mr. Davies insisted upon it. And then his prediction came true. But this woman, Kelly Denison, she just won it. And she's a 27-year-old massage therapist. She could be one of the youngest people in Congress. And she's probably not going to win because it's a major Democrat district. But her candidacy is very, very interesting because the question on at least Mr. Davies's mind is, when did the goth batty's become conservative? My answer is maybe kind of always. Anyway, we'll have to get to it tomorrow because today is dey.

he Thursday. Finally! Finally! Oh, I was driving me nuts, man, that you were skipping my t-he-hees. It's D-he-he-thursday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member use code Knowles, Kna, W-L-E-S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.