The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 401 - Save The Planet: Don’t Recycle

Episode Date: August 20, 2019

SF Airport has officially banned plastic water bottles. We will examine the real purpose behind the rules. Then, Biden releases his first televised campaign ad, and a new study may have just confirmed 75 years of kooky, cranky, far-right conspiracy theories. Date: 08-20-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The San Francisco airport has officially banned plastic water bottles. In a city teeming with human feces and used syringes, hydration for travelers is officially a bridge too far. Ironically, a number of studies show the ever-multiplying environmental regulations not only don't help the environment, but they actually hurt the environment. We will examine the real purpose behind the rules. Then Joe Biden releases his first televised campaign ad and the title, is absolutely hilarious and completely oblivious. We'll get to that.

Finally, a new study published in an influential journal may have just confirmed 75 years of kooky, cranky, far-right conspiracy theories. All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is the Michael Knowles show. What a show today. Thank goodness I have my reusable leftist tears tumbler. Otherwise, I think the police would come in and arrest me. I think it would be a capital offense if I had a reusable water bottle here, but the Leftist Tears Tumblr is there to protect you at all times from the floods of Leftist Tears and from the increasing environmental regulations. We'll get to these nonsense regulations and what they really mean because they are certainly not about protecting the environment. But first, let me tell you why I feel so good, why I

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Right now, my listeners, get $50 off your first set of sheets. Don't say I never did nothing for you. That's a pretty good deal. Go to bolandbranch.com promo code Michael. Go to B-O-L-L-B-B-R-N-B-R-N-B-R-N-B-R-N-B-B-RANCH-B-B-RANCH-BOR. BOLENCH-BRANCH-com promo code Michael. We have got to talk about something that's not as comfortable, that's not as convenient, that's not as luxurious, and that is all these stupid environmental regulations that are coming out.

San Francisco Airport has officially banned plastic water bottles. That's the great scourge. This is the great political issue of our day, not open borders, immigration, economic turmoil, trade, war, IP theft. No, no, no. The big issue is plastic water bottles. This new regulation comes three years after California banned single-use plastic grocery bags. Thank goodness we got rid of that, though. The earth was hurtling toward Armageddon, but then we got rid of single-use plastic grocery bags.

and finally the earth was saved. This, of course, all comes at the same time that we cannot get plastic drinking straws any longer. We've gotten rid of the plastic drinking straws. Our civilization will be saved. You can shoot heroin in the streets of San Francisco outside of an elementary school, and the government will give you free needles.

But if you sip your own, iced coffee out of a plastic drinking straw. That is nearly a capital offense, I think. I think they're increasing the severity of that crime. This plastic water bottle ban is incredibly stupid. And it's not just stupid because it won't have that much of an impact. It's stupid because the purpose isn't to help the environment. The purpose is just to harm you. Like all of these other regulations and bans. It's not about the environment. It's about inconveniencing you. Here's how you know, by the way. In San Francisco Airport now, the ban is only affecting water bottles. But you know, you go into the store at the airport or any deli or any convenience store.

They don't just sell water bottles. They sell soda bottles, iced tea bottles, Gatorade, juice drinks, all these different kinds of drinks. All of those are fine at San Francisco Airport. The only one you can't get is a water bottle. Why is it? Because travel dehydrates you. I've learned this the hard way. One time I flew to New York for a bachelor party, so it was already a little dehydrated. I get on the airplane and I forgot that travel dehydrates you. I felt like I was in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Men lose up to half a gallon of water from their bodies during a 10-hour flight. It's a lot of water. and you are also not allowed to bring any liquid past security in airports. So what are you supposed to do now? You're supposed to suffer. That's it. I guess you could bring

I don't know a metallic water bottle or a reusable water bottle that's empty through security and then go to the one water fountain somewhere in the airport or you can go into the airport bathroom and fill up your water bottle. Doesn't that sound delicious? Doesn't that sound really appetizing? Or you can suffer. And that's what they want you to do. They want you to suffer. The whole point of this is inconvenience. You saw this with the plastic grocery bag ban. So three years ago in California, other states have followed suit. But in 2016, in California, they banned single-use plastic grocery bags. New York followed California this past March. And when they did that, New York's

governor, Andrew Cuomo, he declared that the ban would, quote, help reduce litter in our communities, protect our water and create a cleaner and greener New York for all. So that's what happened, right? That's obviously what happened. No, actually, of course not. Plastic pollution got significantly worse. We haven't seen the effect in New York yet because it just happened. But in California, the ban actually caused more plastic pollution.

How did it do that? How do we know that? There was a study out of the University of Sydney that showed that the ban on the single-use, little thin, nothing plastic grocery bags led to a massive increase in the sale of thicker, more environmentally damaging plastic garbage bags. So you know, the kind you line your garbage with at home. How's that work? What is the relationship between grocery bags and garbage bags that none of these economists or none of these regulators or none of these environmental activists could have thought of? Well, you know from your own use. Back in the good old days when

we had plastic grocery bags, you would go, you'd get all your groceries. and then you'd save your plastic grocery bags, right? And if you're anything like my family, you'd save like 300 of them. You'd never use as many as you actually got, so you just have them in a pantry somewhere. But you would use them. You would slowly use them, and the way you would use them is to line your small little garbage garbages, your little trash bins. And that way it was very easy.

It was actually an organic way to recycle. Because you got these bags. You don't want to go out and buy new garbage bags. There's no reason to do that. so you figure, okay, make use with that, throw your trash away, put that in the trash, throw it out, you're good to go. Now that you can't do that, now that those bags don't exist, people have to line their trash bins somehow, so they're going out there by much more environmentally damaging bags. Okay, well, at least it's better as far as the grocery bags themselves are concerned,

right? Wrong. Another study showed that paper bags, which is what replaced the single-use plastic bags, are actually worse for the environment than the single-use plastic bags. How do we know that? Environmental agencies showed in 2011, that far back, eight years ago, that you would have to reuse a paper bag, a paper grocery bag, three times if you wanted to bring its environmental impact down to the level of a single-use plastic bag. Now, do you ever reuse paper bags? No, nobody does. You just throw them out. Ironically, you do reuse the environmentally pretty fine plastic bags, but you don't reuse the paper bags. So they're actually much. worse for the environment. Why is that? It takes a lot more energy to make the paper bags. You have to create the pulp. You have to manufacture the paper bag. And in all of that energy and all of that time, you could have just made that single use, very thin plastic bag from oil. Okay then. Okay then, Michael, you conservative, you anti-environmentalist. Then forget the plastic bags. Forget the paper bags.

I know. I know the way that we can save the environment, right? This is what all the activists tell you. It's what at the grocery store checkout, what they tell you. You can buy one of those reusable cotton bags. You ever see all those are great bags, right? That's the best. That's when you really want to protect the planet from global warming. You buy those bags. All the most liberal people you know have those bags, they bring them back and forth. That's better for the environment, right? No, that's the worst for the environment of all. Ha ha ha ha. A headline. from Quartz came out just this past April, quote, Your cotton tote is pretty much the worst replacement for a plastic bag.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to the scientists. 2018 study from Denmark's Ministry of Environment and Food found that cotton shopping bags need to be reused. How many times? You want to guess? So if you want to bring the paper bag down to the environmental impact level of a plastic bag, you got to reuse it three times. Do you know how many times you got to reuse a cotton shopping bag? 20,000 times. I'm not going to go to the grocery store 20,000 times in my life. I go like twice a year anyway.

But you're not going to do it. And really what people do is they buy the bags and they use them one or two times and they forget about them and then they lose them somewhere. And then you buy another bag. So now you're up to 40,000 times. How many times you're going to repeat that cycle? You're going to have to reuse these bags like. like 200,000 times before you can bring the environmental impact down to a single plastic bag.

This was the worst option. So what did this study out of Denmark find? What is the best way to protect the environment in your grocery shopping endeavors? The good old plastic grocery bag. Now, okay, maybe the environmentalist just got it wrong. They, look, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, sure enough. Now they've seen the error of their ways. Have the environmentalists changed their tune? Are they saying, oh gosh, we got to ban those cotton bags. Let's bring back those plastic bags. No, of course not. Because it's not about protecting the environment. It's just about inconveniencing you. This is a big difference between conservationism and environmentalism. Teddy Roosevelt loved conservation, right? A lot of conservatives love

conservation. It's where we protect the natural environment because we like it. We like the beautiful landscapes. We like the deer. We want to protect all the deer so that we can go out and hunt and kill the deer and then eat the deer. We like the environment for our pleasure. Environmentalism flips that calculus. And in environmentalism, it is no longer the idea that we're preserving the environment for our benefit. It's that we are serving the environment. We are wicked, awful, terrible polluters. And the environment is this beautiful quasi-divine deity, I guess, this quasi-divine being. And we need to serve the environment. We need to save the earth as though the earth could be saved.

What does that even mean? This religion of environmentalism has taken the place of traditional religion. It offers all the elements of religion. It offers sin in pollution. It offers atonement in recycling. It offers Armageddon in global warming, which is going to kill us in 14 months or 12 months or 10 months or 12 years or 35 years or whatever it is now. It even offers the sale of indulgences in the form of carbon tax credits. It is a religious system.

Everybody's got to serve somebody. And as traditional religious observance has waned, environmentalism, among other leftist ideologies, has risen up to fill that void. You see this perhaps most clearly, not even just in the United States with the plastic water bans in San Francisco airport. Look over in the United Kingdom. Two big stories out of the United Kingdom. A 34-year-old mother of three put her recycling in the wrong color bag. So you know here we have black bags for trash or white bags for trash and then we have blue bags for recycling. I guess they have the same in the UK. And she went to her borough council to get the correct bags to be used for recycling.

And they didn't give her the bags. So then she got permission to use the black bag, which is usually for trash, for her recycling. So she's still recycling. She's still separating it and putting her recycling out there. Do you know what happened to this poor woman? She was arrested and thrown in jail for still recycling, but not recycling in the correct color bag. How did they catch her? They found her on a closed circuit TV camera

putting out the wrong color bag on the day for the recycling, so they arrested her and threw her in jail. The color of the bags in no way affects the environment, right? Of course not. But it does affect the moral dictates of the Church of Environmentalism. Also in the UK, completely on the other side of this,

the country's most prominent environmental activists, Prince Harry and Megan Mark Markle just flew on a private jet to stay with their good friend Elton John in Nice. This was their fourth trip on a private jet in 11 days. Fine, I don't care. They can fly on as many private jets as they want, except at the exact same time, just last month, Harry and Megan posted on Instagram about how important it is to protect the environment. This is the post, quote, as a continuation of our monthly social awareness approach

to shine a light on the accounts that are working toward positive change. change. For the month of July, we turn our attention to the environment. There is a ticking clock to protect our environment. With climate change, the deterioration of our natural resources, endangerment of sacred wildlife. Sacred, like we're worshipping the wildlife? What does that even mean? The impact of plastics and microplastics and fossil fuel emissions, you know, like the sort that are emitted from private jets. The post goes on. We are jeopardizing this beautiful place we call home for ourselves and for future generations. Let's save it. Let's do our part. Okay. Now, you could say it was just some staffer at the palace posting that. Harry and Megan didn't post that. They don't,

they're not really that intense about the environmental thing. They're not really being hypocrites. They're just caught up in the royal family. No, no, it goes on. The Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry, gives a quote, quote, environmental damage has been treated as a necessary byproduct of economic growth. So deeply ingrained is this thinking that it has been considered part of the natural order, that humankind's development comes at the expense of our planet. Only now are we starting to notice and understand the damage that we've been causing. With nearly 7.7 billion people inhabiting this Earth, every choice, every footprint, every action makes a difference. Please visit the accounts we're following this month to figure

out how you can create change and help save our planet. We can only do this together and every little bit helps. Every little bit helps. Every footprint. Every action makes a difference. Except for private jets, four times in 11 days. Economic growth is the problem. You see, economic growth is not worth environmental degradation.

A trip to Uncle Elton's house in Nice, that is worth environmental degradation, but not economic growth. Because economic growth just affects like all those poor people, all those common people. It doesn't look as good on an Instagram post when you're the prince. This is religious hypocrisy. This is the same as any other sort of religious hypocrisy. The guy who sits in the front pew at church on Sunday, and then he spends Monday through Saturday boozing and gambling and womanizing and lying and cheating. It's not just failing to live up to one's own standards,

which we all fail to live up to our standards. That's not an argument against having standards. It's not just like Prince Harry and Megan Markle and these other leftist environmentalists who take private jets everywhere, you know, Leo DiCaprio or somebody. It's not just that they're failing to live up to their own standards. It's not just that they're failing to live according to their ideology. They're just ignoring their ideology. They just do it. They just fly private four times in 11 days.

They don't really believe what they're saying. They're just pretending to believe it to conform to what has become the new secular moral order, a big part of which is, environmentalism. They want you to pretend to care about nature and then not do anything to protect it. But you got to pretend because we need a moral order and in a secular, atheistic society, environmentalism is going to fill that gap. I think you should do the opposite of that. I think you should stop virtue signaling on the environment. I think you should not yammer on about the environment and post about it on Instagram. And then you should protect the natural environment because it's nice and I like beautiful things. And by the way, if you want to protect the natural

environment when you're picking out your grocery bag, save the earth, don't recycle. We've got to get on to 2020. 2020 is got to move away from the environment. I'm getting too wrapped up here in saving the earth by constantly using plastic grocery bags. So we've got to move on to 2020, which it won't matter if we save the planet anyway because our country is going to be in ashes if the Democrats win. Joe Biden has released his first TV ad and you could not. have possibly scripted this ad any better.

Joe Biden, the 76-year-old, dottering candidate in the race, who can't even remember his own URL for his campaign website, he has titled his first TV ad, Bones. Take a listen. We know in our bones this election is different. Stop it right there. We know, we know in our bones.

We feel it in our bones that this is different. election is different. I feel it in my bones because I don't have anything else to feel. I'm Joe Biden, a bag of bones, vote for me to be your president. I'm a skeleton. Joe Biden really leaning in to the age issue. It's like this classic thing with Biden. He can't help but put his foot in his mouth. I mean, even this, who cares, right? I mean, he's an old guy. But just, you know, if you're writing this, if it's going through all the different stages of production, post-production, it's being released. This is your first television ad. Like, don't call it bones. Don't, don't call it bones. Don't use bones as the first. It just reminds people that you are a thousand years old. Okay. Continue. The stakes are higher. The threat more serious. We have to beat Donald Trump. And all the polls agree, Joe Biden is the strongest Democrat to do the job. No one is more qualified. For eight years, President, Obama and Vice President Biden were an administration America could be proud of.

Our allies could trust and our kids could look up to. Together, they worked to save the American economy to pass the Historic Affordable Care Act, protecting over 100 million Americans with preexisting conditions. Now, Joe Biden is running for president with a plan for America's future. To build on Obamacare, not scrap it, to make a record investment in America's schools, to lead the world on climate, to rebuild our alliance. All, most of all, he'll restore the soul of the nation. Battered by an erratic, vicious bullying president.

Strong, steady, stable leadership, Biden, president. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message. Okay, let's break this down, because it's not a great ad, but I think it's signaling that the Biden campaign is moving closer to the right direction. There are four parts to this ad, other than him talking about how he feels aches in his bones like osteoarthritis or whatever he feels. The first part is that Trump is a racist. So this is how he launched his presidential campaign. The first lines out of his mouth in his announcement video were perpetuating that Charlottesville hoax, the President Trump called

neo-Nazis and white supremacists, very fine people. Even though you can see in the video footage, Trump explicitly condemns the neo-Nazis and the white supremacists. That was the pitch from the beginning. Trump is a racist, vote for me. And he's keeping this up here. You see the images from Charlottesville and the tiki torches and the white supremacists saying Trump is a racist. All right. The next part of the ad is Biden is the most electable. This is probably the weakest part of the whole ad in terms of the Democratic electorate. They already got burned on this argument. Hillary's argument in 2016 was vote for Hillary. Hillary is the most electable. Don't vote for Bernie San. Sanders. Don't vote for that other guy who played guitar on the View. What was his name? Martin O'Malley.

Don't vote for anyone else. I mean, don't vote for any of the other candidates who wanted to get into the race, but didn't because Hillary was the inevitable, electable candidate, actually including Joe Biden. Don't do that. Hillary's the most electable. And then guess what? She didn't get elected. So I don't think the electability argument is really going to work. This was the argument for John Kerry in 2004. Vote for John Kerry. He's moderate. He's normal. He's the most electable. Guess what? He didn't get elected. actually, one of the arguments against Barack Obama in 2008 and for Hillary Clinton was, Hillary is the electable candidate and America's never going to elect a guy named Barack Hussein Obama to be the president.

Even forget the issue of race. Even just his name sounds so foreign. We obviously were just fighting a war against a man named Saddam Hussein. It ain't going to work. Don't vote for him. He's not electable. And then what happened? He did get elected because he actually offered a vision. who was a pretty vague vision. It was a pretty leftist vision, but he offered something that Hillary Clinton did not. And Joe Biden is falling into this trap.

I'm just, vote for me. I'm the most electable. You're only the most electable if you get elected, buddy. And Joe Biden's poll numbers are still strong. He's still leading the pack. But just barely.

One poll has him tied with Elizabeth Warren at this point statistically, and he keeps dropping as other candidates keep rising. So that's pretty weak. Then the third part of his ad is pretty good, which is he's tying himself to Obama.

It's a tough play because Obama is sort of passee now in the Democratic Party. But if Obama comes out and endorses Biden, that would be a huge help to Biden. Obama hasn't done it yet, but Biden should keep sucking up and try to get him to do it. Michelle Obama is very popular. At this point, she might be more popular than her husband. She had that best-selling book, the Democrats love her. If he could try to get her support, that would be very helpful. Tying him himself to Obama's legacy is probably a good idea in any circumstance.

But it's especially an important idea in this circumstance because what else does he have? He's been in politics for 50 years. He didn't accomplish anything in the Senate other than hold up the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 and pass a crime bill in 1994. It was a very good crime bill, but he's got to run away from that aspect of his career now because the Democrats are going soft on crime and law enforcement. So the only thing he's got is that he was the vice president to a relatively popular president named Barack Obama. tying him. That's a good point. Then he closes the ad on Trump is a jerk, basically.

Trump's a terrible guy, and I'm going to restore the soul of this nation. Biden has vacillated in this campaign between being the moderate candidate in the Democratic Party. I say moderate only relatively. He's still a pretty left-wing guy, but compared to, I don't know, Beto O'Rourke or Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren, he's pretty moderate. He's vacillated between that and between being the hard left radical saying he no longer supports the Hyde Amendment. He now supports taxpayer funding

for abortion. All he's trying to veer to the left. He's not going to win that way. He's not going to win by being somebody other than Joe Biden. So I think if he doubles down on this I'm the legacy of Obama, I'm going to continue the

Obama era. I'm going to bring us all back to that good era before that awful, mean old orange man, the mango Mussolini came in and made everybody angry. That could go somewhere. But he just keeps putting his foot in his mouth. I'm not convinced that this is going to be enough. Even just the way the ad is made, it's like old TV. It looks like it's from two campaign cycles ago. Meanwhile, you give up President Trump, who is the king of social media. He's always ahead on the media. He's a king of the media and a creation of the media. I mean, he's kept himself in the headlines for 40 years at

this point, someone who's going to use the same old tired traditional media strategies, even if he makes it through the primary election, probably not going to have an easy time in the general. We have got to get to my favorite news story of the entire day, which is about your precious bodily fluids. It's about a conspiracy theory from all those far right cooks that has gone on for 50 years, more than that, 75 years at this point. And everyone discredited it. And then it turns out as study shows, it might have been true. We'll get to that at the end of the show. I've got to bring on my friend Matt Best, who's here, and I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube. You are almost out of time to purchase tickets to our backstage live show tomorrow

night, August 21st, at the incredible terrorist theater in Long Beach, California. We don't do a lot of these shows. This is going to be the only one this year. It's going to be an incredible amount of fun. Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire, God King Jeremy Boring, Andrew Claven, and, most importantly, me. We will be talking politics. and pop culture. Best of all, we'll be answering your questions from the audience. I love these events. Again, we don't do a ton of them, but when we have done them, they are so fun and so great to get to talk to everybody. Tickets are available at dailywire.com slash backstage. There are still a few VIP ticket packages available, which include premium seating, photos, and meet and greets with each of us,

a gift from Mr. Shapiro, and more. They're almost gone. So head on over to dailywire.com slash backstage and get yours today. Go to Daily Wire. We'll be right back with a lot more. We got to get to my friend Matt Best. Matt Best, you probably know him as one of the guys over at Black Rifle Coffee Company. Matt has an incredible story. He joined the Army at age 17. He deployed five times to Iraq and Afghanistan with the second Ranger battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. Pretty tough guy, you know. After he left the military, he then worked as a contractor with the CIA. for five years. Then he gets his bachelor's degree and he starts creating satirical videos. He gets very involved in the media. He helps build brands like Article 15 clothing, the Drinking Bros

podcast, and then, as you would all know, a company that I love, Black Rifle Coffee. So he's got a new book out and it's got a hilarious title, Thank You for My Service. Matt came by and we were able to chat for a few minutes while he was going through L.A. So without further ado, Matt Best. Matt, thanks for being here. having me on. I'm excited. By the way, Matt, with a name like Matt Best, you pretty much have to run for Senate, don't you? There's a lot to live up to, especially with one T. It's a little awkward, but that's true, yeah. Yeah, my parents set me up to hopefully do something great. That's really, well, you have. You already have done something great. You've got a very hilariously named title

for your book. Thank you for my service. Indeed. And this, this book covers a lot. I think a lot that people would be interested in. I know people are interested in you because of your coffee. I know that for a fact. I know my listeners are interested in that. But also, you know, it occurs to me, something like 1% of Americans serve in the military at this point. Yeah. You know, I have a lot of military members in my family, so I kind of lose sight of that. The majority of Americans probably have little to no contact with anybody who's actually served in the armed forces. That's fair to say, and that's really the whole reason I wanted to write this book to kind of discuss the internal workings of being in special operations and loving my job. I think to,

often people that don't understand the veteran community pain this is kind of depressive failures and victims. I think we're the complete antithesis of that. I think that we're successful and motivated and I kind of wanted to combine that all into one crazy package and then tell some fun war stories. I've had some veteran pals of mine have said this. They say one of the big issues in our current culture which basically rewards victimhood. You know, this leftist kind of, if you can claim victimhood, you get special privileges. That in some ways, It's actually turned military veterans who should be the most heroic, the most honored, you know, in our society. They've turned them into a special victim class too.

Absolutely. I mean, if you look at any Hollywood movie out there, it's just the veteran comes back from war. His puppy dies. He gets addicted to depressive medication, whatever the case, self-medication. And, you know, while there are issues about people coming back from war that need to be addressed, I think the larger part of the veteran community that comes back is motivated and successful. And I really want to change that narrative in Hollywood and just in civilian culture as a whole. So what do you think the biggest misconceptions are? Obviously this idea that military members are. It's victimhood. Exactly what you said. I think when people, they don't know if they say thank you for your service. But, you know, when I come back and someone finds out at five deployments in a range of a time, it's almost like, oh, I can't imagine what you've seen.

You know, I signed up for that job to go participate in the defense of America and willingly and knowingly go take care of bad guys. want to kill innocent Americans. So I'm just thankful for the opportunity to go serve my country, and I want people to know that there's guys and gals out there just like that. And you've also, when you came back, you've had an incredibly successful career as a civilian. Yes, I got out and, you know, went through a couple transition things, and then I went as a contractor for five years. So I spent almost three years plus on the ground in that capacity, which I learned a lot from there. And then that transition into entrepreneurship and trying to create something special. What about your military service, do you think, translated to the business side?

Is that, because we hear, you know, veterans are the best workers, obviously. They're very disciplined, obviously. They're very courageous. Is that overblown? Or do you think that your experience in the military really has helped you as an entrepreneur? 100%. You know, I think something, especially in the special operations community, is creative problem solving. So looking at a very complex problem and then activating the team to navigate that. And I think that's what business is. You know, you know, you're presented with all these challenges every day. The stress is immense, but you have to rally that team and solve the problems and keep moving forward. And that's a reason why we hire so many veterans of Black Rifle Coffee for that sole reason is they have such a diverse set of skills that,

honestly, I don't know where else you'd find someone with that other than the veteran community. And, you know, it's funny because you do stand out a little bit to me and that a lot of my veteran friends are, they're not very verbose. They're not very loquacious. They're men of few words. And you're kind of like a triple threat. I mean, obviously you've got this service physically. You're like pretty tough guy. Wouldn't want to meet you in a back alley anywhere. You also have this business acumen, this business brain, but you're also good on camera. I mean, you've also been able to really master this moment in social media, use that to help your business, use that to obviously communicate through your book. Are you unique in that regard? I mean, how did you develop those skills? I don't think so. I've just activated on those skills. You know, um, Again, I don't think that being a veteran should define you for the whole rest of your life. It's merely a guideline of who I am today. And I've always loved art and being a creator and an ideator. And so given the opportunity post-military, I kind of took all my experiences and you started YouTube videos to make people laugh and engage my community.

And I think that's what's most important about telling this story is whether you're into artistry or drawing or making cups, mugs, whatever you want to chase in life, you can do it. And don't let anybody restrict you from doing that. One thing I love about Black Rifle Coffee, actually my favorite thing about Black Rifle Coffee is it's very good tasting coffee. This is the thing. I don't care how many veterans you employ, if it's not good tasting coffee, maybe I'll buy it, but I'll probably just throw it out. I love that it's great tasting coffee. How did you develop that expertise? Where does that come from? Why the passion for coffee? Really, I'm a marketing and branding guy, and so when I co-founded it with Evan Hafer, the CEO, former Green Beret. He used to roast coffee overseas in Iraq and during the invasion and as a CIA contractor. So he really had this massive passion for coffee because it's so communal.

Every morning the team guys would come in, show that cup of coffee, talk about the operation, and then go execute on it. And so that's really why we called it Black Rifle. It's a tribute to military service and Brotherhood. And obviously, Evan is a coffee nerd, so it's going to be the best tasting coffee out there. But you know my second favorite thing about Black Rifle, obviously the first, most important, it's got to be good coffee. Second is, it doesn't hate American. So I go, you know, I go to these other coffee shops,

and I feel they're a little unpatriotic. I feel they're a little, they're donating to things that I hate. They're donating to things that seem anti-American. And we have, at this moment, an actual epidemic of anti-Americanism, people protesting the American flag. Betsy Ross is apparently now some kind of bigot. You've got major politicians running for president, Democratic politicians, who are applauding those who would denigrate our flag. Does this anti-Americanism, does this worry you in the long term, or do you think it's just some short-term fact? It is the whole reason why we exist, because I'm not going to placate the PC culture. We're going to be exactly who we are.

Mark Twain, something said to the effect of being a patriot is loving your country all the time and your government when it deserves it. And America stands for unity and just absolute love. I love this country so much. We do so many amazing things. And, you know, I will say something about other corporate entities. When a law enforcement officer's asked to leave my coffee shop, the person that asks that will be escorted out. and the law enforcement will be given a free cup of coffee. I can't stand for that.

It's absolutely atrocious that we're treating civil servants and veterans this way. It's got to change. And if not, I got to do it, right? And by the way, you know, one of the lines that we keep pointing out is get woke, go broke. So there's this very small group of leftist agitators who wants to tear down the whole country, basically, and they want to protest the flag. And generally speaking, when companies cater to them, their profits decline, their customer-based declines. They start to go out of business.

Because they're probably not working, so. That's right, because they're probably not working very hard anyway. But then, you know, your company is kind of just the proof of this, is you go out there and you say, look, guys, you can get coffee at a million different places. Here's a cup of coffee that doesn't hate America, and all of a sudden you become one of the biggest coffee companies in the world. Yeah, I think there's a sense of irreverence and passion for America, and we always say vote with your dollar. And I think something that we do well is we're a very transparent company and what we do. We show where we donate our funds to, who we're supporting. And if you like us, you can buy it.

If you don't, well, then do something else. That's right. It's a vote with your dollar. It's, it's very hard in 2019 to be transparent with a corporate entity and know what they're actually giving. You know, other people say support veterans, but they're throwing money that absolutely doesn't support veterans. And one thing, you know, I also like that you guys have a sense of humor. I find politics these days is so, you know, God, everyone takes themselves so seriously. But you guys have a real sense of humor. You really embrace the love of country with some levity to it too. You know, I mean, you've got like the, the Benjamin Franklin, you know, a snake, join or die right on the, on the mug. I find a lot of that kind of comedy in the book. I mean, I think a lot of military books also are a little drier.

I don't want to be uncharitable, but they're a little drier. Your book is not dry. Yeah, I believe, you know, kind of humor through horror and all the experiences that I've had in my life. And there are people that have done extraordinarily more amounts of stuff in the military than me. But he kind of got a laugh. There's no dress rehearsal in life. And so if you're not smiling and loving and creating community, then why are you even here? Right. And when does the book come out?

August 20th. So that's coming up. You're probably on a media blitz right now. I'm excited to be here. True, that's right. You know, excited to be here. And I figure, like, first of all, compared to, like, remind. This isn't that bad. And also, compared to fighting overseas, probably a media blitz. You can handle it.

Yeah, I think it'll be okay. You've done something like that before. All right, I can't wait to hear back from everyone else listening on what they think of the book. I know what they think of the coffee and they love it. Matt, thank you for being here. Thank you for your service. And in terms of my day to day, probably the most important, thank you for your coffee. Oh, appreciate it. Thank you for all three of those, man. I really appreciate it. And thank you for my service and everything here and have me on the show. Matt, good to see it. Cheers. All right. Now we've got to talk about something much more important than any of this, which is how we are all Alex Jones now. We're all Alex Jones. This is more important than the environmental protection. This is more important than even Matt's book, even though it's a very good book and I highly recommend you buy it. This is more important than the 2020 election. It's the fact that nobody knows anything. Nobody knows anything. Things we've been told for 50 years, 100 years, they can be upended overnight.

The food pyramid. We were told, there's the food pyramid, you've got to eat a ton of carbs and not a lot of fat. Now the food pyramid is exactly the opposite. Conspiracy theories are popping up and apparently true overnight. One of them is one of the oldest ones in the book. Truly proof that nobody knows anything for decades. The coochiest, crankiest, wackiest conspiracy theorists on the right have harped on one conspiracy theory above almost all the others. that the fluoride that the government puts in drinking water is harmful to us.

This began in 1945, the U.S. began fluoridating water because it prevents tooth decay. And the caricature that almost immediately developed of right-wingers was that they all thought that this was a communist plot to destroy us, and the fluoride in the water was messing with our brains and affecting us somehow. This was parodied in the great film Dr. Strangelove when the brigadier general Jack D. Ripper talks about our precious bodily fluids. I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion. Now that part we all agree with. I mean, that's just, that's not the conspiracy theory part, but then this is where the caricature comes in.

And the international communist conspiracy. To sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. Okay, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, you crazy stupid right-wingers? Ha-ha, ha, ha, you guys are so dumb, right? Well, it turns out the conspiracy theorists very likely have a point. There is a new study out published in an influential medical journal that links fluoride consumption during pregnancy with lower childhood IQs. apparently, the fluoride in the drinking water, according to this study, is so affecting our precious bodily fluids that it's making us all stupider.

To put this into perspective, three quarters of the United States drinks fluoridated tap water. And now, when I'm at the San Francisco airport, I can't even buy a regular water bottle without any fluoride in it because that's been banned. So I have to bring my own water bottle and fill up the fluoridated tap water. Oh my gosh, maybe this is all of the conspiracies are. just coming together right now. The main takeaway from this is not necessarily that communist infiltration is affecting our precious bodily fluids. I guess it could be. But the main takeaway is that we know much, much less about the material world than we think that we do. We know so much less. We pass these environmental regulations, all these big policies because we say this is how

we're going to help the environment. And guess what we do? Because we're so stupid. We end up harming the environment with the very policies that were intended to help the environment. We tell everybody, you've got to eat the food pyramid. You've got to stuff your face with cereal and pasta and breads. That's how you're going to be healthy. And then 50 years later, they tell you, actually, we got it a little bit wrong, you actually shouldn't have any of those things at all, ever, but you should eat a lot of fat. And I don't know what it's going to be tomorrow. One day we find out coffee is really healthy for you. The next day we find out coffee is really bad for you.

Then the next day it's really healthy for you again. The eggs are really good for you. Then eggs are really bad for you. Then eggs are really good for you again. Global warming is guaranteed going to flood New York by 2013 or 2015 or actually never. But it'll, maybe in a little bit, but we're not quite sure when. The earth is going to end in 10 months, 12 months, 14 months, 35 years, 12 years, 14 years. I don't know, but it's going to end soon.

we know much, much less about the material world than we think that we do. What this calls for, my humble suggestion, is a little humility. It's a little humility in your politics. Maybe not passing these sweeping, gigantic, major governmental changes, giving the government huge amounts of power on dubious premises. Maybe being a little cautious. Maybe looking for a little bit of evolution rather than revolution in our politics and our culture. A little bit of humility. And yet we live in a culture right now

that celebrates pride. We have whole months where we celebrate pride. Not very promising. This is true, not just in our precious bodily fluids in our tap water, not just in environmental regulations, but in everything else too, health care, foreign policy, the economy. A little humility goes a long way. But how can you ever recapture humility in a culture that celebrates It's pride. That's our problem. We'll have to figure it out, but we won't be able to figure it out today because we're out of time. I will see those of you who are going to be at Long Beach tomorrow live at our Daily Wire backstage live event. No show tomorrow. We'll be back on Thursday and do a Friday show. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. See you soon. If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.

And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including the Ben Shapiro Show, the Andrew Claibon Show, and the Matt Walsh Show. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz, director Mike Joyner, executive producer Jeremy Boring. Our senior producer is Jonathan Hay, supervising producer Mathis Glover, technical producer Austin Stevens, editor Danny D'Amico. Our audio mixer is Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup by Jesua Olvera.

Production Assistant Nick Sheehan. The Michael Null Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2019. If you prefer facts over feelings, if you aren't offended by the brutal truth, if you can still laugh at the nuttiness filling our national news cycle, well, tune on into the Ben Shapiro Show, where you'll get a whole lot of that and much more. We'll see you there.