The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 992 - Elon Officially Owns Twitter And The Libs

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Elon Musk vindicates the great man theory of history, the WH and the NYT train their sights on the new owner of Twitter, and a new poll shows young Americans strongly support parental rights in education. Matt Walsh is a beloved LGBTQ+ and children’s author. Reserve your copy of Johnny The Walrus here: https://utm.io/uevUc. I’m exposing the most successful failure in government history. Stream Fauci Unmasked here: https://utm.io/ueogL. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All they had to do was give the Babylon B, its account back. All the Libs had to do was just not censor every little tiny thing that they disliked all the way down to a satire website. But they couldn't do it. The lives who ran Twitter just couldn't do it. So Elon Musk had to take Twitter away from them. It is now official. The company has confirmed it. Elon Musk is the owner of Twitter. It all went down exactly as he said it would. In less than three

weeks, Elon Musk went from announcing a major investment in Twitter to gobbling up the entire company to take it private. At first, the board tried to stop the takeover by offering Musk a board seat. That didn't work. Then they tried to stop the takeover by issuing a poison pill to water down his shares and stop him from buying more. That didn't work. Then they leaned on woke financial institutions, Black Rock, State Street to block the takeover. That didn't work. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia even got in on the action trying to stop Musk from buying Twitter. That didn't work. In the end, Elon Musk bought Twitter for exactly the price that he offered from the very start. He got exactly what he wanted and he didn't pay one penny more than he offered. The move is terrific for a lot of reasons. For one, the libs are

losing their minds. They have not cried this hard since election night 2016, which is delightful. Also important, censored conservatives will likely get their voice back on Twitter, which is important because Twitter is in many ways the public square, and speaking in the public square is how republics govern themselves. A lot of conservatives are reporting right now that their follower accounts have exploded overnight. Their engagement has exploded overnight. I've seen it myself. I'm up something like 25,000 followers in 24 hours. Part of that might be the fire tweets that I'm sending, but I think maybe a clearer explanation is technologically, algorithmically, something must have changed. No less important, though, than both of those reasons. Perhaps the most delightful part of it

all. Elon Musk is right now, in real time vindicating the great man theory of history, the idea that individual men can actually shift to some degree and set and reset the course of human events. For years now, the libs have wanted us to believe that individuals cannot make a difference, that history is governed simply, merely by an impersonal science, quote unquote, that will unfold regardless of what human beings actually want or do. The arc of history inevitably bending toward whatever the libs want. They were so confident. And then in walks some eccentric South African billionaire, possibly a conservative, I'm not even really sure, to take not only Twitter, but their

total absolute hegemony and their confidence away from them. Absolutely love it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show. Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment yesterday is from Roy Munson, who says, I'm shocked at how long it took for this insanity to be a major story. Marjorie Taylor Green has bigger Cajonese than most of those rhinos in office, and no one has spoken up about this kangaroo court BS. Good point. This is on how the Georgia Democrats are dragging Marjorie Green, this Republican congressman, to court using a little-known provision of the 14th Amendment to try to stop her from being on. on the ballot because they know they can't beat her at the ballot. They know she's very popular. So if they want to beat the Republicans, they've got to stop Marjorie Green from ever even appearing there. It's probably not going to work though, okay? Because we the people are taking back to at least some degree, our government. We're doing things for ourselves. When you want to fix your car by yourself, you got to check out Rock Auto. Right now, go to

rock auto.com, enter Knowles in there. How did you hear about this box? It seems these days, days like every store wants to sell every single thing, even the things that they don't know anything about. That's not Rock Auto. Rock Auto is the expert in auto parts. They have been doing this online for 20 years. It's a family business. They know what they are doing. So when you want parts for your car or truck, where do you go? You go to rock auto.com. They always have the lowest prices. There's no gimmicks. There's no login at 2 a.m. and get 15% off. No. There's know you've got to be a professional to get this special price versus the regular retail shopper. No, it's the same price for pros and do it yourself as the catalog is so easy to navigate.

Even I can do it. It's very simple. Your life is complicated enough. When you need a part for your car or truck, go to the experts. Rock Auto.com get the brakes, shocks, carpet, wipers, headlights, mirrors, mufflers, lug knots, or any other parts that you need. And be sure to enter Knowles in there. How did you hear about box so they know that we sent you. The libs have 180 degrees pivoted from their previous argument on Twitter. The previous argument was that this is horrible. If Elon Musk takes over Twitter, it will be the end of the world. He's actually offering a low, a low offer for the company, $54.20 cents per share. That's low. Twitter actually has more value than that. The board's got to stop him. The shareholders have to stop him. Black Rock, State Street, Saudi Arabia, they've all got to

stop Elon Musk. And then he got it. Through a number of maneuvers, Elon Musk got what he wanted. And now the libs are trying, through their tears. They're trying to plaster on a smile and say, oh, no, this is fine. No, this is good, actually. Actually, Elon Musk is an idiot. He paid a lot of money for Twitter. Ha ha. The jokes on him. The Twitter shareholders, they're the ones who just made $44 billion. Ha-ha, what an idiot. He got ripped off. This argument does not really work because they were making the opposite argument just a few days ago. But let's even go with it. One, Elon Musk offered $54.20 per share and that's what he got.

That is a considerable premium, over a 30% premium on what he, on what the value of the stock was when he announced that he owned 9% of the company. And it's a 50% premium or more over the price of the stock when Elon Musk first actually started buying Twitter. So, yes, he did, he did pay a little bit more money. But if it's such a good deal for Twitter, if this is such a bad deal for Elon Musk, why didn't the Twitter leadership take the deal when he first offered it? Why did Twitter and the leadership and the institutional investors fight the deal tooth and nail? If it's such a good deal, if 54 bucks and 20 cents per share is such a good deal, why didn't they jump at the opportunity? to have it. Because it's obviously not a good deal for Twitter. It might be if you just look at the

numbers, but Twitter is about more than just the numbers. Elon Musk said it. He said, this is not primarily an economic decision for me. And that's not just a political twist of rhetoric. It's important because the value of Twitter is not merely in the dollars and cents and the ability to advertise and monetize. The value of Twitter is controlling the public square. Twitter is the smallest of the big tech companies. Facebook is much bigger, Google is much bigger. But Twitter does punch above its weight because so many blue checks, so many influence peddlers, so many, so many opinion makers are on Twitter. And so if you control Twitter, you are controlling a huge portion of the digital public square. If you control the public square, you control the government.

You control the political order. And so this doesn't totally solve the problem because now we just have our billionaire controls it, which is something that's a start. It's better than their billionaires controlling it. It's better than their corrupt institutions controlling it. But that's the value in Twitter. Sure, it's a little bit the advertising. Sure, it's a little bit the monetization. But much more than that, if you can control the way that discourse happens in America, which is at least in name, a self-government, at least in theory, the way we govern ourselves as we persuade one another, then you have an insane amount of power. Why do you think Saudi Arabia cares? Saudi Arabia has got enough money. If they want to make money, they can just put a straw in the ground and pump oil out of it. Why do you think Saudi Arabia was throwing its weight around on Twitter? Why do you think huge institutional actors were throwing their weight around on Twitter? It's not because it's the biggest company in the world. It's because it plays a huge role in controlling speech in America. And now we've got at least a shift in that power away from the libs, which had hegemonic control over it, towards something more closely resembling the tradition.

of free speech in America. So that's the first cope that the Democrats and the libs have. Well, he overpaid. Ha ha, ha. This is actually good for us. Okay, sure. Sure. Why were you fighting it so hard then?

Brian Stelter on CNN has a different cope, which is, okay, so Elon Musk got Twitter, even though we fought him tooth and nail on it. Well, who's even going to use Twitter anymore? I think that's an example of a broader question for Twitter, which is, if you, if you get invited to something, where there are no rules, where there is total freedom, for everybody, do you actually want to go to that party? Or are you going to decide to stay home? And that's a question for Twitter users.

Some Twitter users might love the idea that there's going to be absolutely no moderation and no rules at all. Others might not want to be anywhere near that. Am I crazy Matt? No, no, you're right. And what happens to the advertising? I mean, if there's no moderation or little moderation, do the advertisers stay away? What does that do to the business prospects for Twitter itself? I think that's very much an open debate.

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turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. So Stelter is completely wrong in his conclusion and in his premise. Both, even if his premise were right, his conclusion would still be wrong. Well, if Elon Musk gets rid of all the speech regulations on Twitter, are people even going to want to be there? Yeah, they will. He's really, he's saying, why would the Libs stay on Twitter?

They're going to stay on Twitter for the same reason. Conservatives are going to stay on Twitter when the Twitter leadership was going after conservatives. They're going to do it because that's the public square. and Twitter gained a critical mass, and now it plays a huge role in the public square. And so conservatives are going to stay on it, even when they go after us, even when they kick off Trump, even when they kick off the Babylon B. We're going to stay on it because that's where it is. That's where people talk. I wish that were not the case. If that were not the case,

Elon Musk wouldn't have had to go in and buy it. But that's why the conservatives stayed on. Why are the libs going to stay on? The same reason. They can, where they going to go? They're going to go to parlor? they're going to go to Gab, they're going to go to Truth Social, they're going to go to the conservative option? No, obviously, no. At least there was an argument for conservatives to go there.

They're not going to go there. Go to the liberal Twitter. That was Twitter until we took it away from you. So that's why they're, but furthermore, the premise is wrong because Elon Musk is not getting rid of all the regulations. In fact, Elon Musk said when he bought it, he said, I'm going to add more regulations.

I'm going to require some, verification so that you are who you say you are. I'm going to get rid of the stupid bots. He's going to take away certain regulations too. He's going to free up speech, he says. He's going to let conservatives talk more. He's not going to ban conservatives for saying innocuous things. But it's not really a debate between total free speech and total censorship. What's funny now is that the left, through the voice of Brian Stelter, is taking the side against free speech and for censorship. In the 1960s, they did the opposite. it. But it was always a false debate. This is the point of my book, speechless. That's never the

way it really is. The real question is, what are the standards? What are you allowed to say? What are the customs? What are the mores? What are the rules? What are the limits? The libs had completely pushed it in their direction. So you weren't allowed to question Fauci. You weren't allowed to say that boys aren't girls. You weren't allowed to say perfectly ordinary things. But you were allowed to docks conservatives. You were allowed to threaten conservatives. You were allowed to do all sorts of terrible things. And now, now that conservatives maybe have a little more control over Twitter, we're going to move it back in the other direction. Now, when you want to communicate directly with your customers, I would strongly recommend you to check out Constant Contact. Right now, go to Constant Contact.com.

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to provide free Wi-Fi through his company SpaceX. Because this guy is just doing whatever he wants. He's building cars. He's sending out rocket chips. He's building global internet. He's owning Twitter. So Elon Musk struck a deal with Hawaiian Airlines. Hawaiian Airlines, obviously, is flying over the Pacific,

and they've always had this issue with Wi-Fi. It's hard to get Wi-Fi when you're flying over the middle of nowhere in the Pacific. So Hawaiian has not offered Wi-Fi that you could pay for or that you don't pay for. Elon goes in with his Starlink system, which was providing some internet in Ukraine, it can provide internet by satellite, and he said, okay, I'm going to offer it for free to Hawaii. So there are two aspects here. One, it's going to give him a lot of control over internet, period. but two, it's going to pressure other companies to give free Wi-Fi on the internet. Right now, you can go on the most expensive airline in America, you can buy a first-class ticket, you can spend, you can spend $1,000 or more on an airplane ticket, and they still expect you to pay $30 for the

internet. And that's kind of annoying. People don't like to do it. So Elon Musk is pressuring the airlines now, it's maybe potentially transforming the way that people communicate when they're up in the air, the way that we travel, and solving a problem for Hawaiian Airlines. And, for other airlines that are flying over the Pacific where it's much harder to provide internet. All of which brings me back to my first point. Yes, it's hilarious that the libs are crying over this. It's really, really funny. Yes, it's really great. The conservatives are not nearly as censored. Already, you're seeing the shift. I mean, I'm seeing this in real time right now on my Twitter account. But the fact that Elon Musk can do these things is itself delightful, because it shows. It shows that he,

that the conservative understanding of history, the conservative view of history that individual moments really do matter, individual men really do matter, individual twists of history actually do matter, and it's not all just some totally discoverable, scientific, deterministic system that the left wants us to believe. That is a wonderful, delightful thing. I don't want to say that I was predicting what was going to happen with the whole Twitter saga. But, you know, sometimes I put on my Noel Stradamus hat. Sometimes I take out my crystal ball. And I, sometimes I have to say I told you so. And the way that I was predicting, just to, this all happened so quickly, I was just maybe a few days ahead of where some of the conversation was. One of the reasons I was doing that, whether it was

Elon Musk turning down the board seat, taking a, potentially making a tender offer to the shareholders. One of the ways I could do that is because Elon Musk was sending out these really cryptic tweets and people were debating what are the cryptic tweets. Yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted out, and be my love in the rain. Now, most people thought, okay, he's just a weirdo. He's just tweeting out some random line. I don't know what that is.

Maybe it's from a song. I don't know. I happen to be a fan of the American poet Robert Frost. So it was quickly clear to me that he was referencing a Robert Frost poem. The poem is a line storm song. And so I went back, I didn't really remember all the lines of the poem. I looked back at this poem. And one of the lines was, quote,

The birds have less to say for themselves in the wood worlds torn despair than now these numberless years the elves, although they are no less there. People told me, Michael, studying English and American poetry, that's not going to get you anywhere. There's no practical application. Well, jokes on you, folks, because the fact that I know a little bit about poetry actually allowed me to interpret where Elon Musk was going with all of this. The fact that he's referencing the birds during this whole saga about Twitter does not seem to me a coincidence. The poem, a Linesstorm song, is about a destructive force.

to a sort of unproductive and destructive force, violent force, that comes in and renews the woods and renews the whole world. A chaotic force, maybe like this eccentric billionaire, who comes in and reorders the public square. The birds have less to say for themselves. That's right. Twitter had much less to say for themselves. It seems to me to be signaling, this is going to go through. I am buying this thing. And this comparison here between the birds, right, the Twitter people, who are just going about their technocratic lives, and we've got everything, and we're in control of all the speech. And then here come those elves, those little magical, mystical forces that we sometimes deny exist, and we forget that that mystique around the way that the world operates.

We forget that sometimes those guys come in there and they just mess things up and they turn things around. That, I don't think I'm reading too deeply into it, because that's exactly what played out. Previously, Musk had tweeted out, blank is the night. blank as the night. Some people were saying, is it lonely as the night? Is it this? I knew he was referring to Tender is the night, which is the name of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. And actually, the title of that F. Scott Fitzgerald novel comes from a poem by John Keats. The poem is owed to a nightingale, and the line in that poem is, and Midmay's eldest child, the coming musk rose full of dewy wine, the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eaves. Is it a coincidence that the poem that he's

referencing has the word Musk right in it, a sort of unusual word, is in it. I don't think so. I don't think that I've, I don't think that I'm the sort of romantic, you know, nose in the air version of Alex Jones here, you know, putting on my tinfoil hat trying to read tea leaves. I think what this is telling, or what this is showing, rather, is that Elon Musk is a very sophisticated thinker. this is a guy who doesn't do things by accident. He, just for one, how many, how many business tycoons do you know who are familiar with poetry? Not very many. Usually they're the kind of humanities people.

Usually there are the kind of artistic types. And then there are the business types who are only interested in commerce or technology or engineering. And yet here's Elon Musk, I think pretty clearly referencing Fitzgerald and Keats, but certainly without question he's referencing the Robert Frost poem. He actually knows something about this. And it's even funnier because he's South African. He's not even American. Now he's an African American because he's become American, but that's a story for another time. All of this to say, not that it's particularly important that people could decipher exactly what poems the guy was referencing. All of this to say, this guy is operating on a much higher level than most people in public life. This guy, the joke about Washington, in D.C. The joke about Congress is that the average IQ is something like 85, right? That our representatives in DC are very often much much more stupider than the average American. They don't know very much. They're just kind of glad-handing windbags. A lot of people in business are that way too, actually. They just are all

about commerce. They're just all about dollars and cents. Elon Musk is not just about commerce. When Elon Musk says, my decision to buy Twitter is not purely economic, I think he's being honest. I think he's telling the truth. This guy has higher ambitions. This guy is going to be a linestorm song that this guy's going to be a line storm. We're in the song right now, I guess, who is going to come in and just out of nowhere, mess things up and turn things around and shake up the dreary, apparently deterministic course of history and decay. And he's going to come in and say, no, no, we're not going to do that.

So this is really, really great stuff. Not just because we can tweet about how Dr. Fauci is a liar and how men aren't women and how ivermectin's a wonder drug. And not just because we can do that, that's all fun too. But because of what it says about history, because of what it says about the way that we can affect the course of political development. So of course, you know what's going to happen. The libs are going to try to take this guy out. They're already doing it. There was a story in, I think it was a variety yesterday, one of the trade publications in Hollywood, that FX and the New York times have just announced an Elon Musk expose.

Right on time. Right on time. They probably had to speed it up a little bit because the Musk Twitter takeover sort of came out of nowhere and then occurred really quickly. It occurred within just a matter of weeks. And so now they've got their expose. And the expose is going to focus on his car company, Tesla, and how the self-driving car experiments have resulted in deaths. And so they're going to focus on that. And they're going to try to basically paint him as a sociopathic killer, probably a serial killer. I don't know. They're going to accuse him all sorts of things, which is fine by me. To me, it makes me more likely to defend Elon Musk. I don't know the man. I don't know exactly what he believes. The things that I've heard that he believes make me confident

that he's basically got his head screwed on straight. The fact, for instance, that he rejects the overpopulation narrative, this preposterous liberal narrative that goes back, actually centuries, but has been really popular for the last 50 years. The fact that Elon says, actually, the world is underpopulated, the fact that he seems to be pro-human, the fact that he seems to be pro-American tradition of free speech, these are all good signs. But the thing that makes me most likely to support this guy is the fact that the New York Times and FX and the Hollywood liberal establishment is trying to take him out. the fact that Black Rock and State Street were trying to squeeze him out, that the Twitter board

was trying to keep him out. To me, that's the best argument. When I'm trying to figure out who my political allies are, I look at what my political opponents are doing, who they're most vociferously opposing, and then I think, huh, that person must have something right. Now, if you have not heard, speaking of important voices, my friend Matt Walsh is a very important voice in the transgender movement. He is the author of the best-selling children's LGBTQ plus book, Johnny the Walrus. If you haven't picked up a copy of his best-selling children's book, you should do so immediately. It sold out in less than 24 hours when it was released. But don't worry, it's back in stock right now. It will sell out again, so pick up your copy of Johnny the Walrus today at Johnny

the Walrus.com or on Amazon. We'll be right back with a lot more. Not only is the New York Times going after Elon Musk. Not only is FX, Hollywood, going after Elon Musk, the White House is going after him too. Jen Saki, White House press secretary, was asked yesterday about the Twitter takeover, and she seemed to suggest that the White House is going to be taking a stronger hand in regulating social media now. Does the White House have any concern that this new agreement might have President Trump back on the platform? Well, I'm not going to comment on a specific transaction. What I can tell you as a general matter, no matter who owns or runs Twitter, the president has long been concerned about the power of large social media platforms. The power they have over our everyday lives has long argued that tech platforms must be held accountable for the harms they cause.

He has been a strong supporter of fundamental reforms to achieve that goal, including reforms to Section 230, enacting anti-trust reforms, requiring more transparency, and more. and he's encouraged that there's bipartisan interest in Congress. In terms of what hypothetical policies might happen, I'm just not going to speak to that at this point in time. Jen Saki said one word there that tells you the whole game. Everyone thinks this is about free speech, including many, if not most conservatives, and it's not. It's just not.

This is about that one word that Jen Saki said, power. It's about power. It's about who is setting the rules, who has the right to set the rules, who is enforcing the rules. Notice, Jen Saki says, the president's concerned about the harm that social media causes. What are we talking about the harm that it causes? Are we talking about the harm to kids developing brains? That's actually a real problem. When kids are just spending 52 minutes on average on TikTok a day, swiping and getting their brains melted by weird Chinese propaganda, yeah, that's a concern.

That's not what they're talking about. Are they talking about the threats to the public square, the harm caused to democracy when you kick half the country off or at least you suppress what half the country is allowed to say? You kick the duly elected sitting president off just because he's a conservative. No, I don't think Biden's talking about that. He's talking about the harm of misinformation, the harm of questioning Dr. Fauci, the harm of raising questions about the 2020 election, the harm of questioning the Democratic. narrative, the harm of saying that boys aren't really girls. That's what he's talking about.

What Jen Saki is saying is, we're going to go in and fight Elon Musk and take this away from him. And therefore take away from you conservatives the strongest voice you've had in social media in a long time. It's about power. It's not about free speech. It's about who sets the standards, who holds the power. Elon Musk is not... Maybe he'll free up speech a little bit, or maybe he'll just free it up in certain places and restrict it more in other places, like, for instance, anonymous accounts. That's probably more likely what's going to happen. Maybe he'll just shift the way that speech is done. But what he certainly did was shift the balance of power. And the White House does not like that very much. That's what all these battles are about. Moving on from social media, because it's not only about social media, this is what the education fights about.

the education fight is not about free speech. If the education fight were about free speech in Florida right now, conservatives would be against free speech and liberals would be for free speech because we're saying we need to restrict the number of books you can teach in the classroom. We're trying to restrict the number of words that you can say in the classroom. We're trying to restrict the number of conversations that kindergarten teachers could have. That's a good thing. Teachers should not be allowed to say whatever they want in the classroom. That has no place in the American free speech tradition. It's completely incoherent, it has nothing to do with what education is. In the 1960s, conservatives were against free speech in the sense that they were against relaxing obscenity standards. They were against

relaxing other norms and customs and standards in our speech and behavior. It was the liberals who were pushing forward, and they used free speech as an instrument to do that, but it was never genuine. The very people who pushed the free speech movement at Berkeley, then became the most pro-censorship people in the country because it's never about that sort of thing, okay? And so I think we've got to ditch that kind of talk. I don't think that kind of talk is particularly helpful. And we need to recognize that what we're talking about here is a little more about the substance. It's a little less about the abstraction and it's a little bit more about the substance. Is a kindergarten teacher trying to trans a five-year-old? Well, then that teaches out.

See ya. Sionara, sucker. Bye. But my free speech right to talk about how little kids should mutilate their bodies and take croix. No, you don't have that right. If that's what free speech is, I'm against. It's not really what free speech is, but if that's what it is, then never mind. See ya. Bye. This is a popular message, not just among old fuddy-duddies, by the way. It's actually especially a popular message among young people. There's a new poll that's just out. It's a national poll from the Harvard Kennedy School, so it's not exactly a right-wing institution that shows that 18 to 29-year-olds in particular agree with the statement, parents should have, have more control over their children's education than they do now. Forty-six percent agree with that

statement, only 23 percent disagree with that statement. So it's not just that the young people are for whatever you want to teach in the schools, man, and free speech, man, and it's the old fuddy-duddies who are saying the actually it's disproportionately the young people who realize, who have children right now, who have kids in these schools who realize, no, I don't want you teaching my kid critical race theory, weirdo. I don't want you telling little. Johnny, he's really little Jane. No, we need more controls in schools over what kids can say, or at least different controls. Right now, if a teacher teaches the Bible in a classroom, the teacher is certainly going to be fired. It might be, I don't know, might be charged with some

sort of crime or something. They'll have violated the law those teachers. Meanwhile, if a teacher teaches the gender unicorn or the gender breadman or any weird, perverted sexual stuff in class, the teacher will be applauded. The teacher will be encouraged. by the Biden administration. So it's not about, it's not even about more or less speech. It's just about what are you teaching? What is the substance here? Daily Wire had previously reported that the COVID-19 lockdowns probably had something to do with this shift in attitudes because during COVID-19, really, I don't even want to say during COVID-19, because there was COVID-19, there's the virus, which is sort of whatever. I think most people out there have had it by now. And then there were the

lockdowns. And I think they were basically separate phenomena. The COVID-19 virus was the excuse for the lockdowns, but I don't think that the politics of the lockdowns had very much to do with the virus. So in any case, you've got two years of lockdowns, and during which time, virtually every student is being homeschooled to some degree in as much as they're at least sitting on home.

They might be on a computer or an iPad, but they're still at home doing distance learning. And a lot of kids were just taken out of the schools and taught by their parents. So you had homeschooling rates grow from 5.4% in March of 2020 to 11% in just in September of 2020. So that's a six-month period. By the summer of 2021, 5 million American children were receiving their education at home, which is a huge number. And all of a sudden, these parents get a taste of that. And they say, oh, hold on, my kid doesn't

need to just be indoctrinated for eight hours a day into critical race theory or into weird sex theories or into just leftist politics generally. Oh, that doesn't, that's not a requirement. We actually can, I can have some say over this. I like that. That's pretty good. Not just the radical right-wing Republicans. If it were only the radical extreme right-wing Republicans, those numbers wouldn't be possible. That's a huge upswing. What are kids being taught in school? Let's leave the elementary schools for a second. Let's go all the way up to college. There's a school in Utah, Westminster College, Salt Lake City. Salt Lake city, Utah. They are right now offering a course on hardcore pornography. This is a private college,

not state sponsored, but it's a private college offering a course on hardcore porn. This is gender 3,000. So already, you know, the course is in a gender studies department, which means it should be abolished. These gender studies and all of these sort of critical studies that cropped up in recent decades to give stupid students something that they can study because they weren't able to keep up in the real, in the real academic disciplines. So you say, okay, we're going to do gender and ethnicity and migration studies. And it's just, it's just an education in leftism. And so as long as you say the right political slogans, you can get a good grade and you can graduate. It was a way to give the left and even stronger foothold in education. So the minute you see

gender studies, you think, okay, never mind. This should get, get rid of this. As long as we're fixing standards here, just abolish this whole department, turn it into a library or something. In any case, the Gender 3 Studies course is called porn. And here's the description. Hardcore pornography is as American as apple pie and more popular than Sunday night football. Our approach to this billion dollar industry is as both a cultural phenomenon that reflects and reinforces sexual inequalities, but holds the potential to challenge sexual and gender norms, and as an art form that requires serious contemplation. We will watch pornographic films together and discuss the sexualization of race, class, and gender as an experimental radical art form.

This is a very bad idea. This is very harmful to students' education. This should not be permitted at any college or university in the country. This is extremely obscene. This appeals primarily to the pruriant interest, and it is not protected by free speech. In the American tradition, this class would have no free speech protection, no First Amendment protection. Why? It's not because pornography is not a worthwhile phenomenon to discuss. It is. It's a huge problem in America. It's a major political problem. We don't really talk about it enough. It's destroying the lives of especially a lot of young men. How many times? Every week, I get letters into my mailbag. Lots of letters into my mailbag saying, I've been hooked on porn since I was 10. It's ruined my life. How do we fix it? So I think the conversation is really important to have. I think it's really important to study how pornography was mainstreamed into America, how legal prohibitions against it were overturned. That's a really interesting conversation. That's not what this class does. This class involves sitting down with boys and girls and the teacher watching this stuff. Well, that's very different. It'd be like taking a class on crystal meth and cocaine and hardcore narcotics. You could take a class on that in chemistry, for instance, and talk about these drugs and what they do and their effects and you could even have a policy discussion on whether or not they should be legal or regulated. That class would be perfectly fine. But the minute that the class says, okay, and as part of your final

exam, you're all going to do a bunch of crystal and tell me how it feels. You're all going to blow a bunch of lines of coke, smoke a pipe of crack, and tell me how it feels. That's a very different thing. And that's what this porn class is doing, because the way that you use a crack cocaine is by smoking it. The way that you use heroin is by injecting it. The way that you use pornography is by watching it. The very act of watching pornography is what destroys that sort of academic environment. Because when you watch porn, it's the same reason that you shouldn't be doing these kind of hardcore drugs. When you watch pornography, you are not appealing to your rational faculties. You're not appealing to your intellect. You actually, you're not appealing to your

rational will. You're losing control of that because you're appealing to the appetite. If you watch a lot of porn, if you do a lot of drugs, if you drink too much, if you do things that are in the indulgence of your vices, you are going to lose your higher will. You're going to weaken your rational faculties. And that's not a very good thing. Unfortunately, that's what our society has become. I know that we always talk about 1984 by George Orwell,

as though that were the description of the society we're living in. There's censorship. There is an increasingly totalitarian form of government. Yeah, sure. Actually, the way that the establishment controls the American people is much more like Brave New World by Aldous Huxley than 1984 by George Orwell. Huxley, who was Orwell's French teacher, I believe, actually wrote a letter to him to this effect and said, you know, George, it's a good book that you wrote, but my version of it is more accurate as to how

political elites actually gain power. They don't do it by just smacking you with a stick. They don't do it by beating you into submission. They usually do it by appealing to your desires, by appealing to your appetites and your lusts. They do it by promoting drugs, by promoting promiscuous sex, by destroying the family. Which is more, when you look at those two visions of a dystopian society, which seems more correct, the absolute, rigid, transparent party program that has all of these very strict rules that you've got to follow, or a society of licentiousness and hedonism that tells you if it feels good, do it. Obviously, it's the latter. That's the way the society. is decaying. And that's what, that's, not only is that a function of the, the really decayed aspects of

popular culture, that's now what's literally being taught in, in universities, the purpose of which is to do the opposite. The purpose of which is to give you a liberal education and teach you how to make sense of your freedom. That's what's going on. And that's going on in the universities. You're getting a similar, perhaps a light little water down version in the high schools, in the middle schools. And despite what the libs tell you, you are getting this kind of weird stuff, in the elementary schools. Thanks again to Libs of TikTok, one of my favorite Twitter accounts, which I suspect is going to get even more of a boost now that the left is not suppressing conservatives accounts quite as much. A Libs of TikTok posted a video of a teacher playing a slideshow

about how he is going to indoctrinate kids into transgenderism. It opens up, it says, just this quote, stop brainwashing our children in the classroom with the LGBT agenda. The teacher kind of looks and smiles and laughs. It says,

Ms. Beeman is now Mix Beeman. You know me as Ms. Beeman. I'm still your teacher, but now I'm mixed Beeman because I'm non-gendered now. And I'll go by he and they, and I'm transgender and non-binary. And I'm the same me,

but we're going to work together so that you can recognize that I'm not just a boy or a girl. What's transgender? What's non-binary? It's where you look like one thing, but you're actually a different, sex on the inside. And that's why I've got to be mix now, MX, rather than Mr. or Ms. or Mrs.

or miss, really, because that's what transgenderism says and transgenderism is true. That's just, I give the quick version because it's TikTok, so they're moving very quickly. But that's what a teacher is teaching five-year-olds. I actually, I don't know what level of student this teacher is teaching, whether it's a five-year-old or whether it's an 18-year-old for that matter. It's just not true. The teacher is saying that transgenderism is real, that you can really secretly be the opposite sex, that you should call people by this made up prefix, mix, and that she is now really a he or a they, and that's not true. Her name is they because they are legion or something. No, that's none of that is true and the teacher should be fired, or put into

counseling. I mean, the teacher should be probably placed on leave, told to go see a psychiatrist, psychologist. Unfortunately, these days, the psychologist will just affirm this woman in her delusions. But if the psychologist somehow could convince the woman that she really is a woman and she realizes that she was deluded before, then maybe she could come back and teach the kids. But if she's not going to be convinced of reality and she's going to insist on peddling destructive falsehoods in the classroom, then you've got to fire her because she's harming kids' education. And she has no right to do that. It's not an act of cruelty to do that. It's actually, an act of compassion to the students and compassion to her. Because the further down this rabbit

hole of fantasy she gets, the worse off she's going to be. People don't flourish when they are totally untethered from reality. Got to get a little tougher because sometimes getting tougher is more loving. That's what we call tough love. Speaking of the mistreatment of kids, now that the American people are so done with COVID, and they're so done with the ridiculous public health measures that were based on lots of lies and errors and deception. Now that they're really, really done, there's this last gasp, this desperate final push to keep the country locked down. On MSNBC, you've got some quacks showing up saying that the new fad, the new fashion is, of course, you need to keep wearing your mask, even though the court said

you no longer have to. Yes, you absolutely have to social distance and take your 7,000th vaccine, and do all the sorts of things that Dr. Fauci wants you to do. But even for your kids, you're really, really little kids who are too young to take the vaccine and who are too young to wear a mask, well, you basically need to put them in a space helmet. Make Mother's Day even more special at Whole Foods Market. Kick off brunch or dinner with quality cheese and charcutory with no synthetic nitrates, then go seafood.

There's an abundance on sale at Whole Foods Market, where it's all sustainable while caught or responsibly farmed. At the bakery, grab seasonal. treats like their strawberry pretzel cream pie, and you can't go wrong with a ready to heat Keish Lorraine, deviled eggs, and fresh-cut fruits to go. Celebrate Mom with Whole Foods Market. Parents have young kiddos less than six months at age. If they've been breastfed, they will have some degree of protective antibodies. My wife's a pediatrician. We chat about this at the dinner table. If you have something, if you have a different way to get

your end destination and you want to travel with your child that's less than six months of age. Try the car if you can. If not, if you can avoid traveling for those first six months, ideal in an airplane cabin. Moving forward, this is something that some patrons are recommending for six months of age and above, Katie, the bucket hat with a face shield. I personally had not purchased this, but it might help with some droplet protection, just something that we can do here to protect our kiddos while we're wearing a corrective clearance for that group. They're also very cute on kiddos. Yeah, they're really, really cute. A bucket hat with a face shield. So you've got to, they want you to put on your four-month-old baby. They want you to put the little hat. Maybe you can put it on if the baby goes in the sun like a little bonnet with just a giant plastic cone around it, a little face shield for the baby. For the little baby who's scared of his own shadow, who just wants to snuggle up next to mommy, you've got to put him in basically a hazmat suit to protect against the virus that statistically poses an extremely

low risk to children, two years after, well over two years after two weeks to slow the spread, rather. I'm not going to do that. I don't think you're going to do that. I don't think anyone should take all that seriously. This is how they operate. I don't mention it because this sheds any light on coronavirus or the lockdown. It sheds light on politics. They are so desperate to hold on to this power. Why did they turn down that good offer for Milan Musk that offered a premium on Twitter? because the power is worth more to them than the money. And the power is worth money, really, in the long run. Why are they holding on to the coronavirus two years after two weeks to slow the spread?

After we know that the projections about death counts were just completely bogus, after they've even had to revise down the total death counts by 3 quarters, what was it, 72,000 people or something, just a few months ago, and probably it will be even more than that in the end. Why? Why? Why? Because the power is worth a whole lot. to them. Speaking of the poor treatment of children, I do have to get to this point. There's a horrible decision that was just made today by a criminal court. Texas's highest criminal court just halted the execution of a woman who tortured and killed her two-year-old daughter. This woman, Melissa Lucio, she was, she's one of the people who Kim Kardashian and other very ignorant left-wing political

activists have been trying to get off the hook. This woman had 14, I think it was 14 total kids, might have been 14 kids plus this little girl. She tortured and killed this little girl. The little girl was found. Initially, this mother said that the way the little daughter died was because she fell down the stairs. It's the oldest excuse in the history of domestic violence. The experts later found no, she was killed by blunt force trauma. The mother confessed to killing her daughter. There were bite marks on this woman. Hair had been pulled out. She had a broken arm for weeks before she was ultimately killed. Just horrific, horrific torture. The woman certainly needs to face her punishment. I hope she repents. I hope she turns her life around. Hanging concentrates the

mind. But what this tells you, what this decision tells you is one, this society does not care about kids at all. We don't, we're conducting creepy medical experiments on kids that are going to destroy their bodies, potentially give them bone diseases, like the puberty blockers, for instance, that are going to make them infertile, that are going to sterilize them all because of our weird ideological fads to make delusional adults feel better about their sexual dysfunctions and disorders. We're killing 800,000 babies a year in this country, at least for now, hopefully we'll overturn Roe versus Wade. One, it tells you society doesn't care about the kids. And two, it tells you that this society is harshest to the innocent and most lenient to the guilty. That's a

disordered society. It's a society where the standards are upside down and we need to go in there and exert our political will and reorder them. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you tomorrow. If you enjoyed this episode, 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 Claven show, and the Matt Wall Show. The Michael Nulls Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring, supervising producer, Mathis Glover, production, editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico, Associate producer Justine Turley, audio mixer, Mike Coramina, and hair and makeup by Cherokee Hart.

Michael Null's show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2022. Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, Twitter accepts Elon Musk's offer to buy. And we examine all the leftist panic and all the possibilities. That's today on the Ben Shapiro show. Give it a listen.