The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire: AOC's 2028 Dating Game & WNBA's What is a Woman Debate

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Who will be the next White House Press Secretary? Who will be next to date AOC? Cabot Phillips joins the hosts to answer these critical questions of life and death, and more. Plus, sports broadcasting legend Michele Tafoya weighs in on the debate over male basketball stars transitioning into WNBA players, and her Minnesota Senate race. And the Daily Wire's coming blockbuster Run Hide Fight: Infidels has the media and Hollywood running for the hills. Friendly Fire Ep. 21 Michele Tafoya for Minnesota U.S. Senate: https://micheletafoya.com - - - Today's Sponsors: Helix Sleep - Visit https://helixsleep.com/DailyWire for 20% OFF sitewide. PureTalk - Visit https://PureTalk.com/KNOWLES to make the switch to PureTalk, a wireless company that ACTUALLY values what you value. Kalshi - Visit https://kalshi.com/friendlyfire to see live prediction markets and sign up today to trade on the outcomes that matter most to you. - - - DailyWire+ Become a Daily Wire Member and watch all of our content ad-free: https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe 📚👩🏼‍🏫 Back-to-School Sale - Get 3 months for $19 📝👨🏻‍🏫 📲 Download the free Daily Wire app today on iPhone, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung, and more. 🍿 Run Hide Fight: Infidels will premiere on The Daily Wire, Wednesday September 16th. Go to https://DailyWire.com/Shop 🎙️ Watch Wired-in-Live with Cabot Phillips Mon - Thurs 4:00pm ET https://www.dailywire.com/show/wired-in-live 📘 Ben Shapiro’s book "Lions and Scavengers: The True Story of America (and Her Critics)" is available here: https://dwplus.shop/LionsandScavengers 📗 Michael Knowles’ book "Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds" is available here: https://dwplus.shop/Speechless - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know what's so funny. I'm sitting there. I just, I get a text from Drew. He's like, hey, you know, I'll be around in about an hour if you want to have a cigar. I was like, wait, why aren't you on friendly fire? What do you mean you're around? You're in Nashville. What do you do for a living, Andrew Klaven? What the hell? What the hell? That's so funny. Also, yeah, that's that's wild. Also, I thought by now you would have taken the job as the White House Press Secretary. By the way, my off the board pick for White House Press Secretary because I just want ratings and amusement was Alex Jones. And the Alex Jones's White House Press Secretary would be extraordinary. Just having him due to the White House Press Corps. like what he did to Sneako

would be the single greatest thing in the history of American politics just crossing his eyes, screaming at the top of his lungs and ripping open his shirt as he screams about the frogs and Islam would be like incredible. I would pay excellent money.

We can solve the national debt this way. Have you been following our beloved sponsor, Kalshie, does have some rankings here of the likelihood. And so right now, they've got Anna Kelly at 18%, Scott Jennings at 16%,

Roma de Ravi at 14, Alina Haba, 12, Stephen Chung, 10, Jason Miller, 9. And I don't, I think it's going to be a girl. I think it's still going to be a girl. I don't, right? I'll take the under on Jennings for sure. Like, there's no way that Scott is going to do that job. Like Scott has a very nice perch over at CNN.

And also, again, he's like you, right? He wants to comment on the issues. He doesn't want to actually just speak for the administration. I don't know Anna Kelly. Apparently, she's talented. So I think there's a reason why she's on that chart. I think between all of us, we actually know a bunch of people who'd be great at this job. Like Mary Margaret Olehans, bringing to mind as somebody who'd actually be great at this job.

And I prefer that they not start poaching our talents at the White House. There are a bunch of people who are actually really good at this. I think we're too quick to write off Scott Jennings. He's lost like 25 pounds, it looks like, in the last few months, which implies to me that he's getting ready. I think we'll know that he's really throwing his name in there if he dyes his hair, bleeds blonde. And Trump has said he wants someone out of his... central casting, and I think if he gets that blonde hair look, he's been trimming down. He has to plump his lips, plump his lips, so he has the very plump Caroline Levin lips that

President Trump apparently is so adored. I know, I caught that clip. You know, that's the thing with Trump, though, when he said that he goes, those lips, they move like a machine gun. But, you know, he thinks of things from TV. And so he says, like, all of my guys are at a central casting. He says that about John Rackleff, the CIA director. And so this is where I think with Carol,

Caroline Levitt, I can't think of a better press secretary. I don't mean to say, like, there have been plenty of terrific press secretaries, obviously, like, going back to Tony Snow was an amazing one. And Dana Brino was great, yeah. Dana was great, Kaylee, Sarah Huckabee. I know they batted around Sean Spicer for a bit. I thought Sean Spicer did a good job. But they, and now obviously it's moved into the girls. But with Caroline, I just think, like, was there any error? Did she, was there any big gap? I can't think of one. Now, this is totally right. Like, like, Caroline, The thing she did better than pretty much anybody in the modern era is she just did not give the opposition a bunch of material on her.

If you think of the really bad White House press secretaries, and obviously by far the worst White House press secretary of all time is Korean Jean-Pierre. Without any doubt whatsoever, bar none, no close competitor, essentially the secretariat of bad White House press secretaries. Just there's no one else even in the picture. But that's because pretty much every day she would do something stupid and then it would lead the news. And you don't get that from Caroline Levin, who again, was given a challenging judge. job because the president's policies are pretty controversial on a wide variety of issues. So, yeah, I think Caroline did herself really proud here. And she is the only person in politics who I actually believe when she says that she does not want to do this job because she wants

to go spend time with her kids. Yeah. I will admit to being mildly sexist here. When a man says, I need to quit the job to go spend time with my kids, usually like 70% of the time he means I need to spend more time with my mistress. When Caroline Levitt says, I need to spend more time with my kids, I think she actually does really want to go spend more time with her kids. I actually think that the best thing that she did was not just all the things you're listing. From a performance standpoint, yes, I think she did a very good job. I think her lasting legacy, though, will be bringing in alternative media outlets to the press room. That was something we did not see as much of an effort on in the first Trump term.

And I think she deserves credit for not only allowing those voices in the room and working and pressuring the Court's Respondents Association to bring in outlets that are not traditional legacy ones, but actually calling on them and promoting them. putting them in that new media seat right next to the podium. And the Daily Wire now has a seat at the actual or in the press room. And I think that that is the big legacy that she leaves is taking away some of the power from the legacy outlets. Yeah, no, I remember when the transition was up and running. I was on with Don Jr. and we were talking about what the press room should look like. And I thought, you know, that would be such a natural legacy for Trump is to bring in the media and kind of demote some of the old desiccated media. And she did it. She made it happen, including the aforementioned great Mary Margaret Olahann getting in there. So it was terrific.

I look forward to Press Room 2.0 after Press Room 1.0 was so great. You know what 1.0 was not great was Woke 1.0, and it's being replaced by Woke 2.0, which strikes me as exactly the same as Woke 2.0. I should also point out, it's friendly fire. AOC comes out, she says, Woke 1.0 was crazy. Do we have the clip? What do you make of those controversial statements? I'm sure you've seen.

I mean, she's, you know, the Thanksgiving dust up. She says she doesn't, you know, still believe that, but, you know, the abolished prisons, abolished police, which is also positions that have been taken by a lot of the progressive candidates who have won. How do you get around that? Those are not positions that are supported by most aware. I mean, I think that a lot of these races, even right now,

they'll have a tendency to be nationalized. But these races ultimately are local, and all politics are local. My understanding is that Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her electorate. Yeah, she's moved away from a lot of that. She's moved away from it. And I have a local city councilman that has this saying, woke one was crazy. Boke one was crazy.

Okay, that's true. And I think that what's important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying. Did the movement go too far with some of those positions? I mean, you briefly supported the idea of defunding the police. Well, you know, I think that during this time and during, especially during COVID, there was a huge opening of the Overton window. We were shut down. There was some of the highest unemployment rates

that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. So she comes out, and this was clearly intentional. She's referring to this city council member who she's allied with and says, oh, yeah, I had this friend. She told me, well, at one point it was crazy.

And it's clearly an intentional pivot ahead of the midterms to say, yeah, we want to distance ourselves from all that stuff that got us blown out in 2024. But it seems to me that Woke 2.0 is exactly the same thing. So it is not quite the same thing. It is, it is broadly speaking, a similar thing. So the way that I would distinguish Woke 1.0 from Woke 2.0 is the idea that the chief motivating factor in all of Western civilization and in America particularly was racism. That was white supremacy, right? It was Black Lives Matter, that the 1619 project made the argument that basically slavery and racism were the thing that built, say, capitalism or free speech was an aspect of a racist system.

Racism was the underlying motivating factor. And it was incurable. There was nothing you could do about it. All you could do is sort of ripped down the system. And I think it faded out because most Americans looked at them and what the hell are you talking about? Most Americans got tired of it. And also, most Americans looked at their neighbors and went, well, I don't see that many racists around here.

And that doesn't feel real to me. woke 2.0, I do think, has a little bit more legs than woke one point. I think woke 2.0 is making a different argument, and that is that the root of all evil is capitalism. And you see this from Abdul al-Said, you see this from Zarmam Dani, you see this from AOC. Woke 2O is the idea that racism, imperialism, colonialism, all of this is the result of individual rights and free markets in the West. And so all of that stuff needs to be thrown away. And it's why you're seeing some horseshoe effect, where you see some people on the right

or sort of warming to woke 2.0, it's why you'll see people like, you know, if you listen to, you know, Hassan Piker on the left and Tucker Carlson on the right talk about economics, there's actually some significant crossover in the way they're talking about this sort of stuff, because the idea is that capitalism is the thing that's to blame. That's a richer vein to mind for two reasons. One, people are really pissed off about the price of things lately, and I think that there's rationality to that. Again, I think that most of that is being caused by government policy.

I think the failure of government policy is what causes prices to disconnect from underlying demand and supply rationality. And two, it is much easier to make the case that capitalism causes bad things that happen abroad, like imperialism and colonialism, then to say that America itself is racist and terrible. The problem with woke 1.0 is it was self-refuting. You looked around the country, I don't know how many racist, things seem kind of okay. Like most of my neighbors seem like good people. And it was like, okay, that refutes that.

But if you say that American capitalism is causing us to be an imperialist, colonialist, colonialist power abroad backing quote-unquote genocide in Gaza, which is like the number one issue, for the DSA right now, you have to wonder, how did it have a war 8,000 miles away involving a very, very small sliver of humanity become the number one issue for the DSA? That's because it's much easier to get people to buy into a proposition that a bad thing is happening on ITV where people are blowing up 8,000 miles away, and probably that's us in capitalism, than it is to say, well, actually, you getting paid by your employer is a result of slavery. Like, what one point was a harder sell, I think? Well, so I wondered that. I don't know. I think actually you're being too

charitable to the woke 2.0 people in as much as what they want to pitch is a much more serious economic populism. They were pretty open about that. And in some ways, I think the right has more of an opportunity there than the left, because whenever they're asked, okay, what's the difference? To me, this is, whenever IOC says, woke one point it was crazy, the obvious follow-up we should ask is, oh yeah, what was crazy about it? Be specific. What was crazy? Was it the trans thing? Or was it, you know, marching in the streets because a career criminal overdosed on fentanyl? Or was it, what was, is it the mass migration? What was crazy?

They won't tell you. And then you have all these clips of Abdul al-Sayyad and all the rest of them going around, doubling down on transing the kids, doubling down on the mass migration, doubling down on all of it. So I think if it were this switch back, as AOC says to, you know, I'm just a working class person. I'm not a radical leftist. I think it would work a lot better for them.

I just don't, I don't think they can disavow any of the, you know, the aspects of woke 1.0, which involved race, but it involved sex stuff, it involved migration, involved all of that. I don't think they're going to disavow it. And so maybe they could make a play for the economic populism. I just don't think they can stick the landing. So I think I think I right about that, Michael, I think there is one thing that they're doing that's clever. Well, there are a couple things that are clever about the woke one, woke two sort of rebranding. One is that most people don't follow this stuff closely. And so they just assume that when you disavow a prior position without explaining why, you've actually disavowed it, right? This is the same

thing is Zora and Mammani going out there and saying, you know, I shifted and I evolved on my defund the police. No, you didn't. You just became mayor, right? You still believe in defunding the police, right? You still hate the country. You're just lying about it. You're just doing, you know, Tiki, from a left-wing perspective. The sort of Islamic doctrine that during war, you're allowed to lie. Like, you're, that's just the thing. But I think there's one other thing that they're doing that actually is clever. And that is, the thing they will say was bad about woke one was what they are now terming the broad misinterpretation of cancel culture. Right. And this has become part of the problem. It's a problem on the right. It's a problem on the right,

problem on the left, by the way, is that originally when people like us talked about cancel culture, the idea was people should not lose their jobs for saying that men are not women. Right? That's what I mean by cancel culture. We don't mean that if you go into your workplace and just start shouting Nazi slogans that you can never be fired, right? That's not cancel culture. That's just called like rational consequences. Standards and norms and taboos. Yeah, exactly. But that turned into, there can be no consequences whatsoever for your decision-making. And so they're taking that model and that's how they're mapping on Hassan Piker. You hear Bernie Sanders do this now, right?

Bernie Sanders is like, you know, I don't agree with everything that Hassan PICA has to say. We can't just counsel Hassan Pico. We have to conclude him. And you see this on the right, right? Obviously, the vice president said some of this stuff at TPSA. And you see it on the left with regard to the Democratic Party just ingesting all this crap from Hassan Piker. And, you know, I think that that is, again, a tactically smart. I agree with you.

I think they're going to have a very difficult time disavowing many of their prior crazy beliefs. But they're hoping that everybody sort of glosses over it. that everybody just sort of ignores it, that it goes away for them. And you could see a world in which they nominate somebody for the presidency who's able to kind of gloss over the top of it. I don't think it's AOC, but you could see somebody like a Westmore being able to sort of evade some of those more dicey issues from them like trans. Do you think they even need to fully disavow all of this stuff?

I just can't help but wonder how many within the Democratic base are like have a hankering for them to disavow or if they're just saying, oh, well, yeah, we all got caught up and stuff, no big deal. And I just wonder how many of these Democratic lawmakers are going to say, screw it, I'm not going to give any ground on this. I'm not going to show any weakness. I agree with what you're saying, Ben, that I think this one has more legs because I think the class warfare, there's more for them to go on than the racial grievances in Woke 1. And maybe I'm the pessimist. I feel like Republicans have done a terrible job so far responding to Woke 2. And the main message that I'm hearing, I mean, we have congressmen and senators and

candidates on Wired Inn like every day. And the main thing they're saying is just, oh, these socialists, they're fools because socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's tried. And they kind of laugh at them. Oh, we all know how socialism works in the end. And they're right. But I'm not seeing a ton of like acknowledging what people are actually mad about in the first place and telling people, hey, this is a crappy idea. I don't think it's going to be enough. And I'd like to see more folks on the right say, yeah, you guys actually are right to be angry about this. Let's have a more clear solution. Do you think Republicans are actually doing that right now? Well, on the, on the base point, Cabot, the thing, you're right, that there's no appetite among the base whatsoever for them to

disavow woke one. That's one of the problems. I mean, the Democratic Socialists of America are now more popular with rank and file Democrat voters than Democrats in Congress are. Huge swads of the Democrat base identifies now as socialist. So they don't want them to disavow it. They're just trying to win over normal people, recapture the common sense. So the other problem that they have is that the internal of their ideology won't allow them to disavow it. This is the problem they ran into when they went all the way up to transing the kids. Well, okay, if transing the kids is wrong, then why is transing the adults okay? If transing the adults is not okay, if men and women are really different, why is gay marriage legitimate?

You know, if men and women are actually different, then why would we redefine marriage in this radical way? If the LGBT movement in itself is not okay, then I don't know why some of our premises about feminism are probably wrong. So it's like, just as ideas have a kind of inertia and momentum to them that bring us from Gloria Steinem to transing the kids. When you reject part, it goes back in the other direction. I just think that the left cannot unwind it. So they're really between a rock and a hard place. And what the conservatives need to do, I think we need to be honest with ourselves. The Iran war is unpopular and it's dragging on a lot longer than people thought it would. The affordability issue is good for Democrats and Republicans just have a harder

time. Even if we've brought the inflation rate way down from under Joe Biden, it's still a problem. Stuff is still expensive. People see that all around them. Trump has done well with economic populism since 2016 by arguing against NAFTA, by not wanting to reform entitlements. You can say all of that could be economically bad down the road, but just it did actually have a sway with voters. But right now, it's much more difficult for conservatives to make that argument with Republicans in power. So what are you going to hammer? I think you've got to go back to the well. You've got to pick up the bat, keep hitting that dead horse of the trans issue and the radicalism of wokeness, in part because the left hasn't given it up, so it's still a live fight. And two, they can't run away from it.

You know, it's just a major wedge issue for them right now. Most, I think that there's another angle that needs to be taken, that the right has been very reticent to take, which is weird. I get to the affordability and sort of what needs to be done on that issue in a second because you're right that obviously there's a lot of political hay that's being made off of all those issues. And I agree with your assessment, Michael, on the unpopularity of the Warren and Ruffalo. and the lack of an overall strategy that's been expressed to the American people and all that kind of stuff. There is one angle

that the Republicans have left totally on the table and they're just not taking it for a reason I cannot discern. And that angle is, these people, they hate America. I mean, they literally hate America. I mean, Hassan Piker despises the country. I mean, despises it.

I mean, says he wipes his ass with the flag of the United States of America. Abdul al-Sayed hates America. I mean, associates with people campaigns with people who hate America. Grand Planet Remainte, hated America. Zormandani hates America. America. Like, these people are not being shy about any of this. And that hatred of America,

I think Americans have a gut level willingness to understand that if we show it to them. I mean, if I were, if I were the Republicans, I would just in every one of these campaigns be showing pictures of Hassan Piker with Abdul El Sayed and say, this is your Democratic Party and then play a clip of Hassan Piker saying this, right? And there's a clip of the kind of stuff that Hassan Piker says openly. And he is a treasured part of the Democratic constellation at this point. I hate this country so much. Overall, what my favorite is. favorite flag? Yeah.

Hezbollah. Look it up. If Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, America is the top terrorist organization, which it is, by the way. America is the top dog in terrorism. One side is always going to be worse than the other side. America is worse than Iran.

That much is 100% of something I stand on. It's not even a comparison. America is the greatest terrorist on the planet. Also, you might have noticed something finally framed newspaper from 9-11, the morning of 9-12, the newspaper right there. America deserved. 9-11, dude. I'm saying it.

They love walking over, like, the American flag and the Israeli flag side by side. They will always, like, march on it. Kill those. They murder those in the street. Let the streets, let the streets soak in their red capitalist bloods, dude. They can do whatever the fuck they want with the American flag and the Israeli flag. I wipe my ass with the American flag. I understand the utter moral depravity of the average American.

And suck me from the back, okay? I f*** the constitution. I wipe my ass with the Constitution. It's a piece of paper, dude. Shut the fuck up. Mother of the Constitution and mother this country, okay? Okay, so I mean, like that seems to me a pretty rich vein for Republicans to mind. So if I were doing the Republican campaign strategy, number one would be pointing out how much these people truly hate the country.

Now, again, some of these people hide it better than others, right? Like, they're more mainstream Democrats who don't say that kind of stuff. And so that means that it'll be harder in, for example, Wisconsin. It would be easier Francesca Hong had actually won that primary in Wisconsin for Republicans to win the gubernatorial race over there. But that brings us to the sort of affordability thing. And this is where, you know, there's going to be some significant disagreement between you and me, Michael, on this. I think that I agree with you, Cabot, that obviously everyone ought to acknowledge things are too expensive. They are too expensive.

Of course. They mostly got expensive under Joe Biden, right? That is the reality of when things got super expensive. And then they've gotten marginally more expensive under President Trump as well. The great jump in expenses did not have. happened because of the Iran war, although the Iran war contributes at the margins to that. I think all of those things are true simultaneously. The question is how you solve that. I don't think that you can solve that by proposing a set of policies that are statist and interventionist in nature,

because the Democrats, number one, on a political level, will always outbid you there. And number two, it just happens not to be true. If you're the person who wants to bring down prices, there's only one way to bring down prices. And the only way to bring down prices is to skyrocket supply. And the only way to skyrocket supply is to remove things like the tariffs that President Trump likes, to stop subsidizing demand side, which is what subsidies are, right? That's the stuff you actually have to do. So if you want to bring down the prices, and right now the Republicans are in power, so they're responsible for it, you actually have to promote policies that actually get that

thing done that are different than the stuff the Democrats would say, which is mandate, mandate, regulate, subsidize, and all the rest of that kind of stuff. You have to make an overt defense of free markets and attack socialism not just as a buzzword. Like the polls show, Americans don't even know what socialism means anymore. Bernie Sanders has done an amazing job of basically convincing people that socialism looks like Denmark, when Denmark in reality is a very, very robust capitalist state with extremely high tax rates and social redistributionism. Yeah, I think, look, I think even the socialists don't understand what socialism is and the chief

critics of socialism don't understand, because I think that Winston Churchill's right, that it's a gospel of envy. I think it's actually much more than economics. I think it comes down to Marx's favorite line of literature being from Gertes-Faust, saying that everything exists, deserves to perish, and he wants the ruthless criticism of all that exists. So I mean, there's a deeply spiritual component here. How many popes have we had who've said that a Catholic cannot subscribe even to a moderate form of socialism? You obviously, you know, there is a robust moral argument to be made against socialism, even more than the economic one.

Yeah, where I disagree, though, Ben, is I do not think that, I don't agree with the solution that, or with the proposition, that Republicans can't campaign on economic populism. and putting aside even the efficacy of the policies, which we could debate later, just in terms of the campaigning, if the idea is that you shouldn't engage in the economic populism because the Democrats are always going to offer more. They're always going to offer more free stuff than you're going to offer, so they're always going to beat you at that game. I don't think that's true, and I think the proof is now like 60 years of Republican politics here. The Republicans ran for very long time against FDR's New Deal. When the Republicans really came into ascendancy with the

modern conservative movement, it was under Ronald Reagan who defended the New Deal, who said, I'm a New Deal Democrat, I didn't leave my party, my party left me. Now, Ronald Reagan obviously defended free markets. He had a complicated economic record because he also implemented tariffs, but yeah, he was a free market here, no doubt about that. George W. Bush won and won eventually the popular vote in 2004 by campaigning with a little bit of economic populism in there. And President Trump, I think did this most beautifully in 2016. It's annoying because we have this major debt problem and we need to figure out a way to reform our budget, which begins with our entitlements. But President Trump changed the script. Republicans were getting hammered. The Romney Ryan campaign got hammered

because the Democrats said that Paul Ryan especially is going to throw a granny off of a cliff. They campaigned against entitlements and they got crushed. Trump comes out, he says, I'm not touching your social security. I'm not touching your Medicare. And there have been a lot of economic reforms under Trump, some more successful than others. But I think there's a long and storied history of Republicans leaning a little bit into economic populism. And the reason for that, by the way, is not because we're going to become a little bit socialist, but because that's the way to prevent socialism. If you tell people, we don't care about your economic condition, we're not going to do anything to help you. You know, the market is all knowing, the invisible hand deserves our

worship. And if it doesn't work out for you too bad, if we tell them that, we are going to lead them towards socialism, rightly or wrongly. Okay, so this is an argument, this last part of the, I was with you, actually, for a huge part of the argument. The last part of the argument is the part that I find to be a bit of a straw man. I don't think anybody is saying, worship the invisible hand of the market. The question is, if you actually want to bring down prices, you need to say, what is the obstacle to prices coming down?

And the answer is, you have a supply side problem and an artificial demand side problem. That is just the reality of the situation. And so you can campaign on a bunch of nonsense that actually doesn't lower the prices. But when you say there are third rails to American politics, obviously that's true with the welfare state, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's true. If you want to talk about the true Uniparty in Washington,

the truest Uniparty, and they're a bunch of idiots. You talk about Uniparty and foreign policy, which is not true. There's an actual uniparty, not when it comes to, quote, unquote, neoliberalism, but when it comes to the welfare state, that is an actual real uniparty where there are zero votes

for a full scale reduction of, say, social security or changing of the structure of Medicare and Medicaid, right? That's the actual thing, which is only the biggest issue in probably the history of American politics that we are just going to run right over. But, you know, again, on a political level, I'm not saying Trump should run on.

We're privatizing social security. What I'm suggesting is that Republicans are going to need to provide an alternative structure that is not just a bunch of subsidies that Democrats can now. And tariffs are not, in fact, a third rail of American politics. In fact, if you look back at President Trump's approval rating, they actually drop below the 50% mark on Liberation Day and they never recovered. Because of the implementation. And her mathematically down.

Also because they're just a bad idea. I mean, like the way that he did it, I mean, we can say that Reagan liked tariffs. President Reagan's use of tariffs was nowhere remotely close to what President Trump did on Liberation Day. That's also true of the Bush steel tariffs and all the rest of it. By the way, we should say that, you know, AOC,

we mentioned AOC in Woke 1.0 earlier. AOC, obviously, we should get to how she announced her presidential run because it was weird, weird, but Calci markets suggest that 9% of people think she is going to announce her presidential candidacy before January 1 of next year.

23% of people saying before April 1, of next year, July, 40%, October of next year, 58%. So pretty much everybody, at least a huge majority of people in the Kalshi markets, which, again, a sponsor of ours, believe that she is going to announce a presidential run before the actual presidential season starts next year. Again, I find it hard to believe that she wouldn't. And if that keeps you up at night, well, you need a helixly mattress. Okay, let's be real about this.

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That's helixleep.com slash daily wire for 20% offsite wide exclusively for you. That's helixleep.com slash daily wire to get started. Okay, Michael, I do have to ask you, and I have to ask you about the AOC presidential announcement, I'm not sure I've ever seen a quasi-presidential announcement predicated on a biological intervention. That was a new one. I've never seen that. First of all, I feel like none of this

should be on camera. If you're going to do it, whatever moral problems any of us have with it, and I think we all have some moral qualms about a lot of this, that's super duper weird. That's weird. It's weird. You know, and I actually, just respectfully, since you just came out of the Helix sleep at. If I were in your shoes, my transition would have been, okay, gang, we're repopulating the earth because my wife and I share a beautiful Helix mattress, and we'll just leave it at that, gang. But if you, but unlike us, AOC has decided to take the less fun route. And so she comes out and she injects yourself on camera and she pre-tapes it. She says, I'm not going to do this live. That'd be weird. You're like, that would be weird? Yeah, you're right. And yes, I had the exact same first instinct you

did. My first instinct was, okay, this is her presidential announcement. We should bring on, actually, a candidate, a politician who knows a thing or two about running to help us talk about this. That would be Michelle Tofoy, a sports broadcaster, and Minnesota Senate candidate. Michelle, thank you for coming on the show. It's good to have you. I'm really sorry I missed this clip of this shot or whatever AOC was doing to herself. What happened? Well, she stuck herself with a needle because she said, I guess we have the clip. Yeah, you want to play it? Don't be weird about this, even though I know all of you will be. All right, everyone, Deco and I, day one of freezing my eggs.

I'm diving into the process and now I've got, let's see, all of this medicine here. I'm going to inject this first, but I got a pro tip from a friend because this injection kind of stings, it kind of burns a little bit. So a friend of mine told me that if you make the first injection first and let it sit while you're making, while you're doing everything else, maybe it burns a little less, I don't know. Then she shows skin.

Don't be weird about this. Don't be weird about this. Too late. Stop being weird. Yeah. Is that on me? That's like when the lives. You're being weird.

They say like, why do you guys always talk about trans people? It's like, I don't know, because you started it. Like, I'm just responding, don't be weird about this. You're taking your shirt up and injecting. When she was asked this week about her relationship, they said, are you still engaged? She said, I don't talk about my personal life. But let me rip my stomach out on a live stream and show myself freezing my head. I don't talk about my personal life except my eggs.

That's interesting. Well, it brought back some memories there because my husband and I went through infertility. We did not freeze any eggs, but we did do. vitro, so I remember all the shots. I had no desire to film myself doing the shots, by the way, but to each is all. Again, you know, my feeling about this is, so first of all, this is what I've called on the show, face tattoo syndrome, right? This is where you walk into a Starbucks, and there's some weird person with a gigantic face tattoo, and you're kind of staring at it because they have a face tattoo, and then they look at you and they growl and they go, what are you staring at? It's your face tattoo.

That's what I'm staring at. It's the thing that you did in order to get attention, for the thing. I mean, it's like, you, like, what the hell? Shake, don't be weird about this. Lady, you're filming yourself, injecting yourself with hormones in order to artificially stimulate your ovaries to reproduce, to produce multiple eggs that can be harvested for later. Like, I'm being weird. I'm, like, me, it was me. Like, I don't know, man. I feel there, there, there's so much there with her. But again, this is weird Democratic Party. And the whole thing for the Democratic Party is be weird and dare other people to talk about it. The first thing that I thought of here was like,

this is, it was like Tom Hardy, right? This is bait. This is bait. But we all had to take the bait because it was there, right? I mean, it is bait. Can I say something uncharacteristic here, which was not, I'm not, this is not a joke, this is not a set up to anything.

This was my sincere reaction when I saw it. I feels bad for AOC. I actually feel really sad for AOC. AOC is a year older than me. Lady Never Tells, we grew up in almost exactly the same place in towns right over from each other at almost exactly the same time. She grew up in the whiter, richer town next to me, but nevertheless, it's very similar.

And I think, okay, this is a 36-year-old woman who I thought was engaged for four years now, talk about millennial behavior. And I said, you don't, what are you waiting for? You could just have the kid. Obviously, you're putting this off probably for presidential reasons or, you know, running for Senate or something like that. And so you're putting your career first. And you're going to put this off until what, 40, 45, 50. And it's very sad because this is the most millennial behavior ever, the millennial. were all told, put off getting married, put off having a kid, stay engaged for 75 years, put your career first before everything. And they were just, they just are wrong and they're miserable as a result of it. And AOC now is, is in favor of her, I don't know, putting off getting married to the guy that you marry may not be still engaged to and obviously wanting to run for president. She's missing it, man. I've spent a lot of time around Congress. I've spent a lot of time

around the White House. Having kids is better. It's better. And to dedicate yourself to spending time with most people on Capitol Hill are complete degenerates. You know, some of them are very fine people. But a lot of them is not like it's not, it sucks, man. You're missing out. Like you're making the wrong choice and you're going to be less happy as a result of it. And you don't have to. Listen, yeah. You know what? I'm going to say this. I didn't have my son until I was 40. Part of that reason was I was really pursuing my career hard. And it wasn't, I didn't put anything off. I wasn't a very. I wasn't. avoiding meeting the man of my dreams. I just wasn't meeting him. And then finally we met. He's seven years younger. And then it was time to get married. And we thought, no, we have a little time to just go enjoy the first years of our marriage. Before I knew it, you know, I was 37 and trying to get pregnant. And it went very, very poorly. I have no regrets in my life, except not a couple from my young age, but really no regrets. I couldn't be happier in my marriage

and with my children, and I had the benefit of adopting my second child, and she is the gift that keeps on giving, man. But I will say, you can do it. You know, I think she's doing this. Obviously, it's kind of a clear sign that maybe they're not getting married. Otherwise, just have kids. You can juggle stuff. It's not, it's hard, but it's worthwhile. Michelle, the White House came out and there were multiple outlets reporting that the White House was upset that there were conservative commentators, folks like that evil Michael Knowles, who were pointing out some of the strangeness with this entire situation. And the White House was reportedly calling Republicans saying,

hey, don't talk about this. Please, this is not playing well to go after AOC for what she's doing. Just stay out of it. Do you agree with the White House messaging? Or did you yourself hear from the White House on this? I haven't heard because it's the first time I saw the video. So I haven't commented on it until now. But look, whatever people want to do to bring kids in the world,

I'm all about it. Like I said, we had a halacious experience. And fortunately, almost 21 years ago now, I had my son. And it was, for me, it was the way it was supposed to be. That's the way I look at it. And then we adopted this angel from Bogota, Colombia. So I'm not going to question anyone's motives or the track that they take to having a family. I'm not. I just I don't need to see it on video, I guess.

Ben, are you going to question their motives in their track? I mean, I get paid to question people's motives and their decision-making. So, I mean, it's a bit of a different career path that we've chosen from those who are seeking elected office. But, you know, speaking of kind of the weirdness of Democrats more general, I wanted to ask Michelle about the race that she is currently going to engage in. So what do we know about your opponent? So you overcame some establishment Republicans who wanted.

someone else to actually win. So what happened in the primary there? And then why do you explain who you're running against in the Senate there? Yeah, I think our message really resonated. I got in on January 21st, you know, so I was playing from a little bit behind in terms of time. But oh my gosh, we started raising money so fast. And in the first quarter, we raised a record amount for any Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Minnesota history. So we felt like we were on to something. And the message just really did. We didn't win the. the establishment Republican endorsement, but we told them from the get-go, whatever happens, we're going to go to the primary because we believe in this candidacy.

And that message really has resonated. Our entire message has resonated across the state. I think we won 81 of 87 counties. And then on the other side, it was a woman, Angie Craig, who's a sitting congresswoman who likes to appear moderate and is not, versus a woman who doesn't care at all if she peers moderate because she is not. And she has been Tim Walls as lieutenant governor, while all of this fraud has gone on, while the test scores in Minnesota have plummeted, while crime has gone up, while the police have been just strangled of their livelihood in Minneapolis and St. Paul,

all of those things happen under Tim Walls and his right hand, Peggy Flanagan. She is now the Democrat nominee. She won in a landslide on that side, which was a little bit surprising to a lot of Minnesotans that she won so handily, I'm telling you, there is a dearth of leadership in Minnesota. And I'm going to encourage everyone in this state to say, stand up, do not give this woman a promotion. She's overseen fraud. She's overseen all of these issues that we are now, you know, sitting within Minnesota going, what has happened? So let's not give her a promotion. Let's hold her accountable. That's what my campaign intends to do. Michelle, I thought the interesting thing on the Democratic side was how really the death nail for Angie Craig was her vote for the Lake and Riley

Act when she was in Congress. And it seems like immigration is the biggest issue on the left right now because of the ICE operations that we saw in Minneapolis and elsewhere. And Peggy Flanagan's really main message that she was hitting Angie Craig on was she voted with Republicans for the Lake and Riley Act, which if you actually read the Lake and Riley Act, of course every single member of Congress should have voted for it. But talk to us about that issue, the role that immigration and ICE and all those things are playing in this race. Well, you're right that Craig had to walk that back and apologize and she regretted that vote. But you're right, the Democrat Party in Minnesota held it over her head and supported her

opponent, Peggy Flanagan. So she is going to make all of this central issue to her campaign, to which I would say this. I wish that it was handled better in the beginning, this Operation Metro Surge. we had two tragic, unnecessary deaths here that were horrible. Tom Holman came in and I think really leveled things out and calmed the situation down. And I've spent a lot of time talking to law enforcement leadership groups, unions, police chiefs, sheriffs here in Minnesota, a lot of time. And they've been demoralized. But when Tom Homan came in, they like him.

They admire him. They respect him. They work well with him. And it really quelled the situation. So, you know, look, I think this idea that you get one end of the spectrum or the other, they're going to say open borders or, you know, just open borders are fine or immigration control is cruel. What I think is cruel are deaths like Lake and Rilies. And I think it's also cruel to American citizens to hollow out programs at their expense for the expense of people who are not here legally.

I think we can have two things. I think we can have a secure border, and I think we can also have a legal immigration system that I know my grandparents took advantage of and have people vetted, coming here legally to be productive members of American society. I just don't see, I don't see the other side seeing it that way. They're making a two-sided argument that is with no room for in between. Michelle, how are you feeling about the midterms right now generally? Because I was very, very black. filled some months ago, and I was interviewing Speaker Johnson, actually. And he said, no, I think we're going to do well. I think we could grow the majority. And I remember we had a cup of coffee. I said, what's in that coffee? Would someone mind pouring some of that into me? And then I start looking at the polls, was it two, three weeks ago? All of a sudden, that on top of the redistricting from the

U.S. Supreme Court, Virginia Supreme Court, I'm starting to say, man, you know, maybe I was wrong. You know, actually, maybe things are looking a lot better for Republicans. For a while, they were running basically even on the generic ballot, even though historically we should get blown out of the water. It's just how the first midterm works in this election cycle. Now, however, I'm feeling a little more black-billed again. It seems to me, you know, and we're looking at, the economy could be a little shaky, and the Democrats have avoided some of the worst nominees. You know, I was really pulling for Francesca Hong. I thought that would really help us at in Wisconsin.

They averted that disaster. Obviously, the Iran War complicates things. So how are you feeling about your chances in Minnesota and the Republicans' chances more broadly? How tough is it going to be for the candidates? Well, it's certainly an uphill climb, but you know what? The contrast could not be clearer,

and that's what we just need to keep hammering, is this contrast between common sense and crazy, or some people like to say common sense and communism. I mean, my opponent could not be worse for the state of Minnesota, could not be worse for the U.S. Senate. And you guys were talking about something earlier that I was listening and taking notes on. And that's this notion that this Hassan Piker-led party is so anti-West, so anti-American, so anti-Israel.

I don't think we can expose that enough because I think there are more people in America who love this country and who want the best for this country. And actually, who want hope and do not want to see us in this Marxist lens of oppressed versus oppressor, who want to feel like, you know what, that American dream sounds pretty good. I'm kind of bummed. People keep telling me it's dying because it's not. I see it all the time. I'm a product of it. You know, my background is, trust me, the harder I work, the luckier I've gotten. And I've done nothing but work since I was 10 years old. It was the way I was raised. It was the way my parents were raised during the Depression. You can do these things. And I'm so tired of this notion

that no, only certain people, rich people, white people get privileged. No, that is just so not true. So I think that we need to keep exposing the weaknesses of the other side. It seems like we're constantly on the defense. We've got to go on offense. I agree. I want to get to a very important story, but if anyone has anything else to add to the election, I want to get to the much more important story, which is the WNBA and the fact that it's about to become much more inclusive. They're finally, you know, after years that we're going to break the glass ceiling, the super ceiling on top, not just for the women, but for the men who think that they're women, because Inez-Cantor Freedom has just come out and made himself a prospect for the WNBA.

And the WNBA hasn't exactly shot it down yet. So the question I have for a Republican candidate, and especially for us at Daily Wire, which made a lot of hay out of Matt's movie, What is a Woman? The question I have is, are we just beating a dead horse here? Is it, look, we've gotten a, Republicans have gotten a lot of mileage out of the trans issue over the years. Are we beating a dead horse, or do we need to keep talking about it? Just for your context, here is the future star of the WNBA. After careful consideration and review in the current eligibility guidelines, I am officially declaring myself a WMBA prospect. If simply declaring who you are is all that's required,

that I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WMBA. My team and I have carefully examined the WMB's eligibility criteria and governing framework surrounding self-identification and inclusion. Based on the current guidelines, I can and am officially declaring my eligibility for the upcoming WMBA draft in May 2017. I am definitely not here to mock, make fun of, or do suspect any community or personal choices. I am simply asking that the current rules be applied equally to everyone.

The rules that represent the very values many WMBA players and coaches have publicly advocated for. My team and I are prepared to ensure these guidelines are applied equally, consistently, and without exception. And I look forward to the WMBA honoring its stated principles. See you at Training Camp. Preach, sister. Do we continue to harp on this or no? Is this a dead issue? No, it's not a dead issue. And I'll just use the people in my life as a barometer, whether they're asking,

whether they're non-athletes, whether they're moms or dads, they are, it's hard to believe we're still talking about it, but we still obviously have to talk about it. Look, I covered the WNBA as a play-by-play announcer. Robin Roberts, Hannah Storm, and I were the first three play-by-play announcers for the league when it started. Reggie Miller was my analyst, and it was a time of celebrating women. Lisa Leslie, Cheryl Swoops, Sue Bird, Rebecca Lobo, that whole crew that came through and they were, it was a celebrant. of women distinguishing themselves as athletes. Well, now you're saying, okay, are you going to accept trans women, i.e., for those who still have a problem following this, biological men who identify as women. Can they play in the WNBA? And you're hearing coaches, and even this commissioner dodging this by saying exclusion is never the answer. Hold on a minute.

Hold on a minute. Let me give the Sophie Cunningham point. Hold on just a minute. You know what? Exclusion is always a part of sport at every level. You know, once you get to high school, you might not make the team because someone might be better than you. You might not make division one, but you could make division two because you can compete at that level, but not at division one. I feel like you're talking to me right now directly. I feel very seen. for the men's division, and it's as simple and cut and dried as that. Yes, no, you're right. I get this point. I feel you're bringing back these traumas from high school of just being excluded from sports. Did you not get picked? I was, I was, I was picked. Michael's didn't even try out.

Michael's experience with getting cut was getting cut from the school play when he was auditioning. He was not doing the football team. I was never cut from the school play. That's a calendar. He's often cut from school play. Yeah, but, you know, this point is so important on all of the DEI inclusion stuff, which is you always have to exclude. Human life involves exclusion.

Having a nation involves excluding other people who are not part of the nation. Having a team involves excluding people who aren't going to make the team. Having single sex bathrooms or sports teams or leagues or schools involves excluding the other sex. That's just, of course, you know, this is a finite world and it involves discrimination.

So, like, you have to do it and you have to do it in a good way. I guess on this point, point, the left will say, you know, you right-wingers, you're being so cynical and opportunistic here, you don't really care about women's sports. And speaking for myself, you obviously do it. You've worked in it, but for me, I don't care about women's sports, couldn't possibly care any less. It interests me, not at all. And I think most of them probably shouldn't even exist other than to keep the ladies happy. But I don't, the reason that I care about this issue is as a matter of justice. If there is going

to be a women's sports league, they need to be protected. And they need to be protected. And they need to win their trophies and they need to not have things stolen from them. You know, women... Sorry, go ahead. No, that's exactly right. It's pretty simple. Look, I remember being a little, little girl. My dad came to me.

He had his son and three daughters, and he came to me and he said, guess what just happened? Title IX passed. This means you're going to be able to play sports in high school and college, if you want. Your mom never got to do that. Your aunties never got to do that. He was so excited. He became my basketball. All my sisters and I, he coached our basketball team.

because Title IX passed, which was to give women a more equal opportunity in certain things in college and elsewhere in life. I would say to you that Title IX was one of the most important pieces of, you know, it was an incredibly important development in society. You talk to women in the C-suite all over corporate American and they'll say, I played sports. It taught me leadership, taught me teamwork, taught me competitiveness, all of those things. So I think this has been, I don't know that I would have become a sports reporter without Title IX, right? So this is what we fought for. And now we're just going to kind of say, yeah, that was all good, but we got to be compassionate, let men compete too. So I think this Eniscata Freedom thing pushes them on this issue.

Are you going to be exclusionary or are you going to be all-inclusive? because if you are, you have to let him try out, and you have to let him make a team because he will make anything he wants. I was with Annas Cantor Freedom at the RNC in 2024. He came to the Daily Wire booth, and he was letting me know, hey, I love Daily Wire.

I'm especially a fan of Ben Shapiro, and he had us film a video challenging Ben Shapiro to a one-on-one basketball game. I don't think Ben ever took him up on it. Michelle, would you be willing to take some time from your busy campaign to commentate on the one-on-one game between and Ed's and Ben? call that one. I would totally.

Ben, are you going to take him up on this? I mean, for the sake of clicks and giggles, maybe we would do that. I mean, like, I would get destroyed. Wait, but that's not fair, Ben. That would not be fair for you to play basketball against a woman. That's not, you would have such an advantage. I mean, oh my gosh, it's like a lose, lose proposition for me now. Before

I could just be like, oh, I got beat by a former NBA player who's 6'11. And now it's like, I'm getting beat by a girl, like a red-headed step child. Like I'm just getting destroyed by this gigantic woman who's dunking on me. So yeah, I don't see a real upside there. My kids would definitely enjoy the prospect, though. They would love it. I just want to throw one more thing in there. You know, there have been these kind of rallies at WNBA games when Sophie Cunningham hits a town. And she hit Minneapolis here a couple weeks ago playing the links. And so Jennifer Say and Riley Gaines and I were down at the arena and cheering on Sophie Cunningham in a very positive way. We have this counter protest.

which was disgusting the names they were calling us, the things that they were doing, it was really awful. But that's going to happen. And again, the contrast can't be clearer. Fairness, lovingness on one side and just absolute ugliness on the other side. I guess what I would say is if the league says exclusion is never the answer, then they better make their rosters really, really, really big so that everyone who wants to play in the WNBA,

can play in the WMBA. But see, here's why they've got to exclude even some women. Because they can't afford a roster more than 12, neither can the NBA. This is a product. So they've got to exclude certain women. Now if you start letting men come in, biological men, now you're excluding even more women from the WNBA. So I think the absurdity of this cannot be amplified enough, you guys.

I really believe that because it gets people, attention, it makes them mad. And it makes them want to go, I just want to go back to normalcy in this world. Yes, you know. And so this is an issue that illustrates it well. If the WNBA doesn't exclude anyone, it will just become the NBA, which maybe it's not the worst. Look, I don't care about basketball generally. So, you know, I'm going to let the league sort it out, but I think you're absolutely right on the point of justice, Michelle. We have to let you go there. Best of luck on the campaign trail. Thanks for going out there to fight. And please save Sweet Minnesota, because that state's been tough for a while, the only state that voted against Reagan in 84.

I know it's an uphill battle. Because Walter Mondale was a son of Minnesota. Come on, let's not forget that. No, I think... Go to Michelle Tovoy.com. Yes, go out there, support Michelle. We have had Republican senators from Minnesota. Not so long ago, before the Democrats stole it in that election with...

Anyway, a dispute for another time, but they did totally steal that. Al Franken should not have gotten that seat. Michelle, best of luck. Best of luck on the trail. Now, I want to talk to you... Good to see you all. I want to talk to all of you about Pure Talk, because modern life has become absurdly complicated. Your coffee has 37 ingredients. Your toothbrush needs Bluetooth. Your refrigerator is asking for software updates.

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Do not wait. This offer is only around for a limited time. PureTalk.com slash Knowles, CanadaWLAS to claim this offer. PureTalk.com slash Knowles, KnaWLES to start saving today. Now, folks, before we get into this trailer that I want to show you, I just got to get you take Ben. Al Franken stole that seat. The Democrats stole that seat. Of course. Totally, right?

Yes. Yes. It was like 300 votes. Absolutely. I know. I really. It discovered like the trunk of a car, 100%. And, you know, I was trying to.

to hold off on my sexist remarks about the WNBA while Michelle was on the line just so that it wouldn't create trouble for her campaign. But there are a few things that occur to me that I just want to get off my chest. There one, I did not know that they make sweatshirts in Inis Cancer size for fans of the WNBA. Like, how is that even possible? How many 611 men are wearing around WNBA sweatshers? I do not think that there are that many.

Two, I will say that when it comes to the WMB, I've never seen a league blow itself up like the WNBA is currently doing. Like, it's not that hard to market a league where you have a bunch of girls who actually would like to go to the games. And instead, they decided to turn it into militant lesbian, angry people league. And it's like, what are you doing? Like, why don't you just provide, you know, like sports for girls where they go and feel good about things? Like, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to have people assaulting Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham.

And we're going to say that sometimes you don't know what a girl is final sexist comment. I will say that I'm unsurprised that the WNBA executive board was unable to reach a definition of women because presumably there were 20 women in a room trying to decide. a thing. And if you've ever tried to see plenty women in a room deciding where to go to dinner, even that doesn't end well. Trying to define womanhood, even though that's really, really simple, it turns out that that was going to be, I think, a lost cause from the very outset. Yes. Look, Ben, I could sit here all day and listen to this commentary. And maybe we can't. No, there's one bit of business we have to get to, folks, which is we kind of made a big splash last week, upset all the right people. Everyone knows that Hollywood is fearless. The big

studios will make a villain of anyone, a corrupt cop, an oil executive, any man who owns a shotgun, any bigoted white Christian threatening society. But there is one group that Hollywood will not cast as the bad guy, despite the historical record. You already know which group that is. So we made a movie about it ourselves. It's called Runhide Fight Infidels. Jonathan Majors, a college campus, and an existential threat to Western civilization. It has the establishment media with their hair on fire. It is not even out yet. Roll the clip.

Your country is beneath contempt. We who love and serve Allah fought back against the Americans and the Zionists from the scourge of secularism and the lands of unbelief. I'm going to listen to Captain Saunders tomorrow. The retired Delta Force soldier with a new book out.

He's the polar opposite of those brain-dead protesters. Given the current climate, should place Saunders to even be allowed on campus. Mr. Saunders is a close personal friend of Chancellor Friedman. This is a decision I cannot fly. There are three ways Islam will conquer the West. Through immigration, through the wombs of our women, and by using our nation's freedoms against us.

Are you paying attention? Han al-a-u-a-v-wā-wā-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw-haw-h. Listen carefully. The great Satan, America. We'll fall. You are infidels. The bodies of women are not pure and the men's souls are unclean.

What makes them so dangerous? Their goals are not in this life, but the next. I got friends here, I can't just deal. They listen to me! In the law! We cannot run or hide from what is coming. We have to fight.

I will be rewarded 10,000 times in the next life. When you die, you're nothing. Only one way to find out. That's the American way. The way I think about this movie, like if I were pitching it to someone, I don't know, I didn't like totally run this by the team or whatever, but this is how I would pitch it. I would say, hey, do you like Red Dawn? You remember like those 80s movie, like Red, John Millia?

Okay, you like Red Dawn. Make it like even more schizo and put it out there in the Big Two Six with just explosions and violence and the crazy Muslims. Do you want to see that? answer is, yes. Yes, I do. That's what I want to see. So it was amazing to watch the media totally blow up over this. Obviously, the idea was that it's Islamophobic to show ISIS being ISIS, because the villains in this movie are ISIS offshoots who do ISIS things. And apparently, you know, when you have the main character talking about the threat of radical Islam, which is what he is

talking about, like, no one's saying that all Muslims are terrorists, no one's saying that all Muslims believe what these Muslims believe, right? I'm saying that. Cabin is saying that, yeah. In any case, the movie itself is, you know, again, a reminder that if radical Muslims got control of our universities, our politics, things would not go so well. And we're seeing that evidence like everywhere. It's, it is amazing how, you know, when you say true things in a narrative fashion, it tends to be reflected in reality. So while we were cutting the trailer for this film, you saw a mass migrant invasion of Suta on the coast of Morocco. While this was happening, You saw a wide spate of terrorist attacks.

You saw Abdul al-Sayed, who's a terrorist supporter, being nominated for the Senate in Michigan. The reality of a threat of radical Islam is quite real, and it is there. And pretending that it's not there, it's not going to get anybody anywhere. And this is kind of a fun and kind of popcorny movie that makes the message clear. So it's missional in that sense. But it's also something you're going to want to watch with your friends because it's pretty audacious. And it does kick ass.

It's basically Toy Soldiers, a Red Dawn. You know, it's not a documentary. It's not meant to be a documentary. it is meant to be, you know, a fun, awesome action flick that is thought-provoking and definitely, you know, I'll say it's the biggest action flick that any conservative studio has ever put out by far. You mentioned the popcorn. I had my popcorn out reading all of the horrified reviews of the trailer from Vanity Fair and whoever else. And they were saying, oh, it's so Islamophobic to, you know, to talk about Islamic terror, as if we haven't already seen plenty of examples of Islamic terror. But the ironic thing is, if you go back and read their reviews of the countless movies that have come out portraying the bad guys as these Christian nationalists and white supremacists, there's a million movies where those are the bad guys,

and it's terrorist acts committed by white supremacists. And their response was, well, it's not hard to imagine these things happening in the future. Those things haven't happened, but they're saying it's not hard to imagine it happening in the future. But when we make a movie on things that actually have happened, they say, well, it's racist. It's very, offensive. It's Islamophobic. Well, is that great norm joke? I mean, I'd have to be more specific because they're all great jokes, but that Biddy did on his show, he says, you know, my greatest worry is that a terrorist. Well, Muslim terrorists will get a dirty bomb, detonated over a major city, killing tens of millions of people, because the blowback against peaceful Muslims would be terrible. And everyone has to straight face it.

This is the, like, to your point, Ben, you say, look, we're not obviously saying that all Muslims are the terrible people or anything like that. But I have a somewhat nuanced take on Islam, ultimately ending in what they call Islamophobia, I guess, though mine is rational. But nevertheless, you think like you can have a really nuanced view. We haven't talked about Dante yet today. Dante put Saladin with the virtuous pagans in the divine comedy. Like, you can have a nuanced view and have some respect for Muslim culture and even architecture, whatever, and still recognize Islam has been trying to conquer the West basically without interruption for 1,400 years. So that's not changing.

That's not going anywhere. We are the ones who have changed, and it has been to our detriment. And that's right. I mean, it's all semantic debate, right? I mean, so the question is kind of what word we're supposed to use for the fact that there is a very large contingent

of Muslims on planet Earth who actually hate the West and wish to see it destroyed. Okay, and some of those people live in the West because we decided to allow mass migration into the West from a lot of countries, where this stuff is taught. And again, we can say, and I do say, and there are reform Muslims or moderate Muslims

who oppose all of that, and that's true. But unfortunately, you know, there are 57 members of the organization of Islamic countries, and of the majority Muslim countries in the OIC, precisely zero are actually multi-ethnic tolerant democracies that really like the Western way of life. Like, it's just, it seems that, you know, there might be some problems with importing a lot of people

from those countries to our countries, and then assuming that they're just going to assimilate well. And when you ignore that, you end up with London, you end up with your born, you end up with all these other places. And people who have experienced this first hand, like Ayan Hersey-A-L-E speak pretty openly about this. And the fact that we're all supposed to ignore it and pretend that it's not happening.

And then we just kind of throw words like Islamophobia. I don't know. I mean, it depends on what Islam is saying. If Islam is making the claim that everyone ought to be Muslim and that war by the sword is the way to do this, then I feel like being phobic of that particular proposition. You want to come out and say that that's not what Islam argues, great. I'm on your side. I hope you win. But for the people who are arguing the opposite,

I hope they lose. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think it would be hard to argue, frankly. I think it's hard to argue the liberal reform, moderate form of Islam, which is why I would encourage their conversion, though not by the sort, just by the by the sacraments would be very good. But we've been trying to do that for about 1,400 years to varying degrees of success. And one way that you can engage with that issue and eat a lot of popcorn and have a great great, great time is by watching Run Highfoot. When does it come out? Do we know? Do we, have we set a date yet? September 16th. September 16th. There will be fun in games around the, around the premiere. So look out for it. Look out. Look out. It'll be very fun. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knawls.

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