The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire: Bad Bunny. Bad Culture.

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, but that’s not the smell of love in the air, it’s another week of the world losing its damn mind. Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and Andrew Klavan are back with Allie Beth Stuckey and Lynden Blake joining to help them understand what's happening in the world. From Bad Bunny’s halftime that required a DuoLingo subscription, trying to figure out who Clavicular is, where Nancy Guthrie is, and another horrific school tragedy that mainstream media refuses to report on honestly. Friendly Fire Ep. 08 Check out Allie Beth Stuckey’s podcast, Relatable:  Youtube: https://youtube.com/@alliebethstuckey?si=CEzSeO4G3xSSKz85 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6HUhXbF0dPutdhbnLnxRQZ?si=cde6b29e2f0d4127 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098 Buy your tickets for ‘Share the Arrows’ Christian Women’s Conference here: https://www.sharethearrows.com/ Allie will be monitoring the Texas Republican Attorney General Debate next Tuesday, 2/17. - - - Today's Sponsors: Helix Sleep - Visit https://helixsleep.com/friendlyfire for 27% off sitewide. 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. PreBorn! - Make a difference for generations to come. Donate securely online at https://preborn.com/fire or dial #250 keyword 'BABY' - - - Become a Daily Wire Member and watch all of our content ad-free: https://dailywire.com/subscribe 🍿 The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin is now streaming exclusively on DailyWire+               Watch now: https://dwplus.watch/ThePendragon               Subscribe here: https://pendragonseries.com 🍿 Real History with Matt Walsh available now, exclusively on DailyWire+!               Watch now: https://dwplus.watch/RealHistory               Subscribe here: https://dwplus.watch/RealHistorySubscribe - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yeah, it looks like that guy, you turn him upside down and it becomes his hair. He's got the full Michael Shannon as James Garfield in Death by Lightning, beard going now. It's so dark on my screen that it looks like someone just took out the pixels of Matt's face into like a black abyss. I've been trying to do that for years.

It's cold. Oh, we're live? Oh, we're live? Cool. That's exciting. I just hope Ali Beth isn't hearing us curse like this. They're still gentlemen enough. She is. Look, she's Nadia. This is terrible.

It's a bunch of clowns. I know enough to know that this is a reality. The reality behind the scene. Friends like these, Scootie, enemies. Friends are these goodies enemies. Listen, we have a lot to do today, guys, okay?

We need to talk about the Spanish maxing skirt cell who showed up to the Super Bowl. And then we also have to talk about clavicular, of course. Then there's a topic that all of us have touched on. Some of us have even made big hit movies on. There was a school shooting, a horrible

incident in Canada, where we all know exactly what happened, but the media don't want to talk about the thing that everybody knows happened. And we have to talk about the biggest news story in the country that I know absolutely nothing about. And it's the weirdest one yet, which is that Savannah Guthrie's mother has been kidnapped. So anyway, there's a lot that we have to get to on this very special episode of friendly fire. But before we get to any of that, I need to explain something. I look haggard and a sound haggard right now. The reason that I look in sound haggard, is because I was out all night drinking and smoking.

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It's so beautiful. Start sleeping right right now by ordering a Helix mattress today. Helixleep.com slash friendly fire 27% off sitewide. That is helixleep.com slash friendly fire 27% off sitewide. make sure you enter our show after checkout so that they know that we sent you. That is helixleep.com slash friendly fire. Okay, I think that's all the English we should speak. Don de Estala, Biblioteca, what did you all think of football Americano? I want to comment first because I have the best comment on this. I've heard everybody else's comments and mine are the best.

My comment on the Super Bowl halftime show every year is the same. I don't watch it. And the reason I don't watch it, no, I'm not, I'm not abscond. for my duty. The reason that is my commentary. I don't watch it because I feel it's a setup. It's a setup where they put on some stupid left wing thing, dissing the audience of white males, basically, who watch football like me. And then we come out and we complain about it. We sound like a bunch of crank. So I just don't watch it. I turn it off. I either, I usually have dinner with my wife. This time I was pounding on my grandson, beating up my grandson while that went on.

And then I turned the game back on, which is what I came there to see. On top, of which, I really believe that the arts belong to people who love them, and I don't love popular music, so I don't comment on it that much. I like, ever since the Beatles replaced, like, Frank Sinatra, singing, Cole Porter's songs, I was out, and I just continue to remain.

I like the game of football. I boycotted it when they knelt at the flag. I'm not boycotting it over crappy music because it's all crappy. This is, this is, that was the best take. That right there was the best take. You insisted on going first, so you could explain that you don't like pop music and that you're old?

That was the best of all the days. Everybody sounds old. Everybody sounds old when they talk about this on the conservative side. I have a best take on this. Can I go? I have the actual best take on this. Because I am mad about it. I am grumpy about it.

No. Shock me, Matt. I know. I know. No one expects it. Listen, I do. It's this weird thing has happened with the halftime show this time around, which is that the thing happened.

Some conservatives complained about it, I think rightly so. So there's backlash. And then there's backlash. from other conservatives against those conservatives saying, well, what are you doing complaining about it doesn't matter? Well, I kind of think like if that doesn't matter, then what, then what are any, why are we talking about anything? Like the, this is, this is one of our preeminent, uh, cultural events, you know, this is an iconic cultural event. It's an American event, the Super Bowl. I do watch the Super Bowl and I like the NFL because I

like, I like football, you know, it's an, it's an American pastime. And I don't want to give that up. And so when they turn that into this celebration of not just any foreign culture, but by the way, a foreign culture that has nothing to do with football at all. Hispanic culture has not contributed to the NFL, to American football at all. I mean, right now there are more Hispanics in the NFL than there have ever been. And there's like one per active roster. And there's 32 on the active rosters in the entire league. And that's at the peak.

So this is, this is, this is, you might as well have a halftime show that's devoted to celebrating women, women, women who represent zero percent of the rosters. Does, does anybody remember those magnet toys where you moved filings to make a beard on a guy? I'm just saying, I'm just having a flashback there. I like, I like football to have a beard, you know. It all comes together. So my, my point is that this, that what they did with the halftime show, I think is, is more deliberately offensive, not in the sense of like,

I'm not crying about it. I mean, like, deliberately, it's meant to be offensive to the actual fans of the game because it's inaccessible. It's in a language that we don't speak, and then on top of it, and this is the part that I think, like, if you're a conservative trying to take the contrarian view, it's actually it was good. You know, that's absurd especially because we get to the end of it. The actual worst take is the one you're describing, and it was John Kasich, and there were other squishy types who were backing it.

And it was all these kind of like, want to be cool, you know, boomer establishment Republicans. You know, actually, what Kasek said was, actually, that was great, bad bunny, a home run grand slam. And I couldn't tell if that was ironic if he was throwing some shade or no, I think he actually was that tone deaf that this guy gets up there. A Puerto Rican transvestite sings exclusively in Spanish. Finally at the end, he says, God bless America. And then it says, God bless America. You know, Chile, Argentina, Cuba. And you think, well, you want, in America's preeminent sporting event, you can't even say, God bless America without throwing shade at this country that you manifestly hate.

And you got John Kasich clapping like a seal saying, you know, please get another three-pointer, fellas. It was not just John Kasich, though. It's easy enough. It's not just John Kasich. There's like plenty of people that are on the, that would pretend to be even on the far right that have decided that actually the halftime show is perfectly fine. Absolutely. And then on top of that word, something new to be wrong about it. Yeah, we're going to flip around and say and criticize the TPSA halftime show.

By the way, the TPSA halftime show was a huge gamble that they took. If they had asked me and got in my opinion ahead of time, I would have told them, don't do it. Because you're, you know, you're counter programming the NFL, the Super Bowl. It's going to be a huge failure. I was wrong. It was a huge success. And even if you don't like Kid Rock, even if Kid Rock is not your jam, well, guess what? The point is they've established this.

They got tens of millions of viewers. So next year, well, now it's actually. actually going to be appealing potentially to some bigger stars because they know they'll get a big audience. So they've set something up for the future and think in a really smart way. Can I say something to? If we can't celebrate that as conservative, I don't know what we're doing. I have to say, both those takes were mediocre. And now here comes the best take. Okay. Thank heavens. I know. I thought we're dying here. We were all waiting. So I'll get to the TPSA event in a little bit because I think that the TPSA thing is really,

really fascinating because on a on a cultural level I totally agree with math that it was a huge success obviously the numbers were gigantic there was a hunger for something that wasn't what was being shown on the Super Bowl and TBSA proved it on a sort of aesthetic level obviously you hope that the future is better than kid rock who has not been musically relevant in my opinion ever but certainly for the last 20 years and so that that kind of is what it is but as far as the bad bunny show so I think first of all that the I want to say a couple of things since it's been unmitigated, just bashing of the Super Bowl halftime show. And I'm happy to join in on that because I also despise music that is this music. I will say this. One, everybody was upset.

It was all in Spanish. This is like the third time I haven't understood a word somebody said during the Super Bowl halftime show. I mean, I will freely admit that Kendrick Lamar rapping, I had no idea what the hell he was saying the entire halftime show. So the fact that it was in Spanish or whether it's any bonics makes no difference to me. If I don't know what you're saying, I don't know what you're saying. As far as the actual productive value, just from like a pure production value standpoint, it is pretty incredible what they were able to build on the field, like just from, in terms of they built, like, out an entire sugar cane field, and then apparently one of the glories of Puerto Rico, failing telephone lines, and then they

built an entire, you know, Casita, like, that stuff, honestly, like on an aesthetic level, that was kind of cool. I did appreciate that they actually held a straight wedding on the field, right? I mean, that was, I mean, that's, I like marriage. The little marriages are good. Exactly. I'll take the little win. I'll take the, I thought it was kind of cute when there was the kid who's falling asleep on the chairs and and grandpa comes over and like picks him out. Hey, that's fine. The part of it that really ticks me off. And it's not even that it's all in Spanish.

Although, again, I would appreciate if you did something in English because we should all speak English. It's America. The part at the very end was the tell. And this is all a bit of gaslighting. What is happening here and they do it every year and this is what Drew, I think you were alluding to, is they do a thing, they call it extremely important. And then when you say, oh, I agree, it's important and bad. They go, why are you even noticing it's not important?

Right. And that's the part that's truly galling because at the very end, when he decided that he was going to go through every single country in the Americas and say we are all America, as though there's nothing special or unique about the country that gave you fame, fortune, wealth, the opportunity to be on the biggest stage that exists for any musician. And somehow Peru is getting mentioned. And by the way, it wasn't just Latino, right? Because he mentioned Canada. I'm not sure what the Canadians have to do. And he didn't mention Greenland. I thought that was a huge omission. Yeah, I know.

A huge mistake. If we're not going to include Greenland, what are we even doing here? What are we even talking about? But when he said, you know, we are all Americans and we all understand, no, we're not. We're not. Americans means like from the United States. That was the part that I found insulting and also obviously a way of gaslighting everybody and driving them half mad and crazy and then trolling off of that. And so, of course, the president sounded off on this and said that he didn't like it.

By the way, one of the great things, about the Cali markets, they're one of our sponsors, is that you actually can place, you can actually predict whether the president is going to call out bad bunny by name this month. That was up at like 80% right before the Super Bowl that is down at like 25% right now. But my overall take on it is that, of course, Americans who are insulted are right to be insulted. And the left meant for it to be insulting. Also, I think that it was a game. It was a game. The game was to try and get the right to sound off in extremely loud fashion about this particular thing.

So then they can go back to Latino voters particularly, and Latinos in the United States and say, it's not that they are upset that they didn't get any English or that you're equating somehow Haiti in the United States as we're all Americans, or that, what, all those flags belong in America as equivalent to the American flag? Like, the thing that they really hate about you is that you're Latino.

And that's the game the media are playing now. And they're taking the stupidest form of the argument being made by the right and, of course, using it that way. I know, one good note, though, we have to say, was the only 20 minutes of the show in which Drake May wasn't sacked. So I think that that, you know, that's something we can say positive about the performance. I actually, I disagree with this. I disagree with that. I don't, I don't think, you know, the idea that, well, they're trying to provoke conservatives into having some kind of reaction. And so then the right answer is to not,

is to not have a reaction. I know you didn't say that second part, Ben, but that's, that's the implication. Like, they're trying to provoke us to react. So we look like grumpy old men. And so we we should, therefore, not react. I don't think that's the case at all. I think, I think, I think gamble, there was a gamble they were taken. The gamble was that they would just kind of get away with it and there wouldn't be much of a backlash. Because what has actually been proven is that, is that in fact, when conservatives, if we're like united about something and we all decide basically as one voice that we're not okay with this, this is not okay, we can actually get concessions in the culture. Rather than abandoning these iconic institutions like the NFL, an iconic American

institution. Rather than abandoning it, say, I'm not watching that, or I'm just going to take it and not complain, you can actually extract concessions. You can get them to come back our way, but that doesn't happen if we end up fighting with each other and we've got people on our own side say, oh, actually, this is fine. I mean, we already, that happened with the NFL, okay? Right. Maybe we've all noticed that these players, they don't kneel during the anthem anymore. Yeah, no, that's right. We boycotted it. They did that. And conservatives, unanimous, unanimously, we're pissed off about it, rightly so. And so the NFL sent the message to the teams,

okay, you need to have your player stand. We're not doing this. I mean, famously, we stopped watching, Matt. This is like crap music that is, you're absolutely right. It's geared to make us offended and make us sound like grumpy old men. I think it's a great idea to go over and watch the TPP USA show. I just don't watch any of it because I hate the music altogether. You know, on the point of the TPSA show, look, I totally agree with Matt.

It was a huge risk. And I had multiple fears about the TPA. One, I thought it could flop just because you're going up against the NFL, and it didn't flop. It was a huge success, got tens of millions of views. It was a big, big win. The second fear I had was that it was going to be a cringe fest. And, you know, love Charlie. Eric is a national hero. I love our friends at TPUSA. They do great stuff. They put on great shows. But I kind of thought it was going to be a huge cringe fest. So I'm watching it with, you know, white knuckling it. I don't know. And maybe Kid Rock is going to be a little over the top or whatever. So Kid Rock comes out.

And he does the thing that we were all expecting. Flag, pyrotechnics. One, it was impressive that a guy who's, I think, 57 years old, was moving around like that. I don't live around like that at 35, and I didn't move around like that at 25. But so that was physically impressive. But I thought, okay, here's this song from 1999. We've all heard it. I don't even really like this song.

He's social security rock now. He's no longer a kid rock. But, you know, he actually leaned into that. And I thought this was the point where, and conservatives are kind of dissing some of this stuff. But I thought there was actually real artistry. I thought there was actually some real beauty in that show. Because he comes out, they say, introducing Kid Rock, and he does the Kid Rock bit.

And then it shifted to a cello and a violin. And I thought, okay, man, we're in it now. They're really catering to me. Because the right is split up between, you know, the like, I want to go fishing kind of guys and the more like rocky, edgy face tattoo guys and people like us who like classical music and Cole Porter and whatever.

And so it's actually kind of hard to Hater to all of them. TPSA did that. You had this transition with the cello and the violin, and then they reintroduced Kid Rock by his Christian name, by, I think it's Rob Richie. I actually didn't even know what his real name was. And they introduced him, and he did this song until you can't. And it was this song about how, you know, you plan to go see your dad, but you get a rain check. And you can always get a rain check until you can't, you know, until he dies. And you plan to play with your kids or whatever, until you can't. They're out of the house. And he added this verse that Kid Rock himself wrote. And it was about Jesus. And even there, I thought, okay, this could be kind of cringy, you know, like just Bible thumping, you know, low hymnody. But I thought it was actually much tougher than that. It was more thoughtful than that. He said, you can give your life to Jesus until you can't. You know, there are actually eternal consequences of our actions. And there was a little bit of hellfire in there. There was a little bit of reality that crept in. And it had this beautiful tie in with Charlie, of course, you know, until you can't. We all thought we had so much more time.

with Charlie and he's struck down in the prime of his life. We all think we have a big shot in our political order. Everything is going to go hunky-dory until you can. And it even showed his evolution as an artist, from this guy who's like rapping and bopping around as a kid to this older, more mature feeling. It actually really struck a chord with me. I don't love modern music either. But I thought this was a moment where, yeah, conservatives had the guts to offer an alternative. They succeeded in getting tens of millions of views, but they did something conservatives never do. They did it at the very least a little bit, which is they offered something that was artistically interesting and kind of bold. Maybe I'm to glass half full here.

By the end of it, I thought that was actually a really beautiful choice and a fitting way to end the show. Yeah, and then we also got the other thing that we're used to from conservatives, which is you have this huge win, this unprecedented that you counterprogrammed the Super Bowl and it pays off. one of the, I think the biggest top three streams in the history of YouTube they had, I mean, it's huge. And then immediately, what do you have on the right, which you never have on the left, is all these conservatives that, you know, have to start, well, you know, I don't, it seems like that was a big win, but actually it's bad. Let me explain why this thing that seems really good is actually bad. Let me explain why, yeah, they went out and did something that had a big success, but it would have been better if they didn't do that. Or, you know, having these critiques that are totally useless. Like, you know what I think would have been better?

What if they had an even bigger star than Kid Rock? That would have been better. Oh, you think they didn't think of that? Like, do you, I like, you know, I got no problem with Kid Rock. Do you think that the people at TPUA USA thought that Kid Rock is the biggest star in the world? No, but they wanted to put on this show and you get the biggest star that you can. They're dealing with the fact that, number one, they're TPA USA. They're seen as a conservative organization.

And so that rules out a lot of, you know, big, big stars already. And then on top of that, you have other big stars who maybe would do it, but they're thinking the same thing you were thinking, Michael, and then I was thinking, which is like, this is not going to work. You're counter-programming the Super Bowl. And so they don't want to be, because what if you get 500,000 live viewers or something, and then it's blamed on you. And so you do what you can.

You put on as good as show as you can. You take the swing. You go for it. And then if it's a hit like it was, now in the future, you've done something for the long term. It just pisses me off that for so many conservatives, and we all know that it's really just competitiveness. It's like envy. It's, well, they went out and did something more successful,

and I wasn't a part of it, so I have to find a reason to pick holes in it. And I think that's the one of the reasons we lose. That our celebrities tend to be older because if you're young, they crush your career. I mean, we see with Simisweeney, she didn't even know what her politics are, but all she had to do was hint that there was MAGA and her family,

and she hasn't gotten a good review since. She said they're making fun of her and all this. stuff. And that's why young people don't do it. You know, I have seen John Void, probably the bravest guy in Hollywood. I've seen him counsel young actors, you know, don't be doing this. Don't do it because you're not going to get to the place where you can do it. That doesn't happen to left wingers, you know, that actually is a boost up if you come out and curse people.

Yes. And, you know, speaking of the envy that people feel and the resentment and the need to, I just want to put it on the record here. They should have invited me to play ukulele. And it was a huge miss for TIP USA. We'll move on because there will be a super much. I was watching. I was watching my YouTube videos playing ukulele. You know, one thing you can watch right now, only, only if you are a Daily Wire Plus member, which you should, right now, stop.

Hey, hey, stop. Get your phone out, download the Daily Wire Plus app on your TV, load up the Daily Wire Plus app, on your Commodore 64, plug it into the back of your TV, download the DailyWar Plus app. Get the Penn Dragon Cycle. Do we have a teaser? Men of the Island of the Mighty! You have only known peace when it was given to you. You've only known unity!

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barking. Great light, great darkness. We are not so different to you and I. The Penn Dragon cycle. Rise of the Merlin. Now streaming. Only on Daily Wire Plus. What else can they watch, Matt? Well, also, Real History with Matt Walsh is available on Daily Wire. You know, we put out our episode about slavery, the real history of slavery, which did really well. A lot of people are talking about it. We have, coming out in a couple of weeks, our next episode that I'm very excited about because it's the real history of the American Indian and the actual story of the conflict between, you know, European settlers and then Americans with the Native Americans. And we all know the story that we're often told, that we're told in schools

about the smallpox blankets and the trail of tears. All of that is fake. It's all a myth. And we expose that. But you've got to become a subscriber to watch it. That's absolutely true. Now, what I want to do is I want to beauty and Eloquence Max, our conversation right now, and I want to have a little John Calvin mugging to weigh in on the latest trend of meth-adicted face smashers, namely my former guest, clavicular. And we should do that with our friend, Allie Beth Stuckey. Allie, hello. First of all, I just want to say thank you for introducing me as John Calvin. I was not expecting that, but I appreciate it. Your audience probably doesn't even know who John Calvin is.

I am like your audience's introduction to evangelicalism. So you are welcome for that. You asked about someone clavicle, clavicular. I can never think of what his name is because I hadn't heard of him until I saw him go viral on your show, Michael. And I don't know any of the words that you said. I don't know magging. I don't know looks maxing. I think you said that he's in jail.

I'm going to need to get an update on who this person is and why I should care. And the audience might need that too. So clavicular, just for those who haven't caught my extended sit down, we're kind of joking about him because he uses goofy language and he's a 19-year-old. I think now he's 20 and he gets into all sorts of trouble. But I actually think he's quite an interesting cultural figure because he's apolitical. He was kind of mocking me for caring it all about politics. He said he wanted to vote for Gavin Newsom over J.D. Vance because he finds Newsom sexier. He said he doesn't care about the transgender issue because transvestites. or just another person to mog, and he doesn't want to spike his cortisol by stressing out about politics. And I'm sure he's joking about some or all of that, but there is a reason why he's caught attention. And I think some of that is because it's such a swing. Everything is so politicized, and he is this kind of decadent, Nietzschean figure. And in many ways, it's funny he was talking about the transvestite issue because he himself kind of openly embraces a right-wing form of

body dysmorphia where he says that all that matters is how you look. And he brags about how he injected himself with illegal testosterone starting at age 14. He made himself infertile because of it. But he wants to look smacks because all that matters in this world is appearances. So we need to be decadent, hedonistic, create our own meaning, and then basically take a dirt nap and turn to worm food. So the reason that he is important is because he has 700,000 TikTok followers, I believe, and he has an enormous following on kick. His kick stream is worth a fair bit of money. And that means there are a bunch of young people who are watching this kind of crap and treating it with seriousness. And again, this is a person who says that he takes crystal meth in order to

make sure that he does not gain weight. And that in order to maximize his drawline, he has himself in the face with hammers, a thing he has actually recommended to people. And Michael, somehow decided that it was important to bring this to the mainstream. And so now, I was clearly right. People are talking about it. That is fair. But were you the cause or were you simply a symptom of the decline of Western civilization, Michael?

I've been examining my conscience. I'm not sure the answer. And so he was arrested this week because he was carrying around a fake ID and he had a bunch of drugs on him. And so he was arrested being underage at a bar. And all the rest of he had also gone to a pretty well-noticed. I'd say Nazi influencer get together with some of our other friends

in this arena he's sort of the Miloiannolis of the future is that what we can say about him he's like he will be Milo I don't know if he's gay or if he's just spending way too much time on his beauty regiment. No but you know legitimately I actually think that's it's not a great comparison

because Milo whether you love him or hate him or feel indifferent to him Milo does talk about politics he does think about politics he has read a lot of books and clavicular is like the opposite it. Clavicular is very provocative and everything, but he assiduously avoids anything with real

meaning. In fact, that's kind of his pitch to the audience is I'm just going to be nothing but a pretty face. And you know, that in itself is kind of meaningful, I think. I only met in terms of future irrelevance, I'm sorry. Anyway, so Alibeth, we have

now lectured you about the majestic importance of clavicular. So your thoughts. Okay, I still have more questions. I know he has a lot of followers, but it's kind of like just following something because it's bizarre and you have that kind of odd interest in it. I do wonder how much of this is actually a pervasive trend among boys. I mean, previously, I'm a girl, mom. The concerns that we had for girls is that they're comparing themselves to unrealistic expectations and magazines and now on social media,

eating disorders, things like that. Is this something that is actually being latched on to by boys who are so obsessed with their jawline that they're breaking it with a hammer or that they're taking these drugs in order to be skinny, they want to be empty-headed, not really care about what's going on in the world. Like, is this something that we should really worry about when it comes to the men that are coming of age? Yes, and the reason why is that, and the reason why I think clavicular, oddly enough, is an important and interesting figure, is that he is a symptom, specifically of our age and his generation, and he's an extreme version of it, but he was raised entirely on the internet. This was the through line that I kept trying to poke at and figure out

in our long conversation was that every aspect of his life from getting the illegal drugs when he was 14 to even coming to the idea that he should be injecting himself with illegal drugs, to falling into the subcultures that suggests that all that matters is how you look, to the way that he lives his life, which is entirely in a fishbowl for live streams, the most extreme 24-7 version of reality TV. all of it is because he was raised on the internet in a way that none of us were. I, you know, I had a computer in the internet since I was five or six years old. So even, even we had some touch of that. And this is a completely different level. And so clavicular himself creates a kind of a hyper-reality where it's so meta. His political views are meta-political. His views of what a man is

are kind of meta views. It's like this totally abstracted image of what a man could be that has nothing to do with fertility, for instance, virility, you know, where the word man comes from, veer. It has nothing to do with actually finding a woman, getting married, doing anything, contributing to your community, getting a job. It's all just appearances without substance beneath it. But he's aware of that. Like, he'll talk about that in a way that, I don't know, It's Nietzsche for 2026, I think. Yeah, I think, look, I think that it's not so much that young men will follow everything that this guy does. I mean, maybe some of them will.

But what he is, to Michael's point, I think he's one of the first celebrities of, he's one of our first true, you know, brain rot celebrities. One of our first true slop celebrities, doom scroll celebrities in that he doesn't, it, and it's a new kind of celebrity, too. we're also dealing with a kind of like a new kind of celebrity, a new kind of fame, where the stars of this generation, of this generation he's a part of, are people who, unlike previous generations, they don't do anything. It's like he doesn't sing. He's not really good at a sport. He's not an actor.

He doesn't have an art. He doesn't, he's not even a compelling, charismatic figure to Michael's point. He has nothing to say. He's not, like, he doesn't have interesting ideas. There's just like nothing there at all. He's just kind of a guy who lives his life on the internet for all to see. And I think people, and it's kind of hard to, yeah, it is hard to get inside the mentality of someone who says, I think about these streams. He's like 24-hour streams.

I mean, we do streaming because we're doing a show. We're sitting at a desk. And it's like, hey, I've got some opinions I want to share with you today. Here's what the show's about. But there's a whole other kind of streaming where it's just like nothing is happening. I'm not doing anything. I have nothing to say. I'm not going to do anything interesting.

I'm not an interesting person. I'm just going to kind of like exist for you to watch. And there's a whole generation of people that grow up on that. They just, they like to watch other people exist. And I don't know what to say about that exactly, but I think it's, I don't think it's a good thing. I don't think it's a good thing. Why is it different, though, in terms of what Michael was talking about, why is it different than all the stupid crap that young people have always done tied pods or whatever the hell they were chewing on the other day from eating goldfish back in the 20s?

You know, I mean, people, I mean, young people do stupid stuff. And in terms of celebrities who are famous for being celebrities, I mean, how do we had those for like 50 years? I think what's different here? So, Drew, I do think that there speaks to something different. And it's not just about the celebrity culture. It's about the utter nihilism of the moment. I think that that's the thing that strikes me about the clavicular of it. And by the way, not just about clavicular.

I think it strikes me about Andrew Tate. I think it strikes me of Antiquant. I think that at the root of a lot of what's going on right now is people latches. on to the fact that young people particularly are feeling unmoored. They're feeling their civilization has somehow betrayed them on the most fundamental level and that there is no recipe for success. And so the people who are finding success in this moment are people who are selling you a black pill in order to sell themselves. And so what they're basically saying is there's no way to fix your life. Your life is tremendously meaningless. And the only way that you're going to see success

in anything like what young men want, so clavicular's real pitch, his real pitch in the end, is you can't get a chick. Women are all terrible. everybody is a porn star or unavailable or unattailable. So you have to mug everybody in order for you to, I believe this is his actual theory of life, Michael, if I'm not mistaken, is that basically there's a small percentage of men who are going to get all the women.

So you need to be at the top of that food chain. And the only way to do that is take yourself on the face of the hammer and take Crystal meth. But the promise is, basically, that civilization is so broken that your shortcut is abandon everything except you have to look as good as you possibly can. There's no meaning. There's no happiness.

There's no joy. There's no fulfillment. there's no possibility of civilizational uplift or change. All that there is is your looks. And if you're Andrew Tate, then it's the same sort of thing. You're going to stand around shirtless smoking a cigar and telling people that all of civilization is corrupt and terrible, which is why you are being targeted for your truth telling. And meanwhile, the only way to get out of there is to spend 50 bucks a month on his scam artist university or whatever it is.

There's a distinction. Yeah, I think you're diagnosing the cultural milieu for sure. But I think there's a distinction between all three of those guys. I don't think they're all nihilists. I think with someone by the way, I will point about that Fentz was partying with, with Clivicular Laurent Tate. And I have to say that it was the first time that I realized that God's justice comes in many forms, because Fentz, for all of our, I think, merited critiques of Nick Fentz,

is Fentz is not a stupid person. And I think the definition of hell is probably being stuck in a van, listening to Kanye West Nazi songs with Clivicular, Andrew Tate, and Sineco for Nick Fentz. And then having to go to a club where a clavicular tries to introduce you to girls. So, you know, everyone gets what they deserve even sometimes in this life. That doesn't sound like a good time to you, Ben. That's shocking. On the distinction here, you've got Fuentes, who is, I don't think he's a nihilist.

I think he's a reactionary. I think he's a nihilist. I think he's a neilist masquerading as a reactionary. Possibly. He certainly comes out of a nealistic sort of milieu, but I think he has at least a somewhat coherent and reactionary view of politics. Someone like Andrew Tate, I think, is a hedonist, and that's what he's selling to people. But with clavicular, I also don't think he's selling nihilism. I think he's selling vitalism.

I think he's selling that he's going to be the Ubermensch. I mean, the way that he talks about how people are supposed to behave is he says, we're going to ascend or descend. So it's even kind of the language of the Uba mention and the Unta mention. And he says that I don't think he sees a lack of meaning in the world so much as maybe there is a lack of meaning, but we're going to create our own meaning. And the only way you're going to do that is by magging people through sheer tyranny of will and by perfecting your physique.

In some ways, I think clavicular is born out of Bronze Age pervert. Bronze Age pervert kind of bringing up a Nietzsche for the modern age. So I'm not even totally joking when I make the Nietzsche reference. They're all offering something a little bit different. And I think that, you know, look, I'm an old stodgy conservative. Everyone flirts. They're on the right. They're on the left.

They like Nietzsche. They like this. They like that. Me, I stay pretty consistent about it. But that, too, is a different kind of approach. So they're all offering something. And in a time of great political shifting and confusion, I'm really not surprised that different guys like that are popping off.

Yeah, man. I was thinking about the aspect, not just of like the magging, which I'm still trying to understand exactly what that is and the looks maxing. But in particular, this aspect of being streamed all the time. And I thought about the Truman Show and the reason why that concept is so, disturbing to us is because he didn't know that his life wasn't real. But in this case, this person knows that his life is not real because he's playing a character. All of his friends are playing characters. And they're actually consenting to that. He actually is consenting to his life not being real

and just being a part that he is portraying and performing for an audience. And there's something that is much darker about that to me than the whole like looks maxing superficial part of his worldview. It's that you actually don't care that you are not a part of reality and you are curating every single mundane moment for something to be monetized and for something to be put out into the world. And you could have a whole conversation about family influencers and things like that who do the same thing. But this is that on steroids. No pun intended. And that is what is very disturbing. If other boys latch on to something like that, the monetizing and the like performative aspect of reality that,

is very, very dark. You know, that's a good point, but one thing I wanted to mention was, you know, Michael, you said that clavicular has sterilized himself. Is that true? That's what he said. I don't know, though. And I heard reports to the contrary, but I haven't followed it closely. He doesn't need to worry about our next sponsor, but for anyone who can have babies, I want to tell you about pre-born. That's my best attempt that I tried to do a transition. They tell me I had a transition, so that's the best I could do.

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That's pound 250, baby, or go to preborn.com slash fire. That's preborn.com slash fire. That was the best ad transition we've ever had on this show, man. I think I agree. I thought so too. I appreciate it. It was really good. I mean, really good. There should be an award for that, like a trophy or something. Well, there's also a transition because the next topic we have to talk about is, I guess it's sort of in all of our wheelhouses, but only one of us made a global hit movie about it. There was this shooting in Canada, awful shooting, nine people dead plus the shooter, you know, a bunch of kids and then some people who were next door. And if you read the Canadian media reports about this, they just have no idea what the motive could be. If you listen to the authorities, the Mounties are saying not only that they don't know the motive, but hours after the shooting, they said, we will probably never know the motive of the shooter. So right off, that sets off your bells and you say, all, let me Google this for three seconds, or actually look on X. You're not

going to find it on Google. You'll find it on X with citizen journalists. And what do you know? The reports that we have right now, again, maybe it's changing in real time, but from everything we know, it is the sort of person that you most expect. Matt? Yeah, well, and we expect it for a reason. I mean, this is the thing. We have to realize that, you know, I think if we look at the data, trans people account for more mass shootings than anyone per capita over the last couple of years. I don't even think it's close. And there's a reason for that, I mean, by definition, if you are trans-identified person, then you are divorced from reality, by definition, number one. Number two, you're radicalized because, you're, you're because trans ideology is a is a radical ideology. So we know we know those two things going in. And then number three, you know, I've said many times, and I think it's true that the trans ideology is basically defeated

at a cultural and political level, which I think that it is. Now the fight continues. It's not like we can just put our feet up at the desk and call it a day. But it's basically defeated at those two levels. But what that means is that actually, That's going to make trans-identified people potentially an even greater threat going forward because now you've got a lot of people that were sold a lie and now they're starting to realize that it was a lie.

And society has moved on from them. And now on top of everything else, at top of being radicalized, being self-destructive, by definition, being confused, now they're feeling humiliated and betrayed and, you know, left behind. and I think we're going to see more and more people lashing out violently. And unfortunately, you know, it's only going to get worse from here. I have to say, I want to go back to something, link this back to something Ben was talking about. When Ben was describing why nihilism is attractive to people, he was talking about their sense that the civilization has betrayed them, that there's nothing they can get at. There's no path to happiness.

There's no path to success. I think a lot of that stuff is true. And, you know, I think their sense that it's worth. worse than it's been, I think is actually true. And the sense that they were never given a sort of spiritual target, something, an inner identity that they could move toward that is not, you know, who they are. They've been told that their identity is their race or their sexuality instead of that person that we all know that we should be, but we're not, that kind of God-made person that we have to become and work to become. And I think a lot of this links into that. And I think that, you know, we're in a transitional

period. And transitional periods feel like that, especially when we have to be a very, have a journalistic class that no history in the mind of a journalist is Rome fell and then Hitler came. Those are the two things they know happened in history. So whenever there's a transitional moment, it must be right before, you know, Caesar or Hitler, or some journalists know that there were two falls of Rome, the Republic and then the empire. So there might be a thousand years of darkness brought on by the Catholic Church. This is the other thing that the journalists know. But I think, you know, so much of this transgender stuff, it does speak to something. something in a society that's not having babies and a society that feels that, you know,

what are women, they can't, not only do they don't know what a woman is, they don't know what a woman is for, women themselves don't know what they're for, you know, what matters about them, what makes them so important, what makes them precious in a civilization. So all of that stuff is true, I think, and the question is who is going to come forward? And by the way, I think the answer is us, but who is going to come forward with a vision of the future where we get back, get it through this transition without destroying ourselves and without destroying everything that we hold dear, which namely is freedom and life and God. You know, I don't, that's the issue on the table. And when I see a thing like this where they don't tell you, it's not the press on

this, in this case, it's the police who aren't telling people that this is a transgender person. And when they, just like they did in Nashville in the Nashville Christian school shooting, they just held it back. That line is at the heart of this disillusionment that you see in the young. And I think that truth and telling the truth, even if you get accused of being a bigot or whatever, is our first step in winning people back. Well, you know, Internet has made so much of this possible and prevalent. I mean, some of the information that seems to be leaking out about this particular shooter

is that he may have been trans-radicalized at the age of 15 by people who are on message boards. And this goes back to something you were saying, Michael, which is that when people spend their entire lives online, it really does wreck your brain. Our brains were not built for this. And we've built an entire system that people have created as a virtual reality. And you find echo chambers of people who are willing to say back to you things that are utterly false and to encourage you down paths that are really quite dark,

either for their own sick pleasure or because they themselves don't know which paths to take. Drew, I will say that I think that the myth that people don't have choice in a way that they had choice in the past. I think that is a myth, but I think it is a pervasive myth because people, the feelings are real. The feelings of lack of choice are real. I'll say the lack of choice itself is not real. I think people do have choice, but I think that the feeling of a lack of choice has become all pervasive. And some of that has actually been spurred by, in some ways, the economic prevalence that we see around us. I mean, there's a fascinating section in Dostoevsky's notes from the underground in which the narrator is talking.

And he says, you know, there may come a point where amidst plenty, amidst like things going really well. A man steps forward with arms akimbo and says that we should just tear everything around us down because we have no choice. We must exercise our choice and better we should exercise our choice to destroy things than that we should have no choice in a civilization in which everything around us is built. And I think you're seeing that. I think that the choices that you're talking about, Drew, which are still in the hands of individuals, we've been told you can't make that choice. I don't like when politicians do it. I think politicians do it all the time. I think commentators do it a lot too. The biggest choices we make in life, the really important

ones like should I get married should I have kids should I join a church take those those three let's take those three as a start all three of those are available to you the idea that these are unavailable to you in a way that they've never been unavailable to anyone in history is a lie but when enough people start to believe that then you have a network effective people who stop associating with with each other stop going to church because no one's why do you go to church there's no one else there stop dating because no one else is dating and nobody's nobody's meeting each other and and and that all breaks down into this sort of bizarre atomistic individualism that eventually results in people with fragmented psyches. And I think that's incredibly dangerous.

There is a difference. I completely agree that there's all, first of all, there's always a choice. But you're making the choice in a situation where the powers that be are against you, which was not true for you and me. And for you and me, you know, you joined the church. Everybody was like, hooray, you're in a church. We have a place for you. You're part of a bigger community.

I think in this moment, people feel that the great weight of the culture comes down on their heads. Now, look, people have to have courage. That's just a fact of life. You have to have courage to live well. You have to have courage to live free. And so I'm not accepting the whining part of this. But the sense that they've been betrayed by the people in power, the people who have the power, I think there's a certain veracity to that. I think when they're closing your churches, but encouraging people to riot and then telling you that the riots are mostly peaceful, I think a sense of betrayal has a reality to it. And again, I'm not in favor of whining. I'm just in favor of seeing what's there. Ben mentioned fragmented psyche.

The only person on this panel who doesn't have a fragmented psyche is Allie, who is the only person who hasn't weighed in on this. Allie, were you surprised by the reports of the shooting? Yeah, a couple of thoughts. Talking about a fragmented psyche, there is this great book by Nancy Piercy called Love Thy Body. If y'all have not read it, you should. And she talks about this concept of dualism, the separation of the spirit from the body. And this idea that who you identify as on the inside, your spirit identity is stronger than physical reality. And she talks about the purpose of or the importance of understanding your tell us or your purpose. And that, I think, Claven, what you were talking about is what we've really lost sight of, not just who we are and what we do, but our purpose. Why we are here.

You mentioned that women have forgotten what we are for. And I think the same is true of men, whether you're talking about this. this guy who spends his whole life streaming and trying to look a particular way, he doesn't realize what men are for. You are not just supposed to perform or consume. It's not even just about what you produce. There is a purpose in masculinity and being able to procreate and being able to protect and being able to work hard.

There is a purpose in womanhood and being a female that a man can never fulfill. But when we have kind of elevated these two values of autonomy and authenticity, and we have decided that those are the two highest things that we can achieve and the two highest goals that we can attain to, well, then you do have this identity crisis. Then you are trying to find worth and meaning and value in all of the wrong places. And then you have someone like this who not only convinces himself that he is a woman, but also convinces himself that he is completely justified in taking vengeance against the people and society and family who have done him wrong. It really all goes back to an understanding of the self.

and not just who we are and who made us, of course, I believe that's really important. But what we're for and why we're here. So, anyway, that's my long-winded way of saying, I agree with you. Well, this is a great point. You know, it does go back to the man that Drew calls Uncle Aristotle. Because the way Aristotle saw the world was through four causes, the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. And we don't need to get into, like, all of those things. But the final cause is, like, what the thing is for, like, what its purpose is.

And I think if you were to present that to most people today, even on the right, they would be drooling and scratching their heads. The idea that we can know from a thing that it's like for something, like the Leftist Tears Tumblr is for the Leftist Tears or The Cigar is For Smoking. And they don't really seem to get that. Now, it led to this confusion of the transgender movement, which I thought was kind of over, but then you're still seeing these spurts of it. You get Gavin Newsom saying, I want to see more trans kids. Allie, did you see Andy Beshear? It was going viral. I don't know if it was a recent interview. Andy Bashir comes at, and he's promoting this. trans kids again in the year of our Lord, 2006. He said the gospel supports them.

Yes. Do you see that as a Bible-believing Christian? What's your take on that? This is the only downside to not having a pope, because I wish that I were the Protestant Pope. So I could excommunicate Andy Bashir and all of these people who identify as evangelicals, who claim that loving your neighbor is legally allowing a child to be brutalized because they've been told that they are born in the wrong body. Of course, we don't actually know what

Andy Bashir believes, because a lot of progressives will say that they follow Jesus just by loving their neighbor, but they identify how the secular progressives identify love, which is just the affirmation of sin. That's why I wrote a whole book on this, toxic empathy. They exploit your compassion by telling you that you can only be a good person by affirming these destructive policies and validating lies and affirming sin or else you're not compassionate. that you're not loving, you're not empathetic, and that's exactly what he's doing here. He is emotionally extorting you. He's religiously extorting you.

Gavin Newsom does the same thing. A lot of these leftists who suddenly identify as Christians, Hillary Clinton, they're all doing the same thing, saying, well, Christians like me know what Jesus really meant when he said, love your neighbor. And what he really meant is that you should allow a child to be chemically castrated because they've been told that they can switch sexes. And so it's the same thing that they do with immigration. they do the same thing with abortion. They do the same thing with the definition of marriage.

They say Christians have always believed this and here's why. When you push back against them, suddenly you're the bigot when we're just echoing what Jesus said 2,000 years ago. You know, I think we have, we actually, we four have the power to elect Alibeth, the Pope of the Protestants. Can it be me? I believe that's legally in our... Can we do that right now? Andy Bashir is absolutely, of course, going to run for president, according to our sponsors over at Cal. 80% shot that he runs for president in 2020.

I don't know why he thinks that he's going to get anywhere in those primaries. He's second only to our old friend Gavin Newsom in that betting market, by the way. But one of the things that I think is fascinating about all of this, and Drew, you brought this up, and Ali, Beth, you were saying it as well. We've been focusing a lot on young men, like what's wrong with young men? And one of the things that you'll constantly hear from young men, particularly, is, I can't find a girl. It's hard for me to find a girl.

The women of the past just aren't there anymore. And this is one that I, just statistically speaking, it is more true than many of the other complaints that are out there. Because when you look at the polling data right now, women, for example, are saying that they want to have kids at a lower rate than men do, which is historically not only an aberration or an outlier, it is an extreme outlier. It's totally insane. And when you have a women who don't know that a defining characteristic of being a woman is the ability to have children, that this is in fact the reason for the actual biological, the answer to Matt's question. What is a woman is a large egg producing, it is a large gamete producing specimen of the human species, right? This is actually how you define biological sex is by the type of reproductive material produced. Men are small gamut producing sperm.

Women produce eggs. Speak for yourself. Speak for yourself small gametes, all right? But the fact that women have taken this and they've put it to the side, of course men think that they can be women or women can be men. because if you take away literally the most distinctive part of human existence in life, and then you say that it's completely irrelevant, then what you're going to get is men either wanting to be women or just to exploit women and treat women as though women are men, right?

And treat women as though, and this is one of the, I think, fundamental characteristics that maybe old-fashioned men like, I think all four of us who are men here on the panel, like we see women as things to be treasured and protected. But if women see themselves as just men with different frames, then you can see why terrible toxic men would actually treat women like they treat men, right? As just as though, you know, you go to the bar and you treat a woman the same way that you treat a dude.

And it's, you know, that is a fundamental break that I think has not been rectified yet. Yes, you know, women will never frame mug men because women have smaller frames and that's just a fact of biology, you know. And if you want to knowledge, Max, you have to acknowledge that. Allie, wonderful as always to see you. Thank you for degrading yourself

by joining us. I'm sorry for you and for your dignity, yes, but I'm very pleased for us that you would join us here. You elevated us. I think that was the important. Without question. By the way, if you want more Allie Stucky, and who doesn't want more Allie Stucky, you can go catch her at the Share the Arrows Christian Women's Conference. They didn't invite me. Tickets go on sale tomorrow, had 7,000 women there last year, and now it could be 7,001 if you show up. SharetheAros.com. Also, Allie's going to be moderating the Texas. Republican Attorney General debate next Tuesday. A woman of many talents and many interests. Okay. Now, what I want to talk about, and I know what you want to know about, is the most tantalizing

bizarre story in the country right now, which is that Savannah Guthrie, the, like, Today Show lady, her mother was kidnapped and no one seems to know anything about it. And then they said they think they found the guy, but then they didn't find the guy. And so I really, really want to get into that and I want you to hear about it. But you can. you subscribe to DailyWire Plus. Hey, you like that. Mugged. You have to download the app. You have to put it on your TV. You have to join. You have to become

a member. You need to follow Michael Knowles on the app. You can ignore everybody else, but you got to follow Michael. And then you can also watch this show, and you can hear about it in the secret super member block that's totally cut off to all of you, Hoy, Palloy, Ruffians.

We will see you over at the DailyWare website. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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