Will Cain Country - BACKLASH: MSNBC's Jen Psaki Turns Tragedy Into Attack On Prayer & Trump (ft. Michael Knowles & Chad Bronstein)

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Featuring Guest Host – Fox News Contributor, Tom Shillue Story #1: Host of 'The Michael Knowles Show,' Michael Knowles joins Tom to react to the Minneapolis school shooting and the political fallout. From the mayor’s focus on the backlash against the trans communities to mocking prayer, Knowles calls it a distraction from mental health, ideology, and evil itself.  Story #2: President & Co-founder of ‘Real American Freestyle’ Wrestling, Chad Bronstein sits down with Tom to talk about launching Real American Freestyle Wrestling with Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff, why freestyle wrestling deserves a professional stage, and their special tribute to Hulk Hogan this weekend on FOX Nation. Story #3: Tom wraps it up with The Crew, and break down what worked, what didn’t, and why authenticity beats polish every time. Plus, they tease Will's interview with Vice President J.D. Vance which you won't want to miss tomorrow! Subscribe to 'Will Cain Country' on YouTube here: Watch Will Cain Country! Follow Will on X: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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at Casino.com for details. Please play responsibly. Here we are. Here we are, you and I, all dressed up tonight. It's Tom Shilloo filling in for Will Kane on Wilcane Country. I've appeared as a guest on Will Kane Country. No, to be honest, I think I've filled in before. Haven't I, guys? I have.

I've done it. It was maybe in the deep and distant past, but listen, all I can say is I'm qualified to do the job, but we're going to have a great show today. I'm going to try to rise to the occasion. I'm not Will Kane, but I am a... I was going to say, I'm a paler, Will Kane. A paler, maybe weaker, Will Kane. I don't know. I'm not weak. I'm strong for 149 pounds, but I'm no Will Kane. Look, we're going to talk today about some serious subjects, but we're going to talk in a way that we usually do to illuminate the news and we're not going to get caught in the mire of all this stuff. I do want to start off by playing some sound because after a terrible thing, like a, I even hate using the word a school shooting, the fact that there's such a phrase, right? But after such a terrible tragedy, there is the politicians,

and celebrities and everyone else weighing in on it and trying to say it's time for action. And after a tragedy is not really the time for action because that's when people make rash decisions. You know, we didn't exactly make all of the most wise decisions after 9-11. We didn't make the wisest, you know, decisions because we were traumatized.

But people think, well, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what we do. We have to act. That's why people were taking their shoes off. After that famous shoe bomber, right? One shoe bomber, and then everyone takes their shoes off for 20 years. So sometimes it's not good to act. But of course, politicians want to insist that you act.

Many people come in and they say we have to pass our gun legislation. other people say we have to immediately change the culture what are we going to do to change the culture and then people like myself say maybe it's time to pray

and a lot of politicians come in and they say I don't want thoughts and prayers you know I don't want thoughts and prayers either I just want the prayer part you know don't even think this is what happens when when there's trauma you just get on your knees and you pray

forget about the don't think don't think just pray but let's play a little sound here from Jacob Fry this is the mayor of Minneapolis and he let's do clip one he's at a press conference

and let's see what he is most concerned about after this terrible shooting of children all of us and And I have heard about a whole lot of hate that's being directed at our trans community. Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community or any other community out there has lost their sense of common humanity. We should not be operating out of a place of hate for anyone. We should be operating from a place of love for our kids.

Yeah, that's the mayor of Minneapolis. And, you know, he said he's heard. I don't know who told him. He's heard there's a lot of hate out there. That's what he's been hearing. It reminds me of the old Norm MacDonald backlash tweet. This is a famous Norm MacDonald tweet, the late Norm MacDonald. He says, what terrifies me is if ISIS were to,

To detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans, imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims. I mean, so perfect, Norm McDonald's, such a dark thought, but so perfect. I want to get right into it. I have more sound from the mayor of Minneapolis, but why don't we bring our guest in? Michael Knowles from the Michael Nulls show. And I think we're seeing each other, right, Michael's? I see you on the monitor here. I got you.

I have you, Tom. Thanks for having me on. Beautiful. I think we did work together one other time, and we didn't, we weren't in the same room, just like we are now. It was at a pro-life event. We both had tuxedos on, but this was back during that foolish period in America where everyone had to do everything on Zoom, right?

Yes. And so we hosted a kind of a black tie event, but it was, unfortunately, it was only on the internet. I could have worn my t-shirt. It would have made no difference in those days. That's right. Well, Michael, I'm sure you've been keeping up with all the reactions. We're starting with the reactions of the mayor of Minneapolis.

Jacob Frye is worried about the backlash against the trans community. Does that surprise you? My first thought was the very same first thought that you had, Tom, that was to the Norm bit. He was doing the norm. He said Norm was telling a joke. And this mayor was dead serious. And, you know, with this kind of an issue, you have to be. ask yourself, okay, is it mental health? Is it ideology? Is it religious? And the answer is

it's obviously all of these things. But on the transgender point, you know, this was common sense until about six or seven years ago. But if you're a person who thinks he's the opposite sex, that is dispositive evidence that you have a serious mental problem. And we used to try to treat that. And we used to try to help people who were having serious mental problems so that they weren't a danger to themselves or to others. And now it's flipped completely on its head. And I think he knows that. I think a lot of the reaction from Jacob Frye and other people have said similar things

is coming from a place of a kind of guilt. We can't acknowledge that people who are displaying obvious mental problems, maybe spiritual problems too, that there were warning signs here. And so you have to completely ignore that, distract from that, and thereby distract from the tragedy that we've all seen. It's a completely absurd reaction, and he's rightly receiving a lot of ire for it. And don't you think that the people who do talk about this issue, if they're talking about that as a mental illness, they're coming from a place of compassion. I don't hear people out there, you know, these right-wing thinkers saying now it's time to round up anyone who's trans.

The idea that someone's going through trauma and that that needs to be addressed, it would be the same thing as if you were wondering about the effects of, SSRIs or some of the other issues that people have in, you know, in modern society that people on the right are saying, we have to address this issue, but how can you address it if they're just going to label our concern as hate? Yes, of course. I mean, it obviously comes from a place of charity, and this is why during all of the trans discourse, which really I think was basically settled. This was the final horrific culmination of it. But, but, you know, even the people who have been pro trans have really run away from embracing that issue because we know, according to the largest data sets on it, that the trans-surgery's and the trans hormonal procedures,

none of that ameliorates any of the associated conditions, the depression, the anxiety, the suicidality. And look, this is common sense. When you lie to people, that's not going to help them. You know, we have this old-fashioned view that the truth sets you free and that lies are very cruel. And people have tried to flip that on its head, and they've called us haters for telling the truth, but really clarity is charity, as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, there was always that statistic that you would hear. And I mean, I still hear it when people talk about the argument for, you know, intervention, surgical intervention.

They say that you would you rather have a, do you want your child to commit suicide is what they're saying? Yeah, yeah. Would you rather have a living daughter or a dead son? Yeah. It's even why, you know, it's been reported that the must. of the shooter signed off on a name change from a male to a female when he was a minor. And so a lot of people are dogpiling on the mother, which again, to your point, Tom, I totally agree.

Your first reaction really has to be prayer here because prayer implies action at some point. You know, faith produces works. But whatever the political action we've been taking, that obviously has failed. And this is a fallen world. And so we pray and we ask consolation from God. and we don't pile on people who are grieving. For this mother, I have no doubt that some doctor at some point told her that statement. Would you rather have a living daughter or a dead son?

And the fact is, that was a lie. And that's a big scandal. And if you want some political action down the line, that would be one of the things that we have to address. You have to extirpate lies from your culture, because when you live out of accord with reality, bad things are going to happen. Yeah. And I think, I mean, from what I've seen, the mother in this case was a member of this church. Am I right? I've seen that online.

It looks like there's evidence that she was part of that church, and that's how the, you know, that there seems to be some connection there. We talked about prayer and, you know, the phrase, thoughts and prayers. I think the mayor, Jacob Fry, has thoughts on the thoughts and prayers. Let's play that sound. And the amount of pain that they are suffering right now is extraordinary. And don't just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.

It was the first week of school. They were in a church. These are kids that should be learning with their friends. Okay, you know, the last couple of sentences he said there, I think you and I would agree with him there. These are kids that should be, they should be in church, they should be praying, they should be with their friends. But his line about, he's sick and tired of the thoughts and prayers. Jen Sacky said the same kind of a thing. Nauseating.

Yeah, I mean. It's nauseating. Because what is in there, look, Fry is a fine politician, so he gussies it up in all this sentimental language. He's mocking dead children, is what he's doing. Because what he is saying is, well, these kids were praying, and a lot of good their prayers did them, huh? Where is your God now? What he is saying is tantamount to what the shooter put on one of his magazines. It's a mockery of religion.

It's a mockery of prayer. And it is therefore a mockery of the kids who were praying. And it's nauseating. He should leave public life in disgrace. But then I have a question for him, because it's also. incoherent. He says, he is insinuating, I think, prayers are not enough. We need political action. Enough of your prayers. That's distracting from strong political action. You need to elect progressive politicians who are going to take effective action, much more efficacious than the

prayers of those children. Well, what I would ask him is, aren't you the mayor? Haven't you already been elected? Aren't you the mayor of Minneapolis in a state that is completely controlled by your political party? So if you're setting up this false dichotomy between prayer and action, Well, okay, you've been elected. Where's the political action? You want to accuse God of failing? You want to have the temerity to accuse the prayers of the community

and of the children of failing. Well, you're in office. Really, if anyone's failed, it's you and you're political action. How about you get off your high horse and have a little humanity and grieve with people and pray when that's the right thing to do?

Yeah, I think that you have... We're going back to the... I remember the Newtown a shooting. You know, this was terrible. All these children... children were killed, and then Barack Obama gave a speech, which he was praised for. He got up and he was crying, but it was a speech where he said, it's time now for gun control. He could waste no time after that awful event to essentially do some PR for his pet legislation.

It's tasteless. I mean, it's totally tasteless, it's classless. But it's also in this case, incoherent because he's setting up a, uh, uh, uh, uh, straw man, a boogeyman here to say, well, it's all these Christians. It's all these Christians who are preventing us from taking the necessary steps. Our own Mary Margaret O'Lehann was on my show this morning breaking a story that in the wake of the trans shooting of a Christian school, totally analogous event here in Nashville, that this school requested security from the state to help secure the area, and the governor said no. And so again, I really don't mean to just jump down the

throats of all of the politicians. First of all, they're the ones who started it. But I don't mean to jump down their throats and make it about one political issue or another. But if you're going to do that, well, hey, don't you guys have the power? You control virtually every office in the state of Minnesota. What's your answer, you know? But before you go blaming God and blaming Christians for the tragedies that befall the world, if you're going to claim the possibility of stopping these things, why haven't you done it? Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I see reactions from people. Like I was saying at the beginning of the show, I don't like taking action rashly. You know, I hear a lot of, you know, right-wingers saying, okay, it's time to do the following.

They have, you know, whatever program they have, you know, reinforcing the schools and, you know, having armed guards and things like that. Now, I'm a little concerned on that side, too, because I don't really want our schools to be fortresses. You know, I think that it is a deeper problem than that, obviously. You want to keep these kids safe, but my kids spent some time in the public schools, all right? And we took them out, and eventually they were homeschooled, so we didn't, you know, have, you know, the indoctrination. Early on, I could deal with a little bit of the, you know, the public schools because it was, you know, second and third grade. But then when you start getting older, fifth and sixth grade, they start to do.

the indoctrination, right? So we got them out of there. But they were doing, at the time they were in school, they were doing lockdown drills. And my daughter, I mean, this girl's coming home. She's in third and fourth grade and she's poking fun of the lockdown drills because they're quite silly. And even a third and fourth grader knew that they were engaging in theater and that it wasn't making anyone safe. So we had another school shooter drill today. I mean, they were, it's so strange that kids were kind of laughing about it. But of course, that's what you do when you're a kid. And the kids can recognize that it's kind of idiotic

for them to be doing these drills. But I do want the schools to be protected. But my question is, what do you do? Because I don't want kids going to school in a fortress. I want them to have the window open that like I had. I was looking out at the birds tweeting, you know, because I had a little bit of, you know, ADHD and I couldn't pay attention. But my school was open and I walked to school.

I said it in my book. The first chapter of my book, I said, I remember going to kindergarten and my mother pushed me out the door and I said, where's the school? And she said, follow the other kids. You'll get there. And that's what I did. There was groups of kids and I, you know, so that's the kind of childhood we grew up in. I want my kids to have that as well. But of course, I don't want them to be vulnerable to lunatics. What do you think about this kind of thing, about everything I've just said right here? Well, of course, you know, going back to good old Uncle Aristotle, you know, he says virtue is the mean between two extremes.

And so, on the one hand, you don't want the schools to be totally vulnerable. But as you say, on the other hand, you don't want it to be like Fort Bragg or something. You know, that would be totally unreasonable. So then what that means is, yes, you need to have reasonable security measures. But obviously, you've got to get to something a little bit deeper here, something beyond some white paper from a think tank or some policy wonk order coming out of a bureaucracy. And this is where I think the mayor's mockery of religion is so profoundly. stupid because the people who were in the church obviously take religion seriously and the shooter

obviously took religion seriously. You know, we're seeing pages coming out of the journals and out of the manifesto and there are videos that have come out. And there's a lot of religious language there. On the magazines and on the guns, you see, where is your God? You see, take this all of you and eat, which is a mockery of Christ's words at the Last Supper, where he says, take this all of you and eat of it. This is my body, which will be given up for you. Those words are recited in the holy sacrifice of the mass. This is deeply demonic stuff. In the video that reportedly was shot by the shooter, there's a target practice, and on the head of the target is an image of Christ in the passion with the crown of thorns on him, weeping. There's a page actually in the

journal in which the shooter draws himself looking at a mirror, and in the mirror, it's not his face, it's the face of a demon. So all politics, ultimately, all human conflict, ultimately, comes down to theology. That's what Cardinal Manning said. He was right then, and it's true today. So it, on so many levels, this mockery of religion, of man's spiritual nature, of trying to just give everything to the merely political realm. Oh, pass three more policies and then we're going to eliminate suffering and danger from the world. It's just so profoundly stupid. It's so wrongheaded. You're never going to solve any problem with that. We will be back with more Michael Knowles. I'm Tom Shaloo. In for Will Kane on Wilcane Country.

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I hear a lot of people using the word demonic and demon lately in social media. almost like it's becoming more acceptable. It used to be the kind of thing I would only talk about with my, you know, fellow Knights of Columbus or whatever. Okay, so we're both Catholic. We're both religious. We both believe in demons. And we both, I think, it seems clear to us that this lunatic was possessed by a demon. I mean, that is possession. He was drawing pictures of the demon. He seemed to be very aware of it, almost like the, you know, in the exorcist when, you know, that girl is aware that she's possessed by the devil right this is what happened with this guy okay but how do we talk about that in this secular world in the world of politics i think you

you know i watch your show and i think you you talk about these things very comfortably i almost have i feel like i'm in a more mainstream scene here on fox news so if i'm sitting around on gutfeld and i bring up demons i feel oh can i do Can I talk about the demons? The heads are going to turn. Yeah. Literally, it's going to spin right around. But we do have to talk about this.

I feel like politicians like J.D. Vance are able to start broaching these kind of subjects. And the thing is, let's face it, we need our politicians to be able to talk about demons. And it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. How are we supposed to do that without freaking everybody out? Well, there's a master class. actually that came from the late great Antonin and Scalia. Because look, I don't, I don't see demons under every rock. I'm with C.S. Lewis who says there are two opposite errors you can make with demons, and the devil say. One is you pretend they don't exist. The other is you find them under

every rock. In this case, especially when, you know, when you look at that page of the journal where I say the shooter drew himself, he looks in the mirror, it's a demon. He has written some things on the page. The first thing he writes in the top left corner is, who am I? There's all these other jarring things, but who am I is really prescient because we recall Moses at the burning bush. He asked God, hey, who are you? And God says, I am who I am. Christ says before Abraham was, I am. God being, being himself, you know, not just the source of being for everyone else, but actually being. And so this question, who am I rises. When you turn away from God, when you lose your connection to God, you're left with this pitiful question. You don't

know who you are, you try on all these different identities. Okay, that's a more of a secular way to talk about it. Antonin Scalia, 2013, did an interview with New York Magazine. It's one of my favorite interviews I've ever read. Some no-nothing girl is interviewing him. And she's saying, what do you believe about good and bad and the moral law? And he theatrically leans in and whispers, he says, you know, not only do I believe in God, I even believe in the devil. And she starts kind of making fun of him. She says, you believe in the devil, huh? Oh, wow, boy, that's got to be awful scary. And they talk about why the devil doesn't show himself anymore.

He says, yeah, because now he got whilier. He realizes that the best trick he has, as Bodriard says, or Baudelaire, rather, says, is to convince people he doesn't exist. But at a certain point, he turns it on her. And he says, do you realize how out of touch you are? Do you realize that for most Americans believe in the devil? Do you realize that for most of history, most people have believed in the devil? And the killer line is, many more intelligent people than you and me have believed in the devil.

That, I think, is the way to start broaching this. You know, you say, hey, listen, guys, maybe, as Hamlet points out, there's more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophies. Maybe the smartest people who have ever lived, maybe those, they weren't totally crazy. Maybe Reddit tier mid-2000s Christopher Hitchens' quips is not the height of philosophy and theology. And maybe we need to start thinking more deeply about what good and evil really means and whether or not they have personalities. Yeah. I mean, that is amazing. It's so great.

And I think you were just mentioning, as you were talking there, about the manifesto and the notebook. These things got taken down from a lot of sites immediately. Obviously, his social media was taken down. The video that he made, I think, just before the shooting, where he was, you know, laughing and showing the scenes from his diary, got taken down from YouTube. But obviously, this stuff has found its way onto social media. The thing is, I don't like when these serial killers get attention.

I didn't like the fact when, you know, Yokar, the Boston bomber, was on the cover of Rolling Stone, right? Yeah. And when we had the Columbine shooters, they became, remember, everyone knew the names Dylan Klebold and that other guy, whatever, right? So I don't like that we know Dylan Klebold's name. But I actually do like that we got to see this guy's diary. So should we stop worrying about this stuff and let it all out? Because people have been trading this and, you know, obviously we knew a heck of a lot more about this.

than we usually do because people, now you can't stop this information from coming. Do you think it's okay that this guy's diary is out there and people are parsing it and looking at it and trading it and talking about it? I see the two sides. One is never mention anything about the person, let him fade into obscurity immediately. The other is put him on the cover of Rolling Stone. And I have an unsatisfying answer, but it actually goes back to Scalia, which is, it is good to release some of this information.

to understand the motivations, because the only way you're going to get political action is to understand what has led to this in the first place. But how do you decide what's too much, what's not enough? The way you decide is very, very carefully. When I was a student, I got to meet Scalia a couple times, and we asked him about his views on story decisis, the idea that even if a case was settled the wrong way 50 years ago, you would give it a little bit of credence.

You would try to uphold the case so that you didn't have total, craziness in your justice system and we said well hold on well what if a case is really really wrong you know then you're going to overturn it and scalia said yes that's right we said so how do you how do you figure out what's the right thing to do gun control you let all the guns into the country do you have radical gun control how do you figure out what the right the right measure is and his answer with this classic scalia charm was you figure it out very very carefully and so in in this case i i struggled i played some of it on my show today really And I'm not showing his face. I'm not saying his name. I'm not giving him any glory that he was obviously seeking.

But when you see that he was taking target practice at an image of Christ, when you see that he was actually not only mocking Christianity, but also was attacking Jews and was also attacking Muslims. That's a kind of odd. Obviously, the physical attack that killed people was on a Catholic church. That's meaningful too. But when you get all of this kind of stuff out there, really there's no way of addressing the problem if you don't have a slight sense of what was involved. Because the fear is if you don't let any of this information out, as was the case with the Nashville shooter, they tried to suppress that information a lot. At Butler, Pennsylvania, we still know basically nothing about the guy who shot President Trump. If you just have a vacuum, then that vacuum is going to be filled with a lot of propaganda. It's going to be filled with all of the political agendas and you're going to get the politicians showing up before the murder scene has been wrapped up. You're going to get people going out there to push their hobby horses and whatever stupid bill, even if it would have nothing to do with the incident.

Yeah. I only have you for a couple of more minutes, but I wanted to get you on this subject. It seems like it's kind of a silly story these past few weeks, but I don't think it's very silly. Even though we've been making fun of it on Gutfeld, we've been saying day 41,000 in the Cracker Barrel saga, and we've been talking about this thing, right? So we're kind of poking fun of ourselves for paying so much attention to this story. But at the same time, I do think it's a legitimate story,

and I wonder if you agree with me on that. I think that there is something about this and that it was a worthy thing for people to get upset about and to go after the company and people can learn valuable lessons from this. Do you agree? Absolutely, because it hits so many different points. One, we all recognize that liberal women wearing silly glasses

have caused so many problems in corporate America and in government. They are like almost public enemy number one. So this new takeover of Cracker Barrel, but also this complete misunderstanding. They seem to think that the product Cracker Barrel sells is dumplings or something. They had no idea what their product was.

The company was founded in 1969, all this cultural tumult, summer of love. It was founded not to change. The whole point of Cracker Barrel is not changing. It's the only reason the dumplings are fine, but you go there because it's old-timey. And they said, yeah, great. Well, what have we just change everything? We thought, wow, you don't even understand what your company is and why it's, and people, by the way, right now, they don't love the constant innovation and sterility.

And, you know, we kind of want to go make America great again. That was the message of the election. The last, the last gasp of opposing that, I think, was this poor Cracker Barrel lady who, Uncle Herschel's back and the Cracker Barlady, I think, is probably on her way out. Yeah, it would be great. You know, it's funny you say the lady with the glasses because I said the other day, she reminds me of the woman who started that blood testing company and ended up in jail. You know, that same, and she had that same obsession.

with aesthetics, like she wanted to simplify. And I said to my wife, you know, most people don't like Marie Kondo and the Chip and Joanna Gaines. Like, they don't want to make everything like, you know, pure simple magazine or whatever. No. Cracker barrel is messy. It looks like my garage. There's stuff like nailed to the wall.

Yeah, there's like a saw on the wall or a banjo or something. Yeah. Yeah. And so when I would travel the country, you know, just as a. road comic, I would know what I was getting into with Cracker Barrel. It actually took a little longer. Like, if I wanted fast food, I would go to McDonald's because you zip in and you zip out. You don't want to zip in and zip out with Cracker Barrel. You want to take your time. Sometimes they're a little bit behind. The employees aren't, you know, they're not like boom, boom, boom.

So you have to wait outside. So you sit in the rocking chair and, you know, you take in, you look at some of the crafts and maybe there's a game. Yeah, the peg game. And this woman, and she comes in and she says, hey yeah and forget about the logo for a second just even on the interior she said you know what you know what people really want from cracker barrel they want a hospital cafeteria that's what they that's what they're really coming here for exactly yes so the idea that people went crazy and they were screaming and everyone was making fun of all the latest maga obsession whatever but that's it just shows you people don't understand the way that we the way we want to live our lives you know that's right we like we make everything in ideology now some people just want like a traditional

normal way of life. And when they try to say it was all MAGA that brought Uncle Herschel back, let's not forget the Democrat Party through its official Twitter account said, hey, listen, guys, we agree. The rebrand sucks too. Okay, listen, hey, this woman, she's actually a great political figure. She's the only person to bring both sides together, maybe in my lifetime. That's fantastic. Michael Knowles, this was great. Great to have you. So glad you, you know, I always say this when I'm filling in people. Thanks for not canceling. I was even more excited, Tom, when I saw you hear that. That is great.

Michael Knowles, the Michael Knowles Show on Daily Wire, and hopefully we'll, maybe we'll host a, you know, a pro-life event together in person someday. In person. That'd be great. Yes. Thanks for being with us. Okay, this is Tom Shiloh. I'm filling in for Will Kane on Will Kane Country.

We're going to take a little break and we'll be back. You can get protein at home, or a protein latte at Tim's. No powders, no blenders, no shakers. Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein lattes, protein without all the work, at participating restaurants in Canada. Reading, playing, learning. Stellist lenses do more than just correct your child's vision. They slow down the progression of myopia.

So your child can continue to discover all the way. world has to offer through their own eyes. Light the path to a brighter future with Stellist lenses for myopia control. Learn more at SLR.com and ask your family eye care professional for SLOR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. Tom Shaloo, back. It's Will Cain Country, and I'm filling in. And I'm doing a heck of a job. I've got to say, if I, you know, if I say so myself.

Killing it. I'm killing it today. That's right. We had a great time with Michael Knowles. And my next guest, Chad Bronstein, he is the president and founder of American freestyle wrestling. Did I get it right? Chad? American Freestyle.

American Freestyle, that's all. That's it. That's the whole deal. Real American freestyle. Real American freestyle. You know, we got the promo. We're going to play it in a second, but it's coming up on Fox Nation. We have, you know, in honor of Hulk Hogan.

And tell me about your American freestyle. Yeah, so Hulk and I were part. Hulk founded Real American Beer and then came to me to, you know, come co-founded with them. And we were on a, I wrestled. throughout my life, amateur wrestling. And we were on the road a lot doing our tour for the beer. And we have all these different wrestling teams come, meet Hulk. And I would tell Hulk, there's never been a professional wrestling league for freestyle wrestlers.

You know, either go to the UFC or you go to the WW. But there's never been this arena for these guys and girls. So Hulk's like, brother, it's a great idea. So we, Hulk and I, Izzy Martinez, and Eric Bischoff came out and we partnered together and we started this league. So it's called, you know, there's going to be obviously the Fox. We're partnering and doing the tribute as well for Hulk. He's the commissioner of the league. Yeah.

And explain freestyle, like, you know, what it is as wrestling because, you know, I had when I was a kid, I would watch professional wrestling on TV. This is the early days. I'm talking about, you don't even know. Chief Jay Strongbow, Fuji and Tanaka. Yep. Right? Fred Blassie. You know?

I do know. But yeah, so there's, that's obviously scripted wrestling. Freestyle wrestling is what you watch in the Olympics, right? So it's, you know, there's folk style wrestling, which you wrestle in college. And then when you're done with college, the wrestlers that continue their career, they wrestle freestyle, which is in the Olympics. Yeah. And so it's the same, like in high school. We had a wrestling team in high school.

And those guys did, that's freestyle where the two guys are down there and the onesies and they're wrestling for points, right? Yeah, so that's folk style in high school. And that's what I wrestled. And then you go to freestyle is the Olympic style. But it's similar style of wrestling, but the wrestling you did in high school, there's more action in the freestyle, more throws, more excitement. I see.

It's interesting. Now, why is that? Are they protecting high school guys or is freestyle very traditional? I mean, I'm sorry, is the folk style very traditional and then freestyle has kind of taken that to another level, is that right? Well, they've always existed.

There's three styles of wrestling. There's Greco, which has always been around, folk style and freestyle. Freestyle's always been the Olympic style of wrestling. And there's Greco. There's Greco and freestyle in the Olympics. Freestyle is more popular. But it's just the way of the style,

you know, the way, you know, to keep that high-level, high-intensity engagement. So they're all three different styles. They're all very popular in the wrestling world. But we chose to go with freestyle for this league because we thought it would be the most exciting. Yeah. It's interesting. Greco was something you didn't hear much about, except a couple of years ago. We had an American who was very good at Greco, and I think he won the gold.

Yep. And then everything was allowed Greco. Oh, my God. Greco is everywhere because of this one guy, you know. but that is more like I'm assuming that's the way they wrestled in like you know was it like ancient Greece yeah what's crazy is that wrestling's been around the oldest sport right that's what that's what they did in ancient Greece back in the day but wrestling reason why we did this is you know wrestling is very popular you know Trump went to the NCAAs he saluted Wyatt hendrickson and it went viral and why it's

our main event for this card but once he went there and it was a sold out of at NCA, so you could see it was popular, but it's a very wrestling-specific fan base. Now our goal is to bring it mainstream, but it's such a big audience in the wrestling world. Let's play the promo for a Real American Freestyle. It's going to be, you know, let's play it. You were our guy. They've stuck with me through thick and thin, brother. That means a lot.

And so we got to know everybody and then all's like, brother, this is the next thing. With my partner, I said, you know, let me call out. Eric, because there's something here. And we said, these guys don't have a chance to continue their professional career. Amateur wrestling is a sport. You start when you're four, five, six, seven years old. You wrestle through

high school. If you're fortunate, you wrestle in college. If you're really fortunate, you may even get to Olympic level competition. But then generally it's the end of the road. And what Hulk Hogan saw wasn't the end of the road. It's the beginning of a brand new one. You know, when I saw these

this promo, I thought this was just part of another tribute to Hulk Hogan on Fox Nation, but this is really getting into what you guys do. I want to ask you, just as a businessman, obviously you had Hulk, you went to Hulk Hogan and said, I want to do this freestyle thing, right? How did you, then where do you go? How do you start? Like, it must be a logistical nightmare. Well, yeah. So we were quiet about it. Hulk, we brought in Izzy Martinez, who actually

was very connected in the wrestling world. We had to spend some time really building relationships with all the wrestlers to get them to sign. We signed the best wrestlers in the world. And then Hulk's like, brother, we got to bring Bischoff involved. So Bischoff, we brought involved to, you know, the packages you see. He's obviously brilliant from the content perspective. But yeah, Hulk was always the kind of person that before we launched something, he wanted to spend the time learning about it and actually seeing if there's potential. So Hulk got to meet a lot of the different athletes.

And that's when, you know, it had a click in Hulk's head too where it's like, I'm ready to do this. He had to see it and he always, you know, he always looked at everything as he would look at Hulkomania, the brand. Yeah. And so then you've got to get, A, you've got to get the wrestlers involved, right? You've got to get officiators, right? Laser like what, refs?

Yeah, refs. You got to get venues. What kind of venues are you in? Are you in like, you know, sport like arenas? What is it? Yes. So I'm from Cleveland, Ohio. Hulk loved Cleveland.

We did a lot of tours for the beer in Cleveland. He's like, let's go Cleveland first. So we went to, we're doing it to the Wolstein Center in Cleveland, pretty sizable arena. A.W. just did it a couple weeks ago there for the Wolfstein. But they have a pretty good size. But yeah, arena size are usually between like 7 and 10,000. But there's, like you said, there's a lot that goes in. do it we raise capital from left lane capital which is a big venture firm yeah that um focuses on

emerging sports leagues they were they incubated this with us um from the beginning but yeah there's a different factors are going to it you know it's a it's a big it's not some small event like this sizable event with um good capital invested and we want to make this successful for this sport yeah incubate that's such a business term i like that they're incubating it but yeah i mean you got to raise tons of Capitol and then you've got to let people know about it. There's so much happening in the world today. I know because I just do small shows. I perform at comedy clubs. So I go into town. I play wise guys in Salt Lake City this weekend, right? And then the club has a mailing list and people come and see me. It's fantastic. And how do they, you know, how do they pay the bills? Two drink

minimum. People buy the drinks. They get to see me. Everybody has a good time, right? But with you guys, this is on the higher level. I also tour with Greg Gutfeld, okay? Greg's a big name. name. We now, when I tour with Greg, I do the opening act and then Greg comes out. We're playing now, you know, I guess you'd call them stadia, right? Or sports arenas, right? Greg's got to sell five or six thousand tickets. You can't just do that with a mailing list. You've got to invest. You've got to have, you know, everything, all sorts of media and you've got to have product tie-ins and everything like that. So it's, you guys are, you're doing well. Yeah, I mean, I would say we promoted we're promoting you know pretty hard on this right so i think we're good at we have

obviously foxes fox nations our partner yep they've been working with us but we have our we have you know we're targeting everywhere like you said what you guys have to do for those arenas yeah we're doing the same thing you we built a good mailing list but you can't rely on the mailing list you're trying to fit 6 000 people in arena so we're running a lot of a lot of advertising we do a lot of good PR you know we're building the we're letting the athletes go out and speak to different outlets. But we're lucky that we're fortunate enough that also Hulk and Eric Bischoff have also sizable promoting names as well. And they've leaned into this. So it's a, it's been a, it's been a full court press strategy here. But we, we did this four months. You know, we started,

we announced it four months ago. So it wasn't like, so we've pushed pretty hard. Yeah. And what's the demographic? I mean, you got guys, it's, you think of the wrestling crowd, right? It's like young males. Okay. So I'm assuming when you're in there with the venture capitalist, they're talking about who's our audience and the target market and things like that I'm sure it is a wide range and you have a certain amount of young like kids are there young guys coming their dad has to bring them to the stadium we have tons so we have tons of kids coming to the stadium yeah because you got a lot of the clubs you guys that's a great question like what's exciting about this is kids never had a pro outlet here to look they look at the UFC yeah and they looked at

whole they looked up to Hulk Hogan a lot of the athletes that we have but Like you said, you watched wrestling back when you were younger, right? So we're giving the kids an outlet to look up to the guys they look up to already that are college NCAA champions or Olympians. So a lot of youth programs will be there. And demographically, the fastest growing sport in America for women is wrestling right now. So you also have a huge audience of female women that will be there as well because there's a ton of women wrestlers. Yeah.

How's wrestling doing in, you know, like high schools? When I was in high school in the 80s, our wrestling team was pretty serious. And they were always the guys making weight, you know, oh, I can't have lunch, I'm making weight, you know. But the wrestling guys were stars and there was something about wrestling that was unlike any other sport because, you know,

like a team sport, you know, you had a basketball team, the swim team, you had the football. But wrestling was one man on one man, right? So it was like the pressure and the guys would be, you know, they'd be vomiting before they were so, you know, so intense before every meet, you know, they were, I mean, they were, they were getting sick from, from nerves, you know, they were so pumped up. So anyway, wrestling was big in our high school culture, but I've gotten the sense that a lot of sports has been hit, especially

when that Title IX thing came along. You talked about women in sports. Title IX, some of the wrestling teams were getting cut because they had to, you know, have a, you know, keep up with the girls' sports, things like that. How is, folk wrestling doing in you know among American youth high schools it's it's growing it's growing it's a really fast that's like back to your question earlier about business like when you're raising capital they look at how much audience growth have you had in the sport yeah and so there's a significant growth for youth I think there's around 2.2 million youth wrestlers which is a lot which is a lot

for the sport yeah and then yes I would say it's growing college-wise is also growing, right? So obviously with NIL, it's, you know, going to continue to grow. But, you know, you have your Big Ten schools, which is obviously the big part of wrestling. But I'd say high school level in the states that, in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, California, Iowa, Minnesota, you know, those states, wrestling high schools, pretty big. Yeah. And so you said it's really growing for females, and there are females involved in the freestyle. your operation? Yeah.

Yeah, so we have Sarah Hildenbrand, that's the Olympic gold medalist for, she's wrestling in the league, and then Kennedy Blades, who's also a silver medalist Olympian. So on this card, there's two different women matches. Yeah, you know what? I think that's great, and I'm gonna give you my opinion

and see what you think of it. I imagine you might not agree with me on this, but I think wrestling for girls is great. okay but I don't like seeing MMA females like I know they're big Ronda Rousey the whole thing like I don't like watching two women beat the heck out of each other so what do you think of that like to me wrestling that's good I mean you know you're in there you get the points you know maybe you get tough but to me MMA is like a guy thing and I just I don't begrudge any tough woman who wants to fight MMA but I don't want to see a girl getting her face punch

punched in. What do you think of that? I mean, I actually am best friends with one of the top championship fighters, Giuliana Peña. Yeah. So I love her. Listen, I respect them like hell. I respect them, but I just don't want to watch it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I know. Some people have your opinion. For me, I've been, you know, on the side of Giuliana for some time. So I've gotten to see how, you know, how much she works out to become the champion. Yeah. But I think what you're saying is in the wrestling side, women, you know, you're not getting bloodied in wrestling, right? So for the women's

side, but it's still an aggressive, like, from a training perspective, like a lot of the top UFC fighters, you probably know this, but they're wrestlers. Yeah. It started off with wrestling. So it's a foundation for combat sports. Yeah. Look, when it started, when MMA started, those cages, everybody thought it was the guys who were going to pound the hell out of someone's face, right? But they were getting killed by the wrestlers, right? I don't know if it's kind of even out but in the beginning the wrestlers were dominating am i wrong yeah and then the wrestlers considered boring because they're not you know if they if they use wrestling to uh you know protect themselves and win matches and people were like oh they're not throwing enough punches

but mark holman who's a pretty either that movie's coming out with him on the uh smashing machine he was a ohio state champion and also a freestyle wrestling champion and then he went to the MMA became a champion. So you're right. The wrestling is a lot of the, a lot of the champions that win, they use wrestling as a method. I'm telling you,

for me, when I watch those, to me, there's nothing more thrilling than watching some big dude with long legs get wrapped up by a wrestler and he's about to get his femur

broken by the wrestler in a hole and he taps out. Like to me, that's the greatest thing I've ever seen. Yes. It's pretty, It's pretty intense, that's for sure. And I think that's what, you know, this league is, you know, to show you is like a lot of those wrestlers, they don't have anywhere to go, right?

So, like, there's two wrestlers in our league that are PFL champ, two-time PFL champ, and then Dary and Cal was a two-time Belter champ. And then Bo Nichols, a current top prospect in the UFC. And they were all started off with being NCAA champion wrestlers. Yeah, that's great. Well, listen, I think it's thrilling. I mean, I could talk to you all day about the business side of these things because I think, when you start up something, I don't know how people deal with all this stuff, but it's very thrilling. And I'm so glad, you know, before we lost them, you had the help of Hulk Hogan.

And I just wish you all the luck in your league. And I hope everything's, you know, going to go great. And I'm excited that Fox Nation is partnering with you. And that thing is going to get great ratings, I'm sure. Well, thank you so much. And I appreciate your time. Thanks. Chad Bronstein, thanks for being with us. We're going to take a break. And then we're going to have a final, final thoughts. and we're going to talk about where is Will? Where's Will Kane today? Why does he have an amateur filling in for him?

And we're also, maybe you guys can review, we're going to do a little kind of segment called How Did Tom Do as a fill-in host? All right. We'll be right back. It's Rona Week. Now until Wednesday. Rain or shine, you can always be building yourself a better summer.

So head on over to Rona and save 35% on cans of 3.78-liter Rona interior paint. Give that room you keep saying needs a fresh coat of paint, a fresh coat of paint. Build it right, build it Rona. Conditions apply, details in store, and more offers at rona.c. We sell buckets too. On September 5th I come down here, I need you in your house! Array!

The Conjuring! Hooray! Array! The Conjuring, last rites, only in the theater September 5th. We are back in Will Kane country. Tom Shaloo is filling in for Will Kane today. And I think we had a great show. That's my perspective.

But let's, you know, get the experts. Daniel and Patrick, can you weigh in? Tell me how I did today. No, Patrick, you go first. I think you did a great job. So unlike Will, you brought a level of compassion. Mm-hmm. Cush up.

Wow. You brought a level of compassion to this show. that we might not have had, so. That's interesting. You think that maybe compassion is the weak spot in the Wilcane armor. Yeah. It might be. Yeah.

Well, that's what you happen. Look, he's a guy. He's like a sports guy. He's good looking. Those guys, they don't have a lot of empathy, you know, because they've gone through life. They live up here. Yes. They live in a rarefied world.

Yeah. The air is nice up there. But I was fascinated by, you know, I didn't want to get to, Catholic, but I was just thrilled to talk to Michael Knowles, and he's a very spiritual guy. I think he's a Latin Mass guy like myself. So we could have gone down the Catholic rabbit hole. I'm Catholic myself, too. Oh, you are.

Okay, great. So we could have done, you know, some Pope's Blaining. I was a peer minister. You were? Oh, fantastic. I did ministry trips in Haiti. You did? So you did the real deal.

I did the real deal. It was crazy. Wow. But yeah, so I appreciate the Catholic Church and all that. Yes. And I think, so, but I did, I was thrilled. to be able to be on a Fox podcast talking about demons, you know? Like I said, I mean, we can talk about,

nobody tells us what to talk about here on Fox, and I don't know if anybody knows that. Sometimes they say, you know, what are those guys, you know, give you as direction? I like that. It doesn't happen. It's surprising how little note getting I've had in my years here. A couple of times on Red Eye, we crossed a couple of lines,

and we had some meetings about it. As you do. Yes. But that was after the fact. They, on Fox News, the host of the show has a great deal of, I mean, essentially, Will is the, you know, executive producer, head writer of the show. Even though you guys are producers, he's like, he decides what happens, right? Yep. That's it.

Yeah, we have meetings and we adapt to what he wants. I like how all my liberal friends are like, oh, you guys have directives. all these things you can't talk about. I'm like, no, it's not how it works. No. Generally, you know what? The only thing that we might be directed by is the idea that we start to know

what the audience wants to see. So we'll have, you know, breaking news and then, you know, you want to address it. There was a tragedy yesterday. You're going to address it. But then on Gutfeld, we're going to go back to the silly news that our audience wants. But, you know, that's not what Dana's going to do

on America's newsroom. Dana has hard news. She has people who want to keep up with the news of the day. So every host has kind of their own perspective on what, you know, what people want to hear. And that's what we try to provide, right? Yeah. 100%. Just like Will interviewing J.D. Vance.

That's right. Okay. So Will is interviewing J.D. Vance today. And it's going to be on what? I assume he's going to get the TV, right? Are you guys going to get some clips for the podcast? So they're going to play. Most of it, I think, today on the 4 o'clock, Will Cain show on television.

We'll play some clips from that on all our social media channels. Then tomorrow, right here on Will Cain Country at 12 noon, we're going to play the entire interview. The full uncut. The full uncut interview with Vice President J.D. Vance right here on Wilcane Country YouTube page. Yeah, that's exciting. So what is the sensible reason for it? Why did J.D. Vance take time out of his busy schedule to talk to Will? say, I really want to talk to you about the following

or what? Well, I don't know, Patrick. Was there something besides the game? I think it was just the game. Texas Texas OSU. Yeah. So that's, I mean, really, and he uses that as an end, but then he's going to do a little game, and then he's going to do some policy, right? Well, we do,

he does what he loves Trump does is called the weave. Yeah. He goes in and out. Little lighter little lighter topic, harder topic, lighter topic, harder topic. You're telling me that Will Kane does the or J.D. Vance does the weave. Will Cain does the weave.

Yeah, I'd be careful doing the weave if I were J.D. Vance. I mean, I don't know if the man would appreciate that. I know. Maybe later in his term, he's going to give the weave over to J.D. Vance.

Yeah, yeah. Just like a master class of the weave. Yeah. How about this? If I interviewed J.D. Vance, I think I would not do what everybody does. It drives me crazy

is say, like, are you going to run for president, you know, whatever. They do that because you can't answer that question, right? You can't say yes. You don't want to say no. So the whole thing is just a big waste of time. Is Will going to do that? Is he going to say, are you running for president? I don't believe. I'm making a note right now just to make sure he doesn't do that. Yeah, yeah. We're texting him as we speak. Don't do this in all

caps. Yeah. No, it's good. I think you're right because it's just a, I feel like people just feel like they have to ask that. Yes. Because they are there in the room. And if they don't, they think they'll kick themselves if he has an actual answer. But in reality, he won't ever have an answer for that. I know. And, you know, to tell you the truth, though, when they do ask it, I wish politicians would have other than the hacky answer, which is, if you ask Gavin Newsom, he said, you know, right now I'm thinking about the people of California. Like, they always give you that nonsense.

And you know, Gavin Newsom hasn't thought of the people of California since he had brown hair. He thinks about Gavin Newsom. Let me tell you that. Yes, yes. So I think that's a great opportunity. And, you know, I always, you know, I'm going to be tuning in for it. And then for people, they're going to get the full uncut version for the only fans version of Will Kane. They can tune in tomorrow on the podcast.

But so you'd say, give me an out of 10. Was I like, you know, 7, 8 out of 10? I know I wasn't 10 because, look, it was a little bit, you know, a little bit clunky coming in and out of the break. You're good. I was looking at my notes. I didn't know Chad's name right off the bat. I couldn't figure out what the name of his wrestling outfit was. That's all right.

We figured it out. Okay. You know, we're a loose show here. That's what we like. We like, Will goes for authenticity. Yeah. So if you're authentically don't know someone's name, then that's authentic. You know what?

I think, to tell you the truth, I think sloppiness is the wave of the future. Exactly. Because when I see a podcast, if I'm looking at like a Joe Rogan-type podcast, The guys have the cans on their head. They're hanging out. It's kind of laid back. I'll stay watching, right? Sure.

But if I tune into something that's called a podcast, and I see people doing that old-fashioned walk and talk, like, you know, like it was like 60 minutes, you know, or the lighting is too good and they have like, you know, the cameras frame. Make up on? Yeah. Or to tell you the truth, to be honest,

even the Edison lighting and stuff. Yeah. You know, I don't want to, you know, that's kind of a daily wire thing. But like, when it looks too nice, I'm like, I don't want, I don't want slick. I want a podcast. Do you know what I mean? Gritty is the future. Yes.

It is. Yes. You're absolutely right. Because people like, people feel like they want to, they could be in the room with you talking and having the same conversation. With the polished stuff, you don't really feel that way. Yeah. Yeah.

That's true. So, professionalism is overrated, guys. That's the, you know, I should put that on my business card. All right, Tom Shaloo, in for Will Kane. I hear my bumper music. I'm going to get out gracefully. And hopefully, we'll be back in Wilcane Country soon. See again.

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