Charlie and Michael Knowles Debate Religion at AmFest
Charlie is a Protestant, and Michael Knowles is a Catholic. What started off as a free-ranging discussion at AmFest became a spirited debate about two different approaches to Christianity, which the audience got deeply invested in as well. The two also discuss the origins of the MAGA movement, what they've each seen on college campuses the past year, and more. Join Charlie's interviews in-person at next year's AmFest by becoming a subscriber at members.charliekirk.com.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is what people said was the best interview from AmericaFest.
Michael Knowles decided to be a little aggressive, a little uppity, a little chippy, where he decided to poke fun at Protestants, and we held the line, I think, pretty well.
This was unscripted, not planned, where I guess we, very in a friendly way, debate Catholicism versus Protestantism?
Who won this debate?
Email me, freedom at charliekirk.com.
I want to hear from you.
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Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
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Michael, welcome.
It's wonderful to be with you, Charlie, and with all of you.
So, can I, before you introduce, before you do anything, it kills me to say anything sincere and nice about you, but I think I have to.
When we were setting this up, you know, your producer, Andrew, was joking with me because I said, I think the time will work this day.
He goes, Michael, you know, it's a big honor to be invited on the show.
I said, bro, you're kidding me.
But it is legitimately a great honor to be on the show right now when you, as much as just about anyone in the country, won this election for President Trump.
It's unbelievable.
It's like President Trump and then a handful of people and you're one of those people.
Thank you.
And it's the team that deserves the credit at Turning Point.
It's not me.
The team believed and we worked hard and we did something that would be called very risky, but we hired 1,500 people in a couple states and I did 25 campus stops and tours.
It's really amazing.
We have the polling to now show it of how the states and the campuses that we actually hit on the precinct level moved by an average of 15 points.
And then we had a control group of the campuses we didn't hit That only moved by one point.
And so it goes to show how Turning Point Action helped move the youth vote.
And in fact, if Kamala Harris just would have done one thing, she just had to do one thing.
She just had to get young people to vote the same way they did in 2020, and she would have won.
That's it.
If young people just would have voted the way they did in 2020, that's why all the national polling was off.
It wasn't that far off with every other age group.
It was off with young people.
That was where the modeling was off the most.
And the polling, always assuming that young people were going to vote with similar habits as they did in 2020, and it turns out we shocked the world.
The obvious that Kamala Harris is not the most exciting candidate in the world.
It turns out that when you replace the president, who is in senility, with a woman who no one has ever voted for in their entire lives, that probably she's not going to do very well.
But then the other one is the ideological aspect, that young Democrats in particular decided to go buy a lot of keffias and campaign for Islamists in the Middle East.
That is going to create an electoral problem for the Democrat establishment.
So, Michael, you do a lot of campus stuff alongside, I mean, with us and with other people.
Just what's going on with young men, campuses?
Kind of give us your thoughtful analysis, because there is a change.
There's something profound.
You've played a role.
We've played a role.
What is going on?
It's extraordinarily encouraging to go to campuses now, and when you get questions from the right, they're better questions than they used to be on the right.
On the right, it used to be kind of simple stuff.
Now it's questions about virtue.
It's questions about forming families.
You know, it's not just like cut my taxes kind of questions.
So you've got these profound questions on the right.
And then even when the libs walk up, I find this, the libs will walk up and maybe they'll heckle you, maybe they'll insult you in some way.
But I do get this sense they are sincerely trying to understand something, which I don't think was true two years ago or three years ago.
And I think it's because after this election, I was talking to very liberal friends and relatives of mine, And I said, so, you know, how are you feeling?
Happy Thanksgiving!
But my liberal friends and relatives, they were not furious.
They didn't throw the plate at the wall.
They would say, you know, I guess I just don't really get the country anymore.
I guess something was wrong with my prediction.
In part because he won the popular vote.
You can't even say it was just a white guy.
It was one in five black guys.
It was almost half of Hispanics.
It was a lot of women.
40% of women under 30. Crazy demographics.
And so I said, I don't know.
I guess we just don't know.
You saw AOC saying, which of the right-wing podcast bros should I listen to?
She's probably insecure.
Obviously Charlie Kirk's show.
And everyone was saying that.
Right after she finished watching the Michael Knowles show, she was supposed to watch the Charlie Kirk show.
And...
But she was sincere about it, or at least she wanted her followers to think she was sincere.
They realized they lost something, and they're kind of out of excuses, so they need to create a new mental model.
With young men in particular, it's a dramatic shift.
In 2018, young men were approximately 21 points, 22 points in the Democrat direction.
Now it's 13 points in the Republican direction.
What explains that movement?
Well, it turns out when you tell a group of people that you hate them for 20 years, eventually they hear you.
They say, oh, well, maybe I don't really like you all that much either.
So that's a big problem.
I mean, the Democrats, the liberals, have literally been calling men toxic for decades.
They've been saying things like, the future is female.
They, of course, flunked biology class in middle school, so they don't know.
If there is to be a future, it needs to involve both men and women.
You know, that's kind of how the future is made.
And so, to hear that, Hillary, when she used that slogan, she thought it was just a sweet girl power kind of line.
But men were listening too.
And women were listening too, by the way.
Women who have sons, women who have husbands, women who have brothers and fathers.
They were listening to that too.
So nasty.
There's an old line that people used to say.
They said, there will never be a war between the sexes because everyone is sleeping with the enemy.
And I don't know that that's true anymore.
I don't know.
These days it's a little more confused.
But there is some truth.
The fundamental things apply as time goes by.
A kiss is still a kiss.
A sigh is still a sigh.
I think people are recognizing that Men and women are really complementary to one another.
The era of men being buffoons and women being absolutely perfect, the Homer Simpson era, the Ray Romano era, I think that is passé.
I think it's dated.
And wherever the culture is now on these questions, it ain't that.
And on the campuses...
In particular, there's a cultural vibe shift.
Yeah.
Where, let's just take the MAGA hat.
You know, some of these folks are wearing MAGA hats.
That MAGA hat, you know this, Michael, in 2016, 2017, was like the ultimate symbol of, like, rebel energy.
And now it's still that, but it's...
It's way easier to wear that hat in public.
In fact, it's desirable and it's cool.
How did that happen?
Previously, the media could say, this is a symbol of white supremacy.
This is a symbol of violence against Tasmanian women of color.
I don't know.
Whatever is minor group.
But we know that isn't true now.
The media have lost a lot of their credibility.
The news now happens on X and a handful of other places.
And most people voted for Trump.
So we know that.
I mean, I don't mean to belabor the point of the popular vote.
As a matter of law, it doesn't matter.
But in the public consciousness, it really, really matters.
Most people want to wear that hat.
So I've had my OG MAGA hat since 16. It was the white one with the blue font.
It's great.
I brought it to Havana with me.
I snuck it out and took a picture in front of Shea Guevara in Revolution Square.
But you had to, in those days, forget about Revolution Square.
On a college campus, you'd have to sneak it out.
Oh, yeah.
And now it's just...
And now we gave out like 25,000 of them.
Yeah.
And we had kids that were mad they didn't get one.
Yes.
And these videos, and we're throwing them out.
Because it's just...
You know, in part, I think it's because of the Millennials now are old, and the Zoomers are hip and young and cool.
I find myself to be a spiritual Zoomer, but I'm a Millennial by birth.
And, you know, the Millennials were all about Obama and kind of nice liberalism, and everyone had to be at least, like, half-gay.
And, you know, it was all...
Everyone was, like, really, I don't know, just really artsy, and they listened to, like, hipster music, and they all spoke, like, vocal fry and whatever.
You know, that was the aesthetic of the Millennials.
So true.
And it's just not...
Whenever the next thing comes about, they can't be that.
That can't be cool anymore.
So if Obama was the man for the millennials, what's the opposite of Obama?
It's Trump.
The total opposite of Obama.
The exact opposite of Obama.
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So the cultural realignment that we see is which do you ascribe to?
Does culture lead politics or is politics leading culture?
You can make the argument this year that our politics led our culture.
When you have a media mogul, reality TV star, global celebrity for 45 years as the President of the United States, I guess my question is what's the difference?
I don't think really you can ever have a neat separation of culture and politics.
But certainly not today, not with this guy.
I mean, this guy is the biggest pop culture figure of his age and the most consequential president of his age, the guy making the laws.
So there are two things that are happening.
You can think of, even without one leading the other, it's sort of like a waltz.
You don't necessarily know who's leading.
There are cultural changes that happen, the passing away of old fashions, the displeasure with some of the consequences of liberalism, you know, the Gutting of manufacturing and the stagnating economy and the mass migration and whatever, you name it.
Collapse of the family.
But also, the law is a teacher.
Galatians 3. Yes, yes.
You Catholics know the Bible, right?
We occasionally, every so often we will open up...
We have to hide it, though.
There are 66 books, by the way.
That's a good start.
The 66 are a good start.
That's the hors d'oeuvre.
We're talking about the Bible.
But even that idea that the law is a teacher, that also comes from classical philosophy.
I mean, that is something everyone knew forever until, like us, five minutes ago.
All the wisdom of the ages, both revealed and also natural, has just flown out the window.
So I think there's this great conservative consolation that Russell Kirk writes about, which is that...
Unrelated, for the record.
Unrelated, though, if only.
He's a spiritual father to you.
Yeah, that's right.
Russell Kirk observed that things are always going bad for our conservatives, and the libs are always on the move, and they're destroying things, and it's easy to destroy.
But reality does reassert itself in the end.
You're not going to beat reality.
Reality is undefeated.
And I think the libs, they move so far from the common sense.
Transing the kids is just the most extreme example, but there are others.
They move so far from reality...
Reality came roaring back.
And so where does that leave us now as far as the cultural landscape, what we can expect both politically and culturally?
I think we can expect an opportunity.
That's all I'm willing to say.
I'm not willing to tell you what happens in four years.
I'm not willing to tell you what happens in two years.
I mean, for goodness sakes, we have unified government right now.
We have the House, the Senate, the presidency.
We already have the Supreme Court.
The Democrats, they talked about expanding the Supreme Court, remember, before the election.
I think maybe we should take them up on that offer now.
I mean, just in a bipartisan spirit, maybe, reach across the aisle, add another 50 or 100 justices, and...
But we have a unified government right now.
That are all 38 years old.
That are all 18. Yeah.
I want 18-year-old Thomases and Alitos.
It's a bunch of Turning Point kids that are going to be on the court.
Yeah, that's right.
Love that idea.
So you've got, as someone yelled out, no excuses.
Yeah, no excuses.
But don't worry, there will be.
Spoiler alert, there will be.
Yeah, that's right.
Because you see what's happening right now in the House of Representatives.
Trying to wrangle the House Republicans is like herding cats.
So Trump has two years to really do something.
And what can he do in that time?
You can only really do a handful of things at best.
And that's without being stymied by the courts and the bureaucrats and everyone else.
And the intel agencies.
And the intel agencies and all of these, and private interests too.
So it's like you've got all of these forces working against you.
What does that mean for us in the future?
It means a slight turn of the head, an unexpected jerk of the head at the perfect angle in the perfect moment in a field in Pennsylvania gave us this chance.
And so you can rise to the occasion or don't.
But that's a pretty providential chance.
So how about you take it?
So you had the president's back throughout this entire process.
Other people waxed and waned, and that's fine.
I mean, that's their prerogative.
Why did you continue to support President Trump resolutely throughout the process?
Because you were kind of part of this, and obviously I was, this merry band of rebels.
I mean, is it that you just kind of loved being kind of the high IQ troll, or was it just kind of like, you know, it's just because, Michael, to your great credit, and you deserve credit, is after January 6th, all this, you were like, nope, I'm not going to say something bad about Trump.
Like, Michael is like super MAGA, and has always been.
Why, I mean, explain that, because you were not just early, you were there on New Day 1, January 7th, 2021. That's a great way, actually, to look at it.
But part of it is because I saw what Trump was and what he was doing and what he signified early on.
Not immediately.
When he came down the golden escalator, I had my doubts.
I had my questions, at the very least.
I wasn't sure.
Who knew?
You know, this guy had maybe sort of run for president in 2000. He made some noise in 2012. 2016, I said, I don't know.
Let's just pay attention.
Seems kind of crazy.
I'm a New Yorker.
I've been aware of Donald Trump since I was in the womb, basically.
And so I said, okay, well, let's hear him out.
And then I realized...
Every time they said he was crazy about something.
He was upsetting some orthodoxy.
This just isn't how it's done.
He's gonna go nowhere.
I noticed that he would win politically.
I noticed that his policies advanced the common good in ways that some of his predecessors were not able to do.
I realized the guy, and I don't care what you want to say.
I don't care if he's writing long dissertations every night before bed.
I don't care if he's just moving by his gut.
It's probably a little bit more the latter, though he's obviously a very intelligent and educated man as well.
I realized this guy was just getting things right.
He was offering a legitimate alternative on policies.
He was throwing out some of the desiccated nonsense that had become GOP orthodoxy.
And he just had, you mentioned high IQs and education.
Let's use a very fancy word.
The man has thumos.
The man has the Greek word for spiritedness, for the chest.
You know, this guy's got it in spades.
And then the January 6th thing, I thought, was just so convenient for not only Trump's enemies on the left, but his enemies on the right to finally throw him overboard.
And I thought it was so cynical in many ways.
And some people were legitimate.
Can I interject on that?
It was also all of you that kept on desiring the truth for January 6th.
We have won that argument, and they are running from the hills, by the way.
They're running for the hills.
How many federal agents were there?
Who planted the pipe bombs?
Did you see?
They said headlines the other day when this report came out.
I saw that.
The inspector general.
There were no FBI agents anywhere near January 6th other than the 26th informant.
Hold on.
What was that second part?
Oh, no.
There were no breaking news.
The IG report said there were 26 FBI assets there, three of whom were told to go there.
Yeah, and if you actually read the headline more carefully, they say none of them were involved in the crimes.
And so, like, wait, hold on.
Oh, wait.
But they were, like, telling them to do the crimes and, like, organizing them.
This was a fed-surrection on January the 6th, is what it was.
Right, right.
And so you saw that happen.
But then I would point to one additional moment, beyond the golden elevator, beyond January 7th.
One additional moment was the fourth time Trump was indicted over the past six months.
They tried to kick him off the ballot.
It didn't work.
They investigated him.
That didn't scare him off.
They indict him.
They indict him.
And the fourth time he walks out, what does he do?
He gives a news conference.
And this guy doesn't break a sweat.
He's strong.
He's cool.
This guy never lets them see him sweat.
And I thought, if this...
This would have broken any politician in the country.
The fact that this guy...
It looks like he just walked off the golf course.
You know, the fact that...
And he just keeps on moving.
I thought, this is a once-in-a-lifetime American political talent.
He's a complete American original.
And so, why Trump?
Why not any of the other guys?
There were other talented people who wanted to be president.
It's just him, man.
It's just his moment.
You know, he's the guy.
Narrative is a real force in human life, and the narrative right now is about him as one of the main characters.
Let's get some questions here going so Daisy can work the mic around.
I want to get to as many as we can.
Michael, as we start running the mic around, the current state of the Republican Party, why is it that Republicans are so willing to cut deals to put Joe Biden's nominees in place, but not Donald Trump's?
The state of the current Republican Party, what is that all about?
The short answer is because there is ideological diversity and hostility on the right.
So the Democrats are basically all progressives of one shade or another.
Now that Manchin's kind of done, I think they're all progressives of one shade or another.
With the Republicans, though, you legitimately have the country club set, you know, the Chamber of Commerce kind.
You've got the populists, you've got the neocons, you've got the traditionalists, you've got the libertarians.
I've heard it described that obscure political monikers are the right-wing version of gender pronouns.
We just all seem to have our own version of it.
So that's a real problem, is they all kind of hate each other.
And then the other problem is they've gotten used to being the minority partner, the junior partner in the governing apparatus.
So they want to be the court jesters in the kingdom of liberalism is basically what they do.
And they're happy to do that.
They can have a nice enough life doing that.
But I thought, good grief, you know, with this continuing resolution, I thought...
How to be a Republican congressman.
One, you get elected.
You win everything.
The people give you unified government.
Step two, you try to give Democrats everything they want.
Then step three, Elon Musk and Trump tell you that you can't do that.
And you know what step four is?
You wait to try to do it again next time.
Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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Turning Point action exists because people, and you say some kind words, Michael, and a lot of people say, okay, Charlie, you guys played a role in the greatest political comeback ever.
What's next?
It would be very easy for us at Turning Point to play the establishment game.
We exist simply to, you know, help grow our majority.
Yes, of course.
No, no, no, wait.
Let's be honest.
We want the Republican Party to be as conservative as its voters.
And we're going to replace every single one of these people if you get in the way.
And again, this last CR1 is so maddening.
It was privately and treacherously negotiated for six weeks.
Without Donald Trump's knowledge.
1,500 pages with Ukrainian bio labs and censorship stuff and January 6th immunity.
You know the craziest one to me?
There were all these provisions that people didn't like, but the one that really irritated me, they were changing in the CR, they were changing the U.S. code, they were changing the term offender, like a criminal offender, to justice-involved individual.
Oh, no way.
Now, whatever you want to say about criminals...
Are you serious?
I didn't know that.
Yes.
So you actually read the bill.
I didn't read the whole thing.
I do have some better things to do in my life.
But I read a fair bit of it, and in it, it changes this term.
Whatever you want to say about criminals, the only thing that you can definitively say they are not is justice-involved individuals.
They are injustice-involved individuals.
They insisted in the U.S. Code of Changing, homelessness...
No, the homeless to persons experiencing homelessness.
This was the urgent matter that we have to get before Christmas.
It'd be one thing if we lost the election, whatever.
Guys, the American people handed us a popular vote win, and your congressional Republicans go back and decide to just stab us all in the back.
That thing's dead on arrival, but we have a lot of work to do internally in the Republican Party, If you live in South Dakota, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, we're not going to put up with this.
Okay, question over here.
Hi, my name is Benny Masariegos.
I am here from Phoenix, Arizona.
And first, I want to thank you so much, Mr. Kirk, because you are definitely an inspiration to so many people, especially myself.
I just graduated high school.
I graduated high school a couple years back, and I went to nine different high schools 11 different times.
And you are just an inspiration.
So thank you so much.
And my question, Mr. Knows, is I am a Catholic who reads the Bible and believes that there's 73 books.
I was kidding, by the way.
See, there's another one.
There's another one.
You're okay.
So my question for you is...
I love Catholics, for the record.
We love you, too.
My question is...
I'm actually considering creating content to try to bring Catholicism back to America, to spread the love, specifically using Bible verses.
And I know you're a Catholic, so thank you so much for that.
This is so new.
I never...
This is like...
It's shocking.
I know.
I actually paid him to be here.
I know.
He's on the Knowles payroll.
So my question to you, because you're such an inspiration to Catholicism, Mr. Knowles, what advice would you give to somebody who's trying to spread the love of the Eucharist to the world?
Okay, well, you know, that's wonderful that you're going to do that.
I think it's great.
Most of the time people say, Michael, I want to start a podcast.
What's your advice?
And my advice is don't, because too many people have them, and I think every white man under the age of 75 has one now, and it's by law or something.
But this is the first time in memory that someone has proposed some new content project where I've thought, great, you should do that.
That's really good.
And my advice is you should recite the St. Thomas Aquinas prayer that he would have before study or writing or speaking.
For God to illumine his darkened mind.
And then what you should do is pray a little bit more.
Praying is the first resort, not the last resort.
And then, this is something, Charlie, that we mackerel snappers, we get.
We don't need to...
You know, reinvent the wheel every year.
We got 2,000 years of people who are much smarter than you and I, who have thought this out, who have debated these questions.
So if you just bring that, if you convey that...
I'm trying to sell Charlie on this right now.
I know I'm answering you, but I'm really speaking to Charlie.
If you just do that, that's all you're doing.
You're just telling the story.
You're telling the greatest story ever told and you have the deposit of faith and you have the magisterium behind you as a hermeneutic of interpretation.
But just do that, you know, and do that in sincerity and do that with the best of your effort and I think it'll be wonderful.
As an evangelical who loves Catholics, I love that you're doing it, but let me just edit what you say.
Here's the but.
No, no, it's a big one.
You didn't catch it, Michael.
It's that your goal should be to bring people to Jesus, not Catholicism.
No, hold on.
What's the difference?
What's the difference?
Hold on.
Hold on.
I'm not saying that they're contradictory, but your goal should not be to bring people to a specific sect of Christianity.
It is to bring people to the cross.
You're saying to bring people to the fullness of the truth and the universal faith.
Yes, but not the maxims of every Catholic dogma.
No, I mean, for example, am I a Christian if I don't believe in Mariology?
Well, we're talking about the fullness of the truth.
Am I a Christian if I don't believe in transubstantiation?
You are a little confused, but you can have sincere faith.
No, it's fine.
I think that bringing people to Catholicism is fine, of course, great, terrific, but that is hopefully a means to the ultimate end.
You exist to bring people to Christ.
Of course.
And that is the goal.
I'm just maybe being semantically, you know...
But think about this question.
What happens when you want to bring people to our Lord?
And what happens when there are disagreements over important things?
We schism and say you guys got it wrong.
Or we do a reformation.
So we're at Christmas right now.
We're at Christmas time.
We're talking about St. Nicholas.
You know, Santa Claus.
I'm talking about Jesus.
No, but I'm talking about Santa Claus.
There's...
Before we talk about our Lord.
But, you know, there's this story...
All these characters.
It's Jesus.
It's focused on the main thing.
But there's this story about St. Nicholas, who...
I don't think it's literally true, but the legend goes that St. Nicholas, who Santa Claus is based on, shows up to the Council of Nicaea, and he smacks the Heresiarch Arias, who denied the divinity of Christ...
Smacks him in the face.
And this has led to a meme that I really like at Christmas, which is an icon of St. Nicholas, and it says, I've come here to give presents to children and to punch heretics in the face.
And I'm all out of presents.
And so, no, I don't think it really happened, and it would have been a corrective slap and all the rest.
But the serious question is, What happens when someone has a question on something really important, like, is Christ God, you know, the divinity of Christ?
There has to be an interpretive hermeneutic to figure it out.
Of course, yeah, and look, to be very clear, like nine out of ten of Catholic dogmas evangelicals hold.
Nine out of ten, right?
And that is why I believe Catholics are Christian, even though you don't give me that same sort of charity.
No, I would, I would.
No, I'm giving you a hard time.
And I mean that, again, if you are a Catholic who loves Jesus, therefore, and I know that, I believe that there are personally some fundamental issues with, like I say, Mariology, transubstantiation, which we're not going to get into, but the biggest one is the papacy.
I can't get over the idea of this Marxist who calls himself the head of your church being a representation of Christ our Lord.
I just...
And I mean that as someone who loves the Catholic impact on the world, that says it openly, and by the fruit you will know it, and you have very Marxist fruit.
But what...
I guess my sort of last question on evangelization is...
Is it your last question, Michael?
Evangelism or evangelization?
But both.
Okay.
What happens when we get the next pope?
Can we pull you over then?
You know, what if we get, like, Pope Leo XV? Well, I will say, I mean, John Paul II was amazing.
I just think that there is a question to be asked of why is that specific process, that mechanism, given more merit than, let's just say, the local church and or the Word of God?
And you'd say, okay, interpretation, you know...
The final record.
Fine.
That's fine.
I ask the question, if you are all in on the papacy and the Vatican, no practicing Catholic can look and say, this is the best that my religion has to offer.
Charlie, you're thinking too much about it.
You've got to have the Italian spirit.
Now, the Italian spirit is when, you know, someone asks, hey, in this newspaper, the Pope said something where you say, oh, well, maybe the Papa was misinterpreted.
You know, it's no big deal.
Forget about it.
You're too Anglo to understand that.
Too Anglo.
Attitude.
I have to just...
I have to just hope, you know, oh, you know, he doesn't mean that, you know, homosexuality is bad.
You know, okay, we should just...
No, he said God can't bless him.
I know, sometimes it's confusing.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
He's been way more open on that topic.
Or the climate change thing.
Climate change.
And all this sort of stuff.
You just have to kind of hope that he's saying that we want one of the same things.
It's like my grandmother sometimes.
When one of her grandchildren says something that she doesn't like, she kind of turns down the hearing aid a little bit.
And so sometimes, you know, if you turn down the hearing aid on certain issues...
And I mean this, like, non-sarcastically, but, like, why should I care at all what that guy from Argentina has to say?
Well, because you care what your pastor has to say.
Yes, but if my pastor starts saying crazy things, I find a new pastor.
Yeah.
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So if your Pope starts saying crazy things, maybe he's not the Pope.
And, like, maybe that's a bad representation.
Well, I guess if your pastor says crazy things, you go to a new pastor, and then you have division in the church.
It used to be, in the old days, it used to be, if the pastors disagreed, they'd go to an elder or a bishop or someone, right?
Unless the bishop is corrupted, and then you're taken up higher, yeah.
And then maybe the Pope is corrupted, and we write 95 points of complaints, and...
Hammer him through a door and get back to the word.
Well, the issue is that one of the marks of the church is unity.
So you can't have constant schism.
And so I'm not disagreeing about difficulties in the prelature at all.
But there's a line from Hilaire Belloc, and he says...
He says he has to take it on faith that the Catholic Church is really what it says he is.
But for those who don't believe that, one mark of its divine institution is that no other institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.
And I think there's actually a lot of truth to that.
When one points to the corruption of individuals or bad popes or whatever, there have been plenty of them, that actually that's kind of an evidence because so many other ecclesial communities You know, they appear and then, you know, you leave this pastor.
Yeah, I just, I think that's fine, I guess.
I mean, I think that if you have the Bible as any sort of semblance of a bedrock, you're going to last.
But who canonizes the Bible?
Who canonized it?
Where did we get it from?
Our Lord didn't leave us a Bible.
He left us a church.
Well, that codified the Bible.
Sort of true.
I mean, I think our Lord, as part of Godship, God is the author of all 66 books, right?
Yeah, yeah, of course.
And we had...
Wait, oh, you slipped that in.
Hey, come on, you can't do that to me.
No, this is interesting, though.
Why is it that Catholics acknowledge divine books that Jews themselves don't think are divine?
The keepers of the Torah don't even agree with your canon.
Like the Wisdom of Ben Saraw, 1st and 2nd Maccabees, according to rabbinical teaching, those are not divinely inspired books, yet Catholics say we like those.
Why?
Yeah, well, so there are a few reasons.
One, that the Douay Reims, which is the Catholic Bible, is based on the Septuagint.
The Masoretic texts, which come later, are the ones that the Protestant Bible and the more recent Catholic Bibles are based on.
There is some discrepancy, at least in numbering of certain things.
But also, I mean, you say, well, if rabbinical Jews think one thing, why don't you think that?
And I'd say, I don't know, because we're a different religion.
No, but hold on a second.
No, no, no.
But no, we're in the inheritors of the Torah, as referenced by people that were schooled in that.
And the Tanakh.
So the Protestantism has an identical mirrored image of the Torah and the Tanakh.
And again, in traditional rabbinical teaching, they do not believe those books are divinely inspired.
I know the answer and you're not going to like it, but that's fine.
It's because in those books, it allows for a lot of the practices of the Catholic Church and gives justification for a lot of that stuff.
However, I don't want to get too deep in this.
I actually think the world is a better place because of faithful Catholics.
I've spoken out with great criticism about...
Of how evangelicals remained quiet here in Arizona on Prop 139 while the Catholic diocese was so courageous on the fight for life while evangelicals were silent.
I want a better Catholic church, and I personally would not be able to be part of an institution with the figurehead, with a worldview that is so corrupted and opposite of what I think the Bible teaches.
And I wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt.
I'd be like, no, I'm actually not part of this.
I'm leaving.
But today, you're part of the United States, but the head of the United States is one of the worst presidents we ever had.
But you don't leave the country.
I don't take religious orders from Joe Biden.
No, but you take political orders, or you at least follow the law.
Not really.
I mean, I follow the law, but I certainly don't have political orders from Joe Biden.
No, I guess it would mean...
No, that's not true either.
We all broke laws we didn't like during COVID. All of us did.
That's not true at all, actually.
We opened our churches, and some of you guys lied about your vaccination status.
Like, that's not true at all.
No, nobody lied about their accident.
No, no, hold on a second.
Like, no, like, we all rebel against corrupt institutions we don't like.
But an unjust law is no law at all.
Okay, an unjust pope is not a pope.
Yeah, but what's on, there's nothing unjust about the pope talking about, like, climate change.
You just don't pay attention to it.
Okay, so you pick and choose what?
It's like a buffet line?
No.
I like what he says about this, but not about that.
But yes, he is the inheritor of St. Peter.
No, no.
The papal authority is that he speaks infallibly when speaking ex cathedra on faith and morals.
He doesn't talk about climate change at all.
So the Pope can say things that are crazy.
Yeah, so if this is perfect, then why have one?
If what he says is not...
In order to speak infallibly ex-cathedra on faith and rules.
Okay, so that has not happened since, what, Vatican II? No, it's a little bit...
When was the last time the popes spoke ex-cathedra?
Vatican II was part of the match.
When was the last time?
Like 50, 60 years?
The last, probably, ex-cathedra infallible teachings from a pope were probably Pope Pius IX, you know, like 150 years ago.
Okay, so then, therefore, there really is no functional use for a pope for 150 years.
No, no.
He's the leader of the church.
Exactly.
Your figurehead, your top leader, is not good.
No, I don't know.
Well, none is good but God, I guess.
Well, no, I would say Pope John Paul II was objectively a good person.
You would say none is good but God.
That's what our Lord tells us.
Well, of course, yeah, we all fall short of the glory of God.
Yeah, so there you are.
I think that there is a, I mean, Catholic moral teaching will tell you that there are gradations of sin.
Yeah.
I'm using your own morality and I agree with it, right?
Pope John Paul II is totally different than Ted Kaczynski.
Yeah, but I don't know.
What sin are you accusing Pope Francis?
I can't believe I'm defending Pope Francis.
How about the sin of heresy of the Word of God?
What heresy?
Okay, without getting into the specific things that he said, but in the Latin, the climate change stuff is insane, way too relaxed on the homosexuality stuff.
He says God can't bless sin.
He called gay marriage a machination of the father of lies that seems to deceive and confuse the children of God.
If I had the full body of work in front of me, his teachings on communism are insane.
He comes from liberation theology.
He says he's not a communist.
No, no.
He said it.
He said he's not a communist.
Okay.
So does Obama.
So Michael, let me say this.
If I had every quote here, which of course I don't, you would be able to defend them that he said?
I would at least be able to make the point that he's not speaking infallibly, I think.
But I wouldn't defend every report.
We'll get to the next question.
Hi, my name's Athena.
I'm actually coming from New Jersey, so thank you for having me.
So my question, a little bit unrelated to what you guys were just talking about.
You're not talking about Blessed Pius IX? No, shockingly not.
Okay, so recently Trump was given Person of the Year.
It's really been given to pretty much every president that's ever been voted in, just kind of the most important person.
So I noticed when I was reading the media on it that on the right, you had, you know, Trump gets person of the year, and then you start looking at the past, and you had Democratic presidents, and the headlines were so sweet.
It was, you know, an honor was bestowed unto them.
And then when Trump won, there was this magazine, I think called Metro, and in the headline it said, Trump joined exclusive club that Hitler and Stalin enjoyed.
No, come on.
I did not see that.
I swear on my life.
And I posted a video on this on my TikTok, and it went viral because people had no idea.
So my question to you guys is, what do you think Trump should or shouldn't do about the issue of this defamation all in the media?
Because it's slander, pretty much.
And you can see the imbalance when you look.
So I guess if you were Trump, would you do anything?
If so, what would that be?
He's already collected 15 million dollars from it.
How much more can the man make?
I'm reading this right here.
This is metro.co.uk.
Unbelievable.
Wow.
I don't think you could sue on it because I guess it's technically true, right?
Technically, yeah.
I guess that's true.
That's incredible.
When George Stephanopoulos and ABC lie about Trump, he should sue them for everything they're worth, and that was so delightful.
But when we're just talking about the usual smears, it seems to me that Trump has that briefing room now.
And so Trump has this amazing opportunity to reset the relationship between the citizen and the government.
He has another amazing opportunity to reset the relationship between the people and the media.
And so I think if I'm looking at that press room seating chart right now, I'm looking at MSNBC certainly should not be there.
CNN should not be up by the front row.
Should the New York Times be there?
I don't think Metro UK has a seat.
But, you know, even just those three.
In this past election, the New York Times and the Washington Post admitted that they do not have influence, that they have waning influence.
They called it a podcast election.
So I think, okay, kick them out.
Also, they lie, so they're not credible.
Maybe give this one rotating seat for the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post or whatever.
But why would we reward those people who lie?
You and I should do the White House press.
I've been saying this for years.
Thank you.
No, kick them all out.
Why even give them a seat?
Seriously, no more CNN. You guys can watch it on TV like we did.
Okay, Daisy, last question.
Okay, this is funny.
My name's also Athena.
I'm a senior from South Carolina.
Two Athenas?
What are the chances of that?
Yeah, that's crazy.
I've never met anyone.
Okay, so I'm Athena from South Carolina.
I'm a senior this year, and I want to go to college for political science, and I want to be a political commentator.
And I was wondering if you have any advice for me And I really admire what both of y'all do, and I really feel called to that, and I want to minister the gospel through that, and I want to just reach people, and I want to share the truth as a woman, as a Christian, as a Republican, and I just wondered if you have any advice.
What do you think my advice is?
Well, I know that.
I agree with you on some things, but also I was talking to my parents about it and they feel similarly to you.
But my dad was saying that if God wants me to do that and go get an education, he'll provide the money that I need to do that.
And I really feel like I want to be...
I know that, for example, Ben Shapiro went to a university and he got a higher education.
And I know that that's the case for some people.
They're supposed to do that and some people they're not.
And I personally want to do that.
That's obviously a knock against college, though, that Ben Shapiro went to college, right?
That's a huge...
Yeah, I'm just saying, like, I know some people, like, that's what God is calling them to do, and I really feel like that's what I'm supposed to do.
And I feel like, because I want to know what I'm talking about, and I want to make sure that I'm fully educated.
Well, if you want to know what you're talking about, don't go to college.
No, you know, I broadly agree with Charlie.
I think it's a complete waste of time.
However, I am pro-college in the right circumstance.
Some people today, they complain about college.
They say, college no longer teaches you anything useful.
Now, the point of a university is emphatically not to teach you anything useful.
That's what trade school's for.
That's what apprenticeships are for.
That's what working on a job is for.
The purpose of a university education is to teach you things that are useless.
The problem with our current university education is it doesn't do that.
It actually doesn't teach you philosophy and literature and history.
So all of that can be really, really good.
I mean, look, the Charlie Kirks of the world are like one in a zillion.
There's no flattery.
I reject it though.
It's like, just work hard and study a lot.
I don't understand what college does for you.
How many people are as interested in reading great books on their own?
I have one thing that people don't have.
I have drive.
I totally acknowledge it.
I'm not any smarter than the average person.
No, seriously.
If you want to be good, you can be good.
So decide to do it.
And what does college do for you?
I want someone to tell me what's so important about college, unless you want to be like a lawyer or whatever.
It's an unnecessary institution.
I think, especially for most people, but even for people who are really driven and really ambitious, it can provide.
In the circumstances in which you have really good teachers who really know the subject.
Yeah, like Hillsdale.
Like a Hillsdale.
Hillsdale is a great example.
It's like Hillsdale, Ave Maria, Franciscan.
Like 20,000 kids a year go to those schools.
Liberty is a big school.
Okay, 100,000 kids a year.
But I broadly agree.
I just think if you're going to do it, I'm totally with Charlie on this.
I wouldn't go there to get some degree in journalism or something.
I think that's a complete waste of time.
But you could get a degree in history or philosophy or something to at least point you in the right direction to educate yourself.
My next bit of advice is don't become famous too early.
I know everyone really wants to, especially when they're starting out.
But don't, because you probably don't know what you think yet.
And then the third bit of advice is, I'd work out your own routine.
It's like when a comedian starts.
Comedians start out by doing other people's routines, and so they're doing an impression of someone else.
That's great, and it gives you your chops, but you have to figure out what your contribution is.
I mean, truly, every human being on planet Earth has a podcast, so for you to break through the noise of that, you have to be offering something that's a little bit different.
And I bet you could.
You know, there's no question about it.
But you need to really delve into yourself before you put yourself out there.
Thank you so much, Athena.
Thank you.
Everybody, give it up for Michael Knowles one more time.
