Ep. 150 - Thank You, Lord, That Obama Is No Longer President
On this National Day of Prayer, Michelle Obama refers to herself as our “Forever First Lady.” Thankfully, she’s actually the Never-Ever-Again First Lady. Israeli PM Netanyahu reveals Obama practically gave Iran nuclear weapons and threatened the world order. Thankfully he’s not president anymore. Finally, we rejoice in the media fallout of Kanye West’s newfound conservatism. A lot to be grateful for this National Prayer Day—plus, the Mailbag!
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On this national day of prayer, Michelle Obama, who was never proud of her country until it elected her husband president, refers to herself in a speech at Temple University as our forever First Lady.
Thankfully, she's actually the never-ever-again First Lady.
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu reveals a shocking intelligence operation that proves Barack Obama practically gave Iran nuclear weapons and threatened the world order.
Thankfully, he's not president anymore.
And finally, in what is sure to become a new daily segment, we rejoice in the media fallout over Kanye West's newfound conservatism.
There is so much to be grateful for this National Prayer Day.
Then, the mailbag.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
So much to be thankful for.
So many reasons to rejoice.
Especially thinking of terrible days gone by.
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Okay.
It's National Prayer Day.
This is a very good day.
We're going to be very thankful.
Because one time a priest that I listened to in New York, he said that there were three prayers that you should always be saying.
I love you, thank you, and I'm sorry.
Today we're going to be focusing on the former two.
We can all repent in our own time and, you know, flog ourselves and things like that.
Probably we should all do it.
But we've got a lot to be thankful for because Michelle Obama, let's just begin with the First Lady.
First Lady's first.
She is no longer the First Lady.
Here is Michelle Obama talking at Temple University.
Doubters, I know you have everything it takes to succeed.
I know that you are me.
And if I can be standing here as your forever first lady, then you can do anything you put your mind to.
Well, you can.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas.
You're not the forever first lady.
Apparently some Democrats on the internet refer to Michelle Obama that way.
But just imagine the disrespect of that.
She gets up there and says, I am your forever first lady.
Forget about that woman who's actually the first lady.
Who cares about her?
I'm the forever first lady.
This was not as bad as Michelle Obama's classic gaffe when she said, and by gaffe I mean when she accidentally was honest to the American people, and she said that she'd never been proud of her country except when they elected her husband president.
She said, otherwise I've never been proud of my country.
This is pretty bad though.
This, she says, you are me.
No, we're not.
We're not you.
Why are we you?
Why would we want to be you?
I don't know that people like you very much.
Now, speaking of this, speaking of the National Prayer Day and this me, me, me, you are me, I'm your forever First Lady, this is a classic Obama, both her and her husband, a classic Obama-Messiah complex.
Here was Barack Obama speaking just a little while ago.
You know, I would create...
A hundred or a thousand or a million young Barack Obamas or Michelle Obamas or the next group of people who could take that baton.
This is the Obama messiah complex.
It's why people call Donald Trump a narcissist.
Donald Trump is the most humble man in the world compared to the Obamas.
Whenever they need an example of a good thing or something good to be, they refer to themselves.
She says, you are me.
How about you say, you are bright, you're ambitious, you're talented, you're the future.
No, no, no.
All of that pales in comparison to you are me.
Barack Obama, when he says, I want to change the future, I want to have a wonderful country, and the best way to do that is to create little versions of me.
Me, the greatest American ever.
Because Barack Obama said he doesn't really like America.
He doesn't like the way that America is.
That's why he wanted to fundamentally transform America.
You don't want to fundamentally transform something that you love.
I don't say to sweet little Elisa, I love you so much, honey, but I want to fundamentally transform you.
That isn't what you do.
And thankfully, on the National Day of Prayer, they're no longer in the White House.
That is so nice.
Melania Trump has been wonderful.
She's been a wonderful first lady.
She's been graceful.
She's been elegant.
She's been charming.
And Michelle Obama was not.
Michelle Obama said, practically, that she doesn't like her country.
And she's disrespecting the current first lady.
She's saying, I'm still the first lady.
I'm forever the first lady.
And all these people, they're pretenders.
I'm forever the first lady.
There was that incident.
At the inauguration, President Trump's inauguration, when Melania Trump brought Michelle a gift, a nice little ritual, and she hands her a box.
And Michelle acted as though this were some terrible thing.
She said later on the Ellen DeGeneres show, she said, quote, I mean, this is like a state visit, so they tell you that you're going to do this, they're going to stand there.
Before you get this gift, it's never happened, so I'm sort of like, okay.
That's a direct quote from The Ellen Show.
You know, she said, what am I supposed to do with this gift?
Everyone cleared out.
No one would come and take the box.
Wah, wah, wah.
Just not nice.
Not elevated.
And a lot of people said that Melania Trump would not be a good first lady because she was a supermodel.
Perhaps Donald Trump's wealth and success played some role in his charming her and wooing her.
And she has been wonderful.
Yet you still hear these people say, oh, Michelle was so much better.
Michelle was not a good first lady.
I try not to give too much flack to the family of politicians, except when they make themselves a spectacle, except when they put themselves in the public arena.
More than they have to be.
She wasn't very good at being a first lady.
And Melania's done a wonderful job.
But of course, that's all just the prelude.
That's just the amuse-bouche to the real thankfulness, which is that Barack Obama is no longer president.
There's a major news story this week that shows us just how wonderful it is that Barack Obama is no longer president.
But before we get to it, before we get to how Barack Obama, more than any president in recent history, imperiled the world order, an utterly failed president, Before we get to that, let's just recount some of his other failures.
Barack Obama, people forget this.
When history wipes away all of these sins and all of these bad decisions and all of these bad policies, essentially everything the guy did was a failure and made the country worse.
He entered office during a bad recession, and he made the recession worse.
Usually in economic crises, the deeper the recession, the more robust the recovery.
That's just the way it works.
The Obama recovery, which he says it was the worst recession since the Great Depression— Okay.
The Obama recovery was the worst recovery in seven decades.
If it was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, he should have had a good recovery.
But he didn't because of his own policies.
During that recovery, GDP averaged 2.1%, I think.
That's the worst economic performance of any president since World War II. His economists said, you know, that's just the way it is.
That's just the new normal.
That's the best we can hope for.
Yeah, 3%.
That's not going to happen.
Donald Trump comes into office.
He immediately starts posting quarters of 3% or greater economic growth.
Barack Obama spent more on stimulus money than all of the stimulus packages ever combined.
You take every stimulus bill in history, add them together, Obama spent more with worse results, with counterproductive results.
So it's adding insult to injury.
Not only did he not help the economy recover or allow the economy to recover, he also blew an unprecedented amount of taxpayer money on it.
During the Obama administration, millions of Americans fell below the poverty line.
Food stamps soared.
You heard he was called the food stamp president.
And then lefties, racist lefties, said that that was a racist comment.
And this always boggles my mind.
They said that if you use the phrase food stamps, then that's racist.
You're talking about black people.
say, not all black people are on food stamps.
What are you talking about?
You're the one who said that.
I didn't say that.
It's absolutely not racist at all.
No, when you call someone a food stamp recipient, you're calling them black.
No, that's you, pal.
You're the one who has that image in your mind, not us.
During the Obama administration, the national debt doubled.
Millennials under the Obama administration lived with their parents at the highest rates since the Great Depression.
There's a cultural aspect to that, and there's the economic aspect.
Obama did a terrible job managing the economy.
What else did he do?
Oh, right, he destroyed health care.
Barack Obama destroyed one-sixth of the economy when he upended our health care system, and he lied.
He lied.
Blatantly to the American people, and he even admitted that he lied.
He said, oh, you can keep your doctor.
Oh, premiums aren't going to go up.
Oh, it's okay.
PolitiFact named, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
They named that the lie of the year.
And Obama even admitted this.
When the premiums started going up, when costs started to rise, when people's coverage changed, he said, well, you didn't think you were going to get all that good stuff for nothing, did you?
Yes, we did.
We did think that because you promised us that.
That's exact.
Oh, come on.
What?
You're going to believe me, a Chicago politician?
What's the matter with you?
That's basically what he told us.
He snubbed his nose at the American people.
He says, what?
You were so stupid that you believed me?
So the premiums rise.
And after all of this, we were told this is universal health care.
We've been wanting this for 100 years.
After all of that, 30 million Americans remained uninsured.
After all of that, upending a sixth of the economy, shooting up the prices of healthcare premiums, diminishing the quality of coverage, people losing their doctors and 30 million Americans uninsured.
An abject failure.
How about on foreign policy?
Well, on foreign policy, Barack Obama managed to lose a war that we had already won.
We had won the Iraq war.
The troop surge in 2007 won for us the Iraq war.
Barack Obama chose to lose that war.
He chose to pull out troops without a status of forces agreement.
He chose to lose it.
What happened?
ISIS came up in its wake.
But that's okay.
Barack Obama restarted the war in Afghanistan for no reason.
The actual reason that he did it was because all of his campaign was running against Bush.
So he had to run against the Iraq war.
But he didn't want to seem like the weakling that he is.
So he had to pretend that Afghanistan was a good war.
I don't know why.
The Iraq war was the bad war and Afghanistan's a good war because he needed a good war to win his election.
So he restarted that war and it's no coincidence that the vast majority of American military deaths in Afghanistan occurred under Barack Obama's watch.
Not George W. Bush.
Over 75% under Barack Obama's watch.
They told me if I voted for John McCain, we'd get more war in the Middle East, and they were absolutely right.
What else did Barack Obama do on foreign policy?
Well, all we hear these days is about Russian collusion.
Donald Trump colluded with Russia.
Donald Trump had a bowl of borscht at the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan in 1976.
He colluded with Russia.
What did Barack Obama do?
Barack Obama allowed Russia to invade Crimea and much of Syria under his watch.
He gave them...
Barack Obama...
Sat across from the leader of Russia, or the fake leader of Russia, Medvedev, the Putin crony, and he thought that he was not being recorded.
He thought their cameras and the microphones were off.
And he said, hey, listen, I know that I said all that stuff, you know, about how I'm going to be tough on you, but direct quote...
I will have more flexibility after my election.
To which Medvedev responded, duh, duh, I will transmit this information to Vladimir, duh, duh.
We actually have video of Barack Obama colluding with Russia and admitting that he's misleading the American people on his stance on Russia.
That's the only explanation.
If he weren't misleading the American people, he would have said, hey, we don't have to wait until after the election.
I'll just tell them that I'm going to give Russia flexibility.
But he didn't.
He said, in order to win my election, I have to pretend that I'm tough on Russia, but don't worry.
You can invade and rape the lands of anybody around you and do whatever you want.
What else did he do on foreign policy?
Well, he gave the Cuban slave-holding Castro regime a bunch of money.
Now, in fairness, I've smoked a couple cigars in my life, but what he did was he decided that he was going to give the Cuban regime everything they wanted in exchange for nothing.
In exchange for absolutely nothing.
As a matter of national policy, a terrible idea.
You've got to give John F. Kennedy credit.
John F. Kennedy liked Cuban cigars as much as I do, and he ordered all of his boxes of Cuban cigars, and then he instituted a trade embargo because he had to punish the regime for upsetting the world order and for its horrible human rights abuses, stealing property, killing people, enslaving political dissidents.
As a matter of national policy, it was a sound policy.
Barack Obama said, okay, we'll just give you whatever you want for nothing.
Then, just a penultimate aspect of Barack Obama's foreign policy, he managed to destroy Libya and Egypt, both.
Now, he didn't destroy it when he went and gave apology tours and apologized for American policy in the Middle East.
At the beginning of his presidency, but instead he turned on a long-standing American ally, Hosni Mubarak, let him crumble, and in Libya he allowed that situation to decay.
So it's now a failed state and led directly to the chaos that allowed terrorists to come in there and kill our first ambassador overseas since 1979.
That's not a great record.
By all counts, a terrible president.
But that's not even his biggest blunder, the thing that he will be remembered for.
Because Barack Obama knew.
He said during his presidency, well, I can't get anything passed through Congress because I'm a horrible negotiator and I don't have any friends even really in my own party.
But what I can do is I have a pen and a phone.
So I'm okay.
Congress isn't going to pass laws, but I'm going to sign executive orders with a pen and a phone.
And this leads to the Obama rule.
I guess you could call it the Trump rule.
That which can be enacted with a pen and a phone can be repealed with a pen and a phone.
Ha ha ha.
So he was desperate at the end of his administration to get the Iran nuclear deal, the big deal that was going to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.
And anybody who wasn't one of the 22 year old failed novelist writers who were advising him on foreign policy for some reason, who weren't any of those people, people who had any proper sense of the world said, the Iranians are liars.
They've been the greatest threat to the world order since the Iranian revolution.
and you don't give them nuclear weapons.
He said, I can handle this.
Don't worry, I can handle this.
So here is what Barack Obama promised us.
Today, after two years of negotiations, The United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not.
A comprehensive, long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Total lie.
Complete lie.
Everything about that is not true.
How do we know that?
Because the Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, who during the Obama era was the leader of the free world, he explains in one of the greatest presentations in modern political history.
We didn't have any program to develop nuclear weapons.
Anyway, we consider nuclear weapons both irrational as well as immoral.
Well, tonight I'm here to tell you one thing.
Iran lied.
Big time.
After signing the nuclear deal in 2015, Iran intensified its efforts to hide its secret nuclear files.
A few weeks ago, in a great intelligence achievement, Israel obtained half a ton of the material inside these vaults.
And here's what we got.
55,000 pages.
Another 55,000 files on 183 CDs.
everything you're about to see is an exact copy of the original Iranian material.
You know, if every TED Talk were like that, I would watch them.
Or every, it's like when they do the new iPhone and they're walking, they say, this is the new iPhone.
He's like, Bibi Netanyahu, a master showman.
And this is really humiliating for Barack Obama.
This was supposed to be Barack Obama's one lasting achievement.
And we now know it's a total failure.
Everything Obama told us about the deal was a lie.
And every promise of the deal is of course a lie because it essentially hands Iran nuclear weapons.
So with this, I mean, this was the last thing Obama had to hold on to.
And it just turns out it was an abject failure.
So all of the Obama alumni, who I think just turned 16, so happy 16th birthday to all of the Obama senior policy advisors, they, all of these alumni are out in force to defend the Iran nuclear deal.
But it's very funny because they're contradicting one another.
So I guess they didn't text each other beforehand and say, okay, we're going to lie about it this way instead of this way.
Jim Garrity at National Review pointed this out.
It's really funny.
Tommy Veeder, Veeder, Veeder, I don't know, former National Security Council spokesman under Barack Obama.
He, I believe, was a senior policy advisor for Obama during eighth grade.
He said, quote, After years of bashing U.S. intelligence agencies for getting Iraq WMD wrong, Trump is now cooking up intel with the Israelis to push us closer to a conflict with Iran.
A scandal hiding in plain sight.
Okay, so little Tommy's point of view is that this is all a lie.
Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump are lying.
And look, Barack Obama, his entire administration appeared to hate Israel.
Barack Obama, his campaign apparatus tried to get Bibi Netanyahu kicked out of power there.
So they're saying, oh, they're just lying.
It's just a lie.
But Ben Rhodes, another former foreign policy advisor to the president, at the same time said, quote, So Ben Rhodes' answer to this is, yeah, no, we knew about all that.
So, these guys both worked for Obama.
Same guy, same time, same issue, as a matter of fact.
And one of them says, oh, this is a total lie, totally cooked up by those Israelis and by Donald Trump.
And then the other guy at the same time says, yeah, no, we knew about all of it.
So, okay, maybe next time you should text each other and figure out which lie you're going to try to spread to make up for your abject failure.
This is a major difference between the right and the left.
This hasn't been said enough.
Donald Trump is much, much better at being the president than Barack Obama.
The country under Donald Trump is much, much better off than under Barack Obama.
The world order is much, much better off under Donald Trump than under Barack Obama.
The left, they say, what are you, that's crazy, what are you talking about?
This is a major difference between the right and the left.
The right likes the thing itself.
The left likes the appearance of the thing without the essence of the thing.
The right likes practical things.
The left prefers the theoretical.
Here's an example.
Donald Trump doesn't look like the president, does he?
He doesn't talk like the president.
He doesn't walk like the president.
He doesn't tweet like the president.
It's crazy.
This is a threat to the world order.
Except he's very good at being the president.
On every marker, on the economy, on foreign policy, on domestic policy, certainly on deregulation.
He's just very good at it, on making deals with people, even on getting the pop culture on his side.
We'll talk about Kanye in a second.
So Donald Trump doesn't look like the president, but he's very good at being the president.
Barack Obama looks just like the president.
He talks like the president.
He comports himself like the president.
He uses all the right words.
He smiles like the president, smile and a wink.
But he was terrible at being the president.
He was, I mean, he was utterly a failed president.
He has no accomplishment in office.
Everything was a failure.
Major difference between the right and the left.
And now when people clutch their pearls and they say, but Trump, he doesn't hold a Chardonnay glass right, guys.
Okay, that's fine.
He's good at being the president.
And by the way, people like Kanye West are waking up to this, which brings us to what is sure to become a daily segment, Kanye Watch.
I'm really happy for you.
I'm going to let you finish.
Thank you, Kanye.
I appreciate that.
The latest fallout from Kanye saying conservative things.
What do we have?
Let's do a quick rundown before we get to the mailbag.
A CNN op-ed writer wants to censor Kanye West.
They actually want to shut him up.
The CNN writer says, quote, the time has come to stop amplifying his platform when he continues to misconstrue facts and distract the public from truth.
Shutting him down is not a matter of censoring opinions.
It's a matter of being responsible in how we elevate or endorse the cult of celebrity in situations that further espouse toxic lies.
The cult of celebrity that the left invented.
At this point, any outlet that continues to allow Kanye West's platform to knowingly speak such misinformation is enabling the former or exploiting his status for ratings.
On the misinformation, by the way, let me just say this.
The one thing that all of Kanye's critics are saying is that he lied about slavery because he said, if you've been a slave for 400 years, that's a choice.
That is true.
That is historically and mathematically true.
Now they're saying, well, no, he's talking about the transatlantic slave trade.
The transatlantic slave trade began in 1619.
The Dutch brought African slaves to America in 1619.
If that number were true, then for 400 years, that would mean that, first of all, we'd be in the future.
It would have to be 2019 right now, and the transatlantic slave trade would have to still be going on, which it's obviously not, and ended centuries ago.
The point he was making is that there's a mental imprisonment, and these guys make his point for him on CNN. They say, no, we're not trying to mentally imprison you.
Hey, guys, imprison Kanye West.
Stop.
Shut him up.
Don't let him talk anymore.
So that's one aspect.
Another wonderful aspect of Kanye Watch, which we all predicted, because...
Politics is downstream of culture, and major pop culture leaders who speak to specific demographics can really affect politics.
Donald Trump's approval rating among black men in particular has doubled in a week.
In one week.
That approval rating is now at 22%.
Previously it was at 11%.
Also, at the same time, his disapproval rating among black men has dropped significantly, from 87% to 71%, according to this latest survey.
Black men surveyed, also, who said that they have mixed feelings about Donald Trump, rose from 1.5% to 7.1%.
So you've got this 22% approval and then you've got this huge bump, five and a half point bump on mixed feelings.
So what does mixed feelings mean?
It doesn't mean they're starting not to like Donald Trump.
It means they're starting to like Donald Trump.
And before you accuse that poll of being some cooked up Republican thing, that's from Reuters.
Reuters is reporting that.
That isn't some right wing source.
So we're seeing this political effect.
We're We're seeing the Breitbart effect, Andrew Breitbart effect, come into play, that politics is downstream of culture.
That's great.
And Kanye West has all the right enemies.
USA Today ran a headline.
Greatest rapper alive?
How Kanye West devolved into just another internet troll.
Yeah, right.
Okay, buddy.
Sure.
Yeah, I bet as many people are reading USA Today or listening to Kanye West.
Totally.
Then the really heinous one is USA Today ran a headline.
Chris Brown tears Kanye West to shreds over his slavery comments.
And this is an improvement for Chris Brown, because Chris Brown usually just tears into his girlfriends, so it's good when he's tearing into other male rappers, I guess.
Chris Brown said, quote, This is just entertainment to y'all.
This man is a clown.
Wake the heck up, Kanye.
He didn't say heck.
Please, slavery was a choice?
What?
Hey, Chris, how about you learn to read so that you can find out that Kanye was exactly right?
Please, black people, do not follow West on his path to destruction.
Whatever help you think I need, get it for him ASAP. And this really bothers me.
It bothers me any time Chris Brown does anything, because the judicial system should have taken him out back and put him down like Old Yeller a long time ago.
Chris Brown is...
Let's just read.
His police report is publicly available.
This is just a little snippet from the Chris Brown police report, the guy who's lecturing Kanye West and Americans on how we should comport ourselves historically and politically.
This is from the police report.
A verbal argument ensued and Chris Brown pulled the vehicle over on an unknown street, reached over Robin F., that's Rihanna, with his right hand and opened the car door and attempted to force her out.
Brown was unable to force Robin out of the vehicle because she was wearing a seatbelt.
When he could not force her to exit, he took his right hand and shoved her head against the passenger window of the vehicle, causing an approximate one inch raised circular contusion.
Robin turned to face Brown and he punched her in the left eye with his right hand.
He then drove away in the vehicle and continued to punch her in the face with his right hand while steering the vehicle The assault caused Robin F.'s mouth to fill with blood and blood to splatter all over her clothing and the interior of the vehicle.
Brown looked at Robin and stated, quote, I'm going to beat the S out of you when we get home.
You wait and see.
That is the only part that I can read on air, I think.
It gets much, much worse.
That's Chris Brown.
Chris Brown also got a neck tattoo of a battered woman, and he never served any actual time for his many vicious crimes.
This is the guy telling Kanye West to get the help that he needs.
Absolutely outrageous.
There are very few...
Political or culture stories that actually get me physically angry.
And Chris Brown, anytime he does anything, is one of them.
So that's one of Kanye's enemies.
Then another one.
Finally, Eric Garland from The Atlantic.
He writes that Kanye West, this is a great one.
This is my favorite one.
Kanye West is an agent of Moscow.
This is the new thing.
This is the new I don't like you on the left.
If the left doesn't like you, they'll just say you're a Russian spy.
So Eric Garland writes, quote, both are witting or implausibly unwitting at least assets of Russian intelligence, be it through Roger Stone, likely Jones' case, or other corrupt elements.
They're calling Kanye West a witting asset for Russia, a witting Russian spy.
Eric Garland, by the way, bills himself as a strategic intelligence analyst.
That's really something.
This is the best.
It's sad because the Atlantic used to be a good magazine and now it's 90% trash.
I still subscribe, but it's just awful.
And this is the strategic intelligence from the Atlantic.
You can tell a lot about a man by his enemies.
You can tell a lot about, look at all the enemies coming after Kanye West.
I sort of have to defend Ben here.
I spend most of my time provoking Ben.
But the funniest thing on Twitter yesterday is when a shirtless vitamin salesman started sending a lot of mean tweets about Ben.
You can tell a lot about a man by his enemies.
Okay, we've got to get to the mailbag.
We're running way late.
So before we get to the mailbag, I'm sorry.
We've got a great mailbag today, but I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
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You got me, The Andrew Klavan Show, The Ben Shapiro Show.
My conversation's coming up, folks.
You can ask questions in the conversation.
I will answer them.
Everybody can listen.
Few can ask questions.
Many are called.
Few are chosen.
None of that matters.
Oh, that's really good.
Let's just see.
Is Michelle Obama the forever first lady?
Is she?
Oh no, Melania Trump is the first lady.
Is Barack, are we going to have a million Barack's and Michelle's?
Oh no, Kanye West is talking like a conservative Republican and quoting Thomas Sowell.
Oh my gosh.
We've got to go to a break.
Go to dailywire.com.
I've got to recover from how delicious that was.
Let's get into the mailbag because we're running out of time and these are great questions.
From Tyler.
Oh, Michael, the great and powerful.
I've been hearing people say that Islam and Christianity are the same religion with a few minor misunderstandings.
Can you please shine your all-knowing wisdom down upon them?
Thanks.
Big fan.
Sure.
They're not.
They're different religions, obviously.
I suggest you read the...
Scriptures of both the Koran and the Bible and the writers, people who have written and theological writers about Islam and Christianity.
The big difference between the two is that Islam developed six centuries after Christianity as a Christian heresy.
It became something more than that, probably, but it developed as a Christian heresy.
We know this because the religion began when Muhammad visited a Nestorian or Aryan monk.
We're not sure what Christian heresy he was.
In Syria, his name was Bahira.
He was up there on a merchant trip with his uncle Abu Talib, and he spent a lot of time with him, and afterward concocted a version of Christianity that is in keeping with other heretical traditions.
And most heresy just can't come to grips with mystery.
So Christ is both perfectly divine and perfectly human.
Various heresies say he's entirely human or he's entirely divine.
The big difference, probably you would say that Islam is more political.
It's more nationalist or pan-Arab.
It's more for a particular people.
But these are all kind of minor observations or criticisms that one could debate.
The big difference is that Islam denies the cross of Christ.
So Islam says that they crucified him not.
It speaks very highly of Jesus, but it says they crucified him not.
And there are various theories as to how Jesus was up on the cross and then not crucified.
Plenty of people have written about this.
St.
Paul writes about such proclamations six centuries earlier.
He writes, There are many walking, and I tell you now even weeping, who deny the cross of Christ, who are enemies of the cross of Christ.
Because the cross of Christ overcomes death.
It's where the logic of the universe, the logos, becomes incarnate and dies for our sins to redeem all of mankind.
It's a God of perfect reason.
It's a heaven of immaterial delight.
And Islam poses something different.
It's a God who is not confined by reason.
A God who is not necessarily the Logos.
A God who can be wrathful in irrational ways.
And a world in which death has not been conquered.
a world which promises material delights in heaven.
Those are very different visions of the world.
Those are very different religions.
Now it's commonly taught by people who haven't read any of these things and have no familiarity with either of the religions that, oh, you know, we all worship the same God.
Not so, don't you?
Different religions worship different gods.
That's what makes them different religions.
If they worship the same god, they would be the same religion, wouldn't they?
They would manifest in the same ways.
But when we see vast differences in religion, we know that they're worshiping something different.
From James, Dear Michael, Fascism seems so unlikely today, and does it?
I don't know.
I look around college campuses and it seems very likely.
He goes on, and it's difficult to imagine its philosophical appeal last century.
Could you attribute the rise of atheism nihilism during the 20th century as something that caused the appeal of fascism?
Seems to me that totalitarian fascist states force their own religion of government down the throats of their subjects.
Do you think there was an ideological appeal to fascism, or was the movement based in emotion and feeling?
Thank you guys, thanks you guys and gals at the Daily Wire, the only thing keeping me sane these days.
That's a very good question, because I actually disagree with your read of fascism, or your reaction to fascism.
I'll say also that one can't really separate plain objective facts from the way that we react to them, from the way that we ascribe value to them or that we have emotion about them.
That distinction is, I think, complicated and probably not a good one to make.
The appeal of fascism makes all the sense in the world.
It's a very appealing political ideology in a world without God.
It makes all the sense in the world without God.
Because without God, there's no natural law.
Without natural law, there are no natural rights.
The American version of conservatism only exists because of the profound, radically Christian character of America.
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator.
We know this from Governor Winthrop in the model of Christian charity.
that baptized all of America in the early 17th century.
We'll read that a little bit later.
We know this from the pilgrims, the first Americans, the people who founded the first American colonies, where we trace our foundation, were radical Christian zealots.
Fascism replaces God.
Of course, it's reacting to a world of atheism and nihilism, and it has to overcome that nihilism with something.
Everybody's got to serve somebody.
So fascism replaces God with neo-pagan idols, the nation-state or the people or the fashi, you know, binding us all together.
It's a reactionary philosophy.
It's reacting against, as you point out, atheism, materialism, rationalism, positivism.
It's reacting against that.
I react against that too.
I don't like those things either.
But that's what makes it so seductive is when you react to all of those things that we don't like about modernity without God, you just get the mirror image of all of those things, which is equally ungratifying.
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
This is what the alternative right gets so wrong.
They are reacting against all the right things, but they're reacting in the wrong way because their reaction lacks God.
It lacks the crux.
Pun very much intended.
Of Western civilization.
And so it's a horrific caricature.
It's exactly the flip side of leftism.
Good question.
From Kevin.
Hi, Michael.
My 20-year-old son is a devout Christian.
He's been dating a wonderful girl for about four years.
For the past year, she's been struggling with her Christian faith to the point that she's not sure she can call herself a Christian.
They have a very good relationship.
They're both committed.
How should I advise my son regarding his relationship with her?
And how can he help her with this struggle?
Well, I mean, I was in her shoes when I was 20.
I was vaguely atheistic or agnostic at the time, and now I'm certainly not.
I think it's perfectly normal to go through those sorts of phases, and I think it actually helps one's faith, because when you come back, you have the zeal of a convert, even though you're just a revert.
I think it's fine.
Look, the truth above all things.
She's confused right now, and she's questioning things, and maybe she's reacting appropriately against...
Incorrect interpretations of true religion.
Maybe she's reacting against heresies.
Maybe she's reacting against misunderstandings of Christianity.
That's good to react against those things.
The truth above all things.
Just have your son say, keep cool, keep calm, and explain the world as he sees it.
And you don't have to worry about those things.
You do your best, God will do the rest.
But I wouldn't worry too much because...
There is a right answer, and if you are patient, patience is a virtue.
If you're patient, I think the truth will come out as long as everybody's dealing in good faith.
From Kenneth, how much more time do we have?
We've got a little bit more time.
If we have to accept people because of their immutable characteristics, such as being gay...
How is it that it is illegal in California to have a sex change material, or it might be banned in California to promote sex change material, but at the University of Texas they are going to treat masculinity as a mental health condition?
There's this bill in California that wants to ban all efforts to change one's sexual orientation, and it's true, not just at the University of Texas, but all over the country now, we hear about toxic masculinity.
This is a mental health disorder.
It's being studied by government agencies and public agencies.
It's because they're total hypocrites and lunatics.
But we don't need to take that seriously.
They are not being rational and we don't have to take irrationality seriously.
But we should watch out for that phrase.
I did this PragerU video on the importance of precise language.
The left now is using this euphemism, toxic masculinity, to refer to manliness.
Now, look, manliness has two sides.
There's the gentleman, there's the hero, there's the good guy, and there's the rapist and the warmonger and the villain.
It cuts both ways and you have to be on the right side of that.
You have to use manliness in a good way.
The left is using that phrase to say masculinity is bad per se.
Manliness is bad per se.
But it's not.
There's a good manliness and we have to always exhibit it.
And it's a very manly thing to correct people's errors in a patient but confident way.
Alright, from Christopher.
Hey Michael, I'm a huge fan of the show and listen daily.
As someone who's one of those heathen pagans you mentioned on May Day, Walpurgisnacht to your former German listeners, why is it that Ben and yourself are so critical of anything pagan?
I understand a ton of people who are pagan and just are just those spiritual lefty commune types, but some of us are conservatives that just happen to have differing religious beliefs.
Sincerely, Chris.
Thank you for the note, Chris.
Thanks for watching Daily.
And since you watch daily, you'll get this edifying answer, I hope.
It's because you might have those differing religious beliefs, but they're wrong.
They aren't true.
It just isn't good, and that's why we're harsh on it, because it isn't true.
We're harsh on a lot of things that aren't true and aren't good.
Now, look, there are plenty of people who have good intentions and who...
Say, I don't sacrifice children or whatever.
Okay, I don't think you sacrifice children, necessarily.
Plus, America sacrifices a million children a year.
But paganism itself is just wrong and bad, and you shouldn't do it.
The word pagan comes from the word paganus, which means villager or rustic.
It really means hillbilly or hick.
It's like a kind of uneducated, rough, stupid person.
This is where you get the words like pai or paisano in Italian, a paisan, or peasant in English.
They don't have good connotations.
Paganism is idolatrous, but it's the natural state of man.
Edwin Bevan writes about this very well.
Lewis and Chesterton allude to this.
Paganism is our natural state.
We're in the world.
We don't have access to theology unless we are in civilization.
We know that the world is spiritual and immaterial.
The Paganism recognizes this too, and it becomes superstitious.
So we ascribe metaphysical things to various spirits, and it's idolatrous, essentially.
Idolatry is the gravest of mortal sins because it's an attempt on God's divine majesty.
Everybody's got to serve somebody.
That's why paganism exists.
We have to ascribe things that we see in the world, the immaterial things and metaphysical things that we experience all the time.
We ascribe it to something.
But it's false religion, it's superstition, and it's ultimately unsatisfying.
There is a theology.
That's the study of God.
There is a true God.
And there is false religion.
So the reason we're harsh on it is that it is false religion.
And it's rustic.
There's a reason why it's the natural inclination of man.
It's because if you're wholly uneducated, then you'll fall for that.
That doesn't make you stupid.
It just means you haven't Thought deeply about these things or read deeply about these things.
But over time, when one does those, you arrive at theology.
And there is revelation here as well.
There has been revealed truth, and that's where you get Christianity.
So I encourage you to study that a little bit and to look into it and pray about that on National Prayer Day.
Because, as I alluded to in the question about fascism, when you react in politics in ways that are not grounded in true religion, it It doesn't necessarily have awful results, but it certainly can, and it trends that way.
These things are very insidious.
The Bible is very clear.
God is very harsh when people worship pagan idols.
It doesn't turn out well.
They get lots of leprous sores and storms and locusts and things like that.
So there's a reason for that.
It isn't just because the Bible is kooky.
It isn't, oh, how crazy that is.
No, it's really saying something about human nature and religion.
So I would think about that.
And we'll all pray for you on National Prayer Day.
And you can pray for us.
From Spencer.
We'll do a couple more, then we'll have to wrap it up.
Oh, Grand Monsignor of the Covfefeites, Knowles!
Do you think elites, whether aristocratic or academic, are necessary for the preservation and transmission of culture?
If so, can we attribute the current degradation of Western culture to the egalitarian tendencies of democracy that have also removed from us the injustices of hereditary privilege?
I'll skip over that last part.
Yes, of course.
Aristocracy is a good thing.
Aristos means the best, and krasi or kratia means power.
So, yes, you need the best to transmit culture because you need to transmit the best culture.
The trouble is, though, right now the people who would be our aristocrats aren't the best.
They are not the best of men.
Plato writes about the best of men, and they're not.
They pretend that they are, but we don't have an aristocracy because our culture is totally degraded.
So yes, aristocracy is a wonderful thing, but in a degraded culture such as ours, I don't give media elites or academic elites much credence.
That seems to be gone.
And you can find the remnant here or there that you can look toward.
But right now, probably democracy, which is the opposite of aristocracy, right?
Aristocracy is government by the best.
Democracy is government by the people.
Democracy is probably the worst form of government except for all of the others at our disposal right now.
Okay, last question, and then a little sign-off for prayer day.
From Ivan, dear Michael, recently I started hanging out with an ex-girlfriend, and while we only date for five months, we only dated for five months, it was a tumultuous relationship that had many ups and downs, but ultimately ended because I could not deal with her drinking problem.
She ended up kissing another dude at a party while drunk, which led to me dumping her.
Deep down, I sense she's a good person who may have, in fact, cared deeply for me, but who's just going through a bit of a party phase, which I I myself went through but have since left as it ultimately brought me unhappiness.
Am I making a mistake in trying to form a friendship with her in the hopes of one day possibly rekindling our relationship?
Or should I spare myself the humiliation and part ways for good?
P.S. If Kanye ends up running for president in 2024, would you appear in a commercial for him like you did for Cruz in 2016?
I've got some more commercials coming down the pike.
Look for that coming up soon.
I won't comment yet on future President West.
Yeah, you should just dump her and not try to form another relationship with her.
That's a terrible idea.
Don't humiliate yourself.
She made out with another dude in front of you.
Are you out of your mind?
What's the matter with you?
I feel like Don Corleone talking to Johnny Fontaine.
What's the matter with you?
Get a hold of yourself.
You're going to act like a man.
No, don't do it.
If she comes groveling and begging and saying, I'm sorry, I've totally changed my mind and, you know, I was so wrong and please, please forgive me crying at your feet, then maybe consider it.
But don't go crawling back and say, please, do you like me?
Are you better now?
I understand.
No, no, are you kidding me?
No.
No, I wouldn't even talk to her.
If she comes begging, talk to her.
Otherwise, no.
Okay, before we get to that, it's a real turn-the-other-cheek for National Prayer Day.
Before we say goodbye, there's one last thing I'd like to do.
Because it's the National Day of Prayer, I would like to remind us of the baptism of America, one of the early blessings to America, which came from Governor John Winthrop in 1630.
It was written aboard the Arabella.
That came over to what would become the United States in 1630.
A model of Christian charity.
This used to be required reading everywhere.
Now it's probably banned in schools.
But this is an essential American foundational text so we can read it before we say goodbye.
It's very long.
You should read the whole thing.
Here are the big quotes that are always pulled out.
Governor Winthrop, For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.
But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other gods, our pleasure and prophets, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land, whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it.
Therefore, let us choose life, that we and our seed may live, by obeying his voice and cleaving to him, for he is our life and our prosperity.
