Aloha, hoa! Michael is bronzed, bound, and back. Now that he's finally a man, at a time when the culture encourages boys to become girls, we’ll discuss boys to men, from Robert DeNiro to Justin Trudeau to Donald Trump, with a word on Charles Krauthammer to boot. Then, why IHOP’s rebranding to the International House of Burgers is a brilliant marketing strategy directly influenced by the Trump phenomenon. Finally, it’s Pride AllTheTime! Celebrate superbia with an historical retrospective on pride from man’s earliest days.
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I am bronzed, bound, and back from my honeymoon in Hawaii after marrying sweet little Elisa last week.
That's right, I'm sorry ladies, but I am now Mr.
Sweet Little Elisa.
Take a look at the ring.
My bachelor party, my wedding, my now full week of experience as a married man has got me thinking about manliness.
At a time when the culture encourages boys to become girls, we will discuss boys to men, from little boys like Robert De Niro and Justin Trudeau, all the way to Donald Trump, good old men, with a word also on Charles Krauthammer and his manliness to boot.
Then, why IHOP's rebranding to the International House of Burgers is a brilliant marketing strategy directly influenced by the Trump phenomenon.
Finally, it is pride all the time.
Let's all celebrate.
Let's celebrate pride all the time.
During this all the time, it's the time to celebrate pride.
We will celebrate superbia with an historical retrospective on pride from man's earliest days.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
I have so much to talk to you about.
I have missed you so much, and I have so much.
I can't believe.
Did anything happen while I was gone?
Oh, yeah, everything.
We'll get to it.
Before we get to that, got to keep the lights on over here.
I'm shocked Ben let me come back.
I figured I'd come back to this place, and it would just be rubble.
This entire broom closet that I broadcast from would be pure rubble, and they'd be putting up, I don't know, the Ben Shapiro 2 show or something, But thankfully I'm still here.
And one of the people we have to thank for that is Blue Apron.
This is very fitting.
Now that I'm a manly, married man, you know, I have a way to really eat the Blue Apron properly, which is having Mrs.
Sweet Little Elisa cook it.
And Blue Apron is really good.
It is basically all I eat at home these days.
Obviously, I was on my honeymoon.
We were eating luau's or whatever every night.
But Blue Apron, it is basically all I eat at home.
It is so, so good.
Blue Apron delivers farm-fresh ingredients and step-by-step recipes to your door.
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I've got to tell you, the ingredients that come from Blue Apron We're good to go.
Because Blue Apron is constantly changing the recipes.
You're not just going to get a hamburger every night or something.
They're always new.
They're really innovative.
They're so, so good.
You can get three plans.
The two-person meal plan, meals that serve two regular people or one cavon, such as myself.
You can choose from eight new recipes per week with the choice to receive either two or three recipes any week.
Family meal plan that serves four people or one gavon such as myself.
You can choose four new recipes per week and choose to receive either two, three or four recipes every week.
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All great stuff, convenient, flexible, really high quality.
Check out this week's menu and get your first three meals for free at blueapron.com slash covfefe. C-O-V-F-E-F-E.
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They are extremely delicious.
Blue Apron, a better way to cook.
I've missed you guys.
I've really missed you.
I actually have, because I was sunning on beautiful Waikiki, and it was really nice.
I made some friends there.
I met a great Daily Wire listener there, a very cool guy.
I won't say his name because he'll lose his job, but it's really good.
So I'm floating around there in Waikiki, and I've got to tell you something.
I actually...
Sort of missed work.
Not immediately and not that much, you know.
But after a while, bobbing along on the ocean, it feels really nice.
But you do miss purpose after a while.
George Bernard Shaw said that hell is the place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.
And so it is actually good to be back.
I could have used another few days maybe.
Of just amusing myself, but that's okay.
It's nice to be back.
I'm also, as you can see, transracial.
For those of you who are just listening, I'm a little bit crispy after my time there.
We have finally solved the age-old question, are Sicilians white?
The answer is not much of the time and not after being on the beach.
This is, by the way, after slathering myself in like 60 SPF constantly, and so somehow still pretty crispy.
Um...
I will give you my thoughts on marriage, what I've learned in my vast time as a married man, all of the wisdom I've acquired.
It turns out marriage is mostly people giving you a lot of presents and then eating dinner in tuxedos and then sunning yourself on a beach.
I didn't know that.
I didn't know any of that before I got married.
I assume it'll keep up like this, so we'll see how that goes.
Marriage has me thinking a lot about manliness.
Because, you know, look, I'm not exactly a hulking mass of masculinity.
I'm not a great Adonis of a man or something like that.
I'm not Conan the Barbarian.
But in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, I've noticed.
And so it has me thinking about that.
In the early 80s, there were a lot more people getting married.
Two and a half million marriages happened in the United States every single year.
That number is down.
Even though the population has grown tremendously over that time by 100 million people or something like that, now just over two million people, two million marriages happen every year.
So there's a 40% increase in population and yet half a million fewer marriages happen Right now the median age for marriage is 29, so I got in just under that.
I'm just under the median, which is good.
But a lot of people just don't get married at all.
So the median might be 29, but a lot of people just aren't getting married.
The Urban Institute reports that the marriage rate might drop among millennials to 70% or lower.
That is way, way down from previous generations.
The baby boomers got married at a rate of 91%.
The late boomers who came in the late stage of the baby boom, 87%.
Gen X, 82%.
That number drops precipitously for millennials if the present trends continue.
So what's that about?
I think it's about a crisis of manliness and all these attacks on the...
The toxic masculinity and these bad images we have of what manliness really is.
We've totally lost the sense of manliness in that Harvey Mansfield kind of way, the Aristotelian kind of way, being a gentleman, being a virtuous guy.
And just to underscore the difference between boys and men, little boys becoming men, you know, it's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday.
Here is Robert De Niro.
I think he really sums up that little boy very well.
I'm going to say one thing.
"F**k Trump." It's no longer down with Trump.
It's Trump.
That's so brave.
Oh, wow.
Wow, sir.
That is so brave.
You sit in a room of Hollywood and New York actors.
You attacked a Republican president, used a naughty word.
Wow.
Oh, wow.
Gosh.
Finally, an actor behaving like a child.
This is what Stanislavski created his system for.
This is the American method.
It's ridiculous.
But this is a caricature of manliness.
What Robert De Niro is doing is actually what little boys do, but it's a caricature of what manliness is.
It's a performance of manliness.
Because Robert De Niro is not a manly guy.
He just plays manliness in movies.
He plays tough guys in movies.
In reality, he behaves like a little boy.
This is the least courageous thing he could do.
To get out there and say the thing that everybody wants to hear and be just as vulgar as everybody wants to be and not add anything to the conversation.
If he had come out and supported Donald Trump, That would have required some courage, right?
He could be blackballed from Hollywood, as a lot of our friends have been.
He could have his show canceled, as some of our friends have had their shows canceled.
That would have real ramifications.
Instead, he gets a standing ovation.
These people gave him a standing ovation.
They applauded him.
It was so, oh wow, oh my gosh.
I like to start on this one, because it really shows that difference.
Are you the real thing, or are you just part of the show?
Are you really going to be the tough guy?
Are you really going to be a man?
Or are you just going to play-act it?
Are you just going to try to pretend and be one on TV? I'm not really a doctor.
I just play one on TV. I'm not really a man.
One of my favorite news stories that came out while I was still on my honeymoon is this Justin Trudeau story.
Speaking of little boys.
If Justin Trudeau did not exist, we would have to invent him, of course.
The wonderful Prime Minister of Canada who runs around in little rainbow booty shorts waving flags.
You know, it says that we have to call criminals and terrorists and things nice names and all of that.
So Justin Trudeau hosted the G7 Summit.
And the G7, you know, this group of seven countries, basically went well.
The thing doesn't mean anything.
The G7 is this group of countries, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.
Those are the seven countries in it.
And we're all sort of allies.
And it was founded in the 70s to work on these big economic initiatives because in the 70s you had the collapse of the exchange rate, the energy crisis, recession, stagflation, right?
So there were all these economic issues and so they decided to bring all the finance ministers together and they would talk about it and it's blown into this big Hollywood fest, basically.
But now the heads of state go and they have a lot of warm and fuzzy virtue signaling and it has really veered far away from its original purpose and it's mostly just a show for the cameras and to get nice photo ops.
Here's some evidence of this.
Justin Trudeau, the first female prime minister of Canada, I think, hosted a conference.
I think they probably have had female prime ministers.
Maybe I'll Google that.
We'll have a producer Google that in the meantime.
Justin Trudeau hosted a conference on feminism.
At the G7. I don't know what that conference on feminism is going to do for the global economy or whatever, you know, but that's what it's just this virtue signaling, right?
So he hosts this women's empowerment feminism conference and right out of Hollywood scripting, right out of central casting, President Trump shows up late.
Yeah.
Because of course he does.
Because how can he show up on time?
He walks in, oh yeah, sorry I'm late.
Sits next to Christine Lagarde and Angela Merkel.
Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, and Angela Merkel, the woman who single-handedly destroyed Europe.
And she's also the Chancellor of Germany.
And so he's right there.
And by the way, there was this picture that went around, and it's very funny, because he comes in late, you know, and Merkel's all angry, and Christine Lagarde is being pretty charming and talking to him.
And I actually have personal experience of this, because I've mentioned before that I was a sommelier at George Soros' wedding.
This is a bizarre experience in my life.
As an actor, I was cast To be a sommelier at George Soros' wedding.
I only found out it was Soros' wedding after the fact.
After I was cast in it.
And so I ended up pouring wine for Christine Lagarde.
And she was extremely charming and lovely.
And she's just a wonderful politician.
And really good.
So she sits down and she's charming with Trump and they seem to be getting along.
And then you just see Angela Merkel in the corner like scowling at him and all angry.
Anyway, these little...
Bumps aside, the G7 went pretty well.
It's a silly thing.
It's not really that important.
All in all, it went well.
And so at the end, they all agreed that they would sign on to this joint statement, this communique on how great everything was.
It was boilerplate.
It was the sort of leftist whatever.
But they said they'd all sign on.
And then everything fell apart.
Why?
Why did everything fall apart?
For comment, we turn to Mrs.
This is Broflovsky.
America's hat, Canada.
We will explain how Justin Trudeau blew this thing up.
Hint, spoiler alert, it's because he's not a man.
We'll get back into that.
Before we do, we get to talk about ring.
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So Justin Trudeau blew up this G7 summit and he blew it up because he's not a man.
That's why.
Manliness is actually the issue here.
It wasn't really the tariffs.
It wasn't really sniping over trade.
It's because Justin Trudeau is a little boy because he's a little girly man.
Everything was fine.
Everyone had agreed.
Donald Trump has been trying to negotiate with tariffs.
With tariffs that Canada is putting on the United States, and the United States could put on Canada for a long time now.
Larry Kudlow, Trump economic advisor, negotiated with Trudeau personally.
And then Justin Trudeau holds this press conference and makes this statement.
I have made it very clear to the president that it is not something we relish doing, but it is something that we absolutely will do.
Because Canadians, we're polite, we're reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.
Okay.
Now, I kind of get if you see this, you'd say, oh, that's not so bad.
He's saying Trump can't push him around.
Why is this so bad?
Why is this so bad?
Because it's this catty, bratty, mean girl, backstabbing deception.
This is not the way allies behave.
You know, people are saying about Donald Trump, they're saying, Trump is being mean to our allies.
That's not how allies should behave.
Justin Trudeau is not how allies should behave.
They had come to an agreement.
They were at the G7. They had negotiated about reducing certain tariffs that Canada is imposing on U.S. goods and in exchange for concessions from the United States on trade.
And they agreed.
And then they're going to go out and have this nice communique and everything's all hunky-dory.
And then he comes out and he says, but you're not going to push us around, Donald Trump.
You're not going to push us around.
I bet he didn't say that to Donald Trump's face.
I bet he didn't say that to Larry Kudlow's face, did he?
No, I bet to his face he said, oh, hey, how about we all go out and sign this communique, eh?
I bet that's what he said to his face.
And then he goes out because he's a little boy and stabs him in the back.
It really...
Some conservatives right now are saying, oh, come on.
We want free trade.
Nobody wants tariffs.
It wasn't that bad.
Yada, yada, yada.
Don't be so harsh on them.
Because, of course, the Trump aides came out and they said, Peter Navarro, a Trump aide, said that there's a special place in hell reserved for Justin Trudeau for stabbing him in the back, you know, and Kudlow came out and attacked him.
So they're saying, oh, it's not that bad.
Come on, stop it.
No, that is bad.
That is really bad.
The United States should not be pushed around by Justin Trudeau.
And we're not going to tolerate that.
That's absurd.
Because, by the way, Donald Trump is in the right here.
In the negotiation.
Nobody wants a trade war.
Nobody wants massive tariffs.
The left and the Trump critics on the right are trying to pretend like...
Donald Trump and his supporters want massive tariffs on goods to hike everybody's taxes.
Nobody wants that.
Nobody wants that.
But right now, as the president pointed out, as Larry Kudlow pointed out, Canada has dairy tariffs on United States dairy, upwards of 270 percent, possibly upwards of 295 percent.
Those are huge tariffs.
We can't tolerate that.
And then the minute that we say that we're going to retaliate, they say you're starting a trade war, you started the trade war.
Or maybe there isn't a trade war and maybe we're just negotiating on trade as nations tend to do.
Of course.
But what Justin Trudeau does is he says, I'm going to get my last minute snipe in when it's too late for Donald Trump to respond.
Yeah, I'm going to get the...
You know, it's like when you're arguing with a child and they just have to get the last word.
You say, okay, all right, we've resolved this.
They say, yeah, yeah, you...
You say, well, why'd you have to do that at the end?
That's not how adults behave.
And it's really awful.
The timing is really awful.
Because we're going into this Kim summit.
We're going into the Kim Jong-un North Korea summit.
And he gets this last minute snipe in at the president.
And I'm really glad that Trump responded in the way he did.
He said, okay, you want to get your little snipe in?
We're not going to sign on to the communique.
I hope you enjoyed your vacation in Canada.
I hope you enjoyed the G7. But we're not going to tolerate this.
Good.
We absolutely shouldn't tolerate this.
It's an important point about manliness because...
People think that we just need everyone to like us.
That's what men want.
But that's what little boys want.
Going into this summit...
So look at Angela Merkel for a second.
We've got Angela Merkel leaning over, the Chancellor of Germany, single-handed destroyer of Europe.
She's leaning over, angry at Trump.
And then in that same photo, you've got Trump and Bolton and Abe of Japan...
Just arms crossed, not budging.
Just not Trump staring her right back in her face.
Merkel, Angela Merkel flooded Europe with millions of lightly vetted or totally unvetted Muslim immigrants.
Meanwhile, crimes, rapes, terror attacks are surging all across Europe.
They're covering it up.
And Merkel allowed them to flood.
She has no credibility here.
She's not going to tell us How to run our country, how to run global trade and globalization.
She's used globalization to help destroy her continent.
And I'm glad, thank goodness, that we have a president who's going to say, no, you've done a terrible job leading your continent, and maybe my predecessor let you do it, but I'm not going to let you do it.
You know, it was going around Twitter.
That photo alone is basically worth the Trump presidency.
We've gotten a lot of other good stuff, too.
But I love it.
Just staring Europe in the face, the face of mass migration, open borders, Europe, and saying, no, no more.
Uh...
This gets to the central premise here.
How the left sees the world, how the right sees the world, and specifically how they see manliness.
We'll explain why the right is right before we do that.
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So, okay, I've got more to talk about, but I do want to wrap up this manliness point because it's really embodied here in Mr.
Trudeau.
The left is looking at this G7 summit and President Trump's handling of Justin Trudeau in particular.
They're saying, oh no, our friends hate us.
Oh no, because little boys are desperate for the affirmation of others.
And grown men just do the right thing.
They just do what needs to be done and they don't need to be affirmed constantly in whatever they're doing, right?
Yeah.
men don't want to like be hated or something like that.
But men, which is something we should aspire to be men, don't care about affirmation as the number one goal.
The left keeps saying that the U.S. is isolating itself from the world.
It's probably because they're watching CNN.
So they only see that fantasy.
That's absurd.
Right now, around the world, ISIS has been defeated militarily.
Israel is building train stations dedicated to the President and the United States.
Iran's path to nuclear weapons has been slowed down.
Even France likes this.
Even France, for goodness sake, the Flag of the French Army, Emmanuel Macron, likes Donald Trump, likes our president, comes on over here and says nice things about us.
You know, little boys, they can't say no, but grown men have to say no sometimes, and sometimes we have to say no to our partners.
Donald Trump ran on getting NATO allies to start paying anything for protection, you know, for our military protection.
Past presidents have demanded that too.
They've begged for it.
Donald Trump is the only one who accomplished it.
He accomplished it by being firm.
We're having a summit with North Korea now.
Remember that summit was off.
We're never going to get it.
Trump's going to blow up the world.
And now we've got it.
And by the way, I've been gone a long time, so maybe I missed this.
Has the mainstream media apologized for its coverage of the Kim summit?
And with the on-again, off-again summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un on the rocks, at least for now, what happens to that commemorative coin minted in preparation here in the United States?
There you see it.
You see the President Kim Jong-un, the North Korean flag, the U.S. flag.
That's the coin that was all ready for the summit.
What happens to it now?
We have details.
When news broke today that President Trump had canceled the summit with Kim Jong-un, there was a mad rush to a White House website, not for more information about Trump's decision, but of course to the gift shop for the commemorative summit coins, where lo and behold, the coins had been designated the deal of the day, selling for the low, low price of just $19.95.
And thank goodness the shop had posted a disclaimer to dispel any concerns about the fate of the coins.
True Trump fashion, written with almost but not quite all the words unnecessarily capitalized and missing some punctuation, saying, the coin will be made whether or not the summit occurs as scheduled because the theme is coming closer to peace and celebrates the act of communication among countries.
If summit does not occur, you can request a refund.
But most supporters have said they want this heirloom of political history...
I cannot believe someone wrote that.
And then, for the piece de resistance, the page couldn't handle the volume of visitors and crashed, remaining down for several hours.
Isn't that funny?
Isn't that so funny?
You know what's really funny about that whole segment is it's entirely fake news.
Because there is no such thing as a White House gift shop.
That's why.
That's why it's fake news.
Well, there is a White House gift shop.
There is a company called the White House gift shop that has no connection to the current White House.
But they're giddy, aren't they?
They're so giddy on CNN, MSNBC. It's so funny.
Ha ha ha.
It's funny for two reasons, the mainstream media reaction to this.
Because they say, oh, you know, the White House gift shop made this coin, and then the summit got canceled.
So now the coin is pointless.
Ha ha ha.
Isn't it so funny that we won't have a denuclearization summit now and hopefully bring more stability and peace to the world?
Ha ha ha.
That'll show Trump.
Ha ha ha.
Right.
And now it's funny because, you know, it's happening, and they were totally wrong, and they were so excited that we might not denuclearize North Korea.
They were praying that North Korea would still get to keep their nuclear weapons, and then the summit's back on.
Two, the other reason why it's really funny is that the White House never issued a coin.
It never issued a coin at all.
This is like 100% manufactured fake news.
There is a company called the White House Gift Shop, which is located in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
It is a private, for-profit company.
It's owned by some guy named Anthony Giannini.
Just some guy.
He's not a White House official.
He's just a dude.
There did used to be a gift shop associated with the White House, but for at least the last seven years, There's just this private company with a website run out of Pennsylvania.
Actual fake news.
So little boys like Chris Hayes, little mean girls, so desperate to attack Donald Trump that they'd make up a story whole cloth.
They celebrate canceling this denuclearization summit, even though it's still on.
What's the point of all this?
What's the goal?
This is another big difference between the little boys and men, adults, grown-ups.
What's the goal here?
What's the point of all this stuff?
Little boys are motivated disproportionately by base impulses.
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, fame, power, and money, it's all the same thing, these base, fleshy impulses.
Men are after something higher than that, something more long-lasting than that, which is accomplishment.
Something beyond just pleasing the senses for a little bit of time for an actual accomplishment.
Donald Trump was asked, you know, are you going to get the Nobel Peace Prize if you denuclearize Korea?
And he joked about it.
He said, oh, you know, a lot of people are saying I should, but I don't care about that.
What's more important is getting it done.
And I think he meant that earnestly.
And part of the reason I think he meant that is that getting a Nobel Peace Prize is absolutely meaningless.
I mean, you know, Obama got one after being president for 50 seconds or something.
It doesn't mean anything.
So, you know, I really am pleased that we have an administration that is focused on accomplishment.
And all these little boys who want to tee-hee-hee, tee-hee-hee and spread fake news, that's fine.
You can keep it up.
But in the meantime, the real men are going to go do work in the world and actually make America great again.
Little boys can't make America great again.
Only real grown-up men can.
Okay.
We have got to get to the International House of Breakfast.
Do I have to sign off?
I've got to sign off.
Oh, man.
Oh, that's too bad because the International House of Breakfast is one of the most brilliant marketing strategies in a long time, and it actually is downstream of this exuberance on the right and this Trump phenomenon.
We'll explain how.
We'll also talk about pride and I'll say a little bit on Charles Krauthammer, whom I admire immensely.
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You know, I was sipping a lot of drinks out of coconuts and pineapples last week.
But this is the most delicious one of all.
Oh, how I have missed you, Leftist Tears Tumbler.
That tastes a little bit like...
Who was that guy in Casino and Goodfellas?
Oh, yeah, the Robert De Niro vintage.
Delish, delish.
Okay, we only have a little bit of time left, so I want to get to International House of Pancakes becoming International House of Burgers.
IHOP is I-Hob.
This is a marketing reaction to the Trump phenomenon, and it is really great.
Even the reaction to it mirrors what's happening in politics.
The consensus view of this IHOP thing...
Is that it's crazy and terrible.
And it's so stupid and awful.
In reality, it's working quite well.
Because the consensus view is almost always wrong.
This is, you know, this is how people make money in the stock market, right?
The consensus view is almost always wrong.
And people who see how it's wrong can succeed.
So...
Here's the consensus view.
Whenever companies and people stop doing the thing that made them successful and they start pretending to be something else, that never works out well.
You know, you've got New Coke and Crystal Pepsi.
Do you remember Arby's tried to be a healthy sandwich place for like five seconds?
That was just terrible.
Then they went back to, we have the meats, and now it's good again.
Rubio pretended to be Donald Trump in 2016.
He did that Rickles shtick.
It didn't work.
John Kerry pretended to be cool that time.
And also we're hearing now that reports are coming out all the time that authenticity matters in marketing.
And so what is IHOP doing?
They're not a burger place.
Have you ever eaten a burger at IHOP?
No.
So the consensus view is that this is a terrible idea.
This is a great strategy.
That view is totally wrong.
You probably can't remember the last time you had a burger at IHOP. You also probably can't remember the last time you ate at IHOP, and you certainly can't remember the last time you talked at IHOP. Talked about IHOP, rather.
You probably can't remember the last time you talked at it either because it's like primo drunk end-of-night food, so things get a little blurry at that point.
So it's a gimmick, right?
IHOP serves breakfast and lunch.
People only know of it as a pancake place, and they want to let people know that they also serve lunch.
This is a fun, light, and apparently crazy marketing stunt.
We have been talking about IHOP for days.
It has been a top trend on Twitter for days at this point.
This is a shrewd marketing advisor watching our culture.
And it's a big shift in how marketing is happening.
In the Obama days, marketing was all about virtue signaling, right?
You remember the famously Target changing its bathroom policies.
It was really about marketing, saying we're a progressive company.
We're progressive.
We're really nice.
Chipotle, the restaurant Chipotle, they'd always say, oh, we use organic, local, high-quality rice or whatever, right?
That was their marketing gimmick.
It's all sustainable, good for the world, social entrepreneurship.
Tom's Shoes, you know, they make cheap shoes and they donate a pair of shoes to charity when you overpay for These shoes and that, right?
And it's so tedious.
It's so tedious, that virtue signaling.
The Obama model of politics is so tedious.
All that, to be a good person, you have to, right?
And then the Trump model of politics is act wild, break things, and have fun.
And that's what IHOP is doing.
It's really smart.
It's a lot of fun.
I mean, that's a pretty wild thing to say.
We're going to totally change our name and we're going to make it this whimsical, bizarre thing.
Apparently out of left field name.
It's really big and it's really bold, but what could go wrong?
We've been talking about them for days and people are probably going to go to IHOP now and they're probably going to order pancakes.
They'll say, I want you to be the pancake house again.
So I'm going to order pancakes despite you.
And they'll say, oh gosh, you're really showing us counting the money by putting it in the cash register.
Really good.
Speaking of bad marketing, let's talk about Pride Month.
To begin, is any month not Pride Month?
Now, I think June is technically Pride Month, but there are also major Pride Days and events in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December.
Every single month.
There are major pride events in the United States.
This began in 1968 when a gay activist created the slogan, gay is good.
And the idea here was it was mirroring Stokely Carmichael's black is beautiful, gay is good.
And that strategy makes sense to me.
Is the argument gay is good is much more compelling than pride is good, right?
The argument gay is good basically says you have this moral structure from Judaism or Christianity or Islam or the sort of traditions of the West, and you have this moral structure that says that gay relationships broadly aren't good, gay sexual relationships, and we're saying that it is good, and here's why.
And you could follow.
That's a fair argument.
But the argument pride is good, I don't know that anyone actually makes that.
They're just saying it, but no one really believes that.
St.
Thomas, following St.
Gregory's lead, considered pride, pardon the pun, the queen of all sins.
So pride is the excessive love of one's own excellence.
It's the parent of all sins.
Eve eats the apple to be as a god.
Adam eats the apple too.
Pride does not turn out very well.
And how has Pride turned out this Pride Month?
Recently, a CrossFit employee, Russell Berger, was fired for criticizing celebrations of Pride.
Maybe he can get a job at IHOP. Weak.
The CEO of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, he called Berger a zealot, and he said that he needs to take a big dose of shut the F up.
That was what the CEO of CrossFit said about his fired employee, because his fired employee said, I don't support pride.
I think pride is a sin.
I'm a Christian, and I think that the pride agenda has become very intolerant of other people's views.
And the CEO of that company said, what, you think it's intolerant?
Well, now you're fired.
That'll show you how tolerant we are.
I said, okay.
There's Jack Phillips, that Colorado baker who had his livelihood destroyed for not wanting to participate in something that he considers a perversion of marriage and a sin.
A Baronelle Stutzman in Washington, a florist, same thing.
Jack Dorsey, the head of Twitter.
Jack, no conservative, by the way, pretty left-wing guy.
He went to Chick-fil-A and he ate a chicken sandwich.
And he tweeted out a picture and he said this was a good chicken sandwich.
People attacked him viciously.
Soledad O'Brien said, oh, this is a pretty weird thing to tweet out on Pride Month.
And Jack said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to say I like the chicken sandwich.
It wasn't that good.
It was a little spicy.
It's just absurd.
There's a great irony here.
Because the gay pride movement began after gay people were having their bars raided and, you know, were arrested for their sexual practices and all this.
And they were this oppressed group, right?
And now, now what's happened?
It's totally flipped.
The pride is the mainstream culture.
Every company is doing pride events.
If you don't toe the line, you're going to get fired.
You're going to have your reputation ruined.
And if people say, you know, my religion tells me that I shouldn't celebrate pride, the original sin, you could have your livelihood ruined.
That's the underdog.
It's an amazing inversion.
Pride is very insidious.
People don't usually know when it's affecting them.
These people who are pushing this agenda, the CEO of CrossFit who fires his employee, he probably thinks he's the good guy.
But he isn't the good guy.
And so I never understood why pride became the title for the gay rights movement.
It's a stupid title.
They had a much better idea of an argument 50 years ago.
And as long as it's pride, it's hard to celebrate pride because pride is always terrible.
The last, before we go, I know we're running a little on the later side, but I've got to talk about Charles Krauthammer.
You saw that, this actually really bummed me out on my honeymoon.
I was trying to avoid the news, and this was such breaking news.
Charles Krauthammer wrote an incredible, beautiful note.
In which he said, my doctors have told me I have weeks to live.
My fight is over.
I've lived the life I intended to live.
And I leave this life with no regrets.
Thank you to everyone who's given my life's work significance.
And see you next time.
And it was really moving.
He obviously wrote it much better than I just paraphrased it because he's a brilliant writer and thinker.
And it really bummed me out because I love Charles Krauthammer.
And Charles Krauthammer is...
Not a conservative in a really ideological sense.
He was a speechwriter for Walter Mondale.
He's an incredibly important writer, conservative intellectual.
But, you know, I don't think he toes the party line in many ways.
He was an incredible thinker.
He was such an important voice.
I would always read his columns.
And all of the memorials are coming out for Krauthammer now.
He lived a really good life.
He did what he wanted to do.
The thing I want to point out...
This is one of his columns that really spoke to me and told me what to think and really made me understand what a sophisticated thinker he is.
And it was when they were going to build that mosque at Ground Zero.
This was happening, I think, around 2010.
There was this movement to build an Islamic center, is what it was called, by the supporters of it, and a mosque is what it was called.
In reality, at ground zero in the financial district of New York.
And this was seen as just a horrible affront to people who saw Muslims in the name of Islam knock down those twin towers and kill thousands of American civilians.
You had people like Mike Bloomberg coming out, who was sort of a Republican, sort of a Democrat.
And he said, they should build the mosque.
Free speech, freedom of religion.
They should build a mosque right on the gravesites, basically.
You know, it's they should build it wherever they want.
And there was a good argument there, because we have no establishment of religion.
It's a free country, you know.
But then there was this gut feeling where you felt, gosh, that just seems awful.
They just shouldn't do it.
And Charles Krauthammer was the guy who made me understand why it was not a good idea to build that mosque there.
He made me understand how to articulate that.
He wrote in his column on that center, quote, America's a free country where you can build whatever you want, but not anywhere.
That's why we have zoning laws, no liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.
These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics.
Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred.
No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz, and no mosque at Ground Zero.
Build it anywhere but there.
The governor of New York offered to help find land to build the mosque elsewhere, a mosque really seeking to build bridges.
Rauf's ostensible hope for the structure would accept the offer.
But, of course, it wasn't trying to build bridges at all.
It was trying to be divisive and make a political statement, and a very awful political statement.
Krauthammer, in talking about common decency and respect for the sacred, He really spoke to something that I think the ideological conservatives miss out on sometimes, where they just basically recite the Constitution in their sleep and they kind of forget where that Constitution springs from.
But Charles Kratthammer is a man of deep learning and deep wisdom and thought.
He's, I think, vaguely agnostic.
He doesn't ascribe to any particular religion.
But he also said that atheism is the least plausible theology of them all.
I think he once said, I don't believe in God, but I fear him.
And I had the privilege of meeting him on two occasions.
And he was always graceful and funny and profound and thoughtful in what he was saying.
And we're really going to miss that.
I think he's basically without a peer in political commentary and political thought today.
And we're just really going to miss him.
He's a great thinker and writer, and even as he prepares to meet his maker, and he does have a maker, and it's a good thing that he fears that maker in holy fear and awe, but even as he prepares to do that, he does it in such a manly way to talk about our main theme from today's show.
He He looks fate right in the eye and he says, I'm ready for this life to come to an end.
I didn't create this life for myself.
I've formed it how I want it to be formed and to develop.
And if this is what's coming now, I have no regrets.
It's a really beautiful thing.
And we're going to miss Charles Krauthammer.
So read him while he's still here and send out all your nice tweets to him because he's a really, really great thinker.
Okay, on that note, getting, you know, Drew was talking about this on his show, too, a little bit.
I don't care that much when celebrities die.
It's not, you know, I'm a part of humanity and all deaths, you know, diminish me and all that.
But Crowdhammer in particular, he's really going to be missed.
Okay, that's our show.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
We have some amazing guests coming up this week.
Be sure to tune in.
I'll see you tomorrow.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Semia Villareal.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Jim Nickel.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
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The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
