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May 17, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
01:01:02
The Conversation Ep. 21: Michael Knowles

It’s our latest episode of The Conversation, and this month you’re speaking with the one and only Michael Knowles! Subscribers, ask your live questions over at dailywire.com, and Michael will grace your answers with the knowledge and wisdom you've been waiting for. Date: 05-16-19 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Time Text
I'll write it, and we'll do it live?
We'll do it live.
Alright, I'm Elisha Krause, everyone, and we are live with our latest episode of The Conversation, and with me this month is our host here, one of our hosts here at The Daily Wire, Michael Knows, who will be taking...
Can I say your name right?
Banana.
I should have done all of those things you were doing before.
Can we do a redo?
A redo?
Can do it.
Do it live.
With me is Michael Knowles, you know, famous author of that New York Times bestselling blank book, who will be taking your questions live for this entire hour.
All right.
Remember, as always, our conversation is streaming for everyone to watch, but only subscribers get to ask the questions.
I feel like we needed a t-shirt in our Amazon Prime Daily Wire store that's like an outline of me saying, only subscribers get to ask the questions.
Because I have to say that in my mom voice every single time we do an episode of The Conversation, guys.
So, how do you become a subscriber?
Head on over to dailywire.com.
Be sure to create a login.
Give us all of your wonderful money.
Get a Leftist Tears Tumblr if you do the 99 bucks for the year.
It's like you're practically making money.
I mean, it's great.
If you get the Tumblr.
You get this guy, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro.
Tons of great options there.
So click on the link in our video description if you want to ask a question and to become a Daily Wire subscriber.
And be sure to tune in for next month's episode.
It's going to be much better because it features our editor-in-chief, Ben Shapiro.
Wait a second.
Just saying.
So I feel like a year ago, we've been doing these conversations for almost a year and a half, by the way.
Can you believe that?
Actually, maybe even almost two years.
That's a lot of conversing.
It's a lot of conversing with our amazing subscribers that somehow keep your show on the air.
That's amazing.
But back then, you said that you are working on another book, but this time it will have words in it.
Yeah.
TBD? Oh, no.
It is actually coming along.
I still don't want to talk about it because the last time I had a book idea, I submitted this whole proposal for this book idea.
And the proposal, they didn't like it.
They wanted me to change all these things.
And then another guy came out with the exact same book like three months later.
And it's a very good book.
So I'm telling nobody about what this book is.
But it's very fun.
I'm really enjoying it.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that that has happened to a couple friends of mine as well.
That's very frustrating.
Yeah, that publishing world is fun.
You never get this when you do a blank book, by the way.
There have been a lot of blank books.
There's Everything Men Know About Women, The Wit and Wisdom of the German People.
A lot of very good ones.
Reasons to Vote for Democrats.
Sex After 50 was another one.
Oh my gosh.
It's true.
It sold a lot of copies.
Alrighty.
So we have our first question.
This is from who?
Anthony wants to know, what do you think will happen to the pro-life movement if SCOTUS reaffirms Roe v.
Wade with Alabama's challenge to abortion?
We'll keep going on.
We'll keep on keeping on.
This isn't the first time that this has happened.
Roe v.
Wade was decided in 1973.
It invented a fictitious right to abortion.
It didn't even say where it found the right to abortion in the Constitution.
The opinion said, well, maybe it's in the 14th Amendment.
Maybe it's in the 9th Amendment.
It doesn't matter.
There's a right to an abortion in there, which is ironic because if the right to an abortion is in the 14th Amendment, then the people who wrote the 14th Amendment were unaware of that.
The people who adopted the 14th Amendment were unaware of that at the time of the ratification of the 14th Amendment.
You mean abortion by wire hangers and back alleys didn't exist back then?
Shockingly, the first laws to deal with abortion happened in about 1821.
The 14th Amendment comes in 40 years later.
At the time, there were many states and municipalities that had laws against abortion.
And actually, at the time of Roe v.
Wade, at least 21 states and municipalities had those same laws on the books.
And yet the Supreme Court invents the right to abortion.
Then 20 years later, you get Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
This is where the court reaffirmed the right to an abortion.
It put certain restrictions on it.
I guess in the intervening 20 years, the Constitution magically grew new restrictions on abortion.
But whatever.
Now 20, 30 years later, if this comes up, hopefully we can overturn Roe v. Wade.
I actually spoke to Antonin Scalia about this topic before he died.
And I said, you know, conservatives, we accept precedent.
There is a concept in the law, stare decisis, which is that we give some deference to precedent.
So how do you square your belief in precedent with overturning Roe versus Wade?
And what he said is that some rulings are so egregious that they must be overturned.
Dred Scott would be an example of this, ruling that black people cannot be American citizens.
You can't gradually, incrementally change that.
You've got to overturn it.
Roe versus Wade, same thing.
You can't coherently say, we're going to protect babies at 28 weeks, but we're going to kill them at 24 weeks.
It doesn't make any sense.
You have to overturn it, and if the court doesn't have the guts to do it this time, guess what we're going to do?
We're going to keep on passing laws.
We're going to keep on fighting.
Public opinion is moving in our direction, and we'll get them the next time.
You know, it's interesting because I think the argument that you're seeing from many on the left is that, oh no, Donald Trump has stacked the courts and they're going to overturn Roe v.
Wade.
Honestly, I don't know that as a pro-lifer that I can count on Justice Kavanaugh or Chief Justice Roberts to make the pro-life, pro-Constitution decision in this case.
Well, this is what they said in Planned Parenthood v.
Casey.
This was 1992.
So you just had a decade of the Reagan administration, the Bush administration, stacking the courts.
And what happened?
Three justices appointed by Republicans, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Sandra Day O'Connor, all voted to uphold the fictional right to abortion.
This happens a lot.
The Supreme Court justices disappoint their presidents often.
And can we really count on John Roberts?
It seems like we can't.
Can we count on Kavanaugh?
Jury's still out, but I'm worried.
All right.
Arun says, Dear Dr.
Kofefe, I've been a victim of affirmative action often due to being an Indian American.
Any advice on how we conservatives can subvert discriminatory policies in the university and workplace?
Well, actually, speaking of the Supreme Court, this decision probably is going to be handled by them pretty soon because you've got this case coming up about discrimination against Asian students at Harvard.
So affirmative action also was upheld thanks to Sandra Day O'Connor and other justices.
And what the court said at that time, the last time they really dealt with this, is eventually affirmative action will not be necessary.
Eventually we can phase it out.
The question is now can we phase it out?
Because affirmative action, maybe it's really helpful to black students applying to Harvard.
But you can't help some students without hurting other students.
Like Asians and Indian Americans.
Like Asians and Indians, right.
So if it's going to hurt those students, they have a real discrimination case.
And unfortunately, a lot of these questions now are being decided by the Supreme Court.
And the reason they're being decided by the Supreme Court is because the Supreme Court has taken on that power.
The legislature has not wanted to do its job.
It's brought these questions to the court.
And unfortunately, the court has invented fictional rights over the years.
And when you're basing your decisions on those precedents, you have to invent more fictional rights or you have to read new interpretations into these fictional rights.
And so I'm hoping that this court, which for all of their flaws, has been much more seriously minded, has been much more respectful of the Constitution in recent years.
Hopefully, this court will at least issue some legal and constitutional clarity and get rid of some of these issues that have caused so much trouble over the last several decades.
All right.
Jonathan says, Hi, Michael.
I really enjoy your show.
I think Jonathan maybe needs some hearing aids.
Anyway, he says, I'm a Protestant and I'm wondering, from the Catholic perspective, what is the purpose of praying to Mary and to other saints?
Well, it's a very good question.
I get this question a lot from Protestant friends of mine.
I will answer with a question to you.
Do you ever ask your friends to pray for you?
Do you ever say, hey, Johnny, my wife is in the hospital.
Can you pray for us?
Do you ever ask your church?
You say, let's all pray for each other.
If you're doing that, then you're asking for intercessory prayer.
You're asking for them to pray to the Lord our God.
This is exactly what Catholics do, or Eastern Orthodox, when we pray to Mary.
We are asking Mary to pray for us to the Lord our God.
The Hail Mary prayer is directly from Scripture.
You say, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, prays.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
So we're asking Mary to pray for us.
Why do we ask the saints to pray for us?
Again, the same reason you ask Joe down the street to pray for you.
We know that the saints are in heaven.
That is what a saint is by definition, is somebody who is in heaven.
And we see in the book of Revelation, we see that the saints are holding pots of prayers as they are before God.
Now, if the saints are holding pots of prayers, What are those prayers for?
Are those prayers for the other saints?
No, the other saints already have it pretty good.
They're already in heaven.
Those are prayers for us, those of us who are not saints yet.
You see in the book of Maccabees, you have people praying for the dead.
So you have an intercessory prayer there as well, praying for the hope of those who have already died but are not yet in heaven, are not yet in paradise.
So that's why.
If Joe down the street is worthy enough to pray for me, certainly the mother of God and the saints in heaven are worthy to pray for me as well.
All right.
Veronica says, Mikey Poo.
Is that a new nickname I'm aware of?
I love it.
That's beautiful.
Mikey Poo.
I am on the university professor track, but I'm really losing hope and ready to burn the system.
Should I change course, stay in it to be a voice of reason, go to a lefty school, please help?
This is such a tough question.
That was like a three in one, but I get all of the, I think the expression and the emotion I get.
I totally get where you're coming from.
I have a lot of friends now who are trying to become professors, who are early in their academic careers, who are getting PhDs, and they all have this problem.
They say the university has been hollowed out from the inside.
So you have two options.
You can either keep your head down, Go along with all the awful pronouns, all the awful revisionism, all the awful political correctness, get tenure, and then be open about your views.
First of all, very difficult to do that on the best of circumstances.
How long do you have to wait for tenure?
For most people, their entire lives and they don't get it.
But for some people, it could be 20 years, 30 years.
So you can either do that or you can say, gosh, the universities are really falling apart.
Even professors with tenure have been chased out of universities.
I know some of them.
And one of the alternatives for them are these institutes.
You know, the Elm Institute in New Haven is one.
There are a lot of think tanks that do summer programs.
I got a lot- Hoover, Claremont.
Hoover, yeah, all of these that are associated with universities but aren't necessarily only employing professors.
That might be the smarter option.
You can do your work there.
You can interact with students.
Some of the classical education I got, such as I got it, was really thanks to summer programs and these research institutes that I would do for two months.
And that would teach me more about our civilization than four years at an elite university.
So maybe that's one way that you can have your cake and eat it too.
You can have your beliefs, you can be open about what you think, you can publish what you want to publish, and you can also have a career in the academy.
I think, increasingly, it's very difficult for conservatives to have a career in the academy.
In large part, not because of the other leftist professors, but because of the administrators.
The administration of Stanford smeared Andrew Klavan yesterday based on nothing.
Said conservatives are not welcome there.
The administration of UMKC in Missouri smeared me as some kind of bigot based on nothing.
Said that conservatives more or less are not welcome there.
I don't want to...
Even Christian universities that you thought were conservative do that to Ben Shapiro.
Was it Gonzaga or one of those?
Gonzaga, GCU, LMU. And that's at ostensibly Christian or conservative universities.
So I don't want to...
Rain on your parade.
I just want you to have a good career.
And so when you look realistically at this, you should consider other options other than the traditional academic route.
Because even if you weren't a conservative, I think because the universities have become so rotted out from the inside, because we're at the height of an education bubble that is going to burst, even if you were a leftist, I would say maybe consider some alternatives in which you might be more successful.
Alright, Rob says, Hello, Your Honor.
Do you believe the abortion controversy is an indication of a larger return to religion?
It is the case that the big divide among abortion is not between men and women.
Men and women have basically the same views about abortion.
It's not even strictly a question of Republican or Democrat.
The biggest predictor is religiosity.
It's not because the science is not on the side of the religious people.
Science is very clear.
The word conception, by definition, means that's when life begins.
It's because we have a view, if you are religious, of human life as intrinsically worthwhile and as intrinsically valuable.
We have a view of the moral law as objectively true and not just some illusion as moral relativists and many on the secular left would say.
So there is a religious component to it.
And I think maybe we're having a return to religion as a culture because we couldn't get more secular.
We've gone so far in the secular direction.
You've got a whole generation of people, millennials, Gen Z, who have been raised more or less without religion.
Even the ones who have been raised with religion have this soft-soap, saccharine, sentimental religion that's not based in real orthodoxy.
And I think what people want when they're asking serious questions I think the reason Jordan Peterson is so popular right now is he's telling people, There's meaning in the world.
There is metaphysical meaning in the world.
And this leads people to a lot of religious questions and ultimately, I think, to an orthodox faith.
They're certainly coinciding, but I don't know if it's the religion leading people back to pro-life.
I think it's people asking basic questions.
If a baby's not a baby, what is it?
If it's wrong to kill a baby, why is it wrong?
Why would it be right?
I think it's actually those questions...
Ultimately leading people back to a religious faith or a quasi-religious faith.
I think also you're seeing a thank God for the advent of modern medicine and the level of detail and the fact that the point of viability now is so young.
Can be 20 weeks.
Can be 20 weeks.
I mean, at 24 weeks, they tell you that there's a 60% chance.
At 28, it jumps up to like 90.
In 31 weeks, heaven forbid I were to go into labor right now, We're good to go.
Missouri just outlawed abortion after eight weeks.
There is a video of a little baby in the womb at eight weeks.
And, you know, it doesn't look exactly like you or me.
It's clearly a baby.
It's got its fingers.
It's got its toes.
It's got its little eyes and its little mouth.
Beating heart.
Yes, it's got a beating heart.
Certainly, it's had a beating heart for at least two weeks by then.
You can tell it's a baby.
You can see that.
And you can't unsee that.
Yeah.
All right.
Veronica wants to know, is there any way that we can convert or cut out squishy conservatives from our group?
Oh, yes.
There have been...
Well, there's a range of squishes.
I mean...
Squishes on different topics.
So what you might think is a squish on one topic, I might think is a squish on another.
Right, right.
But even the squishiness is a little interesting.
I mean, everyone's talking about the abortion debate right now.
I would never call Pat Robertson a squish.
I mean, he's a guy who referred to feminism as an anti-family socialist movement that teaches women to leave their husbands, destroy capitalism, practice witchcraft, and become lesbians.
He's a pretty hardcore guy, and he said this abortion law is too extreme.
Tommy Lauren over at Fox News said this abortion law is too extreme.
I don't like it.
People are going a little squishy on this issue because some think as a matter of prudence that this is not going to succeed at the Supreme Court and it's harder to argue for anti-abortion at the first eight weeks than it is at the back eight weeks.
And some of them actually don't care about abortion at all and they wish we would drop this issue as pro-life conservatives.
Fight the fight.
Fight the fight.
I mean, look, it's all good talk.
You can talk a good pro-life game.
When it comes down to the laws, are you going to support the laws?
Are you going to defend life?
Or are you going to say, well, I didn't really mean that.
I want everybody in the popular culture to like me.
What is it?
I mean, this issue in particular is separating the pro-life wheat from the pro-life chaff.
And that's not to say that we don't need a big tent.
We don't want people from different perspectives to support a conservative agenda.
And the Republican Party in so much as they are conservative.
Don't put the cart before the horse.
Don't compromise on important issues.
If you're not going to back these laws, which are enacting what the pro-life movement has been talking about for decades, then you're just a big fake.
You're a total phony.
So do it.
Put your money where your mouth is or don't.
But don't compromise on an important issue and on a principle.
In the hope of being a little bit more popular among people who aren't going to support you anyway.
I think that's totally putting the cart before the horse.
All right.
Timothy says, Michael from the block.
Lots of new nicknames for you today.
I like it.
All right.
Have you seen the new Tolkien movie?
I think it's supposed to be like the romanticized autobiography.
A biopic of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Yes.
And if so, what are your thoughts about it?
I've heard that it fails to represent how important faith was to him in his life.
I haven't seen the movie, so I can't comment on it.
I've read all the same reviews of it that you have.
J.R.R. Tolkien was probably what...
Who's that comedian who always talks about food?
Oh, Jim Gaffigan.
Jim Gaffigan.
He was the sort of...
He was Catholic.
Yeah.
And has like 5,000 children.
Home birther, by the way.
I believe it.
Well, his wife is, not him.
He jokes that he takes naps.
Right.
J.R.R. Tolkien was the sort of Catholic who Gaffigan would probably refer to as a Shiite Catholic.
I mean, he was pretty hardcore.
He would jokingly refer to C.S. Lewis as his heretic friend because Lewis was an Anglican.
The Catholic faith was central and essential to J.R.R. Tolkien's life.
If the movie isn't Almost entirely about that, then it's probably failed to portray Tolkien's life.
And some of the reviews have said it barely mentions it at all.
Really?
Yeah.
Again, I can't comment on it because I haven't seen it.
But if that's the case, then...
Probably the film is not worth very much as a biographical piece.
So I often have this conversation with friends.
I'm a non-denominational person.
You're a devout Catholic.
I'm practicing.
I'm going to keep on practicing until I get it right.
I don't know.
You guys believe in purgatory, right?
I need a lot of practice is what I need, yeah.
And we often talk amongst family and friends of how don't make, and Drew, Andrew Clavin says this a lot, don't make Christian movies, make movies.
Don't make Christian music, just make good music.
And I wish that something like Hollywood would understand that you can still make a good biopic about someone without it seeming too religious.
Because religion was so important to him, his friendships, his marriage, his writing.
It was a huge part of that.
And there's allegories everywhere in his writing.
How can they not include that?
To just gloss over it really, I think, loses the richness of a beautiful story.
Of course.
I mean, it would be, make a movie about Jerry Falwell, but don't talk about Christianity.
Make a movie about the Pope, but don't talk about Christianity.
Okay, I mean, what's a movie going to be about then?
Hollywood and the left generally prioritize their narrative.
In the JFK movie, They don't talk about how a communist killed the president, which is actually what happened.
They come up with all these conspiracies of Republicans in Texas or whatever.
If the facts don't fit their narrative, they go with the narrative.
But at a certain point, it just becomes ridiculous, and it diminishes the value of the story they're trying to tell.
Samuel says, regarding school choice, are you not worried that private schools will increase their cost of tuition like colleges have when government began to subsidize them?
Not particularly.
I mean, there have been school choice experiments throughout the rest of the world.
Sweden has near perfect school choice.
It's increased the quality of education rather than decreased it.
There are secondary effects to any sort of massive government policy that you are going to see.
But again, this is why school choice is not really a federal policy.
I mean, this is why education is run by the states and should certainly be run by the states.
And it does increase competition.
Obviously, it's being funded in some part by the government.
But you are getting all of these schools to compete against each other for those federal dollars.
So I think rather than lowering standards or increasing price everywhere that we've tried it, you've seen the quality of the education increase dramatically.
Just to use one example, in the state of Florida under Jeb Bush, Florida had ranked number 48th in the nation.
That's bad.
It was awful.
They instituted a ton of school choice, thanks to Betsy DeVos and to Jeb Bush, and they rose up to be within the top ten in the country, in some cases within the top five.
That's the only statistic I need to say we need to try this in all the other laboratories of democracy around the country.
I think the point about competition is so true.
In addition to that, it's not just them competing for federal dollars.
It's parents having that money via vouchers, for example, or tax incentive, tax write-off, that can then empower them to make the best decision for them and their child.
Totally.
I mean, they're even...
I heard Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos talking about education savings accounts.
You know, you have a health savings account.
Why not an education?
Why not an education savings account?
And what that would do is allow you to use...
Maybe you want to spend some money on one course at a community college.
Then you want to take one course at a Catholic school.
Then you want to take one course at a trade school.
And if you don't use all of that money, it can roll over.
If you don't use it by the time you finish high school, it can go toward college.
These are the sort of education reforms that you're really only seeing on the right.
And what is the left offering more of the same?
The guy who was running for governor, Andrew Gillum, governor of Florida, he just got beaten out by Ron DeSantis.
He promised to undo all of those education reforms, send these kids right back down to number 48.
And when you dig into the statistics, when you dig into the actual election numbers, you'll see Ron DeSantis doubled.
The support for a Republican among black women than anyone else.
Why?
Because he was saying, I'll allow your children to have a chance at an education.
This is something that I think that even in leftist socialist California polls incredibly well across the board because you have moms, specifically minority single mothers in this state that of course they want what's best for their child.
And if the government can give them the freedom to choose the best educational future for their kid and help them find a way out, why wouldn't they take it?
I don't know why Republicans don't run on that in states like California.
Yeah, well, when they do run on it, even in left-wing states, they tend to do a lot better than when they don't.
So I think it's a totally winning issue, and I'm not afraid of it at all.
Let's go for it.
Alright, I don't know how to say this.
I guess Freedom Tune?
Danny wants to know if you've seen Freedom Tune's parody of Ben.
It's so great.
I don't think I've seen this.
It's great.
It's Ben's whole family imagined through the lens of Freedom Tunes.
And they all just look and sound exactly like Ben.
Is it the one where they're at the dinner table?
They're at the dinner table.
I will tell you, I mean, I know Ben for years and his family.
Completely accurate, right?
I mean, you know that you've seen it.
It's completely, even down to the little baby, just like, goo goo ga ga.
Facts don't care about your feelings.
It's just completely spot on.
The baby that speaks like five languages.
Everyone in that family.
This is where, you know, Ben and I often joke that our oldest, his will take over the world and mine will run the PR for it.
Because, like, genetics matter.
Yeah, right.
And everyone in the Shapiro household is just a genius.
All of the siblings, the parents.
Speaking fast, mind moving a mile a minute.
The kids, the in-laws, it's not fair.
Right.
It's, you know...
It's great.
We're feeding into the conspiracy theory that they control the world, but...
That's true, but only the Shapiros.
Only the Shapiros, right?
Veronica says, Knowles, why don't Republicans have any cojones to get things done?
Like you said, they're often disappointments to conservatives.
What's wrong?
Are they really not conservatives at heart?
Also, are your glasses from Moore v.
Parker...
You're not only an astute observer of politics, you're an astute observer of aesthetics as well.
Fashion.
They are.
I actually, I was on Fox and Friends one morning, and Steve Doocy comes out.
He's got his, like, zillion-dollar wardrobe on, and he comes up, he goes, Hey, Knowles, Warby Parker, 100 bucks, aren't they great?
I said, Oh, man, that is perfect.
On to your actual question about Republicans being squishes.
Yeah, it's very frustrating.
The reason that this happens to a lot of Republicans is because Their currency, the thing they want, the thing that gives them value, is votes.
It's not ideological purity.
It's not accomplishing the agenda they set out to accomplish.
It's not making conservatives happy.
It's votes.
It's getting votes.
And people who are elected to high offices are really, really, really good at getting votes.
And to get votes, you don't need to be right.
You just have to be popular.
And so there's that...
There is a huge incentive among Republicans to do that.
Some Republicans hate conservatives.
I've met a number of them.
They feel much more comfortable with Democrats and left-wingers than they do with conservatives.
Like John McCain called conservatives wacko birds, remember that?
Nuts, lunatics, that sort of thing.
They would feel much better at a cocktail party in D.C. with Democrats, even though the Democrats want to raise taxes and they want to lower taxes.
Thank you.
Ultimately, they feel much more comfortable with them than with conservatives.
It's like they're embarrassed of us.
The conservatives are good enough to get them elected, but then they don't want to talk to them.
It's so, oh, I want to hang out with my new cool friends who are all Democrats.
I don't want to be seen with you weird, loser conservatives.
That's very frustrating, and the way that conservatives fight that is to not take it, you know?
I mean, on these big issues, like the abortion issue, which we're all dealing with all week in all of these states across the country, Say the truth.
Say the truth fearlessly.
Hold people in your own party to account.
And if they go squishy, throw them out.
Throw them out of office.
I mean, it does us no good to have a Republican in name only in the legislature or in an executive role.
Don't you feel like that's kind of a rhino is less likely now, though I think partly since the Tea Party movement, but also in the age of Trump, that you're not getting people that are as squishy?
Yeah.
And the beauty of our system is that they are supposed to or typically represent their constituency?
Well, this is something that Trump really has changed for the better, which is that before Donald Trump, people would go on stage Typical politicians, even politicians that I like, and they would say something, and you would know that it wasn't true.
They would promise something that you know is never going to come to pass.
But you know that it means something else.
Here's an example.
Every politician of both parties would say, we need to move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
That was back when both parties liked Israel.
Now the Democrats don't like Israel, so they stopped saying that.
But the Republicans kept saying that.
But we still thought there's no way that anyone does it.
So Trump, he's kind of new to the political scene.
He comes up, he says, yeah, we're going to move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Then he gets in office.
What does he do?
He moves the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
And everyone loses their minds.
Republicans as well.
He says, you're not supposed to do that.
He says, what are you...
Everybody, it's been the official policy of the United States since 1995.
Everybody was just saying it, now I do it and you're all mad at me.
Yeah, you're supposed to say it, but you're not supposed to do it.
I think what Trump has shown us is voters will reward authenticity.
Even Donald Trump has a checkered past in his personal life, to put it mildly.
But he's pretty authentic about it.
He doesn't really cover it up.
It's been in the tabloids since the 1980s.
And he's kept more of his promises than any president in my lifetime for all of his craziness.
And I think that has opened up the window for discussion and shown conservatives, hey, you can say what you mean, you can then do what you said that you would do, and voters will reward you for that.
That's a great change, and I hope that it continues after Trump.
Alrighty.
Please remember, we're almost halfway through, so if you want to ask Michael a question, you need to head over to dailywire.com and make sure that you're a subscriber because our conversation is live for everyone to watch.
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Telegraph.
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Click on the link in our video description to ask questions or sign up.
And be sure to tune in for next month's episode featuring New York Times number one best-selling author of The Right Side of History, Ben Shapiro.
Featuring another number one best-selling author.
Oh.
Were you number one, though?
Number one, baby.
On the Times list?
Oh, no.
The Times threw me out.
The Times, I don't even want to talk about the Times.
And I hear I thought the great lady had lost their good reputation.
Brutal.
All right.
Jacob says, MB, what chances do you think there are of an overturning of Roe v.
Wade, if any?
I think it's a non-zero chance.
I think there is a chance of overturning Roe v.
Wade.
I think it's the best chance we've had since Roe v.
Wade.
I'm not holding my breath.
I think that the court under John Roberts is interested in maintaining its integrity, which ironically means not having any integrity.
The Supreme Court watches the election returns, and John Roberts has shown himself to be a highly...
Political Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
I'm not holding my breath, but I have hope.
I'm not optimistic.
I'm not pessimistic.
I have hope.
They say the difference between a Scottish optimist and a Scottish pessimist.
Scottish pessimist says things can't get any worse.
Scottish optimist says things can get worse.
I promise you that optimism and pessimism are two sides of the same coin.
I have hope even if they don't overturn Roe v.
Wade.
We're not going anywhere.
They thought that they ended the abortion discussion in 1973.
America is much more pro-life now than it was in 1973.
So, fine.
Do your worst.
I hope the Supreme Court has integrity and overturns the worst decision in American history, Roe v.
Wade.
And if they don't, alright, see you next time, guys.
That optimism versus pessimism argument is something that Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro often have.
Do they?
Yeah.
It's funny.
I actually have a third view on optimism and pessimism because they're both just feelings, right?
Optimism and pessimism say, forget the circumstances.
I'm only going to...
Have this feeling all the time.
But I think real hope is the knowledge that things are going to keep getting worse.
Things are going to keep just getting worse and worse and worse.
So you're a pessimistic optimist?
In a sense, yeah.
Prager, I think, says he's an optimistic pessimist.
Yeah.
The reason I feel that way is I know that eventually this old world is going to stop spinning.
The sun is going to go out.
I'm going to turn to worm food.
But hey, my savior lives.
I can have hope in that.
Alrighty.
CJ says, I struggle with the idea of making a woman carry a rape baby to term because in this case her rights have been violated versus in a regular pregnancy where the parents should just take responsibility.
What are your thoughts?
This is obviously the hard case.
Which is less than 1% of cases.
It's rape and incest.
In the case of rape, it's probably less than half of 1%.
And in rape, incest, or threat to the life of the mother, all three of those combined are less than 1%.
So I do think the left-wingers who are using this example are disingenuous.
Oh, they shout it from the rooftop.
Yeah, I think they're being very disingenuous here.
But let's consider that actual case.
In the case of rape, yeah, that's a horrible crime.
The crime is the rape.
And so the way to get justice for that rape is to punish the rapist.
Now, Matt Walsh made this argument.
He said, you know, rapists love abortion because abortion gets rid of the evidence of the crime.
Mm-hmm.
Alabama, coincidentally, which passed this abortion law, has some of the toughest rape laws in the country.
I'm perfectly fine with capital punishment for rape.
If I were king, I would institute it.
I'm not king, and around the country we do have tough laws on rape.
In that case, however...
The baby's the baby.
The logic of pro-life is that a baby is a baby, and you can't kill babies who are innocent.
Now, this extends even to that point, although I will make just a prudential observation here.
If somebody is raped, they go to the hospital and they deal with all of that, collect evidence, that sort of thing.
They can take Plan B. I'm not advocating the use of Plan B. However, there are drugs that are not necessarily abortifacients, though they can act as abortifacients, that people can take in that case that will make surgical abortion completely unnecessary.
You may have your own thoughts on Plan B. My faith tells me Plan B is not morally licit.
However, Even in the hard case of rape, which accounts for less than half of 1% of abortions, there are many alternatives to surgical abortion.
And I think the people who are using the case of rape to make the point that we actually should kill a million babies a year, statistically none of whom are conceived via rape, I think they are being totally disingenuous.
And the final point on this, of course, is that hard cases make bad law.
These very difficult, rare cases make for bad law because what they're trying to argue is that because of one possible reaction to a very rare occurrence, therefore we need to kill a million babies a year.
That logic doesn't hold up.
All right.
Nick has a question.
He wants to know if the abortion debate is more about how to define human life and personhood, do you believe it's possible to have a conversation on the national level with something this complex?
At the moment, it's very difficult to have that conversation because our moral discourse has been totally degraded.
and it's been degraded by creeping materialism and relativism among the population.
So now we can't even talk about things like virtue or purity or-- - You get accused of being an old fogey.
Yeah, you get accused of being delusional.
You right-wing religious man trying to tell me what to do with my body.
And people who say it's your truth and it's my truth and you can't tell me.
Someone about the abortion debate tweeted out, they said, you can't legislate how other people live.
That is the definition of the law.
The law tells other people how to live.
But we can't have that discussion.
And it's no coincidence.
The law even tells other people what to do with their children.
Right.
This is an argument I've been having with feminists online all day.
There's a reason DSS and CPS and truancy officers and law enforcement exist.
Exactly.
Because if you're a you-know-what parent, You lose your kid.
Exactly.
It is no coincidence that as we've lost the ability to have moral discourse in this country, abortion has become more rampant.
If you're asking about when human life begins, we know.
We know for a fact when human life begins.
It doesn't happen before fertilization.
A sperm cell is a sperm cell.
It has 23 chromosomes.
You leave it be, it's going to be a sperm cell and that's going to die.
An egg has 23 chromosomes.
If you leave it be, it's going to be an egg and it's going to die.
When you combine the two, when the sperm fertilizes the egg, you get a new human being with 46 chromosomes That will grow and become just as recognizable as you or me or our grandparents are.
That becomes a new, separate, individual human being.
That's where human life begins.
We know it's a life.
From the moment of conception, it meets every scientific characteristic of life.
We know it's human because it's not a dog and it's not a kitten and it's not a giraffe.
It's a human life.
That is when that begins.
And if you want to have then the more philosophical or theological conversation of personhood or ensoulment, we at least have to first agree on what human life is.
And unfortunately, the pro-abortion crowd is unwilling to do or unable to do even that.
But I think common sense is spreading around this country.
I mean, Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, Louisiana, you've got all of these laws challenging abortion directly.
Ernest Hemingway described bankruptcy as it happens gradually, then suddenly.
And the pro-life movement has happened gradually, now it's happening suddenly.
And I think maybe people are waking up, if not to moral discourse, at least to the total insufficiency of the way we talk about these issues now.
All right.
This is a funny question.
I don't think it's PC to say this, but I guess I'm just going to go ahead and say it anyway.
Okay.
Veronica wants to know if you have a perspective on whether or not gingers have souls.
Oh, it's very clear that they do not have souls.
This has been proven time and time again.
Obviously...
Are there no, like, red-headed saints?
The...
I wonder...
Well, St.
Patrick is actually often depicted as red-headed because he was from Ireland.
But he wasn't from Ireland.
I thought he was British and he went to Ireland to minister.
Well, he's Roman.
He's a Roman citizen.
And so he's like...
I picture him as just like a big Italian guy with a big nose and beard, you know.
I don't know if there are any redheaded saints.
I mean, that's a real question for the theologians and the historians.
But it is a fact of natural law.
I think, I'm pretty sure this was proved by Thomas Aquinas that redheads do not, in fact, have souls.
What about strawberry blondes?
Oh, strawberry blondes.
Okay.
Because I have one of those.
That's true.
Go home and tell her.
Sorry.
You're lucky she's got a soul.
Uncle Michael says you don't have a soul.
20 months old.
Ma, no.
All right.
Rob says, dear Mr.
Know-it-alls.
Oh, I like what he did there.
You see that?
Yeah, see that right there.
Know-it-alls.
Uh-huh.
Do you agree with Ben regarding the fact that Alabama went too far with their abortion prohibition?
No.
No, I don't.
I think it's a terrific law.
I totally support it.
By the way, I don't think Ben is making the argument that it's too far because of the moral.
I think his point is it's going to be overturned by the court.
Yeah, I think he's making a political argument or an argument from prudence.
So I do respect the argument, but I don't agree with it.
I think fight the fight.
The time is now.
This is the pro-life moment.
And coincidentally, we happen to be right.
All right.
Arun wants to know, Dr.
Kofefe, what do you think about judicial review more generally?
Do the courts have the power to make nationwide injunctions on abortion, marriage?
I mean, we could even go into some of the EPA decisions that they've made, or the Hobby Lobby case, for example.
Or the EPA decisions that they don't make.
Unfortunately, one of the great hopes I have for Justice Kavanaugh is that he will upend the administrative state because of a very awful Supreme Court decision that In the Chevron case, Chevron deference, the idea that courts will defer to the administrative agencies to make their own rules and to adjudicate their own rules, which is an awful idea.
Mark Levin, though, isn't hopeful that he's going to do that, though.
I heard him talking about this last night.
He's a little more pessimistic than I am.
But, I mean, sure, no one can predict the future.
We don't know how it's going to go.
But the two questions that were asked are different questions.
One is, what do you think of judicial review, I think?
It's been a principle since the earliest days of the country, since the Marshall Court, that the court has the ability and the right to interpret the Constitution and invalidate statutes that violate the Constitution.
So I'm fine with judicial review, but the court does not have a right to invent a right to abortion.
The court does not have the right to redefine marriage, as Anthony Kennedy did in the Obergefell case.
Those are very different questions, and the court has...
Utterly overstepped its bounds, even in recent years, thanks to guys like Anthony Kennedy.
And I wish that the court would step back and realize that the United States was meant to govern herself and not be governed by nine robed lawyers who have appointed themselves the benevolent betters for the whole country.
But hope springs eternal in the human breast.
I don't think that's really going to happen.
Actually, again, when I saw Scalia before he died, we said, what about states' rights?
What about returning power to the people?
And he said, you're barking up the wrong tree.
I'm a Fed.
You've given us all of your power.
You gave up direct election of senators.
You've given the Feds all your power.
So even if I were intellectually inclined, I have no political reason to do so, and that's a problem of ceding power to the federal government, to the courts for over a century.
All right.
David says, Michael, what cigars and whiskey would you recommend for a newbie?
Oh, I mean, you're asking me to pick between my children.
How could I possibly...
Look, you can get a good cigar for under $10.
Really?
Yeah, you don't need to spend $30 or $40 on a cigar.
You can.
You can spend a lot more than that.
But there are great cigars that you can get for $10.
Anything by Don Pepin.
My Father's cigars are great.
Oliva cigars are really good for beginners.
Mm-hmm.
A bunch of other lines that are really good.
But those two are kind of cheap and good ways to start.
And then for whiskey, can't beat Johnny Walker Black.
As Christopher Hitchens explained, the preferred whiskey of the Iraqi Baath Party, the Palestine Liberation Organization, part of the Saudi royal family, the Libyan dictatorship before they were ousted, some of the worst people on earth.
Also, Winston Churchill.
Johnny Walker Black label.
Fabulous way to begin and not too expensive to Alrighty, good to know.
Is whiskey kind of like wine?
That there's wine for all different sorts of palates?
Like, is there whiskey?
Are there whiskey and cigars for all different palates and occasions?
Yeah, so some, like, Johnny Black is really good for cigars.
It's actually a great match for cigars.
Others, when I go out with Drew, he insists on McAllen 12.
That's also a good one to begin with, too.
Yeah, he and the God King really like McAllen 12.
Oh, yeah.
And the God King actually loves Irish whiskey probably the most.
That super-aged Irish whiskey.
We spend about the same amount on whiskey per year, Jeremy and I. It's just that Jeremy buys one very expensive bottle, and I buy dozens of cheap bottles.
But, yeah, there are some for all different occasions.
But, yeah, I would recommend Don Pepin and Johnny Black as a good way to introduce yourself to one of the great pleasures.
Freshman levels.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, there are so many...
You know, these are the great pleasures of life.
They make life really enjoyable.
And there's a great poem about it.
Tobacco is a dirty weed.
I like it.
It satisfies no normal need.
I like it.
It makes you thin.
It makes you lean.
It takes the hair right off your bean.
It's the worst damn stuff I've ever seen.
I like it.
Your ability to remember random, like...
Totally useless.
I mean, I wish I had your memory.
Takes a lifetime.
Like, your memorization skills.
A lifetime of, like, all 28 years.
So, true or false?
I feel like whiskey can be enjoyed without a cigar, but can a cigar be enjoyed without a drink?
Yes, but it's much more difficult.
Okay.
You can enjoy a cigar with a Coca-Cola.
You can enjoy a cigar with even a glass of water.
It's a little more, especially if you haven't spent, I mean, I've smoked cigars now for 15, 14 years or something like that, and I'm like 12 years old, so that's a lot.
But if you're not used to it, it's a little harsh.
You might want a little bit.
And the drink kind of balances it out.
Yeah, whereas for scotch, I mean, scotch goes great, you know, nice first thing in the morning, open your eyes up, get you ready for a working day at the Daily Wire.
A little bit in the coffee.
A little bit in the leftist tears tumbler, that's right.
Is that why my water tastes?
No, I'm kidding.
All right.
Next question.
Knowles, explain all of these extra books that you Catholics have.
Oh, well, I wrote a lot of them myself.
What you're referring to is that the Catholic Bible includes more books than various Protestant Bibles.
Believe it or not, I've read them.
Yeah, that's pretty good to read them.
I will just correct you, though, a little bit on the extra books.
The Catholic Church existed before the Protestant churches, so it actually was a question of removing books from the Bible.
Anybody who tells you that he can interpret all the books of the Bible is selling you a bill of lies.
I mean, especially when people tell you they can interpret Revelation.
Oh, man.
When you brought up Revelation earlier, I was like, mm-hmm.
And what are you going to say about it?
Go on.
Yeah, give me your insight into the apocalypse.
But I recommend reading them.
I mean, I recommend, even if you're a Protestant or any denomination that you are, You really should know the history of the church, and not just CliffsNotes' history.
You should really delve into it.
I mean, Martin Luther knew the history of his church.
John Calvin knew the history of his church.
Zwingli knew the history of his church.
So you should know that too, and you shouldn't just settle for some...
Series of ideology that you've been given from the CliffsNotes version.
You should really delve into it.
You should know the hymns.
You should read the Church Fathers.
You should read the books of the Bible that various people like Martin Luther decided they want to take out.
You should know why they wanted to take those books of the Bible out.
You should know why certain lines of the Bible were changed in the 16th or 17th century.
I mean, you should know those reasons and you should defend those reasons if it's part of your faith and if you are convinced by it.
And if not, then maybe look at a different denomination.
You should know the difference between the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Church and the Anglican and all of those.
I mean, regardless of what tradition you come from, even within the term of Christianity, learning about all of the others will inform your faith.
I mean, you have nothing to lose but ignorance.
I really would love to see you and Allie Stuckey have a conversation about faith.
We do it every time she comes to town.
But off-air, I want to see an on-air conversation because she's obviously a Calvinist.
She's a real Calvinist.
And she's a hardcore Calvinist.
And then you, being a practicing Catholic, I want to be a fly on the wall.
I know, it's great because she's such a bulldog too.
I always love doing it.
We'll have to get her on the show or something.
Yeah.
That'd be fun.
Yeah.
All right.
Anthony says, who do you believe will be the first Democrat to drop out of the presidential race?
Keep in mind the forgettable ones like Julian Castro or Kirsten Gillibrand.
Forget Castro and Gillibrand.
What about Jay Inslee?
You remember him?
He's the guy whose logo looks like a CD-ROM from the 1990s.
Bill de Blasio, my former Bolshevik mayor from New York, just got into the race.
I mean, he's not polling.
Eric Swalwell is not showing up in polls right now, which is really sad for me because Eric Swalwell said, I am you, so I am Eric Swalwell, which means I'll be the first to lose.
But you will too, I guess, and so will all of you.
I mean, once you hit the debate, it's going to thin out pretty quickly.
And it's not going to be just one person dropping out.
You're going to lose a number of people.
We're now up to 23 candidates in this race.
And if you're not registering in polls, you're not going to get onto the debate stage.
If you're not on the debate stage, you're not going to raise any money whatsoever.
And you're going to have to get out then.
But I think, I mean, obviously, Inslee, Hickenlooper's probably not going anywhere.
I forgot about that one.
I know.
There's so many that you just don't even remember are running.
I feel like, I mean, de Blasio actually had people booing him outside of GMA today.
People were standing outside of GMA booing him.
People hate that guy.
He's done such a crappy job with New York.
I wonder if he's going to be one of the first people out because he's going to think that he has the name recognition and support there.
But he really don't.
Oh, he doesn't.
And I will say, it's not an ideological thing.
New Yorkers hate Bill de Blasio.
Yeah.
I mean, the Democrats really wanted to replace him.
Did you ever watch a show called The Mindy Project?
Never in my life.
Like, Mindy Kaling, who I feel like, even though she's a liberal, we'd be BFFs in real life.
I'm just throwing that out, Mindy.
If you're nearby, like, we can be friends.
She watches this show all the time.
I'm totally sure she watches the Michael Knowles show.
She would rip on de Blasio in that show all the time.
And she's like a liberal feminist.
That's right.
New Yorkers hate him.
Yeah, they don't like him.
Yeah, he's probably not going very far.
My guess, I was asked this to the great students at Turning Point USA at Augustana.
I heard that we've been saying it wrong, by the way.
Augustana.
Augustana is how you're supposed to say it.
I was like, sorry guys, I think it's going to be Klobuchar.
Oh, I forgot she was in it, too.
I kind of like her because she's tough.
Her town halls have been horrible, though.
Yeah, she's a bad candidate.
I mean, she did the Jeb Bush move.
She did the please clap move.
That's never a good one.
I do like that she throws office furniture at her staffers.
I mean, that's pretty tough, but yeah, she's probably not long for this race.
Zarek.
Like Derek Zoolander, but combined.
It's a good name.
Dear Swarthy Lad, oh God, can you think of a greater power disparity than an abortion doctor and a child still in the womb?
If not, is this just a great evil by the standards of the left?
Of course, we never talk about how oppressed...
the little baby in the womb is.
We talk about the marginalized.
We talk about the disadvantaged, the people who don't have any privilege.
Is anybody more vulnerable, disadvantaged, marginalized and oppressed than an unborn baby?
Matt Walsh took to calling them undocumented infants who are trying to cross over the wall of the birth canal in search of a better life.
The left probably should use those terms.
There's a great essay that was just published, actually in the Yale Daily News, it was by an undergraduate guy who said, abortion is not mercy.
And he said, we talk about how we don't want to bring unloved babies into the world, and they're going to Grow up in poverty and have suffering.
It's better to kill them.
He said, I'm one of those babies.
I never knew my father.
My mother was a complete mess.
I grew up on couches and I grew up on the street and in motels.
I was in foster care.
I dealt with abuse.
I went hungry a lot.
I had a bad upbringing.
And all my foster care brothers and sisters had bad upbringings.
And they were abused physically, sexually, emotionally.
Really awful stuff.
And we're glad we're alive.
Because you endure that suffering.
And you also get the joys of life.
And all that suffering makes joy that much sweeter.
And all that suffering makes the joy that you can give to other people that much sweeter.
And when the people make the argument, oh, the kid's going to be born poor, he's going to suffer, he's going to be unloved, you're making the case that you should eliminate poverty by killing poor people.
You're making the case that you can erase the poor of this.
I mean, there's...
It's the most heinous argument that anybody seriously makes in politics.
I encourage you to read this.
It's called Abortion is Not Mercy.
It's in the Yale Daily News.
I wish the left would read those stories because they talk out of one side of their mouth and they say, these are the people we've got to help.
And then out of the other side they say, we're going to help them by killing them.
They've got the knife right behind their backs.
BJ says, I recently had a discussion with a liberal regarding morality.
She believes that morality is all relative.
Sounds a lot like AOC. And it can be determined by society.
What is the most convincing argument for moral absolutes?
Morality, by definition, is objective.
That's why there's no such thing as morality if morality is relative or subjective.
If morality were subjective, it would just be preferences, right?
It would be preferences that you and I agree to, and then we create the social construction called morality.
But then if we agree that it's wrong to murder somebody, it's not objectively wrong, right?
We've just subjectively sort of agreed that we would prefer if we all pretend that it's bad to murder somebody.
This is refuted, by the way, by all of history and anthropology, right?
People all over the world at all eras have intuited, naturally intuited, a very similar idea of an objective morality.
But even if that were not the case, if we just all said, okay, it's not objectively true, then what you're really saying is there is no such thing as morality.
And if you behave as though there is, You're a gullible fool.
You're not making a lot of sense.
If you follow that idea to its logical conclusion, there really is no morality.
It's just a total illusion that a bunch of people who believe a fairy tale have convinced themselves of.
You should read the Marquis de Sade, the guy that we get the word sadism from.
He wrote a book which is pornography and philosophy.
It's called 120 Days of Sodom.
And it shows you a world without objective morality where you would actually follow your own desires because in a world without objective morality, your pain is not more important than my pleasure.
And if that is the case, then you get sadists.
You get the behaviors of psychopaths.
But we're not a psychopathic society, at least not just yet.
We have a conscience.
We have a moral intuition.
We know that there is an objective moral law, and we know just about what it is.
That's objectively true.
And the people who pretend that there isn't, I notice they very rarely live as though there is not an objective moral law.
All right.
Rob says, can a cis man feel like a lesbian trapped in a man's body?
Every day of my life.
Every day of my life I do.
Thank you for understanding my suffering and not erasing the suffering that I, a lesbian trapped inside a cis male body, face every day.
So I read a horrific story, but it was so Brave New World to me, about a...
Person that was transitioning that identified as male.
The government had male on his ID. But it's a her.
And it was a pregnant man, according to this AP story, that ended up dying during a stillbirth because the medical, the nurses and the doctors looked at the medical records that showed male and were testing for things that were not a pregnancy gone wrong.
Right, yeah.
You never hear those stories in the mainstream media, do you?
It's horrifying.
Because men can't be pregnant, right?
I mean, now people pretend they can.
There's no such thing as transitioning.
You can mutilate your body or shoot yourself with hormones or pretend that you're a different sex.
There is no actual such thing as transitioning.
But now, the old surgery that makes you more resemble the other sex used to be called gender reassignment surgery.
Now, do you know what it's called?
Gender confirmation surgery.
Which is the opposite.
Now, if you call a man who thinks he's a woman, if you refer to him as a man, you're accused of misgendering.
Uh-huh.
The only person misgendering is the person who pretends that the man is really a woman.
So what if I don't have the gender confirmation surgery?
How can I confirm that I'm actually a woman?
How do I know that you're actually a woman?
Well...
Well, but I could be...
But these days, I know, it's very confusing.
I can't think about this.
I could be the first pregnant man.
Remember that?
The first pregnant man, and he was on with Barbara Walters, and 60 Minutes, and The Pew.
Yeah, where's your 60 Minutes spread?
Yeah.
That's right.
The second pregnant man.
There he is.
Arun, Dr.
Kofefe, my family are Trump supporters, but are souring to the president because he didn't build the wall.
How common do you think this is?
And could Trump lose in 2020 due to not building the wall?
Absolutely he could.
He lost his biggest supporter, Ann Coulter.
I mean, Ann Coulter said, build the wall.
Come on, Donald.
And he didn't do it.
He's got to build the wall.
He says that he's doing it.
He's talking a good game.
I know it's very hard to do it.
I sympathize.
I feel bad for him.
Do you think it's really, it's not his fault that the wall hasn't been built?
Well, it's his fault in so much as the buck stops with the president.
I think it's practically impossible to build the wall.
I don't think it's for lack of trying.
And make Mexico pay for it, or just the first part?
Well, you know, look, money's fungible, and Mexico, like...
We are the dominant partner in our trade relationship with Mexico, so we can squeeze some money out of them, no question.
But the, and I think it's, look, it's obviously in his interest to build the wall.
I think he wants to.
He would win re-election instantly if he did it.
It's very difficult.
But, you know, yeah, that's difficult.
Being president is tough.
They have said there's some immigration announcements that will be coming out of the White House.
Knock on wood.
So we'll see.
This is our last question.
Can you believe it?
Gosh.
Thank God we made it, honey.
A whole hour.
Okay, last question comes from Matthew.
But this is an ode to your new Twitter handle.
Former Zygote.
Is it Zygote?
Zygote.
I'm a former Zygote.
Former Zygote Michael Knowles.
That's me.
I'm looking to get involved in pro-life causes, and I live in Maine.
My wife has told me she wants to go to a rally.
Do you know of any based in New England this summer?
I don't know of any off the top of my head, but the pro-life movement is everywhere.
So there are great places to check out for resources on this.
You might already know them, but Live Action is a great one.
That's Lila Rose's outfit.
They do great work.
All of the Catholic websites are big on pro-life.
Relevant Radio is another great one.
Patrick Madrid, who does a terrific show.
Patrick Coffin.
These guys are talking about it.
So you can go to their resources and find them.
Susan B. Anthony List is another one.
I mean, there are so many...
Human Coalition.
Human Coalition.
I mean, so that would be the first place that I would start because they post a lot of information about how to get involved with pro-life.
So I would definitely start there because you, like me, are a former zygote.
And when people use, they use this word, zygote.
Zygote means the baby right when he's been formed, right when he's conceived.
And it's the kind of word that you learn in seventh grade biology class.
And people who use it with a straight face in conversation later on, you know that they never intellectually progressed beyond seventh grade biology class.
So I think we all just need to point out, I am a former zygote, you are a former zygote, and all of those abortion supporters, the curious thing about them, I've noticed this, just like Ronald Reagan noticed it.
They've all already been born.
Hmm.
Strange coincidence, huh?
Absolutely.
Thank you for this month's episode of The Conversation.
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