New polling from the NYT suggests that Democrats have been living in a progressive fantasy world if they believe that they’re likely to defeat President Trump in 2020, which makes sense if they believe other fantasies like the narrative that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. We will examine how the Left can be so gullible when nobody believes the press. Then, an ex-Evangelical pastor who left his church, family, and faith is lecturing Evangelicals on how they’re ruining Christianity. Finally, the Mayor of Tent City Los Angeles claims, with a straight face, that LA is the model city for dealing with homelessness. Date: 11-05-2019
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New polling from the New York Times, of all places, suggests the Democrats have been living in a progressive fantasy world if they believe that they are likely to defeat President Trump in 2020, which makes sense if Democrats believe other fantasies, like the narrative that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.
We will examine how the left can be so gullible When nobody believes the press.
Then an ex-evangelical pastor who left his church, family, and faith is lecturing evangelicals on how they're ruining Christianity.
Finally, the mayor of Tent City, Los Angeles, claims with a straight face that LA is the model city for dealing with homelessness.
All that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
LA is the model city for dealing with homelessness just like Krispy Kreme is the model company for dealing with obesity.
We'll get to that.
Unbelievable that they can say this.
That's the whole theme.
People say with a straight face, narratives and storylines that nobody actually believes.
Beginning with probably the biggest storyline...
The most ridiculous narrative, the craziest, wildest conspiracy theory of the last several years.
The idea that Jeffrey Epstein was just like randomly permitted to kill himself.
Nobody actually believes that, right?
There is a former Navy SEAL who went on Jesse Waters' show on Fox News, and he was talking about military dogs because of the story of Conan, that dog who chased down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
So it's a completely...
Nice, normal segment about military dogs.
And then at the end, he just sneaks in a little bit of a fact and a little bit of a meme, which is that Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
Well, thank you for training Nero, who's to your left there, and I'm sure he's ready to go out on the next mission, and he can't wait.
So thank you and thank Nero for your service.
I appreciate it.
Absolutely.
If I could, could I throw a PSA out real quick?
Real quick.
Just the remarkable nature of these dogs and them being highlighted in the news creates a huge demand by people that frankly shouldn't have them.
If you see the coverage and you decide, I want one of these dogs, either buy a fully trained and finished dog from a professional or just don't get one at all.
Epstein didn't kill himself.
All right.
Okay.
Thank you for that commentary.
All right.
Just the greatest Fox News guest in all of history.
I say this with no false modesty.
I've been a guest on Fox News 100 times and probably closer to 200 times.
This man is the greatest Fox News guest ever.
I bow down to you, sir.
Really, really well done.
Totally straight face.
And then he slips in this line.
Also, Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
What he's saying is not just something that we all believe to be true.
He's saying an internet meme.
This has become a meme to just give a narrative, state a number of random facts, maybe historical facts, and then at the end...
As a non-sequitur say, also Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
Or even you try to fit it in so you can tie it in.
For instance, yesterday I tweeted out, I said, On this day 608 years ago, Khalil Sultan, the Timurid ruler of Transoxiana, died at the age of 27.
Shortly thereafter, his wife committed suicide, which distinguishes her from Jeffrey Epstein, who did not kill herself.
This has been going around the internet for several days now, and it's not just that it's very funny, it's that These memes do tell us something about the culture and the media.
So, another one that was going around.
Oh, I also tweeted out.
I said, L is for the way you look at me.
O is for the only one I see.
V is very, very extraordinary.
E is for the fact that Epstein didn't kill himself.
Another one was just a block of text.
It said, if I have to see one more Jeffrey Epstein meme, I'm literally going to kill myself.
Unlike Epstein, who was obviously murdered.
Another one.
Fun fact.
The topaz hummingbird is the smallest bird in the world.
Even though it has the smallest bird brain in existence, it knows that Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
And then this one might be my favorite.
The babirusa is a wild pig whose tusks can grow so long they curve backwards, ultimately impaling their skulls and accidentally killing them, unlike Jeffrey Epstein, who was killed on purpose.
Why are the memes so popular?
Why did this guy go on Fox News and put that in at the end of his segment?
Two reasons.
There are exactly two reasons for this.
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Why are the Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself memes so popular?
Two reasons.
One, we can't trust the mainstream media.
Two, we can't trust the mainstream media.
Those are the two reasons.
They're actually different.
What do I mean?
the media tell us that it was a suicide.
We know that the media are in bed with politicians.
We know that the media are in bed with some of Jeffrey Epstein's clients and staff members.
We know that corporate interests play a role in the media as well.
We know that the mainstream media have abdicated their duty as journalists, and so we can't rely on them to tell the truth.
Actually, James O'Keefe just showed this today in a breaking story about Jeffrey Epstein.
We'll get to that in one second.
So the first reason is we can't trust the mainstream media to give us the straight news.
The other reason that the memes are popular is that we can't trust the mainstream media and therefore we need to turn to memes because memes beat the mainstream media.
Memes beat the mainstream media because they're a way to spread information outside the traditional bounds of the traditional press.
This was hugely effective in 2016.
President Trump was the meme king.
He didn't start this.
Because he's a product of the popular culture, because he's extraordinarily good at manipulating the media, he became part of this organic grassroots media campaign that used internet memes.
Elizabeth Warren right now is trying to capture this same thing and it's not working.
She's got her own meme team.
It's not going to work.
Never going to work.
She's not built for memes.
Why not?
Because the mainstream media love Elizabeth Warren.
The whole thing about memes is they've got to be countercultural.
The whole thing about counterculture is it's got to constantly use changing lingo.
It's got to be subversive.
It has to be unapproved.
It can't be the main storyline being pushed by the media.
Liz Warren has cheerleaders everywhere from the major news outlets all the way to Saturday Night Live.
So the memes are never going to catch on for her, but they will for Donald Trump.
This was a major joke in 2016, is you had this comparison.
I had an image of CNN or, you know, the kind of corporate media.
And it said, who do you think would win in a fight?
The establishment, press, deep state, federal bureaucracy, international corporate interests?
And it had a photo of Alex Jones, it said.
Or a shirtless vitamin salesman screaming on the radio.
And it turns out Alex Jones, because Trump won and Jones was considered one of the deplorable people who was backing Donald Trump.
And that's hilarious.
And that actually became a meme in and of itself.
The memes are not just for entertainment.
The memes are actually an effective way to spread information and to subvert a mainstream media that is totally corrupt.
I did a speech for YAF at USC, this was probably a month or so ago, called The Mainstream Media are Fake News.
I just outlined, very briefly, Some of the connections between the press and the Democratic Party and the mainstream left and the deep state and the bureaucracy and the government.
The speech was like 40 minutes long and I didn't even come close to describing all of the connections.
It is totally corrupted from within.
Now, James O'Keefe, investigative independent journalist, actually has some new recordings on the Epstein affair.
He got a hot mic.
From ABC News anchor Amy Robach, who was describing how for three years she tried to report on the Epstein story.
She had information on it, and her bosses at ABC News killed the story.
I've had the story for three years.
I've had this interview with Virginia Roberts.
We would not put it on the air.
First of all, I was told, who's Jeffrey Epstein?
No one knows who that is.
This is a stupid story.
Then the palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways.
We were so afraid we wouldn't be able to interview Kate and Will.
That also quashed the story.
And then Alan Dershowitz was also implicated in it because of the planes.
She told me everything.
She had pictures.
She had everything.
She was in hiding for 12 years.
We convinced her to come out.
We convinced her to talk to us.
It was unbelievable what we had.
Clinton.
We had everything.
I tried for three years to get it on to no avail and now it's all coming out and it's like these new revelations and I freaking had all of it.
I'm so pissed right now.
Every day I get more and more pissed because I'm just like, oh my god.
What we had was unreal.
Other women backing it up.
Hey.
Yep.
Brad Edwards, the attorney, three years ago saying, there will come a day when we will realize Jeffrey Epstein was the most prolific pedophile this country has ever known.
I had it all three years ago.
She had it all three years ago, and her bosses wouldn't let her run it.
So this is a hot mic.
She's obviously complaining to, I don't know, her producer or somebody on the set about how the Epstein story broke.
And she could have broke it three years ago.
And her job is to break stories.
So it would have been very helpful to her professionally.
And the story got killed.
Did the story get killed because, oh, nobody knows who Jeffrey Epstein is?
No, of course not.
The point of the news is to break the news, is to do investigations and dig up stories that people haven't heard about and then convey those stories.
But that's not what they did.
Amen.
Thank you.
They said, oh, it doesn't matter.
It's not a big deal.
Did they shut it down for that reason or did they shut it down because very, very powerful people, perhaps in ABC News, insisted that they shut it down because it wouldn't look good for them.
Certainly the latter.
And so now you have this meme, Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.
And the reaction of the mainstream media, the reaction of people in the establishment, is to say, oh, don't say that's ridiculous.
Don't traffic in that sort of nonsense.
That's a conspiracy theory.
Maybe.
But what ABC News and the rest of the mainstream media did by covering up this story for three years is an actual conspiracy.
So forgive us for trafficking in a conspiracy theory when we have hard evidence that you guys actually engaged in a conspiracy.
I said this when the Epstein story broke.
I said, I don't know how Jeffrey Epstein died.
He very well might have killed himself.
What I do know, though, is that the least plausible explanation for how Jeffrey Epstein died is that he just accidentally was permitted to kill himself because he shouldn't have been able to do it anyway.
He tried to kill himself apparently six days earlier.
He was then taken off of suicide watch or he was taken off.
He tried to kill himself a couple of weeks earlier.
He was He was taken off of Suicide Watch six days later.
Then at the time that he allegedly killed himself, both of the guards who were supposed to check on him just fell asleep coincidentally at exactly the same time.
And then not one but two cameras outside of his cell just didn't work.
They just malfunctioned at exactly the same time.
And then it was revealed in the autopsy he had a couple bones, a few bones broken in his neck that...
Only appear in about 1% of hangings and certainly not from a height at which he would have had to hang himself with his bed.
And it was much more in line with strangulation.
But hey, listen, don't ask any of those questions.
Don't ever traffic in that kind of crazy conspiracy theory.
Just ignore the actual conspiracy of the mainstream media.
This is why the memes work.
And I've got a big warning here for the left.
If the left wing does not shape up, if the left does not stop spreading lies, if the left does not stop covering up stories on the mainstream media, through its outlets, through its establishment candidates, it's going to lose again.
It's going to lose again in 2020, without question.
Because the more corrupt the mainstream media becomes, the more empowered everybody else feels to spread their own information and to believe their own information.
And there is a lot of fake information on the internet.
There's that famous picture of Abraham Lincoln and the quote says, don't believe everything you read on the internet.
Abraham Lincoln, 1860.
There's a lot of false information on the internet.
In an honest culture, in a culture where the media are actually reporting the facts, people have no need to believe whatever they read on the internet.
But in a culture where ABC News, CBS News, let's not forget Cheryl Atkinson, great investigative reporter, Cheryl Atkinson had to leave CBS News because her bosses kept killing stories on Obama's corruption.
Where the New York Times, the Washington Post are just shamelessly spreading lies every single day.
In that culture, people have to believe what they read on the internet.
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So now, James O'Keefe.
We actually see the mainstream media lying and admitting they're lying and just going...
Exposing the conspiracy of the conspiracy of the conspiracy theory.
What does this mean for President Trump?
It's good news.
The more the media look foolish, the less people are going to believe what the media tell us.
The media told us in 2016 that there was a 120,000% chance that Hillary would win, 0% chance that Trump would win.
There's no reason even to go to the polls.
We heard that the day before the election, I kid you not, 99% chance Hillary wins.
97% chance that Hillary wins.
All the scientists who allegedly say that global warming is going to kill us all, I guess they all went and they were the only people polled and they all voted for Hillary.
So 97% of people are going to vote for Hillary.
And then it didn't happen.
Then Trump won.
And we decided, hmm, maybe we're not going to believe the media.
And yet, now for the past few weeks, we've been hearing more and more polls.
Trump is going to lose.
The majority of people support impeachment.
The majority of people...
Across America want to elect Joe Biden.
Fox News, of all places, had a poll out that showed that not only is Biden leading the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, he's beating Trump in a head-to-head matchup by 12 points.
Wow.
It's like the race is already over.
Trump should start packing his bags, right?
Head on down to Mar-a-Lago, which is now going to be his primary residence.
We were told that Bernie Sanders has an eight-point lead On Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup, 49-41.
Elizabeth Warren has a five-point lead over President Trump, 46-41.
Now that's within the poll's margin of error, but still.
Warren, wow, that was a Freudian slip.
I said Hillary instead of Warren.
Gosh, that tells you a lot about the campaign.
She's still beating Trump.
Pete Buttigieg is even tied with Trump.
Pete Buttigieg, a mayor of a small town.
And then...
Hillary Clinton, actual Hillary Clinton, not Elizabeth Warren Hillary 2.0, but Hillary 1.0.
If Hillary got into the race, according to this Fox News poll, she is a two-point edge.
She would beat Trump by two points.
So it's all over, right?
No.
The New York Times has another poll out that doesn't just look at the national landscape.
Because I'm skeptical of all polls, as you know.
I'm very, very skeptical of national polls because it's turned out that some of these polls have been seriously oversampling Democrats.
But the polls that I start to get a little more interested in are the state polls because the election is not based on popular vote.
It's not the United People of America.
It's the United States of America.
So the elections are done on the state level.
And specifically, a handful of states, the battleground states, are going to determine the presidential election.
So the New York Times drilled down into these battleground states, and they realized something horrifying for the left, which is that when you look at the states that are going to decide the election, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, things are looking a lot tighter there.
It doesn't matter if the Democratic nominee wins by 50 points in California or New York.
The Democrats are going to win California or New York.
What matters are these battleground states.
When you look in the battleground states, is Biden up 12 points on Trump?
No.
He's up one or two points in all states but North Carolina, where President Trump is actually up two points.
So they're in a dead heat in all the battleground states.
How about Bernie?
Bernie is up three points in Michigan on Trump head-to-head.
Bernie is tied with Trump in Wisconsin.
Trump is up everywhere else in the battleground states.
How about Elizabeth Warren?
Trump beats Elizabeth Warren head-to-head in every battleground state.
How about Pete Buttigieg?
Give me a break.
Pete Buttigieg?
He doesn't even register.
Trump is up on everybody.
By the way, Trump is up on Liz Warren in the battleground states before she rolled out her ridiculous Medicare for All plan, which is going to be extraordinarily unpopular.
$52 trillion.
Not exactly going to play in Peoria.
Certainly not in these more moderate states.
Trump is...
How about in Iowa?
Iowa is one of these kind of bellwether states.
Trump is up on every candidate in Iowa.
The New York Times is actually the outlet now who's saying, hold on a second.
Don't get too excited.
Don't feel like you can just nominate the furthest left candidate.
Don't watch out.
Maybe let's not go all the way in for Liz Warren just yet.
Hold on a second.
But nobody's paying attention because the left is living in this fantasy world.
The fantasy world in which they believe that they can just tell you What reality is going to be and thereby force reality into existence.
This is what every one of these grand poobahs at the mainstream media networks thinks.
They say, we don't need to cover the news.
We are not beholden to reality.
We are not going to be honest stewards of reality and convey that to the people.
We are going to, in our own imaginations, write the news and by virtue of our narrative, we will force that on reality.
That's the opposite of what the press is supposed to do.
And the New York Times, which has been in the press for a long time, is beginning to say, gosh, that didn't work out for us in 2016.
Maybe it's not going to work out for us in 2020.
You're seeing the same thing now with the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden.
If you remember, the whole problem with Joe Biden is that he engaged in some serious corruption.
Or it looks a lot like he engaged in serious corruption.
His son was engaging in corruption.
And the press has been telling us there's nothing.
There's no evidence of it.
Joe Biden has been lying through his teeth.
Demonstrable lies in just the past few days.
Said he never knew his son was on the board of that energy company in Ukraine.
Even though his son admitted that they talked about it.
Said his son did nothing wrong.
Even though his son just resigned from the board.
Basically said, I did nothing wrong and I'm sorry and I'll never do it again.
Now we have new information about this corruption.
We have new information out that the energy company that Joe Biden's son sat on the board of did in fact push the Obama administration to end its corruption investigations in 2016.
We'll get to that in a second.
We'll get to the effect of impeachment on that race.
Then an ex-evangelical pastor is lecturing other evangelicals about how terrible they are for supporting the Republican president.
We'll get to that kind of hypocrisy.
Eric Garcetti, mayor of Tent City, Los Angeles, says that LA is the model for dealing with homelessness.
And so much more we have to get to.
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Hunter Biden, the company that he was on the board of, pushed the Obama administration to end the corruption investigation in 2016.
A representative from Burisma, the energy company, sought to meet with the undersecretary of state, Catherine Novelli, to discuss allegations of corruption and to maybe discuss a way out of it.
This is according to the award-winning investigative journalist, John Solomon.
This happened in February, 2016.
There were emails between the State Department officials, which stated the This is between State Department officials.
Per our conversation, Karen Tramontano of Blue Star Strategies requested a meeting to discuss with Undersecretary Novelli remarks alleging Burisma of corruption.
She noted that two high-profile U.S. citizens are affiliated with the company, including Hunter Biden as a board member.
Tramontano would like to talk with Undersecretary Novelli about getting a better understanding about how the U.S. came to the determination that the company is corrupt.
So there's a lot here.
First of all, we know that the State Department considered this company corrupt.
They're saying it right here in the memos.
We know that Hunter Biden's presence on the board was being used by the company to get out of this corruption investigation and skirt the rules.
That's also in the email.
And yet, the media are going to lie to us and say, there's no evidence, there's no big deal.
This is it.
This is the evidence.
We have it right here in black and white.
But some people aren't going to believe what they see with their own eyes.
They're going to believe the narratives crafted by the mainstream media.
Which is a very bad idea.
That will mislead you.
That will force you to believe fantasies.
Like the fantasy that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself.
We will get to...
Why the ex-evangelical pastors don't understand the evangelical movement.
We will get to Christian support of President Trump.
We'll get to homelessness.
We'll get to a whole lot more fake news narratives.
But first, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
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We'll be right back with a lot more.
So an ex-evangelical pastor is coming out and saying that evangelicals who support Trump are humiliating themselves, embarrassing themselves, They are damaging the gospel.
What this guy is doing, Joshua Harris, is one of my least favorite behaviors in politics, which is when people who are not in a particular movement, not in a particular mindset, not in a particular religion, start criticizing not in a particular religion, start criticizing the people who are in that organization for failing to live up to their own standards, usually without any basis in reality whatsoever.
Here is ex-evangelical Joshua Harris's claim.
It sounds like you think the church has made a massive mistake by becoming so identified with President Trump.
I think it's incredibly damaging to the gospel and to the church.
And you give advice?
You still give advice?
How do they unwind that?
What should they do?
I don't think it's going to end well.
And I think, you know, you look back at the Old Testament and the relationship between the prophets and really bad leaders and kings, and oftentimes it's not something you unwind because it's actually in the scriptures presented as God's judgment on the false religion of the day.
You think Christians today who are embracing President Trump are due for a judgment?
I think it is the judgment.
I think it is part of the judgment.
What do you mean by that?
To have a leader like Trump I think is in itself part of the indictment that this is the leader that you want and maybe deserve, that represents a lot of who you are.
What?
What verbal gobbledygook is that?
Obviously, this man is very confused, so let's try to clear up some of the confusion.
He says that conservatives supporting Trump is damaging to the gospel.
You cannot damage the gospel.
Christ conquered death on the cross and rose from the dead three days later.
You can't damage that.
As C.S. Lewis pointed out, An atheist can no more diminish God's glory than a lunatic can diminish the sun by writing darkness on the walls of his cell.
You can't damage the gospel.
You can engage in heresy, you can disbelieve, you can turn away from God.
You can't damage the gospel.
The gospel happened.
It's done.
Our Redeemer lives.
Then he says that...
People who voted for Donald Trump are calling judgment down upon them.
Let's just remind people what it means to vote for Donald Trump.
You had two choices in 2016.
A woman who was campaigning on killing a million babies a year and taking away all of your constitutional rights and taking away your religious liberty.
And Trump.
A guy who said he wouldn't do those things and would protect life and would protect religious liberty.
We knew how wicked Hillary Clinton was.
We weren't quite sure how wicked Donald Trump was.
We knew that he lived a sort of colorful life and was a very broken man, as are we all.
But those were the choices.
Kill a million babies a year.
Take away your constitutional rights.
Take away your religious liberty.
Protect life.
Keep your religious liberty.
Keep your rights.
Maybe.
That's not a hard choice.
That's not a wrong choice.
That's not an evil choice.
That's not calling down judgment.
The right choice was to vote for Trump.
And if this guy is upset about that because he didn't do that or he thought Trump would be worse than he is, whatever, okay, fine, I get it.
It was a difficult choice in so much as Trump is such a weird political candidate that it allowed people to become confused.
I get it.
That's fine.
But that was the right choice.
And then you know it's the right choice because he's asked by the interviewer, what judgment is being called down upon people for this?
And the guy says, I don't know.
We'll have to see.
It's not going to end well.
The judgment is having Trump president.
So now he's saying that the judgment is going to be that people get what they asked for?
Okay.
If this is the judgment, not so bad.
Could things be better in the country?
Sure.
Are things a lot better than they would have been under President Clinton?
Yeah.
A lot better.
In every way.
Okay.
That's fine judgment.
He's obviously very confused.
He isn't seeing moral questions very clearly.
And perhaps that has something to do with the fact that he's made a complete disaster of his own life, as he explains in the same interview.
As a very young man, you wrote a book that sold a million copies.
Yeah, it was called I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and that got a lot of attention because it was a radical idea.
We shouldn't just not have sex, we should stop dating because dating is leading to us making these mistakes.
So the first time you kissed your wife was?
At the altar, yeah.
I got married about a year and a half after that book was released and then dove into being a pastor and pastored a church for 17 years.
I was a pastor there.
And then this summer you went on Instagram and said essentially, I don't believe.
By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I'm not a Christian.
What do you mean by that?
I was really just trying to be honest about the fact that all the ways that I had defined faith and Christianity, that I was no longer choosing to live according to those.
Most significantly, the decision that my wife and I made to end our marriage.
Some people were angry.
A lot of people were angry, understandably.
Understandably.
At least he has a little self-awareness there.
Because what he's doing, it's not just Joshua Harris who does this, a lot of people do this.
You will always hear, every single day, if you go on the internet, you will hear atheists criticizing Christians for supporting Donald Trump because they say this is unchristian.
These are people who know nothing about Christianity, or who at the very least are extraordinarily confused about Christianity.
Who don't believe in Christianity, who don't think Christianity is true or good, assailing people who do believe Christianity is true or good and who know much more about Christianity than they do for supporting Donald Trump because they say it's unchristian.
How about, like, one ounce of humility?
It's not a big deal if you don't understand something.
All of us don't understand most things.
But just a little humility.
Instead of saying, you're a terrible Christian because you do something that I don't quite understand and you also profess a faith that I don't understand and don't believe in and don't think is good.
But you're bad for that reason, for some reason.
How about a little humility?
Humility.
I hear this.
There's a guy, John Fuglesang, who I sort of like.
He's a liberal radio guy who refers to people who support Donald Trump as fake Christians.
John Fuglesang knows absolutely nothing about Christianity.
He knows actually less than nothing because he knows a very little bit and a little learning is a dangerous thing.
So, for instance, he thinks that the scriptures...
Defend abortion.
And this is because there's one translation of one verse out of context of the book of Numbers that could be misinterpreted to refer to a miscarriage rather than infertility.
One translation among zillions of translations of the Bible.
And he'll twist that and say that everybody who supports Trump is a bad Christian.
That isn't true.
Before you cast dispersions like that, you should just have the intellectual humility and the curiosity to learn something yourself.
What Joshua Harris says there is a lot of people are upset at him because...
He's left the church, he's left his wife, he's left his faith, and he made himself out to be this great evangelical Christian leader.
This guy always had profound theological errors in what he was peddling, like very deep theological errors.
He was the guy who came up with the idea that you shouldn't date.
He says how I kissed dating goodbye and created this whole purity culture that is ahistorical and deeply misunderstands the nature of the faith.
And then, surprise, surprise, he ran into troubles with his faith because his version of it was unsatisfactory to him, was insufficient, was inadequate.
Now he's left the faith, and people are rightly angry because he's causing scandal.
A scandal is not just when a politician gets caught with his secretary.
A scandal is when you lead people...
Away by your example because you've done something wrong.
This is one of my great incentives not to sin.
I have no problem, but I could easily be tempted to sin if it were just involving me.
And then I go to confession and I repent of it and I'm very sorry and I go back to living my life.
But it doesn't just involve you, especially if you make yourself a public persona like Joshua Harris did.
Because by your example, you could lead people away from the truth and lead people away from the faith.
And that's a very bad thing.
So I'm glad that he has that slight awareness.
But then he immediately turns it around and says, and by the way, if you vote for Trump, you're a terrible person and destroying Christianity.
Hey, buddy, you left your church.
You left your wife.
You left your faith.
I'm not even attacking you for it.
Obviously, you've got some deep confusion and a lot of suffering going on, and you need to figure your life out.
But maybe you're not the best guy to lecture all of us on Christianity.
Maybe you're not the best guy to lecture all of us on how to live your life, okay?
You did that for your entire life and then it didn't work out for you and you let a lot of people down a lot of bad paths.
Step back a little bit.
Same thing with the media we were talking about all day.
The mainstream media, which lie to us all the time, which are caught in scandal, actual scandal, because they're the ones who purport to tell the truth and they are caught covering up the truth and spreading lies, Which destroys our faith in the mainstream media, destroys our faith in these institutions that we should be able to trust, and leads us to believe internet memes because the internet memes are truer than the mainstream media.
Those guys have the audacity to say democracy dies in darkness, Washington Post.
Facts first, CNN. We just report the facts.
We're defending them.
No, you're not.
You're not.
Which is fine.
You're going through a period of intense corruption.
Sort your affairs.
Get your house in order before you all lecture us.
I just have no patience for it anymore.
I have no patience.
Eric Garcetti, the mayor of my city.
I live in Tent City, USA. I live in Los Angeles.
I was on a news program the other day on the Fox channel here.
And Eric Garcetti had just gone on the show.
And he was asked by the host of the show, Alex Michelson.
What are you doing about homelessness?
Under Mayor Garcetti's tenure, homelessness has increased dramatically.
It has skyrocketed.
In just one year, 2017 to 2018, homelessness increased in LA County by 13% and then in LA City by 16%.
16% in one year.
And Garcetti says with a straight face, there's no question LA is the model for dealing with homelessness.
How can you say that?
How can you gaslight us all like that?
Look, if Eric Garcetti came out there and said, hey, homelessness is a really hard problem.
We're having a lot of trouble with it.
We're being hampered by state and county regulations.
We're working on it.
We're trying to get more cops on the beat to bring people in.
And we're going to do our best to make it happen.
At least then we could respect the guy.
But he can't do that.
And this story does tie in with another story.
We're going to have to get to it tomorrow.
Because it's just that gaslighting is so offensive to all of us.
It leads you to distrust all of your institutions.
That is the real scandal.
Because I actually, as much as I love the memes, as much as I love that Epstein didn't kill himself, as much as I love...
All the wild west of information that we have now.
I actually would prefer to live in a country where we can have some faith in our institutions, where we can trust the media to not lie to us every single night, where we can trust the government not to spy on its own citizens and to spy on rival presidential campaigns like the Obama administration obviously did.
I would like to live in a government where the courts support the rule of law and defend our constitution, where half of the country didn't Hate itself, where half of the country didn't protest the American flag.
I would rather live in that country because then we could talk about politics less.
You know, C.S. Lewis, to bring him up again, had a line on this where he said, a country that doesn't talk about politics at all is in danger of dying because, obviously Lewis wrote it more eloquently than me, but I'm paraphrasing, It's in danger of dying because, in the same way, a sick person who doesn't pay attention to what's going on with his health could die as well.
But a country that spends all of its time talking about politics, countries such as ours, where we can't trust our institutions, where we don't believe anything that the mainstream media or the establishment are telling us, A country that spends all its time talking about politics is already so thoroughly sick.
The sickness is already through it that it's on the verge of being killed already.
Much like Jeffrey Epstein who did not kill himself.
That's our show.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
I'll see you tomorrow.
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