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April 9, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show

52:56

Ep. 739 - A History of Violence

The cops are white supremacists hell-bent on slaughtering innocent black people. And that’s why only cops should be able to own and carry guns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	The cops are white supremacists hell-bent on slaughtering innocent black people.
	That is why only the cops should have guns.
	That is the argument that we are being told right now from the left, and the narratives on systemic racism and on gun violence are collapsing as BLM and Joe Biden are doubling down on both.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is the Michael Knowles Show.
	Welcome back.
	My favorite comment yesterday from Jessica Lindstrom, who says, Maybe it wasn't ironic.
	Maybe it was coincidental.
	Maybe it was intentional.
	Maybe Harry's is upset that they're suffering right now because Harry's thought that they could get away with insulting our audience and calling us inexcusable and vile and condemnable and all sorts of things.
	And they thought there would be no problem with that.
	And I'm still being CC'd on the emails that you guys are sending in to Harry's canceling your product.
	So maybe they're saying, gosh, maybe secretly we should start advertising on that show again.
	Because if Harry's is running ads...
	That you're seeing on my show and they're pretending that they're not.
	That is even more pitiful.
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	Joe Biden is taking serious action on guns.
	Does that mean he's going to work through the legislature to pass gun control laws?
	No.
	Does that mean he's going to get a constitutional amendment passed to nullify the second amendment?
	No.
	Does that mean he's going to go after the guns that are involved in most of the gun deaths in the country?
	No.
	But he is really upset about the neck brace on AR pistols.
	We want to treat pistols modified with stabilizing braces with the seriousness they deserve.
	A stabilizing brace hook and a pencil essentially makes that pistol a hell of a lot more accurate and a mini rifle.
	As a result, it's more lethal, effectively turning it into a short-barreled rifle.
	That's what the alleged shooter in Boulder appears to have done.
	It does not make the gun more lethal.
	This is just pure ignorance here.
	The brace does not alter the rate of fire of the pistol.
	It does not change the velocity of the bullet that is fired from the pistol.
	It, I suppose, can help you to aim perhaps a little bit better, but really it's just going to be your...
	It can maybe steady the gun a little bit, but it's really going to be your aim.
	It's going to be your facility with shooting that's going to determine how accurate you are.
	There's an irony here, which is that one of the reasons that pistol braces came to be in the first place is to allow people with disabilities to shoot and hold a rifle with one hand.
	So really, all Joe Biden is accomplishing here is promoting ableism, Among a basic constitutional right, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
	This is obviously a half-hearted effort.
	It's irritating people on the left.
	It's irritating people on the right.
	It doesn't seem to be making people happy.
	It's like he's going through the motions.
	We need to be tough on guns.
	Why?
	I couldn't tell you.
	What's this going to accomplish?
	Absolutely nothing.
	Joe Biden doesn't even know the name of the agency that regulates firearms.
	What's the name of the agency?
	You all know.
	Three of my favorite things.
	Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms.
	ATF. Joe Biden, he, like a lot of things in his head, he got that one a little bit jumbled.
	Today, I'm proud to nominate David Chipman to serve as the director of the AFT. David knows AFT well.
	Congratulations, David.
	I'm glad that you will be running the AFT. That's great.
	But who's running the ATF? I don't know.
	Joe Biden doesn't know either, and it just doesn't really matter.
	This is part of Joe Biden's endemic dishonesty.
	Joe Biden...
	Because he's just an empty suit who wakes up in the morning and licks his finger and tries to figure out which way the wind is blowing, he says at one point, I support the Second Amendment.
	Come on, man.
	Come on, me and my dad.
	I support the Second Amendment, man.
	Me and Corn Pop do.
	But we need common sense, gun control, the pistol grip or whatever, the neck brace, just kind of random cosmetic changes.
	Really what the left is saying here, a coherent left-wing argument is, That the Second Amendment is wrong.
	It's bad.
	It's bad for society.
	It was a mistake.
	We should get rid of it.
	People shouldn't have guns.
	It's insane that we Americans have guns.
	We're going to get rid of them.
	I don't agree with that argument, but at least there is a certain coherence to it.
	But Biden doesn't want to make that argument because he knows that people like their guns.
	And so he's going to make this squishy half of one argument, half of the other.
	And it also doesn't jive with the argument we're being told by BLM and by the left broadly, which supports BLM, namely that cops are vicious monsters, that they're racists and skinheads and neo-Nazis and they hate black people.
	So then why on earth should civilians not be able to protect themselves?
	This is what we're hearing in the George Floyd case, the trial of Derek Chauvin.
	But the George Floyd case, Case is really not going particularly well for the prosecution.
	The way you can tell, it's in the language.
	It's always in the language that you see these subtle shifts.
	What have we been told?
	Why is Derek Chauvin going to go to jail?
	Why does the prosecution believe that this guy should be convicted of murder?
	Because he put his knee on George Floyd's neck until George Floyd couldn't breathe anymore, and then he died.
	That's the whole argument.
	And they're saying, forget about the high doses of fentanyl in his body.
	Forget about Floyd resisting arrest.
	Forget about his priors.
	Forget about all this.
	This was police brutality because Chauvin obstructed his airway and he had the knee on the neck for nine minutes.
	Except that now the prosecution is changing its language.
	They're no longer talking about George Floyd's neck.
	They're talking about his, quote, neck area.
	What's a neck area?
	It's my neck, and it's my shoulders, and it's my back.
	Well, that's different.
	If you had the knee on the back, that's very different than having a knee on a neck so you can't breathe at all.
	You're totally cutting off your windpipe.
	Well, the whole argument, of course, is that Derek Chauvin shouldn't have had the knee on the neck, but then they ran into another problem here, which is a use-of-force officer who is testifying admitted that Chauvin's procedure, the use of body weight and pressure, was a lesser use of force than would have been adopted in the past or that Chauvin could have used himself.
	So it wasn't the most extreme, beyond extreme, beyond the pale.
	It was actually a lesser use of force.
	Now, did he apply it properly?
	I don't know.
	That's what they're trying to figure out now.
	But in terms of the knee-on-the-neck area technique, what we're hearing, even this is coming out of the prosecution asking these questions, is that this was relatively lesser force.
	But that's not what this trial is going to hinge on.
	Everyone in America, everyone in the whole wide world had heard of the details of this case, and right now this trial is being conducted under the threat of terrorism.
	We're being told by members of BLM that if Chauvin is not convicted, specifically of murder, then BLM is going to burn the city down again.
	They're going to burn a lot of the country down again, just like they did for months and months and months with absolutely no repercussions in 2020.
	So how is justice ever going to carry the day if in this trial you've got the explicit threat of terrorism?
	Isn't that a little weird?
	If this were the trial of, I don't know, trial of Bill Clinton.
	Bill Clinton, it's the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton for perjury.
	And the Republicans say, okay, we're going to We're going to watch over this trial and we want you to pursue justice and follow the facts, but if you do not remove Clinton from office, we're going to burn the whole country down again.
	And what if the Republicans had the credibility to say that because they had just spent the past eight months burning the country down previously for the same thing?
	Do you think, if the tables were turned here, that anyone would think that that could possibly be a fair trial, a fair carriage of justice?
	I don't think so.
	But this racial demagoguery does not have very much logic to it.
	Just the way it is.
	I mean, I'm almost sick of saying, if the roles were reversed, well, you know, I mean, I mention it briefly just to show the craziness of it.
	But I don't think that that is a winning argument.
	I don't think they care.
	I don't think there's any logic to it.
	And I think conservatives should stop pretending that it does.
	Eric Bolling, the commentator and host, he had a great response on this.
	Eric Bolling was being subjected to preposterous, illogical racial demagoguery on the BBC. So he walked off.
	Walked off the set.
	I think it's really rich for any Republican, especially a white man, to run around and claim that they care about the economic condition of black communities and black businesses when that's all a lie.
	Okay?
	There's nothing in their policies that they've done.
	The other thing is that I don't work for the Biden administration.
	Eric, I'm so sorry.
	We can't hear you.
	I'm going to let Aisha finish.
	I don't work for the Biden administration, never have, but what I am is a black person in America.
	And everything that these voting laws stand for and what they look like are reminiscent to the Jim Crow policies that my family's lived under.
	This, every single thing about it.
	So this is all about racial discrimination.
	And how dare you try to act like you are somehow a proponent of black people in businesses just to make a point and to try to create a wedge?
	It's ignorant and it's just disrespectful.
	Disgusting.
	I'm done.
	Put me off.
	That's disgusting.
	I am nowhere near anything you're painting me to be.
	And the problem with American politics is exactly that.
	Because I'm white, you think I'm racist?
	That's BS. I'm done.
	Eric, will you just stay for this question?
	I like that he walked off the set.
	I'm glad that he walked off the set.
	There is a certain strain on the right that says, well, no, you should never walk off.
	You should always engage in debate.
	Oh, the free marketplace of ideas is always going to be totally fair, and the good ideas will always defeat the bad ideas.
	Not this idea.
	I, broadly speaking, agree with it.
	I'd like to take on bad ideas head on, and I like to debate these things.
	But they have to be in good faith.
	This woman is not acting in good faith.
	This is why, by the way, when we're talking about things like critical race theory, we need to go further than, don't mandate it, don't require it, we'll get multiple points of view.
	No.
	You need to ban that stuff.
	You need to ban critical race theory because it undermines education.
	What this woman is saying is, how dare you?
	You're not allowed to have an opinion on this.
	Why?
	Because of your race.
	That is not a good, you can't have a good faith debate in that way.
	Because it's pure demagoguery.
	You are undermining the premise of the debate.
	You're undermining people's faith in objective truth and in reason.
	That's what critical race theory does.
	It undermines people's faith in reason and objective truth.
	It denies those things.
	And so we need to kick them out of the classroom.
	Because that would be an idea that would undermine all of the other ideas.
	Sometimes you've got to shut bad things down.
	And you are under no obligation.
	And you should not actually engage in bad faith debate.
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	This is a record month.
	Record month, record week, record year, I guess, but not the good kind of record.
	U.S. Customs and Border Protection are reporting a record number of illegal immigrants taken into custody at the U.S.-Mexico border.
	Wow, isn't that great?
	Compassion, humanity.
	Not like that mean old Trump.
	No, we got records.
	Records of illegal alien children pouring across the border.
	The situation has gotten so bad...
	That even Lindsey Graham, who has traditionally been pretty squishy on the immigration question, they call him Lindsey Gramnesty, Lindsey Gramnesty has become Lindsey Grambo again.
	Grambo, baby.
	Getting tough.
	Getting real hardcore.
	Lindsey Graham calling for a total shutdown of the immigration system until, to paraphrase former President Trump, we figure out what the hell is going on.
	There was a time...
	That we basically shut down travel into the United States from China and other places.
	I think it's now to shut down the immigration system and have a timeout.
	What they've done by abolishing the remaining Mexico policy, where you no longer have to wait in Mexico to get an asylum court date, people released into the interior of the United States, there'll be two million people hit our border by the end of the year at this rate.
	Unaccompanied minors are not repatriated back to their home country.
	You no longer have to apply for asylum in your home country.
	You no longer have to wait in Mexico.
	We don't deport people anymore.
	We've had a moratorium on deportations.
	The bottom line is we've sent every signal to Central America and the rest of the world come here.
	Terrorists are coming across, suspected terrorists are coming across the border.
	The bottom line is it is a completely out of control situation.
	We need to shut down the immigration system and have a time out.
	Got to shut down this kind of travel.
	We've got to figure out what is going on.
	I really like that Lindsey Graham is saying this right now.
	Because a complete and total shutdown of the immigration system, to me, seems draconian.
	In the ordinary proceeding of things, I would drastically reduce...
	Well, one, I would stop illegal immigration.
	And then I would dramatically reduce illegal immigration as well.
	But to me, it just seems too radical to say we're going to completely shut it down.
	Unless the effective policy is completely radical in the other direction.
	Right now, we effectively do not have national borders in this country.
	We've barely had national borders for a long time, and even that is collapsing.
	So in that world, I'm much more comfortable advocating for a total temporary shutdown of our immigration system.
	Is this a change of heart?
	Is this a change in principle for Lindsey Graham or anyone else who agrees with him?
	No.
	Because politics is not just abstract principles floating around in outer space where you hold one opinion and it's totally abstracted and you hold that for your entire life.
	Politics involves taking broad principles, taking a deep understanding of the world, and applying it to specific circumstances.
	So if you had asked this question, actually even, I don't know, 5-10 years ago, said should we have a total shutdown of our immigration system?
	I'd say no, that's very, very radical.
	But now, today, when you have the President of the United States flouting the law, when you've got a major party in the United States calling for practically open borders, when you have floods and floods and floods of foreign nationals pouring over, kids getting literally flung over the border, and the President saying, Surge, come!
	Then, yes, then you need to start talking about more radical solutions.
	And so I'm glad to see this from Lindsey Graham.
	I hope this spreads throughout the party.
	You're seeing a huge polarization here.
	Even the traditionally more squishy Republicans like Graham, moving more to the right.
	New York City, New York State, moving more to the left.
	New York is not proposing a shutdown of the immigration system.
	On the contrary, New York is planning on giving illegal aliens, foreign nationals living in our country in contravention of the law, a grant of $15,600.
	I'm not joking.
	It sounds like a Babylon Bee headline, but it's not.
	New York will offer, quote, one-time payments of up to $15,600 to undocumented immigrants who lost work during the pandemic, according to reports.
	That total fund is going to come in at $2.1 billion.
	This, as Americans are losing their businesses, losing their life savings, losing their livelihoods, depression, suicidality up through the roof among Americans, we're going to give away five figures to foreign nationals flouting our laws.
	You can't make it up.
	By the way, this term, it's being reported as undocumented immigrants.
	I was watching putatively conservative cable news today, and they were using the word undocumented immigrants.
	Are conservatives using this term now?
	An undocumented immigrant?
	I was undocumented when I had a job when I was a teenager because I was working off the books.
	That's not what we're talking about.
	We're talking about foreign nationals who are citizens of another country living in our country and accessing our services illegally.
	That is not just being undocumented.
	It pains me to see conservatives adopting this kind of language.
	It's not even so much about the money.
	It's the normalization of this thing.
	This is national suicide.
	We're going to reward people who break our laws.
	We're going to go real nice and easy on BLM and give them whatever they want.
	We're going to pay five figures to illegal aliens for breaking our laws.
	And then we're going to imprison Regular Americans in their own homes.
	We're not going to let them go out to work or to see people or go to church.
	We're going to punish Americans who defend the American way of life and we're going to reward people who try to undermine the American way of life because there is a major political movement in this country that has a purely negative purpose to destroy our traditional standards and our traditional way of life, which happens to be the subject of my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, which you can pre-order right now.
	You know, turning back away from these ridiculous policies in New York to economic policies that are good and work, here's a story that I promise you, you did not see in any mainstream outlet.
	Turns out that Joe Biden's Commerce Secretary thinks that Donald Trump's economic policies were pretty good.
	So, this was just a little bit with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo during an interview on MSNBC, and it's really not getting a lot of play in the mainstream media.
	Raimondo says the data show that those tariffs have been effective.
	What President Biden has said is there will be a whole of government review of all these policies and decide what it makes sense to maintain.
	This is why no one's covering it.
	The story is going to irritate the leftists because they don't want to hear that Trump's economic policies were good.
	But it's also going to irritate the libertarian types on the conservative side because they hate tariffs.
	That was one of their least favorite things about Trump is that Donald Trump endorsed the use of tariffs.
	Now, never mind, of course, that tariffs have a longstanding role in the Republican Party.
	The Republican Party in many ways was founded on tariffs.
	Abraham Lincoln said, give me a tariff, I'll give you the greatest nation on earth.
	And there was plenty of protectionist economic policy throughout most of our history until really the late 20th century.
	But the conservative movement, and certainly the Republican Party, for at least three or four decades at the end of the 20th century, embraced this total free market neoliberal economics.
	So Donald Trump questioned some of that, went back to an older way of conservative thinking.
	And now even Joe Biden's Commerce Secretary has to admit that it worked.
	Oh man, is that going to infuriate people?
	But the Biden administration...
	I'm sure she's going to get a chewing out for this because they're trying, even when the Trump policies are so good that they can't resist implementing them.
	They are trying to pretend like they're not following through on these policies.
	So a great example.
	Trump wanted to build the wall.
	He didn't really succeed at building the whole wall, but he built some of the wall and there was money allocated to build the wall.
	Joe Biden said we're going to stop building the wall, but now it looks like actually they might use some of that money to keep building the wall in certain places because they have this historic surge and crisis at the border.
	And Jen Psaki doesn't want to admit it.
	She dances around the question of walls in an acrobatic way.
	Well, wall construction remains paused.
	There is a review underway taking a look at the funds that had been allocated when the administration took office, as you know, but funds had been diverted from military construction projects and other purposes toward building the wall.
	That was not something we, of course, supported.
	There are some components of the wall that had already been allocated, the funding to continue building by Congress, so we're working within what is allowable.
	But our focus is not – we don't believe the wall is an answer.
	We have never believed the wall as an answer to addressing the challenges, immigration challenges at the border.
	That's why we're proposing an investment in smart -- investments in smart security at the border, why we're driving 20 -- what we see as 21st century solutions for border management, and why we believe we should build a functioning immigration system.
	There's a review underway of kind of where this funding had been allocated and not, but it's currently paused for the most part.
	What was that?
	Did anyone?
	Here's what I got out of that.
	Walls are bad.
	Trump, bad.
	Hate Trump's wall.
	Yeah, we're spending some money on building the wall.
	I mean, yeah, we're doing it right now.
	But it's bad and we hate it.
	And we're going to build a system that is functioning.
	Okay, so you're tacitly admitting that Trump's program is working.
	But you say, no, we want a system that is functioning.
	I talked about this last night.
	I had my first campus lecture back again since COVID lockdowns shut down 20 schools, which is...
	For something to function, you need to know what it's for.
	Right?
	This drives me the craziest when you have people like Dr.
	Fauci say, look, I'm not dictating people's politics.
	I just dictate policy according to what works.
	Look, I'm not an ideologue.
	I just am talking about what works.
	Well, what are you trying to achieve?
	You can't know what works unless you know what you are working toward.
	Right?
	But because the Democrats have outsourced their political debate away from the people toward the experts, namely themselves, they say, yeah, it's going to be functioning.
	Well, what is functioning to them?
	To me, a functioning immigration system is an immigration system that keeps foreigners out, keeps people who shouldn't be in out.
	But to them, a functioning immigration system is when there's no wall.
	It's open borders and they get a bunch of new prospective voters.
	That doesn't really function to me.
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	Joe Biden is tacitly admitting that Donald Trump got a lot of things right.
	But just so that people don't accuse me of being a hack, just so people don't accuse me of carrying water for the former president...
	There is one issue, and I've been totally consistent on this from the beginning, that I feel President Trump got wrong, and I think the Republican Party is starting to correct course on that, and that was with his obsession with freeing criminals from prison.
	I always felt this was the wrong idea.
	I felt it was the wrong messaging.
	It was based on a lot of phony narratives about poor innocent people who got pinched on carrying a dime bag of pot or something and spent their life in prison.
	And that just really isn't happening right now.
	So the line you hear a lot, even from some conservatives, especially the more squishy ones on the right, they'll say, we have an over-incarceration problem in America.
	And Senator Tom Cotton made a great point the other day.
	He was asked about this issue of the prison population and he said, actually, we have a massive under-incarceration problem in America.
	What do I mean by that?
	Just last year, homicides rose 33% in major cities.
	Clearly, we are not throwing enough people in prison, at least in prison.
	Last year, an organized, violent leftist terror organization called BLM, in partnership with another leftist terror organization called Antifa, burned down the country.
	How many of those people went to prison?
	How many of those organizations were busted up by the feds?
	None.
	The organizations are fine.
	I guess some people got in trouble, but clearly not enough.
	They feel emboldened to commit more crimes.
	That's because we have an under-incarceration problem.
	And I know, I get it.
	The political argument for the jailbreak bill was, well, you know, we're going to appeal to black voters this way.
	That was the explicit appeal that people were making.
	If we spring criminals from the can, that'll get black voters to like us.
	And I actually felt it was a sort of offensive argument to be making from the beginning, and I felt it wasn't worth it, and I didn't think it was going to work.
	Then there was the moral argument people were making.
	Oh, it's wrong that people go to prison for carrying a dime bag of pot.
	First of all, that doesn't happen.
	A lot of these guys have a ton of priors, or they're dealing drugs, they're pushing poison to kids, they're involved in lots of other crimes, they plea these things down.
	I get that conservatives want to seem like cool guys.
	We want to just seem really cool.
	There was that strain for a while, especially of the, you do you.
	Hey, whatever you want, man.
	Just don't make me pay, conservatism.
	Which, like, they wanted to be...
	It was like Steve Buscemi with the skateboard.
	How do you do, fellow cool guys?
	But that, I thought, was always kind of weak.
	And I think the moral arguments that people are making are just kind of based on faulty premises.
	Yeah.
	It is not compassionate to the victims of crimes to let these guys go scot-free.
	It is not compassionate to people who live in bad neighborhoods to let criminals run those neighborhoods.
	It's not just.
	It's not right.
	It doesn't advance racial justice.
	It doesn't advance any other kind of justice.
	Put the criminals in prison.
	And hopefully you can reform them, by the way.
	I also think that we don't do a good enough job Bringing people back into society.
	So that's something to work on too.
	But you've got to punish people for their crimes.
	Especially, at the very least, when they're repeat, repeat, repeat offenders.
	That is a major under-incarceration problem.
	One thing conservatives are starting to get it right though, and I hope that maybe this show has played some role in it, maybe some writing that we've been doing has played some role in it.
	The GOP governors Are getting a little bit tougher on the vaccine passport.
	I've said on this show this needs to be a line in the sand.
	There are 27 Republican governors in this country.
	And so far, as of yesterday, as of two days ago, three of them had come out against vaccine passports.
	And we've been hammering and hammering and hammering.
	A lot of other conservatives joined the chorus.
	Then we got another Republican governor.
	Now we've got GOP governor Brad Little.
	In Idaho, who is coming out to prohibit the so-called vaccine passports.
	This will bring him to join Florida, Texas, and Utah.
	Little's order comes after New York has started pushing in the other direction and they want to start seeing these vaccine passports.
	He says, quote, Vaccine passports create different classes of citizens.
	Vaccine passports restrict the free flow of commerce during a time when life and the economy are returning to normal.
	Vaccine passports threaten individual freedom and patient privacy.
	I really like this.
	You know, Terrence Williams, their comedian, a friend of mine, Terrence tweeted the other day.
	He said, you know, look, I'm not going to get the vaccine, but it's not because of politics.
	I just don't want to grow a tail and a third eye.
	I'm a little skeptical of this vaccine.
	The vaccine seems to be working out just fine, but hey, for me, I'd rather not get it.
	It seems like it came out very quickly, and I'm young, I'm healthy, I don't really want to get it.
	And according to the Democrat governors, Terrence is basically a mass murderer for saying that.
	And he'll probably be kicked off social media because you're not allowed to make any jokes about the vaccine.
	If I talk about how, you know, all my friends who got the vaccine are now my personal Wi-Fi hotspots, they're 5G flowing all through their bodies.
	If I make that joke, I can be kicked off of social media.
	And what the governors now are saying is, no, that's a bridge too far.
	Giving not just the government, but big tech and allegedly private businesses the right to force you to inject yourself with a very new vaccine and then give them the right to force you to show them your medical history and give that medical history to big tech companies, it's a step too far.
	So here again, I mean this looks pretty good in Idaho, but we've got to keep the feet to the fire here.
	This cannot just be about...
	The government coming out and saying, we're not going to mandate it.
	It's actually got to go further.
	It's got to say the companies can't mandate it either.
	We're going to interfere in the allegedly free market of the allegedly private businesses to protect the constitutional rights and the liberty and the political traditions of Americans.
	That's what they have to do.
	Things are moving in the right direction, and that's really great stuff.
	Speaking of political dissidence and imprisonment, This is an international story that's also not getting a ton of news in the West.
	Alexei Navalny is the major dissident, the sort of opposition leader in Russia to Putin's regime.
	And it would appear that the Kremlin is killing him right now.
	So the Kremlin tried to poison him once and they failed.
	And he caught it in time and was taken to a facility in Germany.
	He was in a coma, but he recovered.
	And Putin said...
	If you come back to Russia, I'm going to imprison you.
	And Navalny said, well, I'm going to do it anyway.
	And he flew back there, and what did they do?
	Putin imprisoned him, and now it looks like his health is failing quickly.
	The guards in the prison are reportedly depriving him of sleep.
	The facility is apparently quite unsanitary.
	There's a tuberculosis outbreak here.
	He's apparently losing quite a bit of his health.
	And I guess you would call this a slow-motion assassination, right?
	They're just going to let this guy die in prison.
	I mention this as Vladimir Putin effectively names himself President for Life.
	He now, according to a new law he signed, could be in power until 2036.
	That would make him 93 years old at that point.
	The reason I mention this is not even to talk about the internal politics of Russia, about which I know very little and, frankly, about which I don't care all that much.
	I do this to show political courage.
	Alexei Navalny is...
	We went back to Russia knowing he would die.
	Knowing that he would die for his political cause.
	That Putin would kill him.
	Eventually he'd be successful.
	And that would be it.
	And we here in the United States are neurotic over the sniffles.
	And we're not willing to risk really much of anything.
	We're not even really willing to talk up at work about our defense of basic American values and waving the American flag.
	And I think it's very hard for us to understand.
	Alexei, why would you do it?
	Why would you go back to Russia?
	Why would you leave Germany and go back to a place where you know this guy's going to kill you?
	Because there are things that matter more than just breathing for a few more years.
	We used to know that in America, and now the godless Ruskis are the ones that have to tell this to us.
	I don't know if they're godless over there.
	Actually, right now, there's a flourishing of religion in Russia after communism.
	That's a lesson we could learn from.
	That is a lesson, regardless of the actual political views of Putin and Navalny.
	That's a lesson we can learn.
	Turns out there are things in life worth dying for.
	Alright, we've got to get to the mailbag.
	First though, you know, there's going to be a great episode out of Candace today.
	I don't know what she's talking about, you know, or who the other guests are, but I'll tell you, there's one guest on that show.
	Oh gosh, you were going to want to see him.
	Handsome, articulate, ooh, a mellifluous voice.
	So definitely go and check out Candice, an absolutely great show, 9 p.m.
	Eastern, 8 p.m.
	Central at dailywire.com.
	You can also check out the podcast audio version of that, which is under Candice.
	Be sure to leave a five-star review.
	We'll be right back with The Mailbag.
	Welcome back to The Mailbag, my favorite time of the week.
	First question from Dennis.
	Dennis says, So I was watching the Bible on Easter.
	You're going to wait for it to jump up and down?
	How are you watching the Bible?
	You mean you're reading the Bible?
	I don't know.
	When Jesus was on the cross and speaking to God, the Roman soldiers seemed to almost look like they felt bad for what they did.
	Do you think the Roman soldiers thought they had messed up for doing what they did?
	Or do you think they still wrote him off as a heretic like the Jewish high priest did, like Caiaphas did?
	No, I don't think they had any particular interest in these religious views.
	I do know that Pontius Pilate was very disconcerted by Jesus and Pontius Pilate's wife suffered nightmares because of Jesus.
	And Pilate has this very famous moment Where he's talking, he's saying, what are you doing?
	Why aren't you standing up for yourself?
	And Jesus, you know, just says that he is the truth.
	And Pilate, this cynic, says, what is the truth?
	What is truth?
	And washes his hands of the matter.
	But Pilate was troubled.
	He was a fairly sophisticated guy and he was troubled by Christ.
	And the Romans did take pity on him.
	They offered him effectively a gall, but what was effectively a sort of drug that would numb the pain a little bit.
	And he turns it away at the beginning of the crucifixion, and then after it is accomplished, he takes it, but doesn't have very much of it.
	So, did they feel bad?
	Well, their job is to execute criminals.
	Their job is to follow the law, and Christ was condemned through this legal process.
	Even Caiaphas and the high priests, part of their enmity against Christ was their envy of him.
	He threatened their power.
	Just as people awaiting the Jewish Messiah felt that that Messiah would threaten Roman power and political stability.
	But ultimately, these are all people.
	When we have the passion narrative, when we are going through the passion of Christ, when members of the congregation participate in that, we are the ones who yell, crucify him, crucify him.
	That is our role in this, because we are the cause of this.
	And really, it's not just about Pilate.
	It's not just about Judas.
	And it's not just about Caiaphas.
	And it's not just about the Roman soldiers.
	It's about sin.
	It's about the consequence of sin.
	That will either lead to the death and enslavement of mankind, or will lead to this redemption.
	Which is why on Easter, Christians sing, O happy fault, the fall of Adam in the garden.
	O happy fault that one for us so great, so glorious, a redeemer.
	From Matthew.
	Hey Michael, how quickly will the audiobook for Speechless be made available?
	Your audiobook version of Reasons to Vote for Democrats was fantastic.
	By the way, Speechless comes out on my wife's birthday and I need a gift.
	Hmm.
	I think it makes a great gift.
	Thank you.
	I'm glad you listened to the audiobook of Reasons to Vote for Democrats.
	The John Cage estate was a little upset with me, but I think it's a good one.
	We will be recording the audiobook for Speechless.
	That's going to be coming up.
	I think I'm going to be recording that within a few weeks.
	The book itself goes to the printer on...
	April 15th or something like that.
	I mean, that's going to be going out within days.
	And then it's done, and I don't need to make any more edits, and I will then read it for the audiobook, and then that will go up.
	I appreciate people pre-ordering it.
	It's done quite well on the pre-order charts, so we'll see how long it is able to remain on Amazon.
	You can also get an autographed first edition over at Premier Collectibles.
	So if you're interested in that sort of thing, head on over.
	And thank you for doing that.
	Next up from Nick.
	I'm Michael, huge fan of the show.
	I watched your guest appearance on C-SPAN today and I wanted to ask a question regarding the role of religion in our government.
	The Declaration of Independence explicitly mentions three unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
	How did the Founding Fathers arrive at these specific rights and why are they the most important from a Christian perspective?
	Thank you so much.
	Well, There are some great parallels here between the Declaration of Independence and John Locke, who describes the rights to life, liberty, and property.
	And so where does John Locke get it from?
	Well, Locke, like liberal thinkers, Enlightenment thinkers, gets this from the Western tradition, and where that comes from ultimately really is the Catholic Church.
	And in particular, the way that the Catholic Church synthesizes this revelation of Christ and And the Old Testament and the pre-Christian Greeks, the pagan philosophers.
	And so, you know, it's all ultimately coming from there.
	Now, why these three rites?
	Well, it makes a lot of sense.
	Our pursuit of happiness is how we would describe the sort of end of our civil society, right?
	I mean, justice is the end of civil society, as Madison says, and we are pursuing flourishing happiness in society.
	You can't do that without liberty, and you can't have liberty without life.
	This is why, and very important to remember, life is not just one issue among many.
	Like, well, you know, we can talk about life, or we can talk about drug policy, or we can talk about taxes, or we can talk, and it's not just one among them, or immigration.
	Life is the prerequisite for all of these other rights.
	That is a Catholic point of view, and it's one that our present Catholic president is disregarding.
	But we know this just naturally.
	We know that life is the prerequisite for all of these.
	So you ought to focus on those three, and you've got to focus on them in that order.
	From Theodore.
	Dear Michael, according to Dan Bongino, he said most Republicans are really Democrats, but no Democrats are really Republicans.
	That's a great point.
	Dan always has these really good pithy points.
	What he's saying, I mean, look at Asa Hutchinson.
	He's a great example.
	Asa Hutchinson, the governor of Arkansas, who I thought, I thought he was sort of conservative.
	I guess not.
	He vetoes a bill that says that perverts are not allowed to pump little kids full of hormones to make Johnny look like Jane.
	So he vetoes that bill.
	And when asked why, he says, well, you know, that's just part of the culture wars and we need to focus on things that really matter, you know, like whatever, corporate tax policy or something.
	And you think, oh, so what you're really saying is that's part of the culture war.
	You totally concede the culture war to the left.
	You are perfectly happy living in the left's world as long as you can make a little bit more money or something like that.
	Well, that means you're really a Democrat.
	It just means you're a greedy Democrat.
	You know, there's sometimes, and look, I've done this myself, okay?
	Back in my wayward youth, I would have called myself a fiscal conservative social liberal.
	And what I really would have meant by that is I'm a fiscal libertarian and a social degenerate, derelict.
	What that means, though, when you say that is that you are a greedy Democrat, right?
	You support the Democrats' policies, but you want to keep more of your own money.
	Okay, you know, that's a good step on the road to becoming a conservative, but that's not a sustainable argument.
	So I think that's what Dan is really getting at.
	And you don't really see that on the Democrat side.
	A little bit here and there.
	They're kind of Clinton types, but really they tend to be true believers.
	Maybe you've got a mansion or something like that, but really they tend to be on the left.
	Next question from Michael.
	Hi, Michael.
	I wanted your opinion on the Catholic Church's China virus stance.
	My local diocese was saying that they do not condone testing vaccines on cells of aborted babies, but as an act of charity and to prevent more suffering, we can get the vaccine.
	To me, this seems like a slippery slope.
	Cancer causes suffering, but does that mean we should condone euthanasia?
	Love the show.
	Thank you very much.
	Well, I guess the argument that the bishops are making...
	In allowing people, we're saying it's permissible to use a vaccine that was made, developed through certain cells from certain lines derived from aborted babies decades ago, is that this is a relatively remote cooperation with evil, and we engage in similarly remote cooperations with evil every day.
	When I go to Starbucks and I buy a coffee, Starbucks matches employee donations to charities.
	One charity that employees can choose to have money donated to is Planned Parenthood.
	So when I buy Starbucks, am I giving money to Planned Parenthood in a remote way?
	I suppose I am.
	But at a certain point, we wouldn't be able to interact at all in society if we had such a wide threshold for that sort of thing.
	Now, I think the vaccines are a little different.
	I mean, you're using dead babies to make your inoculation against the Wu flu.
	I don't know.
	That seems to me graver.
	But the bishops have given their guidance on this, and I suppose that's above my pay grade.
	But I do think there is a little bit of a fear of a slippery slope argument here.
	I don't think it's quite like the same as saying we're going to start committing euthanasia.
	You know, we're going to start killing people if they don't feel good one day.
	But it's, yeah, I don't think it's the sort of thing that ought to be encouraged.
	Katie writes, Hey Michael, I really appreciate what you've been saying lately about denying money and business to corporations that vocally disdain conservatives and choose to go woke.
	I wish I could do this when it comes to seemingly monopolized airlines.
	I travel regularly and have been loyal to particular airlines for their quality and prices.
	You can just say it's Delta.
	But you're talking about Delta because they have high quality.
	The prices aren't that great, but they're okay.
	But with everything from aggressive mask rules in early 2020 to their recent political behavior regarding voting regulations, I'm loathe to keep giving them my business.
	Do you foresee any alternatives for air travel in the future?
	Where can I sign up for air, daily wire, frequent flyer program?
	Oh man, if only, how great would that be?
	And, you know, if Ben were flying, you'd just get there so much faster.
	And that somehow the announcements would be, you know, normally the airline announcements are, well, so we're about to touch down.
	But if it were Ben, I'd always be like, guys, the idea that we're going to get here in six hours is patently ridiculous.
	We're going to get there in four hours.
	So that would be great.
	But the short answer to your question is, The airlines are a little bit of a racket.
	They are highly regulated.
	It's hard for new players to break into the market.
	And therefore, withholding our money is not probably going to be enough.
	What you're going to need to do is not just exercise that kind of personal cultural power.
	You also need to exercise political power.
	When you get into positions of political authority, you need to make it really hard for these airlines to operate when they try to undermine your republic.
	Now, Georgia's doing this.
	To some effect, they're denying Delta some of their tax credits.
	Okay, great.
	They've done that before.
	It hasn't bankrupted Delta.
	But if you had broader political action on this front, then maybe you could get these woke companies to stop attacking your way of life.
	Because it's It's not just the fringe, cultural, super-duper conservatives who are saying this sort of thing.
	It's Mitch McConnell.
	Mitch McConnell's establishment as it gets, but he's saying you can't just give these guys a blank check and allow corporations to set up a parallel government.
	That's like the worst possible situation.
	So that's what I would do.
	I would flex political power if we can ever get it again.
	And if we don't get voter integrity back under control, then who knows if we will.
	Next question from Michael.
	Dear Michael, I have noticed that MSNBC, CNN, PBS, and other loud champions of wokeness have many articles calling the new virus variants after the places where they arose, like the Brazilian variant, the UK variant, the South African variant.
	Weren't we told that it was a sure sign of racism and white supremacy to call SARS-CoV-2 the Wuhan virus?
	Did the Ministry of Truth change the rules And I missed it.
	No, here's the rule.
	If the virus comes from a white-ish place, white or white-ish place, then you can call it by its name.
	And if it comes from an Asian place, then you can't.
	That's basically it.
	The UK, white.
	South Africa, largely white.
	Obviously, it's a complex racial situation there, but it was run by whites for a very long time.
	And Brazil, they're like sort of white, right?
	They're white Hispanics.
	I don't know what the new term is.
	I don't keep up on all the racial lingo.
	But that's the new rule.
	It's just different rules for different races because the left is instituting a new racial caste system.
	That's the way it goes.
	It's not necessarily hypocrisy.
	It's just a new hierarchy.
	I think conservatives would prefer if we just didn't focus on race.
	We didn't think that's the most important thing about people, but the left really wants to.
	So they're going to set up a caste system.
	From unknown.
	This is unknown.
	Who is unknown?
	How mysterious.
	Michael Knowles, I've heard you and Ben Shapiro talking about the COVID vaccine passports a bit.
	I was wanting to know if you see them as being potential HIPAA violations.
	Medical privacy.
	That's a good point.
	Also, I want to thank you for referring to Dr.
	Rachel Levine or whatever he calls himself as he.
	It irritates me when even people from our side let people like him live in his fantasy of being a girl when he quite obviously isn't.
	Please keep it up.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I think this is an important point because there's increasingly a fissure on the right between the people who are standing up for objective truth and are willing to assert objective truth in the public sphere and the people who might stand up for objective truth in their personal life, but they don't I think this is an important point because there's increasingly a fissure on the right between the people who are standing up for objective truth and are willing to assert objective truth in the public sphere and the people who might stand up for objective truth in
	And I think increasingly the latter vision is untenable and I think we need to stand up for the truth now or we're not going to have an opportunity to.
	As for the HIPAA violations and the medical questions of the vaccine passports, yeah, I mean, that is pretty...
	It's a good line of argument.
	I'd be happy to make it.
	I think there are even broader concerns here.
	Namely, it's an upending of our way of life.
	It's an upending of our political order.
	It empowers a whole lot of people who shouldn't have a lot of power.
	And we should simply not stand for that sort of thing.
	Whatever the argument is.
	It's kind of like with big tech.
	Do you go after big tech on fraud or Section 230 or on some other matter?
	I don't know.
	Just go after them.
	Just go after them and break it up because we cannot support that anymore.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is The Michael Knowles Show.
	See you Monday.
	See you Monday.
	Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
	The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring, our technical director is Austin Stevens, supervising producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, production manager Pavel Vidovsky, editor and associate producer Danny D'Amico, audio mixer Mike Coromina, hair and makeup by Nika Geneva, and production coordinator McKenna Waters.
	The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021.
	Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
	You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned to blood.
	But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

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