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May 7, 2021 - The Michael Knowles Show
52:47
Ep. 759 - Caitlyn Ain’t Conservative

Caitlyn Jenner clarifies his campaign, three million kids drop out of school, and AOC praises abortionists for saving lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Lots of conservatives are embracing Caitlyn Jenner's candidacy for California governor.
And you know that I have been a little slower to embrace the stiletto-clad decathlete.
And a lot of people have said, oh, that's terrible, Michael.
It's transphobic.
It's, no, let's do it.
It'll be great.
Caitlyn is totally going to turn California conservative again.
Well, now Caitlyn has spoken out for the first time about his campaign.
And you know how much I hate to say it.
You know, I can't, can I even get the words out?
I was totally right.
I'm Michael Knowles, this is The Michael Knowles Show.
My favorite comment yesterday from Sylvia J. Walker, who says, if Liz Cheney is so afraid of the Capitol riot on January 6th, what would she have done if she lived through Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles reality?
What alternate universe was she living in then?
It's still going on.
Right, but that doesn't matter.
When people like, it's not even just Liz Cheney.
When, when these squishy Republicans, you parrot Democratic talking points and say that January 6th was the single worst, most horrific, shocking, terroristic event in the history of the United States.
And they totally ignore what happened just six months prior during the BLM and Antifa riots.
What they are telling you is not that they oppose political violence.
It's that they think that some political violence is kind of justified and some political violence is totally unacceptable.
And the political violence that comes from the left, even if they don't like it, they think that that is, look, we just have to expect that.
That's just what they're going to do.
And we're not going to do that.
And we can't really stop that.
So we're just going to tolerate the leftist political violence.
But we're really going to stop it on the right.
And I just sort of think...
No, let's treat it all the same.
Let's treat it.
But the squishes cannot do that because they serve primarily to be the court gestures in the kingdom of liberalism.
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Caitlin, speaking out to Sean Hannity on Fox News.
It was a very long interview.
You can go watch the whole thing.
It's perfectly illuminating, but there were three distinct moments where I thought, okay, this is telling me what I need to know about the Caitlyn Jenner candidacy.
The first one, it starts off well.
It starts off with a recognition of what I think is perhaps the most important conservative virtue.
It's certainly up there, which is prudence.
It's the common sense, and that's what Caitlyn is going to base his candidacy on.
I've kind of played around with that term, and originally I started out as a compassionate disruptor, and then I was thinking the other day, I think I'm more of a thoughtful disruptor.
I have common sense, okay?
I see what's going on, and I see no common sense in politics and why they're doing it, besides only for political reasons.
A man dressed as a woman wearing high heels is telling you that he has common sense.
And the thing is, in California politics, relatively, he probably does.
And I don't mean this in any insulting way.
Bruce Jenner has been an outspoken, sort of Republican, you know, more Republican than Democrat for a long time.
And I think he actually does have a fair bit of common sense.
There's just one problem.
There's just one glaring problem that he fundamentally misunderstands human nature.
Or if he doesn't even misunderstand it, if he merely just wills to contradict human nature, that's a problem too.
You can't claim the common sense when you're a man wearing stiletto heels.
No matter how smart you are on fiscal policy, and I think he's fairly moderate and reasonable on fiscal policy.
No matter how reasonable you are about crime, he's much more reasonable than any Democrat politician on crime in California.
On immigration, we'll get to immigration in a second.
He's a little squishy on that.
But sure, he has relatively more common sense on a lot of important policy issues.
But he doesn't have common sense, okay?
But when it comes down to it, he doesn't have common sense.
So on the parts where he's relatively good as a candidate, what is that about?
It's about the economy, stupid.
To quote James Carville, it's all about the economy.
I have always been on the Republican side just because I have conservative economic values.
You know, the old same, lower taxes, less regulations, you know, a more friendly business environment.
And we don't have that in California.
But socially, I've been much more progressive all my life.
I get it.
People do need help.
You know, we need programs.
But you cannot have social programs without an economy.
Doesn't happen.
You just don't have the finances do it.
And that's what's happening here in California.
And so it's been so frustrating for me.
I don't care.
I work.
I honestly, I like everybody.
I'm friends with everybody.
I don't like everybody.
There are people I don't like in life.
I can get along with anybody, Sean.
You know, I can get along.
So honestly, I don't really care if you're a Republican, a Democrat, a Libertarian, vegetarian.
You know, it doesn't make any difference to me.
I want solutions.
If the Democrats are able to come up with great solutions, I am behind that 100%.
Oh, gosh.
This is almost the worst answer he could have given.
Because it starts off okay.
He says, look, I want...
Typical 2000s Republican economic policies.
I want less regulation.
I want lower taxes.
I want a friendlier business environment.
Okay, that's fine.
Then he says, but on the social stuff, I'm quite progressive.
Oh, well, that's not great.
Because, ultimately, politics comes to culture, and culture ultimately comes to religion.
That's where it derives from, and these religious premises.
What is a man?
What is a woman?
What is our human nature?
What are we here for?
What are we doing?
What is the nature of liberty?
Is liberty the same thing as licentiousness, or is it the opposite of licentiousness?
Very important debates.
Our founding fathers thought one thing.
All the smart people throughout history in politics thought one thing.
And in modernity, we think another thing.
But then he starts even beyond that.
Where you think, okay, look, if you lower taxes but completely gut the culture, That's not a good trade.
That's the trade that Republicans made for 20, 30 years now, and it hasn't worked out very well for us.
But also, he's not even saying that he's that fiscally conservative, because what he's saying is, not only am I progressive in the sense that I think men can become women, I'm progressive in the sense that I think we should have a big welfare state.
He's saying we need social programs, but you need a good economy to support that welfare state.
He's basically just Bill Clinton.
This is just what the New Democrats did.
This is actually, in terms of...
Political analogies here, you had this period after Reagan, after the end of the Cold War, you had George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and to a lesser degree, Barack Obama, who were all basically the same president.
Certainly the two Bushes and Clinton.
They had the same policies.
Make the economy better for business, especially big business, and permit basically anything anyone wants to do on the social front.
And support the consequences of those lifestyles with bigger government programs.
It's what they all did.
So if you want to go back to Bush and Clinton...
Vote for Caitlyn Jenner.
That's what you're going to get.
And then you just get into the pandering, which is so Clintonian.
And actually, fairly Bushy as well.
Remember, you had Ronald Reagan who says, I'm a conservative.
Then you had Bush come in, Bush I, and he says, we're going to be a kinder, gentler nation.
And Nancy Reagan famously responded, kinder and gentler than whom?
How dare you, George Bush?
You're insulting us.
Then you had Bill Clinton come in.
He goes, I feel your pain.
And then you had George W. Bush say, I'm going to be a compassionate conservative.
What?
As opposed to all the cruel, inhumane conservatives before them?
And that's what Caitlin's saying here.
Look, I get it.
I get it.
We need to take care of people.
I'm just for solutions.
I get along with anybody.
I love Sean's response.
He goes, I don't know.
I don't really like everybody.
Some people, I think, maybe not.
No, Sean, I get along with anybody.
And then the tell that Caitlin has here is he goes, and honestly, And honestly, when people use the phrase honestly, or when they say, to be honest, to be totally honest, that's always a big red flag to me.
Because what that tells you is they haven't been honest with you up until this point.
If you need to alert your audience to the times that you're being honest, then you're not being honest at other times.
And then...
What I felt was really, really a low point of the interview, of an already pretty low interview, he gets to a very important issue in California, immigration.
Here's his answer.
I am all for the wall.
I would secure the wall.
We can't have a state, we can't have a country without a secure wall.
You have two questions here.
One is stopping people from coming in illegally into this state.
And then the second question is, what do we do with the people that are here?
We are a compassionate country, okay?
We are a compassionate state.
Some help.
I mean, some people we're going to send back, okay?
No question about that.
But I have met some of the greatest immigrants into our country.
I had a guy the other day, and he was Spanish, and I've known him for 17 years.
He is the nicest, greatest guy he would make.
I mean, I would do everything for him to stay here.
And...
So you have to deal with it.
We have to modernize.
We have not modernized our immigration system in the United States to make it possible to people to immigrate into this country.
It's such a ridiculous problem.
We haven't made it possible for people to immigrate in here.
We take more immigrants than anyone else on earth and it's not even close and we've done it for 60 years.
What are you talking about?
We need to make it easier for people to come into this country.
Make it easier.
The majority of Americans want to dramatically reduce all immigration, both illegal and legal immigration.
According to fairly recent polls, there's a great Harvard Harris poll that shows this.
What on earth are you talking about?
Well, look, look, I think we need to build a wall.
Yeah, I support immigration enforcement.
Okay, I'm with you so far.
And we need to grant amnesty to the people who are here.
What?
Why?
Oh my gosh, Caitlin, you want to give a path to citizenship to tens of millions of voters who are going to skew overwhelmingly Democrat?
Sorry to break it to you.
There have been plenty of public opinion surveys about this and wishcasting about how these illegal aliens are Republicans.
They just don't know it yet.
That's just not true.
It never shows up.
There's no evidence of that.
So you're saying...
Let me catch my breath here.
I'm so frustrated by this.
You're telling me I've got to give up gender, the gender ideology.
I've got to totally accept that.
I've got to give up the fundamental distinction in human nature.
Totally mainstream this delusion, which we've at least generally held the line on in the Republican Party and in the conservative movement for some years now.
I've got to give that up so that we can get a squish Republican Who is fairly immoderate on economics, who is politically totally unpracticed, and who wants to give amnesty to tens of millions of illegal aliens.
And who's going to lose the race, by the way?
That's why I've got to give up the most fundamental premise that the left is trying to push and has been trying to push for years.
Are you insane?
Are you out of your mind?
Totally crazy.
It just shows you the naivete, the political ignorance, where he says, look, you've got to do something with the illegal aliens.
No, you don't.
No, you don't.
They came into this country illegally.
I'm not saying you've got to deport them all.
That's probably impractical.
But why on earth do you have to give them amnesty?
Just leave it as is.
But they're living in the shadows.
Yeah, they should leave.
They broke our laws and they're in our country illegally.
I think they should leave.
But if they're not going to leave, you don't need to encourage it.
You don't need to incentivize it.
Totally, totally wrong-headed.
Not a whole lot of common sense there.
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The big problem with Caitlyn Jenner is not even his policies, which are pretty squish.
In some cases, they're further left than most Democrats.
And in some cases, they're just kind of moderate.
I don't know, Arnold Schwarzenegger type Republican, Bushy Republican, Clinton type of policies.
Okay, whatever.
Is that better than Newsom?
Maybe, maybe not.
Okay, fine.
But the real issue is no matter how much Caitlyn says, I'm not going to push the transgender ideology.
If you elect a man who thinks he's a woman to high office, you are mainstreaming it.
It's Especially if you are the party that is at least nominally standing against it right now.
Democrats are already trying to mainstream it, but if the Republicans do it, then that's over.
That's it.
We have conceded that.
There are conservative commentators and conservative politicians who refer to him as her.
And I get why they do it.
It's hard not to do it.
I did it the other day by accident.
I was talking to someone.
I said, oh my gosh, I'm doing it now too.
Because it's a very seductive ideology.
I'm not saying Caitlyn Jenner is seductive.
I'm saying the ideology is very seductive.
And People are doing it on television, on the conservative, putatively conservative news shows.
They're calling him her.
We will be doing that.
And that is too great a cost for sort of slightly maybe more conservative economic policies and basically the same immigration policies, maybe a little slightly more conservative.
It's just not worth it as far as I can tell.
Because that is, that ideology is very dangerous.
You're seeing it being mainstreamed right now, not just in politics, but in Popeye's chicken shops.
There was a fella dressed up as a lady who had a breakdown because allegedly some guy at a Popeye's, my favorite chicken shop, called him sir.
I'm going to be talking to your manager.
This guy called me sir.
I get this on every f*** yet.
Everywhere I go, I get called sir.
I'm so f***ing sorry.
Why would you call a big-ass t***?
Why would you call...
No, stop trying to gaslight trans people and tell us that we're crazy.
Wait, what?
Did you call me sir again?
What was that?
You said goodnight sir?
This is transphobic harassment.
You're a bigot.
Alright Alex, you know what?
I can't wait to just...
It's a slur.
Do you not understand?
It's like if you call the person, I'd call her the n-word.
Don't...
You did, on the way out.
I don't care.
I have the right to be pissed about it.
You f***ing did.
You f***ing did, you liar.
Since people need to be held accountable for how they treat trans people, and I'm not going to put up with this s*** anymore.
You're crazy, bro.
You're f***ing.
Don't call me f***ing broke.
Stop f***ing throwing slurs at me, you f***ing piece of s***.
So this guy obviously should not be in a chicken shop.
He should be in a padded cell because he's not in his right mind.
If conservatives mainstream Caitlyn Jenner, then that crazy guy is right.
Then the guy throwing the big fit, screaming the words, that guy is in the right.
And the Popeyes employees, if they called him sir or whatever, they're in the wrong.
Because we will be tacitly but clearly accepting the premise that a man really can become a woman.
And so, even beyond the guy freaking out in Popeyes, when you hear these promises, well look, we support gender ideology for adults but not for children.
What are you talking about?
That doesn't make any sense.
Either a man can become a woman or he can't become a woman.
If he can become a woman, that's true for children just as it's true for adults.
If he can't become a woman, that's true for children just as it's true for adults.
It's not even a slippery slope.
It's just you're there.
It's just the same thing.
And so we can say, no, no, but we're going to protect children from this.
Why?
If it's true, then why would you protect children from the truth?
And if it's false, why would you mainstream it?
Why would you embrace that?
You think, you think that, I'm talking to those conservatives who want to mainstream Caitlin, you think that you can just keep these declarations about reality totally private.
What you're embracing is the Anthony Kennedy view that at the heart of liberty is the right to define our own conception of existence, of life.
This is what Antonin Scalia mocked as the sweet mystery of life passage from the ridiculous decision Planned Parenthood versus Casey by the Supreme Court, which I talk about at length, by the way, in my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available now for pre-order.
The...
Obviously, you do not have any right to define your own conception of existence in reality.
Reality has the right to impose itself upon you.
Also, if you have 300 million people defining their own concept of reality, then you have an insane asylum nation.
You can't actually have a nation because we have to agree on certain things.
We have to be at least playing theoretically in the same game here.
And reality doesn't change just because you want it to change.
You think you can keep these things private, but this is where the radical left actually gets it pretty right.
Your private actions do have an effect on public life.
But we hear from the left and we hear from the squish Republicans, they say, oh, just mind your own business.
Just, hey, if that guy wants to make a nuisance of himself in Popeye's, mind your own business.
Well, those guys in Popeye's were minding their own business, but that guy wouldn't let them mind their own business.
Samantha Bee just made this point.
You don't think that a man should wear stilettos?
Mind your own business.
This year, we're seeing a tidal wave of transphobic legislation targeting kids, largely in retaliation for President Biden's executive order to protect trans rights.
Conservatives are staging a coordinated attack on trans kids by making up a problem that Absolutely doesn't exist.
Most of the legislators who sponsored anti-trans bills this year can't even cite a single instance where trans girls competing in sports has caused problems.
Rather, these laws stem from the very incorrect misconception that trans women are not women.
They falsely claim trans women automatically have more testosterone and therefore more muscle mass than cis women.
But studies don't show a consistent relationship between testosterone and athletic performance.
So why are conservatives actually targeting trans athletes?
Fear mongering, baby!
Just like with the bathroom bills, Republicans are trying to scare their base into voting for people like, Governor, if life didn't go well, Pat Sajak.
Let's be real.
Conservatives don't actually care about this.
They just want to politically profit from excluding trans people from yet another public space.
At the end of the day, Republicans need to stop policing other people's bodies, mind their own f***ing business, and let trans people live their lives.
Yeah, just mind your own business.
So obviously the factual claims she's making are just completely wrong.
The idea that there's no evidence that there's ever been an athletic issue here.
There's a case at the Supreme Court right now that's working its way up the courts that the Alliance Defending Freedom is working on.
I think we've talked about it on the Daily Wire quite a lot.
So yes, it has happened many times.
The idea that the anti-trans bills are infringing on trans rights.
No, the question is what is the definition of a person?
These Republicans, they don't really care about this.
They just want to harm people.
They just want to...
You should just mind your own business.
We are minding our own business.
Why don't you mind your own business, Samantha Bee?
Mind your own business.
We're here.
We've been in this society now, in civilization for, I don't know, ever.
You know, just about forever.
We've been from primitive man all the way up to this alleged height of civilization that we're living through right now.
We have always, at all times everywhere, believed that men are men and women are women.
So, just mind your own business.
And if you disagree with that reality, then just stop pushing this on me.
But this has nothing to do with minding your own business.
This has everything to do with dominating the business, with declaring the rules of engagement, with defining the standards.
You always hear this, well, hey, get your morality out of my politics.
Well, Samantha Bee is imposing her morality on our politics.
Get your religion out of my politics.
You're imposing your religion on my politics.
Your religion says a man can be a woman.
My religion says it can't.
Only one of those religions is going to win out, and I think it ought to be mine, because mine's correct.
And everyone has agreed with that for all of human history until about five seconds ago.
You can't just keep these things private.
And conservatives, worse than leftists almost, have given into this idea.
Well, just leave me alone.
Get off my lawn.
Yeah, they're...
That goes only so far as the force of law comes in and tells you that your worldview is no longer permissible.
And that's the point that we're at right now.
This stuff is going on in first grade.
YAF, Young America's Foundation, just uncovered this.
In a first grade class in Bellingham, Washington, a teacher is educating her children in transgenderism, reading a book, some transgender book.
Teacher's name is Jennifer Miller.
She said, yes, I did read the book.
As a district, we're working hard to support all members of our school community and promote inclusion through understanding and compassion.
Concerned parents reached out to administrators, but they refused to take action.
Why?
Why did they refuse to take action?
Well, the president of the school board operates a sex boutique called Wink Wink in downtown Bellingham, which is a, quote, gender-inclusive, woman-owned, all-ages sex shop.
All-ages?
Yes.
What on...
So it's a kid's sex shop?
You're a...
Huh.
Well, that's just her private life.
That's just her private views.
No, it clearly has public effect as well.
This sort of thing is being mainstreamed and conservatives are just, we're twiddling our thumbs when we're not outright embracing it.
This kind of stuff going on in schools.
There's a report out from the New York Times that three million kids dropped out of school this past year.
When you read stories like that, you think, oh good, what a relief, what a comfort.
The New York Times.
By one estimate, three million students nationwide, roughly the school-age population of Florida, stopped going to classes, virtual or in-person, after the pandemic began, according to the New York Times.
Now, notice what they do here.
This is relatively subtle for the Times, but they say...
Three million students, roughly the school-age population of Florida, stopped going to classes.
They're doing this because there is a prejudice in this country against Florida, against the South generally and against Florida specifically.
You know, Florida, man, all those kooky rednecks in Florida.
The Florida kids didn't stop going to school.
Florida's the most open state in the country.
The kids who stopped going to school are in Chicago and New York and California and all over those places.
But they point, they say, because it's the numbers, right?
I'm just making a comparison by the numbers.
No, they're trying to insinuate that it's somehow Republicans' fault or the rednecks or the Southerners.
No, it's not.
It's the libs that are keeping the kids out of schools.
But frankly, I'm not sure that's such a bad thing.
Conservatives, we just get so, we're our own worst enemy so much of the time.
Because we point out that these schools are indoctrinating children into radical leftist ideology that teaches them to hate their country, to question their own nature, and doesn't teach them or offer them a liberal education.
So that's what's going on in the schools.
Then along comes this virus and takes the kids out of schools, and then we complain that the kids aren't in schools.
Isn't that a good thing?
Isn't this an opportunity to rethink our education system?
I understand.
It's hard for students, especially the social aspect.
It's really hard.
And it's especially bad if when they're at home, they're not even learning the basic sort of edifying things that they would have been learning in school.
The parents should step up there, or the community should step up there.
Yeah, I don't actually mean to minimize the experience of the students.
But the government education in this country, I mean, public education broadly, I mean, even including a lot of the private schools here, is very destructive.
So if we have this opportunity where three million kids are not being steeped in that kind of insanity, maybe we should take that opportunity.
I think the libs would take that opportunity.
They never let a crisis go to waste.
The population of Florida.
Florida's doing just fine, thank you very much.
And Ron DeSantis is taking victory laps, because this guy has been right about coronavirus from the beginning, and he's fighting back again.
He just gave a press conference.
You'll notice he's looking a little thinner.
He's wearing better tailored suits.
It's almost like this guy has his eyes on a bigger job.
I don't know.
I'm not...
Making any predictions here, but one might think he's setting himself up for 2024.
Ron DeSantis says, we got to cut it out here with this craziness at the CDC. Florida was right and everybody's got to open up.
Think about the larger implication of this.
Do you want one unelected bureaucracy to be able to have the power to indefinitely shut down a major industry in this country?
They do not have that authority to do it.
That's why we're suing them.
But this has much larger implications than just cruise ships sailing or not.
This has implications for potentially any industry.
And look, with all due respect to the CDC, I mean, if you look at some of the stuff that they've done on school openings, where they're basically doing the teachers' union's bidding, when they say these kids should be masked at summer camp outdoors, I'm sorry, that's not science, that's politics.
That's not science.
That's politics.
It's a good line.
Ron DeSantis is good at these lines.
He's obviously set himself up very well in 2024.
And I'm really not knocking him.
He's doing such a great job.
I don't want to nitpick.
But this distinction here, that's not science.
That's politics.
That's a meaningless distinction in secular progressivism, in a country that's run by the administrative state.
He says the CDC doesn't have any right to run our lives for us.
Yes, it does.
Yes, it does.
The progressives for a century now have empowered these agencies that are relatively unaccountable to the people to run our lives.
They've done that.
And that is the way our government works.
I know it doesn't look like it works that way in the Constitution, but that is how our government works.
And we have outsourced, through the Progressive Project, our political decisions largely to egghead experts who pretend that there's no debate over any political questions because that's just what the science says.
So the real issue here is not...
I fear we fall into this trap where we agree with the left that, well, whatever the science says, we need to follow that.
The science should dictate our politics, but just in this case, that's not what the science is saying.
Just in this case with the CDC, they're not following the science, it's politics.
No, we should go back and say, I don't care what the science says.
The science, meaning this method of material inquiry, does not dictate my politics.
I truly don't care.
My issue with Dr.
Fauci is not just that he gets it wrong, it's that he shouldn't be running my life.
He also gets it wrong a lot, but that's not the issue.
My issue isn't just that the CDC is overstepping its bounds where it gets to run our lives because of science.
No, my issue is that the CDC at all is trying to run my life.
I don't mind the CDC giving advice.
I have no problem getting the advice of experts.
But ultimately, I want these decisions to be made by politicians.
You know who the experts are at politics in a self-governing republic?
The people.
We're the experts.
We're the experts that everyone's supposed to defer to within the constitutional boundaries.
And that has been totally disrespected.
DeSantis has done a great job, so I'm really not knocking him for it.
But you've got to watch the language.
The language is very important here.
The left has wrought a lot of changes in society through subtle shifts of language, which is a topic I discuss at great length, by the way, in my upcoming book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, available now for pre-order.
The audio book, the autographed first edition, the Kindle, and the hardcover.
Speaking of the politics of science...
Cori Bush, a representative on the Democratic side, wants you to know all about the politics of birthing people.
Everyday black women are subjected to harsh and racist treatment during pregnancy and childbirth.
Everyday black women die because the system denies our humanity.
It denies us patient care.
I sit before you today as a single mom, as a nurse, as an activist, and as a congresswoman, and I am committed to doing the absolute most to protect black mothers, to protect black babies, to protect black birthing people, and to save lives.
As far as I know, Cori Bush supports abortion, so I don't think she cares at all about black babies.
And in terms of the birthing people, what's a birthing person?
Oh, a woman.
But you're not allowed to say woman anymore because the left embraced transgenderism.
And guess what?
If the conservatives go all in on Caitlyn, we are implicitly, even if we say we're not, we are implicitly embracing that kind of language too.
This woman, Cori Bush, she might be even to the left of AOC, though AOC had a pretty wild line.
I have to get to it before the mailbag.
AOC... is out defending Planned Parenthood for saving lives.
She begins, she says, conservatives, I don't want to hear it about Planned Parenthood when you support the death penalty.
First and foremost, I don't want to hear a single person on this committee or outside of this committee talk about valuing life when they continue to uphold the death penalty, when they continue to support policies that disproportionately incarcerate and lead to the deaths of Black men and people throughout this country.
And uphold an absolutely unjust medical system that exists for profit that allows people to die because they can't afford to live.
Put a pause right there.
I don't have a lot of time, so we'll do this quickly.
Executing convicted criminals is different than murdering innocent babies.
The U.S. justice system intentionally incarcerates criminals.
That's what they go for.
If some groups commit crime at higher rates, that ain't the cop's fault.
That ain't the system's fault.
It's a problem, but it ain't the cop's problem.
And third, the United States has the best healthcare in the world.
That's why people from other countries that allegedly have better healthcare, when they want good healthcare, they come to the United States.
And then she goes on and makes her real point.
In addition to that, if we want to talk about Planned Parenthood, let's talk about how many lives Planned Parenthood has saved and how many babies have been born because of the prenatal care provided by Planned Parenthood.
And if you don't believe it, and if you've never met a Planned Parenthood baby, I'm happy to let you know that I am one.
And that my mother received and relied on prenatal care from Planned Parenthood when she was pregnant with me.
And so if we're concerned about life, we don't get to talk about anyone else who's not concerned about the full spectrum of that when we are upholding policies that kill people.
So, that's obviously preposterous, the argument she's making.
If AOC really, if her mother did go to Planned Parenthood at various times, and I have no reason to believe that because AOC lies all the time, but if that's true, if AOC slipped through the cracks of the abortionist ghouls at Planned Parenthood, that's good.
Good for her.
That's a good story.
The fact is that Planned Parenthood kills hundreds of thousands of babies a year.
Their business is abortion.
If accidentally some woman walks in and they're not able to get their fangs into them and convince them to kill their babies, that is a happy accident that happens at Planned Parenthood.
But the argument she's making here is if you don't oppose the death penalty, you can't oppose abortion.
Not true.
If you don't support socialist medicine, you can't oppose abortion.
Not true.
You can.
You really can.
You don't need to fall for the traps that the left is laying before you, even when that involves candidates on our own side that are, I think, tricking us, wittingly or unwillingly, into accepting a lot of three dangerous leftist premises.
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We'll be right back with the mailbag.
Welcome back to the show.
First question from Lisa Marie.
Hey, Michael.
I have a problem at work.
I recently moved to a new city for work and have not fully settled in.
There is a guy at work I have a crush on, but there are a few complications.
He is much younger than me.
I'm Catholic, and he's a practicing Jew, and I am about five inches taller than him.
Do you think this is too much of a divide to be bridged?
Does height and age really matter?
Thanks a lot.
Sincerely, Romeo, and not a Jew yet.
Well done.
Well done, not a Juliet.
There are a lot of complications here.
Not the least of which, you don't even really get to it or acknowledge it, but not the least of which is you work together.
So if things don't work out, it could be a little bit awkward.
It could be even worse than awkward.
So, you know, you got to take that into consideration.
Plenty of people meet at work, so I'm not saying that's a deal breaker, but something to consider.
In terms of the age...
It could be an issue.
The only way it would be an issue necessarily is with kids, I think.
I mean, you know, age creates complicated...
I have friends who are married who have big age gaps, and it can be a problem.
It's not always a problem, but it can be.
But with kids, it could really be a problem because if the timing is not going to work out and he really wants kids, then probably this thing isn't going to work for you.
As for the religious issue, if you want to be married and remain Catholic, you know, if you want to be married in the church, then you would have to agree to raise children Catholic.
That's the way that you would get a dispensation from the bishop for an interfaith marriage.
And really, really he would have to convert, right?
Because you need to be unified.
You can't have a family that believes radically different things like that.
And if the man is going to be the head of the household, which is pretty traditional, then if you're not going to convert to Judaism, and as a fellow papist, I would suggest you do not do that, then you would have that trick.
And that's not impossible.
Plenty of people start out believing different religions and then they come together.
But you'll either grow together or grow apart.
Not saying you can't go get a drink with the guy.
In terms of the height, you know, if you don't have a problem with it, and he doesn't have a problem with it, then who cares, you know?
Think about Nicolas Sarkozy, the former prime minister of France, who, you know, he was dating that hottie who was much taller than him, and that made him look like an even cooler guy.
So that, I wouldn't worry about that, but, and in terms of, you know, in terms of the age, it's, there, that is a little bit more difficult than it, than it would be in terms of height.
But, you know, you can suss it out.
You don't need to decide whether or not you're going to spend your lives together on the first date.
But you shouldn't drag it along either and put yourselves in a bad situation that'll be harder to get out of.
From Jared, dear Michael, my brother's wife has excluded me from Mother's Day because I've not gotten vaccinated.
Ugh.
My parents and every other adult who will be at the celebration have been vaccinated, but she doesn't want me exposing my seven-year-old niece, who's at what, like.0000001% risk or something?
That's not an exact figure, but it ain't that far off.
I'm not an anti-vaxxer.
I'm 31 years old, had COVID last December, and I don't understand how a vaccine can improve my own God-given immunity.
I respect her impulse to protect her child, but I don't see how my presence puts my niece at any more or less risk.
My sister-in-law is acting out of fear at best and at worst, passive-aggressively punishing me for not marching to the beat of Fauci's drum.
What would you do?
Well, I might tell my brother that he could consider acting like a man and get control of his household.
Good grief.
Clearly, your sister-in-law wears the pants in the family, doesn't she?
Goodness gracious.
Your brother is letting your sister-in-law tell his family what to do?
There are clearly deeper problems here than the vaccine.
And the neurosis that your sister-in-law is expressing with the vaccine clearly is given free reign in that household.
So that's the first problem.
Your brother is the first problem.
And if you look at the statistical likelihood that a seven-year-old child is going to face serious complications from COVID, it's virtually non-existent.
So that's not a good argument.
And I would not do it.
I would not get the vaccine for that reason.
I wouldn't want to miss out on Mother's Day either, so I'd try to arrange maybe, you know, you have breakfast with your mother or something like that.
But if your sister-in-law is going to boot you from the dinner or from the lunch for a completely bogus reason, and your brother is gelded and refuses to tell her no, then what can you do?
You know, you shouldn't acquiesce to that sort of ridiculous demand.
Maybe go get breakfast or go get a different meal instead.
From Sandy, last week Walsh had a segment where he dissected a statement that Steve Harvey made on how it's impossible for a single man to be just friends with a single woman.
Man, I'm getting a lot of relationship questions today.
He agreed with Harvey, but what is your take?
like Yeah, basically that's true.
It's difficult for married men to be friends with single women.
It's not impossible.
It can happen, but it has to be the case that you've got, you know, you're not sexually attracted to one another, that your wife is part of that friendship too, then it can work.
But if a married man is friends just completely on his own with a single woman, that can create some complications.
In terms of single men and single women, yeah, it's virtually impossible to do it.
Unless you're really not in any way attracted to one another.
But that's rare and that sort of thing can change as well.
And the question is, if you're a single man and a single woman and you really enjoy spending time together, then why would you want that to remain totally impossible?
Why would you even want to do that?
If it's working out, then why don't you see where it goes?
From James.
Michael.
I want to push back respectfully against your thoughts on Caitlin's run for governor.
Wow, that's funny because obviously this question came in days ago and then my show today was all about this.
Isn't it possible for the GOP to support her run, especially if she has a viable shot at winning, without accepting the premise of transgender ideology?
I'm not interested in owning the left, although it would be a great trolling opportunity.
But can't someone vote for Caitlyn without accepting the transgender issue?
Please keep up your great work.
You're the most based host at Daily Wire.
Thank you very much for the compliment.
No, it is not possible.
And you just proved it.
Because what did you say?
I'll pull it up right here.
You said, isn't it possible for the GOP to support her run if she has a viable shot at winning without accepting the premise of transgender ideology?
You just accepted it.
The premise of transgender ideology is that a man can become a woman.
And we ought to treat men who believe that they are women as women.
And you just did that.
And you didn't mean to, I assume.
I assume it just happened.
Because you look and he's wearing stilettos and he's wearing a dress often and he's got long hair and he vaguely resembles a woman and everyone else is calling him her.
So you're going to go along with that too.
The most ardent opponent of this madness and the most ardent defender of reality will Crack a little bit if the whole culture is telling you that the man is a woman and if even the putative conservatives are going along with it.
I'm trying not to be totally closed-minded here.
Never say never in politics.
Never say never in politics.
But I just do not see a way for conservatives to embrace Caitlyn.
Caitlin isn't particularly conservative anyway, but even if he were, even if he were the most hardcore knuckle dragon right winger, I don't see a way for them to embrace him as her without giving up the game on gender ideology, as I think you just demonstrated.
From Daniel, I really love the show and I wanted to tell you that it is largely due to you that I am joining a local church.
Hey, great.
A couple of years ago, I got divorced, which was at fault against me for reasons I won't get into in the mailbag.
I'm working on fixing the damage to others and myself that I caused, but what I wanted to ask is how could I possibly move forward?
My friend tells me that now I need to just jump back into dating.
However, I have a huge feeling of guilt from the divorce, even still, and if I find someone, I don't want to bring that in and have another failed relationship because of it.
If you have any good advice, it would be welcomed, but if there is no good advice, then honesty will be appreciated as well.
Either way, I know that whatever you say, the results will leave me.
Speechless.
Oh, but you know, that's my new book.
That's the title of my new book coming out.
Controlling Words, Controlling Mindset.
Available now for pre-order.
Very difficult situation.
I'm so pleased to hear that you've joined a local church, and I'm very pleased to hear that I had some role in that.
Drew Clavin tells me that whenever that sort of thing happens, we get a toaster in heaven.
So that's great.
I'm very excited.
You're in a very difficult position.
You should not listen to your friends.
Your friends just might not know what's going on.
Here's a hard saying, my friend.
Sorry to tell you this.
You can't get divorced.
You can't do it.
Now, the question of divorce is a question of what is the marriage?
What was the marriage?
So I'm speaking here as a Catholic.
This is the old-timey view.
This is the long-standing Christian view of marriage and divorce.
What God has joined together, let no man separate.
Now, If you've split up and you say it was your own fault, and sure, these things happen.
People get divorced.
I totally get it.
It's in the Mosaic Law, right?
If you split up, you get divorced, this does not mean necessarily that you can never date again and that you can never marry.
But what you have to determine is whether or not your marriage was a valid marriage in the first place, which is why the process here in the Catholic Church is not divorce.
One cannot get divorced, but there is an investigation for the purpose of annulment.
And what annulment says is not, okay, you had a marriage and now you're going to dissolve that marriage.
What annulment tries to figure out is, did you have a valid marriage in the first place?
Was something concealed before the marriage that...
It makes a fraud or a farce of that marriage vow.
Did the people who were getting married know what they were getting into in the first place?
Now, the difficulty for you, I'm not sure if you're Catholic.
I suspect you're not by saying I joined a local church and say, you know, you're kind of just getting into this.
Back when I was coming out of my 10 years of atheism, I checked out some other Protestant sorts of pastors and things too, so I understand that process.
I'm not familiar with a non-Catholic Process for this investigation, this type of annulment.
So obviously I recommend the Catholic way to do things.
But you should figure that out first.
Because I think your intuition is totally right.
And you're going to have the whole culture telling you you're wrong.
But you're totally right.
If you've got these unresolved questions, these unresolved issues, you shouldn't just immediately jump into another relationship that then you could get married and then that could be failed as well.
You need to work these things out first yourself.
And ultimately, what are you working out?
You're working out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
And...
You're trying to figure out things that, and you're hearing things that might be hard sayings, but you remember as you've joined your local church that Christ's yoke is easy and his burden is light, even if it doesn't always look that way, even if it looks like it's the way of the martyrs.
I would work that out first.
I think that it might be a little difficult or it might involve some discipline in the short term, but But I would never give in to despair, and I would never fling yourself.
You know, there's the sort of despair of, oh, my life's never going to get better, and the sort of despair of, I'm going to fling myself into something immediately, because I have no idea what else to do, and that could create further problems as well.
I would investigate first.
What was the nature of your marriage?
At the very least, why did the marriage fall apart?
And was it a valid marriage in the first place?
From Aaron.
Michael, huge fan of the show and all the other Daily Wire material.
My question for you has nothing to do with politics or the culture war that is going on right now.
Actually, I was curious if you are ready for the upcoming cicada arrival now that you're living in Tennessee.
Speaking of scenes from the Bible, yes, I am preparing myself for the actual biblical plague that is supposed to be happening.
Apparently trillions of cicadas, these hideous, gross, gigantic bugs are about to come out and they're especially going to come into D.C. Not great stuff.
Very, very bad stuff.
I'm preparing myself to not leave my home for a couple of months.
From Sarah.
Since you show a passion for history, I was wondering who you thought were a few of the most important women in history, not including the Virgin Mary.
Thanks.
Well, you know, you have to include the Virgin Mary.
I guess...
Most of the women that I think of as the most important in history are saints.
You know, I think of Saint Lucia.
I think of Saint Catherine of Siena.
I think of Saint Therese of Avila.
I think of these very important, Therese of Lisieux for that matter, very important reformers, very important...
There have been important statesmen, too.
I mean, obviously, Elizabeth I was extraordinarily important.
Elizabeth II was extraordinarily important, even if I don't totally go along with everything that they did.
Queen Isabella, oh my gosh, she was essential toward the creation of America.
She counts, too.
But they all do seem to have this religious grounding as well, right?
Isabella, devout Catholic, the Elizabeths, head of a church, you know?
It's kind of weird that Elizabeth II is head of a church when no one in her country seems to believe in that church anymore, but she doesn't.
So yes, I think those women are plenty in statecraft, but they do all seem to have a kind of cultural and religious basis too, as does all politics.
Got to take a break.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Two days, and we'll be right back on Monday.
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