The Transportation Secretary remains MIA on “paternity leave,” inflation hits a 13-year high, and a major airline ditches its vaccine mandate.
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As possibly the worst port and supply chain crisis in America's history roils the economy and threatens to continue all the way through Christmas and beyond, it is just now being reported that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been on paternity leave for the past two months and has no plans of coming back to work anytime soon.
Everything, and I really mean everything, about this story is wrong, sad, and ridiculous.
Broadcasting live from Clown World, I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show, my name is The Michael Knowles Show.
My favorite comment Friday is from OpenEye, who says, Let's not forget Magic Johnson literally got to play basketball while HIV positive.
Yes, that's true.
But basketball players who have already had the Wu flu, who have already recovered from the Wuhan cough, they're not allowed to play if they don't get the vaccine.
Kyrie Irving, for instance, he doesn't get to play unless he gets the vaccine.
But if you have...
One of the worst diseases in modern history.
That's totally fine.
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Pete Buttigieg.
change.
Secretary of Transportation is missing in action because he is on paternity leave.
I got in a lot of trouble over the weekend on Twitter because I made fun of Pete Buttigieg's paternity leave.
And I would say just about every conservative is mocking this incident, the Buttigieg paternity leave.
But they're doing so with varying degrees of breadth.
Meaning, everyone is mocking the idea that the Transportation Secretary just disappeared.
A Cabinet Secretary disappears for two months.
But there's more wrong to this story than just that, alright?
So, I think there are three aspects of this that are really, really wrong.
The first one we all agree on.
No cabinet secretary should be able to just disappear for two months for paternity leave or any other reason.
And if they do disappear for two months, they need to be replaced.
It's kind of funny that no one even noticed Buttigieg was gone.
Frankly, if he'd been around, he'd probably make things worse.
But no cabinet secretary should be able to just disappear for two months.
Okay, that's the first thing that's wrong.
The second aspect that's wrong with this is more specific to Buttigieg.
There was this YouTuber who goes by the name Shuan Head.
She said to me, Michael, I think you're just secretly in opposition to gay marriage and adoption, but you're just using paternity leave as a way to hide that.
And clearly this woman has never listened to my show because I don't think I've been exactly shy about my opposition to redefining marriage.
Issue here, because the only argument I've ever heard that's even somewhat compelling for paternity leave is it's not so much for the dads to take care of the kids, to sit at home for a couple months and change diapers and chest feet or whatever.
It's so that the dads can take care of mom while mom recovers from the physical trauma of pregnancy and of childbirth.
Obviously, in Pete Buttigieg's case, he doesn't have to worry about that because there's no mom at home.
And so, it does raise this issue of the redefinition of marriage in the family.
Because there are two ways that Pete Buttigieg could have acquired these kids that he's now going to raise.
And it's not clear.
He's been kind of cagey on which one it is.
The first one is adoption.
And if these babies were adopted, what that means is that in a country where there were 36 couples approximately trying to adopt every one infant put up for adoption, some adoption agency decided to deprive these children of being raised by a mother and a father and to choose to have them raised by two men.
And if you're fine with that, What you are saying is that there is nothing that mothers add to raising children.
There is nothing that mothers uniquely or especially do that fathers don't do.
There's no special role for moms and for dads.
It's all just the same.
Mom and dad are exactly the same.
They're completely indistinguishable.
And I know that a lot of people pretend that these days, but I don't think very many people actually believe that.
When you think back to your childhood, were mommy and daddy exactly the same?
Did they fulfill exactly the same roles?
And neither of them added something special to your upbringing?
They were just completely interchangeable?
No, no one really believes that.
The other way that Buttigieg and his partner could have acquired the kids is even more morally dubious, and that is through in vitro fertilization and surrogacy.
And this is a process whereby a man will choose a woman out of a catalog, purchase her eggs, and then use the womb of another woman to implant an embryo and then get rid of the women altogether and just raise the kids.
And this is more morally dubious because it involves the intentional creation of a baby for the express purpose of denying him his natural mother, which is wrong.
It's a wrong thing to do.
Babies have a right to their mother.
I don't want to seem like I'm just beating up on Buttigieg and his partner here.
I actually have a great deal of sympathy for them.
I have even empathy for them.
Sort of a personal issue.
In the sense that when I got married, sweet little Elise and I, we are Catholic.
We started getting ready for the baby machine right away.
And it didn't happen right away.
And if you've ever dealt with infertility problems of any sort, you know this is a very...
Painful things, very difficult.
And I'm sure that Buttigieg and his partner just have a natural longing to have a kid, but they don't have the desire or the willingness to do the things that naturally lead to a kid.
And so, I remember when we were trying to have a kid, you know, my wife said, well...
Oh, gosh, maybe we should do IVF. Maybe we should do this.
Maybe we should do that.
The Catholic Church does not permit that because they're morally suspect processes whereby multiple embryos are created.
Some are just put in a freezer forever.
Some are destroyed.
It can be a really bioethically wrong process.
And the conclusion that we came to is that, yes, it's good to have a kid.
That's a good thing to want.
But a good end does not justify immoral means.
It's good that Buttigieg and his partner want kids.
That doesn't justify depriving that child of his natural mother or of the opportunity to be raised by a mother and a father.
So that's the part that a lot of conservatives are probably not going to say because they don't want to seem like they're being mean to Buttigieg and his partner.
And no one wants to be mean to them.
But it's just a fact.
And one has to think about The broader moral implications here.
And one has to think about kids.
And one has to think about what it means to have a father and a mother and these sorts of realities.
The third part that's ridiculous about this story...
And this is probably the least popular opinion of all, but it's true, is that paternity leave is a very silly concept, okay?
It's a very modern, silly concept.
And I'm sure that there are many listeners out there who took paternity leave or who plan to take paternity leave.
I do not begrudge you your employment benefit.
It's perfectly natural to take advantage of all the benefits you can.
But it's a silly thing.
It's a very new thing.
There used to be such a thing as maternity.
Well, there used to be such a thing as mothers staying home and raising their kids.
Then, as more and more women entered the workforce in the 20th century, there was such a thing as maternity leave.
Because mothers have a lot to do with their kids when the baby's born.
One, the mothers have to recover from pregnancy and childbirth.
Two, they have to breastfeed.
Three, they have to nurture and bond and take care of this little baby.
Fathers...
Don't really have to do that.
Matt Walsh got in trouble for saying this over the weekend.
There actually isn't all that much to do for dads, for their little babies, when they're born.
We're not going to chest feed.
I guess we can change some diapers or something, but it's a little bizarre, I think, for men to stay home for two months or more, in the case of Buttigieg.
To change diapers or something.
Babies need their mothers when they're born.
And they need their fathers too, but in a different way.
They need their fathers to go bring home the bacon, show them a good work ethic.
I think there are a lot of conservatives who believe that Policies such as paternity leave are a way to rebuild the family, to not just focus on the crazy, market-driven, economics-obsessed aspects of politics, but to focus on the family, too.
I do not think policies like paternity leave help rebuild the American family.
I think policies like paternity leave actually come from the same sort of gender confusion that led to this problem in the first place.
Because we're pretending that moms and dads are exactly the same.
They're not.
They're really not.
I do think that this is a political problem.
It's not a personal problem.
It's not just a, hey man, suck it up and go back to work and pick yourself up by your bootstraps.
No, the problem is that mothers do need help right after their babies are born.
And in the old days, there were two ways they'd get that help.
Rich people would pay servants, and less rich people would have extended families all around them, right?
Cousins and sisters and all sorts of relatives who could come help out.
And in our modern economy, most people don't have the money to hire someone to help them, and they don't live anywhere near their family because we live in this world where we move away from our families.
We don't have very big families.
We don't have extended families nearby.
So I agree.
This is a political...
I don't think the answer is just...
Hey, let's get rid of paternity leave and suck it up and figure it out.
No, we need to figure out a legitimate, genuine, authentic way to rebuild the American family.
Just one policy off the top of my head.
In Hungary, Hungary will exempt you from paying income taxes if you have more than four kids.
Or maybe it's four kids or more.
So if you have four kids or more, you just don't pay income taxes.
It's the government directly trying to deal with this problem of declining birth rates, nations such as ours having less than replacement levels of fertility, which is one of the reasons why a lot of people encourage mass immigration, is because you need to have people to bolster the economy.
That would be one way to do it.
But pretending that daddy is exactly the same as mommy and there's no difference whatsoever, that is not the way to rebuild the American family.
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Pete Buttigieg took a quick break from his months-long paternity leave to go on TV. He got caught in this scandal.
He goes on Jake Tapper's show, and he wanted to gaslight the American people on inflation and the supply chain.
Well, certainly a lot of the challenges that we've been experiencing this year will continue into next year, but there are both short-term and long-term steps that we can take to do something about it.
Look, part of what's happening isn't just the supply side, it's the demand side.
Demand is off the charts.
Retail sales are through the roof, and if you think about those images of ships, for example, waiting at anchor on the West Coast, Every one of those ships is full of record amounts of goods that Americans are buying because demand is up, because income is up, because the president has successfully guided this economy out of the teeth of a terrifying recession.
This massive transportation crisis that we're in right now, actually, it's a good thing.
Huh?
And all of the consequences of that and some of the causes, you know, like the fact that you've got to pay a lot more money and you're not getting the goods that you want, that's actually, that's good.
Man, if this is good, man, what's bad?
It's so weak.
But you're seeing here the beginning of a White House line.
Initially, I thought, This was Pete just grasping at straws, trying to hold on to his job and saying, no, inflation's good.
No, supply chain crises are good.
People are buying stuff.
They're not really getting it, but they're buying it.
Yeah, it's really good.
But it's not just Pete who's making this claim.
The White House Chief of Staff, just a few days ago, Ron Klain, came out.
He retweeted this comment.
He said, quote, most of the economic problems we're facing, inflation, supply chain, etc., We shouldn't have had them, or wouldn't have had them, if the unemployment rate was still 10%.
We would instead have had a much worse problem.
So, because the unemployment rate was artificially high during COVID, because the government mandated that businesses shut down, Joe Biden's administration is now taking credit for fixing the problem that was artificial in the first place.
It's not as though we just had an actual unemployment crisis.
It's not as though the government couldn't figure out ways to incentivize companies to hire people.
It's that the government went in and said, stop it.
Shut down your business.
Shut down.
Don't buy anything.
Don't produce anything.
Stay home.
So it created this artificial unemployment crisis, and then the government started to say, okay, you can kind of go back to work again.
See, look how great we are.
We fixed unemployment.
Well, no, you just took your foot off the brakes for a little bit, and so the economy started back up again.
And now they're saying, as a result of this, inflation's going up and the supply chain's going up.
I think the supply chain is having problems.
First of all, there are other causes of this.
Namely, we just gave people a bunch of money and printed up a bunch of money for a long time.
So that, I suspect that has something to do with the inflation.
And the supply chain crises are caused by this dumb economic policy that shut the whole world down for a year.
But you can't, whatever your views on the cause of these things, you can't say it's just a high-class problem.
If you are having trouble meeting ends meet right now, if you're having trouble affording gas, which is going through the roof, if you're having trouble getting basic household goods, that's not just the Rockefellers who are dealing with that.
That's everybody.
Actually, not only is Ron Klain's claim false, in fact, it's the opposite of true.
People kind of forget about inflation, but...
Inflation, far from just affecting the wealthy, disproportionately affects the poor.
So, for starters, wealthier people are more likely to offset inflation with rising income.
They're more likely to be able to deal with that just on the income level.
But also, prices tend to increase more for basic goods than they do for luxury goods, which is a phenomenon that's called inflation inequality.
So you're going to deal with higher increases in prices for toilet paper, for basic food staples, for gasoline, than you are for your Audi or your BMW. Prices might go up for all of them, but they're going to increase.
They're more likely to increase disproportionately for the basic household goods.
So it's not a high-class problem.
It's actually more a low-class problem.
It's actually more a middle- and working-class problem than it is A wealthy problem.
And this is the official White House.
So it's not just Buttigieg saying this at the Transportation Department.
It's not just Ron Klain, the Chief of Staff, saying this in an interview.
It's the official White House spokesman, Jen Psaki, who went on Jake Tapper's show and said rising prices actually are good.
Doesn't it seem tone deaf to say that rising prices in empty grocery store shelves are high class problems?
Isn't that a bit dismissive?
Well, that's not exactly what the tweet said, nor the retweet of the original tweet, which is what we're talking about here.
It is true, though, Jake, and economists will tell you this, and I know you've interviewed some of them as well, that the fact is the unemployment rate is about half what it was a year ago.
So a year ago, people were in their homes, 10% of people were unemployed, gas prices were low because nobody was driving, people weren't buying goods because they didn't have jobs.
Now more people have jobs, more people are buying goods.
That's increasing the demand.
That's a good thing.
At the same time, we also know that the supply is low because we're coming out of the pandemic and because a bunch of manufacturing sectors across the world have shut down because ports haven't been functioning as they should be.
These are all things we're working through.
Okay, so that's their story and they're sticking to it.
Rising prices and supply chain problems are good.
Now there's a problem, and you've got to give Jake Tapper credit here.
He points out the problem, which is, under Trump, when Trump was dealing with some inflation, Ron Klain, the same guy now who's claiming rising prices are good, Attacked Donald Trump for those rising prices and described it as a sort of tax on the middle class.
So Jake Tapper asks Jen Psaki, what changed then, between then and now?
Why did Ron Klain think that rising prices was a serious concern under Trump and not under Biden?
I can tell you from sitting in a lot of meetings with Ron Klain day in and day out, he is obsessed with lowering costs for the American people, and that's driven from the president.
Hold on.
You just told me, Jen Psaki, that rising prices are good.
And they're the signs of a healthy economy.
But now you're telling me that Ron Klain is doing everything he can to lower prices.
So are the...
Makes me think that the rising prices are bad.
So are the rising prices good or bad?
Because you've just told me completely contradictory statements within the span of about 15 seconds.
And it's because Jake Tapper calls out the BS, which he, on occasion, actually succeeds in doing.
And she backs off immediately.
She goes with this BS White House line, rising prices are good.
Then he goes, actually, that doesn't make sense.
She goes, look, we're doing our best.
Okay, we're trying, we're trying.
We're trying to lower the prices.
Please don't yell at us, please.
That was easy.
That was easy to knock down that ridiculous argument.
And the inflation is, it's a big deal right now.
The inflation has now risen 5.4% from a year ago.
This is now matching a 13-year high, according to the Associated Press.
The lesson, of course, is pretty simple.
Eventually, the bill comes due.
Okay, the bill comes due.
Nothing is free.
And this is obviously true in the financial sector, but it's true generally.
It's true of society.
It's true of culture.
We live in a culture where people seem to believe that you can get something for nothing.
Okay?
Or that you can radically upend certain aspects of society.
And that will have no consequence on the rest of society.
And it kind of gets back to the paternity leave thing.
Obviously the bill comes due for paternity leave.
Literally it comes due.
The company has to pay more money or the government has to pay more money or whatever.
But the social bill comes due as well.
You can't Radically redefine what it means to be a husband and a wife, what it means to be a father and a mother, what it means to be married, what it means to have a family, and then expect that that won't radically alter everything else in society.
The family is the fundamental building block.
It's the basic political unit.
And I think there are a lot of right-wingers who have believed, mistakenly, over the past decade or two, that it's no big deal.
Yeah, whatever, redefine everything, and it's okay.
Just don't make me pay for it.
You know, redefine everything, totally upend our basic institutions, but hey, don't infringe on my rights.
Don't, well, guess what, pal?
I think we're beginning to see this.
That will have an effect.
You can't do that.
It's amazing that these kind of economics-obsessed conservatives don't realize that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
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We'll be right back.
Joe Biden is threatening the Navy SEALs.
As a general rule, it's not smart to threaten Navy SEALs.
They tend to be pretty tough hombres.
But the Biden Defense Department is threatening Navy SEALs.
Why is this?
Because a number of SEALs don't want to get the COVID vax.
A number of people in the Special Forces, a number of people in the military broadly, don't want to get the COVID vax.
And when you join the military, you sign away basically all of your rights, and people who join the military take lots and lots of vaccines, but they take vaccines that have been pretty well established against things that pose a grave threat to them.
COVID doesn't meet either of those criteria.
The COVID stuff is a little bit different, because for the vast majority of people, COVID doesn't pose a particularly grave danger, and the COVID vaccine is brand new, and we don't know anything about the long-term effects, because obviously not, because...
It's only been around for six months or a year.
So there just aren't any long-term data.
And we have heard reports of blood clotting.
That's why they paused the Johnson& Johnson vaccine.
And of myocarditis and pericarditis.
The CDC and the FDA both acknowledge that.
And of nerve damage.
And of other issues, too.
And there was a study out of UC Davis.
Just one study, but we all quote studies these days, that showed that young men, certain young men, face greater risk from the vaccine than from the virus.
So, these SEALs and these other service members say, I don't think we really want to get that.
Well, the Biden administration is threatening to remove them from special warfare.
So, you know, they're special operators.
They can remove that designation from them.
Or reduce their salaries.
Or force the SEALs to repay the costs of their training.
Right?
The SEALs receive some of the, if not the best military training in the entire world ever.
Right?
And it's not cheap.
It's expensive training.
And so what Biden's saying is, well, if you're not going to get the vax, you need to repay us for that training.
Now, why is it?
I think people are kind of missing the heart of this story.
They're focusing on the lack of gratitude that the Biden administration has for the military, or for the lack of respect the Biden administration has for the military.
I don't think that's the big issue.
I think what the story shows, actually, is the incompetence of government, okay?
Because why?
The argument for making the SEALs repay the costs of their training is that once these guys get out of the service, what are they going to do?
Are they going to go drive Uber?
Probably not.
Maybe.
Probably not.
Are they going to go work at Starbucks?
Maybe.
Probably not.
You know what I think they're going to do?
I think they're going to go become contractors and do exactly the same job that they're doing now and make about a bazillion dollars more money.
It's much more expensive to pay the salaries of these contractors than to pay the salaries of the enlisted men and the officers.
Because the United States is still going to need Special operators.
The United States is still going to have this military need, especially if China keeps aggressing on our interests.
So what's going to happen is the Biden administration is going to say, get the vax.
Then a bunch of people are going to leave.
They're going to say, I don't want to get the vax.
Then those people are going to go work for private contractors.
And then the Biden administration is going to say, uh-oh, man, we need those warriors back.
Okay, go get the contractors.
Go pay and pay them whatever they want.
And those contractors are just going to be former SEALs and other sort of special operators and other people who quit because they don't want to take the vaccine.
There actually is a limit to what the government can do here.
They don't have infinite power and infinite resources.
There are some basic constraints.
You're seeing this now.
A number of companies are beginning to go back on their vaccine mandates.
There was a game of chicken that was being played between the Corporations with the backing of the federal government, the corporations who were using the Biden administration's ridiculous vaccine mandate as an excuse to force the vax, and the workers.
There's a game of chicken, and it's led to lots of canceled flights, and TSA members walking out, and employees generally walking out, and cops walking off the job.
And they're fighting, fighting, fighting, and then, in many cases, the corporations have caved, which we'll get to in just one second.
Worth pointing out, though, The people instilling these mandates and demanding these mandates don't really believe this stuff.
Joe Biden and his wife, Dr.
Jill Biden, the most acclaimed surgeon, doctor, doctor, doctor, doesn't have an MD or PhD, but she's doctor, and Vindman is a lieutenant colonel, and Jill Biden is a doctor, and damn you if you won't use their proper titles.
Biden and Jill got caught at a restaurant in D.C. not wearing the mask.
So they're walking in, security detail, they're wearing the masks.
The staff members at the restaurant have the masks on.
And someone there was filming this happen from their table at the restaurant and Biden and his wife don't have the masks on because no serious person is worried about the masks.
Including, I'm not saying Joe Biden's a serious person, but he's serious enough to know that the masks are just not that big a deal.
And so he walks in, and it's so flagrant.
I thought, when I watched this, I thought...
Joe Biden must know that people have cell phones.
Joe Biden must know that people film him wherever he goes.
D.C. has a very strict indoor mask mandate.
D.C. forces you, when you get to a restaurant, you have to put the mask on.
Then you walk to your table, and then you're allowed to take the mask off.
You're in the bubble of protection.
And then at some restaurants, this actually happened to me last time I was in D.C., the waiter comes to the table.
They say, excuse me, sir, while we're at the table, you need to put your mask on while you're ordering.
They're that strict about it.
And Joe Biden just doesn't wear it.
And his wife doesn't wear it.
Doesn't he think he's going to get caught?
Well, the sad answer is, yeah, he knows that someone's going to film him.
He just doesn't care.
There's one set of rules for you.
There's another set of rules for him.
And what are you going to do about it?
What are you going to do about it, punk?
You can't do anything.
Joe Biden, man, he's the most popular president ever in history.
He got 80 bazillion votes.
Oh yeah, he got more votes than anyone ever.
And he's super popular.
And oh, you're protesting him and everyone's chanting, let's go Brandon, and his poll numbers are tanking.
And yeah, so what?
So what?
What are you going to do about it?
Well, Dr.
Fauci has a different take.
Fauci says the reason people don't like him very much is not because of anything he's done or any lies that he has told or any contempt that he has for the American people.
It's because of conspiracy theories.
Why do you think you've become so controversial?
And honestly, do you think there's anything you have done that has contributed to that?
Well, I'm not so sure I could answer the latter, because I can't think of anything, but I'm sure some people will.
But you know, Chris, I have stood for always making science, data, and evidence be what we guide ourselves by.
And I think people who feel differently, who have conspiracy theories, who deny reality that's looking them straight in the eye, Those are people that don't particularly care for me.
And that's understandable, because what I do, and I try very hard, is to be guided by the truth.
And sometimes the truth becomes inconvenient for some people, so they react against me.
That just is what it is.
There's not much I can do about that, Chris.
I am the way and the truth and the life, okay?
And, well, hold on, wait.
I think there is someone who is the way and the truth and the life, and I don't think it's you, Dr.
Fauci.
I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that.
He just said he is the truth, and he's said that often.
He says, I am science, and science is me, and I am the truth.
People react against me because they don't like the truth, right?
It's kind of a weird rewriting of scripture.
He says, he's the way.
Do what I'm doing.
Order your life in the way that I'm telling you to, and I am the life, or you'll die.
If you don't do it, I say you're going to die.
Talk about a God complex, man.
And to Chris Wallace's credit, he says, Hey, Fouch, do you think maybe you bear any, any at all responsibility for the opinion people have of you?
Nope.
Uh-uh.
Not even a little bit.
Nuh-uh.
It's all them.
They're bad and stupid.
I'm Dr.
Fouchy.
Good grief, man.
You know, he's a really good politician, you can tell, because he never admits that he did anything wrong ever.
Do you think the reason people don't like you, Dr.
Fauci, might have something to do with the fact that you lied to them?
At your very first moment in the epidemic, you said, masks don't work, it's your opinion that masks don't work and you shouldn't wear them.
And then five seconds later, you said, actually, they do work and you should wear them.
And then when asked to explain it, you said, well, yeah, I lied to them so that they wouldn't buy up all the masks and then take them away from the health care workers, Yeah, but believe me now, do you think it has anything to do with that kind of stuff?
Do you think it has anything to do with 15 days to slow the spread that we're now entering our 595th day of, just about?
Do you think it has anything to do with that?
Do you think it has anything to do with your not wearing a mask when you don't think you're on camera, with your canceling Christmas, with your seizing power and more and more and more power With your holding power in D.C. through seven presidencies now?
Yeah, has anything to do with that?
No.
No, no!
They persecute me because I am the truth!
Oh, okay.
Must have missed that.
Some good news on this front, though.
I alluded to it just a moment ago.
We're winning a little bit on this battle with the corporations.
We're playing a game of chicken.
Corporations are saying, you've got to get the vax.
You've got to do it.
The government's telling us you've got to do it.
And the workers are saying, no, maybe not.
And then the corporations on occasion back down, including Delta.
Delta Airlines had a pretty strict vax mandate.
I've flown Delta a bunch since the lockdowns hit.
And Delta, I always found, was the best airline.
They had the best service, most meticulous sort of stuff, which ironically meant that during COVID it was the worst airline.
Because they were so meticulous, because they're so focused on, you know, the details of their job, that when their job entailed them making people wear the dumb mask, they were hyper-focused on it, and they were hyper-clean, and they wouldn't let you, you know, have a drink or any of these sorts of things.
So, Delta came out and said, we're going to have a vax mandate, and the workers said, please don't.
And then Delta just backed down.
Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta, Quote, acknowledge that there will need to be religious and medical accommodations made for those who wish to remain unvaccinated while avoiding having to threaten employment status.
This according to Fox Business.
Quote, by the time we're done, we'll be pretty close to fully vaccinated as a company without going through all the divisiveness of a mandate.
Well, that's a change of tune because initially you heard, we're going to mandate it, baby.
You got to do it.
Put up or shut up or get out, right?
And you saw this with United.
United laid off a lot of people who wouldn't get the vax.
And Joe Biden bragged about it.
He said, yeah, a ton of people lost their jobs.
But look, now United has a 99% vaccination rate.
Yeah, because they fired all the people who wouldn't get it.
Wow.
That's one way to solve employment problems.
But what Delta is saying is, no, we're going to encourage people to do it.
We're going to incentivize people to get the vaccine.
But we're not going to force them to, and we're not going to take their jobs away if they don't.
Great stuff.
That's the way to do it.
And I suspect they did it.
One, Delta's a good company.
It's basically a well-run company.
But two, the people pushed back.
And Delta looked at the power they had, and they said, this is not the way.
This is not a good way to run a company.
The people pushing back against entrenched power is a very wonderful thing when the people are abusing their power who are in those positions of authority.
You see this in Loudoun County.
The Daily Wire broke a story the other day that finally the establishment media have had to acknowledge.
In Loudoun County, there was a rape.
That took place in a bathroom and it was a violent rape of a young girl and it took place in a school where the boys are allowed to go into the girls' bathrooms if they pretend that there's no difference between men and women.
There was a boy who occasionally wears a dress and he allegedly raped this girl and the school covered it up.
The school covered up because, obviously, the gender-bending policies had some role here.
And we all like to pretend that there's no difference between men and women and mom and dad and girls and boys.
But there is.
There's a big difference.
And the reality keeps reasserting itself.
And so the school covered it up.
Well...
The superintendent of that school has just acknowledged, he wouldn't apologize, but he acknowledged what he did, Scott Ziegler.
He said, this lack of oversight that existed prior to my tenure also contributed to errors in our state reporting regarding disciplinary incidents in schools.
The division inadvertently omitted some information in the past.
This is extremely concerning.
We're making steps to make sure that this is improved.
No, no, buddy, you lied is what happened.
You lied.
I'm glad that you're not admitting that you did anything wrong, but you're admitting some wrong was done.
Now you should either resign or be investigated and then resign, or be investigated and resign and possibly go to jail.
This is a good first step, and it's only because the people of Loudoun County were pushing, and it's only because of that great investigative journalist at the Daily Wire.
Keep pushing.
Keep pushing.
Hold this jerk, this moral idiot to account.
The ruling class is really, really upset that parents are pushing back against entrenched power, especially at the level of the school board.
They're really, really upset about it.
You remember I referred to him earlier.
Lieutenant Colonel Vindman!
Alexander Vindman was this twerp who was undermining civilian authority and was really anti-Trump during the Trump administration.
And he was testifying Literally, a woman at the school board meeting said...
She wasn't able to sign up to talk about critical race theory, so she signed up to talk about salaries.
And her first opening salvo is, I'm here to talk about salaries.
You shouldn't be getting yours because you're not doing your job.
So this is what they want to say.
Like, we're only going to pay you if you do what we tell you you should do.
And that's just not how things work in a democracy.
I'm sorry, if you were listening to that, you might be under the impression that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman had a sex change.
It was not Vindman who made the comment, it was Vindman's wife, who is an activist of these sorts.
So, clearly, a lot of resemblances here in the family in the way that the Vindmans look at democracy.
Lieutenant Colonel Vindman did not like the idea that the people made this choice to elect Donald Trump.
And Vindman's wife does not like this idea that people are asserting power in their local communities and going up to the school board.
This is not how democracy works.
That's exactly how democracy works.
That's why we have school boards.
That's why parents show up to these meetings and voice their opinions.
It's a reminder, though.
That when the libs talk about our democracy, and they pretend to care a lot about our democracy, they don't really mean our democracy.
They mean their oligarchy, and they mean, at a philosophical level, liberalism.
And democracy and liberalism are related concepts, but they're not the same thing.
You could have a rather conservative democracy.
You could have a rather right-wing democracy.
And it wouldn't be particularly liberal.
So when the people, for instance, go and elect Donald Trump, that is a great expression of our democracy, but it's not very liberal.
And when the left uses this phrase, our democracy, they're referring to liberalism.
This is not how liberalism is supposed to work.
According to liberalism and according to progressivism, the parents are supposed to be thrilled that critical race theory is being taught in schools.
The parents are supposed to be thrilled that little Johnny is being told he can be little Jane.
That's supposed to be a wonderful thing.
The fact that parents of all stripes, of all shapes, of all different ages are pushing back against this, that's a great rebuke of liberalism.
And the Vindmans can't tolerate that.
Okay.
And they're going to fight back.
The ruling class is going to fight back.
And the ruling class still has a lot of power.
A New York City judge has just barred a father from visiting his three-year-old daughter unless he takes the Fauciouchie or submits to weekly COVID tests.
Thank you.
Because the judge says, Judge Matthew Cooper, says that it's not in the child's best interests.
This is according to the New York Post.
The father was unnamed here.
Obviously, the parents are divorced.
We're getting divorced.
And the judge says, no, it's not.
So three-year-olds face statistically an infinitesimally small risk from coronavirus.
But if this dad won't go along and get the experimental drug to fight against the cough that poses a relatively very low risk even to him...
He won't be able to see his kid.
So yeah, look, we're not going to mandate the vaccine.
We're just going to take away your job and your money and your ability to go out and your ability to interact in society and your kids if you don't do it.
So you want to do it?
You going to get it?
You going to do it?
Come on.
Just do it.
This is techno-medical tyranny.
That's what it is.
And this is why I would strongly recommend If you are asked about whether or not you've had the vaccine, don't tell people.
I've seen this on both sides.
I've seen some people who are the kinds of Republicans who love the idea of this vaccine and they're really afraid of the coronavirus.
And they say, look, I love the vaccine.
I'm very pro-vaccine.
This is the greatest vaccine ever.
But I don't think it should be mandated.
But I love it.
I got it.
I got seven of them.
I'm about to get one next Tuesday.
But I don't think other people should be forced to get it.
Then on the other side, you've got some conservatives who are really proud of not having the vaccine, and they'll brag about that.
They'll say, oh yeah, I didn't get the vaccine, I'm not going to get the vaccine, there's no way I'm ever going to get the vaccine.
I would not recommend saying either of those things.
Because...
We're living in a world where this is real, where this is a real form of power, and where real entrenched authorities are using vaccination status to lord power over other people.
And so, for your own self-preservation, and for the good of society writ large, I would basically just not disclose whether or not you think the vaccine is dumb, or whether you think the vaccine is great.
I would probably not disclose it.
Because the way that the authorities are wielding power here is by...
It's through knowledge.
It's through knowledge of who is vaccinated.
The reason that Biden pushed for that OSHA vaccine mandate when he did is because by that time, at least according to the data, the majority of Americans had received some sort of vaccination.
He couldn't have done it at the beginning because not enough people had done it.
And so they already knew that they were outnumbered at that point.
Now they know that they've got the numbers so they can probably push for it.
So I would just, I would deprive them of that sort of knowledge, okay?
These are people with a very radical agenda and they want to upend a whole lot of things.
Not just the economy, not just the supply chain, not just inflation, not just, look, Joe Biden himself said it, or his representative said it, that they want to use this opportunity of the lockdowns and the epidemic, they want to exploit it to rework the entire economy.
They want to rework the way that dads can see their kids.
They want to rework the way that every political institution is structured down to the family.
They're going to rework everything up to and including paternity leave.
Don't let them, don't make it easier for them to completely reorder your society.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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A woman on a train in Philadelphia was sexually assaulted for nearly 10 minutes while bystanders watched and did nothing.
Kamala Harris is campaigning in churches.
How can she walk in the door without bursting into flames?
And finally, the outrage mob is very upset at me because of some things I said about paternity leave.
