The prosecutor in the Rittenhouse case complains that video footage undercuts his case, Joe Biden pontificates about “negroes,” and the head of BLM in NYC threatens to burn down the city if he doesn’t get his way.
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The prosecutor in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse has failed at every stage to make the case that Rittenhouse is guilty of murder.
Often, his witnesses have made the defendant's argument for him.
So now, the prosecutor is complaining that he's at a disadvantage because the video evidence is undercutting his case.
Your videos that you have captured of these incidents that you call riots, they're very slanted against the people who are rioting.
You characterize them as Antifa, Black Lives Matter rioters, correct?
Because they are rioting in the footage, yes, absolutely.
The videos of the events that you call riots are really slanted against the people who are rioting.
Yeah, video tends to be slanted against people who are rioting.
If the video of what happened is biased against the prosecution's case, that's because reality is biased against the prosecution's case, which never should have been brought to trial in the first place.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Sharon Bisriguez, who says, I've seen a lot of, how does a 17-year-old have an AR-15?
But I haven't seen any, how come a convicted felon had a pistol?
Yeah, that's to me the more important question.
The people who should be on trial, well, I guess two of the people who were attacking Kyle Rittenhouse are dead, but that one guy survived.
Why isn't that guy on trial?
Why isn't that creepy, creepy Antifa dude on trial?
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The videos are not looking good for the left.
Your Honor, I'd like...
I object.
I object to playing that video of what happened.
That's really not good for my case.
I know, that's true.
Maybe if those videos had gotten out in the first place, you wouldn't have brought that case and you wouldn't be humiliating yourself now.
There are other videos, though, beyond the Rittenhouse trial that don't look good for the left.
One that went viral yesterday, a video of Joe Biden calling someone a Negro.
You know, I've adopted the attitude of the great Negro, at the time, pitcher in the Negro Leagues, went on to become a great pitcher in the pros into the Major League Baseball after Jackie Robinson.
His name was Satchel Paige.
There was a fact check.
I think it was from Mediaite.
They said, did Joe Biden call a guy a Negro?
And they said, no, no, not really.
I mean, yeah, he did, but he didn't mean to.
And that's what fact checks are like for Democrats now.
But I have a different take on this than most people on the right.
Oh, people on the right yesterday, they loved this clip.
They were posting it all over.
Joe Biden, that racist, he called someone a Negro.
Oh, look at him.
Could you imagine if Trump, oh, could you imagine if she were on the other foot?
Does anyone actually care that Joe Biden used the word Negro?
I'm not saying, should they care?
Is there a double standard?
What if Trump...
Forget that for a second.
Does anyone actually care?
No.
No one does.
No black person is offended.
No.
No Republican who is pretending to make a big deal out of this, who is making a big deal and pretending it is a big deal, actually cares.
And no Democrat cares either about what he said or about the double standard.
This is a completely impotent political attack.
The only way this would be a good political attack against Joe Biden is if Democrats cared about their hypocrisy and double standards, but they don't.
So it just doesn't matter.
By the way, the word Negro is not offensive in and of itself.
There are other words that begin with N that can be offensive, but Negro was just the common, ordinary word for a black person.
Used by black people, used by white people, used on government forms, and then it became colored person, and then it became black person, and then it became African American.
Now it's back to colored person, except we have to call it person of color.
Who knows?
A Negro might come back into fashion at some point.
They just keep changing the word.
It's not like...
The N-word.
They're actually different words.
To me, this kind of politics is such a waste of time.
It's such a distraction.
It's so lazy.
It's not going to help conservatives to make a big deal out of this attack.
It's not going to embarrass Democrats.
The only thing in this video that does look really bad for Joe Biden Is that he seems senile.
He seems senile.
He's using the word that was popular 60 years ago, the last time he remembers anything.
And he is kind of doddering, and he says, oh, there's a guy, good Negro.
No, I mean, the Negro League, he was a player, and there was a guy, you know, he played baseball.
That's bad.
That, I think, is an attack that might work on moderates, that might rile up Republicans, that might win over independents.
But playing this gotcha thing with a...
I agree it's a double standard.
I agree it's hypocrisy, but just...
No one actually cares.
There's a worse video for Joe Biden, actually.
Another one came out yesterday where Joe Biden's giving a speech about the inflation crisis, the transportation crisis, the fact that gas is going through the roof.
And Joe Biden, as if he were not the president of the United States, as if he were just some passive observer, says, good golly, folks, you ever think you'd be paying this much for gas?
So we got nearly 20 percent more goods coming into the country than we did before the pandemic struck.
COVID-19 has changed the way we spend our time and our money.
More products are being delivered than ever before.
That's because people have little more breathing room than they did last year, and that's a good thing.
But it also means we've got higher demand for goods at the same time we're facing disruptions in the supplies that make those goods.
This is a recipe for delays and for higher prices, and people are feeling it.
They're feeling it.
Do you ever think you'd be paying this much for a gallon of gas?
In some parts of California, they're paying $4.50 a gallon.
That's why it's so important that we do everything on our power to stabilize the supply chain.
Okay, first of all, just to tell you how out of touch he is, gas is way higher in California.
In some parts of California, it's pushing up towards $7.
$4.50 a gallon is just the normal price in California.
$4.50 a gallon in California, in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, you don't even bat your eyelash, okay?
But second of all, Well, he's trying to push responsibility off everywhere else.
It was because of the supply chain, and it's China, and it's this, and it's that, and it has nothing to do with me.
It has nothing to do with my energy policies, and it has nothing to do with my lockdown policies, and it has nothing to do with me, you know, the guy that buck stops here.
No, I have nothing to do with it.
He's presenting himself as a passive observer in politics, and this is bad for him.
He thinks this is good for him because he thinks he can shirk responsibility.
I actually think this is a bad bet because the big knock on Joe Biden right now is that he seems really weak.
He doesn't seem up to the job.
The whole reason, if people voted for him, the whole reason that people voted for him is because he was supposed to be a return to normal.
He's the adult in charge.
He's in command.
He's in control.
But he's not in control.
It's like he's the old guy Muppet puppet.
He's up in the balcony just commenting on the show.
But we don't need a president who's just commenting on the show.
We need a guy to take charge and fix problems.
And Joe Biden is manifestly incapable of doing that.
Speaking of cars...
There's a news story that is getting a little attention as a kind of meme.
It's just a little weird headline.
People don't see the import of it, though.
Elon Musk.
Elon Musk just sold a ton of his Tesla stock.
Now, the way that he did it was he tweeted out, he said, much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.
Do you support this?
10%!
Elon Musk is the Tesla guy.
He says, I will abide by the results of this poll whichever way it goes.
Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere.
I only have stock.
Thus, the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.
He's a billionaire, but it's not as though he just keeps money in a bank account.
The money is in Tesla stock.
So you can't pay taxes on it unless you sell that stock, which is going to have huge effects on the price of Tesla.
So, Elon sells $20 billion worth of Tesla stock, 10% of his holdings.
And this is ostensibly because of a Twitter poll.
More people voted for him to sell it than voted against him to sell it.
Now, I again have a slightly different take on this than most other, forget just conservatives, most other people here.
I think that Elon is in many ways just trying to cash out or cash out in part from his overvalued company.
I think Tesla is very overvalued.
It's a cool company.
It's very impressive.
Elon Musk is a very impressive guy.
But I just think if you, I mean, what is Tesla valued at right now?
Like a trillion dollars or something?
You know, I just, I think it's, I think it's too high.
And so, I don't think it's worth all of these various car companies put together.
In a way, I think he's able to cash out of it while making it seem like a joke, while making it seem like he's not losing faith in the valuation of the company.
But beyond that, he's making a real political point as well.
Which is, if the Biden policy of taxing unrealized gains goes into effect, it's going to completely screw up the stock market and people's investments.
Because you can't pay cash on unrealized investments.
You're going to have to sell a lot of stuff.
It's going to disturb the economy.
It's going to upend the economy even more than Joe Biden already has it.
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Speaking of African Americans, just talking about Elon Musk, now turning to another prominent African American, the head of Black Lives Matter in New York City.
Is threatening riots and bloodshed if the mayor doesn't give him what he wants.
So, speaking of the mayor, this head of BLM New York says, if he thinks that they're going to go back to the old ways of policing, then we are going to take to the streets again.
There will be riots, there will be fire, and there will be bloodshed because we believe in defending our people.
This he says to the New York Daily News.
He should be arrested and thrown in prison just for making that statement.
Isn't that a threat to free speech?
No, not really.
It's very much in keeping with the American tradition of free speech.
There was something, I guess there still is in this country, called the Smith Act.
The Smith Act was the law that was used in the 40s and 50s to arrest and prosecute communists and fascists and anarchists.
What the Smith Act did was said that it is not legal to advocate for the overthrow of the government of the United States.
And they prosecuted a lot of people.
Then there was a kind of pullback.
There was a weakening of that law.
And they said, no, it's not enough to just advocate the overthrow.
You've got to actually have an imminent way to do that.
But the laws are still on the books, even though it doesn't really get brought into effect right now.
And it wouldn't apply here, because the BLM guy is threatening to overthrow the government of New York City.
He's not threatening to overthrow the federal government.
So you would need a more local Smith Act.
But it would be absolutely just and right and proper to put that into place.
In the narrow sense, it seems like you would be curtailing free speech.
But in the deeper sense, you would be protecting free speech.
I don't think our free speech is really protected here if the head of Black Lives Matter gets to threaten to set things on fire and cause riots and have bloodshed, right?
He's threatening to attack and very likely kill people.
To me, I don't feel like I have a great amount of free speech if I'm going to criticize Black Lives Matter, if I'm going to advocate for more serious policing in the city.
Now I'm being threatened possibly with death.
He is abusing his right to free speech to take away my right to free speech, my right to have a nice city, my right to live in peace and order.
So he should go to prison and there should be a law for that and conservatives should defend that sort of thing.
And we're going to have to change the kind of shallow slogany way we've been talking about free speech and even policing.
Now somehow the Republicans are on the side of letting the criminals out of prison and the First Step Act and Prison reform?
No.
We have an under-incarceration problem.
One of the problems is that the head of New York Black Lives Matter is not in prison for saying this kind of stuff and threatening people.
And you just got to put a stop to it.
This is the kind of thing that Giuliani did in the 90s back when last time New York was as bad as it is right now.
Giuliani came in and he said, we're just going to arrest the criminals.
OK, they're going to try this radical, crazy strategy.
We're going to arrest the criminals and not let them burn down the city and kill people and rob people.
And guess what happened?
New York got a lot better and it persisted for about 20 years.
persist, I guess 15 years.
No, no, about 20 years, I guess.
Persisted through Giuliani, persisted through Mike Bloomberg, kind of preserved it, and then it went to hell in a handbasket.
Speaking of people who should be in prison, there is a creepy, creepy dude who is in a viral TikTok video who is begging to speak to your children.
I want to talk to the kids.
Parents watch the video and then hand the phone over to the young kids.
Hi there!
I get asked a lot, are you a boy or a girl?
And I love that question.
And so I wanted to just tell you, sometimes human beings are more than boy or girl.
Sometimes we're something else.
Sometimes we're both.
Sometimes we kind of float in between.
And sometimes we're a boy, sometimes we're a girl.
Because human beings are creatures and we're wild and exciting.
We are wild, aren't we?
And sometimes we're a little more wild than at other times.
And we talked about this yesterday.
There was a guy who...
There was a headline in the New York Post.
My husband is gay and we have two kids and we have a wonderful, intimate life together.
And...
Everyone's making fun of this article, and I pointed out, what's wrong with it?
Why is every sexual choice and sexual identity and sexual desire choice valid, except for that guy?
That guy is saying, look, I'm a gay guy, I have this natural sexual inclination, but I want to have a family, I want to practice my religion, I want to be a part of my culture and my tradition, and so I'm just going to repress that part of me, and I'm going to cultivate these other parts of me, and I'm not going to be deceitful about it, I'm just going to do that.
It seems like he has a great life and they have a nice time together.
And the woman acknowledges, she says, physical attraction is not, obviously it's not the bedrock of our relationship, but there is something actually deeper than that.
And I'm kind of okay with that.
I actually like that physical attraction is not the basis of our relationship because looks are going to fade.
But there's something deeper there.
When I watch that creepy guy on the TikTok video trying to talk to your kids about how sex isn't real and, you know, boys should wear lipstick and be fluid and whatever, it reminds me.
Repression is a good thing.
It gets a real bad rap these days, but repression is good.
We all have inclinations and things that are a little weird about us that we ought to repress.
Every single one of us does.
And some of us, I guess a little more than others, if you're a guy who thinks that he's a woman and wants to dress up in all that glitter paint and talk to a bunch of kids, then you've got a lot of things that you ought to repress.
But you should repress them.
The reason that it gets a bad rap is because we're still in the thrall of Sigmund Freud.
We're still in the thrall of the era of psychology that thought the human brain resembled a steam engine.
The thought that the way our desires and our mind works is that we have these natural desires, there's no way to change them ever, and so if we don't let them out, if we don't blow off a little steam, we're going to go crazy and explode.
But that's not actually how the mind and desire work.
Okay, different eras, it's interesting, different eras seem to map their vision of how the mind works on the prevailing technology at the time.
So these days we're beginning to think of the mind as a computer, because what's the big technology of our time is the computer.
Before that it was the steam engine.
Before that it was the printing press, this idea of making impressions, imprinting on your mind.
But actually the real way the mind and desire work are sort of the opposite of the steam engine Freud view.
The real way it works is that virtue and vice are habits.
So you'll know this if you've ever dealt with an addiction.
The more you give into your addiction, the less control you have over it.
If you're a drinker, the more you drink, the harder it is not to take that drink.
It's true of sex.
It's true of gluttony.
It's true of all of these things.
And the more you repress those things...
If you're a recovering alcoholic, the further away you get from those first 100 days, 200 days, 2 years, 5 years, the easier it becomes.
Because virtue and vice are habits.
So I'm not saying that that guy is obviously a very confused guy and he's got a lot of problems if he wants to be talking to kids about how he's really a girl.
But it does actually get a little bit easier.
It's not good for him to be indulging this craziness.
It's not good for him.
It's not good for society.
It's not good for the kids he's trying to talk to.
It's not good for anybody.
It's not good for our society's grasp on reality.
And so, if we encourage that behavior, we're going to get more of it.
It's going to be harder not to do that.
If we discourage that, and we encourage that naughty little word, the R word, repression, actually, I think we'll all probably get along a little better.
I know, it's a very unpopular view these days.
But it is obviously...
Correct.
You know, I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.
And Jordan Peterson, the great Jordan Peterson, speaking of psychology, right?
This is one of the most prominent psychologists in the world.
He just exploded with our other buddy, Dave Rubin, because the carpet just got pulled out from under him.
He was told, get the Fauci ouchie and life is going to go back to normal.
And it turns out that's not what happened.
Canadians who are unvaccinated now cannot leave the country.
Like, what the hell?
Why is that?
And I'm...
Look, I got vaccinated, and people took me to task for that, and I thought, all right, I'll get the damn vaccine.
Here's the deal, guys.
I'll get the vaccine.
You f***ing leave me alone.
And did that work?
No.
So stupid me.
You know, that's how I feel about it.
It's like, well, now I have to get tested for COVID when I come back into Canada.
I have to get tested before I leave Canada.
Now, you know, that might be the latter issue.
That's an issue with the Americans.
And so that's outside of the Canadian purview.
But the restrictions to get back into Canada are even more stringent.
It's like, well, why do I get the vaccine then if you're not going to leave me alone?
No more Mr.
Nice Canadian.
There's something really funny about hearing this urbane, very serious, very well-respected public intellectual Canadian guy.
Because Canadians are so nice, right?
Just using expletives.
What happened?
I thought I was able to...
No.
They were never going to do it.
They were never going to let up on these restrictions.
Jordan Peterson, very intelligent guy.
And sometimes, you know, especially professors, they're so intelligent, they're so, in the abstract, they miss these very practical things.
The left promised you, wear the mask, take the jab, lock down for 15 days, and then here's that little carrot right at the end of the stick and we'll let you get back to normal.
It wasn't going to help you get back to normal.
It was going to make it less and less likely.
the more you give in, the more you give in to them, the less and less likely it is that they will ever let you get back to normal.
That's the way power works in society.
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There are new ways that the ruling class is going to control you.
There are new ways of interconnection.
What Jordan Peterson was upset about is he did the rules.
They made a deal.
They made a deal with him.
They said, you get the shot and then you can go back to normal.
And then they yanked the you can go back to normal thing.
He says, leave me alone.
And I think a lot of people...
Feel that way.
That resonates with a lot of people.
Leave me alone.
That's kind of the libertarian mantra.
Just leave me alone.
You do you, you do whatever you want, and just leave me alone.
And the problem is, you can't be left alone.
You can't be left alone in modern society, in society before modern society, at all times.
The leave me alone, you do you thing has never worked.
I think we have this revisionist idea that America was all about purely rugged individualism and people getting to do whatever they want.
That is just not true.
Okay?
Even when we had a very weak federal government, so the states could do what they want or the communities could do what they want, all of those places were pretty robustly policed.
This nation was founded when a bunch of religious zealots came over on the Mayflower because they didn't feel at home in England where they weren't allowed to practice their extremely authoritarian religion, their extremely illiberal, authoritarian, rigid community.
And then some people would leave that community.
And very often when they would leave the community, whether it was at Plymouth or the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they would leave to go found other equally rigid authoritarian communities.
Blue laws on the books.
Laws against sexual behavior.
Tons of laws against sexual behavior, some of which were punishable by death.
Laws against drinking.
Laws against dancing.
Laws against all sorts of things.
Okay?
And you might say, well, why does anyone care about what my personal behavior is?
Because that's how society works, right?
Politics is just what we all do together.
And maybe the different local communities have relative autonomy compared to the other ones.
But the idea that the individual just gets to choose to do whatever he wants is a very, very modern idea.
It's come up in the last 50 years or so.
And even then, the people who were pushing it on the left didn't let that last for long.
Now they are imposing rules that are just as authoritarian, just as rigid, just as illiberal.
As the ones before them, they just happen to be along different standards, along different sort of lines.
And you're seeing that now in a very silly way on Peloton.
Peloton, you know, is the electric bike company.
It got kind of popular during COVID, but I'd always heard it had these left-wing leanings.
So I thought, this is why I didn't get a Peloton.
I was thinking about getting a Peloton.
I thought, I don't know, I hear it's fine or whatever.
But I said, I heard it's kind of lib.
I You know, I hate to say I told you so.
I was right.
I was right.
So my producer, the great Ben Davies, texts me the other day.
He says, Michael, I was using this exercise bike, this Peloton, and I typed in the hashtag, Let's Go Brandon, so all the people who were on the hashtag, Let's Go Brandon, could work out together.
It was kind of funny.
We were having a good time.
The next day I tried to do it.
It was gone.
You couldn't log into it.
Peloton banned the hashtag, Let's go, Brandon.
So I thought, maybe it's just your bike, Ben.
I don't know.
Then we start hearing it from other people.
Then people start sending the tip in to the daily wire.
You can't do it.
And it seems like such a minor thing.
But this is how the left wins.
All these little minor things.
You suppress the let's go, Brandon hashtag on the exercise bike.
Which is why, by the way, I would recommend checking out the Echelon exercise bike rather than the Peloton.
Echelon, a little more open.
A little less rigid and ideological.
These are just my preferences.
But the Peloton, they say, okay...
Let's go, Brandon.
That's not going to work.
Or Facebook says, no, you can't post the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Or Twitter says, no, you can't post this thing that's critical of, say, Dr.
Fauci or the CDC. And, oh, it's just, and you can't say this thing in the classroom.
And, oh, this and this.
And it's death by a thousand cuts.
To say nothing of the huge laws and the huge enforcement mechanisms of the federal government, even just at the cultural level, all these little tiny things, they all come in together to shape what we're allowed to say The things we're allowed to advocate.
The BLM guy.
You know, BLM, the terror wing of the Democrat Party.
BLM comes out and says, if you push against the stuff that we want, we're going to kill you.
That's what he's saying.
We're going to burn your place down and we're going to kill you.
All these little things that shape behavior stop you from saying and doing what you want, living in the kind of society you want.
Now, What is that going to mean into the future?
Something tells me Joe Biden is not long for this political world, at least.
He's very senile.
He's obviously not up to the job.
His approval rating is in the gutter.
It's about 38%.
But the problem is, Kamala's approval rating is extremely low as well.
Kamala's approval rating is actually lower.
It's plunged, according to USA Today and Suffolk University, to 28%.
This is the lowest rating, I think, ever recorded for a vice president.
Dick Cheney It was close.
He was at 30%, but that was at the very end of the Bush administration.
That was in 2007 after he shot a guy in the face.
And everyone blamed him for everything, the Iraq war and all that stuff.
Kamala's already significantly lower, significantly lower than Joe Biden and even lower than Dick Cheney.
So that's really bad news for Democrats in 2024.
What's going to happen to them?
They're below water on every single pole.
And why is it?
Why is Kamala's approval rating so low?
There was a clip yesterday that I think just perfectly encapsulated why people find Kamala Harris so insufferable, where she is, at some event, explaining the scientific method to scientists.
One of the things I think people in politics and government should really take from the approach of scientists Scientists operate with a hypothesis.
I love that.
A hypothesis.
It's well thought out, it's well planned.
They start out with a hypothesis, and then they test it out.
Knowing, invariably, you're trying something for the first time, there will be glitches, there will be mistakes.
Then everyone gets together, no one gets beat up about it.
You analyze it, what went wrong, reevaluate, update the hypothesis, and start again.
This woman raises vacuity to a high art form.
I did not know it was possible for something to be so empty of substance.
Speaking of science, this must have been, Kamala Harris must have been developed at CERN, in the CERN laboratory.
I mean, this is, we talk about like black holes as sort of just the absence of everything that's pulling all of this matter in.
Has Kamala Harris ever had one substantive thought?
Scientists have hypotheses.
I love that.
It's so disingenuous.
It's so empty.
Ain't nobody going to vote for that, okay?
That's why she was the first person out in the Democrat primary in 2024.
Bad news for them.
Good news for us.
When it comes to Joe Biden's vaccine mandate, the Daily Wire is not backing down.
We filed our lawsuit against the unconstitutional mandates last week.
We're already seeing results.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay over the weekend, preventing Joe Biden's vaccine mandate from going into effect.
This is an urgent matter and your medical freedom depends on it.
If you want to support the fight to make your personal medical decisions without government interference, sign our petition against Joe Biden's mandate.
Herb's a good one.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already signed the petition in just a few days.
We need many more people to stand with us to reach our goal.
So please head on over to dailywire.com slash do not comply to sign the petition today.
Also, got to tell you, if I have a bag under my eyes today, it's because I was out last night with Andrew Klavan.
We went and had dinner.
We went and had a cigar.
We went and had a drink or two.
We have a lot to celebrate with Drew.
His new novel, When Christmas Comes, is jumping up the charts.
Actually, I think the only reason it stalled out a little on the charts is they ran out of books.
The publisher sold all the books.
They said, print the books.
We got to reprint these books because it's selling like hotcakes.
It's a tremendous book.
Dean Kuntz, the great Dean Kuntz, described it as a wonderful, gripping, and a pure delight.
The book centers around the story of a sleuthing English teacher who will need a Christmas miracle to prove a condemned man innocent.
It's a seasonal tale of tradition, family, and, of course, murder.
Its chilling twists are best experienced, curled up beside a burning Yule log.
Go pick up a copy for yourself or your thrill-seeking loved ones at Amazon or anywhere you buy books today just in time for Christmas.
It's really terrific.
Drew is simply peerless as far as fiction writers go today.
Wonderful, wonderful Christmas read.
Go check it out.
it out.
We'll be right back with The Mailbag.
Welcome back to my favorite time of the week, The Mailbag for First question from Ethan, dear Michael, thought experiment for you.
Would it be right to make everyone take the vaccine if it meant overturning Roe v. Wade?
The left claims bodily autonomy to cover abortions and some on the right claim bodily autonomy in resistance to the vaccine mandate.
Leftists then say that their bodily autonomy is inconsequential because the disease poses an imminent threat to the lives of others.
By their own logic, abortion always poses an imminent threat to the life of another.
So what if we offered them a deal?
Overturn Roe and every pro-lifer who hasn't taken the vaccine will get fully vaxxed.
Would you accept this deal?
Of course.
Of course I would.
I wouldn't hesitate one nanosecond to take that deal.
But it's because conservatives are falling into a little bit of a trap here.
We're saying to the left now on the vaccine, my body, my choice, Libs.
Whatever happened to my body, my choice?
But don't forget, we don't actually believe my body, my choice.
Yes, we're using that stupid line against the left to prove their hypocrisy, but we don't actually believe that.
Obviously not on abortion, where it's another body, right?
So you're not even just focusing on your own body.
You're focusing on the body of the baby.
But even beyond that, we don't believe that we have the right to do whatever we want at any time to our bodies.
That's why we have laws against drugs.
That's why we have laws against suicide.
That's why we have laws against all sorts of things and all sorts of abuses that we can make to our bodies.
You don't actually have the right to that.
A lot of conservatives these days, I've noticed, have this line.
They'll say, look, I'm pro-vaccine, but anti-mandate.
And I'm sort of the opposite.
I'm kind of anti-vaccine and pro-mandate.
We have a legal basis for vaccine mandates in this country.
It goes back to the case in 1905.
A lot of hay has been made over it during this debate, which establishes the precedent that the government, in some cases, does have the right, during an epidemic, to mandate a vaccine.
And if you don't get the vaccine, they at least have the right to fine you for doing that.
We established that over 100 years ago.
We talk about George Washington requiring inoculations against smallpox for the Continental Army in 1777.
That was before the Constitution, fair enough, but still, we have a lot of precedent for this in the country.
And my issue isn't with vaccines generally.
My issue is with this vaccine for this virus.
If there were a really super-duper dangerous virus that had an infection fatality rate above 0.5% or something, which in this case, it's not just as at 0.5% for the coronavirus, but for the vast majority of people, it's like 0.003% or 0.005%, depending on your age group.
For some people, it's 0.001%.
So I just think...
If we had a 30% fatality rate from this virus, yeah, I'd be fine with vaccine mandates.
Of course.
If this were a really super-duper dangerous virus for whole swaths of people, yeah, sure.
I think we would all agree with that.
Take it to its extreme.
Let's say there were a virus going around that killed 90% of people that got it.
Would you support a vaccine mandate?
Of course you would.
Especially if the vaccine had some precedent, were not a new vaccine technology, had some long-term data even.
Yeah, of course you would.
But that's just not the case here.
And so now if you're asking me, okay, Mike, I actually don't think the vaccine poses a huge threat to people, but there are risks and it has killed people and there have been side effects and even the CDC and the FDA acknowledge that.
And for most people, the virus poses such a low risk to them that I just don't see the reason for a lot of people to get the vaccine.
But if you told me, Michael...
We're going to make all the pro-lifers take the Fauci-ouchie and then we get rid of abortion in America?
Cool.
Sign me up.
Give me five jabs.
I don't care.
If you're going to end abortion, great.
Love it.
From Glenn.
Dear austere religious podcaster, I've been listening to all of the shows for several years now.
I recently joined to help support the legal battle against the Biden vaccine mandate.
Thank you very much.
I really appreciate that.
Now I can finally get the answer to this question that has been on my mind since I started listening.
Why does everyone at the Daily Wire pretend to hate you?
Is it a Harvard-Yale rivalry between you and Ben?
Is Ben jealous that your book without words was wildly successful?
Or is it the go-to excuse of our day and age that everyone is racist against your Italian heritage?
To quote Silvio Dante from The Sopranos, this is anti-Italian discrimination, is what it is.
It also goes back...
Yes, it does have something.
I don't think it has to do with Yale or Harvard.
I think it does go back to the blank book because Ben was upset that I sold more blank books than he had sold books with words.
Ben had spent a long time writing all these books with words and there were lots of different books and he works very, very hard.
And then I just had this blank book and it sold about a gazillion copies.
So it went back to that.
It also went back, we had an election bet and, you know, back when everyone, all the odds were giving Hillary Clinton 99% chance that she was going to win the race.
Ben and I engaged in an election bet.
And it was a $100 bet on Trump.
And Ben was so confident.
He said, I'll give you odds.
I'll give you four to one odds.
I said, four to one odds.
All right, I'll risk $100 for four to one odds.
And then the magic happened.
And then, contrary to all of the polls, Donald Trump won.
So I think it goes back to that.
But at the most basic level, yeah, it's anti-Italian discrimination.
From Shelby.
Hi, Michael.
I have a dilemma.
My aunt was recently diagnosed with cancer.
I'm sorry to hear that.
We'll have to undergo chemotherapy soon.
Sadly, it's not curable and we likely don't have much time left with her.
I'm considering the vaccine just so that I may see her and spend some final time with her.
As we've been very close my entire life, I'm a young, healthy woman at 25 and wouldn't take the vaccine.
Otherwise, if you had a loved one in this scenario, would you take the vaccine?
Any other advice?
Thanks.
I'm a huge fan of the show.
Well, I just don't...
I'm very sorry to hear about your situation.
I don't see why you need to take the vaccine.
I mean, you're...
Not to be too morbid about it, but you're telling me your aunt is on the brink of death, so I don't think you really need to worry about killing her, right?
You're saying she's already about to die.
Even if you have the vaccine, let's not forget the vaccine does not totally prevent the contracting or transmitting the coronavirus.
The CDC admitted that at the end of July.
So...
I just don't see why.
Maybe some of your family members want you to, but who cares what they think?
I mean, it's really more you're talking about the concern for your aunt.
I guess if it's the issue that you can't get into the hospital or you can't get into the hospice without proof of vaccination, I would be surprised if that were the case.
But if that is the case...
Yeah, 100%.
100%.
I don't think it's particularly necessary.
I don't like the vaccine being pushed to everybody.
I do think that for some people, they can make a good prudential choice to do it.
If you're very old, if you're very unhealthy.
But yeah, I don't like that idea.
I don't think the risk of coronavirus is particularly high.
But still, it's my loved one.
I also don't think the risk of dying from the vaccine is all particularly high either.
So I would make a prudential judgment in that way.
I don't think there would be anything unprincipled or hypocritical about you doing that.
But I also don't see why necessarily you would need to do that to see your aunt.
But, you know, we can pray for you.
Very sorry to hear about your situation.
From Nick.
Oh, no.
Hi, Michael.
Me again.
This is Nick.
This is the famous Nick.
In the past few months, I've noticed a large uptick in my DMs from women, both looking to take their title shot at the champ and others who want me to join some kind of pyramid scheme.
I guess you do get a lot of those on Instagram.
From going through the comments after your shows, I believe this is because I've become quite popular with some of your groupies.
Yeah, I bet that's true.
However, I'm afraid of getting portnoid.
If one of these babes makes good on her promises and then regrets it when I inevitably don't agree to meet her parents for Thanksgiving.
As long as they are over 18 on Insta, am I good?
Or, since now I'm the most famous person on your show, do I need to carry this power more responsibly?
Sincerely, with great power comes great responsibility and also options.
Well, Nick, as is often the case, you've hit on a good point, which is...
I guess you probably are the most famous person on this show at this point.
If you, like Dave Portnoy, have a lot of attention, and people have found you, and they're messaging you, and it's these young, impressionable girls.
I also don't know how old you are, Nick.
I'm going to hope that you're just in your 20s or something, and you're not in your 40s or older, which would make the situation even worse.
Should you use these girls for sex, is what you're saying.
Should I use these girls for sex?
Even if it's consensual.
Even if they are literally asking for it.
No.
No, Nick.
Get it through your head.
It's not just you.
I'm glad the question came up because this is a common issue in our culture today.
We are made to believe today that consent is everything.
As long as two people consent to something, it's totally fine.
There was some case in Germany a while ago where someone posted on Craigslist and asked for someone to kill and eat him.
It was like his fetish or something.
It was consensual, wasn't it?
But it's still wrong.
That's a great extreme of this.
It's still wrong to abuse your power.
It's still wrong to use women just for sex.
It's still wrong to do those things.
There is no...
The Portnoy situation really brings this up.
Everyone knows who Dave Portnoy is.
No one is going in with any illusions.
In one of the cases with Portnoy, a girl literally asked for him to simulate a rape.
And then she regretted it afterward.
And she said, oh my gosh, it was so bad, I felt like I was being raped.
That's literally what you asked for.
And you got what you asked for, and you realized that your desires were disordered.
And that's wrong.
And it's bad for the person who's abusing the power, and it's obviously wrong for the person who's being used here.
This is a point I wanted to make yesterday.
When we talk about virtue and vice, when we talk about doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing, we think of it as a way of just resisting temptation.
We have these desires and we just have to resist the temptation.
Or, you know, we need to turn our eyes up and do the good thing.
Yes, you do have to do that.
You have to turn your intellect toward what is good, toward God.
You need to turn your conscious will toward God.
But you also want to order your desires toward God.
You can actually change your desires.
To use that case of the alcoholic.
When the alcoholic puts his head on his pillow, well he probably won't think about it very much if he's super drunk, but let's say he's jonesing for whiskey, his mind will just only be thinking about whiskey.
The addict is only thinking about the thing that he is addicted to.
Over time, the more you break away from that, you discipline your will, you discipline your ability to resist these things, but you also reorder your desires so that when you put your head on your pillow at night, you're thinking about something else.
Maybe you're thinking about your family.
Maybe you're thinking about Your soul.
Maybe you're thinking about God.
Maybe you're thinking about a nice beach that you visited when you were a kid.
Whatever you're thinking of, your desires will actually be turned in a different way as well.
And so this is why it's very bad for the person abusing the power and also for the girl who's being abused.
Don't do it, Nick.
Settle down.
Didn't I tell you two months ago or something to go just get married?
Get married.
The girl who DMs you just DM her right back and say, do you want to get married?
And then get married and be done with it.
From John.
I've been following the Rittenhouse case and what is most interesting to me I've seen dozens of news outlets and even campaign videos calling Kyle everything from a murderer to a white supremacist.
Do you think Kyle will be the next Nick Sandman if he is acquitted?
Thanks.
He has got to get acquitted first.
And yes, if you've been watching the trial, everyone can see this was obviously self-defense.
The kid didn't take a bad shot.
But...
This is very politicized.
We live in an age where not everything...
I mean, all ages are such that not everything is fair, and in this age, the whole deck is stacked against This kid.
So he's got to get acquitted first.
If he gets acquitted, yeah, I think he should go the Nick Sandman route.
And I hope he becomes a trillionaire.
Next question from Quaid.
Mr.
Knowles, how do you respond to the idea that Christians should not fight progressive culture because of God's sovereignty?
God's plan will be enacted ultimately.
But does that not mean that we should fight for a moral society?
Well, yes, God is sovereign.
God is the maker of heaven and earth and is deeply involved in every aspect of the creation constantly.
And he sustains us.
We have free will.
And we have the ability to cooperate with God's grace or to turn away from God.
And we are incarnate beings and we are called to politics because we're called to live together because we're not just isolated atoms floating free in the world.
Okay?
We are...
Living together, the authority is legitimate, right?
God grants that there will be political authority.
The authority doesn't carry the sword in vain, as St.
Paul writes in the letter to the Romans.
And so we do have a political responsibility here, and we have a responsibility to use our free will in cooperation with God's grace.
We don't have the right to abuse our free will, to turn away from God.
People do that, but that's wrong.
And it violates, in some cases, the civil law, and it certainly violates the moral law.
We have an obligation and a duty to cooperate with God's grace.
Last question from Tom.
Michael, I was catching up on the Daily Wire shows.
You had an interesting observation that the American conservative movement continues and has long been led by Catholics.
Buckley, Russell Kirk, Phyllis Schlafly, Brent Bozell.
To continue with this thought, today we've got Robbie George, Ryan Anderson, Saurabh Amari, Rinesh Panuru, Sheriff Gurgis, to name a few.
Do you think today's conservative movement is essentially a vehicle to bring everyone home to the Catholic Church?
Well, you might be getting it in the opposite direction.
You know, I'm Catholic.
I'd like for everyone to be Catholic.
But I think the reason that Catholics historically just always play an outsized role in conservative movements is because the Catholic Church is the conservative institution.
It's the only institution in the West that made it from antiquity to modernity.
All of the other institutions, even some of the ones that we like, are products in many ways of modernity.
And so ultimately they can't be conservative.
And that's just a fact.
And maybe it tells you something about the religion.
Maybe it tells you something about politics.
I don't know.
That's for you to decide.
But we can all pray.
We can pray for one another.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you on Monday.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
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 producer, Mathis Glover.
Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky.
Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico.
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And hair and makeup by Cherokee Heart.
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.
