All Episodes
Previous Next
April 7, 2022 - The Michael Knowles Show
47:21
Ep. 979 - OK Groomer

Democrats are getting crushed by a new slogan, Biden is pausing student debt repayment, and a new Tennessee law gives me hope. Order your Michael Knowles merch here: https://utm.io/uesdA . The magic has left the kingdom. It’s time to build new things that we can believe in. Subscribe to The Daily Wire today with promo code BUILDTHEFUTURE for 45% off: https://utm.io/uereW Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Ever since Democrats came out swinging against Florida's parental rights in education bill, which bans sexual conversations from kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, the Libs have found themselves on the receiving end of a new political slogan, Okay, groomer.
Some conservatives think this slogan is hyperbolic and counterproductive.
I, for one, think it's great.
After years of Democrats bandying about the word racist unfairly to destroy people's lives and shut down debate, I am all for a potentially equally powerful word like groomer, which in this case I think is being used fairly.
Conservatives are arguing that if you insist on having sexual conversations with kids in the classroom or anywhere else and then hiding those conversations from their parents, you are a groomer.
You are priming kids for certain kinds of sexual behaviors, for a certain kind of sexual perspective.
The attack so far seems pretty effective.
According to recent polls, the vast majority of likely voters support the Florida law and oppose sexual conversations with little kids.
And yet, despite the popularity of this bill and other bills, Democrats are doubling down all the way up to the White House, which now says it's going to fight to protect sexual conversations between teachers and little kids in Florida and all around the country.
Bad news for kids.
Bad news for the culture, but potentially bad news for Democrats, too, as voters head into the midterms pissed off and eager to protect their kids.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Sunshine Coolwater, who says, I didn't even know my teacher's first names until I got my yearbooks.
This is true.
This is true.
I loved my teachers.
I still speak to a number of my teachers, including teachers all the way back to my kindergarten teacher, as a matter of fact.
So I love my teachers.
We have kept in touch, at least with many of those teachers.
and others.
But we never had any of these kinds of conversations when we were in the classroom.
I agree.
I didn't know many of my teachers' first names.
I certainly didn't know what they were doing on date night, and that all seems to have changed now.
I always want to be fair on this issue.
I do not want to be a pyromaniac in a field of straw men.
And so I have twisted the arm of my friend Jessica Tarlov, who is one of, if not my very favorite Democrat out there.
Jessica, you know her from The Five.
She's a co-host of The Five.
She's vice president of Insights at Bustle.
She is the author of America in the Age of Trump, Opportunities and Oppositions in an Uncertain World.
If Trump runs for president again, we might get a second run of that book.
We might get The Age of Trump, Part 2.
So, Jesse, first of all, thank you so much for coming on the show.
I very much appreciate it.
So I have talked to a colleague of yours, Ethan Behrman, about the substance of this law in Florida, the parental rights and education bill.
I'd be more than interested, certainly, in hearing your take on the substance.
But first, at least, I want to get to your thoughts as a political strategist.
The opposition to this bill and others seems to be a total loser for Democrats in Virginia, in Florida, in every poll I've seen on the subject.
Why are Democrats doubling down?
Well, first of all, I want to know if Ethan Behrman is potentially your favorite Democrat since you said I was your favorite.
You rank so much higher.
It's not even close.
You can't even see him from where you are on the list.
Well, he's actually a lawyer, which I am not.
So he's probably good to speak to about the substance of the bill in a different way than I am.
In terms of this being a loser, Democrats have fared very poorly with culture war issues as of late.
Obviously, we had a good year in 2020 and was able to take back the presidency and control of the Senate, which made all the difference.
But we do know that that was obviously affected by the fact that we were in the midst of a global health pandemic and we had Trump, who's a very particular type of Republican, on the ballot.
I know you're a fan, but there are many Republicans who remain uncomfortable with his style.
In terms of the Don't Say Gay bill, which I will admit, when I first heard about this, I then searched for the term Don't Say Gay in the bill because you would think that it was in there.
It is not explicitly in there.
It's a quirky slogan.
It's something that people think will be catchy.
It has been used in a lot of ads here.
And I think it's very confusing for a lot of people.
Now, I happen to think that the bill is dangerous.
I don't think that there's a need for it.
And I've seen a lot of counter arguments against it.
Going back to, first of all, how often are these conversations happening?
And I'm sure that people would say, well, one time is too many, but we can't legislate for an entire state or an entire country based upon outlier issues.
Seen pushback from teachers who have said that this means that they can't talk about their lives with their students.
And you may not have known your teacher's first name, Or whether they were married or if they had kids.
But I went to school here in New York City and I only called my teachers by their first names.
I knew their entire families who were active participants.
In my school.
And I ended up just fine.
And I have a new daughter and I'm not, you know, she identifies as a girl because I said that she identifies as a girl and she even wears pink sometimes.
So I really don't think that this is nearly as dangerous as an issue as Republicans would have it be.
But I know it's all about politics all the time.
time.
And I believe that it is a winning issue for them now that we have parents that are pissed off about CRT.
And now they're pissed off about sexual indoctrination at the age of six.
So to your point on whether this is a real issue or not, it seems to me Democrats are running into a contradiction, which is, and they ran into the same contradiction on CRT, which is on the one hand, they're saying it's not happening.
CRT is not being taught in the classroom.
These conversations are not happening in kindergarten.
It's not a big deal at all.
But then on the flip side, they say, it's the end of the world if we ban these conversations, if we ban CRT from the classroom, or if we ban sexual conversations from kindergarten.
And And so I'm noticing they're going back and forth here, and I'm not sure if there's a consensus, but if the conversations aren't happening, then great, the law is no big deal.
It's more wasted ink in government, but hey, we've got a lot of that already.
So then I come back to this political question, and it seems you agree with the political question, Outlook on how this is going to fare for Dems in the midterms.
So then, are they just crazy?
Have they just lost their minds and they're running with a bill that they, one, don't think even matters all that much, and two, is deeply unpopular with voters?
Well, there's always an issue, and it's on both sides of the aisle between the extremes, right?
We had that, obviously, when the Tea Party came to power, the moderate Republicans were looking at them saying, this is absolute madness.
And we have an extreme left in our party right now.
And the people in the middle, the moderates that are trying to win races in Virginia and Michigan, etc., are looking at them and saying, excuse me, could you please stop talking?
I don't want to hear defund the police.
I don't want to hear about socialized medicine.
We want to hear about middle of the road solutions, which is how Joe Biden won.
So I think there's a bit of a communication problem there because often the most extreme people have the biggest platforms.
They're the most effective on social media.
They're kind of screaming from the rooftops about this.
But there's this fundamental problem going on right now with my party about what we should be focused on.
And voters have been clear.
They care about inflation and the cost of living.
That's it.
That's really all they care about.
We would like to save Ukraine from Putin.
Sure.
We think Afghanistan was bungled.
Sure, but we're happy to be out of the war, etc.
Climate change is still a really big deal, but not as big of a deal as a 22% rise in the cost of beef at your average supermarket.
So that's what the midterms is going to be about.
And the moderate wing of the party certainly understands that.
The left-wing side of the party, I think, is A, running in districts that are probably too safe for their own good, and B, just doesn't want to say that they're listening to polls.
And that is, as someone who was a former political poster and now does it for consumer brands, I can tell you that's where everything's won.
That's where the dollars are won.
That's where the elections are won.
And the moderate wing of the party is message testing all of that.
They're listening to their focus groups and they're saying, this is just a loser for us.
And there's too much time to be having this conversation that it can go on and on and on and actually allow Republicans to be focused on these culture war issues, which they have been winning as of late, rather than having to put up their own plans.
And I brought this up on The Five yesterday, for instance, on the health care issue.
Mitch McConnell was on a Sunday show last weekend and was asked about, well, what's the Republican plan?
So that's a really good issue.
I'll get a really good question.
I'll get back to you.
Republicans may very well win on the healthcare issue, but they haven't put forward a plan.
But with Democrats screaming about these other ancillary things, it won't make a difference necessarily at the polls.
And that's where my frustration with it lies.
And to your point about if these conversations aren't happening, I didn't say they weren't happening at all.
But I do remain fundamentally concerned about the young kid, a six, seven-year-old, and there are a lot of people who are gay, straight, grow up to be trans, etc.
Who say that they knew that, sorry, I shouldn't have said gay straight, who are gay, who feel that they knew that when they were really young.
And if they don't feel like they can talk to their parents about it, why shouldn't they be able to go to their teachers to have those conversations?
And I'm not saying that parents should be left out of the loop.
But if you are someone who believes that you were born in the wrong body, and they've reported kids as young as four years old who are saying that or saying, Mommy, I don't think I'm a girl.
I think that I'm a boy.
And if they can't say that to their mommy, they need someone who can help them, who they can go to and talk to about that.
Not to get on puberty blockers, but to have an open conversation.
Well, okay, because that's an important distinction, I think.
My response, if my own child came to me and said, I think I'm a girl, even though I'm a boy...
I would tell him, as lovingly, as gently as I possibly could, I'd say, well, you're not.
You're not a girl.
You might have a psychological condition.
You might have seen something on the news.
You might just be a little kid who gets confused about things.
If it were a little girl, I might say, you might just be a tomboy.
I'm not denying your feelings, but you'll grow out of it, as most people do.
But I would lovingly try to deal with that.
And so what you're saying is Kids need a resource if they've got awful, terrible, regressive parents, but not to the point to put them on puberty blockers.
I think the fear here is, and we're seeing stories all around the country of this, kids before puberty, by definition, are being put on these kinds of drugs.
There was a whistleblower just came out, a school nurse, who said 11-year-olds are being put on these kinds of drugs without their parents' notification.
And so it does raise this, I mean, I guess this is where you get the actual title of the Florida bill, Parental Rights in Education.
Whose right is it?
If you've got two fundamentally different worldviews, the traditional worldview that says if you've got a boy's body, then you're a boy and you can't be a girl secretly.
They just deny the whole premise of transgenderism.
And the new sort of secular transgender view, which says, no, your body and your true self can be totally different.
You should deny the body and go on puberty blockers and whatever else is going to be...
Following that, well, who wins out?
People might think the old Christian view or Jewish view or traditional view is regressive and terrible and harmful.
Though, by the way, the studies, I don't think, really back this up on the efficacy of puberty blockers at reducing suicidality or depression.
But let's put that aside for a second.
Who gets to choose?
Is it the parents?
Let's say they even deny transgenderism.
Let's say they even look on homosexuality with moral opprobrium.
They're Orthodox Jews.
They're traditional Christians or whatever.
Or the teachers who are the representatives of this new secular culture.
Well, I think fundamentally that parents should be responsible for these types of decisions with their children.
But even the example that you talked about, the case of the 11 year old who was put on puberty blockers and the school knew and the parents didn't know, that's an 11 year old.
And this bill is talking about five year olds through third grade.
So that's right.
Five through eight year olds.
Yeah, they certainly shouldn't be put on the puberty blockers.
And they can't be legally put on puberty blockers.
But I'm just saying that we're not actually...
That's an extension of this that is totally separate from that bill.
And I think that that's part of the problem when...
We talk this fast and loose about things like this and so few people actually read the substance of these bills and they're just railing about, well, I heard this and I heard that instead of getting down to the nitty gritty of what's in there.
So we were talking about extremely young kids.
You're not denying the fact that children, you said even my children, could potentially feel this way.
And express a concern about their gender identity.
But when you said that you would lovingly say this to them, I could push back easily and say, it's not actually loving of a child who's coming to you and telling you that they're struggling with their gender identity to tell them, well, it's just not true.
And yeah, little girl, like it's fine if you want to be a tomboy, but you're not a boy.
Because unless you fundamentally refute the possibility that transgenderism exists and I fundamentally refute it.
I think it's a complete fantasy.
I think it's a new version of the old Gnostic heresy that says that our bodies and our souls, and really when we're talking about transgenderism, we don't like to use these theological terms, but that's what we're talking about.
We're saying my physical self is totally different from my metaphysical self, and the physical self should be denied, and the metaphysical self that I at least imagine should bring the physical body more in line with what it perceives itself to be.
I think it's just bogus.
I think it's an old, crazy religious heresy.
I think it's harmful to everyone who's involved in it.
And I think it should be discouraged.
And I think when you go from...
0.001% of people identifying as transgender to now 20.8% of Gen Z identifying as transsexual or pansexual or some other gender identity issue.
Clearly that either Alex Jones is right and there's something in the water or this is a social phenomenon that's going on that is related to how we're even talking about these things.
Well, Alex Jones is not right about anything.
He was right about the frogs.
He was right about the frogs.
Yale proved it.
I don't even know what you're talking about, but I cannot go along with it.
And I try to block out as much Alex Jones anything as possible.
So I do think that...
Social constructs certainly plays a role in what's going on in the rise of people identifying as gay, as queer, non-binary, transgender, etc.
But I would posit as well that we are at a different time culturally where people are feeling like they can actually speak honestly and openly about who they are and not feel like they're going to lose their jobs, not feel like they're going to be ostracized from society.
There's obviously been a huge evolution in terms of how we treat people.
Who identify in these ways.
And there are a lot of psychiatrists, and you're a lot of things, but I don't believe that you're a psychiatrist.
I'm more of a biologist myself.
Ketanji Jackson is not, but I consider myself more of a biologist.
Well, as a woman, I can tell you.
That there are plenty of psychiatrists out there that believe strongly that transgenderism is something that is real.
It's something that also that if it doesn't get addressed is going to lead to tremendous spikes.
And we've seen this in terms of suicide and self-harm and depression.
And I go back to the original North Carolina bathroom bill, which basically came down to who cares?
Really, who cares?
The left cares.
No, no, no, no.
It was because the right had a problem with people who identified as the other gender using that bathroom.
Right, yeah, that's the change, though, right?
But isn't that the change?
Previously, the men who identify as women were not allowed in the women's bathroom.
The libs wanted them to be able to use the women's bathroom, and the right said no.
But we're not the ones who changed the rules, right?
No, but it was because Republicans...
Made up an issue.
They said that these people were identifying, that men who were identifying as women were going to go into bathrooms and hurt people.
No, it was just disordered for them to go in.
And that's a huge problem and such a misrepresentation of the way that transgender people live.
Obviously, I have plenty to say about Leah Thomas, and I played sports up to the collegiate level.
Not certainly at the D1 level, the D3 level, but I understand that that is a rich debate that is very textured.
But to deny transgenderism, when so many people have studied this for their whole lives, and so many people who live this life have said that they are happier, more effective, have better relationships.
But I would tell you, Jesse, you know, one, sometimes they say the plural of anecdote is not data.
Though, frankly, I think it is, right?
The plural of anecdote actually is data.
But I've talked to multiple people who had gender confusion, who even went through the process, went on testosterone, started transitioning, and who deeply regretted it.
I've probably talked to half a dozen people who deeply, deeply regretted it and wished that someone told them the truth.
And when we talk about who's a psychiatrist or who's a biologist, I mean really what we're talking about is who's a philosopher and who's a theologian and who's talking about this question that you're bringing up too, which is who are we?
What is our true identity?
Is our true identity what we perceive it to be?
Does it have to do with the body?
Does it have to do with what my teachers tell me in kindergarten?
We have to leave it there because I'm seven minutes over.
But you, though you may be...
You may not be a biologist.
You may not be a psychologist.
You may very well be a philosopher.
You do remain among my top three favorite Democrats, and I very much appreciate you coming on.
Where can people find you?
Everywhere.
Well, on Fox, a lot.
On Twitter, at Jessica Tarla, but I try not to read my mentions because I work at Fox.
So, Twitter.
That's basically it.
Wonderful.
You can find Jessica on Twitter, find her on Fox, and I hope find you back on this show very soon.
Thanks so much, Michael.
Thanks so much for coming on.
Now, when you want to protect the sort of things you're looking for, you know, you're Googling what is a man, what is a woman, you know, really controversial stuff like that, you've got to check out ExpressVPN.
Right now, go to expressvpn.com slash Knowles.
We know that big tech...
Doesn't like us.
We know that they target us for our views.
So why are you letting them peek in and look at everything you're looking at on the internet?
Even when you use that special super secret incognito window, you're not hiding your data from these big tech companies.
I'm talking about when you're looking at websites that you shouldn't be looking at.
I'm talking about those websites that could get you in trouble.
I'm talking about dailywire.com.
You don't want big tech knowing about that.
That's probably the worst thing you could be looking at, especially in a day when people are really being persecuted for their political views.
ExpressVPN anonymizes your online activity, camouflages your IP address, replaces it with a different secure IP of your choice.
I don't go on without it.
I've got it on all my devices.
I love it.
It's the number one rated VPN provider.
Go to ExpressVPN.com slash Knowles.
Get three months for free on a one-year package.
ExpressVPN.com slash Knowles.
ExpressVPN.com slash Knowles.
Head on over there to check out the VPN that I trust.
I love the OK Groomer political messaging, and my friend Jessica here has convinced me that it's the way to go because Republicans are winning on that issue.
I'm really glad that we could get into the substance because we're talking about the issue itself.
Who are we?
What's transgenderism?
Can five-year-olds be transgender?
Can anyone be transgender?
I like that.
But she started out at the political level.
What does this mean in the midterms?
And I think it's clear as day to me that this is a huge winner for conservatives.
When voters see people talking about transitioning children, it just turns them off.
There was some lunatic mother who went on ABC News the other day and talked about how from her daughter's very first words, she began to identify as a girl.
It was a boy, but then identified as a girl.
When Chazie, our daughter, when she really started to communicate to us, and that was at the earliest moment that she actually had words and language, to communicate to us who she truly was, we were a little surprised because we didn't expect it.
And then as we just...
Literally raised her, supported her, just like all parents do, raising, you know, we're teaching her the right values, we're teaching her to give back.
You know, one of her favorite things in the world to do is to volunteer and be in service to others.
You know, that surprise evolves into something just really cool and important, and that is the realization that she's our daughter.
That's the realization she had.
When she started saying goo-goo-ga-ga, we just knew.
If anyone who's ever had a child knows that this is preposterous.
First of all, it's preposterous because your kids' first words are like, you know, doggy, right?
Your kids' first words don't even sound like words.
They're just kind of sounds.
And so this woman is...
Projecting something.
I don't know what she's projecting.
And then it's so sad because she shows photos of her son who she's dressed up as a little girl.
And it's obviously, he's a boy.
He's a boy.
It's obviously a boy.
And I think the pictures here are the key to it.
Because you hear these lunatic women, like this person here.
Men and women, but this woman in particular.
And she says, my...
Eight-month-old baby obviously was transgender, and you say this woman's off her rocker, and she's saying the same kinds of things that elected Democrats are saying.
She's saying the same kinds of things that the White House is pushing right now, and then you see it.
You see it so clear.
You see it in what your kid's being taught, which became very clear during COVID when kids were being taught online.
You see it when you look at the picture and you say, no, the boy actually isn't a girl, and the girl actually isn't a boy, and we're careening toward the midterms right now, and this is not going to go very well for Democrats.
There's a teacher in Kansas who is insistent, he's a kindergarten teacher in Kansas, who is insistent that kindergartners are ready to learn about transgenderism.
When they've been exposed to information, they're ready to learn about it, whether you think they are or not.
And the research says that there is no age too young to talk about pretty much anything.
If they know about it, they're ready to learn about it.
Right?
So there is no...
You know, what we think is always age appropriate.
It is if they don't know about it.
If they haven't been exposed to it, then yeah, you can give them time to develop.
But once they're exposed to it and social media is going to do it, right?
I know some kindergartners in this school with cell phones.
Mine had a cell phone.
And so they get access to information.
They can learn quickly.
The world is teaching them faster than probably you are.
They're students as early as kindergarten who are identifying.
As non-gender conforming, non-binary, transgender.
And so because they're in our school, they're in our classrooms, then that becomes a responsibility on the adults to say, okay, I have a student who identifies this way.
And so it's my responsibility to make sure the classroom is inviting to them, just like it is to someone who might be Yeah, So this five-year-old, he's African.
And so we're going to affirm that he's African.
And this five-year-old says that he's a unicorn.
And so we're going to affirm that he's a unicorn, right?
Which is just as coherent as saying that the little boy identifies as a little girl.
There's a difference here, of course, because there are such things as Africans.
There are such things as Asians.
There are, your race is something that I can look at and say, okay, that's real.
Just like your sex is something that I can look at and say, that's real.
But your imagined identity, that is not real.
That's fake and that shouldn't be affirmed.
The point he's making here is so subtle and it's so dangerous.
He's saying, look, I don't want to teach kindergartners about transgenderism.
I don't want them to learn about transgenderism, but once they find out about it, then we have to talk about it.
They're already hearing about it from social media, from their cell phones that the five-year-olds have, from the smartphones that five-year-olds are being given.
And he says, I gave my own five-year-old a cell phone.
Right, that was a mistake.
That was bad parenting.
You shouldn't do that.
That was your first mistake.
Now you're going to compound that first mistake.
You're going to use that mistake.
You're saying, look, I'm exposing my kids to all this kind of transgender insanity.
So now we've got to talk about it.
Well, we wouldn't have to talk about it if you weren't exposing them to that in the first place.
So it's a way of subtly getting that in there.
And then he goes even more wrong, where he says, and once it comes up, then I've got to affirm their transgenderism.
No, you don't.
You should deny it, because it's not real.
It's just not real.
It's just made up.
I don't want to sound cruel or insensitive.
I actually think I'm being quite compassionate and sensitive here.
When I tell you, I would tell a five-year-old and I would certainly tell his kindergarten teacher, it's just not real.
I'm sure the experience of it is real, the feeling of it is real, but it is not because a boy actually can't be a girl.
And this is the radicalism you're seeing.
And you're going to see this from just about every teacher.
Well, it comes up in the classroom.
Sure, it comes up in the classroom.
And you're totally right.
You do probably have a responsibility to address something that comes up in the classroom.
So how are you going to address it?
Well, one of two ways.
One of three ways, I guess.
One is you shut it down and you say, talk to your parents.
Two, you say, no, Johnny, boys can't be girls.
Or three, you say, yes, Johnny, boys can be girls.
You are teaching something.
This is why it's not enough for conservatives to just say, get the politics out of the classroom.
The politics are going to be in the classroom.
Politics just means public stuff.
It just means the stuff that people are talking about, the way that we live our lives, that's going to end up in the classroom.
It's not enough to say, hands off, don't talk about it.
You actually have to have a point of view.
As I say in my book Speechless, free speech doesn't mean anything to people who don't have anything to say.
So it's not enough.
These laws are a good start to say you can't preach transgenderism in kindergarten.
They should go further.
You should teach an affirmative, accurate, true understanding of human nature.
You should say, boys are boys and girls are girls.
And when a man and a woman love each other very much, they leave their families and they get married.
And when they get married, because the sexes are complementary, they have children and they reproduce.
And that's a good thing, actually, that they do that.
And that's how we all got here.
And you do that at age-appropriate times, but you can't just bury your head in the sand and you can't just avoid reality.
I want to talk about what's going on with kids right now.
The most horrifying story probably I've ever seen in the news, we've been talking about it for a couple days, this live action story about how in D.C. there were five babies who were killed through abortion and now a whistleblower brought these bodies that were photographs taken, a pro-life activist broke the story.
And so the authorities are, of course, investigating the pro-lifers.
They're letting the abortions soft the hook.
They're investigating the pro-lifers.
It's not just five babies, by the way.
This has happened well over a hundred times.
And they've only got evidence of the five.
They've only got physical evidence of the five.
Well, it turns out Live Action has a clip of the abortionist, this butcher, who committed these atrocities.
And this goes back years now.
And he admitted that he was allowing, in violation of the law, allowing babies who were born alive simply to die.
Take a listen.
Obviously you're here for a certain procedure, and if your pregnancy were, let's say you went into labor, the membrane's ruptured, and you delivered before we got to the termination part of the procedure here, you know, then we would do things, we would not help it.
We wouldn't intubate.
Okay.
Okay.
So you would make sure?
Yeah, we wouldn't do any extra, you know, it's like, yeah, it would be, you know, a person that would be a terminal person in the hospital, let's say, that had cancer.
You know, we wouldn't do any extra procedures to help that person survive.
They had, like, do not resuscitate orders.
Okay.
You know, we would do the same things here.
Okay.
Whereas if you were in Yeah, we wouldn't do it.
You know the thing that all the hospitals do because that's the law?
We don't do that here.
You know how they help the fetus survive?
Even if you're going to use a silly word like fetus instead of baby.
People say fetus because they don't want to admit that a baby in the womb is a baby.
The fetus, quote unquote, stops being a fetus by any definition once he's out of the womb.
So then what he's saying is we wouldn't help the fetus survive.
He's saying we wouldn't help the baby survive.
So do that here.
He talks about, oh, this poor woman, she went to the hospital once because her abortion didn't work out for her.
And then she gave birth to the baby and they wouldn't let her kill the baby.
This guy, how many times has he done this?
It's almost funny.
If not for the incredible suffering involved, it would almost be funny how ghoulish this guy sounds.
His name is Dr.
Cesare Santangelo.
You probably haven't even heard that name.
Dr.
Cesare Santangelo.
This guy, we talk about Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin's a butcher.
He's committing war crimes.
Sure.
We talk about people like Bashar Assad, the dictator in Syria.
He's a butcher.
He's committed war crimes.
Sure.
Cesare Santangelo is just as bad, probably worse, because he's focusing all of it on innocent little babies.
That's his job.
That's how he makes his money.
In violation of the law, he seems to know it.
Stone-cold psychopath.
The guy should, at the very least, be locked up for the rest of his life.
Frankly, I would recommend a harsher punishment from the civil authority than that.
And this name, no one even knows this name.
You should be posting this name.
You should be publicizing this name.
Cesare Santangelo...
The worst killer, the worst serial killer, murderer in this country right now.
Who knows?
Who knows how many victims he's got?
Maybe the worst in American history.
Shine a light on that.
All of the entrenched powers are trying to cover it up.
Cover up for this psycho and trying to bury the bodies.
Actually trying to incinerate the bodies without even doing an autopsy.
Don't let him get away with it.
You know, you know, sometimes on this show I have to say I told you so.
Sometimes that's happy with good political predictions.
Sometimes it's sad with bad political predictions, but I was still correct.
Well, All of my prophecies that have come to light have inspired a new collection of merchandise over at dailywire.com slash shop.
This is the Noel Stradamus line.
That's right.
That's right.
You all know that the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth is six months these days.
I have this wonderful new merch and I see it.
I foresee it in your future.
Go to dailywire.com slash shop today.
Order from the Noel Stradamus line.
We'll be right back with a lot more.
The Democrats are so upset about this okay groomer slogan, the fact that Republicans are accurately criticizing them for having, insisting on having sexual conversations with little kids without their parents knowing about it.
They're so upset that they're trying to throw that punch back on Republicans, and it's not working.
And it's extremely dishonest the way they're doing it.
Tennessee, my state, was trending yesterday on social media, and it was trending because of a bill, Senate Bill 562, House Bill 233.
Brought forward by Representative Leatherwood, which would redefine certain aspects of marriage in Tennessee.
And the headline, according to all the media, was...
Tennessee Republicans want to get rid of age limits for marriage.
Tennessee Republicans take out an age limit in a marriage statute so they can cover up for child abuse and have child brides and their pedos and they're the real groomers.
That was the headline.
And I saw that headline and I said, no, that's not true.
I didn't know anything about the story.
I hadn't read the bill.
I said, that's just obviously not true.
So, you can read the bill.
The bill's two pages long.
It's not that hard.
And it's mostly just kind of boring government gobbledygook, but it changes a little bit the definition of marriage.
And what it appears to do, just from my first reading, is it gives a protection to public officials who do not believe that marriage can exist between two men or two women, who adhere to the definition of marriage that has existed everywhere throughout all of human history until five minutes ago, who adhere to the definition of marriage that has existed everywhere throughout all of human history until five minutes ago, and who feel that it would be a violation of their conscience and their religious That's what it's about.
The representative who brought it said, quote, Tom Leatherwood quoted by WKRN. It doesn't even get rid of gay marriage or the redefinition of marriage that we got from the Supreme Court through the Obergefell decision.
It just clarifies marriage and gives a specific category, a specific carve-out to the definition of marriage we've had for all of human history everywhere in the world.
So, what happened with the age requirements?
Well, I knew it the second I heard about this.
Obviously, the state reps just messed up the language a little bit.
Obviously, as they were amending a statute, they accidentally left out one part.
But no one in their right mind would ever propose a bill to say that you should be able to marry a five-year-old.
That's just, no one did it.
No matter how poorly the left-wing thinks of us, how evil the left-wing thinks that we are, how stupid the left-wing thinks we are, no one would do that because it's not right.
And it's politically just completely idiotic.
Even if some psycho thought that it's a good idea to be able to marry five-year-olds, he still wouldn't put it forward because it's a total political loser.
And there's no evidence whatsoever that the people who proposed this bill ever suggested anything like that.
In fact, there's a lot of evidence to the contrary.
In March, in a committee hearing in March, the Representative Leatherwood who put this forward said...
That, as he understood the very legislation, that it would, quote, not allow minors, children under the age of 18, who haven't even reached the age of consent, to enter into a marriage contract.
So it's just a completely made-up issue.
It's a total non-traversy.
But the fact that the Democrats are focusing on this completely made-up part of the bill tells you two things.
One, they're really sensitive about the groomer line.
One, they're very vulnerable on this groomer issue, that they're being accused of weird sex stuff with kids.
And now, the fact that their Supreme Court nominee's most glaring part of her judicial record is that she lets pedos off the hook, that certainly doesn't help.
So they're very sensitive about that.
It's a good area that Republicans should keep pushing on.
But two, it's that they don't want to talk about the real issue of the bill.
The real issue of the bill, and maybe you agree with it and maybe you don't, is that the people pushing it do not believe that the Obergefell decision was legit.
They do not believe that there is any such thing as gay marriage, same-sex marriage.
No slight to gay people, no slight to people with differing or eccentric sexual desires, but they just believe marriage is marriage.
It actually has a meaning.
You can't change the meaning.
You can't completely upend it.
And so they're trying to give a carve out for people who still believe that.
Maybe you oppose that.
But one thing I know for sure is that the Democrats don't want to deal with that issue head-on.
Just like they didn't want to deal with the redefinition of marriage head-on, period.
When it was put up for a vote, do you want to change the definition of marriage to include monogamous same-sex couples?
For now.
They'll probably change it again.
When it was put up to a vote, it failed.
When it was put up to a vote in super-duper liberal California, it failed.
Proposition 8.
Then, nine robed judges on the court decided to just rewrite the Constitution and invent this right.
Anthony Kennedy, the romantic poet on the Supreme Court, just invented a new definition of marriage, completely out of nowhere.
And the Democrats, who insist that this is very popular and it's a wonderful thing to do, they don't want to defend that.
And so they make up a bunch of nonsense that's not in the bill.
By the way, the lawmakers already filed an amendment to clarify that minors are not allowed to do this.
You have to reach the age of majority to do it.
Completely made up.
But I think the Democrats are actually telling on themselves, and they're telling Republicans how to fight this political battle come November.
Now, Joe Biden is focusing on anything he can to try to win back November.
To try to stem the tidal waves that he's going to have to deal with in November.
He's losing on the economy.
He's losing on jobs.
He's losing on foreign policy.
He's losing on COVID. He's losing on the weird creepy sex stuff with the kids.
He's losing, losing, losing, losing.
So the one Hail Mary he's trying to throw here.
The Biden administration just announced that they are extending the federal student loan payment pause.
They are going to move the return of student debt repayment from May 1st of this year to August 31st.
They had already paused it in December of last year.
No serious economist thinks this is a good idea.
Forget conservatives for a second.
Even Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, former top economist to Barack Obama, when Joe Biden was vice president, said this is nuts.
He said it's very hard to understand this in policy terms.
This is not a small macroeconomic thing.
At a time when the economy is overheating, student debt action will be injecting money into the economy at a $100 billion a year annual rate.
This is a macroeconomic step in the wrong direction.
So to put that into layman's terms, what he's saying is, right now we're dealing with inflation.
Inflation is going through the roof.
There's just too much money swirling around right now.
And so what Joe Biden is, and a lot of that is caused by not just Biden's policy of this, but years and years and years of just printing money and giving away money, and so the money's not as valuable and things cost a lot more.
And what this Biden policy does, rather than trying to pull that back, trying to get a hold on inflation, it's going to inject another $100 billion a year into the economy of just free money that the students or the graduates now are not paying for no reason whatsoever.
These college graduates, by and large, are doing better economically than people who don't have a college degree.
Their degree might not be worth what they paid for.
It's probably not worth a quarter of a million dollars to go study lesbian dance theory or whatever else we're talking, or frankly, even to get a regular old degree from an ordinary academic program these days, it's not as valuable because people aren't being taught as much.
And the practical value of a university education is not what it once was.
But regardless, they're still doing better.
These are still wealthier Americans.
These are still the upper class Americans who are now being bailed out by everyone else.
That's not fair.
That's not fair at all.
But this does make sense of it.
I now get from a policy perspective why Joe Biden's doing this.
Larry Summers might not get it.
Because economically it doesn't make sense.
But politically it makes a lot of sense.
One, it's a de facto federal takeover of education.
The Democrats are having a hard time selling free college.
They're having a hard time selling it because it's just a handout to the upper classes in America.
Most people in America don't graduate from a four-year college.
I think it's what, one in four Americans graduates from a four-year college?
And then they go on and make more money and have a more economically prosperous life.
So why are the lower classes going to be paying extra money to the upper classes?
Because the upper classes made a poor financial decision.
They can't pay back the debt on their college degrees.
It's not a big seller.
It's not going to play very well in Peoria.
So the Democrats are having a hard time doing that.
So what they're doing is just saying, okay, we're going to pause it.
We're just going to pause it and run out the clock.
And the more the government is involved in education in this way, the more influence they're going to have over the educational system.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
That's the first part.
Second part is it's a payoff to Biden supporters.
College graduates, people who have spent four years maybe not learning a whole lot of the classical tradition or of the liberal arts, but definitely learning a lot of leftist ideology, they're more likely to vote for Democrats.
And so, it's a payoff.
It's a payoff to the people who are more likely to vote for Democrats, and it's an incentive to other people to go and get these degrees, knowing that very likely they're not going to have to pay them back anyway.
And the Democrats know that if kids go to college and spend four years getting indoctrinated in this crap, they're more likely to vote for them.
Free money.
It's a way to ensconce yourself in power as long as the money doesn't run out.
A California city is doing this right now.
Palm Springs in California is testing out a policy to just give people money for calling themselves transgender.
To just give them money, to give them a payment of $900 per month, only if they identify as transgender or non-binary, which those things don't exist.
But if you identify that way, you get the free money from Palm Springs.
I could go to Palm Springs.
I say, hey, I want my free money.
They say, are you transgender?
I say, no, they don't give it to me.
But then if I came back, maybe I put a little mustache on or grad show glasses.
I said, hey, it's me again.
Yeah, I'm transgender now.
I say, okay, here's your money.
You have to meet a certain poverty threshold, but it's specifically for transgenderism.
Why?
Why are they doing this?
The only conclusion you can draw is that they want more people to identify as transgender.
That's it.
You don't need to be Larry Summers.
You don't need to be one of the top economists in the country to know that when you incentivize something, you get more of it.
That's why you incentivize it.
And the left is incentivizing this.
They are grooming kids.
They're doing it.
I don't think they're doing it primarily because they want to diddle kids or something like that.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Maybe.
But I actually don't think that's the primary motivation.
I think it's because they want kids to believe in their political ideology.
And their political ideology is one of liberation.
Liberation from oppressive systems.
Liberation from custom and tradition.
From the past, which is also awful.
Liberation from human nature itself.
Some of the people pushing this are cynical politicians, but some of them, I think, are true believers.
And they know, this is why they focused on education so long, they know that if you can get kids when they're really, really young, that you're going to be able to mold their brains.
The classroom is a crystal ball for your country in 20 years.
And they know that sex is one of, if not the primary driver in human nature.
It's not the top top, but it's pretty important.
And so if a five-year-old If a three-year-old, if a one-and-a-half-year-old, like that lunatic mother said on TV, is inculcated in this transgenderism, that's just going to be part of how they view the world.
Think about how important that is.
Think about how important your religious foundation is, for those of you who grew up with religion.
It colors the way you see the entire world.
And the left wants more of this.
There are many reasons why they want more of this.
The most basic reason, we should do a whole episode on all of the reasons, but the most basic reason is, for the left, the family has always been the greatest impediment to their political takeover.
They have to turn people into radical, atomized individuals in order to gain power, in order to push their ideological agenda of radical liberation, and in order to gain much more government power.
In order to control your lives much more and take away your freedom and take away your way of life.
So this is one way to do it.
How better to break up the family than to break up the basis of the family, which is sexual difference?
It's been effective for the left in conquering the culture.
There's just one little impediment to them.
And that would be the voters.
And the voters hate this stuff.
And the voters, I hope, come out and give them a real shellacking in November because the fight is not over.
It's just beginning.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
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.
Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky.
Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico.
Associate producer, Justine Turley.
Audio mixer, Mike Coromina.
And hair and makeup by Cherokee Heart.
Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2022.
Hey there, this is John Bickley, Daily Wire editor-in-chief and co-host of Morning Wire.
On today's episode, the CDC will conduct a month-long comprehensive review, China seeks to keep its companies listed in the U.S., and new reports show the Black Lives Matter organization purchased a $6 million home in California.
▲
Export Selection