A new report shows that most of Biden’s top officials have zero years of business experience, Trump makes a decision about 2024, and a major new development comes out in the politically charged rape case of a 10-year-old girl.
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I think I figured out why the economy is in total collapse and most people are much poorer than we were three years ago.
Turns out the Biden administration doesn't know anything about business.
And I don't mean that in a cheap, political shot kind of way.
I mean that in a quantifiable, indisputable kind of way.
A new report from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity has just revealed that the top 68 officials in the Biden administration have spent an average...
Of 2.4 years in the business world, these are the top guys in the administration, 2.4 years.
Of those 68 people, just eight of them can claim extensive business experience and, gets even better, the median length of business experience among Biden's top officials is zero.
Zero years.
Now, I am not one of those people who thinks that the government should be run exactly like a business.
I don't think that.
The government is not a business.
There is more to politics than just profits and efficiency and GDP. But don't you think the people running our country should know something about how the economy actually works?
have some practical firsthand experience with it?
Our last president had spent his whole career in business and he hired lots of business people.
And what do you know, they spent their time making America's business run better.
Our current president has spent his entire career in left-wing politics and he's hired lots of leftist ideologues.
And what do you know, they spend their time trying to expand abortion and trans all the kids and watch the economy completely collapse?
None of this should come as any surprise.
Personnel is policy.
And as long as these people are running the show, do not expect things to improve.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
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Every day.
I feel like this is my opening every single day, and it's because every single day things get even worse for Joe Biden.
We keep talking about the lowest approval ratings ever.
Actually, scratch that.
And now the lowest approval ratings ever.
Actually, scratch that.
There's a new poll out from Yahoo News and YouGov that shows that I'll ask you.
I don't want to give it away yet.
What percentage of Americans do you think want Joe Biden to run for re-election?
This is all Americans, but this is the guy who allegedly was elected with more votes than ever in the whole history of democracy.
What percentage of Americans want the incumbent president to run for re-election?
What would you guess?
Maybe you'd say, I don't know, if things are bad, 40%.
If things are really bad, 30%.
18%.
18% of Americans, less than 1 in 5 Americans, wants the president to run for re-election.
Yahoo describes this as the lowest number to date.
This reflects a 7-point drop, a 7 percentage point drop from the number of Americans who wanted him to run for re-election in May.
That was two months ago.
And even worse news, perhaps, for Biden, even worse than the people turning on him and the people not wanting him to run for re-election, We've decided to release the Kraken tonight.
Joining me is our favorite and only CNN senior data reporter, Harry Enten.
How does President Biden stack up against other presidents at this time in administrations?
Yeah, so we can look at both Joe Biden's disapproval rating on inflation and Joe Biden's disapproval rating overall.
And what we see is his disapproval rating on inflation is topping 70%.
His disapproval rating overall is still in the 50s.
But if you compare that to everything Any single other president at this point in their first term throughout polling history, this goes all the way back since the 1940s, he is the worst on both.
And the reason he is the worst overall is because inflation is eating his presidency alive at this point.
Am I watching the Daily Wire?
Am I watching the Michael Knowles show?
Oh no, I'm watching CNN and Anderson Cooper.
But they are being harsher toward Biden than sometimes even I am.
Than the right-wing media are.
Why is this?
It's not a complicated issue.
It's because the libs, not just the regular rank-and-file lib voters, but the liberal leaders and the liberal intellectuals and the liberal communicators, they all know that Biden is a dead man walking.
They know his presidency is a disaster, and they know that in a fair election, his odds of winning re-election are the odds of a snowball in hell.
So they realize, gosh, we've got to change course.
We need some new candidate.
We need him to not run for re-election.
We need him to get behind some other candidate.
Who that candidate is, we don't know.
Kamala Harris would probably be a disaster.
Buttigieg is never going to happen.
Maybe Gavin Newsom.
Maybe some candidate that we're not even aware of yet.
But whatever it is, we can't have Biden.
These numbers are just abysmal.
And it gives Republicans a huge opportunity.
And this is where things get really spicy and saucy.
Because the Republicans have what would appear to be the most winnable election maybe in my lifetime that they've got in front of them.
But there's this big wild card.
There is this big elephant in the room, a big lion in the room, if you ask me.
Mr.
Covfefe himself, Donald Trump.
Will Trump run or not?
If you believe the polls, take them with a grain of salt, of course.
Trump does not do very well against a Democrat, against Joe Biden or other Democrats, compared to other candidates who have been floated, such as Ron DeSantis.
Again, that may be true, that may not be true.
I don't believe those polls at the moment.
I just think, one, it's too early, and two, I don't really trust the libs when it comes to Donald Trump in particular, because they hate this guy.
And the fact that they hate this guy so much is one of the reasons that I like the guy so much.
A liberal magazine, New York Magazine, just did an interview with Trump, and according to the magazine, they seem to suggest that Trump is going to run in 2024.
The interviewer asked him, when are you going to make a decision?
And he said, I've already made my decision.
That's done.
I've already made my decision.
But again, that's kind of ambiguous.
Does that mean he's decided he's not going to run, but he's going to keep leading people on to believe that he's going to run so that he can maintain some influence in the party?
What...
But then later on in the interview, the interviewer says he kind of loosened up and he made clear he is running.
And he said the only question now is do I declare before the midterms or after the midterms?
Again, the way I'm reading his literal words, I think he still leaves himself some ambiguity.
But if people were taking bets today, it would be very hard to make the case that it seems like Trump is not running.
He is doing and saying everything that someone would do or say if he were running for president.
And he's got every reason to run.
He feels he was jilted the last time.
He didn't get to complete his second term.
He's still extremely popular.
He's leading the field by, what, 40 points now?
The only thing cutting against him is his age.
And I know it's popular now to say that older people should not run for president.
I don't think there should be an age cutoff.
Elon Musk recently said no one over the age of 69 should run for president.
And I think it was mostly because he wanted to make a joke about the number 69.
But I don't think that's true.
I think it's entirely dependent on the person.
Ronald Reagan famously said he's not going to make age an issue of his campaign, and he's not going to exploit for political purposes his opponent's relative youth and inexperience.
Ronald Reagan was the oldest man we had ever elected president, and he's one of the best presidents in recent American history.
And so it's entirely dependent on the person.
Joe Biden is now the oldest man who's ever been elected president, and he doesn't know his own name, and he doesn't know what end is up.
I think you've got to make that calculation not based on some arbitrary number, but on the man.
And if you look at Donald Trump, love him or hate him, the guy is still totally with it.
He's still totally full of energy.
He's campaigning like a much, much younger candidate.
Even now, he's going out and campaigning for midterm candidates.
And he was asked about age during the 2020 race, and he said, look...
Listen, I don't know if Biden's too old.
I'll just tell you, I am so young.
I'm a young, vibrant man.
And he acts that way.
I don't know if it's because he doesn't drink.
I don't know if it's because he's mostly aspartame and fast food preservatives now.
But I don't know if it's good genes.
Whatever it is, the guy is very energetic.
And if he runs, he seems likely to win the primary.
I don't think it's inevitable.
I think if a DeSantis ran or if a different candidate ran, I think they would have a chance in the primary.
But again, just looking at the numbers, just looking at the name recognition, just knowing the candidate, if Trump runs, he's very likely to win the primary.
And so if you don't want Trump to be the nominee, and if you feel that Trump is going to lose the general election, all of your energy has to be focused right now on stopping him from running for president.
And I know there are a lot of conservatives who either they hated Trump, then they like Trump, then they hate Trump again.
Or they liked Trump from the beginning, but they're sick and tired of Trump.
Or they really like Trump, but they think, look, Trump's just not going to win re-election, so we've got to move on to somebody else.
I am open to all of these possibilities.
I am not committed to any particular 2024 primary outcome right now.
I have not.
I say let the chips fall where they may.
Let the process play out.
I really, really like Trump.
He's my favorite former president alive today.
I love DeSantis.
DeSantis is the best governor around today.
I like a lot of other candidates who I say let the process play out, but you are seeing that primary already taking place, and the clearest place you're seeing it is in the feud between Trump and Elon Musk.
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The primary for 2024 for the Republicans is playing out not with snipes between Trump and Ron DeSantis, or snipes between Trump and Ted Cruz, or snipes between Trump and Mike Pompeo, or Nikki Haley, or whoever.
The 2024 primary right now is playing out between Trump and Elon Musk.
Why?
People are saying, why?
Why are these two social media genius billionaires, why are they going at it?
Because Elon Musk is an avatar for Ron DeSantis.
The Elon-Trump feud has been just continuing in recent days, and Elon has said about Trump, I don't hate the man, but it's time for Trump to hang up his hat and sail into the sunset.
Dems should also call off the attack.
Don't make it so that Trump's only way to survive is to regain the presidency.
Trump would be 82 at the end of his term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.
And then here is where, even with all of that, Trump would probably snipe at Elon.
But here is where Trump felt he had to snipe at Elon.
Elon said, if DeSantis runs against Biden in 2024, then DeSantis will easily win.
He doesn't even need to campaign.
Now, I disagree with that perception, not because of any weakness of DeSantis, just because of how corrupt the liberal establishment is.
So I agree with Elon Musk.
DeSantis would be, I think, a phenomenal candidate.
No question about that.
He's a phenomenal governor.
But he wouldn't even have to campaign.
I don't buy that for a second.
I think they would do the same thing to DeSantis that they did to Trump, that they did to Bush, that they did to Reagan, that they do to all of them.
And they'd say he's a Nazi, and he's a rapist, and he's a racist, and he is a pedophile, and he probably punched his grandmother in the face.
You know, they would throw the kitchen sink at him.
So Trump now is punching back at Elon.
The reason he's punching at Elon, too, it's not even just about DeSantis.
It's about anyone saying anything nice about any Republican candidate other than Donald Trump.
Trump at this moment knows that he's on the top of the heap.
He knows that the nomination is his basically if he wants it.
And so he's got to make it very painful for anybody to endorse any other candidate.
He's got to make it very painful for anybody to boost or raise money for any other candidate.
Could Ron DeSantis or someone else, but DeSantis seems to be top of the heap right now, could he mount a successful primary campaign against Trump?
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
Right now, I lean toward no.
But maybe that could change.
DeSantis has been on a rocket ship of success and name recognition and goodwill in the Republican Party recently.
Maybe he could, maybe he couldn't.
But one thing I know for sure is Republicans want to avoid a bloody, messy primary contest between DeSantis and Trump.
Especially because Trump fights so dirty.
They don't want to see the golden boy governor of Florida who's doing such a great job destroyed because of this bitter contest for president.
Now, it gets even more interesting than all of that because of a figure not in state government, not in the federal government, not a former president, because of a TV show host.
A TV show host who is just for some reason going to be taking a trip To Iowa.
So this show has come to Iowa for a couple days, giving a speech at the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines.
Lots of people who are running for president are swinging through Iowa.
We thought we would assess the field.
We're going to stream that speech live on Fox Nation tomorrow, Friday, 5 p.m.
Eastern.
Go to foxnation.com for access.
Tucker is such a pro.
The guy is so smart.
Listen to those words, which were scripted.
Those were in a teleprompter.
He chose those words very carefully.
He said, we're swinging through Iowa.
Our eyebrows go up.
He says, yeah, I'll be giving a speech.
So it's not just that he's doing interviews.
It's not just that he's covering it on the ground.
He's giving a speech to an important conservative summit.
Our eyebrows go up even further.
And then, just in case anybody missed what he's putting out there, he said...
Lots of people who are running for president are making tours through Iowa right now, giving speeches, that sort of thing.
And then he gives himself the out, a little plausible deniability.
He says, so we're just here surveying the field.
We're just here doing journalism.
But I'm also giving a speech.
And I'm giving a speech with the other people who are maybe running for president.
A lot of people have called for Tucker to run for president.
I think he could mount a pretty serious campaign.
Not saying he would win the nomination necessarily, but he could mount a pretty serious campaign.
And then it occurred to me.
He could mount possibly the greatest campaign in the country.
For Vice President, especially if Trump is the nominee.
If Trump is the nominee, who is he going to pick for Vice President?
Obviously, it's not going to be Mike Pence.
I guess it could be Ted Cruz.
I don't know.
Again, it's a little awkward because I host a show with Senator Cruz.
I have not spoken to him about this at all.
This is just purely my own conjecture.
But I guess I could see that.
The United States Senator, so it kind of balances things out.
Nikki Haley, I could see.
Nikki Haley worked for Donald Trump.
She brings in a little bit more of the moderate side of the party.
Though she did irritate some Trump voters when she went after him in Politico.
But then she kind of, she said that this didn't represent my actual views about Trump.
And so I don't know, she might be able to do that.
Maybe, I don't know, maybe a Pompeo.
I don't think a DeSantis really could.
I just think DeSantis and Trump are too similar.
They've had roles that are too similar in government.
Their personalities are a little bit too similar.
I don't see DeSantis taking a vice president.
I don't see Trump offering it to him.
But Tucker, that...
There's a lot of ideological overlap between the two men.
They come from totally different parts of politics.
Trump from the executive, from actually being the president.
Tucker brings in the media.
He's the most popular conservative TV show host.
And yet there's a lot of overlap there, too, between the guys.
Both have a big background in the media world.
Trump really respects guys who come from the media.
Trump endorsed Dr.
Oz, I think, primarily because Dr.
Oz had a TV show.
Just very interesting stuff.
I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but there could be a natural spot if Tucker went crazy and wanted to give up his extremely lucrative, very influential post on television to go join the melee of elected politics.
That's what's going on in Iowa.
Speaking of the Midwest...
There's an update to that horrible story and kind of sketchy story about a child who was raped in Ohio and then went to Indiana to get an abortion.
And the story was first reported on by a very pro-abortion activist doctor and she wouldn't give any details and it was dodgy and she said she didn't meet this patient but she got a call from a doctor who knew a person who got the patient and And Joe Biden pushed this and it was all really part of an anti-pro-life, pro-abortion argument that the left was making.
The Attorney General of Ohio couldn't find details on the crime.
No one was offering any details.
Then, some days later...
Some reports about a crime that seemed similar cropped up, and there was a girl who was not quite the same age, but almost that age that it was being reported on.
And then it came out later that the man who raped her was an illegal immigrant, 27-year-old illegal alien.
So that could have explained why the story was being reported in such a weird way, because the media didn't want to divulge these details, because it cuts against their immigration narrative.
Well, now it's getting even dodgier.
A Telemundo reporter, Maria Vargas Pion, went to the home, Of this girl, really the girl's mother, and tried to interview her to get more details because the story just doesn't really totally add up.
The mother would not open the door and contradicted pretty much all the reports about the rape.
The reporter says, did the girl live here as well?
Mother says, yes, but she's fine.
Everything that they're saying against him is a lie.
And the child, are you related to her or the mother?
Yes, she's my daughter, she says.
The woman refused to provide her name, show her face.
She said she's not filed charges against the 20-year-old Gerson Fuentes, who is charged with the rape.
According to the authorities, he confessed to having vaginal contact on at least two occasions with the girl who recently turned 10.
So he did this when she was 9.
Or younger, I guess.
When she was raped and then became pregnant.
Really, really crazy story because people are inferring from this that, and I think justifiably, I think pretty inarguably, that the Mother knows the accused rapist.
Maybe the accused rapist was the boyfriend.
Maybe the accused rapist was living with them.
Maybe the accused rapist was very close.
And so she's saying, yeah, the girl's fine.
Don't worry about it.
Yeah, she was raped by the...
Whether she was raped or not, forget about that.
She's fine.
He's wonderful.
Don't charge him with any crimes.
He's a great guy.
And so now we're seeing this as very possibly just a case of a horrible, horrible family of...
Illegal aliens.
This mother and potentially a boyfriend or a relative or someone that at least is known to the mother endangering the welfare of this poor little girl.
It becomes a much different story than what was initially reported.
Now, One of the questions that has come up tangential to this highly politicized Ohio rape case is, what should be the punishment for rape?
The mother of the poor little girl is saying, no, don't punish the guy.
He's fine.
It's all a lie.
He's great.
Don't worry about it.
So that's obviously sickening.
It somehow makes the story even more repulsive.
Some people are saying the penalty for rape, certainly rape of a child, should be the death penalty.
I understand why people have that natural reaction, but this is an example of even conservatives thinking too much with their emotions and not thinking enough with their logic and their reason and their minds.
I got into a debate with a number of conservatives over this.
I'm all for the death penalty.
I think the death penalty should be more widely applied in society.
But I'm opposed to the death penalty for rape.
And the reason for this is not because the rapists don't deserve it.
They certainly deserve death.
But because of incentives.
If the punishments for rape and the punishments for murder are the same punishments, then the rapist has an incentive to murder his victim.
Because if he murders his victim, he will reduce the likelihood that he is caught, but he will not increase the risk of punishment that he has.
If the punishment for rape is less than the punishment for murder, he at least has some incentive not to murder his victim.
By not murdering his victim, yes, his risk of being caught will increase, but his risk of punishment will decrease, and decrease pretty dramatically if we're talking about the death penalty.
This is an area where the libs are always discarding their reason and their logic and their minds and making political decisions with their emotions and their will.
Conservatives sometimes are liable to do this too.
You've got to ask, yes, it might feel emotionally satisfying to say death penalty for these rapists.
Yes, it is even true to say that rapists deserve the death penalty.
But what's going to be better for the victims?
What's going to serve the cause of justice better?
Seems to me in this case it's pretty clear.
That the penalty has to be a little bit lower or else all you're going to do, you might feel a little bit better, but all you're going to do is incentivize monsters to be even worse to their victims and to punish their victims even more.
Speaking of child abuse, the CDC! Is encouraging your kids to visit groomer chat websites and hide it from you, from their parents.
I'm not joking.
It sounds like a sensational headline.
It's really not.
The Center for Disease Control is promoting to young people an online chat space that discusses sex, polyamorous relationships, sex change operations, activism, and the occult.
A little bit of a sidebar, but isn't it weird how whenever you go far enough down the leftist, especially the sexual revolution, leftist activism, you end up at overt Satanism?
Isn't that weird?
Even Drag Queen Story Hour.
Why do the drag queens dress up like demons?
Frequently.
Why does the pro-abortion activism often take on explicitly satanic imagery?
Why does leftist activism take on the language of witchcraft or spells or the occult?
Why does that happen?
Almost as though there's a spiritual reality to all of this.
And certainly at a practical level we have to ask, why is the CDC promoting creepy weird sex stuff and the occult to little kids on websites?
The website is called QChat that have buttons that make it much easier for the children to hide the websites for the parents if the parents walk by.
The chat hosts conversations on topics such as Drag Culture 101, Sex and Relationships, Having Multiple Genders, Bi-slash-Pan Youth, Gender Affirmation Surgeries, Hormone Therapy, Self-Discovery in Astrology, and Queering Tarot.
The weird occult cards.
Tarot seems bad enough, but then they're going to queer tarot as well.
Why?
One, this reminds us that there is no neutrality here.
The government is going to be pushing some set of values or another, and either they're going to be pushing the devil's values like this, tarot and queering the occult and chop off your genitals, five-year-olds, or they're going to be pushing good, true...
Virtuous values.
Your pick.
I think conservatives need to stop throwing our hands in the air and pretending this is all neutral and enforce our vision of the good.
All political life involves promoting some vision of the good and discouraging some vision of the bad, and so we ought to do the correct one, not this creepy one.
But it is a reminder to, I've mentioned this a few times in recent weeks, it's the IQ bell curve meme.
Really dumb people who are drooling, who just, duh, they don't know anything about politics.
They say, duh, I think the bad stuff is because of the devil.
And the good stuff, you know, good stuff is about God.
Right?
And then the people in the middle, it's like, well, actually, you know, those are all just metaphors.
And what it's really about is Marxism and postmodernism and this-ism and that-ism.
And it's really just the metaphor of your inner blah, blah, blah.
And then you get to the people who are really smart, like the Thomas Aquinas end of the IQ spectrum, and they say, no, it's about God and the rejection of God that is personified in the devil, who is a real person, by the way, who you can worship but you shouldn't worship.
That's what it's really about.
It's why it always comes down to this.
This is why the weirdos on TikTok who are trying to trans your kids, it's why they always look like demons.
And the more they get into it, the more they look like demons.
And they have explicit satanic imagery on there.
Maybe instead of dismissing all of that and saying, oh, we know none of that exists.
How about we look at all of human history and all cultures and say, how come they all have a conception of God and a conception of the devil?
Isn't that kind of weird?
Maybe there's some wisdom in that that we should pay attention to.
Speaking of...
Computers and naughty things that you shouldn't do.
Really interesting story, almost entirely unrelated here, about artificial intelligence, but it's really going to affect students and teachers and our education system.
There's a University of Kansas professor, John Simons, who's pointing out that this coming school year in particular, you're going to see a major technological revolution when it comes to writing papers.
And it's because artificial intelligence is now good enough that AI can write papers for students that are B +, A- papers, and they can't be caught by the plagiarism software.
So in recent years, if a student submits a plagiarized paper, there's just checking software.
You can run the paper.
You say, okay, 80% of this paper is plagiarized.
You get an F.
But now, because of artificial intelligence, you don't just need to plagiarize.
They can write a new paper without having the student actually have to write it.
And the professor makes a good point.
It's a point that we've made on this show before.
What's the solution to this?
The only solution to this is going to be to minimize the role of technology in education.
The only solution to this is to get rid of the Zoom, get rid of the submit your papers online, get rid of the do everything from a remote distance, whether it's in your parents' basement or whether it's from your dorm room.
It's going to have to increase the amount of in-person learning.
You're going to have to minimize the number of papers and increase the number of oral exams because you can't use artificial intelligence on an oral exam.
And this would be a really, really good thing.
So many of our political issues way beyond education come down to the isolation of man from the real world.
And we're living our lives virtually.
It explains a lot of the transgender stuff.
You talk to people who've gone down the transgender rabbit hole.
Most of them, it seems to me, at least in my experience, have been radicalized online, in these online communities.
And that makes perfect sense because online your body doesn't matter.
You are just a free-floating mind and you have avatars in a virtual space.
So much of our lives, the way we work now, we telecommute.
A lot of people telecommute.
I don't, but a lot of people telecommute.
A lot of people do e-distance learning where your body doesn't matter as much.
And it alienates you from the world and it makes society a lot worse and it's depressing and it's inhuman.
If we want to restore a more flourishing society, we've got to put the body back into it.
Salvation hinges on the flesh, it has been said.
And so much of civilization hinges on the flesh too.
We've got to see people in real life and hug them.
Not through weird bulletproof glass like they made us do during COVID. We've got to hug real people in real life and go have dinner with them in real life and go learn from real professors in real life and go work with people together in real life.
We've got to be human again.
Or...
This is just necessarily the case.
We will lose our very humanity.
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We will be right back with The Voice Mailbag.
Welcome back to my absolute favorite time of the week, The Mailbag, sponsored by PureTalk.
Go to puretalk.com, select a plan, and enter promo code NOLSPODCAST to save 50% off your first month off the already great price, which is going to save you, what, two-thirds on your cell phone bill.
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So head on over there, PureTalk, right now.
All right, first question.
Thank you.
Hi!
Obligatory introduction saying thank you for what you do.
Love it.
So, I'm reading Speechless by the great Noel Stradamus.
It has obviously provided a lot of fodder for thought and dinner table conversations with the fam.
One phrase in the book that struck me as particularly thought-provoking is, a humility parade would seem self-defeating.
This is in reference to pride parades.
Thankfully, June turned out really good for us conservatives, but, you know, there's still stuff that we disagree with going on.
Anyway, my question is this.
How do we oppose pride, and not exclusively gay pride, just the sin of pride that's, you know, rampant in our society, with humility, which is the opposite of pride, while managing to remain humble?
So what does this look like in daily life?
Thanks again.
Bye.
You've got to keep your eyes on God.
That's what it's about.
Instead of thinking about yourself and how to even think about yourself, should I think, should I be confident?
Should I think of all the good stuff I've done?
Should I think of all the sins that I commit?
Should I think about what I did yesterday?
Should I think about what I did 10 years ago?
Instead of that, just turn the focus off of yourself entirely.
You've got to put your focus entirely on God, which will accomplish all of those things.
It will remind you that you do have an inherent worth because you're made in the image and likeness of God.
If you are looking at the cross, looking at your crucified Lord on the cross, you will recognize that you have worth because God himself, God the Son, died for your sins.
It will also remind you that you are a sinner.
You're not all that, man.
There's a reason that God had to come down to earth to die for your sins.
That will remind you of your flaws and your worth and all of those things.
And it will just click everything into the right place.
And then you have to do these good things in the world that you want to do.
And you need to pursue virtue.
Not just for yourself, but because your focus is in the right place.
Next question.
Hey Michael, thanks for taking my question.
I've listened to the show for a few years, have always enjoyed the be a man advice and the constant reminder to get a girlfriend before a dog.
But following that, I've moved to Indiana, but stayed in Illinois to finish my associate's degree.
And I've taken an interest in this girl, and I don't want to lead her on for a relationship, because I'm leaving for Indiana at the end of August.
So I don't really see a point in dating right now, but I would like to take her out to see a movie that she wants to see.
How would I go about starting this friendship without it morphing into something more?
Thank you for taking my question and look forward to the advice.
You don't.
That's how.
You don't do that.
If you're asking me, how do I take a girl out on a date without taking her out on a date?
You can't.
That's not possible.
You obviously are interested in this girl.
That's why you want to go on a date with her.
But you don't want to lead her on because I guess you're not interested in her enough to try to pursue a longer relationship.
So you just need to make a decision.
You need to make a decision and stick to that decision.
You're trying to have your cake and eat it too and that's not going to work.
You can, since you alluded to it at the top.
Act like a man!
What's the matter with you?
Now I will tell you, if it were me, I don't know all the details of your particular situation.
If it were me, I would take the girl on a date and maybe try to discern if we're going to have some love affair here and if it's going to blossom into a marriage and we're going to have ten kids and have a great life together.
I know that you're planning out every step in your life.
Well, and then I'm going to move here and so it's not going to work and then I'm going to get this job and then we're going to go here and then I'm going to do this and you're trying to be really rationalistic about the whole thing.
But no, you like the girl.
The girl likes you.
You want to go on a date?
Maybe you end up moving, but maybe you keep the relationship going a little bit long distance, and then you try to work out a way for you to both end up in the same place together.
That's what I would do if it were me.
But if you for sure say, nope, not going to do it, we're not going to date long term, then don't take her out on a date now.
You're asking me, how do I lead a girl on without leading her on?
You can't.
So then you've got to just write that off, and she's going to go see a movie with another guy.
Next question.
Hey Michael, my name's Chris, I'm 17 and I'm a resident of Central Florida after fleeing Ontario, Canada last November.
I'm a big fan of the Daily Wire and have heard almost all of the main personalities share their opposition to red flag laws, which I'm also opposed to.
My only confusion is with the proposed alternatives.
I've heard that the mass shooters that seemed unstable before committing the shootings should have been institutionalized, which I'm not opposed to, but my issue comes up with the fact that if we're able to lock people up in mental facilities against their will for seeming dangerous, couldn't the government use this institutionalization as a tactic in the same way they might use red flag laws?
Thanks again, big fan.
Really good question.
The answer is yes, but not exactly in the same way.
And this is why a lot of people who oppose things like red flag laws and oppose things like most gun control measures also support increasing the ease with which people can be institutionalized.
Because you've just got to make the threshold very, very high.
The problem with red flag laws is the threshold for depriving people of their constitutional and civil rights is very, very low.
The way Democrats talk about red flag laws, the red flag is you.
Listening to this show is a red flag.
Voting for Donald Trump is a red flag.
Having an American flag outside of your home is a red flag.
It's the red, white, and blue flag, and they're going to take away your guns.
So that threshold is so low and it's so vague.
To involuntarily commit someone to an insane asylum, the threshold has to be at least relatively high.
Now it's so high that it's virtually impossible.
I think we should lower that threshold a little bit, but it's still going to be very, very high.
And it forces you to grapple with the reality of what it means to deprive someone of their Second Amendment rights.
When you deprive someone of their Second Amendment rights, which is a basic right, a constitutional right, a civil right, and the right to self-defense is a natural right, You are saying, I must deprive you of all of your rights because you are not able to exercise them at all.
You are not able to live your life as a normal human being.
So you're really making that clear.
And for some people, that's true.
People who are insane, people who are not able to take care of themselves, sure, okay.
We already have laws in the books for this, right?
Relatives can exercise power of attorney if a loved one, say, becomes senile or...
Otherwise incapacitated.
So we already have ways to do this.
But it's a way of saying, okay, you want to take away my rights?
Well then, take away my rights.
Really take away my rights.
Because if you're not willing to do that, if you're not willing to lock me up in a straitjacket, then let me have my guns.
Let me have my right to self-defense.
Don't pull a little bait and switch here.
Well, you're not crazy enough that we're going to take care of you or really change your lifestyle at all, but you are so crazy that we need to deprive you of your really, really basic rights.
That's the game that the libs are trying to play right now.
We want to clarify the stakes.
Next question.
Hi Mr.
Knowles.
I have a philosophical and theological question about the so-called God of the Gaps logical fallacy.
I was thinking about it earlier and I realized I can't make any sense of it anymore.
You've mentioned on the show that St.
Thomas Aquinas teaches that God is reason and will and that his reason and will do not come into conflict.
The God of the Gaps posits that anything we can't explain by reason we cheat and ascribe to God's will.
This is supposed to show that God is a psychological condition, but it just assumes that reason is separate from God, and then makes this incomplete version of God a psychological condition?
Am I missing something about this argument, or does it really basically assume its conclusion?
And then as a sort of bonus question, I was wondering if you could speak to this concept of moving an idea from God's will to God's reason and what we can say about that as Catholics.
Thank you.
Sure.
Actually, both questions kind of tie into the same place.
When people use the phrase God of the gaps, usually they're not using it in the way that Nietzsche meant the phrase, for instance.
They're using it in the way that edgy online atheists from the mid-2000s used it and journalists who were part of the New Atheist Movement used it, which is to say that God is opposed to reason.
And what this reveals is that these people just know it.
Very little about God.
They know absolutely nothing about religion.
They haven't read any of the works that they're purporting to be experts on.
Because, in Christianity at least, God is logic.
It's right there in John chapter 1.
In the beginning was the logos, the divine logic of the universe, the word.
And the word was with God and the word was God.
There are differences between religions here.
Pope Benedict XVI says, In his Regensburg Address, probably the greatest address of the 21st century, described a big difference with Islam.
In Islam, according to Islam, Allah is pure will.
Allah is so utterly transcendent that he's pure will.
Allah could order his subjects to violate logic, to worship idols even.
And they would be bound to do that.
Where in Christianity, God is logic.
So that would be one difference there.
The phrase God of the gaps can have some use to make fun of bad theology, to make fun of faulty theology, to make fun of shallow religion.
But God of the gaps does not describe Christianity, Orthodox traditional Christianity.
Read Thomas Aquinas.
I guarantee you none of these people have read Thomas Aquinas.
Read Thomas Aquinas and say, that man's not logical.
I, an edgy online atheist, I am much more logical than Thomas Aquinas.
Give me a break.
It's ridiculous.
So that would be the issue.
And so when you ask, how do we move from a conversation about God as will to God as logic and reason?
Well, you have to recognize those are unified in God.
The logic and the power are unified.
And will and power are unified in God as well.
This is what Dante writes in the mouth of Virgil.
When Virgil and Dante are about to cross into hell, and Charon, the boatman, doesn't want to let him in because he says, Dante, you're a living person.
You're not allowed to come into hell.
And it's one of the most famous lines of the comedy.
Virgil says, Vuol si così cola dove si puote ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare.
which is a great line if you want to memorize it in Italian.
It's very funny because it means this is willed where will and power are united and don't ask any more questions.
This is desired where it can be done what is willed.
And so you, shut up, stop asking questions, let me into the boat.
And so in God, all of that is unified.
Not just desire and power, but desire, power, and logic, and reason.
Okay, let's get to a written mailbag question from Bailey.
Michael, I have a question about guilt and forgiveness.
In my youth, I was not a good person.
Isn't that true of all of us?
Probably 99.7% of people could say that.
Okay, Bailey says, From age 16 until I got pregnant at 23.
The moment I found out I quit everything.
My daughter's three now.
Me and her father split shortly after she was born.
I've met an amazing Christian man, got saved, got married, and we have a one-month-old son.
My problem is I deal with so much guilt.
My daughter now has a broken home, just like the one I grew up in.
Her father gets her every other weekend while my son has both parents at home.
My husband treats her like his own, but I constantly...
I think constantly about how unfair it is to my daughter and have a terrible time forgiving myself for who I used to be.
How do I get past this?
Thanks, I love the show.
Sincerely, Reformed Degenerate.
Well, not all of the saints started well, but they all ended well.
That's a line from St.
John Vianney.
You think, maybe most famously, of St.
Augustine, who had a pretty wild, sinful youth.
He even has that great line that he prayed, which is, Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.
And he slept around and did all sorts of bad things that he shouldn't have been doing.
And then he reformed.
And this is true of not just regular run-of-the-mill good old people, but some of the greatest saints in history.
They didn't all start well, but they all ended well.
You're asking me a very practical question about your conscience, which is nagging you.
And so I'm going to give you a technical answer, and I don't know if it's going to work for you or not.
Well, I do know if it'll work for you, but I don't know how you will...
I don't know if you're Catholic or not, but my views on these things obviously come from a Catholic view of the world, and so I think that the way to receive absolution and the way even at a psychological level to assuage your nagging conscience is to go to sacramental confession.
I don't know if you're Catholic or not, or if you're interested in becoming Catholic, or if you believe in the sacraments, or you believe in confession, or any of those sorts of things, but that would just be the technical answer.
I have found that really has worked for me.
I think it is totally legit.
I 100% believe in that.
At a kind of broader level than just that technical answer, you're asking...
How can I forgive myself for my past more generally?
And I think you've got to, again, look not at your own person, but look at God.
Who forgives you?
Who sends his son to die on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins?
And so if God can forgive you...
You should be able to as well.
I know that practically is not always easy to do, but part of that stems from pride.
It's very presumptuous to say, oh, well, forgiving me, yeah, that's fine for God, but I'm holding myself to a higher standard.
Oh, are you?
Don't you think that's a little presumptuous?
I think it is as well.
You cannot change the past.
The past is gone.
You cannot do anything in the past.
I know we all want to, and we think about it, and depending on how anxious a person you are, you might be nagged by some comment that you made 10 years ago to some random person.
I know that we dwell on the past.
The devil wants you to dwell on the past, because you can't do anything in the past, and so you become impotent, and you become depressed, and you despair.
You can only do things in the present.
Could life have worked out better for you and your kid and your ex-boyfriend had you all done things all differently when you were younger?
Maybe.
Maybe.
I guess so.
I'm not totally sure about that in the unfolding of Providence, but maybe they could have.
But that is totally beside the point.
All you can decide to do is what are the decisions that are presented to you today.
The only place you can live is in the present.
You can't even live in the future.
A lot of people want to live in the future, too.
You can't.
You can only live in the present.
So all you can do is do the right thing.
And harping on your past incessantly, particularly if you have taken the steps to get over that psychological, spiritual, everything in between.
Harping on the past is a waste of your time.
It's worse than a waste of your time.
You'll be neglecting the things you ought to be doing right now.
It's a story.
It's not unique to you.
I think most people, they don't have the particulars of your circumstance, but most people have a similar story, and it's a common problem for human beings.
The solution to that is to accept God's forgiveness, accept that grace, which you're free to turn away from that grace, but I don't recommend it, and then do the right thing in the present, which is where you live.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you next week.
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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, new details emerge about the rape of a 10-year-old in Ohio whose abortion story made national headlines, a seismic demographic shift is taking place in both political parties, and unvaccinated Novak Djokovic wins Wimbledon but is still barred from the U.S. Open.
