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July 25, 2022 - The Michael Knowles Show
50:35
Ep. 1053 - The Uncomfortable Truth About Monkeypox
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While everyone was focusing on the latest presidential horse race news over the weekend, Steve Bannon possibly going to jail, Trump possibly declaring his campaign, Biden's lackeys fighting over who takes the reins when the big guy drops, while everyone was focusing on the big headline news, most people missed the most disturbing political news story to come up in a very long time, care of CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.
Two little kids just came down with monkeypox.
We do have seen now two cases that have occurred in children.
Both of those children are traced back to individuals who come from the men who have sex with men community, the gay men community.
And so when we have seen those cases in children, they have generally been what I call adjacent to the community most at risk.
I should also mention, importantly, those children are doing well.
Doing well?
The children are doing well?
The children, who for whatever reason are living with promiscuous homosexual men, according to federal officials, just came down with a dangerous disease.
A disease that is, by the way, especially dangerous for children.
It's not super dangerous for lots of other people.
A disease that you pretty much only get from having sexual contact with gay men who go to orgies.
And the kids are doing well?
Thank you.
percent of monkeypox cases have been transmitted through sexual activity.
98 percent of infected people are gay or bisexual.
41 percent of them already have AIDS, HIV, not full-blown AIDS necessarily.
The median number of sex partners that the people who are infected with monkeypox have had in the prior three months is five.
And a third of them are known to visit orgies and bathhouses within the month of infection.
According to our own federal government, 99% of American monkeypox cases involve men who have sex with men.
Some activist groups are trying to blur this reality and they're claiming that Monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted disease, or they're claiming that it's affecting all sorts of other people, not just one group in particular.
The data just don't back that up, not even close.
Remember when we were supposed to follow the science until the science was politically incorrect?
A sane society would be demanding answers here.
They would be interrogating the men who gave the kids this STD. The sane society would be demanding the closures of the gay sex clubs where the virus spreads.
We just shut down the world for two years over a cough, a cough that nothing was able to stop anyway, no matter how hard we tried to shut it down.
Now we can't shut down a few bathhouses for a little while to stop an entirely preventable disease that now a couple of kids have somehow.
We can't even ask the obvious questions that this bizarre and disturbing story raises.
No, it's no big deal.
No big deal.
The kids are fine.
Nothing to see here.
Move along.
Move along.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment on Friday is from Janelle Austring, who says, As a wise man once said, the kids aren't alright.
So true.
You were saying that with regard to what we were talking about on Friday, but absolutely holds up even truer when we get to this extremely disturbing story today.
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It's not a big deal.
What's the big deal?
Move along, move along.
It's okay.
Everyone's doing fine.
Everything's just great.
Do things feel just fine and great to you?
When you hear a story like this, kids got this STD that you pretty much only get from gay orgies.
Little kids got it.
And even the CDC is saying they got it from these gay guys without answering any of the questions.
What's the relationship here?
What do you mean household transmission?
No, it's okay.
Never mind.
Don't ask any questions.
It's fine.
Right now, the CDC, the public health authorities, are trying to have it both ways.
They're trying to scare everybody about monkeypox and everyone's risk of getting monkeypox.
But they can't get past the scientific facts, which is that virtually everyone who's getting this is getting it from promiscuous gay sex.
So then when they say, well, actually, even kids can get monkeypox, the obvious next question is, how?
How did that happen?
Oh, never mind.
Don't ask that question.
Just be afraid of this virus.
The virus that essentially only affects this one very niche community.
It's no big deal.
Stop asking questions.
Especially stop asking questions about the sexual revolution.
This is something we've heard.
It's not just homosexuals.
This is something we've heard for 60 years now.
At every single stage of the sexual revolution, going all the way back to the 60s, even going back further, at every single stage, people will say, oh, what's the big deal?
Come on, what's the big deal?
Stop being such a prude!
Ah, man, you're such a square!
What's the big deal about free love?
What's the big deal about promiscuous sex?
What's the big deal about the hookup culture?
What's the big deal about...
Ubiquitous contraception and then abortion, which followed shortly thereafter.
What's the big deal with redefining marriage?
What's the big deal with the transgender movement?
What's the big deal if a guy wants to pretend to be a woman?
What's the big deal with the guy going into the girls' locker room?
What's the big deal with the guy taking the trophies from the women?
What's the big deal now with transing two-year-olds?
Two-year-olds, that's the story.
Stonewall, which is an LGBT group, Just posted over the weekend.
Well, this new research, and here's what they said.
They said, research suggests that children as young as two recognize their trans identity.
Yet many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the well-being of all young people.
What's the big deal?
This would be some of the big deal.
Transing two-year-olds is part of the big deal.
And it's not just the libs who shrug their shoulders and pretend, oh, what's the big deal?
It's the squishes.
It's the squishy conservatives even more than the liberals who are the problem here.
The liberals know that this stuff is a big deal.
That's why they've been fighting so hard for every aspect of the sexual revolution.
It took a lot of energy, a lot of resources, a lot of time to get us to this point in society.
And it was a political agenda pushed essentially...
Well, exclusively by the left, it was just abetted and permitted by the squishy conservatives who said, oh, it's not a big deal, never mind, move along, move along, nothing to see here.
We all know, we all know that it is wrong to trans the two-year-olds.
We all know that, right?
And we all know that this research is bogus, but even if it were real, even if a two-year-old could, a two-year-old can barely speak, but it's If a two-year-old could come up with some conception of gender identity as divorced from biological sex and a sense of self that recognized that the little boy is somehow a woman, even if all of that were true, we all know it's wrong and should not be encouraged.
And it happened pretty fast, didn't it?
To go from 1960s free love kind of culture to what you would call the gay rights movement, that took, what, about 20 years or so?
Then to go from the gay rights movement to redefining marriage, that took about...
I don't know, 15 years or maybe a little bit more.
Maybe that was like 20 years.
Then to go from gay marriage, 2015, to transing kids, that took about, I don't know, five years, if that.
And then to go from transing kids, including in elementary schools, to transing the two-year-olds, that took like six months.
This is accelerating.
And every step along the way, people say, oh, is this a big deal?
Come on, this is a trivial culture war issue.
Yeah, it's a culture war issue, but it ain't trivial.
That's why the Libs are spending so much time on it.
We all know, if anyone here has ever had a two-year-old, and you can picture these predators, these political predators coming up and trying to trans your little two-year-old, you would probably feel an instinct to violence, okay?
You know it's a big deal.
Everybody knows it's a big deal.
Where does this come from?
It comes from the reticence of squishes to state plain truths because they don't want to offend people and they don't want to be politically incorrect.
You just saw this with Pete Buttigieg.
Pete Buttigieg Just went on TV and lambasted Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio refused to vote for a bill that would redefine marriage, that would enshrine the new Obergefell definition of marriage, to say that marriage doesn't necessarily need to be between a man and a woman.
It can be between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman.
Rubio refused to vote for that, and he said it's because he doesn't have time.
It's a waste of time.
It's a distraction.
Buttigieg just called him out for it.
Republican Senator Rubio told my colleague Manu Raju he's going to vote no and he called the vote a, quote, stupid waste of time.
What's your reaction on that?
What's your message to Senate Republicans?
If he's got time to fight against Disney, I don't know why he wouldn't have time to help safeguard marriages like mine.
Look, this is really, really important to a lot of people.
It's certainly important to me.
I started my day, as I try to do on weekends, I try to give Chastin a little bit of a break and Do breakfast with both of our twins.
And that alone, that's no small thing, as every parent of small kids knows.
It was one of those days where the tray table wasn't quite fitting into the high chair, and I'm trying to make sure that they're busy enough with their little cereal puffs to give me enough time to chop up the banana and get the formula ready.
And it just, I don't know, that half hour of my morning had me thinking about how much I depend on and count on my spouse every day.
And our marriage deserves to be treated equally.
There is so much wrong with what Buttigieg just said, but my first reaction, listening to that clip, my first reaction is, man, that guy's got a point.
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Members, FDIC. Rubio comes out and he says, I'm not going to vote for the gay marriage bill because it's a waste of time.
It's a distraction.
Sure, it is a waste of time because there's no threat to Obergefell.
The Supreme Court has said explicitly they're not going to overrule it.
Certainly not any time in the foreseeable future.
It is a Democrat issue to try to save themselves from all the issues they're failing on this year.
On the economy, on foreign policy, on immigration.
They're failing on everything.
And so they're trying to gin up a non-issue at the moment to give them some oomph in November.
That's all true.
But Buttigieg has a point, too.
When Buttigieg says, what, you're telling me you don't have time to do this?
What are you talking about?
You're a politician.
You guys waste time in all sorts of different ways.
This isn't about time, Marco Rubio.
This isn't about time at all.
You could find time, if you wanted to, to safeguard my marriage.
And on that point, Buttigieg is absolutely right.
This is not about time.
What I suspect, I don't know, I don't talk to Marco Rubio.
What I suspect it is, is that Marco Rubio doesn't think that gay marriage is real.
I think Marco Rubio believes that marriage, he believes as virtually every single person has for all of human history everywhere in the world, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that there is no such thing as same-sex marriage.
And that Pete Buttigieg, though he keeps calling his relationship with this guy Chasen a marriage, it's not really a marriage.
He has a long-term relationship.
He has...
We've gone through a technological and financial process to purchase the eggs of a woman and then to create a child in a test tube with the intention to deprive that child of his natural mother so that he and Jason can feel more like they're in a real marriage, a real marriage which has the possibility of generating children.
But I suspect what Rubio thinks is that none of that is real and that actually marriage does have a meaning and it's the same meaning it's always had.
We can't just radically change it.
But Rubio doesn't want to say that.
And conservatives generally don't want to say that, because it's very politically incorrect.
It's an extremely difficult issue.
The libs are pretty much on board with gay marriage, and half the Republicans are too.
And so, as a tactical matter, what Rubio's trying to do is say, oh, it's a waste of time.
I don't want to answer on the substance of marriage, so I'm just going to make a kind of procedural point and move along.
And Buttigieg is calling him out for it, saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, mister.
Well, what about my marriage?
And then he goes through this whole political routine of, I wake up in the morning and I'm the one who prepares the formula for my children.
Why is he preparing formula?
Because neither he nor his husband can breastfeed.
Because they've deprived these children of a natural mother, intentionally.
And conservatives, I think, know that's wrong at a deep level.
But Buttigieg is daring Rubio.
He's saying, I dare you to tell me that's wrong.
You won't do it.
You won't do it, you coward.
So now you're going to make up some lame excuse.
And in defense of Rubio, I don't think Rubio is necessarily...
It's inexcusable here in his tactic.
I think this is probably the best political tactic that Rubio can use at the moment.
And in the short run, it might get him past this vote, might get them past the midterms.
Maybe it's the smart play to make in the short run.
In the long term, though, that's never going to work.
In the long term, all that is, that we don't have time, this is a distraction, all that is, is a surrender on the issue of marriage.
Buttigieg makes this point beyond Rubio.
He says it's amazing.
I go and I talk to these Republicans, and we have a nice conversation.
And then they go ahead and vote against my marriage?
I don't understand how such a majority of House Republicans voted no on our marriage as recently as Tuesday, hours after I was in a room with a lot of them, talking about transportation policy, having what I thought were perfectly normal conversations with many of them on that subject, only for them to go around the corner and say that my marriage doesn't deserve to continue.
Pete doesn't understand that, so let me explain it, because I understand how this could be confusing.
Here's how you explain that.
Most Republicans, most conservatives, are nice people.
Generally speaking, they're nice people who wish only the best for Pete Buttigieg and Chasen.
And everybody with all sorts of eccentric sexual views and desires and identities and everything.
They really wish the best for everybody.
And the Republicans and the conservatives, they want to work with everybody in good faith, but they still believe that marriage has the meaning that marriage has always had.
And there's no degree of nice conversation with Pete Buttigieg.
There's no degree of Pete Buttigieg's earnest wish that reality were different than it is that can change that fact.
The problem here is not that conservatives and Republicans hate Pete Buttigieg or Well, I don't like Pete Buttigieg generally.
He's my least favorite Democrat, but it actually does not have to do with his sexual desires.
It has to do with his extreme glibness and his extremely shallow politics.
And that just kind of, you know, hey, come on, guys.
Let's just totally redefine society.
Come on.
And the fact that he looks like Alfred E. Newman, all of that bothers me.
But the sex stuff is really secondary to all of that.
When it comes to Pete Buttigieg's sexual desires...
It's not that conservatives hate Pete Buttigieg, hate homosexuals, have some irrational anima toward homosexuals.
It's just that Pete Buttigieg isn't really married.
And it's hard, I know it's hard to say that in our politically correct culture, but it's not because you can't, two guys can't be married to each other.
Marriage is the union of A man to his wife.
A perpetual union of a man to his wife for the sake of the generation and education of children.
That's what it is.
And that's not possible between two men and two women.
Marriage essentially has sexual difference at the heart of it.
And so, if we call things that don't have that marriage, we don't expand marriage.
We just get rid of marriage.
If Pete Buttigieg and Chason can be married, then marriage has no concrete meaning.
What is marriage then?
Walsh asked that question, what is a woman?
What is marriage?
Well, it's a union of two people.
Who love each other.
I don't know.
Some marriages, the couple, they don't love each other.
They stay together and they remain in that institution.
They don't necessarily love each other.
So, okay, it's a union of two people of no particular sex who may or may not love each other.
Well, at least they do that thing that married couples do.
At least they have sex, right?
Well, I don't know.
They're married couples who don't really have sex.
So, okay, they may or may not love each other and they may or may not have sex and they...
Well, it's a perpetual union, right?
They can't split up.
It's a union.
What God has joined, no man can rip asunder, right?
No, except couples get divorced all the time now.
So they may or may not stay together.
And well, they have children, right?
Well, no, it's impossible for homosexuals to have children, but they can purchase eggs from women and rent other women's wombs through surrogacy and then intentionally deprive those children of their natural mother and then Raise them as though they were in a marriage.
I guess that's possible, but they don't need to do that either.
Even in marriage today, there's no social demand that people have children.
Lots of people get married and don't have children.
What the hell does marriage mean?
A union of people who may or may not love each other, who may or may not have sex, who may or may not stick together, who may or may not have children.
It's just Just two people who have some relation to one another?
It just doesn't...
It just can't mean anything then.
It just means nothing.
And that's the problem.
And that's the conservative objection.
Trust me, man.
Conservatives really, really wish that we could convince ourselves that Pete Buttigieg and Jason are married.
It would make politics a lot easier.
It would make life a lot easier.
It would feel a lot better that we don't have to say hard truths.
Saying hard truths is difficult sometimes.
But you can't convince yourself of that because it's just so obviously not true.
I hope that explains it, Pete.
I'm not sure that it does.
I think it explains it, but I'm not sure that Pete's willing to hear that.
Speaking of transportation, the mayor of New York is very, very upset.
Mayor of New York City is big lib.
He supports illegal immigration.
New York's a big sanctuary city.
They're all fine with that.
But now the mayor of New York is very, very upset because the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, is shipping all the illegal aliens that the libs in New York and elsewhere are encouraging to flood across the border.
They're shipping them up to New York City, and the New Yorkers don't like that.
This is a real burden on New Yorkers as we're trying to do the right thing.
We already, as I stated, we already have an overburdened shelter system.
So now we're talking about, as you stated, food, clothing, school.
This is going to impact our schools because we do not turn away individuals because they're undocumented.
Translation services There's just a whole host of things that this is going to produce, and that's why we need help in getting this done, and we need to write coordination to make it happen.
That's what we need to do.
It's creating a huge burden.
It's just a big burden, and it's unfair to ask New Yorkers to bear that burden.
Hold on.
I thought migration was our strength.
I thought all this diversity was our strength, and it's really, really great, and it makes America so much stronger.
So how come you don't want it in your backyard, Mayor Adams?
How come you don't want it, New Yorkers?
It's a strength for Texas and Arizona, and it's a strength for all those red states where they're going to see the electoral demographics changing.
But it's not a strength for New York?
What do you mean?
It's putting a burden on the system?
But no, I was told that the migrants who are coming over don't need any additional resources.
They aren't putting any burden on the criminal justice system or on the welfare system.
No, they're not.
They're a net positive in every way for society.
No, you're telling me there are costs to this.
You just want to impose those costs on the red states and on the other people down south and Texas and everywhere else.
You support illegal mass migration as long as it's not in your backyard.
Okay, now it's starting to make sense to me.
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We'll be right back with a lot more.
Speaking of illegal immigration, Bill Barr, former Attorney General of the United States, just made former Attorney General of the United States, just made a really important and interesting point about immigration that I think should be able to unite pretty much all of the conservatives.
Take a listen.
I think Mexico's well on its way to being a failed narco state.
I don't think AMLO has either the disposition or the ability to take on the cartels.
I think they're dragging their feet.
I think he was hoping for a modus vivendi, where he'd sort of leave the cartels alone as long as they wouldn't kill as many Mexicans.
That hasn't worked out for him.
So the United States is relegated to working through Mexico to try to deal with the cartels, and I think that's a losing proposition because I don't think the Mexicans, at least with this administration, are serious enough.
I think they have to be forced and pushed into action with us.
I think we have to be more active against the cartels.
In my mind, we have to approach the cartels more like ISIS and less like the mafia.
And the idea of a case-by-case prosecution down there to stop these organizations would be like going after ISIS and Syria on the same basis.
They are effectively terrorist organizations.
They are increasingly building their connections with terrorists.
They are paramilitary.
Their paramilitary can take on the Mexican military.
And they have so much money they can corrupt any system.
And we are doing basically nothing about it.
The State Department and the Pentagon should be viewing these cartels in Mexico as priority number one.
The reason I say that Bill Barr's comments I think should unite a lot of conservatives here is that there are a lot of divisions on the conservative side.
Some conservatives want to go in and go bomb a bunch of countries, and some conservatives are very isolationist, and they pretty much never want to leave American shores.
Some conservatives are really tough on the drug war.
Some of the more libertarian people in the conservative camp, they don't really care about drugs.
But everyone here, I think, should be able to agree that Mexican cartels that essentially control the nation directly south of our border, that are pouring poison across our border illegally in contravention of our laws,
in contravention of the desire of the American people, killing actual Americans in contravention of the desire of the American people, killing actual Americans in huge numbers because of this drug problem you're seeing for the first time in ever, and you've seen it now for several years, the average life expectancy in the U.S. starting to decline, everyone should be able this is a big problem.
This should be priority number one for the State Department and the Pentagon.
I think even the isolationists should be able to agree with this.
Certainly the people who want a more robust foreign policy.
You say, look, look, Pentagon.
Look, State Department.
You want to go deal with problems in the Middle East?
You think that America has a real strategic interest in keeping boots on the ground in the Middle East because of the growth of terrorist groups or because of oil interests or whatever?
Okay.
Okay, hey, Pentagon, State Department, you think that America has a real strategic interest in fighting a war with Russia, a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, which is what's going on right now.
I know it's not a declared war, but we are at war with Russia in Ukraine.
We are funding the Ukrainian side.
We've had Americans die in Ukraine.
Okay, but let's say you think that's really, really important for America's strategic interest.
Okay, fine.
You're going to do that.
You can keep on doing that.
But first, you've got to take care of the cartels on the border.
Whatever you think about the Middle East, whatever you think about Ukraine, I think it is undeniable that the drug cartels Right at home, right on our doorstep, pose a much greater threat to American national security.
The cartels are the ones who control the border.
So you have two million illegals pouring across the border every year, national security threat, major economic problem, actual threat to democracy because it changes the voting base of the country.
That's a much bigger problem.
You want to talk about threats to the public health?
You want to talk about threats to American lives?
The fentanyl pouring across the border because of the drug cartels are a much greater threat.
So, okay, you want to go bomb the Middle East?
Fine.
You want to go bomb the Russians and Ukraine?
Fine.
Bomb the freaking Mexican drug cartels first.
Go in there.
Flex a little bit of muscle.
I am pretty cautious about how we use the American military.
I don't think that guys in uniforms are just expendable because they happen to sign up and wear a uniform.
They're there to protect American interests and American lives.
Those two things, the American nation, American sovereignty, and certainly American lives, those are facing a far greater threat for Mexico.
Go in there, decapitate the cartels, go down and just rip them to shreds, salt the earth where the cartels once operated, and come back.
Done.
And then the State Department and DOD wants to go play around in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe or wherever.
Okay, fine.
That's a secondary issue.
Take care of the actual problem first.
The American military exists for this problem.
If the drug cartels in Mexico, if the failed narco state right on our border that is flooding our country with poison and foreign nationals, if that is not a legitimate use of the American military to stop that, then there is no legitimate use of the American military.
And Bill Barr, Bill Barr is an interesting figure to raise this suggestion because he's got establishment cred, he's got Trump cred.
He was a strong defender of Trump, and then at the end he turned a little bit on Trump, but not entirely.
So he's still got a little bit of Trump cred, and he's still got establishment cred going back a long time.
Everyone's got all these kind of mixed feelings about him.
This suggestion, really, really good one.
Speaking of America's role in the world and foreign interests, former CIA Director James Woolsey just made some headlines because he went on cable news and he was asked whether or not the United States meddles in other countries' elections.
And he didn't want to lie.
Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries' elections?
Oh, probably.
But it was for the good of the system in order to avoid the communists from taking over.
For example, in Europe, in 47, 48, 49, the Greeks and the Italians.
We don't do that now, though?
We don't mess around in other people's elections?
Well, only for a very good cause.
Can you do that?
Do a Vine video on those former CIA directors.
Only for a very good cause in the interest of democracy.
Thanks for being here.
Only for a very good cause.
And then Laura lets him off the hook.
So he's saying, yeah, yeah, we interfere in other countries' elections.
This reminds me of something that John Bolton, the former national security advisor, got in trouble for a little while ago.
He was being interviewed by Jake Tapper, and Tapper was trying to get him to say January 6th was a coup.
And John Bolton laughed at him and said, it's not a coup.
He goes, look, I mean, I don't like January 6th, but it's not a coup.
Look, as someone who's been involved in planning coups around the world, that wasn't a coup.
Yeah.
Okay?
And they were shocked.
And Bolton came out and he said, of course the United States helps to plan coups.
Of course we have foreign interests.
Stop being such snowflakes.
That's what we do.
We pursue this around the world.
And that's just a fact.
Okay?
That's just a fact.
You might say, well, I wish that we weren't doing that.
I wish that the United States could just mind its own business and not have anything to do with world affairs.
Okay?
And maybe there's a kind of admirable or noble aspect of that wish, but it's just a pipe dream.
Powerful countries have interests.
Powerful countries pursue those interests around the world.
That has always been the case.
That will always be the case.
And no amount of wishful thinking is going to change that.
It's kind of the theme of today's show.
I know, you've got wishful thinking, but reality is reality, okay?
And that's true on domestic issues, social issues.
It's true around the world.
So if you want to change some aspect about how things are going, you've got to deal with reality.
You've got to get past this question of, should America intervene in other places around the world?
And you've got to ask what I think is a much more relevant question, which is...
How should we intervene?
We are going to intervene.
All powerful nations always protect their interests around the world.
That always happens.
There's no way around it.
Marriage has a meaning.
Marriage has always had a meaning.
Marriage will always have that meaning.
We have interests around the world, okay?
How should we pursue those interests?
Where should we intervene?
should America, this is a big divide among Republicans and Democrats, should we be a little closer to Saudi Arabia and oppose Iran or should we be a little closer to Iran and oppose Saudi Arabia?
It's not easy to answer that question on the back of a napkin with a few ideological bullet points, but those are the real questions that are going to affect the rest of the world.
Do we interfere in other countries' elections?
You're damn right we do.
And we do it in such a way that will, we hope, benefit the United States.
And I don't see anything particularly wrong with that if we don't violate justice.
Now, speaking of dubious elections, speaking of elections that have raised some questions, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, you know, the most popular president ever.
He got, I think, 100 bazillion votes.
Everyone just loves it.
Don't forget about the opinion polls.
Forget about the dismal approval ratings he's got.
He's the most popular guy ever.
And there's really great news coming out of the White House.
The White House COVID chief, Ashish Jha, wanted to update us on Biden's COVID condition.
And he told us that Joe Biden finished his breakfast like a big, big boy.
He slept well last night.
He ate his breakfast and lunch.
Fully.
He actually showed me his plate.
Didn't ask about the menu, but I did see an empty plate with crumbs.
That's good.
That's good news that Joe Biden's a big, big boy.
And he finished his breakfast and his lunch.
And now, if he remains a good little boy, he might get some dessert.
Maybe they'll give Joe one of those ice cream cones that he loves so much.
Ha ha ha.
And there's the press laughing.
This COVID chief is making a joke about how Joe Biden is senile.
That's what the joke is.
And that's what the White House is laughing at.
The joke is, Joe Biden is such a simpleton in his dotage that he is...
When he finishes his plate for breakfast and lunch, that's a really big accomplishment.
Show me the clean plate.
Here you go.
Can I have a lollipop?
Yes.
Ha ha ha.
And then the press laughs because everyone knows that Joe Biden is senile and it's just taken as a fact.
No wonder the country is falling to pot.
So what is the Biden administration going to do to turn around the country that is collapsing in some part because Joe Biden is senile and missing in action?
Let's just look at the economy.
The economy is in shambles.
It is collapsing.
Everything is much more expensive than it was a year ago.
It's over 9% more expensive than it was a year ago.
People are having trouble heating their homes.
Well, they don't have to heat them right now because we have a heat wave going on, but they're having trouble air conditioning their homes.
They're having trouble filling up their gas tanks.
They're having trouble buying groceries.
So what is the White House going to do about this obvious recession that we're heading into?
Well, the White House is going to change the definition of recession.
That's what they're going to do.
This is what they do.
You know, I hate to say I told you so.
I wrote a whole book about this.
Now, the LIBS, the primary instrument that they use for changing the political order is changing all the language.
That's why the word marriage matters.
They didn't win any debate over what marriage is.
They just changed the definition of marriage.
That's why the transgender debate matters.
They didn't win any debates over transgenderism.
They just changed the definition of man and the definition of woman.
Now, if you Google it, the definitions are actually different because the libs just try to change reality by artificially altering the meanings of the words.
And now they're doing it with recession.
This from Jackie Heinrich.
Bracing for impact, even if Thursday's GDP report shows a second consecutive quarter of negative growth, you won't hear the Biden administration using the R word.
Here's what the White House is saying.
I got it right off the White House website.
Well, some maintain...
What is a recession?
Well, some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitutes a recession.
That is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.
Put a pause there.
Hold on.
It's clearly the way that some economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.
I don't know if there is an official definition, but that definition that they just gave, that is the definition I've heard for my entire life about what a recession is.
Two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP is a recession.
But they say, no, that's not.
Who says?
And then the White House concludes, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year, even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter, indicates a recession.
But it does by definition.
That's what a recession is.
This is exactly the same argument as when they say, just because...
A person has two X chromosomes and breasts and womb, uterus and ovaries.
That doesn't mean that that person is a woman.
No, it does.
That's exactly what that means.
No, but what if it didn't?
What if up were down?
What if black were white?
What if...
My aunt had testicles.
Well, then she would be my uncle.
That's what would happen.
They just try to change all of the words.
So that is a sign of real desperation here because they can't do anything about the economy.
Biden has tried every trick.
He's released an irresponsibly large amount of oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to artificially keep gas prices a little bit lower than their record highs up until the midterms.
That strategy ends just before the midterms.
It was just a political strategy to stop the bleeding for the Democrats.
He's trying that.
He's begging Saudi Arabia to release more money.
He's trying everything that he can do other than ramp up American energy, which would irritate his base.
They're so desperate that now the best thing they can do is just try to change the words.
They're trying to change the words.
They're trying to deny reality.
They're also now attempting to jail their political opponents.
Steve Bannon The CEO of the Trump campaign 2016, a top advisor to Trump in the White House.
He was then kind of booted out of the White House by Trump, and Trump did it in one of those spectacularly Trumpian ways where he referred to him as sloppy Steve and got into a big fight with him in public.
Steve Bannon, though, remained loyal and has remained a Trump supporter.
Steve Bannon may very likely be going to jail now.
A DC jury has convicted Steve Bannon of two counts of contempt of Congress.
Congress subpoenas Steve Bannon.
Steve Bannon resists, and he cites executive privilege, and he cites all sorts of things.
And so they prosecute him.
This is not often that people will be prosecuted for this sort of thing.
And the DC jury convicted him, which means that Bannon now faces between 30 days to a year in prison for each of the charges.
I want to thank the jury for what the effort they did, the judge, particularly the court administration here, everybody.
I only have one disappointment, and that is the gutless members of that show trial committee, the J6 committee, didn't have the guts to come down here and testify in open court.
Thank you very much.
So, Steve Bannon, triumphant, even as he is convicted and very possibly going to be sentenced to jail time.
And it showed one of the real miscalculations here from the libs, which is that this conviction for Steve Bannon, that they're all gloating over and they're saying, ha ha, take that Steve C in an orange jumpsuit.
This conviction for Steve Bannon is the best thing to happen to him since he was in the White House.
Maybe Steve Bannon goes to jail.
Maybe.
Maybe he goes to jail for 30 days or 60 days.
So what?
Steve Bannon has not been this politically relevant since he was in the White House.
And he left the White House sort of in disgrace.
Trump was really mean to him on his way out of the White House.
And Bannon remained loyal and he kept plugging away.
And now he's elevated to this very high position.
He is going to go down.
He's going to go to the trenches.
He's going to be in jail.
Right?
For Donald Trump.
So I'm not surprised that Steve Bannon is gleeful there in that press conference.
He's probably hoping that he gets at least a week or two in jail just to build up that credibility.
And what does this say for Trump?
Trump should be thrilled about this too.
What this says for Trump is Trump is the main threat in the eyes of Democrats.
DeSantis as well.
I'm not saying DeSantis is not a threat.
I think the Democrats are terrified of him.
Some other Republicans as well they're probably afraid of.
They're always attacking Ted Cruz.
I think that is a sign that they do fear Ted Cruz to some degree.
Josh Hawley a little bit too.
But Trump is the big one that they're going after.
That's why they're trying to jail his campaign staff.
That's why they're trying to We're good to go.
If I were Trump, I would be very happy with this news because I'd say, oh, I'm the number one target.
Okay, that means I'm the one that they fear.
And Trump is going to sell that message.
Now, I actually just heard from a friend of mine who lives in Austria right now.
I heard from him yesterday who said that the Viennese newspaper ran a huge hit piece on Ron DeSantis.
And he said, this is really unusual.
You don't see this kind of thing in Europe.
This early, before a presidential primary, that even the Europeans, who are all big libs, they are afraid of Ron DeSantis as well.
So DeSantis can make that argument and say, no, they're really afraid of me.
But right now, Trump is the main opposition.
There is no question about that.
And they're now making it harder to try to challenge elections.
That comes from the Electoral Count Act Act.
Update.
This was a story last week.
It didn't get very much attention at all.
But there is an act being put up before the Congress.
The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act.
It's co-sponsored by all the moderates.
It's co-sponsored by Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, Portman, Sinema, Romney, Shaheen, Murkowski, Warner, Tillis, Murphy, Capito, Cardin, Young, Coons, Sass, and Lindsey Graham.
And the bill, got it here, the Electoral Reform Count Act, the bill is to make it harder to challenge dubious elections.
So they've got some things in here that they want a single conclusive slate of electors, so there's no question of who the electors are after the election.
They want it to be clear that the vice president has no role in the count.
That was a big topic of controversy in 2020.
Does the vice president have any role in accepting or rejecting the slates of electors?
They say the vice president has no role.
It's just a ceremonial position.
They want a higher objection threshold.
So the threshold to lodge an objection to the electors has to be at least one-fifth of the duly chosen members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Which would raise the threshold right now.
It's just a single member of both chambers is all that's needed.
That's when Ted Cruz and Paul Gosar stood up and challenged the count.
And they want to protect the state's popular vote.
So this is a bad idea.
It's a bad idea because the point of this law and the effect of this law will just be to make it harder to challenge dubious elections.
The problem is the elections are becoming more dubious.
The elections are becoming susceptible to fraud.
In 2020, whatever you think about Joe Biden or Donald Trump or who won the election, it is undeniable that they changed so many of the rules right before the election in ways that made the election much more vulnerable to fraud, even by the standard of Barack Obama, even by the standard of the Democrats, by extending election day to election week or election months, by Pushing widespread, in many cases, unsolicited mail-in ballots in contravention of the state constitution of Pennsylvania, for instance.
By taking forever to count the ballots, by stopping the ballot counts in the middle of the night for some reason.
On and on and on, you see elections that are more dubious, that are more vulnerable to fraud.
And at the very same time, the squishes are pushing to make it more difficult to challenge those elections.
That is a grave threat to our democracy.
That's a grave threat to all these sorts of things.
And then, we'll get to this a little bit more tomorrow.
But it's worth mentioning today because it ties in.
The Dems are really afraid of Trump's radical plan for his second term.
The radical plan for Trump's second term that's being touted in Axios by Jonathan Swan is that Trump plans to fire a lot of the deep state and replace them with his guys.
The piece notes that ordinarily when a presidential administration comes in, they can swap out about 4,000 people.
The federal bureaucracy is about 2 million people.
It's humongous.
They usually swap out about 4,000 maybe.
Trump plans to swap out about 50,000.
And this is a huge threat to our democracy to get rid of the career leftist bureaucrats, almost exclusively leftist bureaucrats, who exert a huge amount of control over our government and who usually implement and even make most of the real laws that govern us.
They say that the huge threat for Trump's second term is he might actually be able to get something done.
Oh no, we can't let that happen.
If we allow the people to elect someone who's then allowed to govern, that would be a grave threat to our democracy.
That's what we hear.
from our extremely corrupt government.
You can tell something has changed in the country.
Things have decayed.
Things are getting a little bit worse.
We have fewer political rights.
We're sicker.
The economy is collapsing.
We've got debauchery and degeneracy galore.
We've got kids who have freaking monkeypox, and we're not even really allowed to ask questions about that.
Something has gone wrong.
If you don't like the trajectory that we are on, you need to get very, very serious about the political process and have the chutzpah to stand up and say, no, we're not just going to keep going along with these things.
We're not going to be the Democrats from five years ago and just go along the same path to quote-unquote progress, albeit a little bit more slowly.
We're going to offer an alternative, and we're going to have the courage to pursue it.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
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Hey there, this is John Bickley, Daily Wire editor-in-chief and co-host of Morning Wire.
On today's episode, the most important week of the summer begins with crucial economic information to be released, controversy swirls around the House contraception bill, and the attacker of a Republican New York gubernatorial candidate is released within hours due to bail reform laws.
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