The White House redefines “recession,” CNN attacks Christian nationalism, and Trump plans to fire 50,000 government bureaucrats.
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Second quarter GDP data will be coming out on Thursday, and pretty much every serious economic analyst is predicting that we will be heading into a recession.
Every serious economic analyst, with the exception of the economists who work for Joe Biden, according to the director of President Biden's National Economic Council, not only are we not in a recession, we don't even understand what a recession is.
Two quarters of negative growth in a row, that's a recession.
Right, and certainly in terms of the technical definition, it's not a recession.
The technical definition considers a much broader spectrum of data points.
But in practical terms, what matters to the American people is whether they have a little economic breathing room, they have more job opportunities, their wages are going up.
That has been Joe Biden's focus since coming into office.
He has had a view of the economy that we need to look to build from the bottom up and middle out.
And what that means is that Typical working class people in this country have had trouble affording things for years.
He is focused on building a strong, durable economic recovery here.
We have real global challenges here in the short term.
We've got to navigate our way through them, but we have to do so without giving up all our economic gains.
That's going to be our focus, and I think that we need to train that focus on that rather than on sort of technical debates about backward-looking data.
So the consumer confidence numbers are going to come out as well.
And consumer confidence has been fairly dismal.
Those numbers have just been flat out bad.
I love that line at the end there.
Oh yeah, okay man, but you know, it's all pretty dismal and bad, right?
Even the CNN guy has to admit that.
Even the CNN guy can't lie about it.
But the White House economist is insisting that two quarters down in GDP is not technically a recession.
So I thought, okay...
This is a debate over the definition of a word.
So let's just look it up in the dictionary and see what the definition is.
Pulled up my little Google.
I typed in recession definition.
Here's what I got.
Top result featured on Google from the Oxford Dictionaries, quote, recession, a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.
That is literally the definition of a recession.
The National Economic Council guy just straight up lied about what a recession is.
Because if we don't call it a recession, we're not in a recession.
We're just going to change all the words and that's somehow going to change reality.
That's the left-wing playbook.
Even the White House Press Secretary, Corinne Jean-Pierre, was not that shameless, was not that brazen.
When Corinne Jean-Pierre was asked about the recession, she just refused to answer.
And what is exactly the White House's definition of a recession?
Again, we don't, we don't, I'm not going to define it from here.
I'm just going to leave it to the NBER, as we have stated, how they define a recession.
Okay, we will declare it one until they have declared it one.
I'm just saying that we're just not going to define it.
We use the indicators that the NBER, the National Bureau of Economic Research, have used.
We've mentioned that a few times.
We're not going to define it.
Yeah, you're not going to define it because by the definition of a recession, we are in one and you don't want to admit that.
You know, I can't help but notice that when things are going well, the White House doesn't have any problem defining basic economic terms.
This White House has not had very much good news, but on the few occasions they have, for instance, they let people go back to work.
It was kind of artificial, but people weren't allowed to go to work.
Then the White House lets people go back to work.
Obviously this is going to cause an uptick in the economic numbers.
Well, the White House sure knew what the terms were then.
They used terms like growth.
They used terms like job creation.
They knew all those terms then.
But now that we're headed into a recession, that we're in a recession, all of a sudden, I don't know, who's to say?
What's recession, man?
What do words mean, man?
What if the color I see is blue, you see is green?
You know what I'm saying, man?
Okay.
Not to be outdone, the Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, achieved the finest Orwellian wordsmithing of all.
Janet Yellen explained that we're not, well, we're in something, we're not, but it's not a, it's not a recession.
It's more of a Transition.
This is not an economy that's in recession, but we're in a period of transition in which growth is slowing and that's necessary and appropriate.
Necessary and appropriate.
You see, it's a good thing.
It's a good thing that you can't afford food and gas.
It's a good thing that the economy is declining.
Now, it's not a slowing of growth, by the way, which is what she said.
We're talking about an actual economic decline.
The numbers are not going up, but slowly.
They're going down.
So what she said also is not true.
It's not a recession.
It's a transition.
We're transing the kids.
We're transing the bathrooms.
And now, we're transing the economy.
And the results of that are exactly as destructive as you might expect.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is yet again from Cool Papa J Magic.
This is amazing.
I don't see the names of people.
When I pick the comments, I just pick the comment.
I must have picked Cool Papa J Magic a hundred times on this show so far.
That guy, very sharp guy.
He writes, Did you guys notice that they are starting to use the term young people instead of children?
That is on purpose and will lead to levels of abuse we still have yet to see.
Really good point.
I actually had not noticed that.
And I usually try to pay very close attention to the left's manipulation of words.
I wrote a book on it called Speechless.
I'm very interested in that.
But it's so subtle, sometimes even I miss it, even when I'm looking out for it.
That shift from children or toddlers or babies to young people is intended to blur the line between adults and children as they're pushing all this grooming, creepy sex stuff on the kids.
It's amazing.
When we're talking about babies, those aren't people.
Those aren't because babies are inconvenient for the left.
But then when we're talking about really tiny little kids who obviously can't make their own sexual decisions, all of a sudden it's young people.
They're going to be calling them young adults.
Trans 25-year-olds, that's what they're going to be calling them.
Things are going really haywire when you want to protect what's yours going into this crazy climate.
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Just transing the kids.
Transing the economy.
We're transing everything.
The Democrat premise here is what you say will entirely determine reality.
And this is why all the transgender stuff actually matters here.
The premise is if you say that a recession is not a recession, Then it's not a recession.
The power of our speech is such that we can totally change reality.
If you say that a baby is not a baby, it's not a baby.
When we all talk about the royal baby, you know, Prince William and his wife, his wife is pregnant, they're about to have the royal baby.
We all talk about the royal baby.
We don't talk about the royal fetus or the royal embryo or the royal zygote or whatever.
Because that baby is wanted, and so we talk about him honestly like he's a baby.
But when we talk about some woman who maybe doesn't want a baby, we say, oh, it's not a baby.
It's not a baby unless you want it.
Whatever we say, that's what determines it.
You had a little boy, but maybe some perverted parent wanted a little girl, actually.
And so they push the child into the transgender ideology.
Well, okay, you can have a little girl.
Just call him a little girl.
Put him in a dress.
He's a little girl.
That's easy.
We don't need to worry about reality.
We can just change it with our language.
And that's what parents are doing.
There's a TikTok that just went viral.
I think I've got a blocked TikTok.
Except that it's so funny in a really dark, sad way.
TikTok is very funny.
There are some parents who just went viral because they held a gender reveal party.
Not a gender reveal party for their baby, a gender reveal party for their toddler, because the toddler apparently is transgender.
What are you waiting for?
We practice acceptance is what they write and they say it.
It's a gender reveal and they've got the little transgender flag and then the poor little kid is excited because the parents are throwing all sorts of fun little glitter and things in the air and so the kid is excited, not realizing that these parents are sexually abusing the child.
Why are the parents doing this?
I don't know.
Because they're sickos.
Maybe it's satire.
I don't know that it's satire.
The line between satire and reality is pretty blurred these days.
I don't think it's satire.
It'd be kind of weird to subject your kid to this in public if it were just a big joke or you were making just some political point about how transgenderism is crazy.
So I think they're doing it for real.
And they're doing it for clout.
That's one of the reasons that parents are pushed to trans their kids is because that's the new hip, cool thing to do.
And that makes you really cutting edge and avant-garde and liberal and socially acceptable.
So that's one of the social...
Impetuses for doing this.
They are getting clout.
They are going to get lots of likes and they are going to go viral and it's going to give that mother all of the attention she's always craved.
And so that will happen.
But why is the culture giving the parents this clout?
It doesn't just end with the culture.
Okay, I know we're so fond of saying politics is downstream of culture and we've said it on the right for 10 or 15 years.
But there's more to the story than that.
Culture is also downstream of politics so one of the reasons why this is being encouraged and promoted is because we now have laws in place that encourage people to trans their kids.
We have laws and regulations in place where if you don't trans your kids, you can be in trouble.
You can be accused of child abuse or neglect.
We have laws and rules in place where teachers and other ministers of the state can trans your kid without your knowledge.
We now have laws in place going all the way up to the Civil Rights Act that have legal protections for gender identity.
They are enshrining in law this idea of transgenderism.
The law, the politics, not just the culture, but the politics and the government and the law are creating incentives for transgenderism and are punishing people for upholding the traditional and correct view of sex and gender.
That's something else that is pushing the culture in this direction.
Is it any wonder that in this moment...
You are seeing a major political reaction from the right.
And the name of that political reaction, the name that the left is putting on that political reaction, the big political fight that we're heading into, even if we're not quite in it yet, is over Christian nationalism.
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The latest inflation numbers are in.
They're not good.
We are now at a 40-year high.
It's 9.1%.
Thanks to this genius administration, our nation's authorities are openly admitting at this point that they completely missed the flashing red lights of inflation and this administration's failed economic policy.
Quote, I was wrong about the path inflation would take.
That's not a quote from me.
I was not wrong.
I was right.
But the Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was wrong and she admitted it.
Quote, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that at the time I didn't fully understand.
We fully understood it.
Or largely understood it.
This administration did not, okay?
You can't trust these so-called authorities when it comes to economic policy.
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Against the backdrop of gender reveal parties for your two-year-old when you pretend the little girl's a little boy or vice versa.
Against the backdrop of drag queen story hour for toddlers.
Against the backdrop of all of this, you have...
Right-wingers coming out, those kooky, crazy, awful, radical right-wingers, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the worst, most right-wing, awful person of them all.
And she's saying, oh gosh, can I even utter this phrase?
It's the scariest phrase in politics, according to CNN. Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying, whatever that stuff is, I'm not that.
In fact, I'm a Christian nationalist.
I believe in accountability and I believe in not just saying something but following through on it.
And I believe that Republicans need to prove to the American people that we are the party of American nationalism and Christian nationalism.
I'm a Christian.
I have no problem saying I'm a Christian nationalist.
And I think that's an identity that we need to embrace because those are the policies that serve every single American, regardless of how they vote.
They could be a Democrat and a Progressive, but Christian Nationalists or American Nationalists, America First policies still serve those people because they're the right policies for everyone.
A Christian nationalist!
And it's coming from Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is this conservative member of Congress, that the Libs have really focused on.
They really, really hate this woman.
And then they make this into a scare term.
Christian nationalism!
CNN has a long article, gosh, this article never ends, called An Imposter Christianity is Threatening American Democracy.
I want to pause right there, because they explain what they mean by Christian nationalism.
But before we get to it, I love they use this phrase, it's an imposter Christianity.
It's not the real Christianity.
You ever notice the libs do this?
Whenever you say things that are really basic aspects of the Christian religion and a Christian culture...
They'll say, you're not really a Christian.
You're not a real Christian.
Jesus, you know, he was a hippie socialist.
They always say Jesus was, too.
If you believe in Christianity, you don't say Jesus was.
You say Jesus is because he rises from the dead and he lives in heaven and he's our king and our savior lives.
But they always say, you know, Jesus, he was a radical left-wing, this, that, and the other.
They name all these things because these people have never cracked open a Bible in their lives.
And they say, you're a terrible Christian.
You're not a real, true, good Christian.
And also, Christianity is really stupid and dumb, and you shouldn't believe it.
You're a fake, imposter, hypocritical, artificial Christian.
But also, Christianity is really totally insane.
Why would anybody believe that?
They say both of these at the same time.
Out of both sides of their mouths.
That's a minor digression.
They say an imposter Christianity is threatening American democracy.
This is Christian nationalism.
What does the CNN article say Christian nationalism is?
What's it all about?
First part, erasing the line, separating piety from politics, is a key characteristic of white Christian nationalism.
That part's true.
You're right.
Christian, I don't know, white Christian nationality, what does that even mean?
Christianity, there is neither Jew nor Greek nor slave nor free, but all are one in Christ Jesus.
But okay, whatever.
They don't know what they're talking about.
Obviously, they don't know what they're talking about.
Let's get to that point.
They say, erasing the line between piety and politics.
They're saying, it's making politics more explicitly religious.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
But we're not the only ones doing that.
Do you think that the left has a firm line between piety and politics?
All the left ever does is virtue signal.
The only difference is that what they call virtue is actually vice.
You think that the left isn't pious?
What are you talking about?
You think the left doesn't have religious views that they foist on all of us?
They're pretending that human beings can actually secretly be the opposite sex.
They're making a metaphysical claim that the soul is totally different from the body.
And they're forcing you to engage in a sacramental sort of ritual to transgender your little toddlers.
You don't think that's pious?
You don't think a pride parade is a kind of weirdo version of piety?
Of course it is.
It's a religious ritual.
It's just not for Christianity or Islam or Judaism or anything that we would call a traditional religion.
It's just for leftism.
So, okay, yeah, you're right.
Christian nationalists want to separate, or want to bring together a little more piety in politics, a little closer together.
Sure, the libs are already doing that.
They've been doing it forever.
Next line.
One of the most popular beliefs among white Christian nationalists is that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation.
That's true.
That is a popular belief because it's inarguably correct.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Have you ever heard of the Mayflower?
Have you ever heard of the pilgrims?
Have you ever heard of the people who settled our country?
Would you call them Christian?
I would call them so zealously Christian, so hyper-focused on their particular brand of Protestant Christianity that they fled England, another Protestant Christian country.
They fled it because they thought they were too heathen.
And then they were in the Netherlands.
They were in Leiden.
And then they fled there because they felt that was too sort of secular and fun.
And then they came to America, to the hinterlands, where half of them died in the first winter, just so they could practice their extremely rigid form of Christianity.
I think they were Christian.
The vast majority, virtually everyone in America at the time of the founding, so fast forward now a century and a half, you're in 1776, virtually everybody in America at the time of the founding, including the founding fathers who were largely Christian.
Some of them had sort of heterodox beliefs and some of them verged on deism, but they were overwhelmingly Christian.
Those people believed in some version of Christianity.
The only line that these people can ever point to when they say America's not a Christian nation is one line from the Treaty of Tripoli, which says America's not founded as a Christian nation.
And they say John Adams said that.
John Adams didn't say that.
The Treaty of Tripoli is a diplomatic document to assuage Muslim pirates who were imprisoning and stealing and kidnapping American sailors.
That's all it was about.
If you look at John Adams' diaries, if you look at the founding documents of the United States, if you look at the writings of virtually all of the founding fathers, they describe America in overtly Christian terms.
That's what John Adams says.
He says the morality for America is the Christian morality.
When at the Continental Congress, the...
Early proto-Americans are invoking God and the blessings of God explicitly.
What do you think that is?
Who do you think they're talking to?
Do you think they're talking to Allah?
Do you think they're talking to Shiva?
No, they're talking to a Christian God.
A broadly Christian understanding of who God is.
When George Washington issues a Thanksgiving proclamation, who's he giving thanks to?
He's not giving thanks to some lib social construction man.
He's giving thanks to God.
So that's incontestable that America is founded as a Christian nation.
The third one, a belief in a warrior Christ, the idea that Christ calls on us to do things, that we have a role in the world.
The CNN says this is totally out of keeping with Christianity because they haven't read their Bible.
But of course, what does Christ say?
He says a great many things in the Gospels.
One of them is, I come not to bring peace but a sword.
One of them is to establish a church and go out and preach to all of the nations.
The way that the church understands itself is in three states.
Traditionally, this is how the church understands itself.
As the church penitent and the church triumphant and the church militant.
You might have heard that phrase before, church militant.
That means the church on earth.
The church penitent is the church in purgatory.
The church triumphant is the church in heaven.
And the church militant is the church here on earth.
The entire Bible is infused with language about spiritual warfare, spiritual combat.
That is a combat.
And then finally they say, Christian nationalism is a threat to democracy.
That's my favorite line.
This is my favorite line of all.
Because...
The Libs do this all the time.
Whenever the people vote against their preferences, they say it's a threat to democracy, which is, of course, nonsensical.
If most people are voting for a thing, that can't be a threat to democracy.
They say, when people vote for Trump, oh no, it's a threat to democracy.
The people elected Trump.
You can't have that.
It's not just in America.
In Hungary, when the people elect Viktor Orban, who's a right-wing leader there, this is a threat to democracy.
The people have voted for this thing, and now they've got that form of government.
What a threat to democracy.
Bolsonaro down in Brazil, another right-wing leader.
Oh no, the people elected a right-winger.
This is a threat to democracy.
No, it's a threat to liberalism.
That's what they mean.
When they say democracy, they mean liberalism or progressivism or leftism, all of which are increasingly unpopular.
And so the libs are really upset about this, and they are lying, or they're just ignorant, and they're pretending that that threatens democracy.
The reason Christian nationalism is the term here, the scare term, it's why they're going after Marjorie Taylor Greene, it's why they're going after all these conservatives, and specifically Christian nationalism, is because it's the opposite of leftist globalism.
Nationalism is the opposite of globalism.
Christianity is the opposite of leftism.
I'm not even making this as a cheap shot.
The term the left comes from the French Revolution when people who sat on the left of the National Assembly opposed the church.
The people who opposed the church sat on the left.
The people who defended the church and the state, they sat on the right.
So they're just opposites.
When they call you a Christian nationalist, they're saying, you oppose our leftist globalism.
And on that charge, my friends, Guilty.
I plead happily.
I plead guilty.
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I hate Harry's.
If you don't know the story, you certainly should.
Harry's used to advertise on our shows until someone around here, I'm not, I don't know, was it?
Oh yes, it was me, said that boys are boys and girls are girls.
And this was too much for Harry's.
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Left-wing activists in Illinois are very upset that a public library is considering taking gay porn out of the young people section of the taxpayer-funded public library.
The libs are very upset.
How dare you consider taking gay porn out of the libraries?
Here's what they say in their own words.
I am not upset by these books, and I don't understand how they would be.
So I looked it up online to see what people could be complaining about because I have read the books.
And some people claim they're porno.
So they're either mad because it's porn or because it's LGBTQIA porn.
And if this upsets you, you're really against porn or you're homophobic.
Are you going to try to ban straight romance novels too and have no straight porn in the library?
If you read the book, and I have three times, I strongly encourage people who are experiencing conflict to please give genderqueer a try.
It is not pornography.
I have seen a great many things in my life as a librarian at various book selling schools.
This is not an erotic Adventure.
In any way, shape, or form, it is a true expression of what this person felt to be their life.
It might be a true expression of what this pervert author thought to be his or her life, sure, but it is pornography.
It is.
And if you're watching that clip, instead of listening to this on your podcast app or on the radio, you would have seen just some of the images from the book which are pornography.
And they're not just pornography, they're gay pornography, and they're not just gay pornography, they're gay pornography aimed at children.
And for all of those reasons, in increasing severity, increasing urgency, you've got to get this out of the library.
There is no free speech protection for pornography.
There never was in the United States.
There actually still isn't according to the law, but those laws have not been enforced in recent decades.
But it's preposterous.
There is no serious person who has ever argued for free speech and the free exchange of ideas.
No serious person, philosopher, statesman, has ever suggested that some work of pornography has the same kind of protection as some work of philosophy.
No one would seriously argue that.
That was not reflected in our law.
In fact, that still is not reflected in our law.
It is a reminder, though, when you heard that woman say, she goes, oh my gosh, if you oppose this book, look, it's not pornography, it's totally not gay porn, but okay, let's just admit for a second that it is.
That means that you're really against pornography, or you're homophobic.
Now, what it means, homophobia...
Would be an irrational fear of homosexuals.
And that's not what they're talking about.
That's not what this woman is accusing anyone of.
She's accusing people of having moral opprobrium, of feeling a kind of moral opprobrium for certain types of sex acts.
Which everyone feels.
Everyone looks at at least some kinds of sex acts and says those are wrong.
At the very least, for instance, we would all say pedophilia is wrong.
Well, actually, the libs these days, I'm not so sure.
Some of the libs are trying to normalize pedophilia.
They're trying to change the term to be minor attracted person.
Or bestiality.
I think we should all be able to agree.
Virtually everyone should be able to agree.
Bestiality is wrong.
It's a sex act, but we can look on it with moral opprobrium.
And that's not a kind of phobia.
And so traditionally, people have viewed a much broader range of sexual acts with moral appropriation and said, no, you really shouldn't do those things.
Not just same-sex acts, but polygamous sex acts, certain sex acts between a man and a woman.
This is kind of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, some forms of paganism, traditional society, 101.
It says, yeah, obviously sex is a very important thing in human life.
It has a lot to do not just with our private lives but with all of society because the family, the marriage is the fundamental political unit.
And so we're going to look at certain sexual acts with a kind of opprobrium.
These people are saying, no, that's totally crazy.
That's totally phobic and irrational.
And even forget about the same-sex stuff for a second.
Why would you even be against porn?
I don't know.
Let me put the question back on you.
Why has every society ever had some prohibitions on porn?
Why is that?
Were they all just crazy?
Including our own society right now.
Why, even presently, does every single society on Earth have some kinds of prohibitions on at least some kinds of porn?
They're all just nuts?
They're all just close-minded?
No.
Because we know that sex is a very powerful motivator and we know that our lusts can be very, very powerful things and they can be really dangerous to ourselves and to society and we've got to rein it in.
And especially if we want to have self-government, we want to control ourselves, we need to be able to tamp down those really, really base appetites and cultivate our higher rational will.
That's why.
And that's especially true for kids.
Maybe older people can rein it in a little bit more.
Just like older people maybe can drink or even do some drugs.
Again, I don't think we should legalize drugs.
I don't think we should further legalize porn or anything like that.
But certainly we would say an adult is a little more capable of dealing with that than a little kid.
That's why we don't let kids drink.
That's why we don't let kids do a whole lot of things.
And certainly we shouldn't let kids look at porn in the libraries.
Okay?
And these people look at you and they say, you're crazy.
They look at you and they say, your moral system is wrong.
My moral system is right.
Your Christian nationalism is awful.
My leftist globalism is good.
They're both making moral claims.
What are the moral claims?
Christian nationalism.
No porn for little kids in the library.
Leftist globalism.
Trans the kids, trans the two-year-olds take the toddlers to drag queen story hour.
You're going to have to live under one of those moral systems.
Which one do you want?
One of those political orders.
Which one do you want to live under?
Christian nationalism.
Sure, if those are the choices, those look like the choices right now.
Christian nationalism or leftist globalism.
Any sane person of any religious background, of any sexual desires, of any race, of any geography, any sane person would prefer to live under Christian nationalism than leftist globalism.
Every single person will do better under Christian nationalism than they would under leftist globalism.
This is why it's not just the fringe, radical Marjorie Taylor Greene.
They really hate Marjorie Taylor Greene.
But it's not just her.
It's not just some members of the House of Representatives.
Even the most mainstream kinds of executive governor, national level conservatives, Ron DeSantis.
It's really hard to call Ron DeSantis a fringe, crazy figure.
Ron DeSantis is using the exact kind of language.
This is from a couple of months ago.
Ron DeSantis was at a rally.
He called on people to put on the armor of God.
Gird your loins for battle.
We are going to fight.
You put on the full armor of God.
You take a stand against the left schemes.
Yeah, you're going to face flaming arrows, but if you stand for truth, you and we will prevail.
So this is just explicitly biblical language, Christian language, and it's totally right.
Let's say you had two politicians giving speeches.
They get into a time machine.
They go back to 1776, and they start talking.
And one of the politicians is Ron DeSantis, and the other one is AOC, let's say.
Okay, the libs right now are saying that Christian nationalism is completely out of touch with the American tradition.
It's a total perversion of America.
The founders wouldn't have liked this and nobody, this was totally unnatural to the American way of life.
Okay, so you got Ron DeSantis and AOC, and they both get in their time machine.
They go back to 1776.
Ron DeSantis gives that exact speech verbatim, and then AOC talks about how transgender rights are human rights, and we need abortion on demand without apology, and no human being is illegal, which is why we need to open up all the borders.
Which do you think the crowd would prefer?
Which do you think the crowd would say, this makes more sense, oh yeah, I've heard this before?
What Ron DeSantis said would sound like pretty much just anybody in their society.
Except his accent wouldn't be quite as silly and he wouldn't be wearing a powdered wig.
But otherwise, that guy would fit in at the Constitutional Congress.
The Continental Congress, rather.
Or the Constitutional Convention.
Either one of them, he would fit in.
They'd say, you look a little swarthy.
You're a little on the Italian side, but that's okay.
Alright, you still vaguely fit in.
AOC comes and she starts talking about transing the kids in abortion.
They say, who the hell is this lady?
What planet did you come from, lady?
Obviously, this one is in the American tradition.
No question about it.
Now, speaking of men who want to be president, Donald Trump is laying out his plans for his second term.
Donald Trump...
I would say all the smart money right now is saying Donald Trump is going to run for president.
So all this horse race jockeying that people are talking about, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, they're all talking about these horse races.
And I really like a lot of those people.
I think Ron DeSantis is a phenomenal candidate.
I think he's the best governor ever.
Certainly in the country right now, maybe the best governor in America in my lifetime.
You know I love Senator Cruz.
I do a show with him.
I even like some of the other people, too, who could be running.
But none of that really matters, actually.
Because if Trump runs, he almost certainly will win the primary.
Because his numbers are so far up right now.
They're up 40 points.
And so you hear people complain.
They say, no, but this candidate would be so much better.
No, I don't like Trump.
You know, there's even some people who hated Trump in 2016.
I always kind of liked Trump.
I had my reservations about him during the primaries in 2016.
I voted for him in the general.
I voted for him in 2020.
I'm not saying he's perfect.
There are some things he did that really drove me crazy.
I hated that first step act.
You know, so I'm not, I don't like worship the guy as a demigod, but he was by far the most conservative president of my lifetime.
And I like him.
And I'm noticing now a lot of people who didn't like him in 2016, they're kind of turning up.
Maybe they liked him in 2020.
Maybe they didn't.
But they kind of don't like him again now, and they're pulling for other candidates.
And I get it.
It's all a fair debate.
But guys, how about reality?
If Trump says he's running, he is 99 out of 100 going to win the primary.
So now the question is, if he is going to run, what is he going to do?
What is his campaign going to be?
And right now, what Trump is campaigning on is not just immigration.
It's not build the wall.
Wish he could have built more of the wall, but it's not just build the wall.
It's not pro-life.
He is the most pro-life president ever.
He got Roe v.
Wade overruled.
It's not the economy.
That's kind of a given.
The issue that he is running on right now is firing 50,000 government bureaucrats in the deep state.
Here are just some of the other things we must do with Republicans back in charge.
We must pass critical reforms, making every executive branch employee fireable by the president.
The deep state must and will be brought to heel.
The deep state must and will be brought to heel.
This is what the libs are freaking out over too.
You can tell generally which Republican policies matter by which ones the libs are most freaked out over.
And this one, they're really scared.
They call this a coup.
They call this a radical plan for Trump's second term.
I mentioned it at the very end of the show yesterday.
But what Trump is talking about here is something called Schedule F. And it's a bureaucratic measure to change the way that employees work in the federal government and to change what kind of employment protections they have.
Generally speaking, when any president comes into office, they switch over something like 4,000 members of the federal bureaucracy.
And it's usually those top-level guys.
The top-level guys and the people just below the top-level guys.
Federal bureaucracy is something like 2 million people.
So you change out 4,000 people That's nothing.
You haven't changed anything.
And so the elected guys come in, they put their guys at the very tippy-top of the bureaucracy.
But all those career people, they know they're going to be there a lot longer than the elected people or the appointed people.
And so they don't really have to do anything.
When Democrats get elected, this doesn't matter because the federal bureaucracy is overwhelmingly left-wing.
So the machinery of government generally works when it's the libs in charge.
But when the Republicans come in, especially if we're talking about conservative Republicans, not just the squishy people, but the ones who actually want to change something...
Nothing is going to get done because the federal bureaucracy is going to be sitting there.
They're going to say, oh, that guy at the top told me to do something.
Okay.
Okay.
Going to drag my feet.
Going to drag my feet for about four years.
And oh, you're gone.
Okay, bye.
All right, back to normal.
Never mind.
And there's no consequence because they have really strong employment protections.
So what Trump is proposing is firing 50,000 members of the federal bureaucracy.
Now we're talking.
Now we're making a start here.
And the libs are saying this is a threat to democracy.
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine?
There is something called the federal bureaucracy which is completely unaccountable to the American people.
The American people express their desires through elections and the federal bureaucracy says, cool, pound sand, we don't care.
Very anti-democratic.
Then Trump comes in and he says, I propose that presidents should have more power to fire these bureaucrats who are the ones actually making and enforcing policy so that the way that the government operates actually reflects the will of the people.
Very pro-democracy.
It's a big pro-democracy reform.
What do the Libs say?
They say, well, this is a threat to American democracy because they don't mean American democracy.
They mean liberalism, leftism, progressivism.
They mean their agenda.
Speaking of shrinking things, you all know how bad inflation is.
You have seen the numbers.
We're going to get more numbers on Tuesday, which is going to be very unfortunate.
You're going to get economic numbers on Thursday to show that we're in a recession, even though the Biden administration refuses to admit it because they changed the definition of the words.
Then, you're going to get inflation numbers.
You see, inflation is up 9.1% year over year.
This is a massive part of inflation.
But I'm here to tell you, folks, things are even worse than that.
Don't worry.
I've got hope.
Things can get a lot worse.
They are getting a lot worse.
Because while you've got the economic collapse, while you've got inflation making everything more expensive, you also have something called shrinkflation.
And shrinkflation is really subtle.
And shrinkflation actually hides the severity of inflation.
Because while prices are going up, the products you're buying are getting smaller.
This happened to me over the weekend.
I was going to buy cheese.
I had a couple of friends over.
We were making fondue.
It's really fun.
It's like we were right back in the 1970s.
I was going to go out and buy the cheese to make the fondue.
And I had to buy 24 ounces of cheese.
So I'm buying different kinds of cheese.
And I pick up a little block of cheese.
And I see the block of cheese is 5.9 ounces of cheese.
Why...
What executive would make cheese 5.9 ounces per block?
That is the most useless denomination of cheese, the amount of cheese.
There is not a single recipe on earth that calls for 5.9 ounces of cheese.
It might call for 6 ounces of cheese, more likely, I don't know, 8 ounces of cheese.
5.9.
Why did they do that?
They're shrinking the amount of cheese so that you won't notice that even if the price goes up a little bit, you're not noticing it's actually going up a lot more per ounce of cheese.
And it's happening everywhere, not just in my fondue.
It's happening throughout the economy.
Honey bunches of oats.
You know, I love honey.
That's one of my favorite cereals.
The box of honey bunches of oats used to be 14.5 ounces.
It is now 12 ounces.
That sounds like, oh, who cares?
What, it's two ounces, two and a half ounces of honey bunches of oats?
How many oats can that be?
Well, that's a reduction of 17%.
The Daily Mail is reporting all of these numbers.
So you're getting 17% fewer honey bunches of oats, and you're probably paying either the same price or more likely you're paying a little bit more for it.
So effectively, you're losing much more of your oats.
Angel soft toilet paper has just reduced its size from 425 sheets per roll to 320.
You're not going to notice that.
You're not counting the sheets per roll in your angel soft toilet tissue.
But you are getting a significantly reduced product for the amount of money you're paying.
Bounty paper towels have cut their rolls from 165 sheets to 147 sheets per roll.
That happened late last year as we're heading into all of this.
You can't notice that.
Why?
Why would they do that?
There's no argument from the product standpoint to reduce it to 147 sheets.
They didn't discover 147 sheets.
That's the ideal number of sheets per bounty paper towel.
No, they did it to save money and to deceive you because they've got to try to cut corners somewhere.
Gatorade is down.
Bottle used to be 32 ounces.
Now it's 28 ounces.
Folgers coffee.
The canister used to be 51 ounces.
Now it's 43.5 ounces.
The inflation is even worse than it seems.
Speaking of consumption, speaking of things getting worse, there is a story that was going all around the internet.
Where is it?
Here it is.
It's from the New York Times.
And a lot of conservatives were freaking out over this.
It's called A Taste for Cannibalism.
And it was a cultural review of a spate of recent stomach-churning books, TV shows and films, suggesting we've never looked so delicious to one another.
And the New York Times article goes on and on about all of these stories of cannibalism.
Now, a lot of conservatives looked at this and said, oh my gosh, this is crazy.
First they tried to make us eat bugs, now they try to make us eat each other.
This is awful.
This is terrible.
But Here's one paragraph that I really wanted to focus on, because I have an unpopular take on this.
I really liked the article, and I think they're correct.
I think the New York Times, it stopped clock twice a day, the New York Times is observing a cultural trend.
And they're even correct in a kind of left-wing critique they're making in the article.
They're saying, the cannibalism movies and books, it's not really about wanting to eat other people.
There might be a little bit of that there.
Listen, we've got a lot of sexual perversion in this country.
They've probably got a little bit of that there.
But it's more a comment on society and how we relate to one another.
They say, more generally, Ms.
Summers thinks that the recent spate of cannibalistic plots could also be commentaries on capitalism.
Cannibalism is about consumption and it's about churning up from the inside in order to exist.
Burnout is essentially over consuming yourself, your own energy, your own will to survive, your sleep schedule, your eating schedule, your body.
This is kind of a stupid point, but there's a little kernel of truth there.
Some people have pointed out that the cannibalism stuff is probably about communism, because under communism, you don't have any food.
So you have to eat each other.
Like someone whose plane crashes in the Andes, you have to eat people.
But I think they make a good point here on capitalism.
You've got to remember, I know conservatives reflexively defend capitalism.
Capitalism is a word that was popularized by Karl Marx.
When we talk about capitalism, we're using kind of Marxist terminology, actually.
I don't consider myself a capitalist.
My ideology is capitalism.
No, I love private property.
I love entrepreneurship.
I love hard work.
I love all that stuff.
I like producing more material goods to help people, but I don't like capitalism.
Capitalism is just a materialist ideology like any other that says that man is just made to consume and get a lot of stuff and at the worst end of it, worship mammon and consume our fellow man.
We don't view them as men made in the image of God.
We just view them as cogs in a machine to make more crap.
So I don't like that side of it at all.
What would be a good term?
You might say Christian nationalist.
I don't know.
I consider myself a Christian, an American, a conservative.
I like the fruits of private industry.
But as a means to an end, there is more here as well.
And at the very worst side of capitalism, or really call it liberalism, or whatever ism you want to use, we stop viewing human beings as fellow men.
We start viewing them as just things that can be useful to us to produce more, to work more, for our sexual pleasure, for whatever purpose we find ourselves.
We start to consume one another.
We start to view each other, oh my gosh, the abortion regime.
I totally see abortion here in this cannibal culture, where a mother says, I'm just going to devour my own child because I want to serve my own ends of my career, or more money, or more personal choice, or I get to go to brunch more frequently, or I get to go to the club, or whatever.
That is a really bad thing.
Maybe the word capitalism isn't the right word here.
Maybe we should just call it modernity.
Maybe we should call it leftism, leftist globalism, whatever.
All I know is, whatever that culture is, I don't like it.
I don't want it.
I think the Times is observing something that's real.
I'm observing it myself.
And I don't like it.
We need an alternative.
And whatever you want to call that alternative...
People are calling it Christian nationalism.
I think that's as good a term as any.
Whatever that alternative is, that's what we have to defend.
We have to stop accepting the premises of the left.
We need to stop being engaged in this fight over the very same premises of leftist globalism and just following them down the road to perdition off a cliff.
I'll keep mixing metaphors.
We need to offer not just Democrat light.
I talked about this yesterday.
Not just Democrat policies from 10 years ago.
We need to offer a clear alternative.
A choice, not an echo.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, as climate change alarmists become more frantic about our alleged impending doom, they have also started to sound more and more genocidal.
We'll discuss.
Plus, the left now claims that abortion bans are a racist conspiracy to ensure that more white babies are born.
Of course, this claim completely contradicts all of the facts.
And Tucker Carlson is criticized for urging young people to get married and have kids, if you can imagine.
What a terrible thing.
And our Daily Cancellation, a tragic story of sexism and patriarchy.
