Ep. 1163 - Biden Caught In Another Million Dollar Chinese Finger Trap
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Joe Biden's fake think tank, at which he improperly stored classified documents, was reportedly funded by a ton of anonymous communist Chinese money, the government is trying to take away your gas stove, and the President, who claims to be a devout Catholic, now also says that, as a child, he attended a black Protestant church, no doubt with Corn Pop.
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You know things aren't looking great for Joe Biden when he's lost Adam Schiff, one of the most reliably partisan hacks in the entire Democrat Party.
But that is exactly what has happened when Adam Schiff was forced to address Joe Biden's classified documents scandal on TV. Congressman Schiff, you were on this show just after Attorney General Garland appointed a special counsel in the case of the Trump documents.
You said it was the right move.
Do you feel the same way about this special counsel?
I do think it's the right move.
The Attorney General has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied, But the appearances of justice are also satisfactory to the public.
And here, I don't think he had any choice but to appoint a special counsel.
And I think that special counsel will do the proper assessment.
I still would like to see Congress do its own assessment and receive an assessment from the intelligence community of whether there was any exposure to others of these documents, whether it was harm to national security, In the case of either set of documents with either president.
But yes, I think the special counsel was appropriately appointed.
Jonathan, if I could also though, because my state is still trying to dig out from these terrible storms, I want to thank the president for making an emergency declaration.
I love that bit at the end.
John, I'd really love an opportunity to compliment Joe Biden so he doesn't totally hate me.
John, I'd really like to curry a little bit of favor with the guy that I just threw under the bus so that I can hedge my bets a little bit here.
But still, Schiff threw Biden under the bus.
He not only supports the investigation into Biden's documents, he's even willing to say that those documents might have jeopardized national security.
And Adam Schiff has good reason to think that they did jeopardize national security.
Because it turns out that the Penn Biden Center, where some of the classified documents were found, was reportedly funded to the tune of tens of millions of dollars by anonymous Chinese communists.
Some questions come up.
Did the donors maybe get a tour of the facility?
Did those anonymous Chinese donors maybe get a peek at some of those documents?
I don't know.
I'm not saying they did.
Just asking questions here.
Why did the Chinese fund the center at all?
Why did they keep their names hidden?
How are they even allowed to keep their names hidden when we know that age-old political rule, a rule that Joe Biden's career has made especially clear, that he who pays the piper calls the tune.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Lowell Show.
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The Penn-Biden Center, that's the fake think tank that Joe Biden established after he left the vice presidency.
It seems to have taken a lot of money from the Chinese.
We don't know what the exact numbers are, but here's what we know.
We know that between 2014 and 2019, Penn received $54.6 million from the Chinese.
That includes $23.1 million in anonymous gifts starting in 2016.
So right at the time that Biden is leaving the vice presidency, launching this big new center initiative at Penn.
Most of the anonymous donations came after the university announced that it would create the Penn-Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
Kind of weird.
It's sort of like how after the Clintons left the White House and they established the Clinton Global Initiative, with the understanding that the Clintons were still going to be very involved in politics, maybe Hillary would become the president, certainly she was going to run for the president.
All of a sudden you saw a ton of money pouring in from foreign countries, especially Ukraine, actually.
You Ukraine, I think, was the largest single nation donor to the Clinton Global Initiative.
Why is that?
Do you think they were doing it just out of the goodness of their own heart?
Do you think they were doing that because they just really supported...
NAFTA or something?
I don't know, some part of the Bill Clinton presidency?
No, they were currying favor with politicians.
Politicians who could possibly help them in the future.
Do we think that the Chinese funded this center just to, I don't know, promote politics?
Diplomacy and global engagement, or because Joe Biden is such an admirable figure?
No, they were currying favor with a potential player in the future.
Joe Biden has wanted to be president since he was a little kid, and he intimated that he was going to potentially run again.
And even if he didn't, the Bidens still play a big role in Democrat politics, and the Chinese especially are known to do this.
They just place bets on different people, and they hope that one of those bets pays off, as apparently it would have with Trump.
As apparently it could have with Biden and probably as it did with Biden.
Trump was very tough on China.
Biden and the Democrats promised to be very soft on China.
Biden had been cheering on China's rise for his whole political career.
Biden said about 20 years ago, he said, you know, some people criticize our helping China rise to prominence on the world stage, but we believe that a rising tide lifts all ships.
And that's why we're so glad that China entered the World Trade Organization.
That's why we're so glad that China is now producing...
So many of America's goods, that we've shipped jobs overseas, that we're now super reliant on China, that China now buys up all of our debt.
We're so happy about that.
So Biden was obviously currying favor with the Chinese as well.
The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and that is why politicians, even ones that are super tightly aligned with Joe Biden, are trying to keep a little bit of distance here.
Even the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Do you believe that he's violated the federal law here?
It's much too early to tell.
There's a special prosecutor in each situation.
I think President Biden has handled this correctly.
He's fully cooperated with the prosecutors when the documents were found.
He notified archives.
It's a total contrast.
To President Trump, who stonewalled for a whole year.
But the point is we now have special prosecutors for both of these situations, very serious people.
We should let it play out.
We don't have to push them in any direction or try to influence them.
That's all I'm going to say.
Let the special prosecutors do their job.
Do you support the fact that a special counsel is overseeing this matter now?
Yes, I do.
And in fact, you know, when the FBI first went to Mar-a-Lago and they said, well, what are you going to say about this?
I said, it's premature to comment.
And I've said it here.
So I've been consistent about it.
In both cases, you have prosecutors, special prosecutors.
I support both of them.
Let them do their job.
I think that's all that should be said.
The politicians shouldn't be buzzing around.
The politicians shouldn't be buzzing around giving their opinion.
This is the first time in Chuck Schumer's entire career that he has not wanted to buzz around giving his opinion.
The old line was that the most dangerous place in the state of New York was the space between Chuck Schumer and a TV camera.
And yet now he clams up.
Now he gets all reticent to talk about it.
Listen, I don't...
I think the president, he's done a great job, but I support the special counsel.
Do you think he violated the law?
Well, I don't know.
It's too early to tell.
So he's keeping a safe distance here.
Even as he's trying to flack for Biden, it's not persuasive.
The best he tried to do here to defend Biden is he said what Biden's done is totally right.
He's followed all the procedures he should follow.
It's all hunky-dory.
But if that's true, then why is Chuck Schumer happy that a special prosecutor has been appointed?
If it's all fine and Biden followed the letter of the law perfectly and there's nothing to criticize him for, then why is he happy that it's being investigated by the special counsel?
Doesn't quite add up.
What is Schumer doing?
He's hedging his bets.
He's saying, look, Biden is too weak now for me to go out and completely defend him.
But he's not weak enough that he's definitely done and I can pile on him and completely ditch him.
So he's straddling the fence, as is Ilhan Omar.
Well, one, I'm glad that there is a special prosecutor that's been appointed to investigate this.
You are glad that there is a special prosecutor?
Yes.
Tell me why.
Because any time there is a deviance in regards to security protocols that should be taken serious, it should be investigated.
What I find interesting is that Republicans who have defended Trump After he literally stole classified documents, refused to turn them over, lied about having them,
made up some story about how he declassified them, had to have his house raided in order for those documents to be found, are now only interested in investigating Biden, who has cooperated, who his own staff And former staff have themselves turned these documents in.
So you have to understand, Republicans aren't really interested in upholding the law, in following security protocols.
What they're interested in is playing a political game.
Just playing those political games, those nasty Republicans.
Yeah.
Is it a political game?
In part it is.
In part it's a political game, of course.
But it's Ilhan Omar and Chuck Schumer playing the exact same political game.
And when all the Democrats made a big hullabaloo about Trump's documents, which he had the right to declassify, that was much more of a political game than what the Republicans are doing now to Joe Biden.
Because when Joe Biden took these documents out of the White House, he did not have the right to do that.
He did not have the right to declassify those documents.
Trump did.
That's a major difference.
But of course, they're playing political games.
And the real political game that the Democrats are playing is with themselves.
So they're playing the game, which is they're going to straddle the fence and do everything they can to leave themselves in open if Biden does go down.
They think it's serious enough that it could hurt him.
But he's not totally weak now.
The only person who is reliably defending Joe Biden is Corrine Jean-Pierre, his paid spokesman.
And what's very telling about this classified documents case is that the way that the White House press secretary is defending Joe Biden is by just not talking about it.
She's just stonewalling on the question.
So Biden has no defense here.
Trump had, I think, a legitimate defense.
I mean, I'm very persuaded by his defense.
Some Republicans are less persuaded by it, which is that he's president.
He can declassify the documents in his own head.
I think that's Totally convincing, as far as I'm concerned.
Biden doesn't have that.
And so, the best that the Democrats can do is hedge and seesaw and keep their mouths shut.
Go mum and stop buzzing around.
Even someone like Chuck Schumer, who hasn't stopped speaking since the mid-1990s.
Now, speaking of Joe Biden.
Joe Biden, he makes some pretty weird claims and he's not the most reliable guy.
And he's been one of the most notorious liars in American politics since at least the 1980s.
And we got another doozy.
The other doozy is that Joe Biden, who tells us that he's a devout Catholic and he campaigns on being a devout Catholic, actually grew up in a black Protestant church.
Unless they want them to rest, I'm not going to be a Christian.
I may be a practicing Catholic.
I used to go to 7.30 mass every morning in high school and then in college before I went to the black church.
Not a joke.
Andy knows this.
Not a joke.
I went to the black church.
He made these comments at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia for Martin Luther King Day.
And Biden claims, he says he went to daily mass and then every day he went to that black church.
I assume he went with his friend Corn Pop.
Corn Pop actually passed the collection basket around.
Joe Biden, he wore big colorful hats.
You know, come on, man.
Listen here, Jack.
That's the truth.
Listen, you dog-faced pony soldier.
Yeah.
I grew up in a black church.
I was good friends with Martin Luther King.
Yeah, you know it.
No, me and Frederick Douglass?
Yeah, we used to go to the pool together, swim laps with Corn Pop.
He said I had hairy legs.
Come on, Jack.
Come on, man.
I don't think anybody believes what Biden is saying.
But the most notable part of the story to me is that any way you slice it, Joe Biden reveals himself as dishonest.
Because if he lied about going to the black church all the time as a kid, which is probably the case, then he's a liar.
But even that first part when he says, listen, I'm a practicing Catholic.
What non-Catholics might not know is that Catholics are not permitted to participate in the religious ceremonies of other religions and other denominations.
So, if you're a practicing Catholic and you go and you are regularly attending a Protestant church and participating in those activities, that's actually considered a sin in the Catholic church.
You're supposed to confess that sin when you go to confession.
You would not really be able to call yourself with a straight face a practicing Catholic if you are regularly and willfully violating that requirement of the church.
But of course, going to a Protestant church would be the very least of Joe Biden's infractions against his faith.
Joe Biden is giddy about abortion.
He not only supports abortion, which is utterly impermissible for a Catholic politician, but he supports funding abortion.
Joe Biden supports radically redefining marriage.
This is not a permissible thing to do if you're a Catholic politician.
He supports all sorts of things that run contrary to the faith.
So...
I mention this not really to say anything about Catholicism, but to say something about Joe Biden.
Any way you cut this story, he's a liar.
He's not a practicing Catholic, and he probably didn't go to this church.
And you can't believe a word that this guy says.
And so when you get back to a scandal like the classified document scandal, this is why nobody believes his excuses.
Oh, yeah, Jack.
Yeah, we forgot to take those documents.
Yeah, that's too bad, Jack.
That's why they ended up there at the Penn Biden Center.
Well, what about the documents in your garage?
Oh, come on there, fat.
Don't do me like that.
Yeah, it's next to my Corvette.
It's cool.
It's all safe, man.
What about the other documents?
What about this?
this?
What about that?
He just doesn't have any credibility at all.
This is a man who's lied about his professional career, his beliefs, his accomplishments, his involvement in the civil rights movement.
That's another one that keeps coming up.
He's a guy who lies about everything.
He'd lie to you about what he had for breakfast in the morning.
And he would even lie about a matter as consequential as his faith.
Now, speaking of politics and the Catholic church, I have seen something that you have not seen yet, but you're going to want to see it because it's This is an interview that Ben did, our very own Ben Shapiro, did with Frank Pavone.
Frank Pavone, a very, very well-known Catholic priest, the head of Priests for Life, who was recently, shockingly, laicized by the Vatican.
Another word for that is defrocked.
They say you're no longer allowed to be a priest.
And it's a kind of a complex thing because the sacrament of holy orders makes an indelible mark on someone's soul.
So there's a question, can you even really ultimately laicize somebody?
Well, the church has said we're taking away your faculties to be a priest, to confer sacraments, to present yourself as a priest.
For what?
It's a little unclear.
No one really seems to know exactly why...
Pavone was laicized.
So he just went on Ben Shapiro's Sunday special.
And he made a really, really important point about his pro-life advocacy.
How do you make the case to people that would say that Catholic doctrine or religious doctrine, it allows for a variety of opinions in terms of how you vote?
So, OK, sure, the Republican Party is pro-life.
Sure, the Republican Party opposes same-sex marriage.
But the Democratic Party is more for social justice matters.
It's more for economic redistribution.
How do you privilege one idea over another idea?
And how does that mesh with Catholic doctrine?
How can you draw such a clear dividing line between how people should vote?
Shouldn't you just sort of speak to broad principles and then whatever people do in the privacy of the voting booth is what they choose to do based on the dictates of conscience?
The relationship between the issues needs to be looked at.
Nobody in the pro-life community says abortion is the only issue.
What we say is that the right to live is the foundation of every issue.
If an issue...
It's because it somehow impacts human life.
Why are we concerned about poverty?
Well, people have a right to food, clothing, and shelter.
Why?
Because they have a right to live.
Why am I concerned about unemployment?
Well, people have a right to make a living.
Why?
Because they have a right to live.
Protection from terrorism.
You can go down the list, and it's like, okay, the value of life is obviously at the core of every issue.
Such an important point that conservatives don't make nearly as much as we should.
Life is not merely one issue among many.
Life is the foundational right.
If we are to have any rights at all, we have to have the right from life, on which all of the other rights rely.
Declaration of Independence says we have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Life is obviously the most important.
If any of those are rights, life has to be the most important.
Because you can't have liberty without life.
You can't pursue happiness if you don't have life.
And so when someone like Joe Biden comes out and he says, well, listen, I'm practicing Catholic, but I don't believe in the right to life.
Well, you're saying, okay, I don't believe in any rights at all then.
I don't believe in the most basic right of all of them.
And so there's been some speculation.
Again, we don't know why Pavone was laicized.
I want to call him Father Pavone.
I guess I'm not supposed to call him Father Pavone anymore.
It feels kind of weird to call him Mr.
Pavone.
But in any case, he was laicized, some speculate, because of his pro-life advocacy.
And because he was perhaps disobedient to his bishop's And to other people who may or may not have told him to calm down with all the pro-life stuff.
Again, I don't know.
This has not been a transparent matter.
But what Pavone is saying is, I can't pipe down about this.
This is a fundamental issue.
There was one report that Pavone had refused to give absolution to unrepentant Democrats.
And This was a big headline, sounds really shocking.
The sacrament of confession is where Catholics go and they confess their sins, and the priest, deriving from Christ's conferring of the right to loose and to bind.
Christ says, here is the power to forgive sins, what sins you forgive are forgiven, and what sins you retain are retained.
And so what Pavone is saying is, I'm not going to, I cannot absolve someone of their sins if they're not repentant.
And the report was, again, I haven't heard him say this, but the report was that in some cases he wouldn't give absolution to people who say, vote for a Democrat, vote for some radically pro-abortion politician, and don't repent of that.
Well, fair enough, it seems to me.
If you're sorry, if you say, look, I supported abortion in the past and that was wrong and I'm sorry, please, I'm asking God's forgiveness, then you receive God's forgiveness.
But if you don't, if you say, yeah, I support baby-killing politicians and, yeah, I think it's totally great to support legal abortion and even taxpayer-funded abortion, okay, give me absolution.
Pavone's saying, I can't do that because you're not repentant.
A lot of the opposition to Pavone is he's too political.
He's getting too involved in politics.
I don't even really know what that means.
Yes, we don't want to see priests just chumming it up with one candidate or some other candidate or something.
We want our priests to be doing something different than our politicians are doing.
Sure, okay, I see all of that.
But we're supposed to pretend now that our spiritual leaders have to remain neutral?
There's no neutrality.
We're in a spiritual war.
And what, we're supposed to pretend that the guy who's running to save the babies and the guy who's running to kill the babies, that we're going to not have a preference between those two things?
We're not going to tell our flock who to go to?
I'm not a priest.
I don't have a flock.
Priests are not supposed to do that?
Give me a break.
That's completely insane.
It's ahistorical.
It's completely incoherent.
And I really hope it all works out with...
With Frank Pavone, I hope.
It's a real shame to see what's happened, and it would be good to see him brought back into the priesthood at some future date, I hope.
Especially if they only booted him out for being too pro-life.
It would be nice if they could kind of work it out, you know, and have him get back to his overall excellent work.
Speaking of life and death, this story, I meant to get to this a few days ago.
Glad I got to it now.
It's kind of grisly.
And really, really stupid.
The story, here it is on Daily Wire.
Man googled how to dispose of 115-pound woman's body.
Now his 115-pound wife is missing.
You almost want to laugh at the headline, except you realize someone's been killed.
Some guy murdered his wife here, it would seem.
And it's a guy from Massachusetts who looked up how to dispose of this particular kind of body.
And then his wife was supposed to take a ride share to the airport in Boston for New Year's Day.
There's no record.
She took the ride share.
She never boarded the plane.
And then she was reported missing by her workplace and her husband.
And then when law enforcement searched the guy's computer, it says, how do you dispose of a 115-pound woman's body?
Not really sad story.
Not Not the brightest criminal in the world, it would seem.
I guess he's innocent until proven guilty, but not looking good.
Not looking good for the husband.
The reason I bring up the story is not because it's of this local crime story, odd as it is, but it's because of what it tells us about one of the biggest issues in our politics, which is the surveillance state.
We are increasingly living in a surveillance state, and that has been increasing for decades now.
It's been increasing in the government sphere.
You think of the NSA, formerly known as No Such Agency, which is just processing countless reams of all of our data constantly.
But then you think of it in the private sphere as well.
You think of private companies that now have access to what we search on the Internet, private companies that have access to who we call, private companies that have access to cameras inside of our homes.
It's just everywhere now.
Our TVs very often have cameras.
Our cars are spying on us to corporations.
So we're living in this total surveillance state.
And our first reaction to that is that this is very bad.
And it is bad because it's giving bad people undue power.
It's giving frequently very bad actors leverage over us and control over our lives.
There is a silver lining, though.
You know, on this show, I try to have a little silver lining.
I don't really get angry and pull my hair out and say the world is ending all that much.
I try to look for the hope here because I think that's a theological fact and a requirement of our lives.
So here's the silver lining.
The surveillance state can keep you on the straight and narrow.
It can.
People don't want to hear it, but it's true.
If you knew, I mean this is how a lot of those anti-porn apps work.
I think it was Matt Fradd, a really great podcaster, was talking about this.
If you want to quit porn, if you have an addiction to porn, you get some of these apps and services that basically whenever you look at a porn website, it just emails whoever you tell it to email.
So it can be a buddy, it can be your wife.
So it's a voluntary kind of surveillance.
But if you know, voluntary or not, if you know that every single thing that you type into your computer is going to be seen by somebody else, you're probably not going to go to that naughty website that you want to go to.
Now, if you're living in China, say, and you know all your searches are going to be seen by the government, you're also probably not going to Google things like democracy, or how to lead a political revolution, or things like that.
But even just in our personal lives, if we know that somebody is watching, we're probably going to be a little better behaved.
If you see a camera in a store, you're probably going to be a little loath to rob that store, unless you're in San Francisco where it's just a complete free-for-all.
If you are in your home even, or in your workplace, surveillance can make you behave a little bit better.
The reason that this is happening now...
One, there's been technological advances in surveillance, but there's a cultural reason too.
And it gets back to one of these statements that John Adams said in the early days of our country.
He said, a statement frequently quoted by conservatives, that the country is built for a moral and religious people.
It's not fit for the government of any other kind of people.
That the American expression of political liberty and relative privacy is built for people who are going to control themselves and rein in their basest passions.
The country is built for people who believe that God is watching them at all times and they better not step too far out of line.
As that belief has declined in the United States, you have seen an increase in other kinds of surveillance.
Police surveillance, in private surveillance, in surveillance by your teachers and your professors and your bosses and everybody else.
As people don't fear God watching us, we are going to need Big Brother to watch us.
This is something I've said always as an addendum to the John Adams quote about the moral and religious people, which is there will be order.
There must be order and peace in society.
That is what government does, is to maintain that.
That is what political communities are largely for.
If people will not order their own lives, someone is going to come in and order our lives for us.
But don't mistake it.
The people that control the country, the powers that be, will not allow things to spiral out of control.
Even when those powers are we the people.
Even when it's us in representative assemblies.
If our government really were still to work as the bill up on Capitol Hill and all the rest of it.
We would not allow anarchism.
You're seeing this in some of the blue cities where crime has gotten completely out of control.
People are stepping up and saying, we don't want this stuff anymore.
Okay, impose some control.
Now, speaking of Big Brother and the nanny state, there's a story that seems a little bit murky, and the government is trying to kind of deny this.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has threatened to take away your gas stove.
Of all the problems facing the country, completely open border, potential world war breaking out in Eastern Europe, you've got the biggest drug epidemic ever in American history, declining life expectancy, all of these problems, the government is really focused on what all of these problems, the government is really focused on what matters, which is keeping you from using a gas stove to make your eggs in the Yeah, you've got to use an electric stove now.
That was the threat from the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
This came out, people pushed back against it.
Even some Democrats came out.
Joe Manchin was interviewed about this.
He said, this is insane.
Nobody wants...
Stop trying to ban gas stoves, you weirdos.
That's fine.
So, then the government came out and said, no, we're not actually threatening to...
Here is the Consumer Product Safety Commissioner threatening this just back in December.
I think we need to be talking about regulating gas stoves, whether that's drastically improving emissions or banning gas stoves entirely.
And I think we ought to keep that possibility of a ban in mind as you follow along because it's a powerful tool in our toolbox and it's a real possibility here.
No thanks.
No thank you.
How did this guy...
One, if you cook at all, you know gas stoves are just much nicer to cook on.
If you have the privilege of having a gas stove, I've had electric and I've had gas.
Gas is way, way better.
But how did this guy muster the gumption to say, yeah, we're taking your stove away?
Yeah, why?
Because I said so.
Because I, some petty bureaucrat, said so.
Because we have a culture now.
Where we have infantilized ourselves and we've given up so much of our right and our spines and in some cases other body parts thanks to the transgender movement.
We've given this away.
We no longer have a clear vision of virtue and our rights and our place in society.
We can't even defend, many people in this country can't even defend the most basic right in the society.
And as we give those things away, then the people who are going to impose the order that we previously would have, fearing God, are going to be petty bureaucrats like the guy who's trying to take your stove.
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I don't know.
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I am so happy that at the Daily Wire now, with all the zillions of dollars that is coming through this company as people flee the woke corporations and they want to help fight back and build our own culture, and we've got all this cool We're making movies and we're making products.
We have finally acquired a piece of technology from the 1970s or earlier that will allow us to take live calls on this show, which I love because my favorite part of the show is when I get to talk to you in person.
So, we've got some calls here set up.
Let's see.
Who do we have?
We've got Daisy from Chicago.
Daisy, you are on the air.
Hey, Michael.
Can you hear me?
I can hear you.
How can I help you?
Wonderful.
So, I've been listening to your show for about a year now, and I wanted to press you on something.
You've alluded in the past that you think people shouldn't be allowed to cross-dress in public.
To me, and I suspect to pretty much everyone, there's a difference between a giant, burly dude in a pink miniskirt and stilettos than, say, a woman wearing a suit, or even a man wearing a woman's cardigan or women's skinny jeans.
Technically, that all qualifies as cross-dressing, but clearly it's not all as disruptive to society.
So my question is, do you really think it should be illegal or just discouraged?
And if you think it should be illegal, how would you define cross-dressing?
Really good question, Daisy.
I think that in the case of skinny jeans, skinny jeans should be illegal, not for cross-dressing, just because they're a hideous offense against style.
But that's a question, I guess, for another time.
You make a great point, which is that the line between cross-dressing and avant-garde fashion can be a little bit blurry.
I suppose that's true.
Nevertheless, we can kind of know it when we see it, I think.
I go back to Justice Potter Stewart, who was asked to define obscenity.
We have laws still in this country against obscenity.
We have through our whole nation's history.
And the line between pornography and art can be a little bit blurry in the way that you're describing fashion.
Nevertheless, Justice Stewart said, I may not be able to give you a perfectly precise description and definition of the difference, but we know it when we see it.
And I think that's true.
So this would involve a prudential judgment call on the part of the authorities, but so does all law enforcement.
Even the most ardent positivist who believes that the letter of the law is exactly what should govern us.
I wouldn't argue that there is no judgment, personal judgment, that's involved in handing out court decisions and in enforcing the law.
So we're going to have that anyway.
Politics is a human endeavor.
And so I trust that as people can distinguish between art and obscenity in 99% of cases, we probably could in the case of cross-dressing.
And then I would err on the side of caution, obviously.
You want to err on the side of not being too overbearing.
But I think right now...
We're erring on completely the other side.
We're just throwing our standards and norms completely out the window, and we're pretending that there's some constitutional right for a weirdo to cross-dress and jiggle around for kids at the library.
Is your objection to this idea of, well, not of passing new cross-dressing laws, but really just bringing back old ones?
I mean, we had laws against cross-dressing, including in San Francisco, for a lot of our country's history.
Is your objection that...
Is it that people have a right to cross-dress the stilettos and the feather boa and all the rest of it?
Or is your objection that as a practical matter it would be too hard to enforce?
Yeah, it's not so much as I think people have a right.
It just seems like if we tried to bring in some sort of cross-dressing laws, it wouldn't be practical.
Yeah, fair enough.
I mean, because your objection at least is not based on, I think, what a lot of people mistakenly hold as this extreme individualism that says we have the right to do whatever we want or something.
I mean, that is nowhere found in America's history or form of government.
So your objection is really just that you don't trust the government to get this done because they're basically incompetent.
And I share, I think, your suspicion of the government.
However, we do have to have laws.
The government, incompetent as it is, we do rely on the government to maintain order and to execute justice.
And so in this case, a lot of the reason people write it off is they say, well, it's sort of a trivial issue.
Who cares if some weirdo wants to wear a miniskirt and walk around New York City?
And I'm sympathetic to that argument.
My answer to it is, who cares?
The libs care.
The left has really, really been pushing this.
They put a lot of time and energy and money into normalizing this kind of stuff.
And I think they're doing it because they recognize that cultural issues really do matter.
It's not just fights over the tax rate that affect politics, but it's these little cultural things that if you're able to change the way people dress, the way people view men and women, the way people are educated, the way the culture talks about its own citizens. the way the culture talks about its own citizens.
If you're able to change all of that in a kind of subtle way, then without passing a single law or only minor kind of regulations— You have ultimately changed the culture.
And so I'm skeptical of the government.
I just think it's a fight that we have to engage in.
We've got to go to war with the army that we got.
Really, really good question though, Daisy.
Thank you for calling in.
Okay, let's turn now to Erin in the great Commonwealth of Virginia.
Hello, Erin.
Hi, Michael.
How can I help you?
So...
I just wanted to let you know, I'm also an Italian Catholic, so I love listening to your show.
But my question is about working in the public school system.
So I currently work at an elementary school that's really conservative and I'm lucky, but I'm finishing my degree in hopes of being a middle school math teacher.
So I'm wondering what advice you have for how to work in the public school system and not agree with or support their woke agenda.
I would recommend that you be wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove.
And depending on where you are, if you're in Virginia, there's a good shot that you're going to be in a pretty pre-lib school system.
If you were in Tennessee or Texas, your odds of being in a conservative school system would be a lot higher.
I'm not necessarily suggesting that you retreat from that fight, but I would recommend, one...
You know what you think and you know what your lines are and you know, okay, maybe you'll keep your mouth shut when in the teacher's break room they're talking about how terrible Trump is or whatever and you say, okay, this is not worth my time to pick this fight.
But you are going to speak up when they tell you you've got to refer to One of your 12-year-old male students is she.
So that's a line I'm not going to cross.
If I were a teacher, that would be a line that I would not cross.
I would not allow the school to force me to lie and to lie about an issue that is fundamental to human nature and a lie that will really end up damaging the poor students who are being exposed to it.
So I'd know what your lines are.
And then I would recommend having a backup plan is the other thing.
Because you know that you're going into the lion's den I think it's admirable that you're going in anyway, and I think education is obviously a very important thing.
I remain close with many of my teachers.
In fact, I keep up with my kindergarten teacher.
So I think that's a wonderful thing, and you could be a real lifeline for conservatives and sane people and Sicilians and Catholics at the school.
So that's all wonderful.
But you ought to have a backup plan because you're going in knowing...
That you face greater risk to your employment than the other people who are going in there.
You should go in with your eyes wide open and not be caught unawares when the libs try to tar and feather you for saying that boys are boys and girls are girls.
Best of luck.
I hope you do wonderful things and subvert all of the wokeness in whichever school you end up in.
Okay, let's turn now to Ozzy Ought.
It's an interesting name.
From Minnesota.
Am I pronouncing that correctly, Asiat?
Hi, Michael.
No, it's not.
It took my husband three years to learn how to pronounce my name.
How do I do it?
Asiat.
Yeah, that's right.
All right, I'll keep trying.
It might take me three years, but that's okay.
How can I help you?
Yes.
Yeah, so I'm a huge fan.
I was like, I can't believe you picked up my call.
Anyway, my husband and I, and you always put my stories on your stories when I tag you on Instagram, so thank you for that too.
My pleasure.
Thanks for tagging me.
I'm really glad I picked up.
I'm certainly glad one of the producers picked up the phone.
So, what's going on in Minnesota?
Oh, it's really cold and I really hate it because I was born in southern Russia and I hate cold.
And that's what my question is about.
So my husband and I are looking at moving from Minnesota to Tennessee.
We are both young entrepreneurs and want to hear your thoughts about people and life in Tennessee.
So what do you like the most about living there?
Ozzy Ott, you should move yesterday.
You should not even wait until we finish this call.
You can keep me on the line.
You can hang up now if you want.
Just come to Tennessee.
It is so great.
I just went back and visited my old friends in L.A. because I still do a show out there with PragerU called The Book Club, and so I go out a few times a year and we film episodes of The Book Club.
And I like it.
I go back, I see some of my friends.
Most of my friends have fled at this point.
But there's still some there.
And I miss the nice weather.
That's not something that you will miss in Minnesota.
Minnesota certainly does not have nice weather.
But I do miss certain things.
My restaurant, my cigar bar, my this, my that.
But I am so happy that I made the move.
Because what you get out of going to a red state...
It's not only you get to save a lot of money on taxes, not only do you get more normal people generally around you, not only do you frequently get your dollar going a lot further than they do in some of these blue metropolises, but you get the standard back to a sane place.
Any place you move to, you move to Tennessee, there's plenty of libs in Tennessee.
But the center of gravity there, the political center of gravity is not nearly as far over to the left.
If you're living in a place like California, the dividing line between right and left is do you trans the kids at four or do you wait to trans the kids at seven?
I mean, that's how far left it is.
I say this with almost no exaggeration.
Whereas in Tennessee, even the Democrats are still relatively normal.
And that grounding in- Look, we don't want everyone to just believe precisely exactly the same thing and to just behave like automatons.
We want there to be diversity and spice to life, but you want it to be within normal constraints.
Society is not a crazy jungle where everybody says and does whatever they want and we're basically all just barking at each other.
We want society to be a manicured garden.
And so when you move to a place like Tennessee, which I just adore, the boundaries of discourse and behavior are just more normal.
People are just way more normal here.
So I hope I've convinced you, Asiat, I hope to find you at some restaurant in Tennessee eating delicious fried chicken and enjoying the good weather.
Lovely to speak to you.
I think I can take one more question.
Let's Let's turn to Sam from California, from my old state.
Hello, Sam.
Hi, Michael.
Thanks for having me.
My pleasure.
What's up?
Well, I'm the CEO and founder of a new Christian free speech social network called Axe29 or axe29.online.
And I'm an ex-Facebook intelligence analyst.
And the reason why I'm calling is because we were recently deplatformed from using our ad account on Facebook.
Tell me more.
You've got my attention.
Well, you know, we started off not, you know, we were always conservative, but we started off, you know, very light on the political side.
But the moment we started talking about how our country is in grave danger from the communist elements, our ad accounts started getting all wonky on us.
And they declined our ad account seven times in the last week.
You know, I had heard that Facebook was going to make a move to suppress political content.
And of course the argument that Facebook made is, we're going to suppress political content across the board.
Usually when social media companies say that, what that really means is they're going to suppress the conservatives.
And maybe they'll give occasionally a little smack on the knuckles to Democrats.
But this is almost never enforced equally.
And so I'm not terribly surprised.
You say you're an ex-Facebook intelligence analyst.
Do you have any inside thoughts on exactly why you're being shut down?
I believe that it's because they don't want a Christian free speech social network.
A lot of the employees at these tech companies, they double as political activists.
And you see political activism more and more in the workplace.
And I believe in the last three years, you know, it's kind of converged into this amalgam of, you know, communism within social, either socialism or communism in the workplace.
Right, you know, it's funny to use those terms because, you know, I almost feel bad for the communists calling these people commies, you know.
Stalin was a very evil guy, but at least he was kind of manly, you know.
Yeah.
He recognized that men and women are different.
These guys, they want to take your property.
They want to take your rights away.
But they're somehow even kookier.
They somehow believe even more fantastical things.
Well, I wish you the best of luck.
I'm not surprised.
Facebook did show its hand by saying we're going to suppress political content.
The only way that we're going to do very much about this at this point, now that the big tech companies have achieved critical mass through fraud in many cases, saying that you're signing up for one service when in fact they're going to provide you a different kind of a service, and by exploiting legal loopholes that give them protections, they've now got a critical mass.
And so you're not going to succeed by just going out there and building your own Facebook.
We're going to succeed by wielding the political order.
But the really important point here is that in a...
Political order, in self-government, in a republic.
If a private or semi-private entity controls the public square, they control the whole political order.
And you and I, in America, we still have rights to come out there and wield our political power and say, no, we're not going to give away the public square.
We're not going to give away the country to woke wackos in Silicon Valley.