Ep. 1210 - TikTok Is Turning The Freakin' Frogs Gay
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TikTok’s CEO admits that the Chinese Communist Party can manipulate TikTok content, Uganda outlaws homosexuality, and school choice takes over America.
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The CEO of TikTok showed up to Capitol Hill yesterday to persuade lawmakers not to ban the social media app, and things did not go particularly well.
Do you disagree with FBI Director Wray and NSA Director Nakasone when they said that the CCP could have the capability to manipulate data and send it to the United States?
Do you disagree with their statement?
Their statement says could.
So do you disagree with that?
No, I don't disagree with that.
Okay, so it is possible that the CCP, under the auspices of ByteDance, which is your parent company, which you get paid from, has the ability to manipulate content that is being shared with 130 million Americans, yes?
Congressman, I watch this one, make sure I'm understanding all these questions.
The TikTok CEO admitted that the Chinese Communist Party is able to manipulate the extremely addictive content warping the minds of 130 million Americans every day.
China can spread highly targeted propaganda to half the country.
They can also spy on us, collecting countless data to use against us.
A big problem for our American government, which prefers to spy on us and spread propaganda and warp our minds itself.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
We will get to in just a moment.
My absolute favorite moment from any legislative committee hearing in the entire history of politics.
It might be my favorite political moment that I've ever seen on video.
But before we get to that, we've got to get to TikTok because everyone is reporting on the TikTok testimony as though it were just absolutely terrible, a total failure.
And it was always going to be a little bit awkward because the CCP does have a ton of access to TikTok and can use TikTok to push propaganda to half of the country.
And when we say push propaganda and manipulate content and warp minds, it's not exactly the same as when you're doom scrolling on TikTok.
The average user of TikTok uses the app for a few minutes a day.
The average user of Or the average user of Twitter, rather, uses it for a few minutes a day.
The average user of TikTok uses it for something like 56 minutes a day.
So it is highly, highly addictive.
You know, if you've ever been on it, it's like crack.
Just anywhere you look, it's another video with music and dancing and lights and it's just so totally engrossing.
So, yes, the CEO of TikTok Had to admit, okay, the CCP has access here.
Yes, okay, I wouldn't call it spying, but yeah, we're kind of spying on you.
Okay, fine.
But then, the COO of TikTok came in to do damage control.
That's Vanessa Pappas, who said that she felt the whole hearing was rooted in xenophobia.
This is the key to the TikTok testimony that people don't seem to be picking up on.
The COO wrote, we are committed to providing a safe, secure platform that fosters an inclusive space for our amazing, diverse communities to call home.
It's a shame today's conversation felt rooted in xenophobia.
Thank you to our employees who worked tirelessly to protect our platform and community.
This wasn't just a big flop accident.
Oh my gosh, what was TikTok thinking showing up to Capitol Hill?
Oh no!
TikTok knew the questions that they were going to be asked.
TikTok knew that the answers were going to be a little bit awkward.
That was baked in.
But what TikTok has done, and I suspect this will be successful, is they've now made an effort to reframe the debate about banning TikTok.
The idea of banning TikTok, certainly from government devices, but from all American devices, was gaining a lot of steam throughout the country.
It's a very popular idea.
And what TikTok has done is come in now and say, hold on, if you want to ban this Chinese spy app, that sounds kind of xenophobic, doesn't it?
You wouldn't want me to call you a racist, would you?
And that won't persuade serious Republicans with real national security concerns.
But that might persuade a lot of Democrats, that might even persuade people in the middle, because the worst thing to be called in America is racist.
But what about the claim?
The claim that this is xenophobic?
Yeah, I guess so.
It's not phobic because the fear is not irrational.
To have a fear of the Chinese Communist Party spying on you and pushing propaganda to half your country, that's not irrational.
It's a very rational fear.
But yes, the fear comes from the fact that these are foreigners doing it.
So if that's what xenophobia means today, then call us xenophobic, I guess.
That is a fear.
I pointed out at the top that the reason that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Google are so concerned about TikTok is not because of privacy concerns.
It's because of competition.
They don't want to have to compete for eyeballs.
The reason the government is so concerned about the CCP spying on us is our own government wants to spy on us.
Our own government wants to push propaganda to us.
And that's true.
I don't want The kind of liberal propaganda that comes at me from the government.
I don't want the kind of mass spying on me that we see from the United States government.
But there actually is a difference.
One's own government has much more of a right to do these kinds of things than a foreign government.
So we should treat these things differently, and we should treat them differently precisely because one of them is foreign, the others are domestic.
All of that said, they can ban TikTok, they can not ban TikTok.
I don't really care.
I'm more interested now in reigning in Facebook, Twitter, I guess we already have Elon there, so we'll put Twitter aside for a second, YouTube, Google, all the rest of it.
Those are the people spreading propaganda and spying on us that I'm more concerned with at the moment.
But there's nothing wrong in principle with treating TikTok differently.
These are different powers with different cultures.
We're now told in the United States that we have got to respect other cultures, never criticize other cultures.
We Americans, we are the source of all the evil in the world and so we need to be much more restrained.
How dare you ever go into any of these avatar-like Civilizations that are living in peace and harmony with nature and then we go in with our white culture and our evil white capitalism or whatever and we mess up the countries.
So that has been the push largely from the left to say stop interfering in other places around the world.
You have no right to do it.
One place that you see this especially would be Colonialism in Africa.
Well, there's a new law that just passed in Uganda that confounds some of this liberal argument.
We're going to talk about it.
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For how many decades now have we heard, we need to end colonialism in Africa.
We need to end neo-colonialism in Africa.
Colonialism was the worst thing that ever happened and we need to let the African nations govern themselves.
Okay, so we've started doing that now.
We're letting the African nations govern themselves.
Are the liberals happy about that?
I don't think so.
There's a headline here from The Guardian.
Ugandan MPs pass bill imposing death penalty for homosexuality.
That's African countries governing themselves.
And it's kind of funny that it's the liberals who are the ones who say this is outrageous, America is so terrible, stop spreading your evil ideas.
Please, Ugandans, live as you like.
Very good.
We are going to kill all of the homosexuals.
Not like that.
Did you what?
It's like that wonderful video from the from the African newscast.
You are gay.
Why are you gay?
The liberals don't they can't understand that because in their view, Every single culture is liberal, and liberal in a 2023 kind of liberal way.
All the cultures are just the same.
The only difference is some people have more money and some people have less money, and some people get a little more sunshine, some people get a little more fog, but we all basically agree on everything.
That's not true.
So the liberals, paradoxically, are the most inclined to impose their values on the world, but one of those values is not imposing your values on the world.
So how does one make sense of that?
The way they're going to make sense of that is they're probably going to go in and reimpose their values.
Now, as far as I'm concerned, the death penalty is a little harsh.
I'm all for standards and sort of maintaining certain behaviors in the public square, but death penalty seems a little strong.
But if Uganda is going to have self-determination, this is what they're going to do.
And there are certain areas where African nations are doing this.
Where I think a lot of American conservatives would say, hey, African nations, can you come run for the legislature over here?
The libs are constantly trying to push abortion on Africa.
Africa says we don't want abortion.
The libs are constantly trying to push contraception on Africa.
The Africans are saying we don't want contraception.
We don't, we don't want that imposition.
That's the imposition of your culture, Westerners.
You think the imposition of your culture is, I don't know, capitalism, and racism, and this is... No, every country on earth is extremely racist, other than the West, okay?
You're not exporting racism or anything like that.
What you're exporting is the LGBT flag, and condoms, and abortion, and all the trappings of liberalism.
It's the new kind of colonialism.
When the libs protest colonialism, you better bring those protest signs and take a look in the mirror.
Speaking of cultural differences, a Michigan college has just announced a number of new graduation ceremonies.
This is Grand Valley State University.
The multicultural affairs office over at Grand Valley State has now announced there will be graduation ceremonies or celebrations for black students.
There's the black graduation.
Asian students.
Latinx students.
Talk about colonialism and cultural overriding of norms and tradition.
Latinx students.
Native American students.
LGBTQIA plus students.
There's one group of students I can't, there's actually a couple that I can't quite find on this list.
Where is the...
Where's the white student graduation?
The Multicultural Affairs Office has said that won't exist.
And there's no... Where's the, I don't know, the Christian or let's say just broadly religious student graduation, maybe to counter the more novel sexual revolution graduation?
No, none of that's there.
And the response of many conservatives is, this is not going to go on forever.
At a certain point, white people are going to get extremely angry about this and they're going to push back and say, no, you can't just, you can't make us second class citizens.
We're not going to tolerate that.
But I'm not, I'm actually not totally convinced.
I think the libs probably will get away with it, at least for a very long time.
And they'll do that because white people don't have a racial consciousness.
And it's one of the delightful things about white people is we just don't think about race that much.
We think that race is a relatively unimportant aspect of our identity.
We think about religion a lot.
We think about culture a lot.
We think about nation.
We think about affinity to different, I don't know, hobbies and vocations.
Race is really, really low on the list.
But for every other racial group in the world, it's much higher.
According to Pew, white racial consciousness is 15%.
For Asians, Hispanics, and Blacks, it's over 50% for all of them.
And for Black people, it's over 70%.
So as long as that persists, then you're going to get more of these sorts of graduation ceremonies.
Though there is a kind of subtle There is a subtly colonial or racist undertone to this whole thing, which is, oh, there's the Latino graduation, there's the gay graduation, there's the black graduation, but the main graduation, that's the white graduation.
I don't think the Libs are totally conscious of it, but it's the same accident of their Invectives against colonialism and racism that you see in their affairs in Africa.
Speaking of wokeness at schools, there is some good news out of higher education.
You remember a week or two ago, Stanford Law had that horrific display where a judge, the Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan, came to town and was giving a lecture.
And these lunatic students, these students who obviously should never have been admitted, certainly should be expelled, certainly should never become lawyers, They come out, they start screaming obscenities, weird sexual obscenities, all sorts of four-letter words at this guy to shut him up from speaking at a Federalist Society event.
So, at that point, a dean of diversity and inclusion walks in, takes the side of the screaming banshee students, starts yelling at the judge, and I said at the time, if the students aren't expelled and the dean isn't fired, then we're just seeing empty talk.
Okay, yes, Stanford apologizes, but talk is cheap.
Okay, show me some action.
Well, we're starting to see some action.
The dean of Stanford Law School, Jenny Martinez, doubled down on her support of free speech in a memo on Wednesday.
And then the diversity dean, Tyrion Steinbach, joined the disruptors and she has been placed on leave.
She's been placed on leave.
She now just moments ago published an op-ed in which she came out against free speech.
She said that her job was to de-escalate the situation, not to defend Stanford's free speech policy.
First of all, your job is to enforce the rules and standards of the university broadly.
You're an administrator at the university.
That should be one of your jobs.
Now, she's right in as much as her role as Dean of diversity is to undermine everything the university stands for.
That's what these administrators do.
Their job is to stir the pot.
They are not doing their job if they're not constantly stirring the pot, undermining the rules of the university, undermining the pursuit of truth, undermining academic standards, and ginning up racial grievance about nonsense and imaginary problems.
So that is her job.
She's been placed on leave now.
Being placed on leave is usually what happens when your employers are hoping that something will blow over.
So we gotta go further.
And I think she may have helped us go further here, because by publishing this op-ed, she's basically daring Stanford to fire her.
And Stanford should fire her.
If Stanford doesn't fire her now, it's gonna look so, so weak.
It's true that firing her is gonna lead to all sorts of lawsuits.
It's okay, there are plenty of good lawyers at Stanford Law, I've been told.
Go for it.
We've also got some great news, speaking of schools.
On the education front.
We so rarely have good news on the education front.
But Florida has become the sixth state to enact school choice into law.
That's after West Virginia, Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas.
Now we've got Florida.
Why is Florida doing this?
One, because Ron DeSantis is a very good governor and he's obviously running for president.
So he's gonna score as many wins on that board as he can before he formally announces.
What explains the push in all of these other states?
Why school choice has become more popular?
Republicans have been talking about school choice forever.
Why is it now?
The consensus wisdom Is that the reason that school choice is winning now is because during lockdown, the kids came home and the parents were able to see what they were being taught in schools because the learning started to take place on laptops and the parents could be in the back of the room.
And the parents were so shocked at what the kids were being taught in schools that this renewed a push for school choice.
Maybe that plays a role into it.
I have a little bit of a different take, though.
I think that one of the big reasons that school choice is winning now is because parents recognized the possibility of alternatives in education.
I think humans are creatures of habit and we can get stuck in a rut and we can lose our imagination and think that if something is a certain way right now it always has to be that way.
And so, yes, parents saw that their kids' education was even crazier than they previously thought, but they knew it was a little bit crazy.
The kids are coming home and talking about all this weird stuff, the transgender and the pansgender and the thank-you-ma'am gender and all the rest of it.
So they know that.
It's like that scene in The Sopranos when A.J.
comes home, and he's talking to Anthony and Carmella, and he says, America's a terrible place, and Columbus was a genocidal maniac.
And then Tony starts screaming at him.
Parents know that their kids are being taught nonsense in schools.
They didn't know there was an alternative.
And then for two years, the kids were sitting at home on their computers Parents were exploring homeschool pods, they were exploring certain private education methods, and they were recognizing that the education was not particularly high quality.
And they said, wow, another option is available.
I think if people just see that there are choices, if people just see that they're not stuck with whatever the libs hand them, that gives people a lot of encouragement.
Encourage is not only a virtue, but the prerequisite for all of the other virtues.
Push ahead.
We've got six states here.
That means that we've got 44 to go.
We need to restore balance to our education.
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My favorite comment yesterday actually does not come from the show.
My favorite comment comes from the Democratic Socialists of Purdue University.
So, you know, I'm in Indiana right now.
I was at Purdue last night.
There were hundreds and hundreds of protesters.
There were 500 or more protesters at a separate venue down the street where they were performing a drag show.
It may have been like 800 protesters or something.
But then even just right outside the lecture hall, there were at least 300 protesters last night screaming and shouting during my whole speech.
Luckily, the room was relatively soundproof, so we were able to get through it.
Protesters holding up all these sorts of signs, kill yourself Michael Knowles, kill the fascists, Michael Knowles is a fascist.
Now I did the math there and you see if I am a fascist and they're holding up a sign that says kill all the fascists, that would appear to be a call to kill me.
I was no math major in college.
But I mean screaming like banshees, obscenities, trying to block people, calling people all sorts of terrible names.
They obviously had tried to get the event shut down previously and And this is the quote that the young democratic socialists of America at Purdue gave to the college fix.
They said, the presence of Michael Knowles on a university campus should cause embarrassment to anyone who values intellectual honesty and free inquiry.
Is that?
The presence of a conflicting viewpoint should embarrass anyone who wants free inquiry.
Just as coherent as everything else they say, right down to the suggestion that a man can really be a woman.
I now have to get to speaking of Florida, my absolute favorite clip I've ever seen from any legislative committee hearing.
I guess at this committee hearing they were hearing objections and commentary from various constituents and so people put their names forward to be called on and then this legislator would read the names that were put into the hat to be called on during the committee.
You might see where this is going.
It was like an episode of The Simpsons.
Florida Station of Counties, waves in opposition.
Pamela Birch Fort, Florida State Conference of NAACP Branches, waves in opposition.
Anita Dick is an opponent.
Waves in opposition.
Holden Hiscock is also an opponent.
Waves in opposition.
Jimmy, only Jimmy.
I have nothing to say about that.
I just found it really, really funny.
And I was identifying as my eight-year-old self when I heard that, and I giggled quite a lot.
And I always love when there are moments of levity in politics.
It's not the legislator's fault.
He's just reading the names in front of him.
The Seymour Butts!
We got Seymour Butts here for commentary on the bill!
That's great.
That's great.
I really like that.
Everyone's so angry all the time in politics.
Kill this person and not this.
Think of the children.
And when you get a Holden macaque or whatever the name was, that's really great.
Most people are angry.
Like Jeffrey Marsh.
Jeffrey Marsh, who is this Super, like the creepiest guy you ever saw out of the weirdest horror movie ever.
Promoter of transgenderism.
He, like, cast out of central casting to be the uber villain of transgenderism.
Jeffrey Marsh is angry with his critics.
It's okay to be angry.
Anger is often your body, your mind, your soul's way of telling you that you are worth something.
That other people are worth something.
That justice counts for something.
So no, don't be afraid.
Don't be um... Don't be afraid to show your anger.
Don't be afraid.
It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.
Speaking of transgender representation in cinema and popular culture, what of his point?
His point is anger is really good.
You should be angry.
Use that anger.
Channel that anger.
Libs say this all the time.
Channel that anger!
Take that... You don't usually hear conservatives say this.
Because anger, 999 times out of a thousand, is going to lead you in the wrong direction.
Drew has this line, he says, anger is the devil's cocaine.
I'm not saying there is no place for righteous anger.
There is a far greater place for righteousness, broadly.
Yes, there can be a case for righteous anger, but most of the time that you are getting angry, you are falling into a temptation, and you're falling into the sin of wrath, and it's going to lead you astray, and you're going to feel justified in doing it, because your enemies might really be as bad as you think they are, and the way that they persecute you might really be as bad as you think it is.
But you are called to patience.
You are called not to indulge in wrath.
It's like when you punish a child.
If you want to punish your child or spank your child or anything like that, what do they always tell you?
I'm such a softie with my kids.
I gotta get tougher before I totally spoil my kids.
But what do the educators always tell you?
What does your grandma always tell you?
Don't punish a child when you're angry.
Wait until you've calmed down.
If you're dealing with a rogue employee, like I'm dealing with Mr. Davies all the time, you know, gallivanting around, carousing, doing all sorts of nonsense.
When I'm going to, you know, bring down the hammer, you don't do it when you're angry, because you're going to lose your rational faculties.
You're going to lose control.
One last button on the transgender issue.
I meant to get to this yesterday, too.
There's a letter from the Vice President of the United States to Dylan Mulvaney.
Dylan Mulvaney, the most famous woman in America.
She writes, with the letterhead of the Vice President, Dear Dylan, I send you my warmest greetings as you celebrate your 365th day of living authentically.
Thank you for courageously sharing your story and your journey.
I appreciate your continued advocacy for transgender equality, including during your visit to the White House last year.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sincerely, Kamala Harris.
Authentically.
Yes, yes, if there is one word that comes to mind when I think of Dylan Mulvaney, it is authentic.
Of course, he's not living authentically.
He's living the opposite of authentically.
He is a man, and he's pretending to be a woman.
But furthermore, there was a clip that just came out of Dylan Mulvaney, before he dressed up like a woman, on The Price is Right.
And he was behaving in exactly the same way he behaves now, in a way that he says is how a woman behaves.
Very over-the-top, very foppish, and attention-seeking.
Now, is that authentic?
I don't know.
I mean, it's clearly performed.
It's obviously very, very conscious.
But maybe he just is authentically an attention seeker.
He's certainly very theatrical.
He was a Broadway actor.
The emphasis on authenticity is a big problem in our culture.
Because the focus on authenticity turns all of our attention on ourselves.
Say, am I, that thing that I just did, is that really me?
Is that really me or was I doing someone else?
I don't know, what's my real desire?
What's my true sexual inclination?
What's my true fashion style?
What's my true professional calling?
What's my true, what's my authentic, what's my this, what's my that?
And it's a fool's errand to think in that way, because a man wrapped up in himself makes a small package indeed.
Especially because man is mimetic.
We grow, we learn, we are educated by imitating others.
That's true of little babies, that's true of adults.
We imitate the way that someone we admire speaks.
We imitate the way that they think.
We imitate the things that they read.
We imitate the way that they dress.
We imitate everything.
We imitate their desires.
We desire certain things because they desire those things.
The way to live in a flourishing way is not to just look at yourself and then imitate yourself in this infinitely regressive way and recursive way until you're talking about nothing at all.
It's to look elsewhere.
Say, how do they live?
Hey, that good person over there, I'm going to imitate that person.
I'm going to live authentically as that person, or that even better person, or ultimately what you're trying to do is imitate God.
This is the idea of the imitation of Christ, and this is the idea of putting your focus all on God, and then trying to behave that way.
What would Jesus do?
If you do that, you're not going to be living authentically as yourself, but paradoxically, you will be living most authentically as yourself, because you were made in the image and likeness of God, and you were made to do good.
So do it.
Let me ask you something.
Speaking of God, what are you ruled by?
There's a good chance you are ruled by something, whether you know it or not.
That's inevitable.
So, that is what Jordan Peterson is talking about in episode 10 of Exodus.
I am less interested in the interior person, morally speaking, than you are, than probably any of you are, and it's largely, I do believe, because I come from a behaviorist, law-based religion.
We care how you act.
That's why we don't have a claim that if you look at another woman with lust, it's as if you've committed adultery with her.
I am, as I said yesterday, I thank God for America's Christians, and Maimonides said if it weren't for Christians, the world wouldn't know about the Torah.
I'm a big Christian fan, but obviously Christianity and Judaism are not identical religions, and we have no equivalent that if you look upon another woman with lust, it's as if you have committed adultery with your heart.
There's only one way to commit adultery in Judaism, and it's with a different organ.
And I'm not being cute, I'm being very realistic.
In Exodus, Jordan is joined by a group of esteemed scholars, theologians, artists, and my great friend Dennis Brager to discuss one of those seminal books in the Bible.
New episodes are coming online every week exclusively for Daily Wire Plus members.
Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe to watch Exodus.
Now, finally, finally, we have arrived at my favorite time of the week.
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Take it away.
Mr. NOLS, I have an awkward question for you.
About masturbation, of all things.
I'm a married man in my 30s, I have a child, and I just have to know, is masturbation without porn a sin?
I feel very ashamed when I succumb to the natural urge to masturbate, and I don't know if that is because I've grown up thinking it was sinful, and I psychologically am wired to feel that way, or if it truly is wrong.
Of course, so much of the internet tells me to just have at it and be guilt-free, but I don't know how to not have guilt, and I get jealous of those that say they have no guilt.
So, a sincere thank you for any wisdom on this matter.
Yes, it's wrong and you shouldn't do it.
You feel guilt because that's your moral conscience.
The people who say that they don't have guilt have one, dulled their moral conscience and two, are lying to themselves.
And the way you know they're lying to themselves is because of a great bit of Wisdom from that political philosopher, Norm Macdonald, who said, you know, when you're going into your room to do that thing, you know, with yourself, you know, and what do you do?
Do you open up the window shades really wide open?
And you say, hey, everybody!
No, you don't.
You close the blinds.
You close the window shades.
And you feel ashamed.
People don't talk about that sort of thing openly because it's degrading.
It's very, very degrading.
And it's obviously not what your body was built for and your sexuality was built for.
Things have a purpose.
The purpose of this glass, not quite as good as a leftist here's tumbler, but the purpose of it, is actually to drink wine, though I'm not a lush quite that much.
I'm drinking coffee in the morning.
The purpose of the paper is for me to read the show.
The purpose of my watch is to tell time.
The purpose of the sweater is to keep me warm.
The purpose of my eyes is to see.
The purpose of my mouth is to eat and to taste.
And the purpose of some of those other parts, like the ones that Dennis Prager was talking about earlier, the purpose of that is for a woman, not for yourself.
So, yeah, that's wrong.
How do you resist that?
Obviously, sex is a huge driver for men in particular.
You're married, so I would encourage you to have a conversation with your wife and maybe say, hey, look, you know, I am so drawn to you that we need to express that a little bit more for the generation and education of children and for the unity of the spouses and so that I don't fall into this sin, which is obviously a sin.
Okay, keep going.
Yeah.
Hey, Michael, I've been thinking about the possibility of impeaching Joe Biden.
And I generally agree with you when you say that it's not expedient for Republicans at the moment to do so.
But with all of the corruption that's coming out about Biden's family and Hunter and the laptop and all that.
If he were to be impeached, I feel like this would be a game changer for the Republican field in 2024, because it would set Ron DeSantis apart as being someone among those three people, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, that has not been impeached when the other two have.
And you can't say that about Donald Trump.
So do you think that an impeachment of Joe Biden would Maybe.
make a nomination of Ron DeSantis more likely?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks.
Maybe.
There are plenty of reasons why people prefer Ron DeSantis to Trump, but I'm not sure that that would necessarily be one of them.
It might sway people who don't pay very close attention to politics and to just hear a talking point.
I'm the only guy who hasn't been impeached.
But as impeachment becomes nakedly political and not based on the legal criteria that are outlined in the Constitution for impeachment, impeachment will become a badge of honor.
The The risk for DeSantis there is that people will say, wait, this guy wasn't even impeached?
Oh, he must not be in the fight.
This guy, hold on, this guy hasn't irritated the libs enough that they've impeached him over nothing yet?
I don't know, I'm a little skeptical of him now.
Whereas with Trump, we know that both of his impeachments were so preposterous that it made one think, wow.
If they're going after this guy so hard, based on nothing, he must be right over the target.
So, I don't think it would really affect the race much at all, and I think if you want to boost DeSantis, I would just focus on his many other virtues.
I think actually calling attention to his relative cleanness is a downside for DeSantis.
Because you know they're going to muddy him up.
The moment that he becomes a genuine threat at the national level, they're going to muddy him up terribly.
So who cares?
At that point, why not go with the candidate who's already had his dirty laundry aired?
Next question.
Hey Big Mike, it's Damaris from Arizona, and I have a presidential question for you.
I really enjoyed watching your Path to the Presidency interviews, and in particular, I took special note of Nikki Haley's interview.
I don't really know her, and I appreciate your interview because I feel like I'm a little more informed about what she believes in.
Frankly, I don't have anything against her or her running, but I'm a little hesitant to back any female candidate for presidency because I do think it should still be a man's position.
I might be a little old-fashioned in my thinking, but that's just the way I think.
I also like you think it's too early to get fully behind one person in particular.
So knowing that, I've worded my question very carefully.
Could you perhaps sway me or outline the potential positives to a female presidency?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts and thank you for being the best host at The Daily Wire.
Thank you so much, Damaris.
Thank you for your very kind comments and for using my true title, Big Mike.
Best nickname I've ever had.
You want me to outline all the advantages of a woman president?
That could be the topic of a book, perhaps, if I wanted to revisit my magnum opus.
No, I'm joking.
I'm joking.
I think that there could be some advantages of a woman president.
Maybe.
But it depends a little bit how you view the presidency.
There have been great female rulers in history, but they've tended to be monarchs.
Rather than prime ministers or presidents.
The president in the United States is weird because he's a little bit monarch and he's a little bit prime minister.
In other countries they divide that office up so that the head of state, the president, is mostly ceremonial and meant to unite the country, whereas the prime minister is the efficient politician who is driving at policy and day in and day out of government.
In the UK they've got a king.
Who is dignified, or supposed to be dignified, and he unites the country, and then they've got the Prime Minister, which is the efficient politician.
In the U.S., the President is both of those things.
So you think of some of the great Queen Victoria, very important and wonderful world leader.
Queen Elizabeth II, totally beloved.
Elizabeth I, for that matter, quite beloved.
Cleopatra, quite a prominent and important politician.
A woman would have an advantage of attracting the loyalty of men.
In the way that you would have that loyalty for your grandmother, that Queen Elizabeth, I think, certainly in her later years, was able to cultivate.
Or a loyalty like courtly love, you know, the idea that you would pledge your loyalty to the wife of a lord and because women are just so much more sympathetic and men put women on a pedestal.
That maybe could work.
There's one example, really, of a really tough-as-nails, conservative, efficient political leader in recent times.
That would be Margaret Thatcher.
So, you know, sometimes women can twist the knife a little bit better than men can.
They can be cool as a cucumber and do it.
But it's a rare woman who can do that.
But otherwise, no.
I would not go to the ballot box saying, all right, finally we get a woman president.
There are advantages that women could have, but it would not really motivate me.
Okay, next question.
Hello again, Mr. Knowles.
This is, once again, Slap My Base, and I have another question I wanted you to express your opinion on.
What are your thoughts on citizens' arrests, or citizen justice, if you will?
I started mulling over the idea that citizens who are properly armed know the difference between right and wrong.
Actually tend to produce more results than just waiting and calling for the police and it reduces fatalities of good people but I wanted to take a look at the possibility of the negative consequences whereas in If somebody does not know the difference between right and wrong, but they think that they're just to take out somebody who disagrees with them, i.e.
the libs, if you tell them that they can't use the women's bathroom and then they drag you out and they beat you to death because of that, then how would we define what is the actual definition of right and wrong for this sort of thing, even though we all know what the difference between right and wrong is?
Thanks.
We can infer from the moral order and deduce what is right and what is wrong using our moral conscience, and that is guided by tradition, by the inherited wisdom, by the civil law.
We can use our faculties of reason to work through these questions.
But you're saying, what about in the heat of the moment?
We have a right to self-defense, to defend ourselves.
Take down the immediate threat.
But in the example that you've just given, the people who go into a woman's bathroom, drag the guy out who's mostly just minding his business, then beat him to death on the sidewalk, they would not just be defending themselves or defending women.
They would be engaging in an act of vigilantism and murder in that case.
So vigilantism, very, very bad.
To say that you have a right to self-defense, It's not to say that you now have the right to go be a vigilante and go find every bad guy like Batman.
It's to say you have a right to stop the threat and then allow the civil authority To come in and do what it does.
You have to be restrained in that regard, and so I don't see any fear of that.
You always have the right to defend yourself.
That just comes from the law of self-preservation.
But to go further than that, you have to give it up to the civil authority, even if the civil authority is corrupt and stupid and lazy and does all sorts of problems, as is often the case.
That would be how you protect against that, and in the long run, how you have a better shot of ensuring Justice.
Today's Fake Headline Friday.
I've got more mailbag questions to get to.
We will get to that.
You will help me pick the correct, or the fake headline rather, out of the five that Mr. Davies is trying to stump me on.
The only way to do it is to become a member of the Chaim du Lachem.
Not Juhoi Poloi out here on YouTube.
Just Like a leech, sucking up all this free content without parting with your hard-earned money so that you can help me figure out which headline is fake on Fridays.
