Ep. 1227 - Black Teens Loot Chicago, Woke Citizens Cry For Police
Teenagers rampage through the streets of Chicago. Budweiser is attempting yet another piece of damage control to ease Dylan, Mulvaney controversy, and a major bridal retailer goes bankrupt.
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On Saturday night, more than 100 teenagers rampaged through the streets of Chicago.
I'm not talking about juvenile delinquent little hijinks.
They weren't just throwing eggs at houses and toilet paper on trees.
These teenagers were torching cars.
They were beating the living daylights out of each other and others.
They were attempting to breach police barricades.
Two boys, a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old, got shot.
How did Chicago's new mayor-elect react?
He urged people not to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.
Yes, if only there were a couple more after-school reading programs, then maybe these high school seniors wouldn't have felt the need to torch cars and shoot people.
It's not their fault, you see.
You've got to stop demonizing them.
I for one think we should stop demonizing demonizing.
To demonize means to portray something as wicked and threatening.
If shooting people and burning down a city isn't threatening, I'm not sure what is.
Our problem is not that we demonize things.
It's that we demonize the wrong things.
We demonize normal social behavior.
We demonize the distinction between men and women.
We demonize family and patriotism and Christianity.
It's wrong to demonize good things.
But it's good to demonize bad things.
That's how we recognize threats.
That's how we protect ourselves against them.
That's how we prevent the rest of the country from turning into the cautionary tale of Chicago.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
This episode is brought to you by one of my absolute favorite companies on earth, Good Ranchers.
Free bacon, great meat, a secure price, and an extra 20 bucks off with my promo code NOLS.
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Got a lot to get to speaking of food and beverage companies.
Budweiser just keeps on digging.
They've got a new commercial to try to get themselves out of this Dylan Mulvaney problem.
Not working very well.
We will get to that in just a little bit.
First, though, speaking of demons, got a lot of demon talk on the show recently.
Well, speaking of demons, AI is advancing.
Nations are searching for AI dominance.
AI is advancing much more rapidly than a lot of people could have predicted.
If you think about what AI art looked like even six months ago, it was extremely rudimentary.
The computers couldn't figure out how to do hands.
When you typed in prompts, it came out all weird and blurry.
Today, AI art is absolutely incredible.
It's masterful.
You can type in a prompt, you will get amazing results very quickly, usually on the first try.
You're seeing how AI is developing at solving problems.
You're seeing how AI is developing at using language.
It's moving fast.
So fast that the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, is joining a lot of other big tech executives to call for regulation on AI.
Now the cynical read here would be that Sundar Pichai is just calling for regulation on AI so that he can get a strategic advantage.
But Google's been working on AI for a long time.
Google is as advanced at AI as pretty much anybody else out there.
And Pichai is saying that regulations, quote, should align with human values, including morality.
He says, it's not for a company to decide.
This is why I think the development of AI needs to include not just engineers, but social scientists, ethicists, philosophers, and so on.
He's saying that this is such a transformative technology.
This is going to have such widespread effects for human life that we need to take a pause here and just make sure not only that we can do this, but that we should do this and figure out how we should do it before the technology escapes our hands.
Notice that list.
He said it shouldn't just be the tech guys, but it should be social scientists, ethicists, philosophers, and so on who make these decisions.
You notice anyone missing from that list?
Which group should have maybe some say over how our society looks and is governed and will grow to be moving forward?
You ever think about the people?
Aren't we supposed to live in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people?
I agree, big tech executives shouldn't be the only people making these decisions.
But are social scientists all that much better?
Ethicists?
I don't know.
There aren't a lot of great ethicists these days.
Philosophers?
What kind of philosophy are they peddling?
What about the people and the people's representatives?
This is the one group that Sundar Pichai won't list because our tech executives and our corporations generally and our bureaucracy and most of the people that hold the power in this country They don't respect the people, and they don't respect the people's representatives, and they acknowledge that the people don't really have much power anymore, and they don't think that the people should have any power.
They are just as dismissive of the people as anyone else.
Senator Pichai has the right idea here, which is that you can't just let three billionaires decide the future of humanity.
But the one group they exclude is the one group that theoretically is supposed to govern.
The people.
No respect for that whatsoever.
But the technology is advancing.
These doomsday predictions are getting closer to reality.
And this is not just the bots that are seeking the destruction of humanity, and this is not just all the bots that are going to take your jobs.
This is also bots that are going to cut at the core of human social interactions.
These are bots That are, as I have predicted now for some years, are going to be making really, really weird porn.
So, got an article right here.
Associated Press.
Deepfake porn could be a growing problem amid the AI race.
I said the moment that AI started to come out, I said that very soon AI is going to be so good that people are not going to look for porn just from the regular porn channels anymore.
They're going to want to make their own porn, and they'll be able to do it with anybody.
The girl down the street, the next door neighbor, the pretty girl in your math class.
And using just a picture or two, what people are going to do is construct their own kind of weird, creepy porn, obviously without the consent of the people who are being depicted.
And it's going to be pretty realistic.
And then I said, when the AI porn reaches a sufficient level, and the sex robots reach a sufficient level, then the human race is going to go extinct because people are going to lock themselves in their rooms and live in this solitary chamber where they're surrounded only by their own fantasies. then the human race is going to go extinct because You might say, Michael, that can't happen.
That's too dystopian.
We're already doing that to a large degree, and we're enshrining it in public law. .
We are already encouraging people to live in their own fantasy world, divorced from reality, especially on issues of gender and sex, but on a whole host of other issues as well.
People are retreating into their safe spaces.
And it's not just the little snowflakes on the college campuses as we used to make fun of them.
It's everybody is retreating into their own safe spaces and their own echo chambers online and their own virtual reality.
Now, The good news, the silver lining in the storm cloud of the AI deepfake porn, is that the result of this will be something that I called for in my book Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.
Hello, thank you.
The result of this will be what was missing from the Sundar Pichai comments on the development of AI.
The result of this will be the people, once again, reasserting some control over standards.
The result of this will be the reassertion of obscenity law.
It has to be.
Unless we're going to live in a society where you're free to make obscene videos that very realistically depict all sorts of people who don't consent to it, then the law is going to have to, once again, clearly distinguish between obscene material and material that is not obscene.
And it's not exactly a science, and it's just as Potter Stewart says, it's not that you can exactly define pornography, but you know it when you see it.
We're going to have to do that if any of this deepfake porn is going to be actionable.
If you have the right not to be depicted in graphic pornography, and if our country is going to recognize that, then our country has to recognize first what is porn and what isn't porn, and then take action against the obscene materials.
It will determine if we will have a standard of obscenity.
That is good news.
We will reassert that the people have a right to define our own standards.
That's good.
That's bad news for the technocrats and the bureaucrats and the master of the universe tech people.
But the people, you will see an acceleration of this rising populism that you saw creep up during the Trump campaign.
That will have to happen.
Because the alternative is to lose society entirely.
Speaking of weird sex stuff, I made it onto a new show, okay?
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I think I've made it.
As far as critics of transgenderism go, I've reached the peak.
I can never get any higher.
I was obliquely referenced on RuPaul's Drag Race.
You ain't eradicating us, honey.
- Body down. - Letting them all know.
- Yes.
- You ain't eradicating us, honey. - You ain't eradicating us, honey.
So this choice of words, I don't think I'm taking a step too far to say this is a direct response to my seat back speech where I use this word eradicating that all the libs went crazy about.
Even the White House misrepresented what I said.
But I did use that word eradicating.
I said, for the good of society, especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life.
The whole preposterous ideology at every level.
The fact that drag queens on this show Are pushing back against my comments is a little weird because are drag queens transgender?
I never, I always thought of those two groups as distinct.
Transgenderism is the idea that a man who puts on a dress is really a woman.
Drag shows are a joke.
They're a punchline.
The drag performers know that they're men.
That's what's so funny about drag.
That's what defines drag is that they're men who dress up in these ridiculous caricature costumes of women.
Put on shows and then they take the clothing off afterward.
In fact, I've heard pro-transgender activists attack drag queens for making a mockery of transgenderism in the same way that a black activist might take issue with a white performer putting on blackface.
So what is it now?
Is it all kind of the same?
Is it all being blended together?
What is this about?
The reason that all of these groups band together certain times, the drag queens and the transvestites, the transgender identifying transvestites, even though they seem to not have much in common, the reason that the feminists and the transgender movement sometimes have some alignment is because all of these movements are directed at abolishing normality.
Abolishing normal life, normal society, the society that for 2,000 years we've called Christendom, informed by and animated by Christianity.
That's what they're after.
And so all sorts of weird groups that often bicker among themselves, they will unite to attack us.
This is why This is why I'm so pleased that the CPAC speech reset the conversation as it did.
Because the Libs thought they had won on transgenderism, they thought the whole debate was just about, should we trans the five-year-olds or wait until they turn eight?
And then my speech said, no, transgenderism is completely wrong, it doesn't make any sense, and we shouldn't tolerate it in society.
This is the topic, by the way, of my debate tonight at University of Pittsburgh.
So I've had this debate on the books for well over a month.
We had a really top scholar, this guy, Professor McCloskey, Donald McCloskey, who now goes by Deirdre, and he was going to debate the issue, and then he pulled out at the last minute because I suspect he felt that he was going to lose.
His view was indefensible.
So, lest the debate get cancelled, we have a pinch hitter, a guy named Brad Palumbo, Who is not T-identifying, but he's lumped in with the LGB, at least he's very down with the rainbow.
And so we will be debating, should the law regulate transgenderism?
And if you've got your plans to come out there to Pitt tonight, I can't wait to see you.
I assume the event is sold out, but maybe show up if there's a standby line.
A lot of times what the libs do is they'll reserve a lot of seats and then they'll either not show up or they'll show up and walk out very quickly so it looks like it's an emptier hall.
So there's a shot we'll have that.
Should be a lot of fun over at Pittsburgh.
And many thanks to Brad Palumbo for filling in and making a slightly more middle-of-the-road version of the argument that Professor McCloskey was afraid to make.
Speaking of the relationship between the sexes, some really bad news.
And it actually comes out of retail business.
The bad news is that David's Bridal has filed for bankruptcy.
What do I care about David's Bridal?
Not very much about the story itself.
I don't like what this says about the culture though.
David's Bridal has filed for Chapter 11, laid off more than 9,000 employees.
Why is David's Bridal going bankrupt?
Now it would seem to me not just because of the decline in retail shopping, that's something that all retail brands have had to deal with with the rise of the internet, but some have fared better than others.
I think this is about what David's Bridal sells.
David's Bridal sells wedding dresses and wedding tuxedos.
And marriage rates are hitting all-time lows.
People are just not getting married.
So if people are not getting married, that's really bad for retailers who are in the wedding business.
And furthermore, the couples who are getting married very often are not wearing formal dresses.
The whole act of getting married has become much more casual in recent years.
People very often are not married by priest anymore.
People very often are not married in churches anymore.
People often will just go down to the courthouse, get a marriage certificate.
People will get married not in tuxedos and gowns anymore, but sometimes in just dresses and ordinary suits.
Marriage itself has become much less formal.
Marriage has been now redefined to be much more ambiguous, to not mean what it once did.
Marriage, for the last 2,000 years at least, has been understood to be the union of a husband and a wife for the good of the spouses and the sake of the generation and education of children.
Today, that's not what marriage means.
Marriage is the union of two people for whatever.
Marriage is, I guess, a special union of two people who may or may not be of different sexes, who may or may not be faithful to one another, which may or may not be undertaken as a vow before God, which may or may not be undertaken as a vow in public, which may or may not last, and which may or may not just dissolve for any whim or caprice that either of the parties feel.
So, it just doesn't mean anything.
Means that the conservatives who predicted that tinkering with marriage and redefining marriage to include things like same-sex unions would not strengthen marriage, it would not expand marriage, it would just weaken and ultimately abolish marriage.
And as with every other prediction that the social conservatives have made, that has come true.
The formality part is important too, though.
Because people feel now, why do I need a piece of paper?
Why can't I just cohabitate?
Why do we need the government to tell me that we're married?
Why do I need to put on a tuxedo and a wedding gown?
We don't need all that nonsense.
We know that we love each other.
Come on, let's just throw on a t-shirt and let's just say we're married and it'll be fine, right?
People have the idea now that formality is pompous.
That formality is egotistical, even.
And that to be truly humble and to stop thinking so much of yourself, you just be really casual.
That's much more authentic.
In reality, the opposite is true.
Formality is humble.
Because when you are formal, when you put on a uniform, this is one of the reasons soldiers put on uniforms.
This is one of the reasons monarchs will put on uniforms.
When you are formal, You take attention away from yourself.
When you dress in a formal way, when you behave in a formal way, according to rules of etiquette, when you engage in rituals that are prescribed, it's not about you, it's not about you writing your own vows, it's not about you redesigning your own party and having your best friend officiate the wedding or whatever.
Submit yourself to rules of formality.
You're saying that this thing that I'm engaging in, this role that I am taking on, the role of a husband, the role of a wife, the role of a married couple in society, the role of a mother and a father, that is bigger than me.
And so I am going to suppress my individuality, my personality, my perceived delightful uniqueness.
I'm going to suppress that for My performance now of this role that is bigger than me.
Our society, if we are to be a serious society again, needs to take formality and ritual much more seriously.
And that is especially true when we're talking about marriage, which is the fundamental political institution.
If that becomes casual, if that becomes sloppy, if that is abolished, your whole political order is going to be sloppy and disordered, and ultimately it's going to be abolished as well.
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Speaking of food and beverage...
Budweiser.
Budweiser is still in damage control mode after sponsoring Dylan Mulvaney and putting Dylan Mulvaney on a beer can, on the Bud Light can.
They got a lot of blowback for this.
They initially defended the decision with a statement from Budweiser.
Then they Leaked through unnamed sources to the press the idea that the senior leadership actually had nothing to do with this and it was just some rogue lower-level employee and don't worry we're looking into it.
But then they kind of doubled down on it again and the Anheuser-Busch CEO sent out a statement that didn't actually apologize for this and it just issued a lot of platitudes about how they support hard-working Americans.
And now they've got a new commercial trying to reset things right.
There's a ranch.
There's horses.
There's an ocean.
There's a gruff old guy.
There we go, right in America's heartland.
Says Omaha.
Yeah, just dudes.
About a beer rooted in the heart of America.
There we go, right in America's heartland.
It's Omaha.
Found in a community where a handshake is a sure contract.
Yeah, it's dudes.
Brewed for those who found opportunity and challenge.
Raising that American flag.
In tomorrow.
This is patriotic. - Abraham Lincoln.
One big fence.
Two rough looking dudes out there on the prairie.
That horse just keeps... It's bigger than beer.
It's bigger than beer.
This is the story of the American spirit.
It's a horse.
This Bud's for you.
So they go back to an old ad.
They go back to an old slogan.
This Bud's for you.
Now, No more, oh hey girl, hey girl, chop off your body parts, you can be a girl too, teehee.
No, that's it, now we're back to this Bud's for you.
I have some crisis communications advice to the CEO of Budweiser, which is, shut up!
Stop making this worse.
Just stop.
Stop calling attention to it.
Stop trying to please everybody.
Nobody can please everybody all the time.
Stop trying to play both sides.
Stop pandering to Americans and insulting our intelligence.
You've just embraced this ideology which says that women don't have any special rights.
Women don't have the right to a bathroom or their own sports leagues.
You're going to support this wild guy who exhibits a fringe leftist view and pretends to be a little girl and puts on his Audrey Hepburn wig sometimes.
And okay, then you're going to try to undo that and you're not going to apologize and you're going to try to be this bud's for you again.
Just shut up!
Pick a lane.
There's no middle ground here.
You can't simultaneously establish both of these opposing principles.
Just pick a side or shut up and hope it blows over.
But if they keep vacillating back and forth, they're going to seem schizophrenic.
Our whole culture is going to seem schizophrenic.
This is why the debate over transgenderism has gotten so hot.
Is because the leftists are insisting on their radical notion that men can really be women.
So they're pushing for the radicalism.
And the conservatives are trying to be nice.
And they're trying to have it both ways.
And they're trying to say, well, I don't want to tell anybody what to do.
I would meekly suggest that maybe we shouldn't trans the seven-year-olds.
No, you should impose your views on people.
If your views are right.
Either you conservatives are going to impose your views on people on this subject, or the leftists are going to impose their completely insane views on this subject.
But someone's views will be imposed.
You can't just keep vacillating back and forth.
On Mondays, women have their own bathrooms, but on Tuesdays, they don't have their own bathrooms.
And maybe some men who identify as women can go into the women's bathroom, like if they're really pretty or something.
If they've had enough surgery and bought enough makeup, then they can go in.
But if they look a little husky and their Adam's apple's too big, they're not allowed to go in.
Someone's view is gonna win.
We have bathrooms.
People need bathrooms.
Either women get their own bathroom or they don't.
But either way, someone's imposing their views on the rest of people.
So if that is the case, and the law has to weigh in, if the law doesn't weigh in on what a woman is, then the law doesn't have much to say about anything.
I would rather live according to a law that is in accordance with truth, rather than a law that is in accordance with falsehood.
Want to use our intellect, and then we use our will to assert the intellect in public life.
Speaking of intelligence, Senator Tommy Tuberville has a really, really good idea for a law that will impose views and increase all sorts of restrictions, but it's an important bill, not only for national security, but also for the national character.
We're being attacked by China and other countries around the world, and we need to make sure that we're all in this together, not just New York, not just Alabama, not just Iowa.
We're all in it together.
In it together, and what he's suggesting then is a ban on land ownership by companies with ties to adversarial nations, and specifically land that can be used for farming.
Dubberville followed up this clip with a tweet.
He said, food security is national security.
I've introduced legislation to block China and our other enemies from buying America's farmland.
Obviously, that's true.
You don't want your enemies to control your food supply.
That would be crazy.
We see what happens when your enemy controls the supply chain, which is that in times of crisis, the enemy cuts off your supply chain, and then you're just done.
We saw this especially during COVID.
It was easy during the heyday of globalism In the late 80s, certainly through the 90s and into the 2000s, everyone thought that the world was just going to keep on churning out more cheap products and there was no trade-off to offshoring our manufacturing, offshoring our food in some cases, that everybody was going to benefit.
But there are always trade-offs in economics.
And what the globalists thought was that we'd reached the end stage of history, and liberalism now reigned supreme, and over time we were going to erase national borders, and we were, yeah, people were going to have to give up their power, but it's fine, because we'd all get cheap crap from China.
And so you wouldn't need to have any political rights, and you don't need to make anything here.
American labor is too expensive.
I mean, we're going to put those Americans out of work, but who cares?
They're going to get cheap TVs and stuff.
And we can always just give them some money to go away and pay for it in some government program.
That GDP is going to go up, and that's all that matters, right?
And no, some conservatives started to think, huh, it might not be so great to offshore all of our manufacturing.
These are people like Pat Buchanan.
And Donald Trump, for that matter.
This was what the Trump campaign ran on.
It's a different set of policies than the other Republicans ran on.
Trump said free trade might not be the best thing in the world because, yeah, maybe the stuff that's being made in China is cheaper, but then if we go to war with China, we don't have any stuff anymore.
Yeah, maybe we can manufacture ammunition or weapons even overseas, but if we do that, then what happens when we go to war?
Well, we're not going to get our stuff.
If we sell our farmland to foreign adversaries, what happens if there's a war?
What happens if the supply chain breaks down?
We're seeing a return to tradition, especially in the Republican Party.
What all of the squishes are referring to as an apostasy, a turning of our back on our Republican conservative principles because we don't love unfettered free trade anymore.
No, what we're returning to is tradition.
The Republican Party was founded on protective tariffs.
There can be a sensible balance reached so that you can preserve a robust economy while still not endangering your national security and your supply chains.
But we're going back to tradition here.
Nature is healing.
The protective tariffs are returning.
Industry is returning to America.
Our farmland is being protected against foreign adversaries.
Nature is healing.
Speaking of the balance of power, Ron DeSantis was just up in New Hampshire.
Ron DeSantis had to deal with some hecklers and he handled it very, very well.
If you looked at governor races, president races, 2010, 12, 14, 16, 18, yeah, thank you.
Jews against DeSantis!
are the hecklings.
16, 18, yeah, thank you.
Jews against DeSantis.
You got to have a little spice in the speech, right?
I mean, you gotta have a little fun.
And then, importantly here, DeSantis, he doesn't flinch, he doesn't move.
This crazy lady who claims to speak for the Jews is escorted offstage.
Why you'd wanna pay the ticket to get in just to do that?
I don't know, but different show.
DeSantis makes a joke about it, and he moves on.
Now, I think that woman can expect legal action from Ben Shapiro.
I don't think Ben is going to be thrilled with this woman claiming that Jews hate Ron DeSantis.
I don't think she really speaks for all of the Jews, but this is really great for Ron DeSantis.
Because Ron DeSantis' biggest weakness right now is that he has too much establishment support.
And it's not DeSantis' fault that he's got too much establishment support.
It's a good thing, ultimately, for his campaign to have that support.
He just doesn't want the appearance of that support.
And the reason he's got a lot of it now is because he is the non-Trump candidate in the race.
And so it's not that he's necessarily a squish or a neocon or establishment or whatever people are saying about him.
It's just he's not Trump.
So the people who really, really hate Trump, there are a lot of powerful people who really hate Trump, they are going to flock to DeSantis because he's the only alternative right now.
And so if these wackos can start showing up and start screaming all sorts of crazy things at Ron DeSantis, that's going to make him look a lot better.
The race in many ways will not be about support, but about opposition.
One of the strongest arguments for Trump right now is that all the right people hate him.
And they go after him in such an insane way that one feels he must be over the target.
And so if Ron DeSantis can start attracting the right people to hate him too, all the crazy ladies shrieking and screaming and getting on stage and carrying on, that will help him as well.
You know, when leftists say that America is systematically racist, They are telling the truth, because we actually do have laws in this country against white people and Asians.
But they're lying about the way that they talk about it.
All evidence points to the contrary of what they claim.
And every attempt to fix this problem in the name of equity is making the country worse.
Heather MacDonald is shutting down that malignant ideology of anti-racism in a brand new book, When Race Trumps Merit, How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.
Heather exposes how the BLM-fueled equity obsession is destroying Western civilization, We are tearing down meritocratic standards of achievement because those standards have a, quote, disparate impact on certain minorities.
We no longer enforce many criminal laws because doing so has a disparate impact on minority criminals.
But lowering standards, Heather explains, jeopardizes scientific progress, destroys public order, and poisons the appreciation of art and culture.
I really loved this book.
When race trumps merit's eye-opening, The truth always is, Heather is unafraid to break taboos about academic achievement and crime.
She provides the data and the life stories that show the damage being done to this country in real time, all in the name of equity.
The book is a must-read for anyone who's concerned about the present state of the country and worried for our future.
When Race Trumps Merit, it's available on Amazon or wherever books are sold.
I just love it.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Spectroxis.
Who says, excited to see you tomorrow at my university, Mr. Knowles.
I'm excited to be seen at your university.
Apparently, the protests that are planned are fairly intense, so watch out, take care of yourself, show up early, make sure that you can get your seat and the libs don't intimidate you into submission.
Really, really looking forward to it.
Back to 2024.
DeSantis in New Hampshire apparently broke a state fundraising record for the party.
According to NHGOP Chairman Chris Ager, said this was the largest fundraiser in the history of the New Hampshire GOP, raising more than a quarter million bucks.
Ticket sales were halted earlier this week because they exceeded planned capacity.
Now, is this because of DeSantis?
Or is this because of Biden?
Right now, Biden is so unlikable, he's so weak, Republicans are really eager for 2024, that maybe they're just showing up to support the party.
Or they've shown up because of the headliner, because Ron DeSantis is growing a lot of support.
That will be debated.
Former President Trump, meanwhile, has a major lead over Republicans, including Ron DeSantis.
He's got a 21-point lead over DeSantis in a hypothetical Georgia GOP primary.
This is particularly important because Georgia has been a hotspot of Trump controversy, and he's had a rough relationship with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, even though Kemp is a Republican.
And so the fact that Trump's got a major lead over there shows that the Trump campaign is still looking pretty good.
51% of Georgians support Trump, 30% back DeSantis, and 4% support Nikki Haley, 2% support Mike Pence, 7% of respondents are undecided.
So what this means is DeSantis is very exciting, he's done a great job as governor, he's a smart politician, he's running a great campaign.
It is still Trump's race.
Pundits disproportionately are pulling for DeSantis.
Pundits in the right-wing pundit class disproportionately haven't liked Trump.
Certainly, that was the case in 2016.
It's still Trump's race.
That's just a fact.
It could change.
Obviously, the libs are trying to arrest him in New York, D.C., Georgia, for that matter.
So, DeSantis is in a great spot.
But as of now, it's not even DeSantis' fault.
Trump has just had a huge lead start.
He's been a worldwide celebrity for 40 years.
He is still winning.
At the very least, though, I think we would say this is increasingly becoming a two-man race.
And the other candidates, no one has really popped off yet.
So because it's becoming a two-man race, the DeSantis super PAC is taking its first TV commercial shot against Trump.
Donald Trump is being attacked by a Democrat prosecutor in New York.
So why is he spending millions attacking the Republican governor of Florida?
Trump's stealing pages from the Biden-Pelosi playbook, repeating lies about Social Security.
Here's the truth from Governor Ron DeSantis.
We're not going to mess with Social Security as Republicans.
What did Trump say?
Entitlements ever be on your plate?
At some point they will be.
We will take a look at that.
Trump should fight Democrats, not lie about Governor DeSantis, what happened to Donald Trump?
Never Back Down, Inc.
is responsible for the contents of this ad.
So this is the DeSantis campaign tone.
This ad didn't come from the DeSantis campaign.
Because of our stupid campaign finance laws, it has to come from an outside group that has no connection to the candidate, even though the groups exist strictly to raise a lot of money and help their candidates.
But the line of the campaign is, we like Trump, he did great stuff, What happened to him?
Where'd that guy go?
We're the new Trump.
Notice here, this squabble over entitlements.
The squabble isn't over Trump changing GOP orthodoxy and saying, we won't touch entitlements.
Until then, 2012 and 2008 and 2004 and 2000, the Republicans were running on cutting entitlements.
For most of my lifetime, Republicans have been running on cutting entitlements.
Trump comes in and he says, we're not going to touch entitlements, which are the biggest drivers of the debt and the deficit.
But Trump says, yeah, that doesn't, that, that might work in the libertarian think tanks, but middle America doesn't want you to touch its social security, so we're not going to touch it.
So the squabble here isn't Ron DeSantis saying, we've got to reform entitlements and Donald Trump won't address the problem.
No, no, no.
DeSantis is running more Trumpy than Trump.
He's saying, oh, I would never touch entitlements.
But Trump has previously said he would touch entitlements.
Again, this is why I say it remains today Trump's race.
Because Trump has defined all the issues.
Trump has defined the direction of the party.
So what the race is going to be is between Trump saying, I've still got it.
I'm still the Trump you voted for in 2016.
And DeSantis saying, what happened to Trump?
Whatever he was in 2016, he ain't that anymore, and he gave the country away to Fauci, and he's tired, and he's lost focus, and he only talks about himself, and I'm the better version of Trump.
And the reason I'm skeptical that that campaign can work is because, generally speaking, if people want something, they want the original.
This is why moderate Republicans don't work.
When moderate Republicans run as just a sort of nicer, better Democrat, they're going to lose.
If people want to vote for a Democrat, they're going to vote for a Democrat.
That's why Phyllis Schlafly called for conservatives to give people a choice, not an echo.
But that is the tone.
Trump has set the tone, and DeSantis is going to make the argument, and it could be a pretty persuasive argument, that he's the better version of Trump.
But that is a total vindication for the conservatives.
Because despite what some people are saying now, DeSantis is not just some squishy guy.
DeSantis is one of the most conservative candidates, he's running one of the most conservative campaigns that we have seen in my lifetime.
Certainly since the days of Buchanan.
But can he ever do that more than Trump?
That's where the race is right now.
They're both running very hard because they know that Biden's poll numbers are absolutely terrible.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Biden's average approval rating is at 43%.
That's nine points lower than his 52% disapproval rating.
So right now, Biden's Disapproval is one point higher than Trump, or Biden's approval rating, I'm sorry, is one point higher than Trump's approval rating on the same date in 2019.
Same point in his presidency.
So they smell blood in the water.
Now, the issue here is, do those polls really matter?
Or do Democrats just have a structural advantage?
Do the Democrats, for instance, have they changed the election rules enough?
And have they pushed enough widespread mail-in balloting?
And have they pushed enough ballot harvesting?
And have they pushed enough this idea that vote counting can take days and weeks?
You don't need results on election night.
Have they pushed that enough to give them An unbeatable margin to cheat.
That's the question.
I know people say you're a conspiracy theorist if you ever suggest that Democrats steal elections.
There's cheating in every election.
There's correspondence between FDR and LBJ joking about how to steal elections.
Okay, this always goes on.
Even Democrats during the Obama era observed that widespread mail-in balloting was going to open up a huge prospect for voter fraud.
Now, the Democrats figured out how to do this to their advantage, so now they defend it and they say, if you ever raise a question about an election, you're an evil election denier who's destroying our republic.
The Democrats have less faith in our electoral system than the Republicans do.
Democrats have been denying the results of elections for a very long time.
I don't want to discourage people from voting.
I don't want to give everyone a black pill of despair here or anything like that.
But we've got to look at this thing pretty steely-eyed and say, can Republicans win?
Can they overcome the structural advantage Democrats have given themselves?
Now, you're not allowed to ask that question anymore.
If you do, you could be slapped with a $1.6 billion defamation suit.
Right now, there's a story that the liberal media are absolutely obsessed with.
I haven't really paid any attention to it.
I don't really care all that much.
It's a story of the Dominion trial.
Dominion, the voting machine company, is suing Fox News for defamation because Fox had the temerity to suggest, or certain Fox, not even many Fox hosts, a handful of Fox hosts, had the temerity to suggest that maybe there were some shenanigans in the election.
And Dominion glommed onto this and said, you're questioning the integrity of our machines.
This is defamation.
We're going to sue you for a gazillion dollars.
What's this trial really about?
The message of this trial is that conservatives had better never dare question Democrat election wins.
And if you do, we'll destroy you.
We'll take away all your money.
We'll take away a billion dollars, more than a billion dollars.
We'll take away your company.
The first chance we get.
Ooh, he said something about Dominion?
Okay, I think that's actionable.
Let's go get him.
But do I care about Dominion?
Do I care about Fox News?
Do I care about... No, I don't really have a personal stake in any of this.
But I at least have enough sense to know this is not about Fox News.
This is not about Sean Hannity.
This is not about... This is about conservatives raising the obvious question, which is, to what degree did the Libs rig the 2020 election?
That's the message of the trial.
Don't you dare ask those questions.
Now, speaking of society breaking down, we have got more coverage of the opening story today, this mayhem in Chicago, where the mayor of Chicago says, oh, those poor misunderstood youth.
They just didn't get to play enough soccer after school.
If they only had a soccer team, maybe they wouldn't go around marauding and shooting people and beating the living daylights out of people.
Don't demonize them.
Don't demonize demonic behavior.
That'd be terrible.
Terrific journalist, David Marcus, up to talk about it.
