Ep. 1305 - Miracle Drug Kills Obesity With One Side Effect
Scientists develop a magic weight loss pill that lets you stuff your face, Chris Christie flies to war-torn Kiev to give Zelensky some Bon Jovi memorabilia, and DeSantis drops to single digits in New Hampshire.
Ep.1305
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Scientists are promising that soon you will be able to have your cake and eat it too.
Researchers at the University of Texas have been testing a new drug called CPACC, C-P-A-C-C, that has proven to stave off weight gain in mice no matter how much the mice stuffed their fat little rodent faces.
The drug works by inhibiting the way that magnesium flows through mitochondria, which is the part of the cell responsible for producing energy.
Excess magnesium seems to slow mitochondria's ability to burn calories, so the drug mimics the deletion of the protein-coding gene that controls the flow of magnesium, thus limiting it and effectively increasing the body's metabolism, which is all a dazzling feat of science.
But I have another suggestion.
Rather than squander countless resources, man hours, dollars, laboratory equipment, so on, trying to figure out how to counteract the consequences of people's gluttony, what if we just encouraged people to put the cupcakes down?
I know weight loss is difficult for some.
Some people have it harder than others.
But this magic experimental pill that rewires your body chemistry doesn't seem like the best solution.
It isn't a solution at all, because obesity isn't the cause of people's problems, but a symptom of people's problems.
Modern, liberal, pill-popping scientific culture constantly treats symptoms as causes.
Are you depressed?
Papa Xanax.
Don't worry about working on your marriage, or reconciling with your father, or finally finishing that degree, or getting a job, even maybe, dare I suggest it, going to church to recognize the meaning and purpose in your life.
No, don't worry about that.
Don't worry about that unshakable existential ennui caused by a lack of faith, which is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen.
No, just drug yourself.
Hmm, all better.
Having trouble sleeping?
Well, don't worry about exercising, or trying to relax, or cutting down on the partying, or, no, don't, just take a sleeping pill.
Are you feeling fat?
Well, don't change your diet and address the causes of your gluttony and compulsive eating.
No, no, no, just, we got a pill for that, too.
And these pills are always marketed as healthy for you.
But, in fact, not only are they not healthy, they are actively harmful.
Because the depression, the insomnia, the obesity, name whatever other nasty outcome you want, those are all symptoms of deeper problems, vices, bad habits, unresolved issues in your life.
And they can sometimes, these little pills, they can sometimes mask the problem, at least for a little bit.
But by leaving the underlying cause unaddressed, by leaving all the bad habits in place, they will ultimately only make the problem worse.
That is because the problem ultimately isn't that you're a little chubby or a little tired or a little depressed.
The problem ultimately is called concupiscence, the inclination to sin caused by the fall of man.
You want five cupcakes because your ancestor ate an apple.
Quacks have been trying for millennia to find a magic man-made workaround for that one.
And every single time they've tried, the problems only seem to get worse.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
The people want Trump to debate.
Trump does not want to debate.
The people want Trump to debate.
We'll get to that in a second.
First, though, apropos of nothing, Chris Christie.
Chris Christie has just visited Ukraine.
He's visited Ukraine, and he's done so on a mission to bring Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky some Bon Jovi memorabilia.
John wrote out the lyrics to the song It's My Life, which serves as an inspiration for a lot of the citizens in Odessa as they were preparing for the invasion by the Russians.
He wrote it out in his own hand, got it framed, and I brought it to President Zelensky, presented it to him, and said that this is representative Of many of the American people and what they feel about the cause that's being fought for in Ukraine and who support Ukrainian people against Russian barbarism.
And we got a good laugh over it about two guys from New Jersey trying to be supportive of what's happening over in Ukraine for the Ukrainian people.
And so I was happy to do that and to be able to show him that there's lots of folks over here.
In fact, hundreds of millions of Americans.
There's also lots of folks over in Kiev.
There's also lots of folks from America who seem to be flying in and out of Ukraine to hang out with Zelensky and take photos for glossy magazines and do long interviews and bring him memorabilia from 1980s rock stars.
And they seem to be doing it pretty easily for a war-torn country.
It would seem to undercut the argument that Ukraine is in this state of total war.
It's the most perilous moment for Europe in the last 70 years.
When Chris Christie sees fit to fly in, hang out with his buddy, have a few laughs over.
Look, I like Bon Jovi, but you know, it's my life.
It's now or never.
This is just not, this doesn't seem like good.
Good use of war resources, and it would seem to undercut the argument that we need to keep sending $10 bazillion over to Ukraine because it's on the brink of collapse and we're gonna head into World War III.
A lot of tourism for a war zone.
So what's the point of this trip?
Other than to have a talking point for Chris Christie on the campaign trail and on CNN.
The point of this trip, why would the former governor of New Jersey, who's now running for president in a long shot bid, why would he go to Ukraine?
Especially when Ukraine would seem to be, maybe not according to the liberal media, but would seem to be, just according to the conservatives I talked to, not the most popular issue with the GOP base.
The point of that trip is to signal to the liberal establishment that a President Christie would accept the State Department foreign policy.
Mike Pence just went over to Ukraine too.
To signal his support for the State Department policy that he will continue this war, the point of which I'm not quite certain, and the end point of which I'm not quite sure when that would be.
That's different than, say, a Trump who says, I'll end the war immediately.
That's different than a DeSantis who has been a little vaguer on the issue, but he's broadly signaled that he's in opposition to continuing to fund this war.
It's in contrast to Vivek Ramaswamy, who's within the top three candidates now, same thing.
You've seen that big split.
The GOP insurgency, which says we're going to upend the foreign policy that has defined both parties for the last 40 years, maybe more than 40 years, the Uniparty.
The establishment, more establishment leaning people who say, no, we're not going to change foreign policy at all.
And what's, what's crazy about the moment that we're in right now, this populist moment in the GOP and a little bit for the Democrats, is that the insurgent part, the insurgent group, the populists who say, we want a totally new foreign policy.
Those are the guys who are currently winning.
The other guys are.
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Americans are done with the war in Ukraine. - Okay.
The establishment will constantly tell us, no, actually, the support for Ukraine polls very high in the GOP.
It's just you crazy Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, MAGA, populist, conservatives.
You guys are fringe if you think that maybe the perpetuation of the war in Ukraine is not a great idea.
No, the majority of Americans and the majority of Republicans, majority of conservatives, The good conservatives, they support the ongoing war in Ukraine.
That isn't true.
It just isn't true.
We have a new survey out that shows it, and this is a survey that shows that 1,200 adult respondents in this poll conducted by SSRS, among them, 55% said Congress should not approve additional funding to Ukraine.
45% supported more funding.
Not saying it's 70-30, I'm not saying it's 80-20, but it's 55-45, it's a clear majority of Americans.
And Democrats are much more likely to support the war in Ukraine.
So among Republicans, it's pretty clear.
They want to wind down the war in Ukraine.
And this marks a reversal of that CNN poll that was conducted shortly after Russia invaded in February of 2022, which found that 62% of Americans wanted the US to do more to help Ukraine.
Well, now they're saying, no, thank you.
So it will change depending on how the question is asked, but money talks and BS walks.
And when people are asked, should we continue to send money?
And therefore arms, and munitions, and all these other resources to prolong the war.
To keep the war in Ukraine going?
Majority of Americans say no.
Which we, I could have told you before, even with the stupid CNN polls, because the poll that matters on this issue is the poll of the GOP primary.
And every top candidate, by a long shot, is saying we want to wind down this war.
Now, the most populist candidate in the race, coincidentally, maybe not so coincidentally, is the candidate who's winning by a landslide right now.
Donald Trump is dominating the field everywhere, and he's increasing his lead.
And as that is happening, the number two candidate, Ron DeSantis, who is going to be the main challenger to Donald Trump, is collapsing.
Not just in the national polls, but even in those early primary states that will decide whether or not his campaign gets to continue on or whether it flops, including in New Hampshire.
Ron DeSantis has just dropped a single digits in New Hampshire.
Very, very bad news for the governor.
Trump right now in New Hampshire is at 43%.
No other candidate comes close.
DeSantis and Chris Christie actually tie for second place in New Hampshire.
New Hampshire is notoriously a weird state where the more liberal Republican candidates generally can do better.
John McCain staked a lot of his campaign on that.
Mitt Romney, John Huntsman when he was running for president.
Chris Christie now too.
Even with Trump is still far and away the number one guy.
The reason this is so brutal for DeSantis is that the DeSantis mojo was based largely on the view that he could win the primary and the general.
He's the only candidate who can beat Trump in the primary, and he's a candidate much better positioned to defeat Joe Biden in the general.
That was the argument.
Yes, the campaign was premised on him being a good governor.
Yes, the campaign was premised on him doing well with donors.
Yes, the campaign was premised on him having a clear political vision.
He's got all those things.
But the main factor here, when you're talking about going up against Donald Trump, who's running effectively as an incumbent, is that he could win.
So the moment that it seems that DeSantis can't win, it's not just that his campaign is gradually going to drop, drop, drop a little bit.
It's going to start to drop precipitously, as we have already seen.
Trump's campaign, ironically, in the minds of some people, is not premised on the idea that he could win.
This is what we heard a lot from the Never Trumpers in 2016, some of whom came around to Trump, but then basically most of them, Mike Cernovich made this point, most of them are back to hating Trump now in 2024, now that there's at least a somewhat credible challenger to him.
They always said Trump's whole campaign is just premised on him being a winner.
Win, win, win.
Winners never lose.
Losers never win.
Don't be a big loser with a big L on your head.
I'm a winner, right?
So their thesis was the moment that Trump loses, he collapses.
And that obviously hasn't happened.
This is what is causing the people who oppose Trump and the GOP to want to pull their hair out.
As you were saying, he lost 25 midterms.
They kind of exaggerate the way that he allegedly lost the midterms.
Or they'll say, his candidates that he endorsed lost, some of whom did lose, some of whom didn't lose.
Or they'll say, well, Trump lost in 2020, and that one is indisputable.
You might say the election was rigged, you might say the election was stolen, but he isn't president right now.
So you could say that.
You could say, okay, here's the testing of this hypothesis.
Trump lost in 2020, at least in as much as he is not the president right now.
Has he lost the support of his base?
No.
His support has grown.
So that thesis, which is the crucial thesis, forget about DeSantis.
I'm not blaming DeSantis for this.
I think this was just built into the nature of this race against Donald Trump.
But it means that any challenger candidate is screwed or will have an extremely uphill battle because That vulnerability of Trump in being viewed as a loser appears not to be much of a vulnerability at all.
These guys got so much wrong about Trump.
I was talking to a friend of mine about this the other day.
One of the other knocks on Trump is that, on the point of populism, is that he's a demagogue.
Trump is just a total demagogue.
He goes around, he'll pander to anybody.
What we've seen over the years is that really isn't true.
You could attack Trump for all sorts of different reasons, but you can't really attack him for being a demagogue, because demagogues are people who just tell the audience whatever the audience wants to hear.
They changed their tune with every single campaign appearance.
Trump famously, infamously doesn't do that.
Trump is like a broken record.
He never stops going on about the things that he goes on about.
This has been one of the criticisms of his campaign is he won't shut up about the 2020 election, even though it might hurt him in the polls.
Well, yeah, maybe it'll hurt him in the polls.
Maybe it won't.
But he just keeps talking about it.
He's stuck to his same issues again and again and again, much more so than other candidates who I think can more rightly be accused of demagoguery.
Someone like a Chris Christie could much more rightly be accused of demagoguery than somebody such as Donald Trump.
So in any case, DeSantis understands that his campaign is in a lot of trouble, that the situation is quite dangerous.
So he has fired his campaign manager.
DeSantis has replaced campaign manager, Janera Peck, with James Uthmeyer, who has served as his office's chief of staff for a long time.
And Peck is not going to be totally canned from the campaign.
She is now the chief strategist of the campaign, but she's not going to be running those day-to-day operations that a campaign manager needs to.
Let me tell you something here.
If you get fired in a campaign, people try to put a lot of blame on you.
They just make you a scapegoat.
They throw you under the bus.
I don't really blame Janera Peck for the collapse of the DeSantis campaign.
Or maybe it's not fair to call it a collapse.
It has been a bit of a collapse, but there's still hope.
He's not out of the race yet.
But I don't blame her.
I don't really blame the fundraisers, certainly.
I don't really blame the strategists.
I don't blame the candidate.
I think these are all pretty talented people who have done a pretty good job in politics.
It's the circumstance.
As I've said from the beginning, I know everyone now, as the primary heats up, they're all trying to say, oh, the other candidate is evil.
If you're on the DeSantis team, you say, Trump is stupid and dumb and evil and bad and he's inevitably going to lose, all the same stuff we heard in 2016.
And if you're on the Trump camp, you're going to say, oh, DeSantis, he's a rhino shill, he's incompetent, he's weird, he's this, he's that.
I don't think any of that's true.
These are both strong candidates, strong politicians.
They've done very good stuff.
They've got sophisticated campaign teams around them.
They've got somewhat eccentric campaign teams around them, both of them.
It's the circumstances which was always the issue.
If you're going to blame the DeSantis campaign for anything, it's just for them miscalculating the strength of Trump going into this election.
Which some of us, who I'm not endorsing in 2024, I have no intention of endorsing in the primary, I'm not working for any campaign, unlike it would seem many other GOP commentators and conservative writers.
I just don't see how you have this historic situation where you've got a major question mark around an election, 2020, and you've got a candidate running for the first time since 1888 for a non-consecutive second term, and you've got this guy, Donald Trump, who has remade the GOP after his own image and broken from 20, 30 years of basically unchanged GOP dog money.
He's led this kind of populist insurgency alongside a populist wave throughout the West.
In England with the Brexit, in Hungary with Viktor Orban, in Italy with Giorgio Meloni, in France with Le Pen, in Spain, in Sweden, in Germany now.
You've got this perfect moment for a candidate like Trump.
I'm not saying it's impossible to beat him.
It's not.
There's still a chance that a candidate, whether it's DeSantis or someone else, could beat him.
But the odds are just pretty low, and they're all going to want to blame the candidate.
It's not about those other candidates.
It's not about the staffers.
It's not about the campaigns.
It's about Trump.
That's it, guys.
That's it.
And any campaign that wants to take him on needs to see that fact very clearly.
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Speaking of Trump and weaknesses, he does have one apparent weakness right now.
Right now at this particular moment.
Which is Trump doesn't want to debate.
Of course he doesn't want to debate.
He's 30 points up in the race and he realizes that a debate entails a lot of risk because all these candidates are going to be taking shots at him.
And not much upside.
So he's going to increase his lead, what, from 30 to 33 points?
That's not a lot of upside.
But there is a lot of risk.
If he has one of these bumbling moments, you know, a Marco Rubio glitching out kind of moment, or a Rick Perry, he forgets the third point in a series.
Or, I don't know, any of these moments.
They happen during all sorts of debates.
Mondale during Reagan got absolutely destroyed by one debate.
Trump says, okay, I don't want a debate.
The problem for him is, His base wants him to.
They're all saying, is he going to go into the debate?
And I said, I don't know if you're leading by 50 and 60 and 70 points.
Do you do that or not?
I don't know.
Should I?
OK, you ready?
Poll.
We take a free poll.
Should I do the debate?
Well, maybe we'll do something else.
You know, see, some people say yes, but they hate to say it because it doesn't make sense to do it if you're leading by so much, but they like it for entertainment value because they're selfish.
They're selfish.
Okay, so he misjudged that one.
He usually has his finger on the pulse of a crowd really well.
That one he misjudged.
And he misjudged it.
He thought he had them.
Because he did a little test, right?
He goes, does it make sense for someone who's up by a bazillion points to debate?
No!
And he's thinking, oh good, okay, so now I can prove that my audience doesn't want me to debate.
He's like, okay, good, let's do a poll.
Should I debate?
This is the caprice of crowds.
Yes, we do want you to debate.
And he's there and he goes, shoot.
Oh, man, he doesn't break his smile.
The guy knows show business.
Show must go on.
He goes, shoot.
Darn, I didn't see that one coming.
Okay.
He goes, no, but, and I think quite rightly, he says, you only want me to debate because you'll find it entertaining, And they say, yes, that's exactly why we want you to debate.
He goes, yeah, okay, that's very selfish.
And he's kind of joking about it a little bit.
But it does expose a real weakness in the campaign right now, which is everybody knows that Trump doesn't really stand to gain very much from debating.
And everyone wants him to debate, including his most fervent supporters.
If I were advising Trump right now, if I were on the campaign, I'd say don't debate.
At least not the first one.
See how it shakes out.
But...
If I were in that crowd at that rally, you know I would have been there.
Yeah, you definitely should debate!
It's going to be awesome!
You're going to make Jeb high five you or whatever.
You're going to make fun of Rand Paul's face.
I don't know.
You're going to do those things that are so mean and nasty and entertaining.
You're going to talk about Rosie O'Donnell.
What was it?
You say the only woman you've ever insulted is Rosie O'Donnell.
It's going to be funny, but there's not a lot to talk about.
It's not a lot to be gained from it.
So he kind of saved it there at the end.
Maybe we'll do something else.
Okay, you guys are selfish.
Come on, get out of here, you.
Come on, stop it.
But a bit of a misstep or a miscalculation, and he's going to have to play it very carefully because the rest of the field is going to call him a coward.
And he's got to make sure that if the people polling in single digits call him a coward, Doesn't matter.
But if his own audience, if he doesn't give his audience what they want, that's a much bigger problem.
So what's Trump's best bet here?
Trump's best bet in the campaign is to keep getting indicted.
That's the best bet.
That's what continues to make the show all about him.
And most Americans are on board with that.
Most Americans believe that the indictments are a political hack job to derail the Trump campaign.
This is not just according to me.
This is not just according to the conservatives.
This is according to a CBS, very left-wing, CBS YouGov poll.
They say that most Americans view these indictments as, quote, an attempt to stop the Trump 2024 presidential campaign.
59% say yes, that's what it is.
41% say no, it's not.
Now this is contrary to what Trump's opponents are saying.
Trump's opponents in the GOP are saying that no, the indictments are actually a 5D chess move to make Trump the nominee.
Because these Democrats, they know that it's going to help Trump in the polls, so it's going to make Trump the nominee.
And so really, yeah, it looks like they're trying to throw him in jail and trying to disqualify him from the ballot and trying to execute him or whatever it is they're trying to do.
But no, but secretly, actually, they want him to be the nominee.
That's what they're trying to do.
I think this is a cope from the second and third tier candidates.
I think the proof that this is not true is that the Democrats have been trying to do this since before they really thought he was a viable candidate.
They've been trying to do this since 2016.
This exact same thing.
They've been trying to bring bogus charges against him.
They've been spying on his campaign.
They have been prosecuting him since he was in office.
They've had special counsel after special counsel going after him.
I just don't, I don't think.
If all of this began in 2024, maybe you could make a case for that.
But I think the simpler answer is the correct one here.
They view him as a legitimate threat.
That's the issue.
And that's why people still like Trump.
Sometimes people will write in to me, they'll say, Michael, why are you giving Trump a fair shake?
Why aren't you working for the DeSantis campaign?
Or why aren't you working for the Vivek campaign?
Or I don't know, why aren't you working for some other candidate campaign?
Why is it that you're fair to Trump?
What I see in Trump is something above the ordinary level of politics.
What do you think about abortion?
What do you think about immigration?
What do you think about taxes?
What do you think?
What I see in Trump is something that is meta-political, which is that his very existence as a candidate and a politician Throws a wrench in the machine of our political order.
The machine of our political order, which has a dominant liberal part and a minor junior partner conservative part.
But they all play their parts.
P.J.
O'Rourke, who is a conservative satirist, libertarian conservative satirist, very funny guy.
He, much to his dismay, endorsed Hillary in 2016.
He was one of the Never Trumpers.
And he was one of the few insightful, honest Never Trumpers in his endorsement when he said, I endorse Hillary and all her lies and all her empty promises.
She's evil and she's awful, but she's evil within ordinary bounds.
PJ O'Rourke was saying, I'd rather the devil I know than potentially the devil I don't.
You don't know if he's a devil or not, but you just don't know.
Trump is a kind of a foreign thing who upsets orthodoxy, not just on the liberal side, but on the right as well.
What's he going to do?
Is he going to start blabbing about secrets on Iranian military policy in Bedminster?
Oh, what's he going to do?
Is he going to just blab about something on TV?
He's not Kooth.
He's not trained.
He didn't go to some think tank.
He's not a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
You know, he's just not clubbable, this guy.
That's what people say.
I'm not saying that's a sufficient reason to support him.
I'm saying that's why people do support him.
That's why many of the most right-wing figures, many of the most conservative people will support Trump, even if Trump is a little squishier on the LGBT issues than other candidates, than Ron DeSantis say.
Even if Trump is a little bit squishier, even on abortion.
I mean, you have to give Trump credit for abortion in that he got Roe v. Wade overruled.
He picked the judges who got Roe v. Wade overruled, and he picked good enough judges to do it.
Say, George Bush trying to nominate Harriet Meyers, George H.W.
Bush nominating David Souter, even Ronald Reagan nominating Sandra Day O'Connor.
Even if Trump just picked the list that was in front of him, he picked relatively very solid judges.
But when he talks about abortion, he sounds squishier often than many of the other GOP candidates.
Why do the hardcore people tend to support Trump?
It's because of that meta-political issue, because of populism.
Because he represents a wrench in the system, for better or for worse.
You might say that our system doesn't need any more wrenches.
You might say our system needs a lot more wrenches.
But the proof of this, too, is that you're not only seeing it on the right, you're seeing it on the left, too.
Trump is not the only populist candidate in this race.
The other clear populist candidate, it's not even Bobby Kennedy.
He's got a little bit of that.
But it's Cornel West.
Cornel West is a left winger.
He is a guy who's taught at Princeton, Harvard.
Very eccentric academic who's come out with a rap album and he wears kind of silly clothing and has always got like big hair and big beard and he just looks like a wild man and he talks like a wild guy and he's a pretty interesting political figure and he's running for president now.
So, Cornel West is running and what do you know?
Now that some polls are showing that Cornel West, if he runs third party, could tip the election to Donald Trump if Trump's a nominee.
What do you know?
We've seen some polls about that.
All of a sudden, Cornel West has some tax issues.
All of a sudden, the IRS has discovered, Cornel West, he's got some real problem.
We've got to investigate Cornel West.
The New Republic here, ostensibly a liberal outlet, but it's kind of establishment liberal.
Oh, here's a new report.
New report, Cornel West owes the IRS more than half a million dollars in taxes.
Oh, here we go, the investigation was first put out by the Daily Beast, establishment liberal outlet.
Not radical left.
Not conservative, it's establishment liberal.
Oh yeah, he owes $543,778.78.
$543,778.78.
It's going to complicate his long shot bid, his third party bid that maybe could pull enough populists from the left who don't like establishment liberal Biden, but can't bring themselves to vote for right wing populist Trump.
Or maybe they'll vote for Cornell.
Well, maybe that's enough to swing the election to Trump.
Can't have that.
Think we're going to have to investigate him and indict him.
Just a smaller version of what they're doing to Donald Trump.
He owes half a million in taxes.
Okay, you know what, Mike?
Maybe he does.
He probably does.
If you make money from lots of different income sources, that sort of thing can happen.
I mean, you hope it doesn't get to that point.
Half a million, that's a lot of money.
But it can happen.
When I was a kid, I always wondered, how did Wesley Snipes get in trouble with the IRS?
How does someone end up owing a million dollars to the IRS?
Can't you just pay your taxes?
But these guys are making money from lots of different sources.
It's not like they just file a W-2 and have their employers deduct the taxes.
So things can spin out of control if you're irresponsible with your money.
Okay, let's say he owes half a million in taxes.
How much tax has Joe Biden, how much tax have Joe and Hunter Biden paid on that $10 million bribe they got from Ukraine?
Because they're in the highest tax bracket.
Let's say, it's a little less than this, but let's just say, just for ease, they should give half of that away to the government.
Maybe a little less, but about half, let's say.
It's a $10 million bribe.
Oh, bribes are illegal, by the way, so they'd probably have to be investigated for that.
But let's say it were legal income.
$10 million, that means they would owe $5 million in taxes that they certainly have not paid.
That's 10 times what Cornel West allegedly owes the IRS.
How come the IRS isn't sicking its agents after Joe Biden?
He's done 10 times the crime.
Forget about, Hunter already has outstanding tax problems.
They're only going after Cornel West.
What's that about?
Do you think it has to do with that specific crime?
With an intentional kind of tax evasion?
Or do you think it has to do with the fact that Cornel West is a populist?
And he's not going to win.
But if he did win, or even just by running, he throws a wrench into the system.
So then the election comes down to a question.
Do you believe that the political order is still sufficiently fair and just and stable that one can do the most good by operating basically within the normal bounds of that system?
Or do you think that the political order has become so degraded and corrupted that the political order is so clearly rigged against conservatives and just ordinary, normal people who want an ordinary, normal, good country?
That's been so rigged against them that the only way to correct that system is to throw a wrench in it, gum up the works a little bit, and then reshape the system.
That's what the debate is about, which is why people who tend to be a little bit more centrist, people who tend to be a little bit more establishment, people who seem to be a little bit more content with the way the system is running, They're never going to go along with Trump.
They can't do it.
Or a candidate like a Cornel West, or to some degree even a Bobby Kennedy.
They're going to go for the other GOP candidates, or they're going to go for Joe Biden, or they're going to go for a Hillary Clinton, or they're going to go for a Gavin Newsom type character.
But if you think the system's gotten a little bit beyond repair from just the ordinary mechanisms, You're going to be attracted to those populist candidates, and the liberal establishment knows that, which is why the liberal establishment is bringing out its enforcement arm, its thugs, its coppers, its agents, its deep staters, its everything, to stop their campaigns before they can take off to kill that baby in the cradle.
Whether it is changing the definition of words or trying to convince you that 2 plus 2 actually equals 5, it sometimes feels like the current culture is doing its best to make you stupid.
When wokeness is permeating every aspect of your life, it's difficult to know where to turn for guidance.
You can check out our good buddy, Dennis Prager.
He's got answers in his DailyWirePlus series, PragerU Master's Program.
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In a world that wants to make you woke, Dennis wants to make you wise.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from AWGA3 who says, when I see a YouTube episode that's only 35 minutes, I know Michael has been extra spicy today.
That's true.
And I apologize for it, folks.
I know that when I talk about subjects that our overlords at YouTube don't want us to talk about, then it's got to come out of the YouTube show.
And so that condenses the show, the add-to-content ratio, I know, is a little bit higher.
I appreciate your patience with that.
That's why you've got to go to DailyWirePlus.
You can check out the full show, uncensored, on Twitter at mnoelsshow.
I will not censor myself for YouTube.
I'm just not going to do it.
I am not going to allow Google to incentivize me successfully to edit my show.
I'm not going to allow the most powerful tech company on planet Earth to put enough sticks and carrots in front of and behind me to get me to stop talking about one of the most important social issues around today.
I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to nuke my YouTube channel for no reason.
I think we need to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
But I'm not going to mess up the show.
So the full version of the show is going to go out on RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher.
It's going to go out on Twitter.
It's going to go out on MNUL Show.
It's going to go out on Daily Wire Plus.
And then the parts that are allowed on YouTube, we're going to put on YouTube.
And that's it.
But we will not...
We will not let these guys beat us, whether by scaring us, whether by paying us off, or anything like that.
We're not going to do that.
We're going to keep talking about that issue.
We're just going to keep talking about it.
It's the only way.
Plus.
Okay.
Speaking of politicians in precarious situations, Mitch McConnell.
Mitch McConnell has been heckled with chance to retire.
It's because he had some kind of a medical incident, it seems, where he froze up during a press conference, had to be escorted away from the lectern.
Now he's back on the trail and hecklers are chanting that he's too old and he's got to retire.
I just told David Beck his introduction is longer than my speech.
Elaine and I are really excited to be back at Fancy Farm on behalf of the strongest Republican team we've ever run in our state.
For those of you who keep count, this is my 28th Fancy Farm.
My 28th Fancy Farm.
I want to thank Father Venters and Stephen Elder for finding a way to keep Fancy Farm going.
Even with pork prices going through the roof, thanks to the Kentucky State Police.
Rough.
It's rough for McConnell.
He is a total pro-politician, and so he works through it just fine.
Whatever that health scare was doesn't seem to have really slowed him down all that much.
He's still pretty good on his feet as far as politicians go.
People are calling on him to retire.
I'm of two minds on this.
On the one hand, the guy's pretty good at wielding power.
I know, I don't know, in his heart of hearts, is he really a true conservative?
I don't know.
I do know that he got Roe v. Wade overruled.
And the guy deserves as much credit as Trump does on that point because he held that seat open amid a lot of political pressure.
He held that seat on the Supreme Court open until the elections.
One of the reasons Trump got elected, one of the big reasons Trump got elected, and then they got a good judge confirmed.
They got a number of good judges confirmed.
They overruled Roe v. Wade.
So I think the guy deserves a lot of credit.
It is his lasting legacy.
He's said it's his lasting legacy.
So I like him.
I have a lot of affection for Mitch McConnell for that reason.
For that reason alone, that would be enough.
Now, I know he's a little old and I was just in Hungary.
The Hungarian government is relatively quite young and they're getting a lot of great stuff done.
So maybe that would be good to have energetic young conservatives out there in the United States advancing the next stage of the conservative vision and not stuck in the old platitudes of the past.
Okay, yeah.
I guess here's my counter though to that point.
Do we have any evidence that Mitch McConnell's replacement is going to be any better than he is?
Do we have any evidence of that whatsoever?
Do we have any evidence that the guy who's going to replace McConnell is more conservative, more energetic, better adept at wielding power?
I don't see any evidence of that.
The guys who might replace Mitch McConnell Are John Barrasso, John Thune, or John Cornyn.
The John Caucus is looking really strong at replacing Mitch McConnell as the Republican leader in the Senate.
And I like these guys personally.
They're very nice guys.
I have nothing against them whatsoever.
I'm not saying they would be so much worse than Mitch McConnell, but I don't see any evidence that they would be so much more conservative, so much more energetic and effective.
I just don't see it.
Which is why I can't get on the whole depose McConnell train.
That's why I can't get on the depose Putin train.
All the really excitable liberals, the interventionists who want to just go bomb every country on earth, they say, we need to depose Vladimir Putin!
We need regime change in Moscow!
To which I say, oh yeah?
For what?
For what?
Who's going to replace Putin?
None of them know.
None of them have an answer to that.
Some of them sometimes say Alexei Navalny, because it's the one other politician name they've ever heard of in Russia.
He's the leader of the opposition who spent some time in America, now he's in prison.
It's not gonna be Navalny, guys.
The guy's in prison, okay?
By the way, what do you know about Alexei Navalny?
Nothing.
Nobody knows anything about these guys.
But it won't be him anyway.
It'll be, potentially, a much more dangerous adversary.
A much less prudent, wise adversary than Putin.
I'm not saying Putin's a great guy, but If you're telling me that he's so bad that we need to bring the force of the United States to depose the leader of a nuclear form or superpower, can you at least tell me who the alternative is?
Who's going to come next?
No, of course not.
Which is how we get into these bungled foreign policy messes that lead us into quagmires for decades and decades.
What's the same kind of thinking going on here?
Show me who's going to replace McConnell, who's going to be the right-wing, far more conservative, far more effective leader.
I just don't see it.
Speaking of relevance, this is going to be a little bit of a tease.
You know I'm such a tease on this show.
There's a writer's strike going on in Hollywood.
I had forgotten this actually until I saw a news article about it.
I'd forgotten it because I don't watch much TV or movies.
I saw Barbie, that was the first movie I'd seen in a while and I only did it because Daily Wire made me.
And I ended up enjoying it.
I watch maybe, maybe a show at night, maybe, most nights I don't even watch a show.
If I watch a show, though, I'll watch one episode of a show.
And usually it's going to be some show that's been on forever, Always Sunny or something like that.
So I don't care about the new content coming out of Hollywood.
The actors, I think, are still on strike.
Again, who cares?
I just don't consume enough of this stuff, especially the new content.
It doesn't really matter.
What about the late-night comedy shows?
Remember late-night comedy used to be the staple of network TV?
The Tonight Show, The Late Show.
Late night comedy shows have been off the air for three months.
Did you know that?
I didn't know that.
I didn't know.
I'm not saying this just to diss them or to dunk on Jimmy Kimmel or something.
I had no idea that they had been off the air for three months, which tells you a lot about our changing media and political landscape.
