Ep. 1382 - DeSantis Vs Newsom Debate Summarized In 2 Minutes
DeSantis and Newsom debate two paths for America, Trump touts a dubious endorsement from BLM, and Elon Musk says he won't vote for Joe Biden.
Ep.1382
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Last night, two governors from two different states with two entirely different approaches to government who each want to be president squared off on Sean Hannity's show.
It was the sort of debate that in a politically serious and grounded country might have swayed the public discourse and altered the course of our nation.
But we are not that kind of country anymore.
So it didn't do any of that and nothing changed.
I'm Michael Knowles.
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Elon Musk is hinting at who he might vote for in 2024.
He's at the very least hinting at who he will not vote for.
We'll get to that in one second.
I don't want to move too fast off the DeSantis-Newsom debate.
I watched the whole debate.
It was a good debate.
And this morning, all the Democrats, and even some of the Republicans, are reporting that Gavin Newsom won.
And I don't really agree with that.
I agree that Gavin Newsom, I don't know, looks taller or something.
is a little slicker, certainly, than DeSantis.
So some people are making the comparison to the Nixon-Kennedy debate, that on the substance, Nixon would have won the debate, but Kennedy just looked more glamorous, so he won the debate.
There's this old line in politics, probably apocryphal, that the radio audience believed that Nixon had won because they were listening to the ideas, but the film audience, the TV audience, thought that Kennedy had won.
I think DeSantis won.
I think it was pretty clear that DeSantis won the debate.
Newsom was a formidable opponent, so right out the gate, DeSantis comes out.
He says, look, all the people are moving out of your state, moving to my state.
Your economy is terrible.
You've got excrement on the streets.
He just stated the facts, and the facts are so damning for California.
You thought, man, how on earth is Gavin Newsom ever going to defend his record?
It's just all right in front of our eyes, and Gavin Newsom - Did the best job I think anyone possibly could, and here's how.
I'm here to tell the truth about the Biden-Harris record and also compare and contrast Ron DeSantis' record and the Republican Party's record as a point of contrast that's as different as daylight and darkness.
You want to bring us back to a pre-1960s world, America in reverse.
You want to roll back hard-earned national rights, on voting rights, on civil rights, on LGBTQ rights, on women's rights.
Not just access to abortion, but also access to contraception.
You want to weaponize grievance.
You are focusing on false separateness.
You in particular, Ron, are on a banning binge, a cultural purge, intimidating and humiliating people you disagree with.
You and President Trump are really trying to light democracy on fire.
So, Sean, there are profound differences tonight, and I look forward to engaging them.
But there's one thing, in closing, that we have in common, is neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024.
Man, that guy's good.
He's so slick.
And DeSantis is not slick.
DeSantis is a little bit awkward, and his smile seems a little bit forced.
And Ron DeSantis is just a bulldog.
He's just a big bulldog who gets into office and wields power effectively and has a good political vision.
Gavin Newsom has no vision whatsoever, and Gavin Newsom has a horrific record, but he gave a great answer there.
And it's something that the left, the smart politicians on the left, have done for years, which is that if you're going to lose on the facts of our society, of how their policies are currently damaging people, then you've got to reframe the debate away from the realities of the present toward the imagined horrors of the past.
Joe Biden is so good at this.
Joe Biden says, oh, you know, I completely saved the economy.
You think the economy is bad now, but man, had Trump's policies continued, oh, you would be so much worse off.
Oh, it's horrible.
You can't even imagine.
Oh, yeah, there's World War III in the Middle East.
It's bad.
But, you know, the only reason they're doing it is I was going to bring peace to the Middle East.
You think it's bad now, man.
What the Republicans would have done?
Oh, it hypothetically would have been absolutely terrible.
And the best way they do this is by convincing everyone that the past was really bad.
This is at the heart of progressivism.
Progressivism says the past is evil and terrible and undesirable and miserable and the present is a crisis and the future is going to be really, really great.
Trust me.
That's progressivism in 20 seconds.
And so Newsom says, Yeah, ignore the excrement on the street, ignore the struggling economy in certain places, ignore the open borders, ignore the crime, the rampant crime.
The 50s, segregation, back alley abortions, oppression, I don't know, regress, going backwards, all these really
Abstract things, the worst aspects of our real past, coupled with imagined evils that people today, having a prejudice for the present, just believe occurred in the past.
And because DeSantis is a conservative, that accusation kind of sticks.
Now, how did DeSantis get out of it?
DeSantis said, yeah, OK, whatever.
Yeah, I know the past is really, really terrible, but I'm not governing in the past.
I'm governing in the present.
My state's so good.
Uh, Governor Newsom, that your own father-in-law moved to it.
I talked to a lot of the people that have moved from California to Florida, and we never used to get people from California to Florida, or really anywhere in the East Coast.
Why would you leave California?
It's got the best weather, great natural forests.
Excuse me, sir.
So, but one of the things that I did, I had, uh, I was talking to a gentleman, a couple... Guys, guys, I'm gonna let this, I'm gonna let the debate breathe, but it's his turn.
Let's take, let's take turns.
So I was talking to a fella who had made the move from California to Florida, and he was telling me that Florida's much better governed, safer, better budget, lower taxes, all this stuff, and he's really happy with the quality of life.
And then he paused and he said, you know, by the way, I'm Gavin Newsom's father-in-law, so we do count Gavin's in-laws as some of the people that have fled California and come to the state of Florida.
Nice.
Nice!
Look, Ron DeSantis, you might say he's not the slickest, he's not the prettiest, he doesn't smile the best, but that guy prepares.
He prepared for that debate.
And Newsom is a super smart politician, too.
Newsom saw that attack coming a mile away.
That's why he tried to interrupt him.
That's why he tried to derail him.
But DeSantis wouldn't get derailed.
DeSantis just kept plowing through in a respectful way until Hannity, who was actually a very good moderator given the currently terrible tenor of these sorts of debates, Hannity said, hey, come on, let DeSantis finish.
And then he totally landed that ending.
He said, yeah, you know, look, I talked to a lot of people.
No, no, cut it out.
Stop it, Ron.
Stop talking.
And one of them who really loves the government in my state and hates the government in your state is your own son-in-law.
Explain that.
So, look, Newsom was able to evade a lot of the attacks all night because he's Patrick Bateman, because he's American Psycho.
DeSantis was prepared for that, too.
And so he took a moment to pull out of the actual issues of the debate to talk about And to acknowledge why DeSantis' performance sometimes doesn't seem as strong as Newsom's, even when all the facts and arguments are on DeSantis' side, he said, it's because you're slick Willie over here.
This guy has no record.
There's no, I mean, the fact that you supported amnesty, the fact that you supported Obama's reforms, those are facts.
They're just simple facts.
The fact that your greatest contribution, Ron, to this debate is shooting people in backpacks.
That's so inhumane.
him lying to me.
I don't mind Gavin lying to me, but I do mind him lying to you.
He is sitting there saying that Joe Biden is willing to solve this problem.
Is there anybody out there that actually believes this?
Joe Biden created this problem.
So if he's willing to lie to you about that, you know he's lying to you about all these other facts and figures, about all this other stuff.
He's just throwing stuff out to see what sticks against the wall.
This is a slick, slippery politician whose state is failing.
People are leaving his state and he's trying to run interference for his failure.
This is a slick, slippery politician.
I I love it cuz it's so true.
And DeSantis kept returning to this.
It's a really good campaign theme.
I happen to think DeSantis is right on one point, probably only one point, which is that neither Newsom nor DeSantis are going to be the nominee as of right now.
Who knows?
Lightning could strike, but as of right now, the polls seem to show, the structure of the race seems to show that it's going to be Trump versus Biden.
And if that is the case, Trump should follow this strategy from DeSantis, which is they're always going to try to redirect to some hypothetical past or present crisis.
They're always going to try to off-foot the Republican, to distract them, to do a Jedi mind trick on the public.
And DeSantis kept coming back to, hey, You have eyes, you have pocketbooks, you have budgets, you have friends who are being subjected to crime and all sorts of disorder.
These slick politicians are lying to you, but you know the truth.
You know, you just live it every day.
What they are telling you is not true.
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Then, okay, there's only a couple more things I want to point out from this.
It was an instructive debate.
Even if it's not going to change the nomination in 2024, it gave a lot of good pointers for what the Republicans should do.
As DeSantis is squirming and trying to weasel his way out of every single question, DeSantis then returns to the bread-and-butter issue.
The bread-and-butter issue that the Squishes want to run away from, the Chamber of Commerce wants to run away from, the Republican establishment wants to run away from, but that serves Republicans very, very well.
And that would be pointing out that the libs want you to believe that a dude can become a chick.
Let me just say something about parents' rights, because he says California respects parents' rights.
This is rich.
He's been telling a lot of whoppers tonight.
This may be the biggest.
In California, if you're a parent in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina, your minor child You can go to California without your knowledge or without your consent and get hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and a sex change operation all without you knowing or consenting.
How in the heck is that honoring parents' rights when you're bringing people from out of state to go around their parents' backs and getting life-altering surgeries?
That is radical.
That is extreme.
That is an assault on parents' rights.
It's not for you to decide.
It's for the parents to decide.
And the parents do not want their kids going to these other things.
Let me stay on a follow-up.
Let's turn to the issue of education.
Where's your decency in humanity?
Excellent, excellent.
Argument.
Newsom knows it, so he's trying to cut him off.
He's trying to interrupt him.
What's so great about this is, one, we know the trans issue works for Republicans.
It got Glenn Youngkin elected in Virginia.
It helped make Ron DeSantis popular in Florida.
It's been a winner, contrary to what the squishes in the establishment will tell you.
That profoundly social issue about sexual matters and things that we just should ignore and only talk about our taxes or whatever they want you... No.
That social issue It is very persuasive to people, especially when you talk about what the Democrats are doing to kids, especially when you talk about the parental rights.
The other thing it does is it takes a strength of DeSantis and the Democrats and it uses it against them, namely that they're really slick and attractive, and it takes their slickness and their attractiveness and makes it seem Creepy.
It makes it seem like they're turning that on children.
It makes them look like groomers.
It makes Gavin Newsom look like he is luring kids to disobey their parents come to California and have weird sexual procedures performed on them, which is what he's doing.
That's a that's an entirely honest true attack and and all of a sudden the slick guy who looks like kind of a Don Giovanni looks like a total freaking creep.
So then it gets down to the the Closing arguments that they're going to make.
Ron DeSantis, with discipline, comes back to a closing argument that the Republicans should should hammer again and again.
Yes, he's in decline.
Yes, it's a danger to the country.
He has no business running for president.
And, you know, Gavin Newsom agrees with that.
He won't say that.
That's why he's running his shadow campaign.
He should not be running.
He is not up to the job.
And it is dangerous for this country.
Well, I'll take, I will take Joe Biden at 100 versus Ron DeSantis any day of the week at any age.
In fact, all of the folks on the campaign trail.
You think he's up to the job?
You think he's 100%?
100%?
I've been spending plenty of time with Joe Biden in private and public.
DeSantis is saying, look, my opponent here and all the Democrats, they say they think Biden's up to the job, but you don't.
And just look at the public opinion polling.
All the Republicans, all the independents, and a lot of Democrats all agree, maybe most Democrats at this point agree, Joe Biden is obviously not up to the job.
I never really liked the guy, but even if you did like the guy.
He is in serious mental decline.
He exhibits that every single day.
It is a danger to the country.
It's caused national crises.
It's causing international incidents.
We all know it.
And so when you hammer that home, not only does it make the Democrat look bad, not only does it incline people to vote for a Republican, But it also shows the Democrats to be liars because they're saying something.
Joe Biden's fine.
He's doing great.
He's totally competent.
They're saying something that everybody knows is a lie and that everybody knows that everybody knows is a lie.
Very good closing argument.
And the way you know, maybe the biggest reason that I would give the win last night to Ron DeSantis is because DeSantis demolished Newsom's arguments so devastatingly that Newsom had to return for his closing argument to absolute piffle, meaningless platitudes.
We all want to be loved.
We need to be loved.
We all want to be protected, respected, and connected.
I think there is a unity frame here.
You said it well.
I mean, Ron, I have no doubt Ron DeSantis loves this country.
I love this country.
It's not about red versus blue.
It's red, white, and blue.
The United States of America.
And I think we're all better off and we're all better off.
And so I appreciate this conversation.
I appreciate you, Ron.
Being a family man, you got three incredible kids.
I appreciate your wife, your sacrifice, and I appreciate your military service.
But I also appreciate we do have fundamental differences about the fate and future of this country.
And that's why I'm gonna be working so hard to get Joe Biden and Kamala Harris reelected in 2024.
Whoa, whoa, total collection.
That guy had nothing.
That was like the love child of Patrick Bateman and Kamala Harris.
And they get to him, okay, closing argument, Governor.
And he's thinking, shoot, every case I made tonight got knocked down.
DeSantis will exploit that.
Look, man, look, we want to be loved and connected and directed and elected.
And man, we do better when we do better.
We do worse when we do worse.
And then the best line of all of the meaningless little rap was, It's not about red versus blue, it's red, white, and blue.
Which is the lamest rewrite, copycat Barack Obama impression I've ever seen.
Obama, I also thought this was a stupid line from Obama, but it worked.
He said, listen, there's not a red America, not a blue America, there's a United States of America.
And that was the moment that everyone decided this guy was going to be the first black president.
He was going to be this unity candidate who spoke in these glowing and vague terms, hope and change.
Well, that doesn't really work anymore.
Newsom is not nearly as inspiring a candidate as Barack Obama, and it's been played out.
And all this hope and change, not a red, not a blue, just a red, white and blue, this stuff was exposed as being meaningless for eight years under the Obama administration.
This is... Gavin Newsom got called on by the teacher and he...
Hadn't done the reading, and he didn't have an answer to the teacher's question, because the teacher Ron DeSantis had already dissected all of his arguments, and he just rambled.
Rambled into nothing.
So, all of that to say, really good debate for DeSantis.
Not going to change anything about this race.
The one good thing that could come out of this is, assuming that Trump remains the leader of the pack and is the nominee, he should take notes.
Because if you coupled that debate performance just on paper, the debate strategies, the talking points, the attacks, if you coupled that with a little more humor, a little more charisma, a little bit A little bit of that je ne sais quoi of President Kofefe.
That would be a formidable strategy.
And it certainly would go a lot better than the debate against Joe Biden went back in 2020.
Now, there's big news with the Trump campaign and its apparent embrace of Black Lives Matter.
We'll get to that in one second.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Mind Martyr, who says, this is why Elon is one of the most cutthroat, successful businessmen alive.
My father worked with him personally for years.
He does not F around.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, I mean, I would imagine.
That this guy is pretty sharp.
And I've been skeptical of a lot of Elon Musk projects before, but the one thing I would say is it's not a good idea to bet against Elon Musk.
That guy can pull a rabbit out of a hat.
And so Twitter, which was already slated to go bankrupt before he got there, and now he's totally mixed everything around and changed the rules, changed the name.
Some people are saying it's going to be the end of Twitter.
Maybe it will be, but I would not bet against Elon Musk.
Okay, turning from the DeSantis and Newsom undercard debate to the top of the ticket, a BLM activist, a co-founder of a BLM chapter, is endorsing Donald Trump.
We've been using abuse for so long at that party.
They don't value our vote.
Their policies are basically racist policies.
I believe it's a racist party.
Donald Trump, he's the opposite.
He's going to tell you how it is.
He's going to give it to you straight.
Trump has done more for the black community.
And he's not alone in his criticism.
President Biden faces dismal approval numbers among black voters in key swing states.
Joining us now, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Rhode Island, Mark Fisher.
Mark, thanks so much for joining the program.
You know, this is my favorite story of the day because it identifies with what I've seen in the barbershop.
All the brothers, for some reason right now, are turning tides right now.
And I just wonder, what is the big reason?
I think personally it's the duplicity of the Democrats.
The hypocrisy.
We're not stupid.
The brothers are not stupid.
We understand when someone's for us and when someone is not.
Is saying, look, I used to be a big BLM supporter, but now I'm supporting Donald Trump.
The way that Trump's opponents in the Republican Party are framing this is that Trump is embracing BLM.
That's not really the case.
This guy, Mark Fisher, is saying, yeah, I'm not really a BLM activist anymore.
I left the left because they're racist and they're not helping black people.
And the black people now are all going to start voting for Republicans.
I hope this is the case.
I hope this happens.
I'm not holding my breath for it because I've heard this just about every single election cycle of my lifetime.
I've heard this is going to be the one where the Democrats lose the black vote and it moves in a big swing to the Republicans.
And it never happens.
It never, ever happens.
The Democrats keep a roughly 90% hold on the black vote.
And I'm looking at the same polling that everybody else is.
I agree.
Right now in the polling, you're seeing a big swing among black voters, especially among black men toward the Republican Party, toward Trump.
I agree that if any candidate is going to shake up the demographic voting patterns, it's going to be Trump because he's a weirdo, because he doesn't fit the mold of the old Republican politicians.
So there's a decent enough chance that the Voters are going to break that mold too for him.
I'm just not holding my breath for it.
But that's not even why I bring up this story.
I bring up this story because of what I think is a fairly dishonest attack on Trump.
And it's the headline, Trump embraces BLM, because he sent out this post on Truth Social.
Spoke with Mark Fisher yesterday, a great guy, very honored to have his and BLM's support.
I've done more for black people than any other president.
Lincoln, in parentheses, Lincoln, including 10-year funding for historically black colleges and universities where they had none, opportunity zones, criminal justice reform, and much more.
Thank you to Mark.
So, I see why people are accusing Trump of embracing BLM.
But I think that this post on Truth Social is a Rorschach test.
I don't think it really tells you any new information about Trump.
I think this is a Rorschach test for whether or not you like Trump or you just hate Trump.
That's what it's really about.
Because one way of reading it is Donald Trump is honored to have BLM's support.
This guy's a leftist.
He's a radical, I don't know.
The other way to read this is Donald Trump is a funny guy who's doing a little bit of trolling and making a joke.
I think it's pretty clearly the latter.
Here's my evidence.
Because one sentence after he says he's honored, first of all, because he doesn't have BLM support, because this guy left BLM and BLM no longer recognizes him.
So I see that as a fact that is a little trollish.
The very next sentence, Trump says, I've done more for black people than any other president.
Now, the obvious response to that is, well, Lincoln freed the slaves.
Are you, Donald, really saying that you've done more than Abraham Lincoln?
And Trump, he's not even unaware of that.
He acknowledges that in this jokey way in the tweet.
I've done more than any other president for black people.
Lincoln?
Question mark.
Not even, okay, other than Abraham Lincoln.
No, no, he says, no, I've actually, I think I've done more for black people even than the president who freed the slaves.
I think he's joking.
I think the 40-year entertainer who had a top show on network television and has been an entertaining comedic figure for almost half a century now, I think he knows how to tell a joke.
Now, he cites certain things here that I don't like.
The criminal justice reform, that jailbreak bill, I did not like that.
That was a bad policy.
So I grant that there is sometimes a little bit of a mixed bag here.
But I guess that's even my broader point to why this tweet or this Truth Social post doesn't upset me.
We have, in the case of Trump, a record to look at.
Does anybody really believe that Donald Trump is going to invite BLM to the White House?
We're going to have Secretary of State Patrice Cullors Secretary of the Interior Alicia Garza?
I don't think so.
Trump very clearly stood against that kind of radicalism, obviously.
But he speaks in ways that are kind of ambiguous and often just funny on the campaign trail.
What I would compare this to is when Donald Trump waved the LGBT flag on the campaign trail.
You remember that?
LGBT for Trump.
And he actually had the flag upside down because he obviously doesn't care about that issue at all.
And a lot of people, a lot of conservatives said, this guy, he's a radical pro-LGBT candidate.
He's a big leftist.
How could conservatives even consider endorsing him or voting for him?
And what some people said at the time was, yeah, he's just happy to take people's votes, but he's not going to be a pro-LGBT rights activism president or whatever.
And then he wasn't.
He gets into office and he immediately reverses Barack Obama's insane decision to promote transgenderism in the military.
He was just an ordinary president.
He promoted conservative judges to the courts.
He didn't, he wasn't that.
He talked in one way on the campaign trail that was Weaponized ambiguity that won votes, that got attention, and then he governed in a way that was basically solid.
And that is what I think we're seeing here with Mr. Trump and BLM.
Now, who is Elon Musk going to vote for for president?
Well, in a lot of elections, it's not so much who you vote for as who you vote against.
See yourself voting for President Biden?
If it's a Biden Trump election, for example. - I think I would not vote for Biden.
You'd vote for Trump?
I'm not saying I'd vote for Trump, but I mean, this is definitely a difficult choice here.
Would you vote for Nikki Haley?
Nikki Haley, by the way, wants all social media Names to be exposed, as you know.
No, I think that's outrageous.
Yeah, no, I'm not going to vote for some pro-censorship candidate.
Oh, it's going to be a difficult choice.
I guess, I don't know.
I'm not going to vote for Biden.
Not going to vote for Nikki Haley, he says.
So what do we conclude from this?
It means that, look, maybe he'll just vote for Trump and he's just trying to be cagey about it.
I think Elon is expressing something deeper here, which is that he opposes the old consensus.
And Nikki Haley, fairly or unfairly, has become a representative of the old consensus.
She just got the big endorsement of the Koch network.
The Koch network used to be the force in Republican politics.
It's still a major force, but since 2016, things have changed a little bit.
The alternately neoconservative and libertarian talking points that once drove the Republican Party, they've fallen out of favor.
The shades of conservatism of the Bush years or even alternately the Paul Ryan fiscal hawk just cut spending years, they're kind of over.
Likewise, Joe Biden certainly represents the old consensus because he was around at the founding of the country and I think he signed the Declaration of Independence.
Elon Musk is saying, no, anyone who represents The policies of 20 years ago or in Biden's case, you know, 300 years ago.
I'm not voting for that person.
We need someone to shake things up.
And I think a lot of people feel that way now.
Speaking of shaking things up, not just in the political order, but in your own life and in the broader kingdom that really matters, the Eternal Kingdom, you ought to check out St.
Paul Center.
Right now go to stpaulcenter.com slash Michael.
I recently had my friend Dr. Scott Hahn on the show.
He is the founder of the St.
Paul Center, which is one of the fastest growing Catholic organizations in the world.
I love Scott, I think that he is one of, if not the leading, Catholic theologian around today.
So important to so many people, and they are spreading the good news and spreading biblical literacy.
The St.
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To, most importantly, grow closer to Christ himself.
In order to achieve this, the St.
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Take it away.
Hey Michael, hope you're doing well and I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.
My question is more on can you give me advice on something?
I have been with my fiancé for about three years and we're due to be married in June.
I am currently looking into becoming a Catholic And there's a parish near me that does do the RCIA all year round and I am looking into that, but he just basically is stagnant in his relationship with God, which is not something that I want.
He doesn't try to move forward in virtue or reading the Bible or anything like that.
And I feel like that's a very important part of any relationship is to center it around God.
And I don't really know what to do.
There are some other things that have to do with finance and everything like that that he goes backwards on instead of moving forward and trying to get better.
It's like he's going backwards.
And he says that if I become Catholic, he'll become Catholic.
But he's doing it mostly just so that we can be together and to please me, I think.
And that's not what I want.
And so any advice would be helpful.
Thank you.
You know the advice that you want.
You're not asking me for the advice that you think you're asking me for.
You don't want to marry this guy.
You're making that quite clear.
You're saying, yeah, this guy, he's a complete loser.
He's a loaf.
He's not virtuous at all.
He's a coward.
He's a cuck.
He's a weakling.
Yeah, he's financially irresponsible.
He's just a total loser.
So what do you think I should do, Michael?
I don't know whether he's a loser or not.
All I know is what you just told me.
But what I do know is that you don't want to marry this guy.
And you're asking me for permission to break up with him.
Well, if you want to break up with him, break up with him.
You don't need my permission.
You don't need anybody else's permission for that.
You're not married yet.
So just break up with him.
If you don't want to break up with him, then I think what you have to identify is that your issue here is not just exactly how he's approaching religion.
Look, I was an atheist for 10 years.
People can take circuitous routes back home to the church and to the right relationship with God.
But everything you're complaining about with regard to your boyfriend right now gets to a deeper issue, which I guess ultimately is religious because it comes down to Genesis 3, and that's basically that your boyfriend doesn't want to take a leadership role.
In the relationship.
He just wants to be a loaf and a follower and just do whatever you do and not have to grow up and act like a man.
So that's the problem.
And if you do want to fix the relationship and end up getting married to him, you got to just tell him to act like a man and shape up and be a leader or else, you know, go find someone else.
Because you're going to dump that zero and get yourself a hero girl, you know?
That's really what you're saying here.
But from the way you're talking about it, you're not saying, look, I love him, he's such a wonderful man and he tries his best.
But no, you're saying, this guy's just a total loser and I don't really like him.
Am I allowed to break up with him, please, Michael?
Yeah, sure, okay, fine.
And the reason, probably, that you feel that way about him is because of that failure of leadership.
Women don't want some guy who's going to be a little wimp or a simp.
No woman wants that.
So, if you want to keep him around, I would just get right to the heart of the matter.
Look, sweet little Alisa has had to do this to me.
Not to quite the extreme that you're describing here with your boyfriend, but in a much shallower way, but still meaningful.
On Friday nights, When we're trying to figure out what to eat.
I don't know.
Whenever we want to go out to eat, Alisa says, Mac, what do you want to have for dinner?
And I say, I don't know.
What do you want to have for dinner?
I don't know.
We could do Italian.
Yeah.
We could do Indian.
Yeah.
We could do, I don't know.
We could get sushi.
Yeah.
What do you want?
I don't know.
What do you want?
What do you want?
I don't know.
What do you want?
Mac, you're the man!
Make a decision!
Head of household!
Genesis chapter 3!
Man up!
That's the answer.
I'd say, oh sorry girl, you know what, you're right.
We're getting sushi.
You're right.
I gotta act like a man.
So I would tell him that.
Or just dump him if you really don't like him at all.
Next question.
Hey there, Smokey Mike.
This is Based Cigar Enjoyer.
I had a theological question.
The Bible frequently references God's wrath, and I was wondering how this should be understood, because Wrath is a sin, of course.
It's one of the seven deadly sins, famously.
And I was wondering if it's the case that it's not a sin for God because God is perfectly free in his nature, or if it's more a matter of There being a misunderstanding of the word wrath or maybe not a broad enough understanding of the word wrath in different situations similar to with how pride can also mean filial love for your country or something like that or if it's maybe a mix of both or something else I'm not seeing.
Thank you.
It's not just because God is perfectly free, but I think more so because God is perfectly good.
So wrath is excessive anger or passion or vengeance.
But nothing is excessive for God because God is infinite.
So, how about pride?
Well, let's go to the deadliest of the seven deadly sins.
Can God be prideful?
God can't be prideful because pride is excessive love of one's own excellence.
But God is infinitely excellent and God is omniscient.
So, it's not that he's ignorant of his own infinite excellence.
He does know it.
So is he prideful?
No, he can't be prideful because he can't excessively love his own excellence because his excellence is infinite.
And his love is infinite too.
So, likewise with wrath.
Wrath is a deadly sin for human beings because it is excessive and because it is vengeful and vengeance belongs to the Lord.
So for human beings, when we take vengeance into our own hands and when we fall into excess, that would be sinful.
But vengeance properly belongs to the Lord and God cannot fall into excess because He's infinite and perfectly good.
It's a sin for us, because these behaviors, this kind of anger that you're referring to with wrath, is in our case conditioned by sin.
For God, of course, not at all conditioned by sin, because God is perfect and without sin.
Next question.
Hey Dirty Mike, Mr. Reality here.
I wanted to ask you a question regarding your sex robot topic from Monday.
About how once they perfect AI and these robots, then no one's going to get married and have kids and the species is going to die out because everyone's going to be busy with their robots.
My question is, do you think this could actually lead to a return to older traditions of arranged marriages where people married other people who they didn't really love, they didn't want to be with just to have heirs and propagate their line?
And then they'll just go play with their robots most of the time and just do that to propagate the line.
Do you think that's a possibility, or do you think it's just going to be the end of civilization as we know it and everyone's going to eventually die out?
And why do you think that?
Thanks.
These are both extreme scenarios, but if it's going to be one of them, it's going to be the latter.
And the reason is that our birthrate problem right now already exists.
We're already a dying civilization.
We don't even have the hot, sexy AI sex robots yet.
And I think probably in Japan, they already have.
Japan's always technologically just a little ahead on these weird things, but we're already in that conundrum.
And the reason we're in that conundrum is because we can't plan for the future because we've taken an anti-historical view of politics.
We hate our forebears.
We have taken an undisciplined approach to politics.
We hate disciplining the appetite to cultivate the rational will.
So, because of that, we spend every dollar we get.
In fact, we spend dollars that we don't have.
We're a nation that is deeply indebted, and we borrow from our biggest geopolitical adversary in order to fund our rampant spending.
As Patrick Deneen, the conservative political philosopher, pointed out, the inheritance that we now leave to our children, politically, is nothing but a mountain of debt.
We don't have kids because we want to go to brunch more often, or we want to just go on lots of fun vacations, or we want to pursue our career without any thought to anyone else, marriage or certainly not kids.
So we replace kids with dogs if we're going to replace it with any living being at all.
And that's a problem right now.
You can't blame a lot on the weird AI sex robots.
You can't blame that.
And that problem doesn't seem to be getting better anytime soon.
Next question.
Dear Executive Grassy Knowles, this is Murder of Crows here.
If you don't mind, I'd like to borrow your Nostradamus hat for just a moment.
I envision a stage with two equally spaced podiums.
Two governors approach from either side.
One governor walks past his podium to center stage and says, Hello, my name is Ron DeSantis and I'm a real presidential candidate.
If you would like to learn about any of my presidential platforms or donate to my candidacy, please go to rondesantisisawesome.com.
If you would like to continue to live in the hellhole that is California, please continue to listen to the fool over my shoulder.
Thank you for your time and good night.
As he leaves the stage, the governor flips Mussolini the bird and says, get bent.
Any thoughts?
My thought is a lot of people have these really nice fan fiction scenarios about their preferred candidates who aren't doing well.
And I say this as someone who really, really likes Newsom and who spent the entire first half of my show talking about how great... No, I really don't like Newsom.
Pardon.
I really like DeSantis.
And I spent the entire first half of my show talking about how great DeSantis is and how well he did in the debate.
But that being said, he has not been an effective presidential candidate.
He's been a bad presidential candidate.
And the reason he's been a bad presidential candidate, the way we know that for a fact, is that he's not on track to be the nominee.
He isn't improving his numbers.
He isn't connecting with new groups of voters.
So even though I like him, and I think he's done a great job as governor, and I think that he did well in that debate last night, that doesn't matter.
My preferences For the sort of things a candidate says and does in office don't necessarily constitute what makes a good presidential candidate.
And so then people come up with all this fan fiction of, well, but actually imagine if DeSantis did this, imagine this.
Right, you have to imagine because it's not happening in real life.
And Trump, love him or hate him, he has been an effective presidential candidate.
Even not Returning to the White House in 2020, in 2021.
Even whatever happened in the 2020 election, even granted that.
He won.
He won in 2016.
He won the presidency at least one time.
And he was a very effective candidate.
Everyone underestimated him and he connected.
So, you know, you don't really need the fiction with that guy.
Can he do it again?
Can he repeat 2016 again?
I don't know.
Some people are skeptical of that.
If you're in the fan fiction world, it's because in reality your candidate is not doing very well.
