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April 5, 2024 - The Michael Knowles Show
48:31
Ep. 1462 - This Just Destroyed The Democrats' Black Vote

The Biden administration bans menthols and loses black votes, an egg donor wishes happy birthday to her abandoned child, and the libs try to convince us that non-alcoholic drinks are all the rage! Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEl Ep.1462 - - -  DailyWire+: Watch the brand new series, Judged by Matt Walsh premiering April 9th at 8 PM ET only on DailyWire+ : https://bit.ly/3TNB3sD Get 35% off your DailyWire+ Membership here: https://bit.ly/4akO7wC Get your Yes or No game here: https://bit.ly/3X6tlKY   - - -  Today’s Sponsors: Birch Gold - Text "KNOWLES" to 989898, or go to https://birchgold.com/Knowles, for your no-cost, no-obligation, FREE information kit.  Hallow - Download the Hallow app and get 3 months free at https://hallow.com/Knowles  - - - Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3RwKpq6  Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3BqZLXA  Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eEmwyg  Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3L273Ek

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Democrats' advantage with Black voters has now cratered to its lowest point since 1960, according to new analysis from the chief data reporter at the Financial Times.
This analysis backs up similar findings in February by Gallup polling, which found that Democrats' lead over Republicans among Black voters has shrunk 20 points in just three years.
And, according to a New York Times-Siena College Poll last month, if the election were held today, nearly one in four black voters would vote for Donald Trump.
Now, I have generally been skeptical of claims that black voters, 90% of whom have been liberal Democrats for decades, are suddenly going to become conservative Republicans overnight.
I've heard this almost every year of my life, and it's never happened.
But for the first time in my life, The signs really are there.
And to top it all off, the cherry on top of this Electoral Sunday for Republicans, the Democrats are about to ban menthol cigarettes.
Which means, frankly, as far as I'm concerned, it's time to start planning the Trump inauguration.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show, P.A.
People are turning away from the sauce.
I'm talking about young people in particular, Zoomers.
They don't like booze.
Non-alcoholic drinks are all the rage, which sounds nice enough.
I guess it's good not to be a drunkard all the time, but There's a dark undercurrent to the move away from booze.
We'll get to that in a moment.
First though, I want to talk about cigarettes.
I'm only...
I don't even know if I'm half joking about the menthol thing being terrible for Democrats among black voters.
Black people love menthol cigarettes.
A lot of people like menthol cigarettes.
I've never been a cigarette guy.
I've loved cigars since I was 15.
Obviously, I have a cigar company called Mayflower Cigars, based on a cigar that I got actually when I was a teenager, and that's a story for another time.
On the rare occasions when I've had a cigarette, I've had a menthol cigarette every now and again, and I get it.
I guess I'm not quite sure why black people in particular love it, but it's just a fact.
There's nothing racist about it.
It's just data, man.
A little over one in five black men smoke cigarettes.
The number is a little bit lower for black people overall because black women are less likely to smoke cigarettes than black men.
I think the total number for black people is around 17% of black people smoke cigarettes.
80% of black smokers smoke menthols.
That is a crazy number.
White people don't really like menthols, Asians, Hispanics don't really, but black people love them.
And this became a big political issue because in 2009, Barack Obama, the first black president, I guess, some people call Bill Clinton the first black president, but Obama, certainly physically the first black president, he comes in and he says that he's going to ban flavored cigarettes and tobacco products.
And the reason for this is they're marketed to kids.
So at least that was the argument from the FDA.
So they're going to go in and they ban all of them except for menthols.
And I'm not joking.
The reason that Obama wouldn't ban the menthols is because it would have hurt him too much with the black vote.
So that was the one exception.
The most addictive, most popular flavored cigarette.
That's the one they allowed to stick around.
That was in 2009.
Then fast forward.
The FDA finally comes out and says in the early Biden administration, okay, we're going to finally ban the menthols now.
There have been delays, there have been delays.
There's now a lawsuit, an anti-smoking group is suing to make the FDA do it, and the Biden administration is moving forward.
If this goes through, it's going to really hurt convenience stores.
Banning menthol cigarettes would reduce non-tobacco sundry sales by $72,000 a year for the average convenience store, and tobacco sales by $160,000 a year for the average convenience store.
That means that convenience stores overall are going to lose $2.16 billion in sales.
It's a kind of interesting regulatory issue, especially because it's such a popular product.
What interests me most about this political issue is, the whole issue revolves around black people and allegations of racism.
The whole politics of this regulation, from day one, has been about how to frame it as not anti-black and as pro-black.
So in 2009, the pro-Menthol forces came out and they said, hey, this is racism.
You're banning the cigarettes that black people most enjoy.
And that carried the day.
Now the argument is, well, actually, these specific cigarettes are killing black people.
And so it's racist to keep them on the market.
It's part of a broader campaign to kill black people.
But regardless of the CIGS and regardless of this particular regulation, it shows you where American politics is.
You have to be able to frame every single issue as a matter of the oppression Olympics, specifically with regard to the left's favored groups and probably most especially with regard to black people.
This comes at a pivotal time when As far as we can tell from all of the surveys, black people do seem to be, in some measure, moving away from the Democrat Party.
Whether that materializes in November remains to be seen.
Speaking of racial issues, McKinsey, some time ago, the big consulting firm, came out with a study that all the libs glommed onto.
And the study showed that DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, are actually great for business.
Now, the moment this study came out, I knew it was totally bogus.
And the way that I knew, and maybe you knew that it was totally bogus, is that if the DEI policies were really, really great for business, then the government wouldn't have to cram it down everyone's throats.
This is the same way I knew that the so-called gender wage gap was bogus.
If companies could really get the same work out of one group of people, paying them 25% less than they pay the other group of people, they would only hire the first group of people.
The businesses would only ever hire women.
But obviously, the women weren't only being paid 75 cents for the same work as men.
That's preposterous.
There aren't enough misogynists in the world, certainly not on the boards of corporations, to unnecessarily raise their labor costs by such a margin.
Well, same thing with DEI.
If the DEI policies were so great, they would just be implemented naturally as the companies tried to increase their efficiency and save money.
Nevertheless, the McKinsey study, because it's got this, you know, big Liberal establishment stamp of approval on it from one of the big consulting shops.
It's adopted everywhere, including at the Pentagon.
Okay, even our national security is relying on this woke nonsense that everybody just intuitively knows is BS.
So that the Department of Defense under Joe Biden leans on this nonsense McKinsey study as the justification to install affirmative action in our military.
What did the studies say?
The studies said that the implementation of DEI led to increased profitability for corporations.
Specifically, the companies became more profitable as their executive levels became more diverse.
You know, the thing that was holding back Ford Motor Company is they didn't have enough transvestites in the ranks.
But the moment that you hire more of the people of the favored minority groups, then the profits are going to go up, right?
No.
There's a study from Econ Journal Watch that found that the studies were deeply, deeply flawed.
And in fact, they weren't even measuring the things that they said they were measuring.
They would measure a company's profitability leading up to the point at which the DEI policies were initiated.
So the growth and profits leading up to that point obviously had nothing to do with the DEI policies which came in at the end, among other problems with the studies.
But it doesn't really matter because the Notion that DEI is really good for companies.
It's really good for profitability.
It's just a smart business decision.
That wasn't the conclusion of any study.
That was the premise.
That was the starting assumption.
Okay, and just as liberalism does to so many other aspects of society, it just flips everything on its head.
So, McKinsey obviously didn't begin with a thesis that it then tested to arrive at a conclusion.
It began with the conclusion and it worked its way back from there.
The conclusion that one has to reach.
Is that diversity, equity, and inclusion is good, because that's the state religion.
That's the new euphemism for the state religion, which is a radical form of liberalism, sometimes called, in its uniquely American manifestation, political correctness.
Now we call it wokeism.
It's all the same thing.
That's the state religion, and its conclusions are assumed.
If we question those conclusions, we are going to have to question so much of our political order.
So this study gets debunked.
The Pentagon's not going to change the policy.
Corporations aren't going to change the policy.
The jurists and the legislators are not going to change the law.
We will live.
We will live as one nation under God or one nation under D.E.I.
It's even kind of funny that D.E.I.
is the Latin word for gods.
It's the genitive form of the Latin word for God, singular.
It would be the singular genitive form in Latin for the language and grammar nerds out there.
And I don't think it's any mere coincidence.
There's no such thing as a mere coincidence in a world governed by Providence.
We've substituted one nation under the true God for one nation under this false God, and it's the false God of liberalism, which ultimately is a worship of the self and of the individual irrational will.
There's so much more to say.
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Speaking of diversity and inclusion, I have just seen the saddest and most infuriating video that I have ever come across in my entire life, and it was going viral yesterday.
It is a video of an egg donor making her annual video message or FaceTime call to her daughter.
This is the daughter obviously that was produced with this woman's egg but she sold her egg to two homosexual men who purchased the egg and then purchased a child and then intentionally created that child to deprive that child of her mother and then the mother once a year makes a little call and here's what the daughter says at the end of it.
I wanted to wish you a happy birthday, and so does Malik.
He says happy birthday also.
I hope you had a wonderful fourth birthday.
I really love looking at all your pictures on Instagram, and you're growing up to be such a beautiful and creative, sparkling light.
And I know your daddies love you so much.
So happy birthday baby girl and I hope you have a wonderful day.
Happy birthday.
What did you say?
Okay, you can say that to her.
What do you want to say?
We blurred out the girl's face because she's undergone enough abuse at the hands of these psychopaths.
Intellectually, tamping down one's emotion, One can remove oneself and look at this as a matter of reason and conclude that obviously this is extremely evil and the entire industry of surrogacy, purchasing children, allowing two men in particular or two women to create a child with the intention of depriving that child of his mother or father.
This is obviously very, very evil and should be illegal, of course.
Selling one's eggs, selling one's sperm, this obviously should be illegal.
But if one has any degree of intellectual removed from this, one can say, okay, I understand.
They know not what, forgive them Lord, they know not what they do.
They don't understand.
They're blinded by their own selfish desires.
They sincerely believe that men and women are not different.
They maybe sincerely believe that a child doesn't need his or her mommy or daddy.
They just don't know.
They just don't know.
I think that's probably true.
And so one could extend a little bit of grace there.
That would be the reaction when you don't watch that video.
That would be the reaction when you just kind of think about it in the abstract and you recognize that people are very confused and we have a very fallen world and culture and they just don't know the grave evil that they're committing.
But then you watch the video.
And it's a little more difficult to extend that kind of grace because you hear the little girl saying, I love you mommy, I love you mommy, but mommy doesn't love her.
And mommy sold her to two homosexuals who intentionally bought her, created her, to deprive her of one of the most important connections that a human being can ever possibly have, which is the connection between a mother and a baby.
And the degree of trauma that that is inflicting on the little child is not only common sense and self-evident, but you can then hear it in the girl's voice.
And when you see that, you conclude that every single adult involved in this should be imprisoned for life at least.
That's just the natural reaction that one has to this grave, grave child abuse that our culture tolerates now, or for the last five minutes, and in fact celebrates.
And so, it's important sometimes, I think.
We want a culture and a political order that is based on reason, okay?
We don't want to be just blown away on passions.
But we're human beings and pulling at the heartstrings sometimes helps us to see the reality of a situation.
This is gravely, gravely evil.
Everyone involved, the egg donor, the people purchasing the child, the people intentionally depriving the child of a natural mother and father, they are all committing, whether they know it or not, they probably don't know it, most of them, they are committing a grave, grave evil.
And if it has already happened, grave evils happen all the time.
People kill 800,000 babies a year in this country, to use just the one example of abortion.
If it's already happened, we do our best to just move on and make the best of a bad situation.
But this process, the surrogacy industry, the purchasing of children on the open market, and the abuse of children to satisfy the selfish and irrational desires of adults, and to satisfy the fantasies and absurdities of even politicians who redefine natural institutions, including the most basic political structure, that's only growing.
This problem only stands to get much, much worse.
There were already a lot of victims of it, but it's going to get much, much worse.
And so it seemed to me perfectly reasonable and the sort of thing that any, certainly any Republican or conservative politician, but really any, any politician who isn't just like an outright Satanist, you know, who isn't just like the most low down, dirty, rotten, completely out of his mind politician there is.
Everyone should recognize this evil and oppose it.
And it's just got to stop.
And it's just got to stop immediately.
And that's that.
I've seen, you cover the news, you see so many, you know, videos of war and killings and this and then they're all very, very disturbing.
That's the most disturbing video I've ever seen in my whole life.
This woman pops in once a year, hey, hey daughter that I sold to a couple of selfish homosexuals, Happy birthday!
I love you, Mommy!
Yep, sorry!
Hang up!
That's not just one example.
That's not one unrepresentative example.
That's a major public policy that the President of the United States is actively encouraging right now, and that many Republicans are fine with, too.
Absolutely revolting.
Speaking of the difference between men and women, on a lighter note, There's a girl, a young woman who's gone viral, a little bit of a palate cleanser after so upsetting a video.
There's a girl who's gone viral for expressing her frustration that her boyfriend does not, just doesn't get her.
And we live in a culture now that denies the difference between men and women.
We're all basically as confused as she is, but her observation of the difference between men and women I find beautifully delightful.
Girls, tell me if I'm right about this, but whenever I talk about something to my boyfriend and I have something to rant about and something just did not go well, all I want to hear is like, yes, you did well.
Good job.
They wronged you.
They were wrong.
Like, I just want my hype, you know, woman, hype man.
But every single time I tell my boyfriend, he's like, this is the logical way to solve this and here's a solution.
And I'm like, no, I don't want you to fix my problems.
I just want you to tell me that I did good.
Like, hello?
I don't know if she's doing a parody or not.
If it's a parody, though, it's very close to the truth, because this is how every single woman thinks.
And as for all of history, and of course, vive la différance.
Some people look at that and they say, you women, why are you different from men?
I hate you women for being... I like that women are different from men.
I don't, you know, I enjoy women.
Nevertheless, though, If Sweet Little Alaysia were to come to me and say, Mac, I don't want you to solve my problem.
I just want you to, you know, agree with me, whatever.
I'd say, well, I'm not the right guy for that because you came to me, your husband, and I'm going to respond like a man would.
So you can go to a girlfriend.
That's what women could go to if women want that.
It was just to be affirmed and told how great they are and how everyone else is wrong.
Then that happens.
That happens to every single woman.
Then they should go to their girlfriends.
It's like, yeah, oh yeah, he's terrible.
Yeah, she's bad.
I know.
But you've never done anything wrong.
You're totally blah, blah, blah, whatever.
That's like girl talk.
But that's not guy talk.
And so the only real confusion, I know every woman has been frustrated for all of history because the women go to the men.
They want this kind of reaction.
But then the men won't give them this reaction, they get kind of frustrated.
That's true.
It's just a category error.
The category error is you thought you were going to get a woman reaction from a man.
And these days, you know, I guess that's not surprising, but you're not.
And women, they can get a lot of great stuff from men, but they're not going to get that because men and women.
It turns out are different.
There's so much more to say.
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My favorite comment!
Yesterday's from Linda Gushenor, 1155, who says, they want to limit travel.
That is why they don't have a problem.
Oh, this is in response to Biden trying to kill the gas car and promote electric cars.
He sends Mayor Pete out there to talk about how great electric cars are.
That's why they don't have a problem with the short distance that electric cars will go between charges.
Gas cars allow too much freedom.
Yeah, I think that is part of it.
It's a lot easier.
Electricity is a lot easier to control.
I think it's not just a bunch of people in the back room, you know, like, mwahaha, cooking up a conspiracy.
But that is part of it, why just even intuitively the libs prefer the electric cars.
The gas cars do provide a degree of freedom that the electric cars never, never really could.
Now, speaking of boys and girls again, and then we can move on from the transvestites and we'll get back to anti-black racism, there is a trans activist apparently, fella by the name of Hunter Schaefer, who is a guy who pretends to be a woman, and I guess he's an actor, I don't know what roles he's been in, but apparently he's a Hollywood guy, and he just came out and he said that he is sick and tired
Of playing trans roles.
You see this guy, just because he's a dude who happens to look kind of like a chick, because he's intentionally made himself look kind of like a chick, he gets cast in roles of guys who think that they're chicks.
Isn't that crazy?
So he says, it has not just happened naturally by any means.
If I let it happen, it would still be giving transsexual actress before every article ever.
It would still be giving.
I think that's a kind of Zoomer Idiom.
It would still be giving, but it's not happening naturally.
I'm being typecast.
Okay?
I'm being pigeonholed.
As soon as I say it, it gets blast off.
It took a while to learn that, and it also took a while to learn that I don't want to be reduced to that.
And I find it ultimately demeaning to me and what I want to do.
Especially after high school, I was sick of talking about it.
I worked so hard to get where I am, past these really hard points in my transition, and now I just want to be a girl and finally move on.
I don't want to be the trans guy.
I don't want to be an activist.
I don't want to be cast as a man who thinks he's a woman.
I have transitioned.
I want to be a girl.
I've gotten offered tons of trans roles, he says, and I just don't want to do it.
I don't want to talk about it.
This is really funny because we've just spent the last three or four years in the Hollywood discourse hearing about how if you're a straight guy, you should not be cast in a gay role.
That if you're a cisgender, you should not be cast in a trans role.
This is very wrong.
If you're in any way a white guy, you should not be cast in any kind of other racial role.
It's wrong.
We've been told for the last three years in Hollywood, you should only play the roles that perfectly suit your actual self, which of course is the opposite of acting.
Acting is where you pretend to be somebody else.
The actors would say you live truthfully within imaginary circumstances, but the end result is the same.
You are portraying someone that you are not.
And we've been told you can't do that anymore.
Now acting is the opposite of that.
Because the libs invert every single thing.
So they say, yeah, now acting is reality.
And reality actually is acting now, because we all go around pretending to be people we're not, like white people pretend to be black people, and Rachel Dollesall, and men pretend to be women, like, well, Dylan Mulvaney or any number of them, like this person.
But then, The people in the favored victim groups, they say, actually, hold on, I want the opposite of this again.
So I want to go back to the first one.
Not only do I not want to be typecast, not only do I want to play the thing that I actually am, that is to say a man who thinks he's a woman, I explicitly don't want to play that.
I want to play the opposite of that.
But if the straight guy wants to play a gay guy, that is not allowed.
And if the cisgender wants to play the transgender, that's not allowed.
And if a white guy wants to do anything in this world, he's not allowed to do that either.
But I get to do whatever I want.
And that's really all it comes down to.
All it comes down to is there's no principle, there's no set of rules.
It is a preference with regard to categories of people.
Trans identifying, if you are gay, if you are any kind of racial minority, if you are a woman, you do whatever you want.
And if you're a straight white man who knows that he's a man, you can't really do anything.
Unless the libs give you permission to do that.
Comes down to much more of a power politics.
The notion that politics really is not about reason or a set of rules, but simply the distinction between friend and enemy.
And the disfavored group, the enemy group, are the, you know, the straight white guys who know that there are other categories.
Christians, you know, are obviously disfavored in the popular culture and other groups as well.
But that's all it comes down to.
Mr. Schaefer, Hunter Schaefer, gets to do whatever he wants and you don't.
You don't get to do anything you want.
Now, speaking of activism, this one raised my eyebrow last night.
It's just kind of making the rounds now, even though this began last fall.
The University of Maryland has a new academic department, or a subsection of a department.
The University of Maryland now offers a minor in anti-black racism, which, it's in the Africana Studies department.
And so I imagine, I'm certain, it's some big lib thing about how white people are evil and black people are great.
But it's just kind of the way it sounds to me is say, what did you study in school?
Oh, well, I got my major in English and I minored in anti-black racism.
Yeah, we'd go out there with our tiki torches.
Oh, yeah.
We had a lot of practical exams.
We'd go burn across somewhere.
They'd say, hold on, whoa, wait, what?
Why would you study that?
That's not the kind of thing I want to learn.
I don't want to learn cruelty to any group of people.
Yeah, I trained real hard in anti-black racism.
First, you know, for anti-black racism 101, they made me shave my head.
And then for anti-black racism number two, they made me burn a cross.
Whoa, man!
That's not good.
But then you look into it and you say, obviously this is some unfortunate phrasing from, you know, liberal academics who probably are functionally illiterate anyway, so I'm not surprised they misused the English language.
But then you think, okay, well what do they really teach?
And what they really teach is anti-white racism.
That's what this all comes down to.
All of the racial grievance politics comes down not to promoting even, not even to focusing on the virtues of one race compared to another race.
It's to focus on the vice of the opposite race.
That white supremacy is everywhere and we need to abolish whiteness.
I mean, these are just terms that are regularly used in faculty lounges and in classrooms all across the country, not even just the University of Maryland.
It's ironic, but I guess it just, it does play into our theme here, which is that the libs invert.
They totally flip everything on their head.
And so they have a minor in anti-black racism when in fact what you're really being trained in is anti-white racism.
No surprise, and that's not a UMD thing explicitly or exclusively, that is true in the, it's not even just colleges, it's boardrooms, it's the government, it's, it's everywhere.
Now speaking of young people, New report out that I had a little bit of a hard time believing, at least at first.
Young people are not drinking anymore.
Millennials and Zoomers in particular.
They're giving up booze.
A headline from CNN, no longer drinking, there are options for you.
A few little pieces from the article.
The number of people choosing to opt out of alcohol, whether temporarily or permanently, has grown and with it the normalization of being alcohol-free.
Restaurants have expanded mocktail lists, sober bars are on the rise, and non-alcoholic bottle shops are popping up in most major cities.
These aren't thoughtless alcohol replacements with a level of care and craft.
often with a price point matching their alcoholic counterparts, these substitutions are much more than a Shirley Temple.
First off, I like a good Shirley Temple.
I've liked a Shirley Temple since I was five years old.
Let's not knock the Shirley Temples.
They're very tasty.
But second of all, they're not even really talking about people who really struggle with drinking them.
I don't even think this is really about alcoholics.
I have friends who are alcoholics, who go to AA meetings, and who really can't have a single sip or they'll go off the edge.
I know a number of people like that.
Norm MacDonald once had an insightful observation about this.
It's kind of how I feel about it.
I like wine, I like scotch, I like cognac and port and things, but I don't I'm not really that drawn to it.
I'll leave half my drink on the table sometimes if I'm done.
My alcoholic friends think that's completely insane.
They can't even begin to fathom that.
But Norm Macdonald had this observation.
He said, you know, my friend Adam Egott, he's an alcoholic.
That means he really, really likes alcohol.
Me, I don't really like alcohol.
I'll have it.
Take it or I'll leave it.
So because Adam Egan really, really likes alcohol, he can never have any of it.
But because I don't really like alcohol, I can have as much as I want.
Life's funny that way.
And it is kind of funny that way.
But that's not what they're talking about here.
It's really good.
People who have a struggle with it being addiction to alcohol, very, very good for them to lay off.
It's good that there are new mocktails and things like that for them.
But that's not really what's going on here.
This is people who will just drink a little bit less.
They'll have one drink maybe, but then they'll switch over to some weird kind of fruity drink or whatever.
It's a little different.
So then I looked into it, and here's the catch to these mostly hipster, kind of Brooklynite, non-alcoholic bars.
It's just people doing a bunch of pot.
What they say is some spirits replace the alcohol with adaptogens.
Things like reishi mushrooms or ashwagandha, whatever that is, says it's used to reduce stress or increase energy.
So whatever those are, I'm assuming those are not magic mushrooms, they're just a little stress reliever, but clearly there's some drug effect to it.
And then others contain varying doses of THC.
So there it is, there's the Haitian oregano.
Eric Flavin owns Marigold, a non-alcoholic bottle shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that also sells legal cannabis.
Marigold serves a diverse clientele.
The cannabis products appeal to both these young and old, as it can help with sleep, while others prefer the adaptogenic drinks and non-alcoholic drinks.
Okay, so what it really is, the real story here, is not people are getting healthier by reducing the amount they drink, which could be perfectly good.
It's that people are just switching from booze to become potheads.
And the potheads say that that's really good.
I don't think that's really good.
I'm not saying booze is great, and if you have a problem with it, you should definitely Cool it with the booze, but I don't, booze makes you a little more sociable.
If you're going to pick a drug and you don't have a real dependency or problem with it, booze makes you a little more sociable, a little more talkative.
It's kind of, you know, a social lubricant as we say.
Pot makes you quiet and less funny, though you think things are much funnier, but you become less funny and less sociable and quieter.
And sometimes you go completely nuts and lose your drive.
And I've, you know, I've seen it happen to a lot of my pothead friends.
That's not a great, they put this nice patina of how wonderful, how beautiful, we're getting healthy, we're getting fit.
No, we're just switching from being drunks to being potheads.
And if I had to choose one, I'd rather not be either.
But if I had to choose one drug for our civil, I'd probably stick with the one that's Long-standing in our civilization that it helps us be more sociable.
We live in a very anti-social age where sociopathy is on the rise, social alienation and isolation is on the rise.
How about the one that gets people talking to each other, not the one that gets you eating Cheetos watching cartoons alone.
The Daily Wire, speaking of new shows to watch, The Daily Wire decided to give Matt a robe, a gavel, and an all-new series.
Introducing Judged by Matt Walsh on DailyWirePlus.
Matt Walsh, as a judge, is as hilarious as you would imagine.
And shockingly, the cases are real, the people you see are real, and yes, his decisions are legally binding.
Take a look at the official trailer for this new DailyWirePlus series, Judged, by Matt Walsh, now.
All rise for the Honorable Judge Walsh.
Please be seated.
Ms.
Goldstein.
Mr. Bentley.
Mr. Outerbridge.
Ms.
Spicer.
Mr. Barney.
Ms.
Singh.
At 30,000 feet, my lips exploded.
Why would I pay rent to somebody who had sex with my sister?
A dog bit my finger.
He's allergic, like the grass.
If he didn't want me to drop the car, he would've took the key I had with him.
Has anyone told you you're the worst negotiator that's ever lived?
I've never been more annoyed than I am in this moment.
Not even close.
That does it.
Please get the hell out of my court.
I can't wait.
I can't wait.
I've only seen little bits and pieces.
I've been so excited about this ever since I heard about it.
We've all kept tight lips.
It's going to be magnificent.
Wait until you see real petty court in action where anything you say to Judge Walsh can and certainly will be used against you.
Be the first to see Judged by Matt Walsh, Tuesday, April 9th at 8 p.m.
Eastern on DailyWirePlus.
Don't have a DailyWirePlus membership?
Well, get it now for 35% off with code JUDGED at checkout.
Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
You realize that Matt Walsh is going to be insufferable, right?
You do.
That's why you're going to watch.
Finally!
Finally.
We've arrived at my favorite time of the week, when I get to hear from you in the mailbag.
Our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk.
Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
Right now, our listeners can get an additional 50% off their first month.
puretalk.com slash Knowles.
Take it away.
Morning, Mr. Knowles.
This is actually a nice one for Tee Hee Tuesday.
What's the difference between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi?
Well, in Riyadh, they do not like the Flintstones, but Abu Dhabi do!
Thank you.
Love your show.
Bye-bye.
That's my favorite mailbag question I've ever received.
That's really great.
I like that there was no question to it, but I'm going to use that.
What's the difference between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi?
In Riyadh, they don't like the Flintstones, but Abu Dhabi do.
Okay, all right.
Get it together, Michael!
Next question.
Good morning, Michael.
This is Arun.
I'm sure you've noticed that in the past several months, the so-called dissident right has called an end to American support for the State of Israel on the basis that Jews are not God's chosen people.
Now, as a Hindu, I also do not believe that Jews are God's chosen people, but this is more a corollary to the fact that Hinduism does not recognize the idea of divine covenants, and therefore the very notion of God choosing any people is foreign to us.
I do, however, have an affinity for Jews due to their religion's often unknown and unappreciated theological similarities to my own, as well as to the generally pro-Western bias of Jewish culture.
And, of course, there are Professor Jacob's many epic and based takedowns of Hamas simps on Twitter.
Therefore, I'd like to construct a rationale for American support of the State of Israel that is not predicated on any biblically defined divine right to Judea and Samaria.
You have mentioned that per your theology, God's chosen people consist of Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus, i.e.
Christians.
Thus, I would observe that you find yourself in a rare agreement with us Hindus on the matter of Israel.
Could you suggest an argument for American support of Israel that does not depend on any claim of divine right?
Do you think that such an argument might even appeal to the dissident right?
Thank you, as always, for your wisdom.
Absolutely, Arun, as always, just a really brilliant question.
Yes.
You're absolutely right that, and I've been arguing this for some months now, I don't think that the theological and even some of the historical arguments for the state of Israel are going to be very persuasive.
And I seem to have been proven right, actually.
If you look at public opinion surveys and you look at statements even of the Israeli government observing that America is diminishing its support for Israel, it's because the arguments that have traditionally propped it up are not all that persuasive.
To a lot of people, at least.
So, I totally agree with you.
Whatever incipient, I guess it's mostly on the left, but there's a little bit on the right, a real antipathy for a certain ancient nomadic tribe.
I don't share that.
I quite like the Jews, actually.
I don't wake up every morning and just, you know, pull my hair and say, the Jews!
Oh, those Jews!
Dastardly Jews!
But I think, in part, One way that you could make a stronger argument for the state of Israel and against this kind of nascent anti-Jewish activism is to acknowledge the kind of silliness of the supposed revelations of the people who are feeling this way.
You know, these people, they say, oh my goodness, you know what I just learned?
You know what I just found out?
I just found out that Jews and Christians are different!
Yes, that's true.
And do you know what I just learned?
I just found this out going down the internet.
Apparently, Jews and Christians have different beliefs.
Yes, that's true.
They do, in fact.
And do you know they might even occasionally have different political interests?
I suppose that is true.
Yes, different groups sometimes do have different political interests.
And you know what else I learned somewhere in the corners of the internet?
I found out that the state of Israel is a different country from America.
Uh-huh.
Yep.
And sometimes nations have different interests, and those interests contradict.
Even if they rely on certain things, they contradict each other on others.
Yes, that's true.
It's all true, man.
Yeah, sure.
Of course.
Yeah.
Jews and Christians believe different things.
There's some overlap, but there's some distinctions, and sometimes there are different interests.
And Israel and the United States sometimes overlap in their interests.
Sometimes they have different interests.
Yeah, that's all true.
You think that isn't true for the Palestine Liberation Organization?
You think that isn't true?
Believe it or not, Christians and Muslims also believe different things, and there's some overlap, and there are some things that we believe in common, and there are some political interests that we share, and some that we don't share, and there's also a history there as well.
One thing I would point out is say, yeah, at the most basic level, some of your observations about distinctions between the State of Israel and the United States are obviously true.
You know, we have been in a state of regular war with the Islamic world for like 1400 years, right?
You know that?
No knock on Muslims, I have a great deal of respect for my Muslim friends, but there is a civilizational conflict there as well.
Let's not forget that the Muslim world invaded the Levant, first of all, in the 7th century.
It's not like the Middle East was always Arab.
That was an invasion that occurred after the founding of Islam.
And then they nearly invaded Paris.
They almost took over all of Europe at the Battle of Poitiers in 732.
And then the Battle of Lepanto, once again, the Muslim world almost conquered all of Europe.
And then at the Battle of Vienna, the largest cavalry charge in history, the Muslim world also almost conquered Europe.
Now we're just inviting them to conquer Europe.
But in any case, I think that would probably tamp down some of the bizarre enthusiasm for the Palestine liberation movement.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the people who are living in, you know, what was once known as Mandatory Palestine.
And I agree that one has to adhere by just war, and I agree that the American interest in any war in the Middle East is going to be different than that of the direct belligerents in the region.
But, like, how about a little perspective here, folks?
Don't you?
These people just swing from one side to the other.
So, what would be an argument for the State of Israel?
You know, I would throw out some of the theological and historical and any other kind of dubious claim and just say, hey, they conquered it.
They conquered it.
They fought a war and they conquered it.
And maybe you don't approve of that, but it did happen with a lot of international support.
And so, what's going to happen now?
Just as I think the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the Palestinian territories would be morally unacceptable, and I think the international community agrees, so too I think we would agree that the river to the sea wipe out all the Jews is also obviously morally unacceptable, certainly to the United States, I think most of the international community, and from just a broader ethical perspective.
So, you know, that would be it.
I know I have the least popular view on the conflict of all, which is, it seems to me, that what is in America's interest and what is the most ethically defensible is something kind of akin to a status quo, because the rational interest for both belligerents in the conflict would be the ethnic cleansing of the other.
Yeah, I know that that's going to not make anybody happy, but, you know, guys, have a little perspective here.
These people, it's like they woke up for the first time and they realize that different groups are different.
They sometimes have different interests.
Yeah, you don't say.
Now what?
Now let's get to step two, guys.
You know, they don't really, they don't quite do that all the time.
So anyway, Arun, that would be my advice.
Next question.
Hi there, Michael.
My name's Katie.
I hope this message finds you well.
My husband has endured a considerable amount of abuse at the hands of his mom over the past 45 years.
In recent years, he has been able to accept the situation and really limits his interactions with her, lest he or her family be caught in the line of fire.
He has really found peace with this decision as he spent many years attempting to work within boundaries to no avail.
So my question, in your view, what are the responsibilities of an adult child of a toxic, mentally ill, elderly parent?
Specifically, the responsibilities of an adult child who requires no contact in order to preserve his and his family's well-being.
I look forward to your response.
I hope you answer.
And I also just wanted to say thank you.
Your show has helped me so much on my spiritual journey, and I am better off for it.
Thanks again.
Bye.
Very kind.
Thank you so much.
I've seen this happen.
So I know it happens.
Not my experience, I've really just had marvelous relationships with the women in my life, and the men in my life, but my great relationship with my mother and my grandmothers, my wife, the mother of my children.
So I don't have a direct experience of this, so it's a little hard for me to...
To totally relate, but I have seen it happen, somewhat up close.
And what I would recommend is remembering that one has certain obligations to one's parents to respect one's mother and father.
And we have obligations to, you know, make sure that they are cared for in their dotage, to make sure that they're, you know, not...
Going hungry or in a dangerous situation or anything like that, we have.
But even beyond that, you will, if you just kind of disconnect from your mother or your father, it will harm you.
You will regret it someday.
You will regret.
When your loved ones die, especially if it's a mother, someone like that, every harsh word you ever said, you will regret.
And so even just from the perspective of self-interest, I would say your husband ought to do whatever he can.
He has a responsibility, you know, most closely to his family, you and the kids.
But he ought to basically push himself just before the limit.
That he can with his mother and to fulfill his rightful obligations to her to make sure she's, you know, not thrown out onto the street in her old age.
But I would go a little further even emotionally as well.
And that is for your mother-in-law's good just as much as it is for his good because he will regret it.
He will be haunted if he treats his mother in a way that seems unjust or uncaring.
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