Protester Arrested, Police Injured — Michael Knowles Returns to Pitt
He was burned in effigy. Protesters were arrested. Now, Michael Knowles returns.
In this explosive episode of Cross The Line, Michael Knowles heads back to the University of Pittsburgh—the same campus where he was met with violent protests, chaos, and national headlines.
This time, it’s personal. Following the arrest of activist Brian DiPippa, who injured a police officer during the protest, Michael revisits the campus to speak with students, confront the narrative, and expose the truth about free speech, political extremism, and the growing hostility toward conservatives on college campuses.
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Thank you very much to the police for removing that.
Can you explain what happened the last time you came to the University of Pittsburgh?
Yeah, I showed up for a debate on the topic of transgenderism.
And when I walked up, the street was on fire with my welcoming committee, which was burning me in effigy.
And as I was scheduled to walk out, some Antifa lunatic threw an explosive at the building and actually seriously injured a cop.
I was inside and all of a sudden I heard some loud boom.
And it was a little bit worrying.
You think Michael's nervous to come back to campus?
If he didn't have security, probably.
Happily, one of the two lunatics who tried to blow me up is currently in federal prison.
He's only serving a five-year sentence.
He should be serving a 20-year sentence.
And the wife got off basically with a slap on the wrist.
But in any case, it was all reason to expect that my return to Pitt would be similarly exciting.
Were you excited to come back?
With a welcome like this?
How could I not be?
I won't be silenced no more.
I will be young.
Today, the university of Pittsburgh has made a constant decision to allow Michael Vole to speak in a university building hosted by a registered student group and protected by university pay.
Say it!
Yeah!
We are not shutting him down.
I'm with Daily Wire.
Daily Wire.
No.
You can't touch my camera.
Sorry.
Please don't.
Please don't film me.
If you touch me, I'm not a part of this.
We're not touching you.
We're just using our bodies.
My truth will be told.
Do you mind if I ask you if you've watched the protest?
Hey!
Hey However, I was able to sit down with three left-wing students for a somewhat heated conversation.
Thank you all for sitting down.
What's your name?
My name is Mike.
Mike, good to see you.
My name is Mercy.
Mercy.
My name is Kenny.
Kenny, you all came out tonight.
You disagree with me.
Did I convince you by the end of the speech?
No.
I do not think so.
Okay, what do we disagree about?
Mainly the stance on settler colonialism.
Okay.
What's your problem with it?
I guess my problem is for somebody who claims to be a conservative that's supposed to uphold the values of the Constitution, how it's difficult to justify some types of colonialism versus others.
Well, the Constitution was ratified in a colonial age by people who were themselves colonists and who descended from the colonial settlers themselves.
Yes, I'm not saying that's good.
I just think that all colonialism is bad, per se, versus where you say some colonialism...
You just said, how could one be a conservative and support the Constitution?
But as I just pointed out, the Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution had no problem with colonialism.
They had just been colonists previously.
So it's one thing to say it's bad.
But you couldn't say it's un-American or not conservative.
Oh, I never said that.
I never said it was un-American.
It's contrary to the Constitution.
Exactly.
It's contradictory to values especially of John Locke and life, liberty, and property.
John Locke didn't write the Constitution.
Oh, he didn't, but his ideas very greatly influenced it.
The life, liberty, and property directly led to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
In the Declaration of Independence.
Yes, that's correct.
Which is different from the Constitution.
That's correct, but those ideas carried forward, especially in James Madison's framing of the Constitution.
Sure.
Yeah, I think...
I think Locke's influence is a little overstated, especially by liberals, deliberately.
And I think that other guys like Montesquieu or even Cicero and some more conservative thinkers, even Thomas Aquinas, either directly or indirectly, I think influenced the Constitution a little bit more than is understood.
But, fair enough point, you're saying you can't be a liberal and be a colonialist.
Yes, that's correct.
Okay.
But liberals do that all the time, don't they?
I'm sorry.
Why did we go in and intervene in Libya, for instance, under a very liberal government, Obama and Hillary Clinton?
Why did we intervene there?
There was no particular direct American interest involved.
There was humanitarian reasons, right?
Okay.
It was a kind of colonialism, wouldn't you say?
Sure.
Well, there you go.
Then it doesn't contradict the liberals.
Well, I'm saying that you shouldn't be.
That's the case.
I'm saying that all types of colonialism are inherently bad versus where you are justified.
Some types or others.
Because it violates people's own rights.
What rights?
To life, basically.
Saying that my life is better than your life.
No, no, no.
I'm not saying...
When I support colonialism, I'm not supporting genocide or something like that.
I'm just saying that nations have interests and we exert those interests in different places around the world.
So it wouldn't violate your right to life.
Well, I mean, to Native Americans and people who were here before us, it does.
Because they're no longer with us.
No.
Because we take their property as well.
No, well, we traded with the Indians.
Were those negotiations fair, per se?
Why wouldn't they have been fair?
Because they were being coerced.
How were they being coerced?
They were being coerced because whenever the treaties are being signed, there's groups of people behind them with guns who are basically saying, sign this treaty or we'll shoot you.
No, I think you diminish the Native Americans.
I mean, I think the first Native American interaction that we had in the United States, in the first instance of settler colonialism in the Northeast, at Plymouth.
The people who sailed on the Mayflower, which is a great cigar brand.
They formed an alliance with Chief Massasoit.
Massasoit became the chief of the Wampanoag Nation, which greatly benefited from an alliance with the Pilgrims, with the English colony.
And the Wampanoag had enemies, and they actually let the English know that the Massachusetts Indians were going to come after them.
And so, in fact, Massasoit himself was nursed back to life by Edward Winslow.
The guy would have died without the Pilgrims.
So, later on...
Decades later, relations broke down because a direct descendant of Massasoit decided to start a war on the mistaken pretext that the English had killed his brother.
But I say all of this arcane history to you to point out.
The real history is a lot more interesting than the notion that the Native Americans were just innocent little does who were coerced by the omnipotent white man who had total power over them.
The real history shows that these Native Americans were real men.
They engaged in real alliances.
And sometimes they were damaged by it.
But I guess my question then is also, what's the alternative?
There is unfortunately no alternative, but I'm saying that the practice as a whole is bad.
And I don't think that it's good or beneficial to justify it.
It's bad, but there's no alternative.
I'll take it.
Okay, that's fine.
Where do we disagree?
Yeah, so I had a lot of issues with what you were talking about.
And I myself am Christian, so the first thing I want to talk about is abortion.
So you mentioned that abortion is killing, which I understand biblically, that's how it is.
That is how it is presented.
And biologically.
I think it's a totally black and white issue, and I don't think abortion is ever necessary.
I suppose if one looked at a very, very small number of medical problems that could arise, the death of the preborn baby could result as a consequence of that medical treatment.
You'd look at a case like ectopic pregnancy, where the baby implants in the fallopian tube.
There, it might be necessary even to remove the fallopian tube to prevent the woman from dying.
That would necessarily result in the death of the baby.
But the death of the baby is not what is intended, and the abortion of the baby is not the medicine to treat the mother.
So that would be one example.
But of course...
For 99% plus of abortions, it's not to protect the life of the mother.
It's not because of a pregnancy that resulted from rape or incest.
It's a purely elective pregnancy.
So would you agree, as a Christian, for those pregnancies, at the very least for those pregnancies, that those are morally unacceptable?
I think morally is different from how we view things in the political sense.
How so?
Because I think that...
Morally, yes, it is wrong to kill a fetus.
However, if you're looking at the impact that that child will make on the future of anyone in the United States or looking at how their life will progress, I don't think that we should be taking away the mother's right to decide whether or not they want their child to grow up in specific circumstances.
Because when you're pointing out these statistics, you're saying that 99% of the cases are elective.
But what is causing the mother to make these choices?
Are they doing it because they want to go on a rampant killing spree of their child?
No.
Imagine you were in the circumstances where you were dirt poor, where you didn't have the financial ability to give your child a good life.
I've been poor at points in my life.
And so have I. So I appreciate the fact that you're bringing that up.
But I think that when the mother makes that type of decision, instead of outwardly ruling But you already ruled that abortion is wrong.
You already said it's morally wrong, but I just don't want to enforce it politically.
We're going to make laws without any recourse to morality?
Is that the argument?
Yeah, because we're not supposed...
Okay, I understand that morals do play a big role in how we make laws.
That's all of it.
A civil law is just an instantiation of the perception of the moral law.
Why would you divorce the two on this one particular issue?
Well, I don't divorce the two on this one particular issue because there are other circumstances in which I believe we have to move away from the moral.
I'm saying that not everything is as black and white as it is portrayed morally.
And so when a woman decides to kill her child, it's not out of the perception that she just wants to murder her child.
It's because she thinks that this is what's best.
And also, if we're looking at the future of the United States in a way to actually decrease abortion rates...
For the long haul, removing abortion right now is not going to stop that.
No, it wouldn't.
Abortion rates would plummet.
When abortion was legalized, the rates shot through the roof.
So let's talk about what happened when the United States banned alcohol.
What happened to people who were drinking alcohol?
What happened to domestic abuse rates?
What happened to those?
They skyrocketed.
No, no, when people stopped drinking alcohol, domestic abuse dropped.
For a little bit, and then it skyrocketed.
Also, when abortion was made illegal in 1973, what happened to black market abortions?
What happened, this is often raised by the pro-abortion side.
They'll say, well, we're going to have black market abortions run by criminals and a lot of women are going to die.
Do you know how many women died from illegal abortions the year before Roe v.
Wade was ratified?
39. Not 3,900, not 390, it was 39 women.
How many women died from legal abortions that same year?
24. And when you factor in the number of states where abortion was legal and illegal, the rate was almost exactly the same.
So the comparison to some black market kind of abortion, there's no analogy whatsoever.
Well, that's not true whatsoever.
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Find out how you can get four months free by scanning the QR code on screen, clicking the link in the description box below, or by going to expressvpn.com slash Michael, letter Y, letter T. Once you are banning abortions in the United States, what's going to happen is that we're going to have women fleeing to other countries that have these abortions.
Oh, other countries.
I don't know.
International travel is kind of expensive.
I thought you said it's because women are poor that they kill their kids.
I didn't say it's because women are poor.
I said that's one of the contributing factors.
I'm not saying that's every single thing.
So hold on.
Just on that point, at the very least, before we move on.
You said you've had the experience of being poor.
We had money problems a little bit when I was growing up.
However, at no point did I ever think that it would be better to be dead than poor.
And at no point do I think here, with the argument that you're making, a woman would be justified in killing her kid because she doesn't have enough money, particularly in the richest country ever in the history of the world.
Okay.
I think you also have to take into consideration the women who are actually committing abortions.
It's not the richest women in the world.
It's not the women who are high class in the United States that are actually having these abortions.
Some are.
Because some of them are.
Some actually are.
It's like wealthy white women.
Some of them are, but they're not the majority.
You're right.
A lot of, 60% of black babies in New York are killed before they're born.
Because they realize that their children are not going to grow up in a system where they are supported.
Now, morally, I can make the argument all day long that abortion is wrong.
And I will make the argument that abortion is wrong morally.
But I don't think...
But you want to actually try to reduce the number of abortions?
I do.
I will.
In the way that's most effective?
No, because it's not the most effective way.
It certainly is.
Without question.
The best way to decrease abortions, honestly, is to increase the amount of sexual education that we are giving to our children.
Because once we...
So, hold on.
Okay.
I get the argument.
Safe sex education.
Yes.
I get the argument.
Not just like sex.
I get the argument.
My last question on this, to try to understand your thinking here, because I'm very impressed that you would say, I think abortion is wrong, and it's tantamount to murder, and I want there to be fewer abortions, and I want all this stuff.
If it were the case that outlawing abortion would, in fact, reduce abortion dramatically, why would you not support that if you have all of those other goals that you've just stated?
Well, I would support it, but that's not what the actual case is.
You would.
So if I could convince you that banning abortion would reduce the number of abortions, you would support banning abortion?
Yes, but that's not the actual evidence.
It does happen, but I'll get you this statistic.
That's not the actual evidence.
Hello.
I guess I disagree with you regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.
I don't even know.
What is even my view on these?
People try to pin me down on Israel-Palestine, which I don't really care all that much about.
But what is my view?
Where do we disagree?
Do you support Israel's settlements in the West Bank, especially the ones lodged inside cities like Hebron and the settlers who commit violence against the Palestinians and take their resources and decrease their quality of life?
I don't have strong feelings about Israeli settlements.
I don't lose sleep at night one way or the other over it.
I do think broadly that the state of Israel probably ought to be able to exist.
Which is contrary to the views of many people on the left, even prominent people.
I do think that it would be imprudent to give the Palestinian Arabs yet another state.
I don't think that would work out very well.
I do think it would be wrong, actually, to abolish the Jewish state that has come to exist in the Holy Land so that we could liberate from the river to the sea a stretch of land that could then go on to elect more Islamists.
I think that would be imprudent.
So in that way, I guess I'm sort of...
Vaguely pro-Israel, but it's not my top issue.
So what's your take on Israel-Palestine?
Well, personally, I believe that Israel should do more to limit the settlements of Israelis in Palestinian territories, because the vast majority of Israelis do not support the settlements, and the West Bank is just a really fringe minority that do, and the settlers do not contribute to the peace process.
They actually complicate the peace process.
By the way, I do not support Hamas or anything.
I do think that Hamas is really bad.
I think the war that Israel is currently waging against Hamas is causing a lot of civilian casualties and it is not bringing back any of the hostages.
It is in fact killing the hostages and Gazan civilians.
I think Israel should try to negotiate with Hamas and through a longer period of time like slowly Yeah, yeah.
It sounds like what you're saying...
Except for this one point which we can talk about.
It sounds like what you're saying is it's a great pity that the war is happening and I hope it comes to a resolution soon and I recognize the Israelis have some rights but I wish they'd be nicer to the Palestinians.
That's basically what you're saying.
So the one point of contention maybe would be that the reason that a group of people went out and raped and murdered like a thousand people and took hundreds of hostages was because they were just suffering.
They were just expressing their feelings.
Because I suffered too.
And I'm not a Muslim and I'm not a Jew, so I guess I don't have much of a role in the Israel-Palestine conflict, but I am a Christian.
And when Christians suffer, we're told to kiss it up to God and have our suffering unite us to Christ on the cross.
I'm never at any point impelled to go kidnap and murder and rape people.
So why are we justifying it when the Palestinian Arabs do it?
Oh no, I'm absolutely not justifying them.
I'm just saying the reason they did it is because of their suffering, but that is absolutely not justified.
Another point is Hamas was propped up by Netanyahu's government as a counterbalance to...
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, Netanyahu himself, has said in past years that yes, Hamas...
He played one party off the other party.
Well, that happens all the time in politics.
You can blame Benjamin Netanyahu for anything you like.
You can't really blame him for the election of Hamas, right?
It wasn't him who did that.
It was the people of Gaza.
It was indirectly Israeli politicians that caused Hamas to be elected because they have caused so much pain and suffering upon Palestinians that they felt that they needed to elect such a radical party to power.
You have a great deal of empathy.
Some would call it suicidal empathy, but it's charming in any case.
Thank you very much for sitting down, guys.
Thank you so much.
Such a pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you.
See you next time I'm at Pitt.
And thank you for not throwing any explosives at me.
Some other people in this town.
Oh, yeah.
Are you deathly afraid of tambourines?
There was somebody out there with one.
Were there tambourines out there?
Yeah, there were tambourines.
Wow, that's quite a downgrade in weaponry.
I agree.
You go from explosives to...
Maybe I'll join the drum circle.
Maybe.
Michael, Mercy, and Kenny did not end up agreeing with me.
Or, if they did, they at least did not admit it.
As my YAF campus tour continues, I hope to encounter more students, like the ones I spoke with at Pitt.
