Ep. 1774 - CEO Caught Cheating at Coldplay—And The Heartwarming Reason Everyone’s Obsessed
Coldplay exposes an adulterous CEO, Trump gets a big win in the Senate, and the IDF strikes the only Catholic church in Gaza.
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Ep.1774
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The CEO of a billion and a half dollar tech company got caught on the KISS cam cheating on his wife with his also married head of HR at a Cold Play concert.
The internet cannot get enough of it.
And the reason why is surprisingly heartwarming.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
The IDF, State of Israel, has hit the only Catholic church in Gaza yesterday, killed three people, injured a bunch more, including the priest.
And the Israelis are saying it was a mistake.
It was an accident.
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is not convinced it was an accident.
And even U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is looking into some of the actions of the Israeli government and threatening reprisals.
Hold on now.
I have many more pearls of wisdom.
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The CEO, the cold play cheating CEO is everyone's favorite story on the internet.
It's dark.
It's nasty.
It's blown up, probably two families.
It seems improbable.
If you somehow haven't seen it, here's the clip.
Yeah.
Oh, look at these two.
All right.
Come on.
You're okay?
Uh-oh.
What?
Either they're having an affair or they're just very shy.
I'm not quite sure.
They bolt.
If you're just listening to the show, it's the CEO and his head of HR and some other girl who I guess works for the company.
And the minute the kiss cam goes on them, they bolt.
The guy goes down like he just got hit with a cannonball.
He goes down.
The woman, the HR lady, flips around, then runs away.
And then the other girl, who I guess is their pal from the company, just starts laughing this awkward, nervous, shameful laugh.
And the memes have been pouring out ever since.
One is, this is just a random smattering of memes that sweet little Alise and I were looking at last night.
It's a CEO hates to see this man coming.
And he's just cold play, just turning around on the piano.
Another one, where's the next one?
Give me the next meme.
This is a picture of them.
It says, the chances of your marriages and careers being destroyed at a cold play concert are extremely low, but never zero.
Next one.
Cold Play should out people at every concert and say they've just been cold played.
So now you shouldn't laugh.
It's very sad, multiple families being blown up here.
But the odds of it are just so low.
Even one of them, they said, you know, Cold Play hasn't made a single in years, and now they just made two last night.
So everyone is obsessed with this.
It's odd too, because yesterday on the show, we were talking about infidelity and for some reason, why men who have beautiful wives will cheat with women who often aren't even as beautiful as their own wives.
And then this happens.
Why does everyone care?
Is it just because some guy got caught cheating?
That happens all the time.
Is it just because it was on the kiss cam?
I don't know.
I mean, I think that's actually happened before.
Is it why?
Why does every, is it because people care about this, this company, Astronomer?
It's a big company, but it's not that well known.
I don't think so.
My wife, sweet little Alisa, has a theory about why the entire internet cares about Cold Playgate.
The reason everyone cares, she believes, and I'm convinced of this, is that the affair is nostalgic old school degeneracy.
That's why.
That it's in a way, it gives us a warm and fuzzy feeling looking at this terrible, sinful degeneracy because it's terrible and sinful within old school bounds.
It's a normal looking guy and a normal looking woman having an affair, then getting caught and feeling shame and trying to hide it.
And I know it, look, the standards of our culture are so low that to say that that is heartwarming in any way is a little weird.
But think about our modern culture.
You have some weird-looking dude and a freaky looking surgically augmented eunuch and like two billy goats and a community in a thrupple, not feeling shame, not even cheating because they have ethical non-monogamy and they don't ascribe to your bourgeois morality, man.
It's like so confusing.
And in this case, this is a tale as old as time.
Good-looking CEO sleeps with the secretary, in this case, not the secretary, but someone under him, a head of HR, and they're going to a concert and they're not doing anything obscene exactly.
They're just kind of hugging and having this weird, kind of oddly romantic affair, and then getting caught, feeling shame, trying to hide it.
It's all terrible.
It's all sinful.
It's all completely degenerate, but it's familiar.
You actually think, ah, remember when degeneracy was like that?
Now it's almost unrecognizable.
It's almost unhuman, inhuman.
You look at degeneracy now and it involves like weird orgies in Caribbean islands and internet pornography and hard drugs and absolute shamelessness.
And wow.
Ah, if only we could go back to the days when adultery were simpler.
I think that's, I think sweet little Elisa is a very insightful woman.
And I think, I think there's a lot to that.
Okay, speaking of untoward behavior, the Jeffrey Epstein controversy might be coming to a close, a real close this time, not just saying, okay, actually, after years of talking about this and campaigning on this, nothing to see here.
Move along, move along.
Because President Trump just released this statement.
Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I've asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony subject to court approval.
This scam perpetuated by the Democrats should end right now.
Really, really smart.
Really, really smart.
And the whole time, even as many Trump supporters, erstwhile Trump supporters were attacking him and saying, this is it.
I regret voting for him and I don't, he's terrible and he's the swamp and he's the deep state and all that was happening.
I said, look, I'm a plan truster.
He's great.
I sympathize with his frustration on this matter.
The Epstein thing long predates him.
He is certainly not seriously implicated in this at all.
He kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club, but there are all sorts of reasons why the list, so-called, might not be released, but the White House needs to message better on this.
And then Trump gave a defiant press conference in front of Marine One.
That was uniformly reported on as being Trump's defiance.
He's not going to release the Epstein files.
He's lashing out at people who want the Epstein files.
And I said, no, no, no, you're not paying attention to the last five words of that press conference.
Where at the very, he says, this is crazy.
We shouldn't be talking about it.
Epstein's irrelevant.
And I want to talk about all my big policy wins at the border, on the economy.
But at the very end, he said, and of course, I support releasing credible information.
And at the very end there, I said, that's a pivot.
That's Trump giving himself wiggle room to come out of this.
Now Trump is saying, okay, I've instructed Pam Bondi to go talk to the courts to release the grand jury testimony, because this is some of the complication of the Epstein issue.
There's no list in the sense that there's no nice piece of parchment with one, two, three, four, five, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Bill Clinton.
There's none of that.
There is just a lot of testimony of women who say they were trafficked by Epstein saying, yeah, I was with this guy, I was with that guy.
And some of it is credible and some of it might not be credible.
In fact, one of the accusers dropped an accusation against Alan Dershowitz after Dershowitz pursued it.
He said, I'm being falsely accused and I'm going to prove that I'm falsely accused.
And she eventually dropped the allegation.
Others will not be falsely accused.
Others actually did.
So there's just this massive pile of accusations, which are not necessarily verified, which have not necessarily been investigated.
And so as I said from the beginning, it's not what we want is not a list exactly.
What I want, I'll speak for myself.
What I want is not full transparency.
A government can't be transparent on everything.
But what I want is justice.
I want to know that some justice is being done.
And I think that's what most people want out of this.
We want to know, as I am quite confident, that the guy we elected is the guy we elected.
And so I said, the political problem for Trump is I think he is that guy.
I think he is the guy that we elected, but he's got this messaging issue now that has become a field day for Democrats and for Trump's enemies in the Republican Party.
And so he's got to do something to show that he's, he's got to show that he's frustrated with the Epstein situation and he's got to try to at least convince people that justice has been done.
This is a brilliant way to do it because this puts the onus back on the courts.
The courts have sealed some of this testimony.
So by saying to Pam Bondi, hey, you need to go to the courts and unseal whatever grand jury testimony you can unseal to give some transparency because this is a really weird case that implicates a lot of very powerful people with a lot of contradictions in the story over the years.
There is no jail cell footage.
Oh, there is jail cell footage.
We're going to release it, but it's missing a minute.
Actually, it's missing three minutes.
And he killed himself, but it seems very difficult to kill yourself in that kind of a cell.
And there's a list, but actually there's no list.
And we're not going to release the list.
And there's just so many questions about it that rumors that he was connected to intelligence.
You need a little bit.
You need to give people a little bit more.
Trump has done it in a brilliant way, brilliant way here.
Put it back on the courts.
Let the courts handle it.
Give us, allow Republicans and reasonable Democrats to be unified on this, and then allow the issue to play out as it will.
Again, I still don't think you're ever going to get anything even resembling full transparency on the Epstein issue.
But at least here, Trump can say, look, this really has nothing to do with me.
This issue long predates me.
This is not a big part of my administration as part of my objectives.
But at the very least, now this kind of a move, this kind of a chess move will not allow the Epstein issue to derail the rest of Trump's very effective agenda.
Okay, now the downside of that is people are going to run with all sorts of craziness and insinuations against Trump.
Hold on now one second.
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So right on queue, and I'm sure this is part of Trump's hesitation, right on queue, you're getting all these insinuations that Trump is seriously implicated in the Epstein stuff, which again, I see no evidence for whatsoever.
I've talked to sources, including liberal sources, who say, nah, he's not, you know, he's mentioned in there, as is just about everyone on earth, including, I think Fidel Castro is mentioned in there, but he's mentioned in there, but he's not implicated really in any way.
The Wall Street Journal thinks otherwise.
The Wall Street Journal prints a letter that was purportedly written by Trump to Jeffrey Epstein.
It was in some file, and it was over an image, like a stick figure of a naked lady or something.
And the letter, you read it, it looks like it was written by ChatGPT or something.
And it says there, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Enigmas never age.
Have you noticed that?
It's written as a kind of a dialogue.
Jeffrey, as a matter of fact, was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Pal's a wonderful thing.
Happy birthday.
And may every day be another wonderful secret.
I don't know.
It's really odd.
People write weird letters and even jokey letters sometimes, but Trump has come out.
He's fully denied this and promised to sue the Wall Street Journal.
He said, this is completely fake.
Not, you know, this is a hoax and you're making a mountain out of a molehill.
He says, this is completely fake and I will sue you over it, which to me is as firm a denial, as confident a denial as there is, because in a lawsuit, there will be discovery.
And so Trump has to be real certain that this is fake news.
J.D. Vance likewise has said, this looks like total BS.
And it seems pretty fake to me.
The closest thing it seems like to me in terms of all the Trump hoaxes, the anti-Trump hoaxes over the years, was back in 2016, the Democrats cooked up this ridiculous story.
It was between the Democrats and the Obama government and ironically Russian intelligence, maybe not so ironically.
And they said that Trump was in Moscow and he hired a bunch of hookers to urinate on him.
And there was a video of this.
And the minute I heard that story, I said, this is so bogus.
Oh, and the hookers allegedly were, I don't know, talking about Obama or something.
It was just so fantastical and ridiculous.
I thought the way you know that that story is completely fake is it doesn't sound like him.
That's the issue with this letter here.
It just doesn't sound like him.
It's not that President Trump hasn't lived a colorful life.
It isn't that he hasn't been this, you know, billionaire brash guy who dates supermodels.
He's done all of that.
He's totally been that guy.
But I said, I remember with the stupid Russia story, I said, part of the reason that doesn't sound real is that President Trump seems like kind of a germaphobe.
So I just don't, I just don't think he would do that.
And then, of course, it later came out completely bogus.
Same thing here.
It just doesn't sound like him.
It's not, it just seems, it seems like fake news to me.
The fact that Trump would deny this and say, I'm going to sue you, I think, yeah.
If this is the best the Democrats have on this, great, right.
A major win for the White House.
Now, speaking of establishment journalism, sometimes a little sus journalism, great, great news for your wallet and for the American political order.
The Senate has just come out and approved a $9 billion rescission package.
Rescission meaning pulling back funding that had already been approved.
The Senate voted 51 to 48, according to the New York Times, to overcome the objections of two Republicans to pull back some funds.
So $9 billion total.
It was supposed to be $9.4 billion.
$400 of that, $400 million was going to be for the PEPFAR, but they're going to leave PEPFAR, which is the presidential plan for AIDS relief in Africa.
And that's been an effective public health strategy.
Okay, fine.
$400 million.
That's okay.
The $8 billion was for foreign aid programs.
We need to start pulling back foreign aid.
After some of Israel's actions yesterday, I think there are going to be a lot of calls from both sides of the aisle to take another look at Israeli foreign aid.
But there's aid to other countries as well.
And then the remaining $1.1 billion was to defund NPR and PBS.
And this was the big fight.
Big, big fight.
You always hear from the left that NPR and PBS, both those Ps have public in them.
It means national public radio, public broadcasting.
They say it's a misnomer.
NPR and PBS don't really get much funding from taxpayers.
A lot of it's privately funded.
Okay.
And that's a little sleight of hand because it's true.
NPR and PBS don't get a huge amount of money directly from taxpayers, but they get a lot of money indirectly from taxpayers through the corporation for public broadcasting.
So your tax dollars go to the government.
The government funds the corporation for public broadcasting.
The corporation for public broadcasting funds a lot of these local stations.
And the local stations pay station fees to NPR and PBS.
And those station fees largely fund the networks.
And NPR and PBS are liberal networks, left-wing networks.
I was on PBS not that long ago.
They do sometimes have conservatives on, usually not the friendliest interviews, but they will occasionally have conservatives on.
But the whole slant of the networks is left-wing.
So I guess they can have their left-wing networks.
Fine, maybe for now.
But why are we all forced to fund it?
You're not all forced to fund the Daily Wire.
Taxpayers don't, we don't get taxpayer funding here at Daily Wire.
Fox News doesn't get taxpayer funding.
So why do we all have to fund NPR and PBS?
This is completely insane.
And for a Republican to allow that to go on would be suicidal.
So Trump comes in and he says, now it's difficult to defund them, but Trump comes in, he manages to do it.
J.D. Vance celebrates it.
He says, border crossings at their lowest levels in history last week and NPR defunded two big wins.
And I think this is the coda to the Epstein story.
The reason some people cared about the Epstein story is because it's an interesting story.
That's, I think, why a lot of people cared about it.
The reason that others cared about the Epstein story was they thought it could be used as a cudgel against Trump.
That's Democrats and some Republicans who are enemies of Trump in Congress and elsewhere.
The reason that I care about the Epstein story is primarily as a matter of justice.
You want to make sure justice is done, but as a secondary matter, because I do trust Trump on it, and I don't want the Epstein story to derail the agenda, because I want the White House to be able to talk about the lowest border crossings in history and defunding NPR and PBS and winning trade wars and all the rest of it.
So this is a big win and long overdue.
The fact that other Republican presidents allowed NPR and PBS to continue to operate against their interest, against all of our interests, with our money is pretty outrageous.
Now, speaking of canceling broadcasts, bad news for Stephen Colbert over at CBS.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Raith Senar, 1337, who says, this is in response, I suspect, to the story that babies have been born in the UK, genetically created in laboratories with DNA from three parents.
So they don't just have two parents.
They have three parents.
And comment says, libs going to be like, whoa, now my wife's boyfriend and me can both be the father.
That is what libs are going to be like.
There is no doubt about that.
Okay.
Stephen Colbert, CBS Light Show, had this announcement last night.
Oh, hey, everybody.
We got a great show for you tonight.
Senator Adam Schiff was my guest.
We harmonized on Seven Bridges Road.
What a voice, I cried.
But before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night.
Next year will be our last season.
The network will be ending The Late Show in May.
And...
Yeah, I share your feelings.
It's not just the end of our show, but it's the end of the late show on CBS.
I'm not being replaced.
This is all just going away.
I'm, so the good news is I'm not being replaced.
The bad news is I've been so insufferable on this show, I destroyed the whole franchise.
That's bad for him, but it's good for all of us.
Colbert is not the most offensive of the left-wing comedian, late-night people.
I like that he's Catholic, even though he's like a huge libcat and he's friends with all sorts of unfortunate figures in the church.
But this show was bad.
His old show on Comedy Central was pretty funny because it was him, a liberal, playing a conservative, making fun of conservatives, but sometimes making fun of liberals.
It was a clever show.
He was basically doing Bill O'Reilly, but it was a clever show.
When he came over to CBS and had to just do Stephen Colbert and be this mainstream milquetoast kind of figure, that show was awful.
That show has always been awful.
It's just, it's not good.
Most of the late night shows are not good, but his was pretty bad.
It wasn't the lowest rated of the late night shows, but there was one show that was beating him by a lot.
Do you know what show it was?
It was Greg Gutfeld on Fox.
And that just shows you where it is.
Now, CBS is denying that this was because of his ratings or his talent or whatever it says.
This is a purely financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.
It's not related in any way to the show's performance content or other matters happening at Paramount.
What does that mean?
What do you mean?
It's a purely financial decision, but it has nothing to do with how the show is performing.
Well, if the show were performing really, really well, then the finances would be great.
And if it were a purely financial decision, you'd keep the show on.
So that's a contradiction.
You can't say it's a purely financial decision, but it has nothing to do with the show's performance.
The show did fine.
I mean, the show is getting 2.4 million average viewers and was doing pretty well in the key demo of people who buy stuff.
But 2.4 million average viewers for Colbert, 3.3 million average viewers in the second quarter for Greg Guttfeld.
Greg Guttfeld, who's on cable, cable, much less accessible to most people than network TV.
The late show has been on for 32 years.
It started with Letterman because Letterman was not the successor to Johnny Carson.
I look around, other late night shows are not being canceled.
Kimmel's not being canceled.
All the rest of them on network TV.
I think the reason that Colbert's show was particularly bad is it was supposed to be this comedian, a real serious comedian at the top of his game who appealed to a lot of different people on CBS of all places.
And it just boiled down to lib hectoring.
It just became lib hectoring.
And it shrunk that franchise.
And it might have played last September, but after the election, lib hectoring is not the future.
That's what the CBS executives saw.
Lib hectoring is not the future.
You're seeing that already in the ratings a little bit, but I think they're looking down the pike.
Oh, wow.
Trump won the popular vote.
Lib Hectoring is not the future.
Coastal elite lib hectoring, not the future.
Okay.
Speaking of libs on the coasts in New York, Zoran Mamdani has a little video.
He's the guy who's probably going to be the next mayor of New York, Democrat nominee for mayor of New York.
Zoron Mamdani has this little video about his ideology going viral.
My platform is that every single person should have housing.
And I think faced with these two options, the system has hundreds of thousands of people unhoused, right?
For what?
And if there was any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it just a statewide housing guarantee, it is preferable to what is going on right now.
And I think that people try and play like gotcha games about these kinds of things.
And it's like, look, I care more about whether somebody has a home.
So surface level of this clip, the guy is a communist, which he is.
So that's what he's saying, abolish private property.
He's a communist.
I don't think he's a Muslim radical as some conservatives are mistakenly accusing him of being.
I don't think he's Saeed Qutib.
I don't think he's Osama bin Laden.
I think he's a leftist punk who lives in New York, who's insufferable, and is a communist, apparently.
But even that doesn't tell you the whole story because he doesn't sound quite as sophisticated as Marx or Engels, does he?
Does he sound like someone who has taken these ideas seriously?
No.
He sounds like a punk millennial who has followed incentives and just said the fashionable things to get ahead.
That's really what I think he is.
It's like the, it's the galaxy brain meme, you know, the kind of dull one is, the dullest one is he'll be a good mayor.
He's not going to be a good mayor.
Then the next one is he's a Muslim radical.
Then the next one is, he's not a Muslim radical.
He's a communist.
Then the next one is, he's actually not chiefly any of those things.
He's an opportunist.
This is the kind of thing that kids who go to fancy colleges, remember Zoron lied about being a black guy or kind of lied about being a black guy to try to get into Columbia.
These are the things that guys in fancy colleges say in their dorm rooms at night.
And they say it just like this.
They don't say it like Koromarx, the workers of the world unite.
We will have revolution.
No, no, no.
That's not what he's saying.
He's saying, you know, it's like, guys, come on.
I just want everyone to have a house.
Okay.
And if that means that I'm a communist, then I guess I am.
You know, it's like, like, I just want to like have people have houses.
Okay.
It's like crazy, like, right?
It's him.
This is probably him flirting with a girl in his dorm room.
He's an opportunist.
He's a product of the spirit of his age.
He's following sticks and carrots and incentives to get ahead.
He's a striver.
And the system was set up, especially for him.
Zoran Mamdani and I are almost exactly the same age.
The system was set up for him such that if you wanted to get ahead, some of us were contrarian, but for most people, if you wanted to get ahead, you had to say the fashionable liberal things at the fashionable liberal schools and just go along to get along.
And then one day you can be mayor of New York.
That's what he did.
And so the political issue for us is not to eradicate Islam.
We have been fighting Islam for 1400 years, but it's a side issue.
It's not even to root out the ideology of communism, though that would be good to do too.
It's to restructure things so that if you want to get into the good colleges and get the good jobs and succeed socially and be accepted and all that, you're not incentivized to say this stupid nonsense.
You're actually, you're discouraged.
You're disincentivized to do that.
You are more incentivized to be a normal person, get married, be virtuous, support America, not be communist, go to church.
That's the issue.
Okay, speaking of church, we turn now from Muslims to Christians.
Horrible story out of Gaza.
Horrible story.
The IDF has struck the only Catholic church in Gaza.
According to the reporting, 10.20 a.m. yesterday, the compound of the Holy Family in Gaza, which belongs to the Latin Patriarch, was struck by the Israeli army.
Three people died from their injuries.
Nine others were wounded, including one in critical condition, and the priest, the parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, was also injured.
This is the line from the Latin Patriarch.
The Latin Patriarchate, which is the Catholic Church in Gaza, the Latin Patriarchate strongly condemns this tragedy and this targeting of innocent civilians and of a sacred place.
So Israel came out later on after international outcry, including from the White House.
Israel came out and said, oh, it was a mistake.
It was an accident.
Was it an accident?
I don't see any evidence that it was an accident.
Can you provide me some proof that it was an accident?
You struck the church.
Churches are pretty obvious targets.
They're pretty obvious sites.
You know, there's certain features, the cross, steeple, pretty obvious.
Can you explain to me how this was an accident?
Haven't heard that.
The Latin Patriarch seems to think it was intentional.
The targeting of innocent civilians, not just a stray bullet, the targeting.
And he goes on, he says, however, this tragedy is not greater or more terrible than the many others that have befallen Gaza.
Many other innocent civilians have also been harmed, displaced, and killed.
Death, suffering, and destruction are everywhere.
This horrific war must come to a complete end so that we may commence the long work of restoring human dignity.
Diane Montagne, who's a great reporter on the Vatican and Rome and the Pope, says, His Holiness renews his call for an immediate ceasefire.
So it's talking about Pope Leo.
He expresses his profound hope for dialogue, reconciliation, and enduring peace in the region.
And then the Pillar, Which is a Catholic outlet, says, sources close to the Patriarchate's Chancery told the Pillar Thursday that some officials believe the strike could have been a deliberate act of retaliation after Christian leaders recently condemned Israeli settler attacks on a West Bank Christian town.
Now, I want you to put a bar.
First of all, we pray for the dead and for this Christian community, but put a bar there for a second.
There's another story coming out, which is that Mike Huckabee, Mike Huckabee, as strong a supporter as the state of Israel as there is, U.S. ambassador to the State of Israel.
According to the Times of Israel, Mike Huckabee is threatening to declare Israel not welcoming Christians as a visa fight blows open, penned a scathing letter to the Interior Minister accusing Israel of blocking Christian groups from entering Israel and threatening reciprocal steps against Israeli visa seekers.
As I've mentioned before, everyone seems to hate the State of Israel these days, mostly coming from the left, but some people on the right have joined.
And I've been broadly supportive of the State of Israel, not really as an ideological matter, but as a matter of prudence.
And you're losing me.
You're losing me.
When you strike churches, the only church in Gaza, even if accidentally, but especially if not accidentally, you're losing me.
If you're losing Mike Huckabee, the Israeli government is really screwing up, is really not playing its cards right.
If Trump, I think the press secretary yesterday said Trump was furious, Trump was angry, not the exact word, but he was quite dismayed to hear about this attack on the church.
I agree with the Holy Father.
I agree with the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and I agree, especially with the Holy Father, on most matters.
The war needs to come to an end.
There need to be political consequences for this action.
And the war needs to come to an end.
How long is the war going to go on?
I know what the answer is.
The answer is, well, until the hostages come home.
Okay, well, how about we redouble our efforts to get the hostages home, if that's the impediment to peace?
Because it seems like there have been a lot of side quests and side missions going in, the Iran nuclear facilities, maybe potentially regime change in Iran, occupying southern Syria.
It seems like there have been a lot of distractions.
The war has been going on for almost two years.
When's it going to end?
Just what's the end of it?
Can anyone tell me that?
When the hostages are released?
Well, then focus on getting the hostages released.
Well, no, when Hamas is totally destroyed.
Okay, well, when's that going to be?
When Iran is no longer funding terrorism.
When's that going to be?
When Syria is made safe for democracy?
Give me an answer.
Because the war cannot just go on indefinitely.
A just war cannot just go on indefinitely.
And when you start striking churches, accidentally or otherwise, when you start interfering with American interests, not allowing in the reporting about Ambassador Huckabee, when you start interfering with American groups going to the state of Israel, now we got a problem.
And America is the only friend that Israel has on planet Earth.
So I don't know.
I do not get what the Israeli government is doing here, but I suspect there will be political consequences for it, as there should be.
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Take it away.
Hey, Michael, been a while since I have submitted one of these, so I figured I was due.
I hear you talk about the importance of getting married and having children on the show, but one thing I have not really heard you cover is how do we get people willing to date.
From my experience, I have not dated for years due to constant rejection, which led to low self-esteem and trying to fill the void with work and knowledge.
As I'm approaching middle age with no children of my own and my friends and cousins all getting married and having children, now more than ever do I want to find a wife and have children of my own, but my generation is more into promiscuity and thinks children are a burden.
I'm going to the places you have suggested to meet people, but the willingness of others to date just does not seem to be there.
So to sum up to the original question, how would you encourage people to want to date, get married, and have children?
It doesn't seem like population replacement is convincing many.
Any help would be appreciated as I really don't want to die alone.
Okay, good question.
Sorry for the difficulties you're experiencing here.
I think you're thinking about it backwards because you're thinking about it in the abstract.
How do I convince people that they should date?
How do I convince women that they should date?
How do I, you know, should my pickup line be that we've had a below replacement birth rate for the past 50 years?
That's not a good pickup line.
Don't think about it in the abstract.
You don't need to convince women or millennials to date.
You need to get a date.
That's your problem.
You need to get a date.
Forget about the abstraction.
Make it very, very practical.
And you're saying you go to the places where I've suggested you could date.
So maybe I've suggested the Latin Mass.
You know, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.
I've suggested bars.
I've suggested all sorts of places.
But you say, and I put myself in these places, but I'm still not dating.
Okay.
I think you need to get a little more personal about it.
Just from your brief question, it seems like the issue is one of a depersonalized abstraction versus a personal thing, and dating is personal.
So what I would do is I would ask people around you, your family, your friends, maybe your colleagues, hey, I want a girlfriend.
You know anybody?
Maybe you get on the apps.
I'm not totally opposed to the apps.
You know, you have to live in the circumstances that you got as long as it's not intrinsically immoral.
We avail ourselves of the resources that we have.
But I would ask these people and say, hey, can you set me up?
Because I think about it with work.
No one ever got a job out of networking.
Pretty much ever.
You get jobs from relationships.
You get jobs from friendships.
You get jobs from real connections.
You don't get jobs from passing out business cards.
People pass out business cards all the time.
I can't believe they still do it in 2025.
Business cards immediately go to the trash.
Immediately.
They barely touch your hand.
They go to the trash.
You need that personal connection.
So that's what I would do.
I would rely on personal connections and say, hey, hey, cousin Beth, whatever.
You have any friends?
I want to go on a date.
I want to get married.
Let's go.
It's not in the abstract.
I want love.
I don't want to just do my patriotic duty and raise the birth rate.
I want love.
It's not, let's do it.
Let's raise the birth rate.
No, let's do it.
Let's fall in love.
Okay, next one.
Hey, Michael.
So I got a question for you.
So I myself, a Catholic who loves philosophy, theology, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
But most of all, I love my wife.
Now, the issue that I have and the question I've got for you is I really like cigars as well.
Recently, my wife and I had our first child, a baby girl, and my wife is very concerned during pregnancy and even now that secondhand and thirdhand smoke are bad for the kid.
I agree with her.
And I want to respect my wife.
But I really want to enjoy a cigar as well every once in a while.
How do you do it?
That's my question.
Is Elisa concerned about that?
Are the kids around you when you smoke?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Love the show.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks.
Yeah, yeah.
Let me show you how you do it.
I'm going to show you how you do it.
You take the cigar out.
You get a cutter.
You cut the cigar like that.
There you go.
Then you, I only have a very silly lighter on me, but that's okay.
Then here's how else you do it.
Then you do the lighter, right, like that.
And then you smoke it.
And then you might hear, and then the thing you do is you make sure that your light is perfect.
There we go.
That's how you do it.
I don't mean to be glib or disrespectful to your wife.
Your wife can make certain requests that are reasonable, and you should take those into account.
But what you should say to her is you say, we have this disagreement over smoking.
And if your wife is using terms like thirdhand smoke, she's not thinking about this in a reasonable way.
And you should say, well, I've weighed, I've used my reason as the head of the household, taking your concerns into line.
And I've weighed the risks of smoking cigars, not even cigarettes.
And I think a cigar a day is just fine.
And so I'm going to smoke.
And maybe you say, look, you don't want me to smoke in the house.
You don't like the smell of smoke.
Okay.
Okay.
Maybe I won't.
I'll smoke on the deck or I'll smoke in the yard or I'll smoke outside or I'll smoke at a cigar lounge or something, but it's okay.
And if I'm going on a walk and I'm having a cigar and my kid is in the stroller, I think my kid is going to be just fine.
She said, no, but it's terrible.
The kid's going to get fifth-hand smoke.
There's no such thing as fifth-hand smoke.
It's okay.
Don't worry.
I've used my reason.
I've taken your concerns into account.
I've weighed the costs and benefits and it's fine.
And that's how it goes.
That's the final word on this matter, honey.
That's what I would say.
And then the way you do it is you cut it, you cut the cigar, and then you light the bottom one, and then you enjoy.
Thank you, by the way, for giving me an opportunity to smoke on this episode today.
Smoke a delicious Mayflower.
Next question.
Hello, Mr. Nose.
This is Emmy from Norway.
I heard recently that the fall of the Roman Empire led to the Dark Ages.
Now, do you believe that if America falls, we will be plunged into a new Dark Age?
And what do you speculate that might look like?
Thanks for all you do.
If only.
If only that's what the fall of America would do.
Because the Dark Ages is an abused term.
And it's really a term that is used as an unfair insult from Enlightenment modern lunatics who wanted to insult the height of Christian civilization.
There was a period after the fall of the Roman Empire when things were a little bit rough, no question about that.
Though it was during that period that you see the development of Western monasticism, that you see the development, the preservation and cultivation of the very heights of our culture, intellectual and artistic, and religious.
You then see, as you move into the Middle Ages, the building of the greatest edifices ever in our history, the cathedrals, where you see the creation of the greatest art, poetry, literature ever in the high Middle Ages.
And people, they say there's just dark ages until the Renaissance.
Renaissance is really overrated, and the Enlightenment is extremely overrated.
So if only we could get into a dark and then middle and high middle ages after America, I fear we won't.
I fear, yeah, you need to reset your expectations.
That's kind of best case scenario if the American Empire falls.
