Ep. 1907 - NEW VIDEO: Strange Figure Enters Jeffrey Epstein's Tier The Night He Died
Newly released footage shows an orange figure entering Jeffrey Epstein’s jail cell the night he died, President Trump shows up to the National Prayer Breakfast and has everyone debating whether or not he’s Christian, and Kamala Harris makes a major announcement about her political future.
Ep. 1907
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Newly released footage shows an orange figure entering Jeffrey Epstein's jail cell the night he died.
And perhaps even more important, we are now learning that no one ever found the noose that Epstein allegedly used to kill himself.
That seems like a pretty big oversight, doesn't it?
We'll get to what any of that means.
And then speaking of last things, President Trump shows up to the national prayer breakfast and has everyone on Twitter debating whether or not he's really a Christian.
And finally, Kamala Harris makes a major announcement about her political future.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
AOC is speaking to criminal Don Lemon, alleged criminal pseudo-journalist Don Lemon, and she is claiming that intimidation is an age-old tactic to qualm dissent.
We will try to understand what AOC is trying to say.
We will try to see what one of the leading Democrats in Congress, a presidential contender, means when she clearly doesn't understand how to use the English language.
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Let's start with the Epstein thing.
This is pretty weird.
And it's not coming from, you know, 4chan or something.
This is coming from CBS News.
Pretty mainstream outlet.
February 5th, 2026.
Who entered Epstein's cell?
Sorry, who entered Epstein's jail tier the night of his death?
Newly released video logs appear to contradict official accounts.
All right, you guys caught up.
That's great.
Yes, the official accounts have been contradicted myriad times, I think, at this point.
Up to and including the footage of the jail tier.
Remember, we were told there are cameras on Epstein's jail cell on his tier on his floor, but actually the cameras didn't work.
So we don't have any footage.
No, but actually we do have the footage.
No, but actually a minute is missing.
No, but actually the minute is back.
But and it's all original footage.
But actually it's clearly from a video editing program and actually, actually, actually.
So what's the latest?
I'll just read a little bit from this CBS news article.
Newly released Department of Justice documents show that investigators reviewing surveillance footage from the night of Jeffrey Epstein's death observed an orange colored shape moving up a staircase toward the isolated locked tier where his cell was located at approximately 1039 p.m. So pretty late at night.
I love the way they're describing it.
An orange colored shape.
Some people probably on the left are imagining that this is just Trump himself.
Yes, a vaguely mango colored, you know, blonde-haired, had a very nice Brioni suit on with a slightly too long red tie.
No, that would be the lib version of what we on the right all imagine, which is that it's Hillary Clinton in Groucho glasses and a FedEx suit saying, you know, I got a package delivery for Mr. Epstein.
Just chokes him out.
Okay.
What is probably meant is that the person is wearing an orange jumpsuit or maybe carrying orange jumpsuits.
It's a little unclear.
Now, we've already mentioned this, by the way.
This isn't particularly new information.
Remember that I was covering Epstein months and months ago when some of this footage came out.
And we're pointing to strange figures that were moving around.
Okay, now we can zoom in and say there's this weird orange figure here.
Okay.
CBS goes on.
Thomas told investigators he discovered Epstein in his cell shortly after 6.30 a.m. and that he ripped Epstein down from the hanging position.
Investigators asked what happened to the noose.
Quote, I don't recall taking the noose off.
I really don't.
I don't recall taking the thing from around his neck.
So that's a little weird, right?
I guess what you could say is it was so shocking.
It's always shocking to see a dead body, but it was especially shocking here.
This is one of the most wanted, talked about criminals in all of America, in all of the world, and you find him dead in his cell.
And maybe, who knows, your hormones are spiking, you have a surge of adrenaline, you're shocked, and you forget.
Maybe he just forgot.
Gets weirder.
Noel, who remains standing at the cell entrance, told investigators she saw Thomas lower Epstein to the floor, but did not see a noose around his neck.
Hold on.
So now it's not just the guy who discovers Epstein and takes him down.
It's also the observer standing a little bit further back looks and says, you know, it's weird.
He was hanging, but I didn't see him hanging from anything in particular.
The noose Epstein allegedly used has never been definitively identified.
According to the Inspector General's report, a noose collected at the scene was later determined not to be the ligature used in Epstein's death.
They never saw a noose.
The guy who took him down never saw the noose.
The lady watching him take him down never saw a noose.
And investigators never even found the noose.
Add on to that, the medical examiner's report, at least one medical examiner saying that the breaks in his neck were more consistent with strangulation than with hanging.
Come on.
Come on, man.
Come on, man, let's just, everyone's focusing on the aspects of his life.
Everyone's focusing on he had a connection to Russia.
He had a connection to Israel.
He had a connection to the CIA.
He had a connection.
And he had then he did.
And what he was really up to was this.
And what he was really up to at this.
And some of the accounts actually contradict each other.
And he was really a super spy.
No, he was really just a sex freak rich guy.
No, he was really trafficking girls.
No, he was really trading secrets.
he was really dealing with the Arabs or the Israelis or the Russians or the Americans or the British or the blah, You got to put that aside for a second.
That's getting us nowhere.
Where's that getting us?
We now have every theory.
We've connected him to every country on earth, every intelligence agency, every vice.
That's not getting us anywhere.
If you want to get to the heart of the Epstein story, the first thing you have to ascertain is it is the end of the story, not how the story begins.
A lot of people want to focus on how did this guy who dropped out of college end up becoming a math teacher that was hired by Bill Barr's father at the Dalton School, but then he became a some kind of trader at Bear Stearns.
And then he became the money manager for Les Wexner and he said he would only manage money over a billion dollars or only have clients who are investing over a billion dollars.
And then he worked with this intelligence agency and then he helped out this sheikh in Arabia and then he don't look at the beginning of the story.
That is going to lead you down a billion different trails, especially with this guy who seemed to be connected to every powerful person on earth.
I think you have to start at the end of the story.
And curious, isn't it, that the shadiest part, the part that has been most covered up, that has been most contradicted, it's not the stuff at the beginning of the story.
It's not, did Epstein work at Bear Stearns?
Did Epstein know Belaine Maxwell?
Did Epstein pal around with Bill Clinton?
It's none of that.
The part that has been most assiduously covered up is the end of the story.
How did he die?
Who killed him?
Why don't we have the noose?
That's it.
If we focus in on that, and by the way, I don't think we're going to get an answer on it.
This has been my consistent position from the beginning.
Either Epstein is who they say he is, in which case we know everything about him, or he's something more, in which case we know everything we're ever going to know because they're not going to let it out.
But if we could ascertain who killed him, that would help us to answer why was he killed?
That would help us to answer what purpose in world politics did he primarily serve.
That would help us to answer who chiefly was he working for.
That would help us to answer what was the Epstein operation really about.
But the only way you're going to get those big answers is by going backward.
You're not going to get it by going forward.
Now we're getting some little, little tasty little hints, nothing definitive.
And if you want my bet, you want me to put some money on the table?
I don't think we're going to get much more than that.
Sleep Matters00:03:03
Perhaps I will happily be proven wrong.
Now, speaking of last things, you know, death, judgment, heaven, and hell, President Trump just showed up to the national prayer breakfast and did he dazzle as ever.
But this is prompting a question, especially on social media.
Trump shows up to the prayer breakfast.
He talks about Christianity.
He talks about God.
But is he a real Christian?
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Clear Glass Vessels00:12:02
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Okay, speaking of penitence, death, judgment, heaven and hell, President Trump shows up to the national prayer breakfast and he makes a joke that he has made a number of times before.
He's a good politician.
He's a good showman.
So when a joke works, he repeats it.
That's actually the mark of understanding the stage.
Trump comes out and he makes this joke about how he might not be going to heaven.
Last time I was having a lot of fun, we had a big red with 60,000 people and I'm talking about the fact that I will never make it to heaven.
I will never ever.
And I was being funny.
I was trying to be, you know, you can't be sarcastic with them because they write your words and the people who are reading the words are much different.
But I said, I'm never going to make it to heaven.
I just don't think I qualify.
I don't think there's a thing I can do.
But all of these good things I'm doing, including for religion, you know, religion's back now hotter than ever before.
I mean, I have to tell you.
But I said, even though I did that and so many other things, I named things.
I said, I won't qualify.
I'm not going to make it to heaven.
The New York Times did a front page story that Donald Trump is questioning his life and the meaning of his life.
No, I was just having fun.
I really think I probably should make it.
I mean, I'm not a perfect candidate, but I did a hell of a lot of good for perfect people.
That's for sure.
I love this whole little joke that he's telling here.
And some people, especially on social media, they're saying, well, this is proof that President Trump is not a Christian.
Because in Christianity, you don't earn heaven.
You don't earn eternal life as a gift given to you by God.
It's God's grace descending, coming down the mountain.
And you have to cooperate with God's grace.
Actually, some denominations of Christian communities de-emphasize that or deny it entirely.
But the traditional view is you do have to cooperate with God's grace, but it's God's grace first.
And so they say, well, this is proof Trump's not a real Christian because he's talking about earning heaven.
And to that, I would say, first of all, just listen to his words.
He's saying, he's kind of joking, you know, he's, and the joke is self-effacing, by the way, which means that it's a joke that comes from humility, which is good because humility is the humility, awe, wonder, fear of the Lord.
These are the beginning of wisdom.
This is important as a disposition if you're going to start to take religion seriously.
But he says, I'm not going to earn it.
He actually says that here.
No, I don't deserve it.
I'm not going to earn it.
I've tried, but I don't think I'm going to make it.
He says, no, but actually, maybe I, maybe I will.
I'm not a perfect candidate, but I've done some good for perfect people, for the people who are much better than I am.
So I'm doing my best.
This, yet again, I mean, I don't want to stretch exegesis too far.
And I'm not saying that Trump should be made a doctor of the church by any stretch of the imagination, but the things that he's saying here have kernels of Christian truth to it.
I'm not going to earn heaven.
I'm not a perfect candidate, even, but I might make it.
So there you have the humility.
There you have the recognition that we don't earn heaven.
He says, but I might make it.
There you have a little hint of the theological virtue of hope, which we're called on to do.
And why?
He doesn't specifically say, you know, because I have faith in Christ, which he should say, or because, you know, Christ has given me his church and these sacraments with which I can refresh myself and my soul.
And he doesn't say that.
He's not speaking like a theologian.
He's not speaking like someone who was well catechized.
But he does say, I've done a lot of good for perfect people.
Even here, even here, you get a hint of the parable that our Lord tells of that manager, that deceitful little manager who he knows he's going to lose his job.
So what does he do?
He goes to all the people who owe money and he cuts their debts in half.
He says, you say you owe 100?
Okay, I'm going to write down that you owe 50.
You owe 200?
Okay, I'm going to say you owe 100.
And our Lord commends him.
He says, you know, the children of this world, they're smart, they're cunning.
He says, and make friends with unrighteous mammon so that one day those people that you've helped will welcome you into eternal dwellings.
When he says that, you know, I've done a lot of good for perfect people.
That is in a weird way pointing at that very parable.
So again, I'm not making any claims about President Trump's eternal destiny.
I certainly hope and I should pray that President Trump is received into the church and avails himself of the sacraments.
Yes, absolutely.
Of course, we should all pray for that.
I'm just saying, I think he gets more of it than some people want to admit.
Here's one good example, Trump admitting he needs help.
And last time I came, I got in at four in the morning.
They said, sir, you're going to be speaking at seven?
They said, really?
Oh, that's wonderful.
I said, where?
National prayer breakfast.
I said, I'll be there.
I'm afraid not to be.
I need all the help I can get.
Okay, it's another joke that I'm sure President Trump's told many, many times before.
And it's a joke, but in jokes, there's a little bit of truth, isn't there?
This is yet another expression of that humility.
I need all the help that I can get.
Yeah.
Yeah, that is very much a part of the Christian worldview.
It's a good start.
Now, let's get to some brass politics here.
Tough stuff.
President Trump, speaking to the National Prayer Breakfast, which includes Democrats, comes out.
He says, you cannot really be a person of faith and a Democrat.
I don't know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat.
I really don't.
And I know we have some here today, and I don't know why they're here, because they certainly don't give us their vote.
I certainly know that we're not going to be convincing them to vote for a little thing called voter ID.
It polls at 97%.
And even the Democrat, the people, the voters are at 82% for voter ID, but the leaders don't want to approve it.
Okay, what about the claim?
The basic claim.
I don't know how you could be a person of faith and vote for a Democrat.
100% correct.
There are going to be some people, the kind of squishy, you know, kumbaya types who say, well, no, of course you can, you know, because the church transcends politics.
And the church is much bigger than politics, than partisan politics.
But there are certain non-negotiables.
Back when the Democrat Party had room for pro-lifers, you could say, okay, I see how you could vote for a Democrat.
Back when the Democrat Party didn't radically redefine marriage, the fundamental political unit and the symbol of Christ and his church, you could say, okay, I see how you could vote for a Democrat.
Today, you can't.
You really can't.
In almost any circumstance.
You just can't.
This is a non-negotiable issue.
If there's a political party that says, we support the wholesale slaughter of infants, we support abortion, something that the church has opposed since the earliest catechism we have, clearly opposed since the earliest catechism we have, the DDAC from antiquity, from right around the apostolic age.
You just can't vote for them.
Very good point.
And it's kind of funny because then Trump pivots to voter ID, which is an important issue, but it's kind of a relatively minor issue when we're thinking about religion and faith.
But the point he makes totally stands.
And then one last point from the prayer breakfast before we get to the standing of MAGA nationally, CNN weighs in on this.
What does Trump have to say about religion generally?
Have a great country.
If you don't have religion, you have to believe in something.
You have to believe that what we're doing, there's a reason for it.
There has to be a reason for it.
We're all working and we're behaving.
I mean, I behave because I'm afraid not to, okay?
Because I don't want to get in trouble.
No, it's such a positive thing and people are starting to see it and they're going to church.
I love this statement.
I love this statement.
And there are going to be a lot of people, religious people from across religious traditions who say, this is shallow.
This is a shallow take, Mr. President, because you're just saying religion is a positive thing, but you're not weighing in on whether or not it's true.
You're not evangelizing.
You're not catechizing.
You're saying it's a positive thing.
Like those disillusioned liberals who say they want to believe they're culturally Christian.
It's a good social kind of convention, but it isn't really true.
Keep listening.
What does he say?
He says, yeah, religion is a positive thing.
And we need religion.
Now, even there still, it could sound like he's just saying, look, it's a social convention, maybe even a noble lie that we have to believe to get along.
But he says, no, no, no, because look at what we're doing.
We're behaving, not just behaving well, but just behaving.
We're doing stuff.
We get out of bed in the morning and it has to mean something.
That's the centerpiece of that comment, and that's the brilliant insight.
It has to mean something.
There has to be a reason that we are doing what we're doing.
The world, in other words, has to be intelligible.
We have to be able to make sense of it.
And we have to communicate in a way that has recourse to objective truth, that has meaning.
We have to behave in a way that is not just totally irrational, like we're a bunch of grunting baboons that can't consciously make sense of anything.
The very fact that we behave in a way that seems to be rational, that we act as though the world is intelligible, implies that there is an objective truth behind it, that there is an intellect behind the world that makes it intelligible, that God really does exist.
Yes, religion is a positive thing.
It's good as a sociological matter, but it is positive precisely because it makes sense of the world, and it makes sense of the world because it's true.
That's the point that Trump is making.
That's the insight that he has either stewed on for 70 plus years or that he has just unwittingly stumbled upon.
But either way, that is a crucial insight.
Pun very much intended.
Okay, where does Trump stand?
You're hearing from a lot of Democrats that Trump is very unpopular right now.
You're hearing from people on the right that the MAGA coalition is falling apart.
And you're hearing from political opportunists in the Republican Party that JD Vance, who is the heir apparent who Trump has effectively endorsed, who Marco Rubio has effectively endorsed, that he just can't hold the Trump coalition together.
Is that really true?
Trump's Coalition Struggles?00:14:29
Let's take a look at the numbers.
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The 2028 fight over what happens after Trump is already underway, well underway.
And I can't help but notice that a lot of the people who were never Trump in 2016, who grudgingly supported Trump perhaps in 2020, who jumped off the Trump train the first chance they could get to back someone like Ron DeSantis, who I actually like in his own rights, but to back any non-Trump candidate in the primary in 2024,
that these kinds of people are trying to turn the tide against JD Vance, who is the heir apparent to MAGA, and trying to suggest that there's not unity in the Republican Party, trying to suggest that President Trump's coalition, even under his leadership, is beginning to fall apart, trying to suggest that the Republican Party needs to turn in a brand new direction.
Let me translate that for you.
Go back to the stale old consensus that Donald Trump destroyed in 2016.
They just need to change something dramatically if they want to maintain unity and have a chance in 2028.
So is any of that true?
We turn not even to a Republican source.
We turn to CNN runs its own poll, a lot of polls.
Here's what the numbers actually say.
It's about the Make America movement.
Again, that's what we're talking about.
Make America Great Again movement.
And it is as powerful as it has ever been.
Because I want you to take a look here.
GOP who view MAGA favorably.
Two years ago when Donald Trump was running for term number two, it was 74%.
Today, look at this.
It's 78% of Republicans who view the Make America Great Again movement favorably.
So we're talking about something that, in my opinion, will very much be able to outlast Donald Trump.
JD Vance, the Vice President of the United States, at this point looks like a favorite for the Republican nomination come 2028.
And one of the reasons why he looks like a favorite is because the Republican base loves JD Vance.
What are we talking about here?
Someone who really represents the Make America Great Again movement.
This is somebody a year ago is favorable rating among Republicans, 81%.
Latest Marquette University law school poll, look at this.
84%, 84%.
So if anything, his favorable rating is someone up from where it was a year ago.
Yeah, right.
The claim that is being made by all of the, not all of the liberals, because obviously CNN comes out here and is actually seriously conveying this Marquette University poll, but by many of the liberals saying, oh, you know, MAGA's falling apart, Trump's really underwater.
JD doesn't have a shot.
Forget about them.
They're always going to say stuff like that.
I'm talking about the kind of people who never liked MAGA, who never liked Trump, who wish we could return to the halcyon days of the Bush family.
They're the ones who keep suggesting, well, no, Trump's, he needs to change all of his policies and not do the stuff he campaigned on.
This is really, forgetting the migration stuff and the tariffs.
It's all really, really terrible.
And especially that Vance, there's no way Vance doesn't have a shot.
And we need to replace Vance with someone who's more like an establishment Republican.
I don't know.
Maybe are some of the Bushes around?
Maybe Mitt Romney?
Could he run?
That would be nice, wouldn't it?
Otherwise, it's all going to fall.
The whole coalition is going to fall apart.
The evidence says precisely the opposite.
No surprises there.
But you got to keep your eyes peeled because as we now enter into the midterm year, and then as we look ahead to the presidential election in 2028, you're going to see a lot of political psyops like this to try to crack the MAGA coalition.
There are people who have hated MAGA, who have hated Trump for 10 years, and they consider this their opportunity finally to get power back to reorder the coalition.
No reason to do that.
No reason to do that from a policy, philosophical, ideological perspective.
No reason to do it from an electoral perspective.
MAGA is more popular today than it's ever been.
And JD Vance, the heir apparent, the crown prince, the obvious successor to President Trump, is more popular today than he's ever been among Republicans, among the people who determine the coalition.
Okay.
Now let's turn to the Democrats because Kamala Harris has a major announcement.
She teased this yesterday on her Twitter account, Kamala HQ.
Here's what Kamala HQ had to say.
So it's a login.
Kamala HQ passwords way too online.
Password, the babysitter is weird, huh?
Project 2025 was real.
Oh my goodness.
Headquarters tomorrow.
Now, first time I saw this, this announcement, what is this announcement?
Is she going to be running for president?
Is she going to be running for governor of California?
What's this big announcement?
But I thought it was really weird.
The second kind of silly little password she entered is, the babysitter is weird.
Given Kamala Harris's husband's past public scandals, I thought that was, it just revealed the political incompetence of the Kamala Harris operation.
Such a blunder.
It makes you think, if you're going to think about anything, you're going to think about a Harris family scandal.
Just so tone deaf, so incompetent, like Kamala Harris's entire political operation.
She was the first candidate who had to drop out in 2016, was it?
Was it 2020?
I forget.
It's all so blurry now.
I guess it was 20.
Yeah, I guess it was 2020.
Yeah, it was 2020.
And she was the first one who had to drop out.
Then she only got the nomination in 2024 because they couldn't pass over a black woman.
She only got the vice presidential spot because Joe Biden boxed himself into a corner saying he'd pick a woman of color.
And the other two options, Susan Rice and Karen Bass, were unacceptable because Susan Rice was the fallman for Benghazi.
And Karen Bass is an actual communist.
Totally incompetent.
But you say, all right, well, I hope Miss Incompetence is going to run for president again.
Yesterday, we found out what the announcement was.
Madam Vice President, what's going on with Kamala HQ?
Well, I'm so glad you asked.
I have good news.
So Kamala HQ is turning into headquarters and it's where you can go online to get basically the latest of what's going on and also to meet and revisit with some of our great courageous leaders, be they elected leaders, community leaders, civic leaders, faith leaders, young leaders.
I'm really excited about it.
So stay engaged and I'll see you out there.
Thank you.
Kamala's big announcement is that she is starting a new Twitter account.
She's not even, I have to correct myself.
She's not even starting a new Twitter account.
She's just keeping her Twitter account going.
The Kamala HQ, I have to thank them.
They featured a number of my clips during the presidential campaign.
So I'm very grateful to Kamala HQ for that, for the publicity.
But she's not even starting a new Twitter account.
Her big announcement is she's keeping one of her Twitter accounts.
And then you want to see the incompetence.
The original name she gave it, the handle, was headquarters underscore 6-7.
6'7.
You get it?
That's what the kids said for a while.
They said 6'7.
I'm gonna Pokemon go to the polls of 6'7.
Oh, no, this woman.
6'7's officially over, I guess.
Kamala said it.
It's totally over.
It was so cringe and embarrassing.
They actually changed their handle immediately.
Now it's headquarters 6-8 underscore or whatever.
Okay, so that's the announcement.
She's done.
Stick a fork in her.
Kamala's done.
Gavin Newsom has that much more runway for 2028.
Okay, before we go, speaking of inarticulate Democrat women, I do have to get to this line.
AOC just sat down with Don Lemon.
AOC, you know, the libs love hanging around with criminals, whether we're talking about Senator Chris Van Holland flying down to see his boyfriend, Kilmar Brego Garcia, the illegal alien, alleged wife beater down in El Salvador, or whether we're talking about AOC sitting down with Don Lemon, another criminal.
AOC sits down with him and then posts the clip.
And this is what she writes from her official government account, Rep AOC.
Intimidation is an age-old tactic to qualm public dissent and outrage.
This administration, capital A for some reason, is going after public figures to encourage the American people to self-censor.
But we will not be silenced and we will not accept this violation of our First Amendment rights, capital R, again, for no reason.
I'm not sure why she capitalized the R there.
Intimidation is an age-old tactic to qual.
What does she think the word qualm means?
Not only does AOC not know the meaning of the word qualm, she doesn't even know that qual is a noun rather than a verb.
She's trying to use it as a verb.
It's not a verb.
It's a noun.
A quam is like a misgiving.
It's an uneasiness that one has.
You know, well, I have qualms about, I don't have any qualms about making fun of AOC here or whoever is running AOC's Twitter account.
I don't have any qualms at all.
Some people would.
I do not.
What is she trying to say?
She's trying to say quell, maybe quell public dissent, maybe calm.
Maybe she's putting together qualm and quell.
I don't know.
I don't know what she's doing.
What I do know, though, is she didn't just accidentally misspeak as she was talking, which we all do.
We do.
Even I, who have a great respect for lexical precision, even I misspeak sometimes.
She wrote it and published it from an official government account.
This is bad.
And it gets to a point that I've mentioned before.
The problem with our current political class is not just that it is ideologically radical.
It's also incompetent.
That's why we have such a breath of fresh air with the Trump administration is they're pretty competent relative to the last few that we've had.
So you need ideological clarity.
You need to be on the right team.
You need to want the right things.
You need to have the right object in mind.
Yeah, that's all important.
You also need basic competence.
A country cannot survive with just people who have good intentions, but no ability to carry them out.
We'll collapse and will certainly collapse if people have bad intentions, bad ideas, bad goals, and incompetence.
And actually, maybe the worst of all is when they have really bad goals and they're very competent.
That's maybe the worst of all.
But this is bad.
And there's the HL Macon observation that democracy is a theory that the common man knows what he wants and deserves to get it good and hard.
The fact that our public culture is degraded, that we've had a kind of leveling culture, that we have encouraged the lowest common denominator in our politics, means that we're going to get governors, you know, in the broad sense, people who are writing laws, effecting laws, executing laws.
We're going to get people like AOC who don't understand the English language, who don't know the difference between a noun and a verb.
Hard to remain a global superpower with leaders such as that.
All right, there is a lot of exciting stuff hitting the Daily Wire this weekend.
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More to get to, but I want to get to the mailbag.
So my favorite comment yesterday is from Brock David, who says they don't hate authoritarianism.
Moral Distinction in Abortion00:07:58
They want to be the authoritarians.
I assume I'm referring to the libs.
I actually don't really agree with that.
I get the point you're going for, and I agree with the thrust of it, but I hear this from people on the right a lot.
They say, you know, the left, they call us fascists, but they're the real fascists.
They're not fascists.
They're not actually.
They're communists.
And communists are bad too.
Some would say communists are worse.
But they're not, it's not, not every bad thing is fascism.
In a way, it's actually fascism is bad enough in itself because it makes an idol of the state.
But communism is worse in its effects.
And that's what they are.
And on this point, you say, they want to be authoritarians.
It's actually worse than that.
Authoritarianism, authority is good.
Authority is a good thing.
We actually want just authority.
Authoritarianism is a kind of unjust authority, an authority that goes too far.
Okay, I guess there's some problems with that.
But what the left is, is worse because they're totalitarians.
What would be the distinction?
Authoritarianism is Franco.
Totalitarianism is Stalin.
Authoritarianism says, look, we're going to have certain rules and we're going to really insist upon them.
And you might think we're a little heavy-handed, but in some cases, like if you're talking about the Spanish Civil War and the Bolsheviks trying to invade Iberia, maybe you got to be a little heavy-handed.
Okay.
That's authoritarianism.
Totalitarianism is, hey, kids, snitch to the police on your parents for their thought crimes so that we can kill them.
Totalitarianism pervades every aspect of society, invades your mind, leaves no crevice unfilled by its miasma.
Authoritarianism just says, hey, there are going to be a handful of rules here that you really got to follow or are going to be tough on you.
But for the rest of it, do whatever you want.
It's a difference.
The right sometimes falls into authoritarianism, sometimes for good purpose, because it is a reaction to the left's anarchy and alternately totalitarianism.
Okay.
Finally, finally, we arrive at my favorite time of the week.
The mailbag sponsored by PureTalk at PureTalk.com slash Knowles.
You'll get 50% off your first month.
Take it away.
Hey, Smokey Mike.
You have described abortion as murder, and I agree.
But the majority of the pro-life movement isn't willing to treat it as murder.
Bills of equal protection, which extend the laws protecting against murder to all human beings, are consistently shut down by pro-life organizations.
This is to protect post-abortive women from criminal consequences.
But in effect, it gives these women special murder rights.
As a Christian, I understand wanting to have compassion on post-abortive women and to preach Christ's forgiveness to them.
And we should.
There is forgiveness for murder in Jesus Christ alone.
But it seems inconsistent and unjust to hold the doctors who perform abortions liable, but not the women who electively seek them out.
If we're going to call abortion murder, then shouldn't we aim to be consistent, establish justice, and treat it as it is?
I love the show, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks.
Great question.
And largely, by and large, good points, but I disagree in your conclusion.
The question is, why don't we charge women who have abortions with murder and incarcerate them or give them the death penalty or something like that?
If we don't do that, is it not the case that we don't really believe that abortion is murder?
Is it not the case that we don't really believe that pre-born babies are really fully human and alive?
No, I don't think that necessarily follows.
The reason that we don't charge women who have abortions with murder is because if we were to do that, every pro-life law would immediately be repealed, almost without exception.
That's why.
And I suspect you know that.
There is a prudential reason.
If the goal is to protect as many babies as possible, because politics is the art of the possible, the art of the second best, then we need to recognize that there are some prudential limits to what really can be done, even if in an abstract sense, justice would call for us to treat the women who kill their children as we would treat abortionists.
Now, if we focus in on justice, there are a couple other reasons why we might not want to charge the women who have abortions with murder.
First one would be related to that point I just made on prudence.
That is St. Thomas Aquinas' argument for why we don't necessarily have to outlaw prostitution everywhere.
And his observation is that people in society are at different degrees of virtue.
And so we want the law to be a teacher and to elevate everyone in virtue and sanctity.
But we recognize that if we shoot too high at the beginning, people will snap and the condition of the society will be even worse than it was before.
So if we try too hard, if we push too hard and too fast on the criminal consequences of abortions, we might inadvertently make the country less inclined to be pro-life and we might inadvertently lead to the deaths of many more babies.
Okay, that's a middle part of that argument.
And then here's a third part.
In many, if not most cases, the women who go in and have abortions are committing a morally different act from the abortionists who actually perform the abortions.
And an analogy that I'll make is the distinction between mortal sin and venial sin, which comes from John's epistles.
You know, all sin is unrighteousness, all sin is really bad, but there's some sins which are not mortal.
So what's the distinction between mortal and venial sin?
Mortal sins are sins that are done with full knowledge, sins which are a grave matter, and sins which are done willingly.
Okay, in the case of abortions, some women know exactly what they're doing.
They're not being coerced.
They don't care.
They just want to kill their kids.
That does happen.
I'm not denying that at all.
The libs want to pretend that doesn't happen.
It does happen.
However, there are many, many women who go in to have an abortion because they don't really know what it is, or they've convinced themselves that it's not really murder, or they've been told by their parents and by their communities and by their schools that it's not really murder.
It's just a clump of cells by their politicians.
They've been told this and they actually believe it.
And some of them come to realize that that wasn't true when the vacuum turns on and it leads to lifelong trauma.
The trauma itself is evidence that something went wrong there.
So there are many cases, I think, in which the women don't really have full knowledge.
There are many cases, I think, in which the women are coerced.
In fact, we know that for a fact.
Some boyfriend or even a husband, I suppose, could coerce a woman to have an abortion.
And in some cases, women are killed when they refuse to have an abortions.
We covered one of those stories just the other day of a guy texting someone says, I'm going to delete this person from the world.
I'm going to cancel this person.
I'm going to go kill my girlfriend because she's pregnant and I don't want her to tell my other baby mama or whatever, the woman I'm living with.
It's a horrific story.
That does happen.
So if there's coercion, that also mitigates the culpability of sin.
It's obviously grave matter to kill your kid, but that would be another reason why I would say there is even at a moral level, at the level of justice, a distinction to be made.
Whereas when it comes to the abortionists, if they really are competent medical doctors, they know what they're doing.
It is grave matter.
They have full knowledge of what's going on.
They're the ones really carrying it out.
They're the ones who have studied the anatomy.
They're the ones who are the scientific experts.
And they're definitely doing it willingly.
No one's coerced into becoming an abortionist.
So I think that would be one reason to treat them differently.
The chief argument I guess I would make is the prudential argument, but that would be one reason, even from the level of morality and justice, to maybe draw a distinction here.
Okay.
Bisesquicentennial Debate00:02:23
So much more I want to get to.
So many more voicemail bag questions.
Let me at least get to one.
This is a question from Michael F. Because sometimes I ignore the written mailbag.
And I want to get to this question.
This is a very important question from Michael F. Hi, Michael.
You did it again.
I haven't heard you say it in a while, but because I know, you know that words matter, it's not called the bisesquicentennial.
That would be 300 years, which would be better stated as tricentennial.
Bi equals two of something.
Sesquicentennial equals 150 years.
Two, 150 yearses would be 300, not 250.
You have two options for stating it correctly, semi-quincentennial or sester centennial.
Okay.
Okay.
This is referring to America's 250th anniversary.
And I'm giving a speech today at YAF, actually, in Nashville on the 250th.
I just want to make the point.
Yes, I know I've heard this.
It depends on whether or not the parts of bi sesquicentennial are additive or multiplicative, because you have bi meaning two, centennial meaning hundred, and then sesqua meaning and a half and a half.
So you have, it depends on whether or not it's bi with centennial 200 sesqua and a half, or if it means, and I agree that your reading of bisesquicentennial is entirely plausible, if it means a sesquicentennial 100 and a half, 150, bi meaning double.
I agree that semi-quincentennial is probably the clearer version and it clears up the ambiguity.
However, I have read plausible, at least semi-convincing arguments that bisesquicentennial is an acceptable term and it has become one of the more popular terms, though I'm stretching the definition of popular probably a little too far.
Thank you for your fraternal correction.
I accept, I partially accept it, though I might continue to say bisesquicentennial.
I will be bilexical when it comes to the term for the 250th.
Is anybody still with us here?
Merlin's Solitude00:02:09
I don't know if I'm still with me.
It's Fake Headline Friday.
We'll get to that.
The rest of the show continues now.
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What was it like, Merlin?
To be alone with God is that who you think I was alone with, Maradin.
I knew your father.
I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.
All men know of the great Talies.
Oh, my father, the gods should war for my soul.
Princess Garris, savior of our people.
I know what the Bull God offered you.
I was offered the same.
And there is a new pirate work in the world.
I've seen it.
A god who sacrifices what he loves for us.
We are each given only one life, Singer.
No.
We're given another.
I learned of Yezu the Christ, and I have become his follower.
He's waiting on a miracle, and I think you can give him one.
Trust in Yezu.
He is the only hope for men like us.
Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Life.
Great Light, Great Darkness.
Such things mattered to me then.
What matters to you now, Mistress of Lies?
You, nephew.
The sword of the High King.
How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?
Still clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.