The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1952 - Trump Corrects His Viral Picture EXPLAINED
Aired: 2026-04-14
Duration: 47:44


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[00:00:59]  Eric Swalwell resigns from Congress in a major political win for Democrats, I'm sorry to say.
[00:01:08]  We'll get into how that is the case.
[00:01:10]  President Trump deletes an image that offended Christians of all stripes in a rare social media backtrack and a happy turn of events.
[00:01:17]  And no matter how frustrating Republicans are, Joe Biden and the New York Times remind us just this week why you should work to keep Democrats out of office as if your life depended on it, because it very possibly does.
[00:01:32]  I'm Michael Knowles.
[00:01:33]  This is The Michael Knowles Show.
[00:01:53]  Welcome back to the show.
[00:01:54]  Coachella is a meme factory.
[00:01:56]  It is giving us Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry pretending that they're 30 years younger than they are.
[00:02:02]  It gives us Sabrina Carpenter mocking Arabs with a look of pure, unwitting liberal disgust, which is in a weird way kind of deeply conservative.
[00:02:13]  We'll get into all of it.
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[00:03:37]  Eric Swalwell drops out of the California governor's race after an avalanche of sexual harassment and assault allegations.

=== Swalwell Drops California Race (07:31) ===

[00:03:46]  That after a financial scandal in which his campaign was apparently paying his wife to watch their kids, after a legal scandal which showed that he wasn't even really eligible to run for governor.
[00:03:59]  I'll read the statement first.
[00:04:01]  And then we'll get into the sheer brilliance of the Democrat Party.
[00:04:07]  It pains me, but game recognized game, they are so unbelievably efficient and good at the game of politics.
[00:04:18]  But here is the statement.
[00:04:21]  I am deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgment I've made in my past.
[00:04:29]  First sentence.
[00:04:30]  Second sentence.
[00:04:31]  I will fight the serious false allegation made against me.
[00:04:36]  I'm so, so sorry.
[00:04:38]  I apologize to my family, my friends, my constituents, my supporters.
[00:04:42]  I'm so, so sorry for all that stuff I didn't do.
[00:04:45]  But that's not, that's how it reads, but that's not what he says, in fairness.
[00:04:49]  This was written by some crisis comms team and they did a decent job.
[00:04:53]  I'm sorry for all the mistakes I've made, plural.
[00:04:56]  I will fight the serious false allegation, singular, made against me.
[00:05:02]  So what he's suggesting here is I didn't rape that girl, but I did all the other stuff, all of which is disqualifying anyway.
[00:05:10]  Third sentence, however, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make.
[00:05:16]  I am aware of efforts to bring an immediate expulsion vote against me and other members.
[00:05:19]  That's the key.
[00:05:21]  Expelling anyone in Congress without due process within days of an allegation being made is wrong.
[00:05:26]  Hold on.
[00:05:26]  Expelling anyone without due process, what are you talking about?
[00:05:29]  You don't need due process if that means a trial in a court of law to be expelled from Congress.
[00:05:36]  You can just be expelled.
[00:05:37]  The Congress just votes to expel you.
[00:05:40]  An expulsion vote from Congress does not require a different branch of government to participate.
[00:05:44]  That is an entirely intra congressional proceeding.
[00:05:49]  This is deeply wrong.
[00:05:50]  What are you talking about?
[00:05:50]  Take it up with the framers of the Constitution, buddy.
[00:05:53]  But it's also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted from my duties.
[00:05:57]  Therefore, I plan to resign my seat in Congress.
[00:06:00]  I'll work with my staff in the coming days to ensure they are able, in my absence, to serve the needs of the good people of the 14th Congressional District.
[00:06:06]  So he's in big trouble because he flew a little too close to the sun.
[00:06:10]  Little Icarus Swalwell here flew a little too close to the sun.
[00:06:13]  And now he's got not only political attacks against him, but legal attacks as well that seem like they are ongoing.
[00:06:22]  He's going to have to fight this out.
[00:06:24]  And that's going to continue even after he leaves Congress.
[00:06:29]  Some Republicans are going to celebrate this.
[00:06:31]  Ha ha, we got a scalp from Swalwell here.
[00:06:33]  Ha ha, this is great.
[00:06:34]  Yeah, we took out a top Democrat candidate for governor in California.
[00:06:39]  That's great.
[00:06:40]  Oh, we took out a prominent member of the House who's a Democrat.
[00:06:44]  Ha ha.
[00:06:45]  Every step of this, as I pointed out yesterday, and now we see the culmination today, every step of this is a win for Democrats.
[00:06:55]  The whole reason this happened in the first place is that Eric Swalwell was the leading Democrat candidate for governor, but he was too weak.
[00:07:03]  He was too weak to actually get it over the finish line.
[00:07:05]  So because of the huge Democrat primary field, the Democrats were splitting up all their votes.
[00:07:11]  And you had two Republicans that were also running in that field who were way better than any of the Democrats.
[00:07:17]  And so the leading candidates for governor in California were Republicans.
[00:07:21]  But California is a Democrat state.
[00:07:23]  So the Democrat party could not abide that.
[00:07:26]  They gave Swalwell a shot to get enough support that he could take out the Republicans.
[00:07:30]  He didn't.
[00:07:30]  So they took him out instead.
[00:07:32]  They fired two warning shots at him.
[00:07:34]  The legal warning shot.
[00:07:36]  On residency and the financial warning shot for impropriety and corruption.
[00:07:41]  He didn't pay attention to those warning shots, so then they took him out.
[00:07:46]  The follow up to that was okay, he's out of the California governor's race, but he's going to keep his seat in Congress.
[00:07:52]  Well, we need to take him out of Congress, right?
[00:07:54]  Well, no.
[00:07:55]  I said, as a conservative, as a Republican, I said, you don't want to just take him out of Congress because he'll just be replaced by a Democrat.
[00:08:02]  And Swalwell's completely useless.
[00:08:04]  It doesn't matter.
[00:08:04]  He's a completely replaceable member of Congress.
[00:08:07]  He's accomplished nothing of substance in his life, he's just a vote.
[00:08:10]  For Democrats.
[00:08:12]  So if you replace him with some other replaceable Democrat, it doesn't matter.
[00:08:16]  You haven't won anything.
[00:08:18]  So what did I say yesterday?
[00:08:19]  I said the only thing that Republicans can do now to get any kind of a win out of this, any small win compared to the Democrats' big win, is to force the other Democrat members to vote on the record whether or not to expel him.
[00:08:33]  You're not going to shame Swalwell.
[00:08:35]  And Swalwell's toast anyway.
[00:08:37]  But you can at least put the other Democrat members in Congress in a bad spot because.
[00:08:43]  They're all on their high horse now.
[00:08:45]  They're all sanctimonious about how he's unfit to run for governor of California because of these allegations.
[00:08:50]  But they would not have had the courage to actually expel him from Congress because Democrats need his vote.
[00:08:56]  Republicans have a very slim majority right now.
[00:08:59]  And so both the Democrats and the Republicans can't afford to lose anyone.
[00:09:03]  And what do the Democrats do?
[00:09:07]  They pressure Swalwell to resign without the vote for expulsion.
[00:09:11]  So now all the Democrats in Congress get off the hook.
[00:09:15]  None of them have to vote on this.
[00:09:17]  None of them have to either turn on their party or more likely show their political cowardice and their hypocrisy.
[00:09:23]  So they get off scot free.
[00:09:26]  And Swalwell's going to go away and they'll replace him with Swalwell 2, going to be indistinguishable from Swalwell 1, maybe a little less goofy, probably just as goofy.
[00:09:37]  And the Democrats are going to keep their power.
[00:09:41]  I say this purely objectively with my political observer hat on, putting aside all of my partisan priors and loyalties.
[00:09:49]  Well done, guys.
[00:09:50]  Well done.
[00:09:52]  You did a ruthlessly, brutally efficient and effective political operation here.
[00:09:59]  Very impressive.
[00:10:00]  And Republicans have a lot to learn from that.
[00:10:02]  The lesson the Democrats are going to tell you to learn is that we hold our own accountable.
[00:10:07]  They didn't hold anybody accountable, they did exactly the opposite of that.
[00:10:11]  Yeah, they sacrificed Swalwell in order that every single other Democrat member of Congress will not be held accountable for this.
[00:10:19]  They sacrificed Swalwell in order that every Democrat running for governor will not be held accountable for the horrific Democrat governance in California that was so horrific that a Democrat state was about to elect a Republican governor.
[00:10:32]  They are entirely avoiding accountability here.
[00:10:35]  And they're doing it beautifully.
[00:10:37]  They're doing it sanctimoniously.
[00:10:39]  They're doing it in such a way that they are going to position themselves on a moral high horse.
[00:10:44]  It's nasty, it's ugly, it's putrid, but it's ruthlessly effective.
[00:10:50]  Republicans, Republicans, please, Republicans who can never get together on anything, the closest Republican allies are going to try to stab each other in the back all the time.
[00:11:01]  The Republicans in the federal level, at the state level, they're always looking for ways to snatch defeat from the Joseph victory.
[00:11:07]  Can you please take a lesson from this?
[00:11:09]  This is politics.
[00:11:12]  This is very effective politics.
[00:11:15]  Democrats are a lot better at it than Republicans are.

=== Trump Takes Responsibility (08:34) ===

[00:11:17]  A lot better.
[00:11:18]  Okay.
[00:11:19]  Now, turning to the Republicans, President Trump was in very hot water for a couple of truth social posts that he made, one excoriating the Holy Father.
[00:11:28]  One in five American voters, you will recall, is Catholic.
[00:11:32]  Catholics disproportionately represented in the conservative movement.
[00:11:36]  Just the political consideration, even putting aside the spiritual considerations, which are obviously significant.
[00:11:41]  But then there was that picture that President Trump posted after the Pope post, in which it looked as if he was in the place of Christ healing people with angels or some kind of celestial being.
[00:11:53]  And it managed to unite the Catholics and the Protestants because they both really hated this picture.
[00:11:59]  And there's some good news on that front.
[00:12:02]  We'll get to that momentarily.
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[00:13:12]  Many people called on President Trump.
[00:13:16]  To pull down that social media post that he made.
[00:13:19]  And a lot of people were very harsh about it on the right.
[00:13:22]  A lot of people were very tough on President Trump.
[00:13:25]  And I don't think President Trump had bad motives here.
[00:13:29]  In fact, I'm not sure that President Trump posted that picture at all.
[00:13:32]  And I'll tell you why in a moment.
[00:13:34]  But I came out and I said, hey, look, no matter the motive, this is a bad picture.
[00:13:42]  It's a bad look.
[00:13:43]  Shouldn't be done.
[00:13:44]  In an irreverent age, sometimes people don't know the lines of the real taboos versus the fake taboos.
[00:13:49]  But It would behoove the president spiritually and politically to take the picture down.
[00:13:53]  And he took the picture down.
[00:13:56]  I wasn't sure if he would because President Trump doesn't like to backtrack on anything.
[00:14:01]  And especially on these kinds of posts, I don't know.
[00:14:03]  He's only ever deleted one or two others.
[00:14:05]  But I said, you know, it would be good for you.
[00:14:07]  This is coming from someone who's a big supporter of yours.
[00:14:09]  I've got MAGA Trump bona fides as much as anybody.
[00:14:13]  OK, I've been very consistent in my support of the president.
[00:14:16]  I'm very grateful for everything he's done.
[00:14:18]  I said, you know, this ain't it.
[00:14:19]  This is a little bit of a misstep.
[00:14:21]  And it would be good if it came down.
[00:14:23]  And he took it down.
[00:14:25]  And that's good.
[00:14:26]  We should be happy about that.
[00:14:28]  That shows responsive government.
[00:14:32]  That shows a guy who clearly didn't intend to offend Christians.
[00:14:36]  I don't think he intended to commit sacrilege.
[00:14:38]  I don't think he intended to do any of that.
[00:14:41]  Once again, I'm not even sure that he posted it.
[00:14:44]  President Trump, however, does say that he posted it.
[00:14:47]  He was asked about this yesterday during a really delightful publicity stunt with an Uber Eats driver who showed up to the Oval Office to bring him his McDonald's order.
[00:14:57]  And they had this great little press conference about how this Uber Eats driver is benefiting from the tax rebate from the big, beautiful bill and how it's helping her husband who's in cancer treatment.
[00:15:07]  It was really, really well orchestrated by the White House.
[00:15:10]  But much as President Trump Gave that speech about the Iran war next to the Easter Bunny at the Easter Egg Roll.
[00:15:17]  So, too, President Trump is dealing with this very, very serious issue of his relation to Christianity and the church, flanked by this lovely Uber Eats driver.
[00:15:27]  He was asked about the picture.
[00:15:28]  Here's what he said.
[00:15:31]  And did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ?
[00:15:34]  Well, it wasn't depicted.
[00:15:36]  It was me.
[00:15:37]  I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, which we support.
[00:15:44]  And, uh, Only the fake news could come up with that one.
[00:15:48]  So I just heard about it.
[00:15:52]  And I said, How do they come up with that?
[00:15:54]  It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better.
[00:15:57]  And I do make people better.
[00:15:59]  I make people a lot better.
[00:16:01]  As an example, the 11,000, I understand your husband's going through treatment.
[00:16:06]  Yes, sir.
[00:16:07]  Yes, sir.
[00:16:08]  He's going through some very serious cancer treatment.
[00:16:11]  So this goes a long way.
[00:16:12]  Yes, sir.
[00:16:13]  It sure does.
[00:16:15]  Okay, so President Trump taking full responsibility for posting the picture.
[00:16:19]  And he says, Look, I thought it was me as a doctor.
[00:16:22]  He's like, Did you?
[00:16:25]  Hold on.
[00:16:25]  Yeah, that was me as a doctor because I helped people.
[00:16:27]  I certainly didn't mean to commit sacrilege.
[00:16:30]  I thought it was me as a doctor because I helped people.
[00:16:32]  Like I helped this lady next to me, but I posted it.
[00:16:34]  I take responsibility.
[00:16:35]  The buck stops here.
[00:16:37]  I was skeptical and I remain skeptical that the president actually posted that picture.
[00:16:43]  In part, having spoken to some of my friends in Washington, D.C., it seemed to me. that he did not post that picture.
[00:16:52]  I'll leave it at that.
[00:16:53]  But my suspicions were confirmed that he did not post it, at least from some friends of mine around the president.
[00:17:02]  However, he took responsibility.
[00:17:04]  And I don't know, why would he take responsibility if he didn't really post it?
[00:17:09]  The reason that I think he might not have posted it is that was an original image.
[00:17:14]  Some people are saying that Nick Adams, the political commentator who is now one of President Trump's special envoys, that he was the one a year or two ago who posted that picture.
[00:17:22]  But that's not really true.
[00:17:23]  He posted a version of that picture.
[00:17:25]  There have been different meme versions of that picture.
[00:17:27]  But the picture that the president posted was different.
[00:17:29]  Some of the characters looked different.
[00:17:31]  The image had been manipulated.
[00:17:34]  And so I just simply cannot believe that the president was sitting on Grok or ChatGPT coming up with that original image.
[00:17:42]  I don't think the president was on Adobe Photoshop manipulating that image.
[00:17:46]  So it would seem to me that other people were involved in creating that image and perhaps in posting that image, which.
[00:17:53]  This is the sort of thing that I was hearing from DC yesterday.
[00:17:57]  So then, why would the president take responsibility?
[00:17:59]  I suspect, look again, maybe he did post it.
[00:18:02]  Maybe he did create the image.
[00:18:03]  Maybe he was on crock.
[00:18:05]  I don't know.
[00:18:05]  I guess it could be.
[00:18:06]  But I suspect this is the president saying, I don't want to blame a staffer.
[00:18:10]  I don't want to pass the buck.
[00:18:11]  I'm going to take responsibility for it.
[00:18:12]  I took a lot of lumps for this.
[00:18:14]  I'm going to take responsibility for it.
[00:18:16]  But I didn't mean it to be sacrilege.
[00:18:18]  I thought I was a doctor.
[00:18:19]  Okay.
[00:18:19]  All right.
[00:18:20]  Whatever.
[00:18:20]  And people are going to fight about this.
[00:18:22]  You say, oh, it didn't really look like a doctor.
[00:18:23]  It didn't.
[00:18:24]  What are you talking about?
[00:18:24]  It didn't look like the Red Cross.
[00:18:25]  What do you mean?
[00:18:26]  You did post it.
[00:18:26]  You didn't post it.
[00:18:27]  You.
[00:18:28]  I guess what I would say is President Trump did something that he doesn't often do.
[00:18:33]  He almost never does, which is he took a step back.
[00:18:39]  He said, You know what?
[00:18:40]  Even though I usually double down because in this environment, the minute that you admit any fault, any confusion, any anything, they all jump down your throat and it's often unfair.
[00:18:50]  And so usually he would double down.
[00:18:51]  In this case, he said, You know what?
[00:18:52]  I'm going to take that one down.
[00:18:54]  That's good.
[00:18:55]  I'm glad he did that.
[00:18:56]  That was the right thing to do.
[00:18:58]  That actually bolsters much of my view of the man.
[00:19:01]  Which is, he has very good intentions.
[00:19:04]  He has done a very good job, generally speaking.
[00:19:06]  He's done especially a good job for Christians, for people of faith broadly, on matters of life, on matters of justice and law and order, on matters of religious freedom.
[00:19:17]  He's got a really good record on this, especially compared to his predecessors.
[00:19:23]  And so there's no confusion about the picture itself.
[00:19:26]  The picture was completely unacceptable and it had to come down, and he took it down.
[00:19:29]  And you know what I say to that?
[00:19:30]  Good.
[00:19:31]  Thank you.
[00:19:31]  That's great.
[00:19:32]  That's wonderful.
[00:19:32]  Okay.
[00:19:34]  Now we can move on.
[00:19:35]  There's still the matter of the Pope Post.
[00:19:36]  I'm actually going to be giving a speech at Villanova tonight with Yav Villanova, which is the alma mater of the Pope.
[00:19:43]  And they asked me, before any of this happened, they asked me to talk about the relationship between religion and American politics tonight at the Pope's alma mater.

=== Ezra Klein Opinion Column (12:54) ===

[00:19:51]  How do you not believe in Providence?
[00:19:52]  How do you not believe in God?
[00:19:53]  So anyway, we'll be getting into that issue a little bit tonight.
[00:19:56]  But to my point on President Trump, clearly not hating Christians, President Trump clearly.
[00:20:04]  Protecting Christians.
[00:20:05]  President Trump doing a lot more to protect Christians than his predecessors in recent memory.
[00:20:10]  This story just came out.
[00:20:11]  You can read about it all over the Daily Wire.
[00:20:13]  Mary Margaret Olihan reporting on this.
[00:20:16]  The Biden administration was so much worse to pro lifers, to people of faith, to Christians, was so much worse than even we already thought.
[00:20:29]  Based on this 7,000 document Justice Department review, This report found that officials in the Biden administration worked directly, closely with groups like Planned Parenthood, groups like the National Abortion Federation, groups like the Feminist Majority Foundation to compile hit lists on pro lifers.
[00:20:56]  They would work directly with these groups, some of the worst people in the country, people whose raison d'etre is to slaughter innocent babies.
[00:21:06]  Would work with them to target pro life organizations and pro life individuals for prosecution to make them into political prisoners.
[00:21:14]  According to the report, the Biden DOJ prosecutors knowingly withheld evidence that defense counsel requested to prepare an affirmative defense.
[00:21:22]  So they would go out there, they'd say, Hey, Satan worshiping abortionists, who are your enemies?
[00:21:27]  And they'd go to say, Oh, that Christian, that pro lifer, that nice old granny, those are our enemies.
[00:21:33]  DOJ would go out and arrest these people under Biden.
[00:21:36]  And then when the defense would say, okay, well, can you at least present us some of the evidence so we can prepare a defense?
[00:21:41]  Biden's DOJ had the evidence and said no.
[00:21:44]  They withheld it from them.
[00:21:46]  The prosecutors would then apparently screen out jurors based on their religious beliefs.
[00:21:51]  If you're a little too Christian, if you're a little too pro life, you're out.
[00:21:54]  You can't be on the jury.
[00:21:55]  They would opt for aggressive arrest tactics rather than allow the defendants to surrender themselves.
[00:22:01]  So they'd go in, they'd say, Where do you get your news from?
[00:22:03]  Is it from Daily Wire?
[00:22:04]  Is it from Fox News?
[00:22:05]  Okay, well, you're out.
[00:22:07]  Sorry.
[00:22:08]  And then in some cases, like the case of Mark Houck, who's a pro life father of seven, I think, who was defending his son at a peaceful demonstration at an abortion mill and some lunatic.
[00:22:21]  A pro abortionist comes up to him and he defended and protected his son.
[00:22:26]  The DOJ under Biden said, We're going to go arrest you.
[00:22:29]  And Mark Hawk said, Okay, well, if you want, I'll turn myself in and I'll just present myself for due process.
[00:22:35]  And according to these documents, the Biden DOJ said, No, we're going to show up with major law enforcement.
[00:22:43]  We're going to do everything but literally kick in your door.
[00:22:46]  We're going to terrorize your little kids and your wife.
[00:22:49]  And we're going to make an example of you because you had the audacity to defend your son and even worse, to defend.
[00:22:56]  Little babies from us, the Biden administration.
[00:23:01]  Pro life defendants, then, after they were arrested, were prosecuted much more harshly than the pro abortion people.
[00:23:09]  Pro life defendants found prosecutors seeking an average of 26.8 months in prison.
[00:23:17]  That is compared to 12.3 months for defendants accused of violence against pro lifers.
[00:23:24]  So, this is all predicated on the FACE Act.
[00:23:27]  The FACE Act is this liberal law.
[00:23:29]  that exists really just to protect abortionists from prayers and criticism.
[00:23:34]  But the only way that they could get the FACE Act through Congress was to dangle this little carrot out for the pro-lifers and say, okay, also, you know, we'll use this to protect pro-life pregnancy centers.
[00:23:44]  Also, we'll use this to protect churches.
[00:23:46]  It's almost never used in that way.
[00:23:48]  And then even when it is, the Biden DOJ going after the pro-lifers would try to sentence them to more than double the prison sentences that they would sentence the handful of radical violent abortionists that they would go and arrest.
[00:24:05]  This is very important because it shows you, one, what a difference an election makes.
[00:24:10]  It's very important, two, because I think it puts the truth social post and pull down into context.
[00:24:18]  Yeah, no one liked the truth social posts.
[00:24:21]  I didn't like the Pope post, and basically nobody liked the picture post, but it puts it into context.
[00:24:28]  One, President Trump took the picture post down.
[00:24:30]  And two, when you look at President Trump's actions in government, He's the most pro-life president we've ever had.
[00:24:39]  He's the president in my lifetime doing more to protect Christians specifically than any president I've seen.
[00:24:47]  The Democrats, on the other hand, the supposedly Catholic Joe Biden, was ruthlessly prosecuting Christians, ruthlessly.
[00:24:55]  The pro-life grannies, sure, also ruthlessly invading Catholic parishes to spy on them.
[00:25:02]  Democrats broadly have been ruthlessly trying to crack the seal of the confessional, to break the church as best as they can.
[00:25:10]  And ultimately at a political level, what it shows us is an election makes all the difference.
[00:25:16]  Because had Kamala Harris won, had Joe Biden stayed in the race and Joe Biden won, all of that would still be going on.
[00:25:22]  And it might affect you.
[00:25:23]  You know, I'm friends with some of the family members of these imprisoned pro-lifers, multiple political prisoners who are pro-life.
[00:25:30]  I am friends with their family.
[00:25:33]  And maybe Biden would have gone after a member of your family.
[00:25:36]  Maybe Biden or Kamala Harris or the next Democrat would go after you.
[00:25:41]  Shows you the stakes here.
[00:25:42]  Politics is not debate club, okay?
[00:25:44]  And our opponents have gotten increasingly radical and increasingly violent, as we're now finding out from even the most milquetoast, moderate, supposedly centrist Democrats.
[00:25:56]  The New York Times, Ezra Klein in particular, going all in on political violence against conservatives.
[00:26:02]  We'll get that in a second.
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[00:27:11]  Very little can scandalize me in the New York Times.
[00:27:14]  I'm just, I'm used to it at this point.
[00:27:16]  So are you.
[00:27:17]  Here's an opinion column published a couple days ago by Ezra Klein.
[00:27:22]  Ezra Klein, he's supposed to be the thinking man's Democrat.
[00:27:25]  You know, he's a little more centrist.
[00:27:28]  He's at the New York Times.
[00:27:30]  He founded Vox.com to be explanatory journalism.
[00:27:34]  He's what they call, if you'll forgive the vulgarity, this is just the term of art in politics now, he's what you'd call a shitlib.
[00:27:43]  He's not the radical purple-haired guy going to the Antifa meetings, throwing Molotov cocktails at my speaking events.
[00:27:51]  He's not that guy.
[00:27:53]  He's the guy who wears a jacket.
[00:27:54]  Probably doesn't wear a tie, but he wears a jacket.
[00:27:56]  You know, he's the adult in the room.
[00:27:58]  He's the responsible kind of liberal journalist.
[00:28:00]  And here's what he writes in the New York Times.
[00:28:02]  Here's the headline: Hassan Piker is not the enemy.
[00:28:07]  Who's Hassan Piker?
[00:28:09]  Hassan Piker is that guy.
[00:28:11]  Hassan Piker is the guy.
[00:28:13]  Who supports violence against conservatives?
[00:28:15]  And not just a one off comment, not just he got a little flustered in the heat of the moment.
[00:28:19]  Hassan Piker is this guy.
[00:28:22]  This is so insane.
[00:28:25]  America deserved 9 11, dude.
[00:28:28]  I'm saying it.
[00:28:28]  If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott.
[00:28:34]  Okay?
[00:28:35]  Here's some of what he actually has said about the depravity of the October 7 terror attack, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
[00:28:43]  Quote It doesn't matter if effing rapes happened on October 7th.
[00:28:47]  Like, that doesn't change the dynamic for me.
[00:28:50]  The Palestinian resistance is not perfect.
[00:28:54]  There's a picture here of when he was threatening to murder Tom Cotton.
[00:28:58]  This is just my personal opinion.
[00:28:59]  My understanding is that the property owners who have properties there choose just not to rent it at all.
[00:29:03]  Yeah, kill them.
[00:29:04]  Kill those motherfuckers.
[00:29:05]  Murder those motherfuckers in the street.
[00:29:08]  Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist bloods, dude.
[00:29:14]  Hassan Piker is not the enemy.
[00:29:18]  So says Ezra Klein.
[00:29:19]  This is the most moderate Democrat around today in the New York Times, which is the most establishment liberal outlet in the country.
[00:29:26]  Hassan Piker is not the enemy.
[00:29:29]  So, what that means is, and this is something we all learned and many of us were shocked to learn after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
[00:29:38]  Our problem is not chiefly the handful of leftists, a big handful of leftists, who actually commit and attempt to commit political violence.
[00:29:48]  They're a problem.
[00:29:49]  The bigger problem is the bulk of Democrats who support it.
[00:29:55]  After the assassination of Charlie, we learned that.
[00:29:59]  Democrats are, especially young Democrats, are something like eight times as likely to support political violence against conservatives as conservatives are to support political violence against liberals.
[00:30:10]  We learned, you saw this on social media, you heard this in conversations around your water cooler, that it's not just those people.
[00:30:17]  It's not just the Hassan Pikers who are lunatics and terrorists and certainly should be deported.
[00:30:21]  It's not just them.
[00:30:23]  It's that lady who sits next to you at work.
[00:30:26]  It's your kid's teacher.
[00:30:28]  Maybe it's your nurse or your doctor.
[00:30:30]  Maybe it's the waiter at your restaurant.
[00:30:33]  It's the supposedly normal lib who has no limits to the political extremism and violence that he will support.
[00:30:44]  You can't put it any more clearly than Ezra Klein put it.
[00:30:46]  He said, Hassan Piker's not the enemy.
[00:30:48]  Who's the enemy?
[00:30:49]  You.
[00:30:49]  You.
[00:30:50]  You're the enemy.
[00:30:52]  Yeah, sure.
[00:30:53]  Trump is the enemy.
[00:30:53]  It's that meme that Trump ran on for reelection.
[00:30:55]  He said, they're not after me.
[00:30:56]  They're after you.
[00:30:57]  I'm just in the way.
[00:30:58]  You're the enemy.
[00:31:00]  Hassan Piker says that the streets should run red in your blood.
[00:31:04]  Hassan Piker says that the politicians that you elect.
[00:31:07]  Not just Trump, but Tom Cotton should be killed.
[00:31:12]  Rick Scott, Rick Scott, has there ever been a more clubbable, amiable member of Congress, member of the Senate?
[00:31:20]  That guy should be killed.
[00:31:22]  Why?
[00:31:23]  Because you voted for him.
[00:31:24]  What's the implication?
[00:31:25]  It's not even an implication.
[00:31:27]  He says the rivers should run red.
[00:31:29]  The streets should run red in red capitalist blood.
[00:31:33]  Hassan Piker is not the enemy.
[00:31:35]  You're the enemy.
[00:31:36]  That's what the New York Times says.
[00:31:38]  They want to kill you.
[00:31:39]  That's not hyperbole.
[00:31:41]  I'm not the hyperbole guy.
[00:31:42]  I'm not the bomb thrower.
[00:31:44]  I'm not literally a bomb thrower because I'm not on the left.
[00:31:47]  And I'm not even figuratively that much of a bomb thrower compared to everybody else in political media.
[00:31:52]  I'm just calling it like it is.
[00:31:54]  I'm not reading the craziest, wackiest left wing blog online.
[00:31:57]  I'm reading the New York Times.
[00:31:59]  They want to kill you.
[00:32:02]  And so, yes, it's good to have a little friendly internal criticism, fraternal correction of our own side.
[00:32:10]  If the right does not stand together, if the right does not get its priorities in order, treat each other with a little bit of grace, correct the things that need correcting, but if the right does not win, Does not win and then exercise political power, they are coming for you.
[00:32:32]  And if you don't want to hear that, if you want to put your head in the sand, if you want to say, that's too crazy, I can't believe it, then when it happens, sorry, when it continues to happen, you will have no one but yourself to blame.

=== Right Wing Internal Criticism (13:33) ===

[00:32:46]  Speaking of the youths, a lot is coming out of Coachella.
[00:32:50]  I've never been to Coachella.
[00:32:52]  I suspect most of you have not been to Coachella either.
[00:32:54]  A lot of memes coming out of Coachella.
[00:32:56]  Coachella is super lib, obviously, but there's a lot of great memes that are coming out of it.
[00:33:01]  The chief one coming from Sabrina Carpenter, who, you know, she's gone.
[00:33:05]  That new music video I didn't like, the producers asked me to watch it.
[00:33:09]  It had a touch of sacrilege in it.
[00:33:11]  It had some vulgarity, which you could kind of get past, but the sacrilege was too much.
[00:33:16]  Sabrina Carpenter, I think she filmed a video once in a church that was very bad.
[00:33:19]  But I've noticed that as far as pop musicians go, even though she positions herself as this hip radical leftist, whatever, a lot of the Messages in her music videos are subversively kind of conservative.
[00:33:34]  It's like girls who just want to date the good looking strong guy and do it.
[00:33:38]  It's not feminist.
[00:33:39]  It's not gender fluid.
[00:33:41]  It's not weirdly kind of conservative.
[00:33:43]  This was Sabrina Carpenter's reaction when a member of her own audience started yelling an Arabic kind of, I can't say slogan, an Arabic kind of sound.
[00:34:00]  Is that what you're doing?
[00:34:05]  I don't like it.
[00:34:10]  That's your culture, is yodeling?
[00:34:16]  Is this Burning Man?
[00:34:17]  What's going on?
[00:34:18]  This is weird.
[00:34:22]  Vindicated.
[00:34:23]  I'm vindicated in my moderate Sabrina Carpenter standing.
[00:34:27]  Totally vindicated here.
[00:34:31]  This is it.
[00:34:32]  A member of her audience does a la which I guess that's an Arabic thing.
[00:34:36]  I don't know.
[00:34:36]  I'm not that familiar with it.
[00:34:37]  I guess that's an Arabic thing to do.
[00:34:39]  It's like a kind of, we go like woo and they go like la la la la.
[00:34:42]  Anyway, they do that.
[00:34:44]  And Sabrina Carpenter looks at this person like she's got three heads.
[00:34:47]  She goes, well, what?
[00:34:49]  What are you doing?
[00:34:52]  And the person goes, That's our culture.
[00:34:54]  And she doubles down.
[00:34:55]  She goes, That's your culture?
[00:34:58]  What?
[00:35:00]  As if an Arab is like somebody from planet Mars.
[00:35:04]  And then, Shari on top, she goes, I don't like it.
[00:35:10]  And I think she's come out and apologized or whatever.
[00:35:13]  But this explains how can Sabrina Carpenter, who is in her expression, in her protestation, in her conscious and explicit speech, very much of the left.
[00:35:28]  How can she weirdly be kind of conservative?
[00:35:32]  It's because there is a difference between ideological liberalism, ideological leftism, and temperamental liberalism, leftism, or conservatism.
[00:35:43]  Sabrina Carpenter, strange as it is to say, mirabile dictu, is temperamentally quite conservative.
[00:35:52]  There are plenty of people, you know people like this.
[00:35:54]  Who go, they go to the liberal church.
[00:35:56]  They go to the liberal Episcopalian church with the lady preacher, the priestess, and they say that they're totally fine with gay and trans stuff.
[00:36:08]  They don't want it in their family, but they're fine with it generally, you know, abstractly.
[00:36:13]  They voted for Joe Biden.
[00:36:15]  They voted for Kamala Harris.
[00:36:16]  And yet, they live in the nice gated community.
[00:36:21]  They're married.
[00:36:22]  They send their kids to the good schools.
[00:36:25]  They drive a sensible minivan.
[00:36:29]  They have dinner together at night.
[00:36:33]  They read magazines.
[00:36:34]  It's liberal magazines, but they do the kinds of things that conservatives do.
[00:36:40]  That's the difference.
[00:36:41]  I think there are a lot of those people.
[00:36:43]  This is another mark in the column for temperamental conservatism.
[00:36:48]  And you can get those people.
[00:36:52]  You're not going to appeal to them with populism, you're not going to appeal to them with like Bubba and the acoustic guitar singing about, well, I just want to go fishing.
[00:37:00]  I want to go fishing and drink my beer.
[00:37:02]  You know, that's going to repel those people.
[00:37:07]  But it is another kind of conservatism.
[00:37:10]  And you can't hide it.
[00:37:13]  I don't care how many times Sabrina Carpenter votes for Biden.
[00:37:16]  I don't care how many times she waves a trans flag or whatever.
[00:37:19]  You can't hide that reaction, that revulsion at a foreign culture entering unwanted into your audience.
[00:37:28]  That's it.
[00:37:30]  She'll deny it till she's blue in the face.
[00:37:33]  She's saying, no, I'm really blue in the face.
[00:37:35]  I'm really blue.
[00:37:35]  I'm a Democrat.
[00:37:36]  No, really.
[00:37:37]  But you can't hide that look, that ugh.
[00:37:39]  I don't want, I just want us all to be normal, like normal Americans.
[00:37:42]  What is that?
[00:37:43]  That's your culture?
[00:37:45]  There's no walking that one back.
[00:37:47]  There's no taking that one down.
[00:37:49]  That reveals something that many, many liberals, many putative liberals don't want to reveal.
[00:37:55]  Okay.
[00:37:56]  Speaking of Coachella, a sad scene, a sad meme coming out of Coachella by way of Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry pretending that they're in high school again.
[00:38:06]  A lot's going on right now.
[00:38:07]  Things are changing by the minute.
[00:38:09]  That's why you need facts.
[00:38:11]  You need facts.
[00:38:12]  You then need to know the meaning of those facts.
[00:38:13]  You need different ways to think about those facts, why it matters, what comes next.
[00:38:17]  That's what the Daily Wire does.
[00:38:19]  And Daily Wire Plus members get all of that plus the chance to chat live in the show, be part of the conversation.
[00:38:24]  Go to dailywire.comslash subscribe right now.
[00:38:28]  My favorite comment yesterday is from HL1377.
[00:38:32]  I'm going to clean this one up because, you know, it's a family show.
[00:38:35]  It says the most intelligent thing to ever come out of Eric Swalwell was the flatulence.
[00:38:40]  That's true.
[00:38:41]  He did.
[00:38:42]  Eric Swalwell was not able to contain himself once on television about six or seven years ago.
[00:38:49]  And that's, I agree.
[00:38:51]  I agree.
[00:38:51]  That hot air was more coherent than anything that Eric Swalwell has ever said.
[00:38:55]  That's true.
[00:38:57]  Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry making waves, living it up like it's 2001 at Coachella.
[00:39:05]  They released this little video.
[00:39:07]  This is on Katy Perry's Instagram.
[00:39:10]  Yeah, here she is singing along to music.
[00:39:15]  Justin Trudeau kind of lightly grinding on her.
[00:39:20]  This man was the Prime Minister of Canada, which, though America's evil top hat, is a sovereign nation.
[00:39:25]  He's kind of grinding on her a little bit.
[00:39:28]  They're drinking alcohol out of solo cups.
[00:39:32]  These people are like 50.
[00:39:36]  But a lot of people say, good for them.
[00:39:37]  Isn't this so cute?
[00:39:39]  They're both, they were married and they're no longer married.
[00:39:42]  Now they're divorced and they're shacking up with each other or something.
[00:39:47]  Oh, it's sad.
[00:39:48]  It's sad because you want to be happy for them.
[00:39:52]  I do.
[00:39:52]  I don't like Justin Trudeau.
[00:39:54]  I don't know Katy Perry.
[00:39:55]  I certainly don't like Justin Trudeau.
[00:39:57]  You kind of want to be happy for them because you remember that.
[00:40:02]  You remember going to music festivals or concerts.
[00:40:06]  With your little sweetheart that you're dating.
[00:40:08]  Ooh, we're going to have a little drink out of a solo cup.
[00:40:10]  Ooh, we're going to kind of grow.
[00:40:11]  Will they, won't they?
[00:40:13]  You remember that from when you were 15, not when you were 50.
[00:40:18]  So you kind of want to be happy for them, but they've lived these lives.
[00:40:23]  They've been married.
[00:40:24]  They've been prime ministers.
[00:40:26]  And it just seems weird and sad because so much of liberalism is just the denial of time.
[00:40:38]  So much of liberalism, I've actually heard this in the religious context, that sin is basically the denial of time.
[00:40:45]  You're trying to escape time.
[00:40:47]  You see this with addicts.
[00:40:48]  The reason that alcoholics drink all the time, drug addicts do a bunch of drugs, sex addicts go screw around, porn addicts, any kind of addict, what they're trying to do is escape time and place and physicality.
[00:41:01]  It's escapism.
[00:41:03]  And so much of liberalism, I think, is that.
[00:41:07]  It's the denial of death.
[00:41:09]  It's certainly the denial of history and it's the denial of aging.
[00:41:16]  That would have been cute.
[00:41:18]  That would have been cute.
[00:41:19]  The Katy Perry, Justin Trudeau thing would have been cute if they were 17, but they're not.
[00:41:25]  And so it's not cute.
[00:41:26]  It's gross.
[00:41:26]  It's like that guy.
[00:41:28]  I remember when I was in my 20s, I go to bars a lot and there was always that guy at the bar who was a little too old to be at the bar.
[00:41:35]  He was just a little too, it was weird, but I was at the bar.
[00:41:37]  I liked being at the bar, but it was weird that he was at the bar.
[00:41:41]  And I remember thinking in my 20s, man, maybe I'll never get married and I'll just go to bars all the time.
[00:41:44]  But I said, no, that would stop being fun.
[00:41:47]  There's a time at which going to brunch stops being so fun.
[00:41:52]  Going to the Coachella stops being so fun because you have changed.
[00:41:56]  The bar hasn't changed.
[00:41:57]  Coachella hasn't changed.
[00:41:59]  Young love hasn't changed.
[00:42:01]  But you have changed or you should have changed.
[00:42:05]  And you're no longer, even if you want to play at young love, you're not young anymore.
[00:42:09]  It's just a little, it's wrong.
[00:42:13]  What we endeavor to be, you know, conservatives are sometimes depicted as being like 50 years old when they're 12.
[00:42:21]  You know, they wear like a tweed jacket, they read books, they wear bow ties.
[00:42:25]  I don't know.
[00:42:25]  I did some of these things too.
[00:42:26]  But it's kind of funny.
[00:42:29]  It's incongruous because 12 year olds are not supposed to be like that.
[00:42:32]  Well, you know what?
[00:42:33]  50 year olds are not supposed to be like that either.
[00:42:35]  And the things that made you happy when you were 20 are maybe not going to make you so happy when you're 50.
[00:42:44]  It's that deny, this idea that I'm going to escape death.
[00:42:47]  All these liberal futurists say, oh, we're going to cure death any day now.
[00:42:50]  We're going to upload our brains to the cloud any day now.
[00:42:53]  We're going to redefine marriage.
[00:42:55]  Because I used to be able to go out and date a lot of different people.
[00:42:57]  Now I can't.
[00:42:58]  We're going to break that limit too.
[00:43:00]  We're going to break the limit of aging.
[00:43:01]  We're going to take aging shots and pills and drugs and surgeries.
[00:43:05]  Then we won't have to age anymore.
[00:43:06]  But you know, the people who do all that stuff, they don't look young forever.
[00:43:10]  They look like mutants.
[00:43:11]  They look like aliens.
[00:43:12]  They look grotesque.
[00:43:15]  That is grotesque.
[00:43:18]  If you want to conserve your happiness, you have to change.
[00:43:21]  Very Burkean, very conservative principle.
[00:43:24]  You have to grow, you have to mature because we do live in time and space.
[00:43:27]  And if you want to flourish in this world, you have to make your peace with that fact, which is that we're born and we are going to die and we are going to grow along that.
[00:43:34]  And you have to grow or you're going to be left behind.
[00:43:40]  Okay, speaking of immaturity and sex stuff, a viral post I have to get to.
[00:43:45]  This guy, Bradley Gray.
[00:43:47]  I don't know who he is.
[00:43:48]  Some viral internet guy now.
[00:43:50]  This tweet has almost a million and a half views.
[00:43:52]  It says, Religion stole my entire sexual prime.
[00:43:55]  I didn't have sex until my wedding night at 23.
[00:43:57]  I didn't have a real dating life until my divorce at 28.
[00:44:00]  And I'm now done pretending that wasn't a tragedy.
[00:44:04]  Nobody wants to say this out loud, so I will.
[00:44:07]  Teaching young men that their natural sexual desire is sinful doesn't make them holy.
[00:44:12]  It makes them socially crippled, anxious, ashamed, completely unprepared for the real world.
[00:44:16]  That was me for the first decade of my adult life.
[00:44:19]  Now, right off the bat, What this guy is presenting here is he's saying, Look, I used to be really messed up, but now I've got it together.
[00:44:29]  And you have to examine the evidence for that.
[00:44:30]  You say, Okay, well, how is it that you have it together now?
[00:44:33]  He goes, Now I'm divorced and screwing around.
[00:44:36]  Maybe I have some STDs and I'm screaming to strangers on the internet.
[00:44:40]  You can tell I got it together, man.
[00:44:42]  You want to be like me?
[00:44:44]  Listen to what I do.
[00:44:44]  I used to be religious and married and normal, but now I've figured it out.
[00:44:52]  The biggest mistake I ever made was not sinning a lot.
[00:44:56]  I got married at 23 to a woman I wasn't right for.
[00:45:00]  Not because we were bad people, because we were both so desperate to escape the shame that we confused relief for love.
[00:45:05]  That's what sexual repression actually produces, not purity, bad decisions made in desperation.
[00:45:10]  She left me.
[00:45:11]  This is sad.
[00:45:12]  She left me.
[00:45:13]  She met someone else.
[00:45:14]  My first reaction wasn't just heartbreak, it was rage.
[00:45:16]  Not at her, not at her, the person who wronged him, at the years I'd handed over to fear and guilt and rules that were never mine to begin with.
[00:45:24]  You want to talk about repression, the actual object of your anger, you're saying, No, I can't be mad at her.
[00:45:30]  You want to talk about being a little messed up in the head, deflecting, projecting.
[00:45:35]  What's he do?
[00:45:35]  He says, No, I'm not angry at the person who's wronged me.
[00:45:38]  I'm angry at God, who's never wronged me, who's only good, who made me and sustains me.
[00:45:44]  I'm really angry at him, and I'm angry at goodness and virtue, and I wish I had sinned.
[00:45:49]  I was angry at the years I'd handed over to fear and guilt and rules that were never mine to begin with.
[00:45:54]  Never mine.
[00:45:55]  Ah, there's that liberal key.
[00:45:58]  That's Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost.
[00:46:01]  Better to reign in hell than rule in heaven.
[00:46:03]  The mind is its own place and can make a hell of heaven and heaven a hell.
[00:46:06]  It's about mine.
[00:46:08]  This is what the liberals would say.
[00:46:09]  I'd rather be miserable but independent than happy and dependent on my wife, on my community, on my family, on my God.

=== Anger at Goodness and Virtue (01:24) ===

[00:46:19]  That's what they say.
[00:46:20]  It's exactly what Satan says in Paradise Lost.
[00:46:24]  Some of the radical romantics said that Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost.
[00:46:27]  They were reading Paradise Lost through a lens of classical liberalism and saying, see, he's the good guy.
[00:46:32]  I also read Paradise Lost through the lens of classical liberalism, but I realize he's the bad guy because liberalism is bad and it makes everybody miserable.
[00:46:39]  And he says, I wanted those years back.
[00:46:41]  I couldn't have them, so I did the next best thing.
[00:46:44]  He says, How much happier I would be if I'd pointlessly slept with 30 women, you know, 30, 40, 50.
[00:46:50]  I don't know.
[00:46:51]  Actually, I don't even know that these people sleep with that many people.
[00:46:54]  They probably just are frustrated.
[00:46:55]  They go on a lot of dates.
[00:46:56]  They swipe right on the apps and they go look at porn.
[00:47:00]  Neither of which will make you happy, by the way.
[00:47:03]  So, what does he say?
[00:47:04]  He says the same thing that Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry are doing, same thing that so many poor, benighted, stunted liberals are doing.
[00:47:10]  They're saying, you know what I want to do?
[00:47:11]  I used to be happy when I was a little kid.
[00:47:13]  And now that I'm fat and 50, I'm going to go pretend to be a little kid again.
[00:47:18]  It's cute when the baby says goo goo gaga and soils himself.
[00:47:22]  It's actually kind of cute, isn't it?
[00:47:23]  It's funny when the little baby bumps into tables.
[00:47:26]  It's kind of cute.
[00:47:28]  It's a little less cute when the adult does it.
[00:47:30]  And now we have a lot of adults doing that.
[00:47:32]  And they think it's good.
[00:47:33]  They long for it.
[00:47:34]  Okay.
[00:47:35]  Teeheehee.
[00:47:36]  On that chipper note, today's Teeheehee Tuesday.
[00:47:38]  The rest of the show continues now.
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