The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1954 - Democrats Try To Drive A Wedge Between Trump & Catholics
Aired: 2026-04-16
Duration: 52:32


=== Investing Without Compromise (02:45) ===

[00:00:00]  As the Iran war rounds out its sixth week, is the president preparing to make war on Cuba?
[00:00:06]  As the Pope criticizes President Trump for the war in Iran, is the Pope also refusing to call out the war that Islamists make on Christians?
[00:00:16]  I've been reading all that kind of stuff in the media.
[00:00:18]  And then, in the most important war of all, the war between the sexes, a new report out of the UK says that it is women who are the actual aggressors.
[00:00:29]  I'm Michael Knowles.
[00:00:30]  This is the Michael Knowles Show.
[00:00:50]  Welcome back to the show.
[00:00:51]  They always used to say that there would never be a war between the sexes because everyone was sleeping with the enemy.
[00:00:57]  Though, in our rather lavender age, I'm actually not sure that that is true anymore.
[00:01:02]  Then, speaking of Lothario's really scary moment when Clavicular, a very prominent former guest on this show, OD'd the other night.
[00:01:11]  He OD'd Clavicular, very famous, infamous for promoting drug use.
[00:01:16]  OD'd, he's okay, that's the good news.
[00:01:18]  But we will get to what this means because Clavicular is not just.
[00:01:22]  A young man making dubious decisions.
[00:01:24]  He is really a sign of the times.
[00:01:26]  So we'll get to that in just a moment.
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=== Crisis in Cuba and Venezuela (05:02) ===

[00:02:45]  Are we about to make war on Cuba?
[00:02:47]  We're still at war in Iran.
[00:02:50]  We wrapped up that war in Venezuela pretty quick.
[00:02:54]  That might have given us all a little bit too much confidence, because the war in Venezuela took 88 minutes.
[00:03:00]  Beginning to end.
[00:03:02]  Now we're rounding out the sixth week.
[00:03:04]  And we do recall President Trump said he estimated the war would take four to six weeks.
[00:03:08]  So I said, okay, you know, it's only going to be during the sixth week that I start to get a little concerned.
[00:03:12]  Well, now here we are.
[00:03:13]  We're at the end of the sixth week.
[00:03:14]  And there are leaks coming out of the Pentagon, according to USA Today exclusive, that we're already planning to make war on Cuba.
[00:03:24]  So, all right, what's the reporting?
[00:03:26]  Pentagon ramps up planning for possible military ops in Cuba.
[00:03:32]  Two sources familiar with the order spoke to USA Today on condition of anonymity because they're not authorized to speak to the media.
[00:03:38]  The directives appear to be an escalation of recent tensions between the US and Cuba that began in January when the Trump administration curbed oil shipments to Cuba as part of a broader campaign to force sweeping political changes on the communist run island.
[00:03:50]  Okay, is this real?
[00:03:52]  Are these leaks real?
[00:03:53]  What do the leaks mean?
[00:03:55]  You can never just take reporting on anonymous leaks at face value because they can mean one of two things.
[00:04:01]  They can either mean that there are people within an administration.
[00:04:04]  Who are trying to stop the administration from doing something.
[00:04:08]  So they're trying to leak that information out there in order to create a public pressure campaign to persuade the administration not to do what it wants to do.
[00:04:15]  Could be the case.
[00:04:16]  Although, when it comes to President Trump, Trump really hates leaks and Trump loves to double down.
[00:04:21]  So, much more so than other presidents, it would seem to me that leaks might undermine what the leakers would want.
[00:04:30]  In other words, by leaking this kind of information, it could force President Trump.
[00:04:35]  To double down on whatever he wanted to do, in this case, ostensibly military action in Cuba.
[00:04:39]  That's one reason for this kind of reporting.
[00:04:43]  The other is the administration wants this out there.
[00:04:48]  The other suggestion is that these anonymous leakers are feeding this at the behest of the administration, at the behest of the president, in order to create a news story, in order to get something else.
[00:05:00]  And what is that something else that the administration would want to get?
[00:05:04]  Look at the situation in Cuba.
[00:05:06]  Cuba is in crisis.
[00:05:08]  Cuba has been in varying degrees of crisis since the early 60s, but Cuba is really in crisis now.
[00:05:15]  Cuba is only getting 40% of the oil that it requires every single day.
[00:05:19]  Cuba was getting its oil from Venezuela.
[00:05:21]  Maduro was a big backer of the Cuban regime.
[00:05:24]  The Cubans were sending mercenaries to Venezuela.
[00:05:26]  That's why in the U.S. strike on Venezuela, a lot of the soldiers that were killed were not Venezuelan.
[00:05:30]  They were Cuban.
[00:05:32]  Now, 60% of Cuba's oil is gone.
[00:05:36]  Cuba's only got 40% of its oil, which means that there are power outages for 12 to 15 hours a day.
[00:05:42]  On top of that, the Cuban economy has not been great in over half a century.
[00:05:46]  Now the Cuban peso is collapsing.
[00:05:48]  There are two kinds of currencies in Cuba.
[00:05:50]  I know a little bit about Cuba, really just because I'm a cigar man.
[00:05:53]  And I did visit Cuba during that brief period when it was really easy to travel to Cuba.
[00:05:57]  Took a nice photo, actually wearing a MAGA hat while smoking a cigar in the Revolution Square in front of a monument to Che Guevara.
[00:06:06]  Anyway, there are two kinds of currencies in Cuba.
[00:06:09]  There's the Cuban convertible peso, the CUC.
[00:06:13]  Which is what tourists use.
[00:06:15]  They go there.
[00:06:16]  It's a little stronger.
[00:06:17]  It's pegged to the dollar.
[00:06:18]  And it's another way to extort money out of Americans when they do make it there.
[00:06:22]  But there's the Cuban money that the Cubans actually use, the CUP.
[00:06:27]  That is in free fall.
[00:06:29]  That has really, really collapsed.
[00:06:30]  So the Cuban economy, much, much worse, even than it was.
[00:06:33]  And it was already very weak.
[00:06:35]  And then since 2021, a million Cubans have fled the country.
[00:06:39]  So starting about five years ago, it became much easier for Cubans to leave.
[00:06:44]  Previously, Cuba was kind of like a prison island.
[00:06:46]  You couldn't get out.
[00:06:47]  So you had these desperate Cubans.
[00:06:48]  Who would try to swim over 90 miles to Florida on a door or on a raft or on a little floaty.
[00:06:55]  And often they'd be eaten by sharks, but sometimes they would make it.
[00:06:59]  And the U.S. had a policy, wet foot, dry foot, such that if you got one foot onto American soil, we would let you stay.
[00:07:05]  Obama reversed that because he was sucking up to the communist regime in Cuba.
[00:07:10]  Cuba started to let the people leave in 2021.
[00:07:13]  Already the country was in massive crisis.
[00:07:15]  So they've lost 10% of their population.
[00:07:17]  And they've lost really the most ambitious of their population.
[00:07:20]  So they are in a massive crisis.
[00:07:22]  My read on this.
[00:07:24]  Is not that President Trump is planning Bay of Pigs Part II.
[00:07:27]  My read on this is we have been in not so secret negotiations with the Cuban government for a very long time now, and probably they've stalled out a little bit.
[00:07:37]  They really accelerated after the lightning fast military operation in Venezuela.
[00:07:41]  I think they've stalled out a little bit as America has stalled out a little bit in this much longer, more complex operation in Iran.

=== Catholics, Christ, and the Vote (14:44) ===

[00:07:47]  I think this is the administration trying to juice those negotiations.
[00:07:51]  You're going to see a lot of people saying, no, stop.
[00:07:53]  We don't want any more wars.
[00:07:54]  We don't want any more military actions.
[00:07:56]  Maybe Trump is planning a massive invasion.
[00:07:58]  I don't know.
[00:07:59]  Maybe Trump is planning to install Marco Rubio as El Comandante in the Hotel Cohiba.
[00:08:04]  Maybe.
[00:08:04]  I don't know.
[00:08:05]  It could be.
[00:08:06]  But that's not my read on this.
[00:08:07]  My read on this is this is a negotiating tool.
[00:08:11]  Trump loves his eccentric negotiating tools.
[00:08:13]  And this one actually is pretty standard.
[00:08:14]  Okay.
[00:08:15]  So speaking of war, the big conflict right now, the big war conflict is the Iran war.
[00:08:21]  And then the big political conflict is between the president and the Pope.
[00:08:24]  So we are told.
[00:08:26]  And the Pope now is being criticized for supposedly going soft on Islamic terror.
[00:08:34]  And folks, I'm going to just right at the top, before we get to all the nuances of this, this is an op.
[00:08:41]  This is an anti Catholic and coincidentally anti Trump op to try to split the Catholics from the president and the president from the Catholics.
[00:08:53]  That's what this is.
[00:08:54]  That's what's going on.
[00:08:55]  And it's clear as day.
[00:08:58]  President Trump won the Catholic vote.
[00:09:01]  With greater numbers and more consistently than any Republican president ever.
[00:09:07]  The Democrats had a stranglehold on the Catholic vote from basically the moments Catholics arrived on these shores all the way up through the early 70s.
[00:09:17]  In 1972, Nixon manages to win the Catholic vote.
[00:09:22]  And he does so because the Catholics were working class.
[00:09:27]  The Catholics are socially conservative, at least were at that time.
[00:09:31]  The Catholics.
[00:09:32]  Were a little more, I don't know, they were a little less cosmopolitan, say.
[00:09:37]  So the Democrats were able to hold the Catholic vote because they appealed to ethnic and class hostilities.
[00:09:43]  But then the Democrats in the 60s started to go nuts.
[00:09:46]  They shifted from being the party of the working man to the party of the cosmopolitan elites.
[00:09:52]  They shifted from being the party of common sense, meat and potatoes, kitchen table issues, to the party of radical, bizarre sex stuff, to the party of abortion, which is a non negotiable issue for Catholics.
[00:10:03]  Catholics cannot support abortion at the ballot box.
[00:10:06]  And so that gave an opening to someone like Nixon.
[00:10:08]  Nixon wins the Catholic vote in the reelection campaign.
[00:10:11]  Then, in 1984, in Reagan's reelection campaign, he won the Catholic vote too.
[00:10:16]  He became the second Republican president to do it.
[00:10:18]  Then, George W. Bush in his reelection campaign became the third Republican president to do it.
[00:10:24]  Notice none of these guys won the Catholic vote their first time around.
[00:10:28]  They were just sufficiently successful and their opponents were sufficiently bad that they won them over in the reelection.
[00:10:34]  It's kind of funny with Bush, too, because Bush is an evangelical Protestant.
[00:10:37]  John Kerry, his opponent, is nominally Catholic, but the Catholics picked Bush over Kerry.
[00:10:43]  Trump, however, is unique.
[00:10:44]  Trump wins the Catholic vote in 2016, first time around.
[00:10:48]  And then Trump wins it again in 2024.
[00:10:52]  The 2020 election, a little bit dubious, but 2024, he wins it again.
[00:10:56]  And so this is a major problem for Democrats.
[00:10:58]  One in five American voters is Catholic.
[00:11:01]  And Catholicism is growing right now.
[00:11:03]  There are a lot of adult converts.
[00:11:05]  And it's growing, especially among Republicans, and it's growing, especially among young men.
[00:11:09]  We'll get to the war between the sexes later.
[00:11:11]  So this is a major political problem for Democrats.
[00:11:14]  And what they're trying to do is split the Catholic vote.
[00:11:16]  I think this explains why there was so much attention given to the three most liberal bishops in the United States going on 60 Minutes.
[00:11:23]  60 Minutes, a show that the president reportedly watches to try to trigger some of that.
[00:11:30]  David Axelrod makes a big show, the strategist for Obama makes a big show about getting to meet the Pope on a visit to Rome.
[00:11:37]  I think this is an op.
[00:11:38]  You're seeing a lot of anti Leo stuff right now.
[00:11:40]  I just saw, I was just doom scrolling while the DW servers were rebooting.
[00:11:44]  I was doom scrolling on Twitter.
[00:11:46]  There is just a complete lie going on.
[00:11:48]  A viral tweet from HIN News.
[00:11:52]  Breaking news.
[00:11:54]  They always, these stupid tweets always start with breaking news.
[00:11:56]  Breaking news.
[00:11:56]  And it's a quote supposedly from the Pope Islam is a religion of peace we can learn from.
[00:12:01]  Those who are against immigration target Muslims needlessly, especially those in North Africa.
[00:12:08]  So I saw that.
[00:12:09]  So here in His Holiness Pope Leo XIV sharing his views to the rest of the world for open borders and Islam.
[00:12:14]  And I looked at that.
[00:12:15]  I said that he obviously didn't say that.
[00:12:17]  But if you don't follow the Catholic Church closely, if you haven't followed this Pope closely, you might be taken in by it.
[00:12:23]  This tweet has well over 100,000 views, almost 1,000 retweets, 1,500 likes.
[00:12:28]  There are a lot of tweets like this.
[00:12:30]  The quote is totally made up.
[00:12:31]  If you watch the video that goes along with the quote, the quote appears nowhere.
[00:12:35]  The Pope obviously didn't say this.
[00:12:37]  This is a coordinated effort by enemies of the Catholic Church.
[00:12:42]  by enemies of this Trump coalition to try to split them apart.
[00:12:47]  And so the latest version of this op is that the Pope doesn't condemn Islamic terrorism.
[00:12:53]  One of the very first things this Pope did upon being elected, don't forget, he's been Pope for like five minutes now.
[00:12:59]  One of the very first things he did was call attention to the Muslim attacks on Christians in Nigeria.
[00:13:04]  It was immediately after rising up to the seat of Peter.
[00:13:08]  And he's not just focused on Nigeria.
[00:13:11]  He has called attention to Islamic attacks on Christians in the DRC.
[00:13:16]  In Bangladesh, in Syria, in Sudan, in Mozambique, the list goes on and on and on.
[00:13:24]  The idea that this pope is somehow calling for syncretism with Islam is totally ridiculous.
[00:13:30]  Even in the disagreement that you're seeing between the pope and the president on the war in Iran, a disagreement that resonates, by the way, with many conservatives in America because there are a fair number of conservatives who are skeptical of war in Iran, certainly of a long war in Iran.
[00:13:46]  But even the crux of that disagreement, is a little bit smaller than I think a lot of people are making it.
[00:13:55]  Because what Trump is saying is the war in Iran is just because we need to protect innocent people from the predations of this terrorist regime.
[00:14:05]  He's saying Iran is a threat to peace and we need to take it out.
[00:14:10]  They kill people, they destabilize the region, they destabilize the globe.
[00:14:13]  They are making war and we therefore need to make war to reestablish peace.
[00:14:18]  What Pope Leo is saying, Is that this war in Iran is not just because the only way to have a just war is for the war to be defensive in nature because, in order for there to be a just war, the purpose of the war has to be to reestablish peace.
[00:14:31]  So, yes, they are disagreeing over the conflict in Iran, but they're not disagreeing in principle.
[00:14:39]  They agree in principle.
[00:14:41]  They're disagreeing over the details.
[00:14:43]  Was Iran really that much of an imminent threat?
[00:14:47]  Will innocence really be protected by this war?
[00:14:50]  Is the war really proportional?
[00:14:51]  It's all disagreements about the details of the criteria of just war, but there's not a disagreement in principle.
[00:14:58]  And so this is why I have said, I gave this whole speech the other night at the Pope's alma mater.
[00:15:02]  I said, the President and the Pope have to work together.
[00:15:04]  There are longstanding tensions between the Emperor and the Pope that goes back to at least the fourth century.
[00:15:09]  There's always going to be that kind of tension.
[00:15:13]  But this President and this Pope need to work together.
[00:15:16]  There are a lot of people, not the least of which are Democrats, but other people, other kinds of subversive forces in politics that are trying to split that apart.
[00:15:25]  Especially at this time of shifting political allegiances, it's sometimes hard to distinguish the left from the right.
[00:15:31]  Do not fall for it, guys.
[00:15:33]  This is a coordinated op to destroy an historic political coalition and to confuse moral authority.
[00:15:43]  Do not fall for it.
[00:15:44]  Okay, speaking of Trump and religion, the president did post a new Jesus picture.
[00:15:49]  He got in trouble the other day because he posted this picture that most Christians thought was him putting his face in the place of Christ.
[00:15:55]  And then he came out and he said, That's not how I viewed it.
[00:15:58]  And he gave this whole explanation as to why he posted it.
[00:16:01]  He took responsibility for posting it, which I was kind of skeptical of.
[00:16:04]  But then he said, but I didn't think it was sacrilegious.
[00:16:07]  I thought I was a doctor.
[00:16:08]  He gave this whole explanation.
[00:16:10]  My take on it was he took the picture down.
[00:16:13]  He was responsive.
[00:16:15]  Good.
[00:16:15]  I'll take the win.
[00:16:16]  Well, President Trump has now posted another picture involving our Lord.
[00:16:22]  This one, however, is quite different.
[00:16:27]  We'll get to that momentarily.
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[00:17:38]  President Trump posting on Truth Social, the radical left lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice, President DJT.
[00:17:46]  And it's this, it's a post on Truth Social of a tweet from the account Irish for Trump.
[00:17:53]  And it's got this caption.
[00:17:54]  It says, I was never a very religious man, but doesn't it seem with all these satanic, demonic, child-sacrificing monsters being exposed that God might be playing his Trump card?
[00:18:03]  And the picture is of Christ hugging President Trump in front of a white background that is itself bordered by an American flag.
[00:18:12]  And plenty of people are not going to like this for all reasons, political, theological, and aesthetic.
[00:18:21]  The picture is not exactly Caravaggio, I would have to say.
[00:18:25]  It certainly doesn't come from the Western Catholic tradition of art.
[00:18:28]  It doesn't really come from the Eastern Orthodox iconic tradition of art.
[00:18:35]  It's a little more modern, a little kitsch, probably, we would have to say.
[00:18:40]  And yet, you would not apply the same criticisms. to this picture that people applied, myself included, a few days ago, to the picture of Trump with his face, with the robes and all that.
[00:18:53]  Because the depiction here is of Christ comforting Trump.
[00:19:00]  It's not Trump comforting Christ.
[00:19:03]  It's not Trump and Christ marching into battle together.
[00:19:05]  It's of Christ comforting Trump.
[00:19:07]  And so even if you don't like the picture, even if you don't like the art or the style, surely we would say, well, our Lord comforts all of us.
[00:19:15]  He is the consolation.
[00:19:17]  He's the ultimate consolation in this world.
[00:19:20]  And as for the caption that goes along with the picture, says, you know, God might be playing his trump card.
[00:19:27]  Again, you might say this is grandiose.
[00:19:29]  This is thinking very highly of oneself.
[00:19:31]  However, it is a very basic principle of theology that God causes all things.
[00:19:39]  He causes all things, but he uses secondary causes very often to do so.
[00:19:46]  And this gets back.
[00:19:47]  I know very few people probably are going to be talking about Aristotelian metaphysics when it comes to this slightly kitschy picture of President Trump and our Lord.
[00:19:56]  But it comes down to the fact that in Aristotelian metaphysics, there is this notion of act and potency.
[00:20:05]  So every buddy, every person, everything is a combination of those two things.
[00:20:12]  Like a little baby is a baby in its act, but.
[00:20:18]  The baby is an adult, is a grown man, is a podcaster, a politician in his potency.
[00:20:23]  It's the thing that he can be, that he will be unimpeded.
[00:20:29]  An acorn is an acorn in its act, but it can be a tree.
[00:20:34]  It's a tree in its potency.
[00:20:36]  And in this world, which constantly involves change, you have to recognize both of those things.
[00:20:44]  In fact, the fact of change, the fact that things change, is St. Thomas Aquinas' first argument.
[00:20:51]  He thinks it's the best argument for the existence of God because we live in this world of motion.
[00:20:56]  And by motion, he really means change.
[00:20:59]  Things are growing.
[00:21:00]  Things are developing.
[00:21:01]  Things are changing.
[00:21:03]  But in order for that to be the case, there has to be a first motion.
[00:21:08]  There has to be an unmoved mover, God who is pure act.
[00:21:14]  And so God, in his divine providence, orders the entire cosmos.
[00:21:19]  We still have free will.
[00:21:22]  We're still contingent beings.
[00:21:25]  But God uses us to cause things in the world.
[00:21:29]  We're secondary causes.
[00:21:30]  We're contingent causes.
[00:21:32]  And so I'm not saying that the White House was going through all of this Aristotelian logic when they were posting the picture, but I don't see anything particularly sacrilegious about that idea that God might be using Trump.
[00:21:48]  In fact, St. Paul tells us that rulers are appointed for our good.
[00:21:54]  With the stamp of approval of God.
[00:21:58]  St. Thomas Aquinas points out yeah, they're bad rulers sometimes.
[00:22:01]  The bad rulers, even they, are appointed by God to chastise us.
[00:22:06]  And God gives us good rulers too.
[00:22:08]  And the fact that President Trump was saved by this totally implausible last minute turn of his head, so a bullet whizzed by him only nicked his ear, one 20th of an inch turn totally changed the course of American history.
[00:22:24]  Suggests that's not the craziest thing in the world.
[00:22:26]  And what else is Trump doing?
[00:22:28]  He's proven a point.
[00:22:29]  Trump is proving a point.
[00:22:30]  He's saying, you know, all right, I took down the picture.

=== Rulers, Drugs, and Internet Mogging (12:32) ===

[00:22:32]  All right, yeah, okay.
[00:22:34]  I didn't mean it that way.
[00:22:35]  It was understood in a way that I didn't intend, so I'm going to take it down.
[00:22:39]  I don't want to commit a sacrilege.
[00:22:40]  But he's doubling down.
[00:22:41]  He's saying, I still am making religious claims here.
[00:22:45]  I want to do good.
[00:22:46]  There was this clip going around of him a few months ago where he said, I got to check with the big guy up there.
[00:22:50]  You know, I got to check with the boss.
[00:22:53]  I'm not the boss.
[00:22:54]  He said, I'm not the most famous guy in the world.
[00:22:56]  He said, you know what the most famous guy in the world is?
[00:22:58]  Jesus.
[00:22:59]  And that's not even just sanctimonious.
[00:23:01]  That's not even just Bible thumping.
[00:23:03]  There's a little bit of swag to that statement, too.
[00:23:05]  He goes, nobody on earth is as famous as me.
[00:23:07]  I am definitely the most famous guy on earth, for sure.
[00:23:10]  But there is someone who's more famous than me.
[00:23:12]  There is someone who's more powerful than me.
[00:23:15]  I'll take it.
[00:23:15]  I guess that's all a long way of saying I'll take it because we obviously don't want our political rulers to commit sacrilege.
[00:23:24]  We don't want our political rulers to overstep their bounds.
[00:23:26]  We don't want our political rulers to divinize themselves.
[00:23:30]  But we do want them to take religion seriously.
[00:23:33]  We need them to take religion seriously.
[00:23:37]  Religion is ultimately a habit of virtue that inclines the will to give to God what he deserves.
[00:23:44]  We need our political rulers to help guide society in such a way that it is good, that it is godly, that it is giving to God what he deserves, and not the opposite.
[00:23:53]  If you think religious rulers are bad, just wait till you see irreligious rulers.
[00:23:56]  Now, speaking of the need for religion, a guest of our show, Clavicular, who, if you haven't caught the interview, I did this long interview with Clavicular.
[00:24:05]  If you don't know who Clavicular is, I don't know, I guess you haven't been on social media in the last six months, but it went very, very viral.
[00:24:12]  Clavicular has just OD'd.
[00:24:15]  This young man who has been promoting drug use in medical contexts, beyond medical contexts for recreational use, he just OD'd.
[00:24:23]  He could have died, but he didn't die happily.
[00:24:26]  We'll get to what that means for him and for our culture because clavicular is very much a sign of the times.
[00:24:31]  First, though, speaking of substances that one puts into one's body, these very good substances in this case, I want to tell you about Kexi cookies.
[00:24:41]  Go to Kexi.com, use code Knowles.
[00:24:44]  Folks, Mother's Day is coming up.
[00:24:46]  Means it's time to think about what you were going to get your mom or your wife, or in this case, just yourself, actually, if you want to go get a delicious Kexi cookie.
[00:24:57]  So I had my Kexi cookie box.
[00:24:59]  These are some of the greatest cookies I've ever had in my entire life.
[00:25:04]  They're gigantic.
[00:25:05]  You warm them in the microwave for about 15 seconds.
[00:25:08]  They're just magnificent.
[00:25:09]  So much so that Mr. Davies, who never eats sweets, he the other day comes in and says, Hey, I'm going to eat one of those cookies.
[00:25:14]  I said, All right, well, excuse me.
[00:25:16]  Maybe I'll offer you one of my cookies.
[00:25:18]  You're going to eat one of my cookies.
[00:25:19]  But so I keep the box next to my desk, and these animals, these scavengers, ate almost all my cookies.
[00:25:26]  But they still left me a delicious honey pistachio.
[00:25:28]  All the flavors are magnificent.
[00:25:30]  You got to go check them out.
[00:25:31]  You have to taste them to believe them.
[00:25:33]  Also, one cookie could feed a family of four.
[00:25:35]  These are big, powerful cookies.
[00:25:37]  They're limited edition Mother's Day cookies, come already packed in a beautiful Mother's Day themed box.
[00:25:41]  No wrapping, no stress.
[00:25:42]  It's a beautiful presentation.
[00:25:44]  They ship nationwide.
[00:25:45]  Very, very easy.
[00:25:46]  Go to kexie.com, grab a Mother's Day box while they're still available.
[00:25:49]  If you want to try anything else from their site, use code Knowles, Canada W L E S. 15% off, just not on the Mother's Day box.
[00:25:57]  Kexie, K-E-K-S-I, at kexie.com.
[00:26:02]  Clavicular OD'd.
[00:26:04]  He had this crazy combination of drugs that he was taking in part for his crusade of looks maxing.
[00:26:12]  I think he told me when we were doing our interview, he said, I don't really drink because that makes you puffy and it doesn't let you looks max.
[00:26:19]  So I just do harder drugs, you know, ketamine or something.
[00:26:24]  I even asked him.
[00:26:25]  This was off camera.
[00:26:26]  I said, I was kind of tired.
[00:26:27]  I said, You know, I have this nasty little habit I've picked up to a little degree, those little nicotine pouches.
[00:26:32]  Do you ever do those nicotine pouches, clavicular?
[00:26:35]  And he looks at me, doesn't miss a beat, just totally dry.
[00:26:38]  He goes, Michael, I do meth.
[00:26:40]  I said, Oh, okay.
[00:26:40]  All right.
[00:26:41]  That's a little harder than, you know, a three milligram nicotine pouch.
[00:26:44]  Okay.
[00:26:44]  So anyway, it caught up with him and he OD'd.
[00:26:47]  And now he's made the announcement that he is not going to do these massive live streams anymore.
[00:26:54]  I ain't going to be doing any more substances for.
[00:26:59]  A little while, hopefully for forever, but that means I can't really IRL stream anymore.
[00:27:05]  So that's the thing.
[00:27:07]  I really can't IRL stream.
[00:27:11]  Because as you guys know, I'm quite brutal without that.
[00:27:17]  So that's, I think I have to figure something else out.
[00:27:23]  I have to figure out a new method.
[00:27:25]  Either practice mogging sober or just find a new form of content.
[00:27:32]  I don't know.
[00:27:34]  It's done for.
[00:27:36]  Okay.
[00:27:36]  So we probably have to define a few terms here for some of the older members of the audience mogging, IRL stream.
[00:27:45]  The upshot of this is he says, I'm going to stop doing drugs.
[00:27:47]  Now, I don't think this means he's going to stop doing all the drugs he takes to look smacks, like the testosterone and all that.
[00:27:52]  But I think what it means is he said, I'm going to stop doing recreational drugs.
[00:27:56]  Cocaine or whatever, ketamine.
[00:27:59]  But he says, because I've got to stop doing the recreational drugs.
[00:28:03]  And I hope that's true.
[00:28:04]  You know, plenty of people who do a lot of drugs say, oh, that was scary.
[00:28:07]  I'm done with drugs.
[00:28:08]  And then they fall off the wagon.
[00:28:10]  So it's very important that Clavicular gets into some kind of program that will hold him accountable for this, not because he's not capable of the discipline or whatever, but really, kind of for that, because no one's really capable of that discipline anyway when one does not have accountability.
[00:28:26]  So I hope that's true.
[00:28:27]  I hope he stops those drugs.
[00:28:29]  I hope he stops all the drugs.
[00:28:31]  But then he says, and this is what's very telling.
[00:28:33]  He says, I'm going to stop IRL streaming.
[00:28:36]  And I believe I myself am a millennial, a little older.
[00:28:43]  I believe IRL streaming is when they just stream everything going to the club, going to the grocery store, hanging around in their living room.
[00:28:49]  They're just streaming all the time.
[00:28:51]  There's no private life.
[00:28:51]  There's no inner life and there's no private life.
[00:28:53]  It's just all public.
[00:28:54]  It's all a commodity for public consumption.
[00:28:57]  He says, I've got to stop doing that.
[00:28:58]  And it's very telling.
[00:28:59]  He says, I've got to stop doing that because I can only do that on drugs.
[00:29:02]  I can't do it.
[00:29:03]  I'm brutal without the drugs.
[00:29:05]  Whether that means it's because he's tired, because he feels anxious, because he feels awkward.
[00:29:10]  He says, I can't do it, I need the drugs to do the live streaming.
[00:29:12]  So I'm glad he's saying, at least, I'm going to stop doing the drugs and I'm going to stop doing the things that I need the drugs for.
[00:29:20]  But why is he doing all of this in the first place?
[00:29:25]  What I found immediately when I was talking to Clavicular is this guy is really talented.
[00:29:32]  He is talented.
[00:29:33]  A lot of people are going to look at him and say, What's his talent?
[00:29:35]  What's his skill?
[00:29:37]  He's just this guy who says this word mogging.
[00:29:39]  Mogging, by the way, meaning to excel, to comparatively excel, to upstage someone.
[00:29:48]  He says, What's his skill?
[00:29:51]  He's very good at the media.
[00:29:53]  He's very funny in this dry way.
[00:29:55]  He knows how to work a camera.
[00:29:58]  He's obviously very popular.
[00:30:00]  So he's got talent and he's got skill.
[00:30:06]  And he was raised entirely on the internet.
[00:30:09]  That to me is the essential part of this persona of Clavicular.
[00:30:14]  He is a pure product of the internet.
[00:30:16]  We're all kind of products of the internet, especially Zoomers because they're a little younger.
[00:30:21]  Even millennials to some degree, though.
[00:30:23]  The internet was around when we were kids, it came out when we were kids.
[00:30:27]  But Clavicular is that just pure, breaking bad, grade A meth version of being a product of the internet.
[00:30:36]  He's that real top shelf black tar heroin.
[00:30:41]  Product of the internet.
[00:30:42]  And that explains what he's describing.
[00:30:45]  He says, I just can't be in public if I'm not doing drugs.
[00:30:48]  Because the internet, living on the internet, being raised by the internet creates a sense of alienation from the body.
[00:30:57]  He describes this.
[00:30:58]  He says, The whole way I got into looks maxing was when I was a kid.
[00:31:02]  I was 14 and I was on these bodybuilder forums.
[00:31:04]  And these bodybuilder forums made me conclude that looking good physically is the only thing that matters in life.
[00:31:12]  So he admits on camera, he says, I was on the internet when I was a young teenager and it gave me body dysmorphia.
[00:31:17]  And we know from other aspects of social media, it creates body dysmorphia, certainly with the social media algorithms, certainly in the social media platforms that are more image based rather than text based.
[00:31:29]  The only social media platform I really like is X, but for most millennials and, sorry, for most Zoomers and especially for most girls, it's all Instagram, it's all TikTok, it's all visual.
[00:31:39]  So it creates this alienation from the body and generally creates an alienation from the body, the internet, because You're mediating all of your interactions through a computer screen.
[00:31:49]  So your body can't matter.
[00:31:50]  This is why the internet helped to accelerate the transgender ideology.
[00:31:57]  There's transgenderism on the left, there's transgenderism on the right.
[00:32:01]  But then to get to the IRL streaming, what is clavicular?
[00:32:05]  Clavicular is a reality star.
[00:32:08]  Clavicular is not a political pundit.
[00:32:11]  Whenever I asked him anything about politics, he said, I don't know.
[00:32:14]  I don't want to talk about that.
[00:32:14]  I don't know anything about politics.
[00:32:17]  He joked that he thought Gavin Newsom looked really hot.
[00:32:21]  That's all he knew about politics.
[00:32:22]  And he was open about that.
[00:32:23]  He said, I don't care about politics.
[00:32:25]  He was asked on some other show about Mamdani.
[00:32:27]  He said, I don't care about Mamdani.
[00:32:29]  I said, What do you mean you don't know about Mamdani?
[00:32:30]  He goes, No, I just want a mog.
[00:32:32]  All I want to do is mod.
[00:32:33]  All I want to do is excel someone.
[00:32:35]  I want to upstage someone visually, physically.
[00:32:39]  That is pure social media.
[00:32:41]  That's pure internet.
[00:32:43]  And so when he says, I can't do the IRL thing anymore, we realize that this is not a totally new phenomenon.
[00:32:50]  He's just the greatest reality TV star of our age.
[00:32:53]  What he does is what reality TV used to be.
[00:32:57]  And there are all sorts of reality TV stars you never heard of.
[00:33:00]  And then there were the guys on the Jersey Shore.
[00:33:02]  And he's just that.
[00:33:03]  He's just the best version of that.
[00:33:05]  Even down to the lingo.
[00:33:06]  You know, when Jersey Shore was on, there were all these little slogans that came out about it, like beat that beat up, Jim Tan laundry, that GTL life.
[00:33:14]  You can tell I'm of Italian extraction from the Northeast.
[00:33:17]  I did watch a Jersey Shore a little.
[00:33:19]  Well, for clavicular, that's just mogging and maxing and this.
[00:33:22]  It's all the same kind of lingo.
[00:33:23]  It goes viral.
[00:33:26]  Is why he's a case study, he's a warning sign.
[00:33:33]  a cautionary tale, not just for people who are publicly in the media, but for all of us, especially for young people who are raised in the media.
[00:33:41]  And how he works through this problem, if he works through this problem, will be instructive.
[00:33:48]  There is weirdly a lot riding on clavicular getting over his drug addiction and not just streaming his entire life.
[00:33:56]  You want him to stop doing that for him because no one seems to care about this guy.
[00:34:00]  Everyone's just exploiting him for money.
[00:34:04]  No one, everyone's just following him around.
[00:34:06]  He's opening clubs.
[00:34:07]  He's promoting all of the funny lingo.
[00:34:11]  But you do have to, he's a human being, you know, and he's very, very young.
[00:34:16]  And people are encouraging him down this path rather than what they should be doing, which is if they sit down with him, they should be discouraging his worst inclinations.
[00:34:25]  But because he's such a prominent figure here, so much depends upon clavicular.
[00:34:34]  Turning away from looks maxing or turning away from mogging or just reforming what all of that means.
[00:34:40]  Weirdly, a lot depends upon that.
[00:34:42]  Okay.
[00:34:42]  Speaking of aesthetics, I am delighted to see a new effort coming out of the Trump administration that is somehow getting blowback itself.
[00:34:52]  It's crazy.
[00:34:53]  President Trump wants to build a big, beautiful, triumphal arch in DC.
[00:34:58]  And some libs are taking issue with it.
[00:35:00]  I don't know.
[00:35:00]  They don't like it, but it's a big, beautiful arch.

=== The Trump Arch in DC (03:40) ===

[00:35:05]  We had the big beautiful bill.
[00:35:06]  Now we're going to have the big beautiful arch.
[00:35:07]  And on the right, I think a lot of people just say, oh, who cares?
[00:35:10]  It's just a monument.
[00:35:11]  It's not a big deal.
[00:35:12]  Let's focus on what really matters, like war and the economy and immigration.
[00:35:16]  The arch really matters.
[00:35:18]  Roman emperors knew that the arch mattered.
[00:35:21]  The Roman Republic knew that the arch mattered.
[00:35:24]  There's nothing conservative about denying the importance of aesthetics.
[00:35:27]  This is the part Clavicular gets right.
[00:35:29]  He is right that aesthetics matter.
[00:35:30]  They're not the only thing that matters, but they do matter.
[00:35:32]  So we'll get to the big beautiful arch.
[00:35:34]  And then we will get to the young women who hate the young men.
[00:35:37]  But first, folks, in the latest episode of Be a Man with Me, Pavel tries to take up one of the most dangerous occupations in America, being an electrical lineman.
[00:35:44]  He faces his fear of heights and climbs poles, works with up to 69,000 volts of electricity, and much more.
[00:35:50]  Check out this teaser.
[00:35:55]  This episode is about electrical linemen, the men that work on the power lines.
[00:35:59]  In dangerous conditions, high temperatures, cold temperatures, snow, ice, rain, wind, they keep the electricity on and society running.
[00:36:10]  Our guys do not go home until the power's on.
[00:36:13]  You have to want to be a lineman.
[00:36:14]  Once it gets in your blood, it's just kind of a way of life.
[00:36:17]  It takes a real man to do physical labor.
[00:36:19]  You don't just sign up and say, I think I'm going to be a lineman today.
[00:36:23]  No.
[00:36:23]  Dude, this helmet is giving me echo.
[00:36:26]  Like I hear my voice.
[00:36:27]  Pavo!
[00:36:29]  But I can't be an electrical lineman unless I climbed an electrical pole.
[00:36:34]  Did I mention I hate heights?
[00:36:36]  If I didn't, I'd hate heights.
[00:36:38]  Oh my.
[00:36:39]  It's not great, guys.
[00:36:40]  It's really not great.
[00:36:42]  Uh oh.
[00:36:44]  Uh oh.
[00:36:48]  TVA gives us our power at 69,000 volts.
[00:36:51]  How many?
[00:36:53]  69,000.
[00:36:54]  69,000 volts.
[00:36:55]  Yeah.
[00:36:55]  How much is that?
[00:36:57]  That's a lot.
[00:36:59]  Check out the full episode on youtube.comslash at beammanwithme and on Daily Wire Plus.
[00:37:06]  My friends, the time has come.
[00:37:08]  For many of you, the time came long ago when you subscribed to dailywire.com.
[00:37:14]  But some of you, you've just been dancing around it.
[00:37:16]  You've been, you've said, Oh, I like watching the shows on YouTube.
[00:37:18]  Oh, I like listening on Spotify.
[00:37:20]  Oh, this side.
[00:37:21]  But I don't know if I want to, I don't know if I want to commit.
[00:37:23]  I don't want it.
[00:37:24]  Hey, now is the time to commit because all of this is fueled by our members.
[00:37:28]  It's a great pleasure to get to speak to our members in the live chats during the show.
[00:37:32]  Great pleasure to do it in all access to really get to know you so I can steal some of your ideas, but also because you're great people.
[00:37:38]  So, anyway, if you want to be part of the community, you got to join dailywire.comslash subscribe.
[00:37:44]  My favorite comment yesterday is from at 2001639, which is, When are you coming to Idaho?
[00:37:50]  Nobody ever comes to Idaho.
[00:37:52]  We need more details.
[00:37:53]  It would be awesome to meet Michael and Erica.
[00:37:55]  Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
[00:37:56]  Mentioned yesterday, I don't, I think this has been publicized to some degree at least, but TPOSA is continuing Charlie's tour.
[00:38:04]  As happened right after he was assassinated, a number of his friends jumped in to finish the tour.
[00:38:09]  I was actually scheduled to do an event with Charlie in Minneapolis 12 days after he was killed.
[00:38:14]  And there was some debate.
[00:38:15]  They said, are we going to keep it going?
[00:38:16]  Are we not going to keep it going?
[00:38:17]  I told TPUSA, whatever you want to do.
[00:38:20]  If you want to do it, I'm happy to do it.
[00:38:23]  But if you don't want to, I don't want to overstep.
[00:38:25]  So whatever you guys want to do.
[00:38:26]  And I think they made the totally right decision to keep that going.
[00:38:29]  And they're continuing that this fall.
[00:38:31]  So very, very excited to do it.
[00:38:34]  I think I'm doing that one with Matt, actually.
[00:38:36]  I think Mr. Walsh and I are going to be there.
[00:38:38]  So it'll be a whole two hour debate, probably about the real issue that matters UFOs and aliens, maybe some other topics too.

=== Engaging to Take Our Country Back (13:15) ===

[00:38:45]  I actually don't know the date.
[00:38:46]  I don't know when it is, but I am going to Idaho for the first time ever.
[00:38:49]  I've never been to Idaho before.
[00:38:50]  So it'll be fun.
[00:38:51]  If you're in the state of Idaho, please come on down to it.
[00:38:54]  It'll be fun whenever I tell you when it is.
[00:38:57]  President Trump wants to build a big, beautiful arch.
[00:38:59]  Here we have White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt explaining.
[00:39:03]  As you know, this year we celebrate America's 250th birthday.
[00:39:08]  In honor of this historic occasion, President Trump and the Department of Interior will submit plans for the United States Triumphal Arc, which will be an architectural masterpiece to celebrate our history right here in Washington, D.C.
[00:39:22]  This is a rendering of the arc for you.
[00:39:25]  Thank you, Peter.
[00:39:27]  Quite beautiful as you can see, and this monumental arc will beam at 250 feet tall in honor of 250 years and stand on ground that is currently empty green space in Memorial Circle on Columbia Island, a man made island in the Potomac River managed by the National Park Service.
[00:39:45]  The United States Triumphal Arc will be outfitted with beautiful artwork and depictions celebrating the success of the American people over our 250 year history and the enduring triumph of the American spirit.
[00:39:58]  Long after everyone in this room is gone, our children and grandchildren will remain inspired by this national monument.
[00:40:04]  Beginning construction this year on the architectural arc is a fitting way to commemorate the 250th anniversary of American independence.
[00:40:13]  Great nations build beautiful structures that cultivate national pride and love of country, and this triumphal arc should be a project that all Americans of all political persuasions can support because it's a monument for every American to celebrate 250 years of our nation's proud history.
[00:40:28]  And again, the plans for this will be submitted tomorrow.
[00:40:31]  We'll have many more announcements with respect to our 250th anniversary in the coming months as we look forward to the 4th of July.
[00:40:39]  Love it.
[00:40:39]  Beautiful.
[00:40:40]  This really matters, folks.
[00:40:41]  I know some people say, oh, it's a little trivial.
[00:40:46]  Look, it's very beautiful, but this sort of thing doesn't matter.
[00:40:49]  This does matter.
[00:40:51]  The triumphal ark goes back to the Roman Republic.
[00:40:56]  Do you know what the ark is for?
[00:40:58]  What the ark actually symbolizes?
[00:41:00]  There are a lot of these arcs.
[00:41:02]  There's the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
[00:41:03]  There's an arc in Washington Square in New York.
[00:41:05]  We even have them in America.
[00:41:07]  You didn't really have them a lot in the Middle Ages.
[00:41:09]  There were some attempts to build them.
[00:41:11]  It was really only in the 15th century that they started to come back as we looked back to the glories of our early civilization and Rome.
[00:41:18]  The arc symbolizes the transition from war to peace.
[00:41:23]  That's what the symbol means.
[00:41:25]  So you would have in the Roman Republic, generals would come back.
[00:41:27]  They'd often pay for it themselves.
[00:41:28]  There would be these arcs that they would walk through to symbolize that transition, to celebrate.
[00:41:33]  The victories of the war, the accomplishments, but then to symbolize that transition back to peace.
[00:41:38]  That's obviously what President Trump wants to do.
[00:41:41]  And I think some people are losing sight of that right now because President Trump has engaged in lots of military actions.
[00:41:50]  He did that in the first term, too, by the way.
[00:41:51]  We forget the killing of Soleimani, we forget the dropping of the Moab, we forget all sorts of military operations, the destruction of ISIS, the total destruction of ISIS.
[00:41:59]  But a global power has to engage in some military conflict.
[00:42:03]  The question is what is it for?
[00:42:05]  Is it for the private interest? as a tyrant would engage in?
[00:42:09]  Is it for just plunder, for spoils, for stuff?
[00:42:15]  Or is it just?
[00:42:17]  Is it for peace?
[00:42:18]  And what President Trump is doing here is building a monument that says that we do have to engage in war.
[00:42:22]  There are all sorts of monuments to wars on the National Mall.
[00:42:27]  Plenty of them.
[00:42:28]  World War II memorial is pretty beautiful.
[00:42:30]  The Vietnam War memorial is pretty beautiful.
[00:42:34]  But the wars have to be for the purpose of establishing peace.
[00:42:38]  That's not sufficient to justify a war, but that is a necessary condition.
[00:42:42]  It's also just beautiful.
[00:42:43]  And this is important.
[00:42:44]  This is the opposite of the Obama era.
[00:42:46]  The Obama era, where, you know, just in the popular construction, everything was just those ugly boxes where, you know, city condominiums just look like prisons.
[00:42:56]  They just look like millennial prisons.
[00:42:57]  And the Obama Library is a perfect example of this this hideous, brutal architecture that just looks like a nugget of coal.
[00:43:04]  It's just so gross.
[00:43:06]  It's nauseating.
[00:43:07]  It's.
[00:43:10]  It's spiritually deadening.
[00:43:13]  This is beautiful, though.
[00:43:14]  This is nice and big and beautiful.
[00:43:16]  And it's important because architects, I forget the name of the architectural theorist, he died just a few years ago, who pointed out that spaces really matter.
[00:43:26]  Sir Roger Scruton, the late conservative philosopher in Britain, pointed out spaces really matter, homes really matter, buildings really matter, because we're incarnate beings.
[00:43:37]  Much as we were discussing in the clavicular conversation, we got bodies, you know, we move around, we are bodies.
[00:43:42]  In part, and we move around in the world, and architecture either will lift our spirits or lower our spirits.
[00:43:49]  In the old Penn Station in New York, you'd walk in there, you'd feel like a god.
[00:43:53]  At the very least, you'd feel like a man, like a true man standing up straight.
[00:43:56]  Then, after they obliterated the beautiful Penn Station, the Beaux Arts architecture, and they created this disgusting little rat maze, you felt like a rat.
[00:44:04]  You'd get in on the train, and you'd feel like a dirty little rat or an insect.
[00:44:07]  It would lower your spirits.
[00:44:10]  And what Trump wants to do is raise our spirits again.
[00:44:13]  What Trump wants to do is make us feel like a great nation again, and to really make America great again.
[00:44:19]  It's one of the most important legacies.
[00:44:20]  Orban just was voted out in Hungary.
[00:44:23]  I was speaking to a high level member of his government a year or two ago, and he said, You know, of all of the things that we've done in this country, our enduring legacy is going to be the architectural renewal.
[00:44:32]  They took all of this brutalist, ugly communist architecture and they just made it beautiful again.
[00:44:37]  They just redid it the palaces, the buildings.
[00:44:40]  They restored the former glory of this thousand year old kingdom.
[00:44:43]  That's what will remain.
[00:44:44]  That arc will remain.
[00:44:47]  Long after policies are amended or reformed or repealed.
[00:44:51]  What do we say of Caesar Augustus?
[00:44:53]  What is the line that we say of Caesar Augustus, the greatest emperor in our history?
[00:44:58]  Suetonius recalls this.
[00:45:00]  He says that Augustus said, I found Rome a city of bricks and I left it a city of marble.
[00:45:06]  It's that architecture.
[00:45:07]  It really matters.
[00:45:08]  This is not a flight of fancy.
[00:45:10]  When they go after Trump as being frivolous or something because he wants to build a ballroom at the White House, when he wants to build an ark, they just don't get it.
[00:45:17]  They don't understand the man, but they also just don't understand politics.
[00:45:20]  They don't understand.
[00:45:21]  The physical aspect of politics.
[00:45:23]  Okay.
[00:45:25]  Before we go, I really want to get to this angry young women piece.
[00:45:30]  It's very, very important.
[00:45:32]  I also want to get to, though, JD Vance at one of the TPUSA events just a couple nights ago.
[00:45:38]  JD gave this beautiful sermon against blackpilling.
[00:45:43]  A lot of people want to blackpill.
[00:45:45]  Young voters, in particular, are not thrilled about the war in Iran.
[00:45:48]  Conservatives wish there were more deportations.
[00:45:51]  There were a lot of deportations last year, and Trump does not get enough credit for it.
[00:45:55]  But they want the economy to be doing better.
[00:45:57]  Obviously, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz is going to cause downstream economic effects that are going to be tough.
[00:46:01]  And so some people say, I'm checking out.
[00:46:03]  I mean, for goodness sakes, you had Ilhan Omar singing the praises of her former colleague, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
[00:46:11]  Candace, too, actually.
[00:46:12]  She mentioned Candace, too.
[00:46:14]  What world are we living in where Ilhan Omar is saying nice things about these people?
[00:46:17]  But because there are these figures on the right, including former members of Congress, who were hardcore MAGA like MTG, who flipped on Trump.
[00:46:25]  And she's singing their praises.
[00:46:28]  And JD Vance gave this exhortation to get people encouraged again and to counter the blackpilling.
[00:46:42]  Ah, you know, there's no point.
[00:46:44]  No, no, no, no.
[00:46:45]  Because, or let me give you another example the Save Act, okay?
[00:46:49]  A lot of people want the Save Act.
[00:46:51]  I want the Save Act.
[00:46:52]  I've been fighting for the Save Act literally since day one of the administration.
[00:46:56]  And I've seen a lot of people saying, what the hell's the point of voting for these guys if you've got three Republicans joining with the Democrats to prevent the SAVE Act from passing, or I guess four Republicans?
[00:47:09]  And here's my response to that Yes, it is annoying to me that there are only 45 or 46 Republicans who will fight politically to get the SAVE Act passed.
[00:47:18]  But you know what?
[00:47:19]  10 years ago, that number was 35.
[00:47:22]  So the answer to frustration is engagement.
[00:47:26]  Don't give up on this process.
[00:47:28]  Get more involved in this process and demand more from people like me.
[00:47:32]  That's how we take our country back.
[00:47:33]  I just think it's important to say that.
[00:47:36]  Really important point here.
[00:47:37]  And I don't want this to be misinterpreted because I think the point the vice president is making is so crucial, especially at this moment.
[00:47:44]  But do not misinterpret it.
[00:47:46]  People are going to diminish his point and say, oh, yeah, here he comes.
[00:47:50]  The VP is just trying to, you know, give us all a pep talk.
[00:47:54]  Everything sucks.
[00:47:55]  And he's going to try to tell us it's really good and we just need to smile and be happy.
[00:47:59]  That's not what he's saying.
[00:48:01]  Is that what he's saying?
[00:48:02]  Doesn't sound like it to me.
[00:48:05]  He's saying that it is wrong to blackpill.
[00:48:09]  He's not even bragging about the accomplishments of the administration so much.
[00:48:14]  He's got some political humility here, but I can brag about that.
[00:48:17]  Do you remember when 3 million illegals were coming into the country every year?
[00:48:20]  I remember it.
[00:48:21]  That was like two years ago.
[00:48:22]  And then Trump just totally stopped that.
[00:48:25]  Had Biden remained in office or Kamala Harris, we'd have another 6 million illegals in this country.
[00:48:30]  Not only did they stop that, But within the first year in office, President Trump deported some 2 million illegal aliens.
[00:48:36]  So you have a net of 5 million illegals gone.
[00:48:40]  Inflation was 9% under Joe Biden, dropped way, way down.
[00:48:44]  President Trump's managed that very well.
[00:48:46]  The price of eggs, which is an economic indicator, but it was one of the key economic indicators over the last five years, price of eggs is down like 60%.
[00:48:57]  The Trump administration has done a lot of good.
[00:49:00]  Pro-lifers were being arrested and imprisoned, including pro-life grannies.
[00:49:04]  They were let out.
[00:49:05]  Political dissidents were being imprisoned in solitary confinement for trumped-up charges.
[00:49:10]  President Trump pardoned them.
[00:49:12]  The children were being trans.
[00:49:14]  President Trump just stopped that.
[00:49:17]  We used to have, before the Trump first term, we used to have a supposed constitutional right to abortion.
[00:49:22]  That's gone after 50 years of struggle.
[00:49:24]  Trump fixed that.
[00:49:25]  So, you know, I actually am going to say we need to recognize the wins.
[00:49:32]  We need to recognize the wins because that's right and just, but we also need to recognize the wins as a protection against blackpilling because blackpilling is always wrong.
[00:49:41]  Hope is a theological virtue and it is a command.
[00:49:44]  Despair is a sin.
[00:49:45]  If you engage in despair willingly, you are committing a serious sin.
[00:49:52]  And what is the alternative in politics?
[00:49:54]  There are two alternatives.
[00:49:57]  I'm not saying you have to blindly trust the plan.
[00:49:58]  That's not what JD is saying.
[00:50:00]  JD is saying you got to put pressure on us.
[00:50:01]  When you don't like something that's going on, let us know.
[00:50:03]  We're going to.
[00:50:04]  We're working, we're managing a lot of things, but we're going to try to improve that.
[00:50:08]  But what's the alternative to active engagement in politics?
[00:50:11]  Two alternatives terrorism and quietism.
[00:50:14]  Those are the options.
[00:50:16]  If you think the political order is just totally screwed, you have two options.
[00:50:21]  One is to subvert the whole order, to tear the whole thing down.
[00:50:25]  And the way you do that is terrorism, where you act politically outside of the law, usually through immoral means, often violent means.
[00:50:35]  So that's one option.
[00:50:37]  The left and the right have both engaged in that from time to time.
[00:50:39]  The left more so, and right now, the left especially.
[00:50:43]  There's that.
[00:50:44]  Or there's quietism, which is to say, well, I'm just checking out.
[00:50:47]  I'm not going to vote.
[00:50:48]  This is all fake.
[00:50:49]  This is all useless.
[00:50:50]  It's all pointless.
[00:50:51]  I'm just going to check out, which is precisely what the Democrats are trying to get you to do.
[00:50:57]  Now they're running this anti Catholic op, but they run it against everybody.
[00:51:02]  They say, check out.
[00:51:03]  Okay, you know what?
[00:51:04]  I'm just going to check out.
[00:51:05]  And just conveniently, that's going to give Democrats all the political power.
[00:51:10]  The only reasonable option, is there a fourth option I'm missing?
[00:51:13]  The only reasonable option is active engagement, even if you're not getting every single thing you want immediately.
[00:51:21]  You can whine and cry like a little toddler.
[00:51:23]  I'm tempted to do it sometimes, but I wanted this policy, but I don't like this policy.
[00:51:27]  Yeah, there are plenty of things I don't like.
[00:51:29]  What's the option?
[00:51:30]  I'm not going to become a terrorist and I'm not going to become a coward.
[00:51:33]  So what are we going to do?
[00:51:34]  We have to engage.
[00:51:34]  You got to act like a man sometimes in politics.
[00:51:36]  That's what you have to do.
[00:51:37]  That's what the VP is saying.
[00:51:39]  Much needed, very timely advice.
[00:51:42]  I do want to get, speaking of young men, speaking of acting like a man, young women apparently hate young men.
[00:51:49]  There's this story out of the UK, out of the New Statesman.
[00:51:51]  We've been told for 10 years these angry young men are misogynists and they hate women, and that's exacerbating the tension between the sexes.
[00:51:59]  Turns out it's actually the opposite.

=== Madison Cawthorn on Politics (00:31) ===

[00:52:01]  We don't have time to get to it today.
[00:52:02]  We'll get to it tomorrow.
[00:52:04]  We'll get to the men women stuff tomorrow.
[00:52:06]  But today's Theology Thursday.
[00:52:07]  And we have a special guest coming on.
[00:52:09]  The special guest.
[00:52:11]  Talk about a timely guest, Madison Cawthorn.
[00:52:14]  Madison Cawthorn, the prophet, crying out in the wilderness about all the creepy, weird sex stuff going on in Congress.
[00:52:20]  And now you got Swalwell going down.
[00:52:22]  You got a number of members of Congress who are caught up in this stuff.
[00:52:24]  So, anyway, we have Madison coming on the show.
[00:52:26]  The rest of the show continues now.
[00:52:27]  You do not want to miss it.
[00:52:28]  Become a member.
[00:52:28]  Use code NOLESKINNAWLES at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.