Primary Topic
This episode delves into the perceived coordinated attacks on conservative media figures and organizations, especially in the context of broader political trends and legal challenges.
Episode Summary
Main Takeaways
- Right-wing victories in European elections might predict similar trends in the U.S.
- Conservative media outlets are under significant legal and financial pressure, which Knowles suggests is politically motivated.
- There is a perceived double standard in how media outlets are treated based on their political alignment.
- The episode discusses the broader implications of these media attacks on free speech and political discourse.
- Knowles expresses concern over the sustainability of conservative media in the current political climate.
Episode Chapters
1: Introduction and Overview
Michael Knowles introduces the episode's themes, focusing on the challenges faced by conservative media. Michael Knowles: "Right-wing media outlets are collapsing under political pressure."
2: European Political Shifts
Discussion on the right-wing victories across Europe and their implications. Michael Knowles: "Right wingers scored huge wins across Europe... it bodes extremely well for Trump's chances in America in 2024."
3: Legal Challenges to Conservative Media
Exploration of the defamation lawsuits and financial troubles impacting conservative figures and platforms. Michael Knowles: "Fox had to pay out almost $800 million in a defamation lawsuit to Dominion."
4: Comparative Media Treatment
Analysis of perceived media bias and the differential treatment between conservative and liberal outlets. Michael Knowles: "You don't see left-wing media companies being held to account for the lies they spread."
Actionable Advice
- Stay Informed: Regularly follow multiple news sources to understand different perspectives.
- Support Free Speech: Engage in or support initiatives that promote free speech and resist censorship.
- Critical Consumption: Analyze news critically, considering potential biases and underlying motivations.
- Participate Politically: Stay active in political discussions and voting to influence the media landscape.
- Educate Others: Share insights about media biases and the importance of a balanced media environment.
About This Episode
The Right scores big wins across Europe, Anthony Scaramucci claims Trump will use the FBI like the Gestapo, and Zoomers are bringing parents to job interviews.
People
Michael Knowles, Hunter Biden
Companies
Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, The Gateway Pundit
Books
"Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds" by Michael Knowles
Guest Name(s):
None
Content Warnings:
None
Transcript
Michael Knowles
Just a quick pause for a moment. I know you are totally plugged into this podcast, but imagine if you enhanced the experience with a Mayflower cigar.
Luxurious, marvelous, refined.
Visit mayflowercigars.com to elevate your podcast enjoyment. You must be 21 years or older to order some exclusion supply. Back to the show.
I've got good news and I've got bad news. Two huge news stories broke over the weekend. Which do you want first? I'll start with the good news. The good news is that right wingers scored huge wins across Europe yesterday. France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, even Spain all scored big wins. They are preparing for more big wins in upcoming national elections, and it all bodes extremely well for Trump's chances in America in 2024. That's the good news. The bad news, which broke right around the same time, is that just as right wingers are on the brink of major victories, a ton of right wing media outlets are collapsing under political pressure.
And the really bad news is that I suspect that those two stories are related. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles show.
Welcome back to the show. London roberts, who is Hunter Biden's baby mama, just came out with some explosive details about her time with Hunter on the Megyn Kelly show. She says that the night she found out she was pregnant with his child, both of her cell phones crashed on different plans and some data was deleted. Hmm. Kind of strange. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to helixsleep.com knowles. I have loved my helix mattress for years. I've had it probably five, four, maybe four ish years now. And my son is feeling even better than me because he just moved from the crib to the bed. And guess what his very first mattress is. You guessed it. That boy. I hope I don't spoil him. It will be and is a helix mattress. You got a little twin size, firm, yet breathable. If you've not already checked out the helix elite collection, you need to helix harnesses years of mattress expertise to offer a truly elevated sleep experience. The Helix Elite collection includes six different mattress models, each tailored for specific sleep positions and firmness preferences. Alex has a sleep quiz that matches your body type and sleep references to the perfect mattress. Why would you buy a mattress made for someone else? They got a ten year warranty. You can try it out 100 nights risk free. They have financing options and flexible payment plans to ensure a great night's sleep is never far away. I can give you the review from my toddler. Not only is it comfy to sleep on. Also the helix mattress, very fun to jump up and down on.
They're offering our listeners 20% off all mattress orders and two free pillows. Helix sleep.com knowles that is helixsleep.com knowles. Their best offer yet. Won't last long with Helix. Better sleep starts right now.
Let's enjoy the good news. First. Good news is Europe is making a rightward political shift in Belgium. I'll just go through all these elections real quick. The liberal prime minister in Belgium has resigned. He's resigned after right wing wins in the european elections. Don't forget there are european elections for the European Parliament, for the European Union, and then there are the national elections too. So the conservatives, the right wingers did very, very well in the european elections and that bodes well for the national elections. Also, the PM is down wide because the right wing anti immigration vlogs belong party. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it, but we've talked about that party on the show before. They took second place in the election with 17 and a half percent of the vote. Don't forget, in the european elections there are lots of different little parties. It's not like in America where there's just Republicans and Democrats. So the number two top party in these elections, the hard anti immigration party, the other right wing parties gained a lot of seats and the prime minister says, okay, I'm out.
What was the number one party? This is the best part. So the hard anti immigration was the number two party. The number one party is the other nationalist right wing party, the new flemish alliance. How about in France? In France, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, has just said that he will dissolve the parliament and call for new national elections. This because right wingers won the european races.
Le Pen's populist nationalist party, which used to be called the Front Nationale, now I think it's called the national Rally. Same party, though it got twice as many votes as the governing group of Macron's acolytes, the globalist liberal party.
So now he's dissolved the parliament, they're going to have national elections. And Lapentin, the leader of the right wing party, says, great, bring it on. We just did a bang up job in the european elections. Let's go. Let's take back and make France great again. In Austria, the right wing Freedom Party won the european elections for the first time ever and pledged that same day to carry the momentum into a national election. Germany, the right wing alternative for Deutschland, got second place in the EU elections. And so they're ready to go for new federal elections. And the first place again, like Belgium was the more centrist conservative party. But it wasn't the left wing party and it wasn't the socialists. In the Netherlands, the anti immigration prime minister, Geert Wilders, increased his seats in the european parliament. That's good. Even in Spain, the center right party, the People's Party, came out on top in the european election. So what's going on here? Why is this all happening at once? And what does it mean for America? Because most people don't really care that much about Belgium. Most people don't think Belgium's a real country anyway. But it means good news for America, because there are civilizational trends that happen in elections.
It can be the case that one country goes far left and one country goes far right. But more often we see trends.
Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan come to prominence at the same time. They're basically the same kind of politician, and they rise up in the UK and in the US at exactly the same time. And actually, their reigns were almost identical. Thatcher held on a couple years longer than Reagan, who was term limited, but Reagan would have been elected to a third term. And effectively he was in the person of George Bush. Nobody was really that passionate about George Bush, but they wanted to give Reagan a third term. So you see that kind of thing. The rise of Tony Blair. Shortly after the rise of Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton ran as a new Democrat. He's a new kind of Democrat, not a socialist, far left Democrat. He's the kind of Democrat who's going to show up to Jesse Jackson's political rally and give a moderate speech and say the Democrats need to become more of a centrist party. And Tony Blair did the same thing in the UK with new labor. Same thing happened at the same time. How about Brexit? Brexit happens just months before the election of Donald Trump. Both representatives, nationalist turns, anti immigration, anti trade, had been out of the mainstream in western politics for decades at that point. They both happened about the same time. So I'm hopeful that this is what we're seeing in Europe now, a sign of things to come in America. Unless the american political system is just so corrupt that they send Trump into an orange jumpsuit and he can't win the election.
The other thing this signifies, and I haven't seen all that many people talking about, this, is a fundamental political shift. Not just the left right pendulum swinging back and forth, but a fundamental political shift that we're not always aware of.
These elections are about migration. That's what it's about. That's why the right is rising in Europe. That's really why the right is rising in America, too. It's about migration. People don't like their country being flooded with foreigners. And the elite, the liberal elite who govern our country, call us racist and bigoted and stupid and uneducated for objecting to the country being flooded with foreigners, but people still don't like it. People on the right, people in the middle, even some people on the left don't like the erasure of borders and the abolition of customs and traditions and a national sense of identity. So that's what this is about. Which means that what we are seeing here is a return of an old kind of politics, the normal kind of politics in our ideological age. We think that every political battle is about the right versus the left. Or we think that every kind of political battle is about the ideology of socialism versus the ideology of libertarianism or the ideology of ideology of ideology. But there's a more basic kind of politics, which is the defense of territories and peoples and the maintenance of traditions and ways of life. That's the real basic form of political antagonism. And so it is no surprise, it's frankly inevitable that with the rise of mass migration over the last several decades, really in America, over the last six decades, you're going to see a turning away of the neat, clean ideological politics from the neat, clean, ideological politics toward that more basic kind of politics.
We want to preserve our national identity. We want to preserve our borders. We want to preserve our traditions and our language and our way of life.
Language is key here. Press two for English really irritates people. It's not just your crotchety old grandma who doesn't like that. No one likes that. It's deeply offensive that I have to press a separate button to hear customer service in my own language, in my own country, especially because language is what separates us from animals, okay? Language is a distinguishing feature for human beings. It cuts right down to the core of who we are as the rational animal.
And it's really, really annoying when we lose that, because it signifies that we're losing something much deeper, our whole culture and our whole country. That's what this is about.
And it's why the anti immigration, further right political parties did better than the center right, squishy kind of liberal conservative parties in virtually all of these elections, people want to keep their country. It's basic stuff. You actually don't need an 800 page tome from some political philosopher dork on this. People want to keep their own countries and their ways of life, and the politicians who cater to that are going to do better in public opinion now, at the same time, you're seeing a turn rightward in european and I think also american politics.
You're seeing right wing media collapse.
This is really strange.
I'm just going to go down the list here.
Gateway pundit, which is a right wing blog, filed for bankruptcy now about a month and a half ago.
Why did they file for bankruptcy? Not just because the business model didn't work, but because of defamation lawsuits.
And it was defamation lawsuits surrounding the 2020 election and claims that there was fraud in the 2020 election.
OAN one America News is getting creamed in a defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic, an election company that had questions raised about it because there were questions raised about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Fox. We all know what happened to Fox. Fox had to pay out almost $800 million in a defamation lawsuit to Dominion, another company involved in the 2020 election. They canned Tucker Carlson, according to reports based on this settlement, and now they're facing another $2.7 billion defamation suit against smart medics. So Fox is a behemoth that can probably survive, but it's facing a lot of political pressure and certainly a lot of pressure not to talk about election integrity issues. Newsmax similar lawsuit from Smartmatic. Salem, Salem Media was forced to pull Dinesh's very popular movie 2000 mules because it raised questions about the, the election, and specifically questions not even about the smartmatic or dominion or whatever, but questions about the ballot dropboxes, which were demonstrably, in some cases illegally placed. And there was pressure to place drop boxes at illegal distances from county clerk's offices by left wing organizations that were funded by Mark Zuckerberg to the tune of $400 million. So you can follow that money regardless of any other claims made in the movie.
That movie had to be pulled. Why? Because of that kind of political pressure. The epoch times, this one seems totally unrelated. The epoch times, a right wing outlet that the feds just arrested the CFO of the epoch Times for supposed financial crimes. And then the big story that you probably saw trending is that Alex Jones is being forced to liquidate infowars to pay out a one and a half billion dollar defamation judgment against him. And in all of these cases, in pretty much all of these cases, I'm sure you can point to business practices and say, oh yeah, actually, the CFO did cook the books. Or oh yeah, actually, Alex Jones was too loose with his words and he opened himself up to a defamation claim. And oh, yeah, actually this, or oh, yeah, actually that, or oh, yeah, actually this. Sure.
But isn't it kind of weird that it's all happening right now at the same time that all of these media companies are facing intense pressure? I haven't even talked about our own company here, which we've been, I think, not to toot our own horn. We've tried to be very, very precise from the beginning. You know me, I like precision with words. I wrote a whole book about it called speechless, controlling words, controlling minds. Thank you. And we have faced intense pressure from big tech companies that have taken us, have tried to demonetize us, have tried to take us off the air, have tried to do all sorts of things. And I have noticed, at least from my little advantage here in conservative media, that that pressure campaign from the big tech companies has gotten much, much more intense in recent months. And you know, it's going to get much, much more intense because we're five months out from an election. Consequential election. The libs are celebrating this headline.
Right wing media reckoning some outlets pay a price after spreading 2020 election misinformation.
Quote, right wing media has finally faced the consequences of running disinformation campaigns, says Yun Kang Yang, an assistant professor at Texas A and M. Some of them are finally being held accountable for the lies that they spread. More here about this is what happens. Misinformation contaminates our information environment, leads to real harms to people, and erodes trust in institution. These right wing, these recent lawsuits, rather against those who made a career of spreading lies and falsehoods, will hopefully help limit the spread and amplification of some misinformation we can expect in 2024 and yet can't help but notice in all this kind of stupid reporting from NBC and the rest, you don't see left wing media companies being held to account for the lies that they spread.
The lies about Trump, the lies about Russia, Russia, Russia, the collusion hoax, the lies about Trump calling nazis fine people at Charlottesville. It never happened. Joe Biden launched his presidential campaign on that. Wheres the defamation judgment? Where are the lawsuits? The lies about January 6, we were told the worst insurrection in the history of the world. Poor left wingers and law enforcement officers were killed by the violent mob. Didnt happen. The only person who died in the political violence of that day was one of the right wing demonstrators. What about the lies about COVID The lies about COVID How many people Covid would kill? The premise for locking down our whole country, not seeing our loved ones, not hugging grandma one last time before she died, postponing weddings, canceling graduations, canceling education. What about those lies? What about the lies being spread by the liberal media? They were never held to account. That led to real harm for real people. There was real consequences to that misinformation. What about the lies about the vaccine? People died because of that. We were told the vaccine 100% safe, 100% effective. And then certain vaccines actually had to be pulled because they were causing blood clots or vaccines were causing cases of myocarditis or pericarditis.
And then all of a sudden, later on, we heard from the same authorities who told us the vaccines were 100% safe, 100% effective. Oh, actually, they're not 100% safe. And oh, actually, they're not 100% effective. And no, they don't actually stop you from catching the virus or spreading the virus or really doing all that much of anything. What about the lies about the 2000 election? Remember when the Libs pretended that they won that election? And they, and there are still some Democrats who maintain that. Where are the defamation suits against them, huh? Or the 2016 election? They said Trump's election was illegitimate. Or the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, where they say, Stacey Abrams, the governor of Georgia, or on and on and on. You don't see any judgments against them. You don't see NBC News going down. You don't see CNN going down. You don't see Hillary Clinton being thrown in court for a defamation case. It's only the right.
Did some of these right wing companies play a little loose with the legality or their finances or whatever? I don't know. Like maybe they did. I don't know anything about their cases, but I know that they did not play anywhere near as loose with the facts as the left wing companies do every single day. And the reason that these guys are all going down right now seems to me if I were a gambling man, might have something to do with the election that the liberals are terrified of losing. The people who are, who are pulling this kind of stuff right now, the american left is trying to throw a former president and current presidential nominee in prison. Okay? There is nothing they will not do to win this election. Now, what else are we coming up on?
We're coming up on father's day.
The best thing you can get your father. And we still have decent stock. Actually, I can't even pull this up from my desk. It's stuck on Mayflower cigars, I think, you know, it. It is very in demand since we launched. You know, we sold out instantly, but it's an aged product. It's a handmade product. It took a little while, so we refilled the stock. It sold out again, sells it again.
Order now. You still have time. Go to mayflowercigars.com. get the beautiful Mayflower dawn blend. It's a nice morning cigar if you're a two cigar a day kind of guy. It's also good for people who don't smoke that many cigars. Nice, mild to medium bodied, beautiful, all sorts of sizes. Or you can get the Mayflower dusk, which is my personal favorite blend. More for the evening. You can have one of each, though. It's really nice, all sorts of samplers. And you can get the Mayflower cutter, which I have in my pocket. We actually might be sold out on the cutter. I don't know. Go check if you can. Beautiful zykro cutter, though. Really top of the line stuff. Mayflowercigars.com there's so much more to say. First, though, go to goodranchers.com comma use code Knowles I had a marvelous breakfast. Well, I always have a marvelous breakfast. But I had an especially marvelous breakfast. I want to say it was like two or three days ago because Elisa makes me. It wasn't even leftover steak. It was just brand new juicy steak from good ranchers with my eggs. You can get that, too. How can one do that? Because good ranchers gives you the highest quality meat. You're going to get at the lowest prices. You're going to find it. And it's from America. It's not imported from some third world country. It's, I don't know how they managed to do it, but it's amazing. They've got their limited edition KINg cut right now, just in time for Father's Day. And you can get free bacon, two packs of good ranchers Applewood smoked bacon uncured with every single order.
It is great. With every new subscription, you get that free bacon and the bacon. For me, that's just the cherry on top, because really it's all about the meat and the chicken and everything else. Good ranchers.com use code Knowles Canada W L E S. Get the brand new King cut box for a dad that you know, or subscribe to any of their custom curated boxes for yourself. Don't forget to use code knowles at checkout to claim your free Applewood smoked bacon for life. Goodranchers.com promo code Knowles speaking of the deep state, James Clapper, this is the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper is one of the guys who signed that letter in October of 2020 claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was russian disinformation. Clapper was one of 51 former intelligence officials who said, do not believe the New York Post reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story. This has, quote, all the classic earmarks of a russian information campaign.
And in part based on the supposed expertise of these intelligence officials who would never lie to us, big tech was able to censor that story. And after the 2020 election, there was a poll that was taken that showed that 12% of Biden voters would have changed their vote had they known that the Hunter Biden laptop was real, not just because of the drugs and the sex and the weird stuff on the laptop, but because of the evidence in texts and emails that the Biden family was corrupt and that Hunter Biden was the bag man for the Biden family and that he was giving kickbacks to the guy at the top, the big guy, Joe Biden.
It had not only the suggestion of all of these sorts of crimes, it had direct evidence, text and video evidence, in some cases, of major, major crimes. And the intelligence officials said, oh, it's russian disinformation. Now, we know it was not.
We know it was not, in part because the prosecutors who were finally forced to actually prosecute Hunter Biden by a judge, they came out and they submitted the laptop as evidence and they said, we've checked it out, we've assessed it. It's legit. So James Clapper, full circle. James Clapper, former director of national intelligence for the Libs, was asked, do you regret signing that letter, saying it was disinformation?
He gave a one word answer. What do you think that answer was?
No.
No, he doesn't. People are shocked by this. You don't regret saying something that was not true, that played a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2020 election based on disinformation, ironically says, no, of course he doesn't regret it, and here's why. The purpose of that letter from the intelligence community was not to warn of actual russian subterfuge.
The purpose of that letter from the intelligence community was to stop Trump. The purpose of that letter from the intelligence community, the reason they signed it, was because the Hunter Biden laptop story was damaging to Biden and could have tilted an already tight election to Trump, even with all the rigging, could have tilted that election to Trump.
And so these people in the IC who have hated Trump and tried to undermine his candidacy since he came down the golden escalator in 2015.
These people who cooked up a fake steel dossier, ironically enough, with russian intelligence, to try to undermine Trump with the Hillary Clinton campaign, they said, okay, we're going to sign this letter and that's going to stop the spread of this Hunter Biden laptop story, even through private messages on some social media apps. And that is going to help Biden squeak through this election and beat Donald Trump. That was the purpose, and the letter achieved its purpose. So, of course, James Clapper has no regrets. Why would he have any regrets? He won.
The letter did exactly what he intended for it to do.
The confusion here is that people never understood what that letter was intended to do. Some people understood it, but most did not because the intelligence community lied, because the letter itself was a classic example of disinformation. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to hillsdale.edu Knowles time is one of our most precious commodities. If you were tired of scrolling through shows on tv and finding nothing but the same mind numbing content, don't waste the precious little time that you have with that nonsense. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses. You can learn about the works of CS Lewis, the stories in the book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient church with Hillsdale colleges online courses all available for free. If you are not sure which lecture to try, a great place to start is with american citizenship and its decline with Victor Davis Hansen. In this eight lecture course, Doctor Hansen explores the history of citizenship in the west and the threats it faces today. These include the erosion of the middle class, the disappearance of our borders, the growth of an unaccountable deep state, and the rise of globalist organizations with their self paced courses. You have the freedom to start whenever and wherever you want. Go right now to hillsdale.edu knowles k nwles to start. It is free. It's easy to get started. Hillsdale.edu knowles that is hillsdale.edu Knowles what is the solution?
Here is the solution to all these deep state shenanigans for the conservatives to get in there and then wield the deep state to our advantage. That is what the momentary White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who reigned over White House communications for precisely eleven days.
This is what he's suggesting on CNN.
He's saying he doesn't want revenge. Revenge is success. And on the other side of his mouth, he's letting people know, hey, I can't wait to get this job because I'm going to seek retribution through the justice system. He's also told friends of mine that have defended him in court, defense attorneys, that he wants to use the FBI as the Gestapo. He probably doesn't know what that means, but he has said that Trump's going to use the FBI as his gestapo if he gets elected.
No, he won't.
Probably some people would like him to do that, but he won't. He won't do that. How do we know he won't do that? Because he's been president before. And what did he do?
He said, we're going to lock her up. We're going to lock her up. Lock her up. That was one of the big chants of the 2016 race, second only to build the wall. Build the wall. During a debate with Clinton, Clinton said, I don't want to live in an America where Trump is president. He said, yeah, because you'd be in jail. He was a great singer, but then he didn't prosecute her.
And of course he wasnt going to be the one to break the 230 some odd years of american tradition where we dont prosecute our political enemies, at least at the top of politics.
But it means hes not going to do it. Hes not going to do it for that reason. And the even deeper reason that Trump is not going to use the FBI as his gestapo is because it is not possible to do that if youre a Republican, because the institutions themselves are liberal.
That's why the libs get to wield the deep state, the administrative agencies pretty effectively. Obama did a very good job wielding the administrative agencies not only to advance his agenda, but also to persecute his opponents.
You think about the Lois Lerner Ir's scandal under Barack Obama, where he used the IR's to go after his enemies through the tax law.
The conservatives aren't quite as able to do that because the institutions themselves are liberal. Even if Trump marched down to the FBI, he just saunters into Quantico day two of his presidency and he says, hey, you need to go after my enemies. They just wouldn't do it.
And guess what? The career bureaucrats, not just at the FBI, but throughout the administrative agencies, they're going to be there a lot longer than Trump is. Trump is term limited one term. Even if you're there for two terms, it doesn't matter. The career people are going to outlast the elected people.
Its just not going to happen.
Now, Anthony Scaramucci is not exactly known for the top tier of political analysis in the world.
But its just preposterous. Oh yeah, trumps going to use the FBI as a Gestapo. Yeah as if he could.
He doesnt want to, but as if he could, he couldnt actually do it even if he did. Thats just not how the institutions are set up. Now speaking of personnel matters, turning away from the government toward the private sector for a moment, there's a disturbing story out here.
Zoomers are bringing their parents on job interviews.
I didn't believe it myself, but there's a survey, there's a poll. You know polls would never lie in a resume template. Survey of almost 1500 us Gen Z zoomers, 70% 70 said they had asked their parents for help during their job search. That seems typical to me. At least ask a little advice. Hey mom and dad, what do you think? Should I do this or that?
But then 26% that is by my rough calculations, a little over one in four zoomers said they had brought a parent to a job interview for the Zoomers, who said they brought it apparent to an in person interview, I almost can't believe this. And I certainly can't get through without laughing. 37% said they had the parent come into the office.
26% said the parent physically sat in the room while the interview took place.
18% said that their parents introduced themselves to the hiring manager. And then here's the kicker. 7% said the parent even answered questions for the job applicant.
Let me just try to find the nice thing here. You know, I'm a glass half full kind of guy.
It is good that Zoomers have respect for their parents.
It is good that zoomers seem more inclined to remain closed to their parents than some prior generations have.
This is completely insane.
So those are the only good things I can really see in this. And I know Pendula, they swing back and forth. And so some generations, they basically want nothing to do with their parents. And now zoomers are sitting in mom's house up until the age of 45, eating chicken nuggets. That's probably the pendulum swinging too much in the other direction. At least it's good that they want to get a job. But to bring your mom on a job interview? Not the smartest idea.
What is this a sign of?
It's a sign, obviously, that zoomers are having trouble growing up. Millennials, my own generation famously has had some trouble growing up.
Zoomers seem to be even a little worse off than that.
And the reason that that's really bad is that not growing up is a sign of despair. And despair is a sin.
Despair is a loss of hope if you're not growing up, if you want to stay in perpetual adolescence, you don't want to move out of mommy's and daddy's house. You don't want to date people, you don't want to get married, you don't want to have kids. Millennials and zoomers are just not having kids. They're not getting married, they're not having kids. That is a sign of despair, because it means you don't have any hope for the future.
You're comfortable in the status quo.
You wish against hope and against the way that reality works, that you can just freeze in time and space forever.
And when you do consider the future, it's only with trepidation and fear, which is why you don't want to take any risks.
Get married, have kids, even go on a job interview alone.
This is one of the reasons why I would never vote for a politician who's not married pretty much under any circumstances. No river so long doesn't contain a Ben, to quote Norm Macdonald, but I almost certainly would not vote for a politician who was not married. I would not follow any kind of political leader who's not married. And the reason for that is that marriage is the fundamental political unit. Its the basic building block of all of politics. If a political leader has not demonstrated that they can do even that, even the most basic aspect of politics, then I should have no confidence whatsoever that they can do anything grander in politics.
This is why a would be political leader pontificating from his parents basement is not a good sign.
Even we were talking about Europe a little earlier.
These european leaders, who many of them are married, but they refuse to have children. It's not even that necessarily. They're caught in infertility. They just don't want to have children. They don't want to adopt children. That's a bad sign because it means they have no skin in the game for the future.
They are not exemplifying the basic political unit. Why on earth should I believe that they have any ability to help construct a political future on a broader scale? Now, speaking of children, explosive new information has come out from Hunter Biden's baby mama, London Roberts. I've broadly stayed out of the Hunter Biden tabloid stuff. I've mentioned the drugs and the sex and everything, obviously because he's being tried for that right now. But I haven't tried to get too in the weeds on it cause it's gross and I don't really wanna look at it. And it seems ugly to gossip about. But some of it has real political implications. For instance, Hunter Biden impregnates a stripper during a period where hes smoking crack all the time.
And this stripper gets pregnant, and she finds out shes pregnant. Shes telling Hunter Biden.
And then stuff starts getting really weird.
London Roberts
I had two cell phones, which is also, I still do to this day, but I had two cell phones at the time because my Arkansas phone had a cellular data that didn't pick up at the place that I was living in DC. So I got a different, I got sprint and at and t to even out the data, and everyone could reach me. But that night, they both, at the same time, crashed in front of me and my friends. A lot of stuff is gone from my icloud had it not been backed up or whatever, but just about everything with hunter was gone.
Michael Knowles
So what do you think happened there.
London Roberts
That is still up in the air? That's something that I can't explain. I don't know exactly what happened.
Michael Knowles
I don't know exactly what happened. You could say, well, maybe it was at and t. Well, hold on. She said she had two cell phones with different service because there was different coverage in her hometown and in DC.
Well, maybe it was an iPhone problem. Yeah, maybe she had two different, it was two different phones, though. Yeah, sure. An iPhone can glitch out every now and again. What are the odds that two iPhones or Android or whatever phone she has would glitch at it exactly the same time? And what are the odds that that would happen just coincidentally, coincidentally, when she gets the information that she's pregnant with the illegitimate child of the son of the vice president? What are the odds?
What are the odds?
Well, now, you might say, Michael, you sound like a conspiracy theorist.
You dont have any proof that Biden and the liberals would do this.
Youre right. I guess I dont have any hard proof.
But if youre asking me, is this really possible, would the government really do this?
Ruling liberal class really do this? They're trying to imprison the republican nominee.
They are right now, actively trying to imprison the former president and current leader of the opposition, who, according to polls, is slated to beat the current president in November, and they're trying to throw him in prison four different ways at the same time.
Yeah, I think they would do this, Nan, maybe 20 years ago, they wouldn't have done this. Maybe 30 years ago. We are living in a different political climate than then. We were living in a different political order than that.
The right seems poised for major victories. This is borne out in actual elections that are taking place all over the west. And at the same time, a ton of right wing media companies get attacked and face collapse or bankruptcy because of political pressure driven by defamation, lawsuits from the left and federal investigations. That happens at exactly the same time.
Is it possible that it's some mere coincidence? Yeah, I guess that's possible. But, guys, they're trying to throw the republican nominee in prison. There is nothing they won't do.
The rational, I think, humble and modest conclusion to come to when we see these sorts of things happening is, yeah, duh. Of course they would do it. The only question is, do they actually have the wherewithal? Did they actually get their act together enough to do it? In this case, seems pretty persuasive. Now, speaking of men and women, men need a razor that actually works. Jeremy's second gen razors are bigger, they're better. They're a number one bestseller on Amazon. Let's break down these razors. First off, the new second gen razors are radically redesigned from top to bottom. The ergonomic handle ensures superior durability and comfort. Jeremy's has options for every man out there. Check out the sprint three, perfect for a quick, clean shave. Then there is the new and improved precision five your go to for an exceptionally smooth and close shave. While other companies are busy pondering, pandering, rather to dei and woke ideologies, Jeremy's Razors is focused on what really matters, and that is delivering a superior shave.
Visit jeremysrazors.com dot choose the razor that is right for you.
My favorite comment yesterday is from cool Papa J Magic. Wow.
Again, it's not that I'm always reading the names of the people, but some of these guys just pop up again and again like cool Papa J Magic says, michael, look what they're doing.
Please stop calling them liberals.
Oh, I've gotten this criticism before where when the political establishment is trying to take our stuff and imprison us and lock us down and take away our businesses and stop us from seeing family, they say, Michael, there's nothing liberal about these people. There are leftists, there are marxists, they're communists, they're thisists, they're thatists. But they're not liberal. Don't call them liberal.
You know, say the left, don't say the liberals.
The reason I say liberal is because I fundamentally disagree with that distinction, because I don't think liberalism is good. When people say call them leftists, not liberals. The premise is that leftists are bad and liberals are good. I don't think liberalism is good. I think liberalism is really bad. I think liberalism leads naturally to leftism. I think it's true of all liberalism, the new modern kind and the classical kind, which is supposedly good. It's all based on, on a false understanding of human nature and a fundamental rebellion against God and an exaltation of pride, which is why it's no surprise that liberal societies end up having actual parades to pride, the queen of vice and the deadliest of the seven deadly sins. So liberalism itself is bad, and that's why I call them the libs. I think it's just the broadest category that encompasses all of the different little groups that are involved in our cultural and political decay.
Now speaking of questions of political justice, the other big news story that came out this weekend was another foreign news story after the european elections and I guess the media collapse, there was this big story that came out of the Israel Gaza war. The story is that it's good news and bad news, I guess. Right? Another good news and bad news. The good news is the israeli defense forces rescued four hostages.
So people forget that there are still hostages. I think most people assume the hostages who Hamas took on October 7 of last year are dead by now. I think a lot of people have lost hope that they're still alive. Well, some of them are still alive, and the state of Israel just rescued four of them. Bad news is in rescuing four of them. According to the Palestinians, at least over 200 civilians were killed. Now again, some of those numbers are a little tough, and even international bodies have revised down some of the numbers on civilian casualties. But let's just say it's true.
Palestinian officials say more than 200 people were killed in this raid.
This took place in central Gaza's al Nusrat. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing that. And people are attacking the state of Israel for this. And, you know, I've been pretty even handed, I think, on the Israel Gaza war. And I've said, oh, this I think was justified. This I don't think was justified. I have defended the state of Israel for certain actions. I've also criticized the state of Israel pretty pointedly. As I've said repeatedly, I'm quite irked at the state of Israel's defense of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan, which is now arming up to commit another genocide against Armenia. Armenia being the earliest christian nation in the world, which converted more than a decade before emperor Constantine legalized Christianity throughout the roman empire. All I'm saying is I have a nuanced view of the conflict. Okay. And yet, in the case of this raid, it seems to me basically the most justified raid of the entire Gaza war.
As I've said, both while I am defending and criticizing the state of Israel, the lens through which I'm viewing this is just war theory.
It's not that all war is justified or that all war is evil. War can be justified if certain conditions are met in going to war, and then war must also be justified in the conduct of war. And a war might be just in terms of going to war, but not just in how the war is conducted. And so I'm just going through the list here.
To be a just war, the war has to be called and conducted by a sovereign authority.
I think state of Israel satisfies that criterion.
It has to have a just cause. So I think this raid, the just cause is Hamas took civilian hostages. Yeah, I think that's probably a just cause. You're gonna go get the hostages. It has to have right intentions. So it's not just to commit some atrocity. Obviously the intentions were to rescue the hostages, and in fact, the IDF succeeded at doing that.
And you have to not intend things that are intrinsically evil.
And this is the rub, right? Because 200 civilians died. But does anyone believe that the intention of this raid was to kill 200 civilians?
How could you say that when the IDF actually rescued four hostages, not only tried to rescue the hostages, but actually succeeded at doing that? So we have living proof that the intention of the raid was to get hostages. So through the principle of double effect, which is very important to the philosophy and theology of, say, St. Thomas Aquinas, and also just war theory, which is developed greatly by St. Thomas Aquinas, that the intention of the raid was to get the hostages. The unintended secondary effect of that was to kill civilians. That doesnt therefore suggest that the war is not justified, and then that the war has to be proportional, the good to be achieved has to outweigh the evil of war. I think the good to be achieved by rescuing hostages and disincentivizing the future taking of hostages certainly suggests that this raid was proportional.
I dont know. Its crazy to me that people would. Chris, there are plenty of reasons to criticize the state of Israel, but this raid, it seems crazy.
If you criticize this raid as being unjust, I think you unintentionally have to gut all of just war theory, and then you're kind of floating in outer space, then you really don't have any way to ascertain the moral goodness or wrongness of any kind of war. Anyway, speaking of the war in Gaza, these four hostages were happily rescued, three of them male hostages, we now know were held by a palestinian journalist who reported for the Palestinian Chronicle and for Al Jazeera. I mention this little coda to the story because its difficult in war. Its very easy, when youre an armchair quarterback, to distinguish between civilians and combatants in wars. But in reality, its not a way to think about it. If Americans were taken hostage by a terror group, taken to a foreign territory, first of all, that territory would not exist within a matter of days. But second of all, we would all consider this kind of a military operation to be totally justified, even if civilians were killed as an unintended consequence.
Especially because we know it's very difficult. In Afghanistan, it was very difficult to distinguish between civilians and combatants. In Iraq, it was also difficult. Vietnam, famously, it was difficult to distinguish between, we're not talking about redcoats marching onto a battlefield. We're talking about places where the distinction between soldier and civilian gets a little bit blurrier.
But furthermore, when we're talking about journalists here, journalists are never neutral. I'm not calling for open season on journalists, but journalists are not neutral. Journalists are not neutral because language is not neutral. So journalists are always advocating some kind of side, whether they're willing to admit it or not.
It's propaganda, that language is simply weaponized because language expresses views. Language is just signifiers that have a relation to something that is signified and that is advancing some kind of idea. It's painting some kind of picture which will be better or worse, more or less favorable to one belligerent or another.
So in this case, you see it literally occur that the so called journalist was holding these people hostage. Yeah. Okay. That is an extreme version of a fact that we all need to acknowledge. Talk about liberalism being mistaken and full of lies. We believe, according to liberalism, that journalists can be neutral. There is no neutrality. Of course not.
Certainly not when we're talking about sending words onto the rhetorical battlefield within politics, of course, that can't be neutral. You want to see an example of the impossibility of neutrality?
Look at Old Town Alexandria.
Old town Alexandria, according to some reporting from Mary Margaret Olihan, has replaced crosswalks with the Pride progress flag.
Now, the pride progress flag isn't even just the regular pride flag. It's like the terrorist pride flag.
It's the rainbow with that triangle with some transgender stuff, and I think some racial stuff in there. And it's a little bit more aggressive even than the Pride flag. That's the crosswalk now. And you might say, okay, well thats because its the month of June and thats just how it goes.
No, according to Mary Margaret, the Alexandria city council voted to permanently install the new Pride crosswalks a year ago.
Permanent?
Its just there. So what do you do? In part, I like the idea that you can just drive your scooter or whatever or in your car. I guess even if you're walking in the crosswalk, you know, just kind of do donuts in there and kind of really scuff that up, though you'll probably go to jail if you do that.
I like the idea that you're trotting this thing underfoot and you're stomping all over it. But no, what they're really forcing you to do is walk across this, make this part of your daily life, participate in the pride ideology.
If we do not suppress a powerful ideology, we will get more of it. The pride ideology is powerful in as much as the people who are in power, who are enthralled to the principalities and powers of this world.
Spiritual wickedness in high places. They have some mojo, they've got some political power and they are advancing this ideology. And if you don't suppress that, you're going to get more of it.
Liberalism tells us, nah, man, you do. You just do whatever you want. Don't yuck my yum. But no, an ideology is going to grow or it's going to diminish if it's got any power behind it at all. The liberals know this. This is why the liberals, looking even beyond ideology, see Christianity, which is religion and not only religion, it's true religion and they suppress it every chance they get. They spy on catholic churches. That's what Obama's, or that's what Joe Biden, that was a freudian slip because it's basically the same administration. That's what Biden's FBI was up to. They go in, they sue nuns for advancing catholic teaching. They try to prohibit catholic schools and institutions from upholding catholic teaching more broadly, they suppress any kind of flavor of christian belief in public life because they know if you don't suppress it, you're going to get more of it. And then what do they do? They exalt their own anti religion, the pride religion, the anti religion that caused Adam and Eve to fall out of the Garden of Eden and Satan to fall like lightning from heaven. They promote that in the public square in part because they know that the conservatives are not going to suppress it because we still believe all the lies and the myths of liberalism, whereas the libs understand what that ideology is really about. The rest of the show continues. Now it's music Monday. You don't want to miss it. Become a member. Use code noltskinowles at checkout for two months, free on all annual plans.