Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: If Donald Trump loses the November election, what do you
Speaker 4: think went wrong?
Speaker 1: How is it possible that Biden could get ten million
Speaker 1: more votes in twenty twenty than Democrats had done it
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. One answer to that is, well, because
Speaker 1: all the rules changed, So you got a new game
Speaker 1: and you've got new results as a consequence. Event, I
Speaker 1: would just point out, so I was down in DC
Speaker 1: on January twenty first, twenty seventeen, covering the Women's March.
Speaker 1: Something like five million people, most of them women, came
Speaker 1: out in March that day against Donald Trump. Continue with
Speaker 1: a historically inaccurate analysis and you're going to have an
Speaker 1: improper kind of strategy.
Speaker 3: Out of it.
Speaker 4: All right, Welcome to Counterpoints Friday. We're now about a
Speaker 4: week and a half away from the November election, and
Speaker 4: Ryan and I are joined today by Michael Knowles, the
Speaker 4: host of The Michael Knowles Show, who also has a
Speaker 4: candle line.
Speaker 1: Michael, you know I only sell combustibles now, so I
Speaker 1: have my Mayflower cigars. I wasn't sure if I'd become
Speaker 1: a candle mogul, but I guess a lot of the
Speaker 1: audience is a kind of live, laugh, love, suburban feminine type.
Speaker 1: Because we are selling bazillions of candles at the candleclub
Speaker 1: dot com. They're a great product. I'm not surprised.
Speaker 3: Ryan.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's time free to go to ndle.
Speaker 3: Everyone needs a good candle. Yeah, that's for sure.
Speaker 4: Well, Michael, one thing we wanted to start off with
Speaker 4: just putting all of our cards on the table. I
Speaker 4: can't think of two people that probably disagree more than
Speaker 4: you and Ryan Grim So we're hoping for a lively conversation.
Speaker 4: But one place to start could be if Donald Trump
Speaker 4: loses the November election, what do you think went wrong?
Speaker 4: Who would deserve the blame? It is basically a tied
Speaker 4: race right now, so that's not outside the realm of possibility.
Speaker 4: Kamala Harris despite all of the flaws that you and
Speaker 4: I might ascribe to her, and I think reasonably so,
Speaker 4: is still, you know, popular among some swath of the
Speaker 4: American people, significant swath among the American people looks like
Speaker 4: an even swath compared with Donald Trump. So if Trump
Speaker 4: actually loses in November, who's to blame?
Speaker 1: I think the blame would have to lie in the
Speaker 1: way that the system has been changed. So, you know,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, the election rules were largely changed to
Speaker 1: extend election day to election season and to encourage widespread
Speaker 1: mail in ballots, which makes ballot harvesting a little bit easier.
Speaker 1: I'm not even really getting into the shenanigans that sometimes
Speaker 1: crop up in the city machines. I'm just talking about
Speaker 1: the actual, now legal and official modes of conducting the
Speaker 1: election that obviously radically changed the nature of the election
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. A lot of people said, how is
Speaker 1: it possible that Biden could get ten million more votes
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty than Democrats had done in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: And one answer to that is, well, because all the
Speaker 1: rules changed, So you know, you got a new game
Speaker 1: and you've got new results as a consequence. Event I
Speaker 1: think that would be really the only way to explain it.
Speaker 1: You know, I love Trump, not a big Kamala fan.
Speaker 1: I'm a conservative Republican, But even trying to take some
Speaker 1: distance here, it seems to me that the issues basically
Speaker 1: all cut for Trump right now. The economy cuts for Trump,
Speaker 1: foreign policy cuts for Trump, immigration cuts for Trump, some
Speaker 1: of the social issues cut for Trump. Probably the one
Speaker 1: issue that the Democrats before you are getting.
Speaker 5: Before before you get into that, because I think that's
Speaker 5: an interesting point to May. I did want to flag
Speaker 5: on one point you made there, that access to the
Speaker 5: ballot is the only explanation for why there were so
Speaker 5: many more people voting in twenty twenty than twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: I would just point out.
Speaker 5: So I was down in DC on January twenty first,
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen, covering the Women's March. I have never seen
Speaker 5: a march that big in my life. In Washington, DC.
Speaker 5: Something like five million people, most of them women, came
Speaker 5: out in marched that day against Donald Trump. This is
Speaker 5: the day after he was inaugurated. Democrats themselves, the Democratic
Speaker 5: leadership was hostile to or skeptical of that Women's march.
Speaker 5: They didn't they were flat on their back. This was
Speaker 5: an organic kind of Facebook generated reaction to the election
Speaker 5: of Donald Trump, and it was it was real, like
Speaker 5: the anger at and the shock that Trump had become
Speaker 5: president was a real thing. And you saw that energy
Speaker 5: for four straight years, and you saw it metastasize in
Speaker 5: some really interesting ways that we can talk about. And
Speaker 5: I think that that played a significant role in why
Speaker 5: so many people voted in twenty twenty, like they.
Speaker 3: Were just living. I'm not so sure.
Speaker 1: I'm not denying that the left is good at street organizing.
Speaker 1: They do it a lot, but I don't think the
Speaker 1: Women's March was unique. You saw similar street protests with
Speaker 1: George Floyd Riot's even before that. You saw it with
Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street. Even before that, you saw it with
Speaker 1: the ant Occupy War or podcast.
Speaker 3: By Wall Street. I was, I was. I covered that too.
Speaker 5: There were dozens of people that occupy Wall Street, hundreds
Speaker 5: at the most even, But.
Speaker 1: There were occupied protests throughout the country too. There was
Speaker 1: even in New Haven. I was in college at the time,
Speaker 1: and they'd occupy New Haven, which I agree it was
Speaker 1: pretty pitiful. But even going back to the Bush era,
Speaker 1: you know, you had Code Pink, you had all of
Speaker 1: these kind of protests so that the left does that.
Speaker 1: The left takes to the streets throughout the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't always translate to it was.
Speaker 5: Like substantially different numbers of people that five million people
Speaker 5: is the most in American history came out against Trump.
Speaker 5: I'm just saying, it's just worth understanding that as like
Speaker 5: you're no your enemy, no your adversary, Like they were
Speaker 5: pissed and it was real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe the left, the left gets very angry, and
Speaker 1: they do it in different numbers at different times. My
Speaker 1: only contention is I don't know that street protests always
Speaker 1: translate to success at the ballot box. If that were
Speaker 1: the case, I think probably Carry would have want to
Speaker 1: know four and I think probably Hillary would have won
Speaker 1: in sixteen. So what changed here was not that the
Speaker 1: Democrats were especially angry, or that you know, a certain segment,
Speaker 1: you know, women were especially angry. I think what changed
Speaker 1: and what accounts for ten million new votes is that
Speaker 1: they changed the election rules. And so you described that
Speaker 1: as access to the ballot. I suppose certain people who
Speaker 1: otherwise would not be motivated to vote, who weren't paying
Speaker 1: attention to the election, might have cast a ballot because
Speaker 1: of ballot harvesting, but it also.
Speaker 3: Does I don't want to get blocked down.
Speaker 5: And I'm I'm just saying, you can't compare the Women's
Speaker 5: March and the amount of energy that pulsed into the
Speaker 5: streets in twenty seventeen to the Iraq War. I was,
Speaker 5: I was actually participated, though that was before I was
Speaker 5: a journalist. There were a couple hundred thousand at the
Speaker 5: peak that came out for that Code pink is like
Speaker 5: six people in a group house in DC. Like these
Speaker 5: these are not the most comparable movements.
Speaker 1: I'm just And you don't have to absorb any of
Speaker 1: this that I'm saying, but your analysis is going to
Speaker 1: continue to be confused if if you don't if you
Speaker 1: if you really believe that code pink in during the
Speaker 1: Iraq War is the same as five million women coming
Speaker 1: out of the streets. And I think, I think every
Speaker 1: four year politics, I think the Libs come out every
Speaker 1: four years or so and they yell in, they screen.
Speaker 5: It's just historically inaccurate. And but good continue with a
Speaker 5: historically inaccurate analysis, and you're and you're going to have
Speaker 5: uh an improper kind of strategy out of it.
Speaker 4: Well, Michael, maybe here's a good question.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It kind of looks like we're winning the election right now,
Speaker 1: so I think I think the Republican strategy has played
Speaker 1: pretty well. We'll see, we'll see if the Republicans can
Speaker 1: overcome the new rule changes that the Democrats uh scrammed
Speaker 1: on everybody's throats. But as of right now, the polls
Speaker 1: are looking very, very good for Trump. So if anyone
Speaker 1: needs to rethink strategy, I think it would probably be
Speaker 1: the party that ran a guy who obviously had dementia,
Speaker 1: lied about it, swapped out the candidate at the last
Speaker 1: minute for a woman who never got primary vote while
Speaker 1: she was running for president on issues that she can't
Speaker 1: win other than maybe trying to promote infanticide. Even then,
Speaker 1: probably not going to push her over the finish line.
Speaker 4: Well, let's talk about that, because to your point, now,
Speaker 4: Donald Trump has never been this is a weird figure,
Speaker 4: but he's actually never been more or less unpopular. If
Speaker 4: you look at his favorability ratings, they've gone up since
Speaker 4: like twenty twenty, which is baffling. And if you had
Speaker 4: told me on January seventh that would happen. The only
Speaker 4: way I would believe it is if the media continued
Speaker 4: to react very poorly to like legitimately objectionable things that
Speaker 4: Donald Trump was doing, but having the exact opposite of
Speaker 4: what made sense of reaction to the media and not
Speaker 4: understanding his voters, not understanding why people continued to like him.
Speaker 4: That was the only way that it would make sense
Speaker 4: to me. But the point that I wanted to ask is,
Speaker 4: as you mentioned, it looks like a lot of the
Speaker 4: issues that are front of mine for voters are cutting
Speaker 4: in Republicans' favor, cutting in Trump's favor. But even so,
Speaker 4: this is basically a statistically tied race, meaning there's a
Speaker 4: lot of support for Kamala Harris. And I guess, maybe,
Speaker 4: to Ryan's point, what do you make of that, why
Speaker 4: are so many people if all of those issues are
Speaker 4: cutting in Donald Trump's election? The media right now is
Speaker 4: asking why isn't Kamala Harris running away with the election,
Speaker 4: But maybe the question is why isn't Donald Trump running
Speaker 4: away with the election if the issues are so in
Speaker 4: his favor?
Speaker 1: Well, I think that there are a lot of historical
Speaker 1: issues with it, but I think that big the chief
Speaker 1: issue right now is the way that the election is
Speaker 1: being conducted, so we talk about new voters being brought in. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the Biden Harris administration has flooded the country with foreign nationals,
Speaker 1: many of whom are planning to vote in the election.
Speaker 1: You don't need to take my word for it. The
Speaker 1: Heritage Foundation I got video interviewing illegal aliens who admitted
Speaker 1: on camera I'm an illegal alien, I have been registered
Speaker 1: to vote, and I intend to vote for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: So this is all available online. You've seen some pushback
Speaker 1: against that in various states, but it's just a fact
Speaker 1: that when you have eight million new border encounters over
Speaker 1: a three and a half year period, foreign nationals who
Speaker 1: over went elmingly identify with Democrats. That's going to have
Speaker 1: downstream demographic effects, especially because we know that the children
Speaker 1: and even the grandchildren of these immigrants, many of whom
Speaker 1: are illegal immigrants, identify as Democrats and they will have
Speaker 1: the right way.
Speaker 3: After that. Just one final point on this.
Speaker 1: This is after the largest movement of people in recorded history,
Speaker 1: which is immigration into the United States since nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: So I think that's part of the reason is that
Speaker 1: the Democrats have explicitly campaigned on changing the demographics of
Speaker 1: a country in a cynical way that actually often harms
Speaker 1: the people they're bringing in but will help them electorally.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's why this election looks different than
Speaker 1: if it were taking place they twenty years ago. Walk
Speaker 1: us through, Walk us through how somebody who is here
Speaker 1: illegally would would vote?
Speaker 3: Like what? Well he would?
Speaker 5: Why have we why have we failed to catch anybody
Speaker 5: other than like one or two people in the.
Speaker 1: Past we've got we've got more than one or two people,
Speaker 1: but maybe six. Well, yeah, I think it's pro more
Speaker 1: than six. The way that we have, the way that
Speaker 1: it's nothing, it's like minuscule. And then they're all in Texas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no they're not.
Speaker 1: They're actually throughout a number of states, including some liberal
Speaker 1: states like California. But californiaou'd be a good place to
Speaker 1: start because of motor voter laws. So that's the easiest way.
Speaker 1: When illegal aliens in states with liberal policies go to
Speaker 1: the DMV, they're allowed to get driver's licenses and other
Speaker 1: identification forms, and at the DMV they're allowed to register
Speaker 1: to vote. Now, of course, officially speaking, they're not supposed
Speaker 1: to register to vote. But if everyone is automatically being
Speaker 1: offered the opportunity to register to vote, and they're getting
Speaker 1: their driver's license. Then the people who don't have that
Speaker 1: eligibility but nonetheless can get a driver's license sometimes fall
Speaker 1: into that pile. You're seeing a big issue right now
Speaker 1: in Arizona because there's a difference between the federal law
Speaker 1: and the state and the local law. So for state
Speaker 1: and local elections, people have to show proof of citizenship
Speaker 1: to register to vote. For the federal level, they don't,
Speaker 1: which to me is pretty crazy. It seems to me that,
Speaker 1: if anything, it ought to be flipped the the federal
Speaker 1: elections are the more important ones, But in any case,
Speaker 1: that's the rule right now. So now Arizona has to
Speaker 1: deal with hundreds of thousands of people who are potentially
Speaker 1: ineligible to vote, and they're probably going to be able
Speaker 1: to vote anyway, and it will be fought the election,
Speaker 1: which is why the established Just one final point of this,
Speaker 1: this is why the establishment media right now are trying
Speaker 1: to normalize the notion that we won't have the results
Speaker 1: on election night, which is preposterous. PBS had a headline
Speaker 1: they said, not only will we not have the results
Speaker 1: on election night, but it's normal not to have the
Speaker 1: results on election night every election in my lifetime, including
Speaker 1: Bush v. Goor when Democrats tried to overturn the results
Speaker 1: of that election before it became unpatriotic to try to
Speaker 1: overturn the results of an election. Even in two thousand
Speaker 1: we had the results on election night. So I'm not
Speaker 1: not sure when it became normal. I guess it's just
Speaker 1: when the Dems wave their magic wand four years ago.
Speaker 5: Well, they didn't have the results until December when the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Because al Gore challenged the election, but they actually did
Speaker 1: call the election that night, needed to recount, but Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris is up nine are pushed for it and then
Speaker 1: tried to overturn their laws and allow for a rec
Speaker 1: That was back though, when Democrats enjoyed overtraded election.
Speaker 3: But okay, So in.
Speaker 4: The RCP average, Kamala Harris is at like forty nine percent.
Speaker 4: So basically the thing I would disagree with it you're
Speaker 4: saying is that the amount of I mean, there's obviously
Speaker 4: been a huge flood of both legal and illegal migration
Speaker 4: into the country over the course of the Biden administration.
Speaker 4: But if I were to ascribe a percentage point of
Speaker 4: like the RCP average that is boosting Kamala Harris to
Speaker 4: forty nine point four percent. I think they have Trump
Speaker 4: around forty eight percent. I just don't know how significant
Speaker 4: that would be, to be honest. I mean, it seems
Speaker 4: like the American people are genuinely torn between Trump and Harris.
Speaker 3: Do you disagree with that?
Speaker 1: I think the American people are torn between the right
Speaker 1: and the left. That's certainly true. And I think that
Speaker 1: the left controls basically all of the institutions at this point,
Speaker 1: and so America has liberalized significantly. I mean, whatever you
Speaker 1: think about the so called social issues, it's simply a
Speaker 1: fact that when Hillary Clinton was running in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, she ran on abortion being safe, legal, and rare.
Speaker 1: She ran on abortion being a bad thing. Now that
Speaker 1: the Democrats shout their abortion. When Barack Obama was president,
Speaker 1: during his first term, he believed that a marriage was
Speaker 1: a sacred union between a man and a woman. That
Speaker 1: was his recent as twenty eleven, and then Joe Biden
Speaker 1: blabbed that they were going to change position, and they
Speaker 1: finally did, but it was pretty recent, you know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about thirteen years ago. So the country has moved
Speaker 1: significantly to the left, and that gives an advantage to Kamala.
Speaker 1: She just happens to be so weak a candidate, and
Speaker 1: Trump happens to be more sympathetic than he's had ever
Speaker 1: been because after years of the Democrats justifying his assassination,
Speaker 1: someone actually pulled out the gun and tried to do
Speaker 1: it and nearly succeeded the first time, and tried again
Speaker 1: a second time. So he, as you say, he's the
Speaker 1: least unpopular that he's ever been right now. And also
Speaker 1: all of the issues are cutting in the Republican's favor,
Speaker 1: So I agree with you, this is bad news for
Speaker 1: Republicans that even with all of the headwinds working Foruplicans,
Speaker 1: it's still a close election. But that's what happens when
Speaker 1: the Democrats have succeeded at reshaping the country and the
Speaker 1: and the laws that shape cultural attitudes.
Speaker 5: And Democrats would say that the reason that they're competitive
Speaker 5: or the reason that why they have might even have
Speaker 5: a slight advantage at this point is Trump's success in
Speaker 5: overturning Roby Wade, and that the country has kind of
Speaker 5: recoiled recoiled at that what what's your what's your assessment
Speaker 5: of that, and tell me, like for people who like,
Speaker 5: our ecosystems don't overlap enough, so a lot of our
Speaker 5: viewers might not know, you know what, what exactly your
Speaker 5: politics are where you are on this side I understand
Speaker 5: is you're you're like pretty hardcore on the on the
Speaker 5: life side. Down the line, she prepped me a little bit,
Speaker 5: like you're like down the line, like as as out
Speaker 5: there as you can get on it, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we ought to protect babies. I think
Speaker 1: it's bad to kill babies. As basically, I guess that's
Speaker 1: an extreme position now I used to be a kind
Speaker 1: of a moderate, common sense position.
Speaker 3: I want to elaborate on that.
Speaker 1: We agree, Yeah, I don't think we really need to elaborate.
Speaker 1: I think it's bad to kill babies, so that that
Speaker 1: would that would inform my election choices. I agree with
Speaker 1: you that Roe v. Wade's overruling is an issue in
Speaker 1: the campaign. I think it's really the only issue that
Speaker 1: helps Democrats at all, and then only in certain places.
Speaker 1: But conservatives have debated how how to react to this.
Speaker 1: You've you've seen a lot of Republicans just basically trying
Speaker 1: to downplay the issue. On the campaign trail, which is
Speaker 1: probably fine as a matter of prudence. I think what
Speaker 1: happened with Roe v. Wade being overruled is not that
Speaker 1: pro lifers merely won a victory. It's not that Democrats
Speaker 1: want a political victory, as some of them plan. It's
Speaker 1: that the whole conversation changed. So now the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: says in its in the Dobbs ruling that the issue
Speaker 1: has to go back to the states. The Supreme Court
Speaker 1: could have said that the Fourteenth Amendment provides equal protection
Speaker 1: and so you can't kill babies anywhere. That's an argument
Speaker 1: Professor Robbie George John Finnis made that argument an amicus
Speaker 1: brief to the Court. But that's not what they said.
Speaker 1: They said, the issue goes back to the states and
Speaker 1: people can vote on it. And so the issue for
Speaker 1: pro lifers is that when abortion has come up as
Speaker 1: a ballot initiative, the pro abortion policies have succeeded. They've
Speaker 1: prevailed pretty much every time. So Republicans are in a
Speaker 1: bad position right now because we're in a whole new ballgame.
Speaker 1: And so what is required is to win hearts and
Speaker 1: minds and persuade people that it's wrong to kill babies,
Speaker 1: and it's good to protect life at the state level,
Speaker 1: but that's not really a federal matter right now. The
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is ruled on it. So when Trump and JD.
Speaker 1: Vans downplay the issue of abortion, I think they're doing
Speaker 1: so as a matter of political prudence, but it's also
Speaker 1: just common sense. They really have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: that issue right now. Unless the Supreme Court is going
Speaker 1: to reverse its position, which it's not, then that's really
Speaker 1: a matter for the states, and it's a matter for
Speaker 1: ubernatorial candidates and state legislature candidates.
Speaker 5: To fight and not to debate the point. But just
Speaker 5: on the definition of babies again, do you think that
Speaker 5: an IUD kills babies?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: And and IUD is a contraceptive device, right, So in principle,
Speaker 1: I'm not, you know, not the biggest sexpert in contraception.
Speaker 1: I have three kids under four. But from what I understand,
Speaker 1: that would prevent the conception of a baby, so.
Speaker 3: Prevent it in general prevents the implantation.
Speaker 1: Oh well, inasmuch I suppose this would be similar to
Speaker 1: certain aboard of fashion drugs, where the uh B nature
Speaker 1: of it, like Plan B, is debated and some people
Speaker 1: you're being, I suppose a little bit more blunt about
Speaker 1: it than many pro sexual revolution types on the left.
Speaker 1: But many people argue that things like Plan B or
Speaker 1: things like Iud's are merely contraceptive and not a board
Speaker 1: of fashion. But if they are contraceptive, then they prevent contraception.
Speaker 1: If they're a border of fashion, they obviously they obviously
Speaker 1: involve abortions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just a matter of basic fact that sometimes
Speaker 5: they prevent implantation. Right, So you would considers it a
Speaker 5: so you would say, you do is if that's the case,
Speaker 5: If I'm right about that, that you think that iud's
Speaker 5: the woman with an ID is like killing baby.
Speaker 1: The question you're asking me, I guess the question you're
Speaker 1: asking is when do I think human life begins? And
Speaker 1: so my answer is I think it begins at the beginning.
Speaker 1: I don't know what else you would say it begins.
Speaker 1: Of course, no one's really campaigning in this uh this election,
Speaker 1: not even campaign on abortion, but no one's really campaigning
Speaker 1: against iu D's or any contraception or anything like that.
Speaker 1: We're pointing out that the Democrats have taken the legal
Speaker 1: rare position. Well, the reason is because.
Speaker 3: The Democrats said your voting to kill Go ahead and find.
Speaker 1: The reason that they're not campaigning on that is because
Speaker 1: the Democrats have moved the goalposts so far. They used
Speaker 1: to campaign on safe, legal, and rare. Now they campaign
Speaker 1: on abortion at any moment up till birth and including
Speaker 1: after birth. So uh, I know the Democrats are trying
Speaker 1: to run away with this because it's unpopular. But Andrew Cuomo,
Speaker 1: when he was governor of New York, was one of
Speaker 1: the first Democrat governors to change law to say there
Speaker 1: will be no restrictions on abortion, even change the penal
Speaker 1: code such that if you killed a woman who was pregnant,
Speaker 1: it would no longer be double homicide, would only be
Speaker 1: a single homicide. And then he lit up the Freedom
Speaker 1: Tower pink to celebrate. Tim Walls, as governor of Minnesota,
Speaker 1: repealed legal protections for babies who are born alive who
Speaker 1: survive abortions. Babies can survive outside of the womb now
Speaker 1: as really as twenty four weeks, twenty three weeks, twenty
Speaker 1: two weeks, even twenty one weeks, so it's very very young.
Speaker 1: Abortions take place up until the moment of birth, and
Speaker 1: so previously in Minnesota there was a law that required
Speaker 1: doctors to provide medical care to babies who survive abortions,
Speaker 1: just as you would provide medical care to anybody who
Speaker 1: needed it. Tim Walls remove those protections. Tim Walls then
Speaker 1: also removed the reporting requirements. Now we know the numbers disputed,
Speaker 1: but we know some way at least five, maybe eight,
Speaker 1: maybe more babies actually were born alive and they were
Speaker 1: callously left to die without any medical care. So that's
Speaker 1: where we're fighting the issue right now because it clarifies
Speaker 1: the issue so much. And that's where Democrats have brought
Speaker 1: the issue. It's not Replicans who have done that.
Speaker 4: Well, Ryan, I saw your reaction to the after birth thing.
Speaker 4: Did you want to follow up on? I mean, Michael
Speaker 4: explained what happened in Minnesota for example. It's a matter
Speaker 4: of not providing care, legalizing the declining to provide care.
Speaker 3: Do you is that not?
Speaker 4: I mean, that is a real thing that both Cuomo
Speaker 4: is something that Ralph Northam advocated.
Speaker 5: I guess why don't we leave this to doctors?
Speaker 3: Like who am I to like?
Speaker 1: Because governing republic and we have tell us against murder.
Speaker 1: You know, it's so amazing that the Democrats who have
Speaker 1: been campaigning for socialized medicine for decades. Now say on
Speaker 1: this one healthcare issue, we just need to get the
Speaker 1: government out of it. What are you talking about, recitizens?
Speaker 1: We live in a self governing and republic. We have
Speaker 1: something to say about the laws. That's why we're all
Speaker 1: talking about an election here, and we're talking about a
Speaker 1: matter of life and death, even if you take the
Speaker 1: babies out of it. For some reason, you don't like
Speaker 1: the babies. But let's say you're just talking about I
Speaker 1: don't know, a disabled woman or something, just an adult
Speaker 1: who is in the room who requires desperate medical care
Speaker 1: in an emergency room. Would you say that doctors should
Speaker 1: just ignore her. Wouldn't you say that the law ought
Speaker 1: to impel medical providers to provide that urgent medical care.
Speaker 1: We have plenty of those laws on the books right now.
Speaker 1: Why is it just the case that when it comes
Speaker 1: to the most vulnerable little babies that for them we,
Speaker 1: in the words of Ralph Northam, we just kind of
Speaker 1: put them on a table, you know, maybe make them
Speaker 1: a little comfortable and have a conversation between the doctor
Speaker 1: and the mutter to see if you want to kill him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I want babies to die either, but we're also
Speaker 5: but I think it becomes very difficult to talk about
Speaker 5: when there's an entire movement that thinks that having an
Speaker 5: IUD is killing a baby.
Speaker 1: So at that point, you can't trying to change the
Speaker 1: subject from the real political issue to a contrived political issue,
Speaker 1: because you know that the real political issue as it's
Speaker 1: being thought the Democrat position is completely indefensible and abhorrent
Speaker 1: to anyone who has even a modicum of a So
Speaker 1: you try to move.
Speaker 5: To a conference why not debating why not why not
Speaker 5: argue around the final trimester and supporting if if a
Speaker 5: fetus is viable like that.
Speaker 1: Hold on, there's a big difference between the final trimester
Speaker 1: and uh an I U D or something. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of space in the middle. And right now,
Speaker 1: the issue is that abortion is effectively legal at any point,
Speaker 1: including in some places after birth, which is just called murder.
Speaker 1: So I think what the Democrats are trying to do
Speaker 1: is really blur this issue. And I'm all for having,
Speaker 1: you know, bioethical debates over the origin of life and
Speaker 1: all the right. I find that all very interesting, But
Speaker 1: we're in an election season, and what I'm observing is
Speaker 1: the actual political issue, The actual political the policies that
Speaker 1: are being advanced by the Democrats right now all concern
Speaker 1: those latter stages. The much clearer point of this, you know,
Speaker 1: up until the moment of birth, shout your abortion changing
Speaker 1: the penal code for goodness sakes in New York. Why
Speaker 1: is it that the Democrats, why is it that you Ryan,
Speaker 1: when we're debating this right now, you are desperately trying
Speaker 1: to avoid that part of it because you know that
Speaker 1: that's that's a losing issue for people.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I'll tell you the reason my view
Speaker 5: on this is I don't even want to have a
Speaker 5: view on this, Like I don't want to have anything
Speaker 5: to do with it, Like I.
Speaker 3: Want this slavery?
Speaker 1: Does the Southern States? Forget about that?
Speaker 5: It's not the states for women and their doctors just work, work,
Speaker 5: just like I trust, I trust them to make the
Speaker 5: decision that is that is best for them and I.
Speaker 5: And there's so much to think about in this world
Speaker 5: that like, why do I.
Speaker 1: Need to think about I'm curious what do I have
Speaker 1: to try this about in fanticide or the law? So
Speaker 1: what're elections or politics in a self governing republic? And
Speaker 1: this is a deeply important moral issue.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of deeply important moral issues. Why do
Speaker 5: you care so much about this? I'm just just curious.
Speaker 5: I don't like, I don't even necessarily want to debate
Speaker 5: the question.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what that much point.
Speaker 1: But what I'm happy to tell you what because the
Speaker 1: right to life is not just one right among many.
Speaker 1: It's not like the privilege to drive a car or
Speaker 1: the right to smoke a cigarette at the age of
Speaker 1: twenty one. The right to life is the fundamental right
Speaker 1: on which all of the other rights rely. It cuts
Speaker 1: down to the very core of our beings. So this
Speaker 1: is why we have very serious laws against murder. It's
Speaker 1: why we take murder laws and murder trials more seriously
Speaker 1: than the laws about jaywalking or tickets about parking. So
Speaker 1: this is obviously a really important issue. Cuts to the
Speaker 1: heart of who we are, how we think about all
Speaker 1: of morality and all of the law, and all of
Speaker 1: the human person. And the people who we're talking about
Speaker 1: here are the most vulnerable people among us, who don't
Speaker 1: have a voice, who are innocent little babies. So to
Speaker 1: me that seems kind of important. You know, I know
Speaker 1: there are a lot of big issues in the world.
Speaker 1: But I think I would I would put jaywalking or
Speaker 1: even tax rates at a less significant part of this
Speaker 1: debate than say, the.
Speaker 3: Right to life.
Speaker 5: Yeah, when again, pursuing that question, like when in your
Speaker 5: life did women's pregnancies become like something that you were like,
Speaker 5: this is the thing I really am going to make.
Speaker 3: My Well it's not.
Speaker 1: Women's pregnancies became important to me when my wife was
Speaker 1: pregnant for the first time because I had to, you know,
Speaker 1: go get her like snacks and things at night. But life,
Speaker 1: you know, the question of human life. Morality has been
Speaker 1: a question for a long time. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: interested in politics and you're not interested in practical morality,
Speaker 1: well I don't really know what you're doing because the law,
Speaker 1: by definition, is a codification of practical moral views. And
Speaker 1: I by the way, he.
Speaker 3: Was just like an always thing, Like is this an
Speaker 3: always thing?
Speaker 5: Like the first time in like middle school, you learned
Speaker 5: about it, You're like, this is I need to fight
Speaker 5: for these.
Speaker 4: I mean he's Catholic, right, mich Oh.
Speaker 1: No, I'm Catholic, But I was in an apostate for
Speaker 1: a long time. So I was from the age of
Speaker 1: thirteen to twenty three.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: I was pretty irreligious, and so I was in favor
Speaker 1: of legal abortion. I had no problem with it. I
Speaker 1: didn't understand why pro life was believed in it. And
Speaker 1: I was having a lunch one day a summer fellowship
Speaker 1: with a bioethicist and she was asking me my views
Speaker 1: on things, and I said, oh, you know, I'm a Republican.
Speaker 1: I like low taxes, but I don't care about abortion.
Speaker 3: It's fine.
Speaker 1: And then we had a lunch, a long conversation about it,
Speaker 1: and she persuaded me that I was wrong. So I know,
Speaker 1: in our modern day it's unusual for people to be
Speaker 1: persuaded by arguments, but she persuaded me that there's really
Speaker 1: no argument for abortion, and that the argument in favor
Speaker 1: of life and defending the preborn is pretty much rock solid.
Speaker 1: You were twenty three, No, I was twenty one during
Speaker 1: that lunch. I was twenty three when I reverted to
Speaker 1: the church.
Speaker 5: And so you're twenty one and you got argued into
Speaker 5: being yep anthea.
Speaker 1: Boy by a very intelligent bioethicist.
Speaker 3: Well so on that point. Interesting.
Speaker 4: Now, Ryan asked a question earlier that to all of this,
Speaker 4: at the heart of all of this, He said, well,
Speaker 4: when is the beginning? When does the beginning begin? And
Speaker 4: an issue where that question is incredibly alien is on IVF,
Speaker 4: which has become something of an election issue because Donald
Speaker 4: Trump is now campaigning on being what did he say,
Speaker 4: the father of IVF something to that extent. And Michael,
Speaker 4: you're a staunch opponent of IVF for a lot of
Speaker 4: the reasons that we've already talked about. So how do
Speaker 4: you sort of square that circle? How do you justify
Speaker 4: support for Donald Trump, somebody who's even walked back prior
Speaker 4: pro life statements and seemed to, at least for the
Speaker 4: sake of political expediency, I don't actually know what's in
Speaker 4: his heart or what he really believes, kind of moderate
Speaker 4: on that particular issue, and then extend it to him
Speaker 4: calling himself the father of IVF, campaigning on free IVF,
Speaker 4: like universal IVF access by the federal government or through
Speaker 4: some combination of federal grants and state grants. How does
Speaker 4: that How do you sort of rationalize supporting Trump if,
Speaker 4: as you say, human life is really the fundamental question
Speaker 4: of our politics.
Speaker 1: Sure, well, there are two parts to that. One on
Speaker 1: President Trump speaking more ambiguously about pro life actually think
Speaker 1: that's probably a good idea. I would encourage him to
Speaker 1: be a little more ambiguous, just as a matter of
Speaker 1: political prudence. I wouldn't encourage him to lie. It would
Speaker 1: be a.
Speaker 3: Moral to lie.
Speaker 1: But in terms of downplaying an issue, the one issue
Speaker 1: that the Democrats seem to be winning on, I think
Speaker 1: that's probably a good idea because, to quote Cocaine Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 1: the winners go to Washington to make laws and the
Speaker 1: losers go home. So I really don't have a problem
Speaker 1: with prudence in politics when it comes to in vitro fertilization.
Speaker 1: There's another reminder that politics is the art of the possible.
Speaker 1: It's the art of the second best and the art
Speaker 1: of inclusion. A lot of arts in politics, and in
Speaker 1: vitro fertilization is a relatively novel technology that poses complex
Speaker 1: bioethical questions that most people have never considered because it's
Speaker 1: not their job to consider it, and it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: they go about their lives and it's kind of.
Speaker 3: A new idea.
Speaker 1: This is true even among pro lifers. So when we're
Speaker 1: talking about a relatively small subset of the population that
Speaker 1: views IVF to be morally unacceptable. You know, you're talking
Speaker 1: about a small number of people. Add on to that
Speaker 1: that many people know someone or know someone who knows
Speaker 1: someone who is conceived via IVF, and though that would
Speaker 1: not be morally dispositive, just as you'd say, I know
Speaker 1: people who have been conceived in the case of rape,
Speaker 1: their lives are of course as valuable as anyone else's life.
Speaker 1: They have a right to life. But that's not to
Speaker 1: justify rape, of course, like that. You know, good ends
Speaker 1: don't justify immoral means. But it's difficult to overcome that
Speaker 1: emotional hurdle, that hurdle of pathos. So I think probably
Speaker 1: the prudent thing to do here. The Catholics have always
Speaker 1: been opposed to IVF because the Catholics take bioethics very seriously.
Speaker 1: It's not just the Catholics. The Southern Baptist Convention just
Speaker 1: came out as the largest Protestant denomination in the country,
Speaker 1: just came out and said IVF is probably morally unacceptable.
Speaker 1: Most people just don't know why. They don't realize that
Speaker 1: IVF creates lots and lots of embryos that will be
Speaker 1: destroyed or frozen indefinitely. They don't consider that if commoditizes
Speaker 1: human life, it turns human life humans from proper subjects
Speaker 1: with rights into objects commodities to be bought and sold
Speaker 1: traded at the baby store. It raises all sorts of
Speaker 1: questions over who has rights in reproduction. You know, traditionally
Speaker 1: understood the only people have rights in reproduction are babies
Speaker 1: to be the right to be the product of the
Speaker 1: specific congical act of their parents joined together in marriage.
Speaker 1: Now we have this notion that people have a right
Speaker 1: to a baby, just like I don't know, a wealthy
Speaker 1: woman has the right to a handbag or something. That's
Speaker 1: obviously not acceptable. But people haven't really considered all of this,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, this is kind of new stuff,
Speaker 1: and so I give people a lot of grace on it,
Speaker 1: you know, And I just think we need to work
Speaker 1: this out. I really agree with the Baptists in their statement,
Speaker 1: people need to work this out, consider this issue. I
Speaker 1: hope they do it before some of the negative consequences emerge.
Speaker 1: Because IVF and no matter what fine effects come as
Speaker 1: a result, IVF establishes the domination of science and technology
Speaker 1: over the origin and toy of human life. That all
Speaker 1: that said, thirteen days to a presidential election. You are
Speaker 1: not going to radically persuade hundreds of millions of people
Speaker 1: of a complex and nuanced bioethical point with regard to
Speaker 1: a novel technology that most people consider to be an
Speaker 1: unmitigated good.
Speaker 3: It's just not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So if some political candidates want to, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of dance around the issue or not address it.
Speaker 4: Trumps leaning fully into it.
Speaker 1: He's I'm the father of other Republican senators have done
Speaker 1: that too. And you know the thing is, I don't
Speaker 1: think he's being cynical about that. I don't think he's
Speaker 1: being opportunistic. I fully Gramt as somebody who takes this
Speaker 1: matter very seriously, and I think about bioethics a lot.
Speaker 3: It's it's a complex it.
Speaker 1: Requires, you know, some nuanced understanding and an examination of
Speaker 1: first principles. And so I bet Trump is right, And
Speaker 1: I bet you know, if he could have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a bioethicist like I had, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: he might be persuaded like I was.
Speaker 3: Trump being persuaded of something.
Speaker 4: Is Trump talking to a bioethicist? That's funny and all.
Speaker 5: All that's pretty amusing to think of. Let me run
Speaker 5: something past, you get your reaction to it. You know,
Speaker 5: from from the feminist perspective and also broadly from a
Speaker 5: left wing perspective, there's all there's always a lot of
Speaker 5: skepticism of people who say that they are opposed to
Speaker 5: abortion because they're out to protect babies, that the idea
Speaker 5: is like, Okay, maybe some of the people who are
Speaker 5: marching in the streets believe that, but the leaders of
Speaker 5: the movement they actually have a much bigger agenda at
Speaker 5: play here, and that agenda is pushing back against women's rights,
Speaker 5: against the entire sexual revolution, which they think was a
Speaker 5: mistake in the sixties and the seventies. They may be
Speaker 5: modernity itself was a giant mistake. All these women in
Speaker 5: the workplaces. They want to you want to go back
Speaker 5: to a much a different time, make America great again,
Speaker 5: maybe back to before America. Emily was telling me. You
Speaker 5: had a funny quote of like, you don't want to
Speaker 5: go back to.
Speaker 1: Twenty fifties, twelve, twenty twenty, Okay, Right, So people hear
Speaker 1: that and they're like, oh, okay, I get it. This
Speaker 1: guy's just against all of modernity basically, and women's liberation
Speaker 1: that came along with it. So is it a coincidence
Speaker 1: that those things align and that they just happen to
Speaker 1: be separate, or do you see your mission of against
Speaker 1: abortion rights as part and parcel of a kind of
Speaker 1: cultural counter revolution. I think you're thinking about it too deeply.
Speaker 1: I just think it's wrong to kill babies. Now, when
Speaker 1: you're talking about cynical or opportunistic motivations among leadership, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I see more cynicism on the side of
Speaker 1: the men who say that they're totally in favor of abortion.
Speaker 1: I think that allows men to use women for their
Speaker 1: sexual pleasure and then to not have any accountability. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's just men saying, hey, honey,
Speaker 1: don't worry, I'll pay for the abortion. Please allow me
Speaker 1: to use you without any accountability. So I find a
Speaker 1: lot more cynicism there. In terms of women's liberation, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It doesn't seem to have worked out very well.
Speaker 1: There was a study that came out of Yale, I
Speaker 1: think in two thousand and eight somewhere around there, that
Speaker 1: measured a female happiness. The study is the paradox of
Speaker 1: declining female happiness, and it observed that since women's liberation
Speaker 1: so cold. In the early nineteen seventies, women's happiness self
Speaker 1: reported happiness has declined both an objective measures and relative
Speaker 1: to men. So they've become significantly less happy than men
Speaker 1: have over that time. Now you have huge swaths of
Speaker 1: American women men have, Yeah, men have all significally.
Speaker 3: I think we should.
Speaker 1: The would be another argument that, well, that would be
Speaker 1: that's where we would.
Speaker 5: Find sinus right, we could complain.
Speaker 1: Well, no, I think probably your point here is making
Speaker 1: my point, which is that, uh, men also are becoming
Speaker 1: less happy. Maybe there's something going a little bit wrong
Speaker 1: in the modern world. To bring us back to our
Speaker 1: first point, we used to conduct elections neatly and easily.
Speaker 3: We don't do that.
Speaker 1: Maybe something's going wrong in the modern world.
Speaker 3: So, by the way, I've also studied just that. I'm
Speaker 3: just skeptical of a lot of those surveys.
Speaker 5: I wrote a book it's actually the back here, Yeah
Speaker 5: there it is, on social history of drug use. There
Speaker 5: was a thing in the forties and fifties called Mother's
Speaker 5: Little Helper. All of the women's magazines were heavily marketing
Speaker 5: amphetamines to women throughout the throughout the country. They're absolutely
Speaker 5: miserable and just just hopped up on these, on these, on.
Speaker 1: This, we just put them on sen There's so much
Speaker 1: progress we've had. It seems to me that when when
Speaker 1: people say it's a paradox of declining female happiness because
Speaker 1: of all of the advantages of the women's live I
Speaker 1: don't think there have been advantages. I think it's robbed
Speaker 1: women of a lot of things they like. And you
Speaker 1: can see this in a debate, not between conservatives, but
Speaker 1: among feminists. There's a famous debate between Betty free Dan,
Speaker 1: an American feminist, and Simone de Beauvoir. It was a
Speaker 1: French feminist and the strumpet of Jumpel Sartre, and they
Speaker 1: were debating whether or not women should be permitted to
Speaker 1: stay home, and of Sartre, yes, they were debating whether
Speaker 1: the women ought to be permitted to stay home and
Speaker 1: keep house and raise a family. And Betty Free Dan,
Speaker 1: being the American, she said, yes, of course women should
Speaker 1: have that choice, but they should also have the choice
Speaker 1: to go into the workplace if they want. And Simbonda Bovoir,
Speaker 1: who I think is a more intelligent and insightful feminist,
Speaker 1: she said, no, women cannot be given the choice to
Speaker 1: stay home, because if women are given that choice, too
Speaker 1: many of them will take it. They would most women
Speaker 1: will be inclined to do something like that, and that
Speaker 1: will inhibit women's liberations. So I take the feminists at
Speaker 1: their word. I think they really did want to weaken
Speaker 1: the family structures, diminish women's opportunities to stay home to
Speaker 1: raise a family. You've seen obviously declining family sizes. We've
Speaker 1: now been below replacement birthrate in America since the beginning
Speaker 1: of this era, since nineteen seventy one or so.
Speaker 3: So I don't know.
Speaker 1: It just hasn't really worked out that well. And I
Speaker 1: think people are becoming really sad and really angry all
Speaker 1: the time. And I think anger is a consequence of
Speaker 1: sadness because people don't know how to deal with their sorrow.
Speaker 1: And so that just seems subjectively true. And if things
Speaker 1: are really praying and have been fraying over the past
Speaker 1: fifty years, it doesn't seem so crazy to me to say, hey,
Speaker 1: how about we avail ourselves of the wisdom of the ages.
Speaker 1: Not the stuff that worked in the nineteen fifties or
Speaker 1: the twelve twenties or whatever, but the things that have
Speaker 1: consistently worked throughout all of history. That seems like the
Speaker 1: common sense position.
Speaker 4: Ryan mentioned or you mentioned Occupy Wall Street earlier, and
Speaker 4: I think I don't want to put words in Ryan's mouth,
Speaker 4: but I think a lot of the left would posit
Speaker 4: that this decline and happiness came alongside the industrialization and
Speaker 4: heightened predatory capitalism, essentially, and I actually think there's probably
Speaker 4: something to that. And you and I probably agree in
Speaker 4: a lot of these cultural questions, Michael, I know we
Speaker 4: agree in a lot of these cultural questions. I think
Speaker 4: people's misery and selfishness reflected in the business community. And
Speaker 4: then I see, you know, Donald Trump capt paigning with
Speaker 4: Elon Musk, and you know, I think Elon Musk is amusing,
Speaker 4: but I also wonder how that's hitting people in you know,
Speaker 4: the rust belt. I was at Butler when Elon Musk
Speaker 4: was there, and people were going crazy for him. They
Speaker 4: really liked him. Granted those were people at a mega rally.
Speaker 4: But anyway, all that is to say, to what or
Speaker 4: to what level do you think actually predatory industrial capitalism
Speaker 4: run by as you and I would describe them, like
Speaker 4: secular business predators or just secular businessmen to what role
Speaker 4: do or at what level do you think that's contributed
Speaker 4: to declining happiness?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Elon is sort of the exception or
Speaker 1: he's a contrarian, which is why people who otherwise would
Speaker 1: despise these you know, zillionaires, people like Bill Gates say,
Speaker 1: what are applauding for him? Because he's saying, look, there's
Speaker 1: something that's really going wrong in our society. He's trying
Speaker 1: to fix it. But I totally agree. I think there
Speaker 1: are perfectly legitimate that right wing conservative criticisms of modern capitalism.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I think Trump would make that point.
Speaker 1: I think this is why Trump also is able to
Speaker 1: bring the head of the Teamsters union over to the RNC,
Speaker 1: you know, and have major labor unions not endorse Kamala.
Speaker 1: Kamala still has that guy who's like Tony Soprano and
Speaker 1: Archie Bunker from The Longshoreman, you know, but she's really
Speaker 1: lost support among labor. So you know, this is a
Speaker 1: critique that's come up through Trump, but also also beyond that,
Speaker 1: and what is it. Well, it's that markets are great,
Speaker 1: and you know, we support economic prosperity, but you can't
Speaker 1: put the car before the horse. You have to recognize,
Speaker 1: to the point we were discussing earlier with Ryan, that
Speaker 1: there are moral considerations here and if you untether the
Speaker 1: market for many moral considerations, you're going to be sunk
Speaker 1: and everybody's going to be miserable, and maybe your GDP
Speaker 1: ticks up, but it's it's not even reflecting economic health
Speaker 1: because you can game the system very easily. I mean,
Speaker 1: if drug dealers are trading fentanyl or people are going
Speaker 1: to brothels, I guess that could be reflected in a
Speaker 1: higher GDP, but doesn't mean your country is really healthier.
Speaker 1: So to the point I think Ryan made a really
Speaker 1: good point earlier that we have to take into consideration,
Speaker 1: which is when our friend here waved the white flag
Speaker 1: on talking about later term abortion. He said, look, I
Speaker 1: just don't want to think about it. Why do I
Speaker 1: have to think about these moral questions? And the answer is, well,
Speaker 1: because you're a citizen and we're supposed to have a
Speaker 1: self government here. And when John Adams says the Constitution's
Speaker 1: built for moral and religious people, that's not just some
Speaker 1: nice platitude that you hear at evangelical camps and brunches.
Speaker 1: That he's really warning you of something John Adams was
Speaker 1: not the most orthodox Christian in the world by any stretch.
Speaker 1: He was making an empirical observation that our constitutional system
Speaker 1: and things like markets and things like free enterprise do
Speaker 1: not work if people are not constrained by morality. What
Speaker 1: could happen then is you could have something that's used
Speaker 1: for a right good like markets, be used for terrible evil,
Speaker 1: for the exploitation of workers, which if you're a Christian,
Speaker 1: that's one of the four sins that cries out to
Speaker 1: God for vengeance, you know. I mean, that's a really
Speaker 1: awful and evil thing to do. People who are putting
Speaker 1: mirror profits over the common good and the health of
Speaker 1: their country. That's something that the conservatives have to watch
Speaker 1: out for too. But I think really the rise of
Speaker 1: the Trump movement and populism and the Maga movement, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it, over the old stale chamber
Speaker 1: of commerce kind of republicanism. I think it's responding to
Speaker 1: that need. And I think it's why you're seeing labor
Speaker 1: come over. I think it's why you're seeing a Kennedy
Speaker 1: for goodness sakes come over. I think it's why you're
Speaker 1: seeing people like Telsea Gabbard come over. The Republicans, bizarrely,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have predicted it twenty years ago, have become
Speaker 1: the party that are responding to the real moral crisis
Speaker 1: brought about by markets and labor.
Speaker 3: Bye.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's just funny that Donald Trump is the
Speaker 5: guy leading that party to it's you know, so it's
Speaker 5: moral moral victory.
Speaker 3: So I mean, I think I don't know why it's funny.
Speaker 5: I really, you know, the guy has probably promised to
Speaker 5: pay for I don't think he's paid for any abortions
Speaker 5: because he doesn't pay his contractors or subcontractors.
Speaker 3: Why would he actually go through on paying for an abortion.
Speaker 5: But I'm you don't think you don't think he's like
Speaker 5: suggested to somebody that he would pay for their abortion.
Speaker 5: I mean, look at the guy, Like the guy's the
Speaker 5: guy's life is a caricature of immorality, Like he it's fine,
Speaker 5: like you can do whatever he wants.
Speaker 3: I don't don't care. I don't know, I don't really speculate,
Speaker 3: like the.
Speaker 5: Idea that like this is the guy that would be
Speaker 5: a role model for well, no, this moral this is
Speaker 5: kind of comical.
Speaker 1: Ryan, if you were religious, you wouldn't find it comical.
Speaker 1: You might find it delightful, but you wouldn't find it
Speaker 1: comical because God uses all sorts of imperfect people for
Speaker 1: his ends. If you're if you're Christian, you certainly believe that,
Speaker 1: and so the left. Ironically, I was speaking with a
Speaker 1: very close left being friend of mine who said she
Speaker 1: really hated Trump. Uh, and she just is a good person,
Speaker 1: you know, onnlike Trump. And what's funny is that was
Speaker 1: Trump's answer. He says, I try to be a good person,
Speaker 1: you know, I try not to commit sins. But of
Speaker 1: course all sin and fall short of the glory of God.
Speaker 1: So you're speculating without any basis on all sorts of
Speaker 1: private sins that Trump in principle could have committed, even
Speaker 1: though again there's no evidence.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, we don't have to do as much speculation.
Speaker 4: As I mean, he's definitely an open adulterer.
Speaker 3: That much is.
Speaker 1: He's lived a very flamboyant life, and he's done all
Speaker 1: sorts of terrible things, and he's been totally open about
Speaker 1: a lot of those things. But I suppose the point
Speaker 1: here from my perspective as a Christian, is yeah, right,
Speaker 1: that is how God works. God uses flawed vessels. And
Speaker 1: believe it or not Donald Trump, because he's had spotlight
Speaker 1: on him for a long time. You know, it's very
Speaker 1: easy to say he did that terrible thing, and he
Speaker 1: did that awful thing, and he did that evil thing.
Speaker 1: But believe it or not, Ryan, you've done very evil
Speaker 1: things too. And if you think that God can use
Speaker 1: you to do good things, if God can use me
Speaker 1: to do good things, it shouldn't be surprising that God
Speaker 1: can use Trump. But what Christians say on Easter Sunday
Speaker 1: is they say, oh, happy for that one for us,
Speaker 1: so great, so glorious, a redeemer. They actually celebrate the
Speaker 1: fall of man, the original sin, because it can not
Speaker 1: that it's a good thing in itself, but it actually
Speaker 1: brought about this great glory and redemption. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think Americans like a comeback story. I think Americans
Speaker 1: like redemption, and they like race, and I think the
Speaker 1: gracelessness of the left, the total lack of charity of
Speaker 1: the left, has repelled a lot of people.
Speaker 5: A redemption story, though, requires somebody to be seeking redemption.
Speaker 3: Is there any.
Speaker 5: Evidence that you sak a lot of evidence that Trump redemption?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 1: I think he's recanted a lot of his previous views
Speaker 1: and behaviors, and I think he's owned up to being
Speaker 1: a kind of a rough guy. I remember one time
Speaker 1: he was asked if he had a beer, and he said,
Speaker 1: now you know, I'm the only president that's never had
Speaker 1: a beer. It's the only good thing you can say
Speaker 1: about me. Can you imagine if I had a beer,
Speaker 1: If I were a drinker, I'd be the worst. That's
Speaker 1: called humility, and I think Donald Trump, ironically enough, exhibits
Speaker 1: a lot more humility than most people in our political class,
Speaker 1: certainly than the sanctimonious left, which ironically is be totally
Speaker 1: bereft of sanctity.
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure you just said that Trump betrays a
Speaker 5: lot of humility.
Speaker 1: I think yeah, I think Trump demonstrates on ironically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a.
Speaker 3: Lot more than the left. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think there is something that people miss with why
Speaker 4: Trump appeals to like normal Americans, because he is like
Speaker 4: self deprecating. Sometimes he does make fun of himself, but
Speaker 4: he does make fun of himself. He let Fallin ruffle
Speaker 4: his hair, something like that. But I'm curious when what
Speaker 4: you made of Michael's answer about essentially predatory capitalism or
Speaker 4: the excesses of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: There, there's a good book on this subject that was
Speaker 5: actually controversial among some feminists at the time, by Elizabeth
Speaker 5: Warren and her daughter. You probably read it called the
Speaker 5: two income Trap, and it was controversial because it suggested
Speaker 5: that there are like as you said, there are some
Speaker 5: who would say no, like both parents ought to be
Speaker 5: or you know, both parents ought to be in the world,
Speaker 5: like there shouldn't be a choice, because if there is
Speaker 5: a choice, then the patriarchy is going to dominate. The
Speaker 5: woman's going to be pushed out of that. What Elizabeth
Speaker 5: Warren pointed out in her book is that what we
Speaker 5: did is we reduced wages along the way, which drove
Speaker 5: up the cost of doing all this. We broke up
Speaker 5: families in a way that there wasn't the same help
Speaker 5: from aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandparents and raising
Speaker 5: up family. So all of a sudden, now you have
Speaker 5: less money, less family help, and two of you are
Speaker 5: now working for the same amount of wages. And it
Speaker 5: shouldn't surprise anybody that out of that comes just complete
Speaker 5: collapse in people's happiness and well being, even as quality
Speaker 5: of life by all other measures is growing. That you know,
Speaker 5: we're living in better houses, there's more access to food,
Speaker 5: more access to clean water, environment.
Speaker 3: But think about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love this point because yes, I agree
Speaker 1: with that analysis pretty much entirely. I just love this
Speaker 1: point where they say, yeah, so people are working all
Speaker 1: the time, and they're making way less money for their work,
Speaker 1: and their families are falling apart, and they're getting married
Speaker 1: later and they can't have kids and they can't really
Speaker 1: do anything, but their quality of life so much better
Speaker 1: on all the other measures you think, well, on everything
Speaker 1: that matters, their quality of life is worse. I guess
Speaker 1: now they have an iPad, so that's nice. But than that,
Speaker 1: it looks.
Speaker 5: Like I think the points are in concert because what
Speaker 5: you're saying is like, despite the fact that, like if
Speaker 5: you look at like an average house, just the house itself,
Speaker 5: the average house today versus the average house in nineteen
Speaker 5: fifty five, like houses are much nicer, cars are much nicer,
Speaker 5: Like things are much nicer. Yet people are still like suffering,
Speaker 5: you know, in a much more significant way. What I'd
Speaker 5: say is like, everybody ought to be working twenty hours
Speaker 5: a week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, twenty, Yeah, let's start with twenty. See how that goes. Like,
Speaker 3: there's not that much work to be done.
Speaker 5: We don't actually all need to be driving ourselves into
Speaker 5: the ground like this.
Speaker 1: So Ryan, I actually agree just having worked at businesses
Speaker 1: a number of businesses, now.
Speaker 3: I don't need forty do that job.
Speaker 1: Well, even just sixty percent of the time, people are
Speaker 1: kind of just twiddling their thumbs and popping sins and
Speaker 1: like going to the coffee break.
Speaker 3: So there, yes, I agree.
Speaker 1: The question is, though, I remember when when this issue
Speaker 1: came up during the Obamacare debates, Hillary Nancy Pelosi that
Speaker 1: was forty and slip. Nancy Pelosi was asked what people
Speaker 1: would do with all the extra time that they had
Speaker 1: now that they didn't have.
Speaker 3: To work to keep their health insurance, and she.
Speaker 1: Said, well, you know, they can write poetry, or they
Speaker 1: can go take an arm class.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, actually it's great.
Speaker 1: Most people are not very good poets and most people
Speaker 1: aren't that good at art. And so the question then
Speaker 1: becomes what what else?
Speaker 5: People can play softball, they can do basket weaving, like,
Speaker 5: they can do things that are like enjoyable and meaningful.
Speaker 3: They volunteer.
Speaker 1: And what's funny here, I think it's what's summing up
Speaker 1: some of our disagreement, but oddly kind of agreement is
Speaker 1: on this point of the realignment. It used to be
Speaker 1: that the left talked about the common good and the
Speaker 1: Republicans just talked to about individualism and making money and
Speaker 1: you know, driving up GDP, And now it seems like
Speaker 1: it's kind of flipped. You hear the Republicans, especially the
Speaker 1: Conservatives and the Catholic Conservatives, speaking constantly about the common good,
Speaker 1: and it's the left talking about radical individualism, to choose
Speaker 1: one's own gender, to have an abortion, to do this,
Speaker 1: to do that, to leave the family, to do whatever.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I think it's important to care
Speaker 1: for the common good. And when you talk about what
Speaker 1: people would do, I think it would be nice. I
Speaker 1: think something people are yearning for is to feel like
Speaker 1: we're doing something together, that we're all kind of in
Speaker 1: it together, we have a common purpose as Americans. Barack
Speaker 1: Obama said this on the campaign trail the other day.
Speaker 1: He said, when did we become some asty and divided?
Speaker 1: We need to be much more unified. Well, I think
Speaker 1: if you're debating which side to vote for in this election,
Speaker 1: and you rightly recognize that we're divided, we don't have
Speaker 1: common purpose, and we don't know what we're going to do.
Speaker 3: This go around.
Speaker 1: At least it's the Republicans who were talking about the
Speaker 1: common good and a common purpose and unity. It's the
Speaker 1: Democrats who are totally ignoring that. I think you cast
Speaker 1: your boats accordingly.
Speaker 3: Bernie Sanders. That's right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like that he talks about the common good, and
Speaker 5: in a way that is like a representative of.
Speaker 1: A credit to Bernie Sanders, my little credit to Bernie,
Speaker 1: in the same way that Chesterton gave credit to.
Speaker 3: George Bernard Shaw.
Speaker 1: Chesterton, a conservative Christian, was friends with George Bernard Shaw,
Speaker 1: who was an atheist socialist, and he said, George Bernard
Speaker 1: Shaw is a man with a very great heart, but
Speaker 1: his heart is in the wrong place. And that's what
Speaker 1: I'd say about Bernie Sanders. The man does have a
Speaker 1: great heart, and he's like kind of trying to get
Speaker 1: at something, but it's totally in the wrong place. So
Speaker 1: he ends up a comedy, which is not good because
Speaker 1: that's a pale imitation of the true common good.
Speaker 4: And thus we have reached the impasse between Ryan Grimm
Speaker 4: and Michael Nols.
Speaker 5: And I googled strumpet Google stump I thought I kind
Speaker 5: of heard that word before so accurately.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that'll be the title of your next book, Michael
Speaker 4: Right or new Dailly Wire documentary.
Speaker 5: Campbell beating the charges that like the the like obsession
Speaker 5: with abortion is actually about just pushing back on feminism.
Speaker 1: Feminism is bad. We're not pushing back on abortion because
Speaker 1: we don't like feminism. We don't like feminism in part
Speaker 1: because of abortion. They're they're they're overlapping issues, but they're different.
Speaker 1: Feminism is bad. It's really it's made women miserable, and
Speaker 1: we should cut it out because the reason is it's
Speaker 1: it's wrong about human nature.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean, we could do another hour on that.
Speaker 3: Actually might as well. Couism.
Speaker 4: Well, what I'll do is also if you guys drinks
Speaker 4: and you guys will hash.
Speaker 3: It out and we'll figure Yeah.
Speaker 4: All right. Well, Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show,
Speaker 4: thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Great to be with you both. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: We'll be back with more counterpoints on Wednesday.