Ep. 1971 - Religious Leaders Bless GIANT Golden Statue Of President Trump

AOC embraces Christian nationalism. The New York Times dumps climate change, and religious leaders bless a giant golden statue of President Trump. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. Pratt Daddy Fever is spreading faster than Hantavirus right now. The reality TV star running as a Republican for mayor of LA is just so dominating the airwaves that the Communist mayor of LA Karen Bass has now pulled out of the next debate. Does this mean that we will have a GOP mayor of LA? We'll get to it in a moment. First though, speaking of restoring balance to nature, I want to tell you about balance of nature. But at balanceofnature.com, use code Knowles, getting a wide variety of whole food ingredients in my diet is key so that I continue to survive. Our sponsor, Balance of Nature's Whole Health System, makes it simple. 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It's great. Daily Wire loves this. I adore Balance of Nature, especially when you're on the road as much as I am. Good way to get your fruits and veggies. Go to BalanceOfNature.com today. Get 10% off the whole health system supplements when you use code NOLS, K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Guys, before we get into any of it, we just got to take a moment on the cold hard electoral politics here. Things are going so well for Republicans. Things are going so much better than you would think they could possibly be going given a midterm election year with this quagmire war in Iran with the Virginia Supreme Court has just taken up the question of that recent referendum. You remember the referendum that people voted on at 51 to 49, ballot referendum, people went to vote on redistricting, supposedly restoring fairness to the congressional districts in Virginia, which resulted in disenfranchising 91% of Republicans in Virginia. Remember that one? Then in response to that, Florida redistricted. And anyway, the Virginia Supreme Court just struck down the Democrats' redistricting map. So sorry that disenfranchising all the Republicans of the Commonwealth, that's over. That on top of the US Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana versus Calais to strike down racial gerrymandering, meaning that not only does Louisiana need to redistrict before the midterms, but a bunch of other states do as well, it could cost Democrats 14 seats in the midterm elections. So heading in any midterm election year after a presidential election, usually the party in the White House is going to lose a ton of seats, going to lose the house. And you add on top of that all sorts of structural problems for Republicans right now, not the least of which is the Iran war. And you say, man, Republicans are going to get blown out of the water. And I sat down with House Speaker Mike Johnson, when was this a month ago, maybe two months ago, I sat down with him. We did this interview, I said, how you feeling about the midterms? He said, Michael, I think that not only are we not going to lose, I think we are going to grow the majority. And I said, man, whatever you're smoking, please pass that over here. It sounds great. I could use it. Look, I know it's the job of Republican leaders to be optimistic, to be encouraging, to rally the troops. I said, man, that is so crazy. Did Mike Johnson call his shot like Babe Ruth? I'm not saying Republicans are going to win the midterms yet. I'm not willing to say that yet. But it's just every single week there is more good news. The redistricting in Florida, now the redistricting in Louisiana, shooting down the Democrats redistricting in Virginia, the redistricting in Tennessee, the Supreme Court decision, Republicans could be looking at an extra 14 seats in the span of two weeks. This, if the Republicans manage to hold on to the House, Mike Johnson's call on my show will go down as Babe Ruth just pointing into center field. Now, the Democrats have realized that on the issues, they're in really bad shape. Republicans are not in good shape either. President Trump's approval rating is not great right now. Republicans' approval rating is not good right now. And a whole host of issues, not just the Iran thing. The only silver lining is that the Democrats are even less popular. That's the thing we Republicans, we got to get into our minds. Yes, it's very easy to play the inside baseball and to see all the missed opportunities and all the extra good we could be doing and whatever. The Democrats are even less popular right now. So much so that the New York Times has just come out and declared in an op-ed by Matthew T. Hooper, geographer, author of Climate Change as Class War Building Socialism on a Warmer Planet, to say Democrats do not have to campaign on climate change anymore. Democrats have been campaigning on climate change, which was initially called global warming, since 1972. It really started to heat up pun intended in the 80s and 90s. It reached its climax in 2006 with Al Gore's stupid PowerPoint movie that somehow won an Oscar, An Inconvenient Truth, which made a bunch of predictions about the end of the world, which turned out not to be true. But Democrats have made this not just one issue among many, but the issue in the same way that all politics ultimately is theological. So for conservatives, when we talk about politics, we say, you know, but ultimately this is about God, this is about Christianity, this is about the transcendent moral order and man's supernatural destiny, eternal destiny. So too for the Democrats, we realize all these little policy decisions have to rest on a theological foundation. And for them, that was climate change, which had sacraments, it had the sacrament of recycling, it had the indulgence of the carbon tax credit, it had eschatology, the end of the world. There were major predictions that these guys made. AOC said in January of 2019, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change. Now, how many years has it been since then? It's seven years, getting close. She said that fighting climate change was our generation's World War II, which is crucial because World War II has taken on not just the tone of a great war, a great political battle, but World War II has taken on a deeply religious aspect as well. I mean, the very word Holocaust is a religious term, it refers to a burnt sacrifice on an altar from the Old Testament. So, whereas after World War II, the driving religious animating spirit was to not be a Nazi. We sort of replace the devil with Hitler, and we replace a traditional moral order with the simplified moral order that comes out of World War II. AOC is saying, actually, forget about that, forget about that replacement quasi-secular moral order. We're going to replace that with climate change because the world is going to end by about 2031. Gordon Brown, who was then the Prime Minister of the UK, said in 2009, we only have 50 days left to save Earth from irreversible global warming. It was in 2009. Regenda Pachauri, who was the former chairman of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in 2007, if there's no action before 2012, it's too late. This is the defining moment. That was 14 years ago. I guess we're too late. Greta Thunberg, Greta Thunberg! Before she decided to don the keffiye and take up the latest intifada, Greta Thunberg at least pretended to care about global warming. Before Greta Thunberg was protesting against the oil embargo on Cuba, she was protesting against oil. Now she's pro-oil, but she initially was anti-oil. She said in June 2018 that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years. So 2018 plus five is 2023, humanity still very much around. Then in 2019, she said, we are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! You've stale in my future! King Charles, who was then Prince Charles in 2009, said we just had 96 months to save the world from irreversible climate change and ecosystem collapse. That was 2017, obviously still around. Then in 2019, he said the next 18 months, he pushed the timetable, the next 18 months, we'll decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and restore nature to the equilibrium we need for survival. That expired in 2020. Again, the world's still around. And then of course, Al Gore in 2009, he said there's a 75% chance that the entire North Polar Ice Cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice free within the next five to seven years. It didn't happen. 2006, he predicted a point of no return by 2016. Nothing happened. So I go through the litany. There's so many more examples we could cite. To point out, climate change was not just one issue among many. It wasn't just alongside immigration and higher taxes and affordability, whatever. This was the issue. This was the existential issue for the Libs. So when the New York Times comes out and says, actually, can we please stop talking about this? It doesn't connect with people and we don't need to campaign on climate change anymore. Let's just forget about it. When the New York Times comes out and says that, what they are saying is Democrats don't just need to adjust their strategy and tone a little bit. What the New York Times is saying is Democrats need to fundamentally change. What the Democrats are doing, the way they are speaking, the claims that they are making are fundamentally intrinsically wrong and they need to be a completely different party. That's the New York Times admitting that. I'm so furious about this. I'm spilling my fruity millennial seltzer all over my studio because we were so vindicated, man. It's like crazy. It's unbelievable how bad a position the Democrats are in. And I know all we conservatives want to do is just whine and complain and blackpill and all the rest of it. We are in a weirdly strong position right now. Even it was already built into the way the Democrats were talking about this because when they said, if you don't give me exactly what I want and raise taxes by $10 trillion in the next five minutes, it's like a little toddler. If you don't do it right now, everything is going to go to hell. And then we didn't. And so it just proves the dishonesty, big, big news. And it means that a left-wing city like Los Angeles, Gomorrah by the sea, is potentially in play. We'll get to that momentarily first, though. I want to tell you about Dose Daily. Go to dosedaily.co.uk, slash Knowles, Canada, U.S. America is dealing with a real cholesterol and liver health crisis. For a lot of people, it feels basically unavoidable with how we eat, how we sit, how we live right now. Then when they finally go in for blood work, they're told to hop on some traditional health care option and start taking capsules. They're not even comfortable taking for the rest of their lives. People want to feel like they still have some say in how they take care of themselves, not just do whatever the big corporations tell them. That is why more Americans are turning to gentler alternatives with ingredients they actually recognize, things like CoQ10, ginger, pomegranate, omelette, turmeric. 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Well, let's consider that debt that we owe to the men who came before us, the fathers, the grandfathers, the patriarchs, whose names we carry. Father's Day is coming up. Mother's Day is over. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. It was wonderful. We had a lovely dinner last night, sweet little Alisa, greatest mother walking the earth today. It was wonderful, but now Mother's Day is over. It's Father's Day is coming up. And so Mayflower Cigars is offering a numerically symbolic 7% off site-wide for Father's Day. Go to mayflowercigars.com, use code father, K-N-O-W-U, sorry. Use code father, me, I'm the daddy. No, use code father spelled F-A-T-H-E-R. Check out a box of Mayflower Cigars as the perfect gift. Get your father, grandfather, the father of your children, or yourself, Mayflower Samplers. Boxes of 15 of that father's favorite blend, among many other excellent selections for the occasion. 7% off site-wide. You know, as you've been following Mayflower for a long time, we do not produce enough to keep up with the demand for Mayflower. So we basically never run sales. If we do, they're pretty tight. 7% is about as generous as it gets with Mayflower. It's a good deal because we keep the prices down. Mayflowercigars.com, code father, must be 21 years older, older to order, void, wear prohibited conditions and exclusions apply. You want to see how out of touch the Dems are. Spencer Pratt is the former reality TV star running for mayor of Los Angeles against an avowed socialist and a woman who, Karen Bass, who presents herself as a moderate Democrat, but was actually a card-carrying communist not so long ago. You want to talk about how out of touch the Dems are. This is an attack ad that was launched against Spencer Pratt. Republican Spencer Pratt is the last thing Los Angeles needs for mayor. Pratt opposes using taxpayer money to build brand new houses for our unhoused neighbors, saying it's time for the homeless to get help or get out. Pratt thinks LA needs thousands more police officers rather than more social workers. And Republican Spencer Pratt thinks public employee unions should have less power, not more. LA is on the right track and needs to stay the course. Vote no on Republican Spencer Pratt. Was that an attack ad? Hold on. Wait, was that when I first saw this ad? Spencer Pratt doesn't want to give all your money and homes away to a bunch of drug addict bums. Spencer Pratt doesn't want to urinate your tax dollars into the wind by giving them to crooked unions who are basically organized crime. Spencer Pratt. Wrong for LA. I thought this truly, I believe this was an apperity. This was actually a pro Pratt ad that was just trying to highlight how out of touch the Democrats are. Apparently not. The LA Ethics Commission filing that handles these kinds of ads shows that the ad was funded by an independent expenditure committee, a PAC, called LA Unions opposed to Spencer Pratt for May or 2026. She said, okay, well, maybe it's just a political op. Maybe that's just some dark arts politics, you know, and it's still, you know, the Roger Stone stuff, you know, it's actually still a pro Pratt group. No, apparently LA Union is opposed to Pratt is sponsored by the LA County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. The group spent almost a quarter million dollars on digital advertising opposing Spencer Pratt. That ad is real. That to me, this is the biggest white pill. We'll get to in one second whether or not Spencer Pratt is actually going to be the mayor of LA, but it's not even just that he's making waves. He's taken over the internet. He's scaring the current mayor of LA, Karen Bass. To me, the biggest white pill is that the people running the Democrat campaigns still don't get it. They thought that was an effective ad. You know what the voters want? They want more bums defecating on the street. That's what the people want. So we just need to highlight Spencer Pratt's terrible record on allowing heroin fentanyl addict bums to terrorize people in their neighborhoods. Once we show them that, once we show the people that he doesn't even want to steal their money and give it to us, well, why buy a golly, then his poll numbers will crater. They really think that. Spencer Pratt just goes on the local NBC affiliate talking about the race for mayor. He addresses the claim of his opponents that he is just a reality TV star. Once the city let my house burn down, I pivoted quickly into a community advocate and I've received two community advocate awards. So when you vote for Spencer Pratt on your ballot today or tonight, it'll say Spencer Pratt community advocate because that's how I identify. Now I'm no longer a reality star. And also it's funny. I keep being called a reality star. I'm the only candidate living in reality too. Okay. You just hear the despair from the NBC anchor. Spencer, you call me a reality TV star. Yeah, I guess I am. I'm the only candidate living in reality. I'm running against an avowed socialist on the city council. I'm running against the current mayor who is an actual communist. Like objectively true. We like when there are objective measures of things. I was joking last week about I was debating the left wing pundit, Mehdi Hassan. I said the thing I really loved about our debate at Dartmouth is it's objective. Unlike a lot of TV debates, they vote. They vote at the end and you figure out who won and lost. So you can say, okay, I, this left wing pundit who wrote a book called how to win every debate, he officially lost. I'm very glad we're going to have to have a new version of the book, which is how to win every debate except against Michael. Same thing here. We can look at objective measures. And he said, this guy, Spencer Preck comes out and he says, look, I objectively am the one who lives in reality. These guys objectively are losing. Here's one objective measure. The LA mayor, Karen Bass, who is objectively a card carrying communist just pulled out of the debate. She's withdrawn from the May 13th candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Greater Los Angeles and the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs. Why? Why'd she pull out? Because she knows that Pratt is going to eat her for lunch. So I don't want people to be, look, obviously there's a lot of good news and I want to encourage Republicans here because things are better than many of them want to acknowledge. However, do not get your hopes up for Mayor Pratt of LA. Okay, I hate, I'm sorry to bring people back down to earth for a second, but it's important to be objective here. It's important to actually know our realistic political position in many ways. The GOP is doing a lot better than people think. It's very unlikely that Pratt is going to be mayor of LA. I want every Republican out there to go vote. I want every moderate, every centrist, every central leftist who's disillusioned to go out there and vote. Anything can happen in politics, but the reason Karen Bass is pulling out of this debate is because she is winning right now. She realizes that if she just doesn't show up to debates and she just keeps her mouth shut, if the election were held today, she would win by a lot. And the risk of going on stage with a guy like Spencer Pratt is he is going to humiliate her. He's just going to be pummeling her. And so there's very little upside and there's a lot of potential downside here. The effect of Pratt thus far in the race has simply been to take out Nidia Rahman, Nidia Rahman who's the socialist on city council. She's done. If you look at the Calciads, I don't think I have the precise numbers here, but as Pratt's stock has risen, Nidia Rahman's stock has just totally collapsed. But Karen Bass remains the overwhelming favorite to win the L.A. mayor race. It's not everything happens overnight in politics. And we Republicans, we conservatives are a little impatient sometimes. It's kind of funny because you think conservatives would be more patient, but we're not. The left has far, much more, the virtue of patience than conservatives do. They're willing to march through the institutions for decades. They're willing to take incremental change. They're willing to accept conciliatory middle ground compromises to score a win today so they can score a bigger win tomorrow. We conservatives are not so much and we get very depressed, but we should look at the progress we're making right now, even if we don't win the L.A. mayor's race. It's a lot of good progress here. The socialist side of the Dems is collapsing. It's not just Nidia Rahman in the L.A. mayor's race. AOC is getting pummeled. AOC has just made a novel claim about American history. She says that the American revolution was fought against the billionaires of their day. We'll get to that momentarily first. I want to tell you about Policy Genius. Go to policygenius.com slash noels, K-A-W-L-E-S. Summer has a way of reminding you of what actually matters. A lot of people taking family vacations, road trips, attending family reunions. Your kids are outside. Your family is together. Life feels full. And that's when the question hits. Am I actually protecting all of this or am I just enjoying it? Because it's easy to assume everything will be fine. It's harder to take responsibility for what happens if it's not. The responsibility of protecting your loved ones and planning for the future is heavy. Trying to navigate life insurance on your own can be a mess. 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Go to PolicyGenius.com slash Knowles, compare life insurance quotes from top companies. See how much you can save. PolicyGenius.com slash Knowles, Canada W, L-E-S. As we celebrate America's 250th anniversary, we reconsider what is America and we have to therefore consider what is the seminal event of America, the American Revolution. AOC says the American Revolution was not about taxation without representation. The American Revolution was not the assertion of the identity of Americans as the descendants of Englishmen. No, no, it wasn't about freedom and independence and patriotism. What it was about was fighting the billionaires of their day. The American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time and we're declaring independence from such an extreme marriage of wealth and power in the state. Okay, that's an interesting thesis, AOC. I'm going to be open-minded about it. It just seems like there are a few facts that contradict it. For starters, George Washington, the father of our country and the absolutely invaluable, irreplaceable man of the revolution, was one of the richest men on the continent in his age. He might not have been the single richest man in the American colonies, but he was pretty close. At the time of his death in 1799, his estate was valued around $780,000. That's roughly $500 to $600 million today, inflation adjusted. That would have been worth a little under 0.2% of the entire US GDP at the time. And by the way, his wealth had already been pummeled by his public service and the neglect of his farm. So Washington was, inflation adjusted, if not a billionaire, he probably would have been a billionaire had he not fought in the revolution, but he was pretty close. Other than Washington, we look at another founding father, Robert Morris. Robert Morris was one of two people to sign the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution. Robert Morris was a not a proletarian class warrior against the billionaires. Robert Morris was the single richest man in the American colonies of his day. Well, what about some of the other prominent figures? What about, say, John Hancock? You know, John Hancock, whose signature was the most prominent on the Declaration of Independence, so prominent that it has actually become a synonym for signature. Now, put your John Hancock on the document. John Hancock was, once again, was he a proletarian? Was he a sort of street urchin anarchist? No, he was one of the richest men in the colonies as well. So not only is AOC a little bit imprecise in her analysis, she is exactly perfectly wrong. She has described the inverse of the American Revolution, which was led not against the billionaire class, but actually by the very richest men in the entire colony. But other than that, really great, really great history lesson from AOC. Now, speaking of AOC, my favorite turn of events this week, this weekend, is that AOC has embraced Christian nationalism. You got the Democrats ditching climate change, so their pseudo-religion is out. They realize it's a total loser and their predictions haven't come true, and it's just not connecting with voters, most importantly. So they need to replace it with some other kind of religious animating spirit. And what are they doing? They see Republicans are having a lot of success. So I guess they're going to embrace Christian nationalism. Here is AOC listening to a sermon being preached by her colleague, fellow Democrat in Congress. This is Senator Rafael Warnock. Ebenezer, welcome to you. Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, born in the Bronx, when I lived in New York. They still call it the boogie down. It was the boogie down, Bronx. And I don't take lightly the peril that we are facing just one week after the Voting Rights Act was gutted. And in the days since we have learned why the Voting Rights Act existed, we are living in terrifying times, but we are people of faith. And our faith is the foundation that gives us the courage to fight in the face of overwhelming odds, like Deborah, who rose as a judge in a time of cruel kings and said, I will go. Preach, sister. Preach, sister AOC. Wait a second. Hold on. I thought we were supposed to resist the Christian nationalists and the theocrats. What I was told like five seconds ago by the Democrats that the greatest terror, threat rising up in America is the specter of Christian nationalism. Here we have AOC preaching at a church talking about how we people of faith need to rise up, quote in the Bible, to go vote for Democrats. Preaching, by the way, at a church led in part by a sitting Democrat Senator, Raphael Warnock. Raphael Warnock is still paid by that church. Raphael Warnock in 2022 was paid $155,000 by that church. And you'd think that would be some kind of ethics violation. That's basically his salary as a senator. How does he get a double salary, one for being a sitting elected official and the other for being a pastor at a church? Isn't there some rule against that? He's still being paid even today. It's so ironic because the left loves to throw around this word theocracy. And when they say theocracy, they refer to any government that in any way appeals to religious moral principles. But that's not what theocracy means. First of all, all government has to appeal to some moral principles. That's just what making laws is. But theocracy is a very specific kind of government. Theocracy is government by clerics. It's not just government run by Christians or Jews or Muslims. Theocracy is government by priests, by religious clerics. And what's so ironic here is that when I look around at the Republican senators or the Republican congressmen, I don't see any priests. I don't see any pastors. Do you? I don't really. I can't think of any. Maybe there's one or two. I can't think of any, though. I can't think of any that are making $155,000 a year as pastor of a church. The only theocracy that I can see actually fitting the meaning of that term is among Democrats in Congress, specifically Raphael Warnock. But it's not just him. AOC is shown up to the church. Apparently, Christian nationalism is okay. Apparently, actual theocracy is okay as long as it's in service of Democrats. But it was ever thus. This is just the extension of the point I made about free speech some years ago, which is that the battle over free speech is an illusion. It's not really a battle between free speech and censorship. It's a battle between competing sets of standards, competing sets of taboos. Same thing goes for Christian nationalism, religious government, theocracy. The battle is not between a religious kind of government and a secular kind of government. It's a battle between the different kinds of religions that will animate and, in the case of the Democrats here, actually run the government. Do we want to live in the government that is informed by, I mean, I don't want to live in a theocracy. I don't want government by clerics. I think it's wrong that a paid official pastor is a sitting senator. That should not be permitted. I don't want priests to be elected to office. Topic, I guess, that's slightly tangential, maybe a topic for another time. But when we're talking about how religion will influence the government, the question is, do you want government that is Christian, broadly Christian, Judeo-Christian was a very popular term for many decades. Basic principles of the Bible, the kind of government that John Adams wrote about when he said that the basic principles of the Christian religion on which all the sects are united, he's talking about a zillion different Protestant sects. They weren't super pro-Catholic, but there were a couple Catholic founding fathers. He says, that's the basic principle of the government. That's how we want independence. Do you want the government to be run on that religion? Or do you want the government to be run on the religion of AOC, which is the religion of the sun monster killing us all unless we sacrifice recycling, which is the government of we need to kill our babies to prevent overpopulation. We need to sacrifice our children to the sun god so that he doesn't take out the earth, which is the religion of Gnosticism that says our bodies don't have anything to do with who we really are, which is the religion of sexual indifference, which says that men and women are exactly the same, which is the religion of abolishing marriage. In Christianity, marriage is a key sacrament. It's one of the few really tangible actions in public life that our Lord speaks about directly in the gospel of St. Matthew. According to the left religion, marriage is nothing like anyone ever thought it was, and it doesn't really matter, and we can redefine it as we like. That's the question. Which religion do we want to live under? Because the theocrats of the left, the actual theocrats of the left, are much more serious than the religious right. And maybe we should learn a lesson or two from them. Maybe, maybe we, I think the religious right needs to stop our game. Now, the religious right ruffled a lot of feathers, including among Christians just over the weekend, because religious leaders, specifically evangelical and Jewish leaders, showed up to dedicate and even bless a golden statue of President Trump at Dural. Dural, which is one of President Trump's clubs in Florida. I was there not that long ago. And this has some Christians worried that we might be entering into Golden Calf territory here, we might be entering into the infidelity of the Israelites in the Exodus kind of territory. But I thought there was one evangelical pastor who had a very, very good response to the criticism. Big fights over history, AOC rewriting the American Revolution. Of course, you had Nicole Hannah-Jones at the New York Times rewriting the American founding in 1619 or 1620. It is a big battle. The battle over modern politics is very much a battle over history, and the Libs have done a good job rewriting history, which is why you got to check out Real History with Matt Walsh on Daily Wire Plus today. It's done really, really well. People love watching this series. Matt does a great job with it. Pains me to say it, but he does a great job with it. So you go subscribe right now. The Libs do not want you to know the real history of this country and the 250th anniversary of America. Now it's more important than ever go watch Real History with Matt Walsh on Daily Wire Plus today. My favorite comment yesterday, wow, again, I don't read the names. It's just the comment. Once again, we're just going to call my favorite comment, the drummers workshop norms music section of the show, who says Greek salad was invented by black people according to AOC. Yeah, you remember that? That was the other man. AOC has been on run the last few days. Democracy invented by black people. Jamal Madison, I think it was, who is the father of our constitution. Is that right? Is that right? Cleistines, but like with a bunch of apostrophes in there. Anyway, AOC got to love it. Religious leaders at Dural, one of Trump's clubs, have just blessed a giant golden statue of Trump. And I was zooming in on the religion here. I can't help but notice, I don't think there were any Catholic priests in attendance, but there were Christians and Jews. I think it was mostly evangelical Protestant leaders and some Jewish leaders. And they installed the statue of Trump on one of his properties, raising his fist in the air in that amazing moment where he was shot in in Butler, Pennsylvania, survived by the grace of God. He said, fight, fight, fight. And these religious leaders came and blessed the statue. And so a lot of critics have said, well, this is a golden calf. You're making an idol out of Trump. You're worshiping Trump. This is wrong. This is too far. Even for us Christians. I thought Pastor Mark Burns had a really good response to the criticism. I won't read the whole thing. It was quite long. But he says, one of the greatest honors of my life was leading the dedication of President Donald J. Trump's statue to the world. What amazes me is how quickly some people have compared this beautiful statue created and made possible by more than 6,000 patriots to a golden calf or idol worship. Let me be very clear. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. The word of God says, you shall have no other gods before me, Exodus 20, verse three. It also says, you shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve. Matthew, chapter four, verse 10. That is the line. And now take out your pencils because I love this line from Pastor Mark Burns. He says, honor is not worship. Respect is not idolatry. Celebration is not bowing down to a false God. Write that line down. Honor is not worship. Respect is not idolatry. Celebration is not bowing down to a false God. This statue was created, was not created for worship. It was created as a symbol of resilience, patriotism, courage, and gratitude. It was created to honor a man who many may disagree with, but millions of Americans believe has done extraordinary things to make this nation stronger. I love this. So on the point itself, should there be a statue of Trump at one of the Trump clubs? Yeah, probably, right? That makes sense. I don't, is there anything crazy about that? There's a statue of Barry Weiss at the University of Austin. I think it's okay to have the founder, especially when we're talking about Donald Trump, who's the president, whose name is on the club. I think it makes sense to have a statue of Trump there, right? He's the president. He's an historic president. Okay. So is the problem that the statue is gold? What is it about gold that's in, I don't think there's anything intrinsically immoral about making a statue out of gold or plenty of gold statues in the world. So what's the issue? The issue is that, like maybe the issue is the blessing, but is it wrong to ask for God's blessing? I don't think there's anything wrong with asking for God's blessing. Is there? We ask for God's blessing all the time. We ask for God's blessing over our dinner, over our breakfast. Is that wrong? No, what's wrong? What's wrong with this in the minds of some people is that they think that these religious leaders, evangelical Protestants and Jews, are creating a golden idol to worship. But the pastor, the evangelical pastor who led the dedication, said, no, no, no, we're not creating this as an idol to worship. We're just honoring Trump. This is a symbol of patriotism, courage and gratitude and resilience. And honor is not worship, respect is not idolatry, celebration is not bound down to a false God. I love this because this is an excellent opportunity to understand icons. Since antiquity, all the way up through the modern era, there have been certain controversies, iconoclast controversies. Is it okay for Christians to make images of Christ or of angels or of anything else? And this is litigated because, you know, in the Bible, God says, don't make any graven images of anything in heaven, but then God also specifically commands the Israelites to make golden statues of cherubim, of angels. So is that a, is God contradicting himself as, no, I think God is explaining what we're talking about here, explaining the distinction between an idol to worship and an image, which is for honor, for respect, for celebration. We are physical creatures. So all of our communications and our thoughts are mediated by images. Even if you close your eyes and you're praying, you can't help but make images in your mind. So it's not the images themselves that are wrong. It would be giving undue worship to an image, a created thing, giving to that thing the worship that is due to God alone. A lot of times, it's funny because I don't think there were any Catholics at this dedication, but it's the Catholics who were accused of worshiping Mary, the mother of our Lord or mother of God, or venerating the saints. You know, we venerate, we shouldn't be venerating the saints. We shouldn't be making these images. And what is the Catholic response? Which is, which is often to evangelical Protestants, but some other people too. The Catholic response is, no, no, no, honor is not worship. Respect is not idolatry. Celebration. You know, our processions where we process with either a statue of the Blessed Mother or certainly a Eucharistic procession actually is an active worship, because it's Christ himself, really, truly present in the Eucharist. But let's say a Marian procession, you know, the old images, you don't see it as much anymore, of Catholics walking around with a statue of Mary. We're not worshiping that. Celebration is not bowing down to a false God. Respect is not idolatry. Honor is not worship. I love, I love the opportunity. I'm not weighing in on the aesthetics of the statue. I haven't seen it up close. Maybe it's a nice statue. Maybe, I don't know. I haven't seen it up close. But asking God's blessing on our president, or God's blessing even on a place or a thing, totally within Christian tradition, and paying respect to our leaders, honoring our leaders, creating depictions of our leaders, nothing wrong with that at all. And I hope it helps people to understand why we honor the saints. To venerate is to honor and to respect it. So it's those exact words that the pastor's talking about here. We venerate them. If we venerate a courageous president, all the more so, should we venerate the people who have dedicated their lives to God with special sanctity. Makes perfect sense to me. Love it. Now, speaking of moral issues before we go, this has been too positive a show, so we got to get a little negative here, folks. There's a graph going around. Got to give credit to End Wokeness here on X showing the percentage of Americans who are married by the age of 30. In 1975, 91% of women, almost all women, were married by the age of 30. And 81% of men, men get married a little bit later, but 81% of men, that's a lot. Then it starts to decline, as is after the sexual revolution, with the advance of feminism, 10 years after that, the number had dropped to 77.5% of women, 67.7% of men. Then it just keeps dropping. 10 points or more per year drops another 13.5 points in the next decade for women. And about the same for men, drops another 13.5 points the following year after that, almost the same for men, drops another 12-ish points, 12.5 points, 10 years after that. Today in 2025, only 25.6% of women, one in four women, is married by the age of 30. For men, it's 16.5%. Absolutely, it was at one in seven or so, or less, even brutal, even more brutal. This is the end of society. We opened up the show talking about climate change. That was going to be the end of the world. The Sun Monster was going to get really angry at us if we didn't keep performing the ritual of recycling and sacrificing our babies. The Sun God was going to be really upset and destroy the earth. Well, that didn't happen. This, however, is the end of society by definition. The fundamental social unit, the fundamental political unit, is the family. We talk about taxes, industry, tariffs, war, immigration. None of that matters. A nation doesn't matter. A nation does not exist if people do not get married and have children. You might say, well, isn't having children the issue here? You could have children out of wedlock. I guess a people could continue in some degraded sense if you just keep having children out of wedlock. But a society cannot, because the smallest unit of society, the very first society we encounter, the society without which we cannot do is the family. Because that's multiple people in a relationship of mutual obligation and right. You cannot have that without marriage. And the marriage rate has completely collapsed, at least at a younger rate. So even if you say, well, no, people are going to keep getting married. They're just going to get married at an older and older rate. Okay. That means that one, it's going to be harder for those marriages to work because people are more solidly formed. Just like, you know, it's easier to repair a broken bone. It's easier to bend somebody at their personality or even their bodies when they're younger, because our bones haven't totally ossified yet. As you get older, it's harder to mash those two things together. But also, it just means you're going to have less opportunity to have kids, less opportunity to grow together, less opportunity to gel, meld, become one flesh. That's the issue. To me, this is the issue. And we always talk about the biggest issue is climate change. The biggest issue is the war, or Israel, the Iran, or Russia. The biggest issue is affordability, the crime. Yeah, everything's an issue. The fundamental issue facing society is marriage. This is one of the secrets of Fatima, isn't it, for the Catholics in the audience. It's that the final battle between Satan and God will be over marriage in the family. But even if you're not particularly religious, you can see it as a truism. The essential issue for society is the family, because the family is the unit of society, the atomic unit of society. Okay, today's Music Monday, the rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member, use code NOLSKIN at WLS, check out for two months free on all annual plans.