Ep. 1951 - LEAKED: Leading Democrat DROPS OUT After This Viral Video

Blowing out budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in... Dashboard Confessions! I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend 200 pounds on your first campaign and get a 200 pound credit. Go to linkedin.com slash lead. Terms and conditions apply. There's no one like you and there never will be. From the producer Bohemian Rhapsody, there were many legends, but there was only one. Michael in IMAX and Cinema's Now. Amid tensions over the Iran war, the president launched a broadside against the Pope last night and then followed it up with an unfortunate post that offended many Protestants too. We will get to the proper relation between church and state. I am sorry to say everybody's getting it wrong. Then the leading Democrat candidate for California governor goes down in flames and, on the other side of the world, a new apparently anti-immigrant right wing prime minister is elected in Europe. And both of those things that you think are good are actually terrible news for conservatives. Also, this little cherry on top, after 21 hours of negotiations in Pakistan, no peace deal with the Iranians, all of which reminds me of that ancient Chinese curse, May You Live in Interesting Times. I'm Michael Knowles, this is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. A little bit of maybe good news by the end of the show, which is that we're looking at birth rights now and there's been a huge divergence. Conservative women are having a bunch of kids relative to the general population. Liberal women are basically having no kids at all. That might be good news, I guess. I remember years ago, Mitch Daniels, when he was about to run for president, he said there are two ways to beat the left. You can either out-argue them or out-breed them and out-breeding them is a lot more fun. We'll get to that. I'm gonna convince that's good news. It's been rough, man. Before we get into all that rough news, I wanna tell you about Hallow. Go to hallow.com slash Knowles starting today. Join Mark Wahlberg on Hallow and let's stay prayed up. You've probably seen Mark's weekly hashtag Stay Prayed Up Posts. That constant reminder for millions of us to keep showing up in faith every Sunday. Well, now you can go even deeper with him every single day. Prayer is not just something we say before dinner or when life gets tough. It's about surrendering control and inviting God to lead. And when you do that, it changes everything. In this new Hallow challenge, Mark's helping us all build a rhythm of daily prayer that sticks even in the chaos of real life. You will learn to pray with scripture, to hear God's voice in his living word and to make prayer part of the fabric of who you are. Because Staying Prayed Up is not about perfection. It's about showing up every day with consistency, humility and heart. That is where God meets you. This app has just taken over the world, taken over the app store, certainly. I've really enjoyed using it. It's a real white pill on the culture. Go to hallow.com slash nolls, Canada, ULS. Or download the Hallow app and join for three months free. Let this be the Easter that changes everything. That is hallow.com slash nolls for three months free. Rough weekend politically folks, wouldn't you say? You get the leading right-wing figure in Europe. He goes down in a brutal election. All the globalists are thrilled about that. The peace negotiations in Iran, JD Vance goes over to Pakistan, gives it the best effort that I think it is possible to give. No peace deal in Iran. Then you have the president offending both Catholics and Protestants right on the heels of one another. And the Yankees got swept by the devil rays. And I'm just saying politically, it was a tough weekend. So I wanna start with the least bad news. This is news that many conservatives think is good news because a Democrat politician who was the leading Democrat to take over California, he went down in flames. I mean, this was the worst political crash out that we've seen since Anthony Weiner. And yet even that is actually really pretty bad for Republicans, though it tells you a lot about how efficient the Democrat party is. So what's the news? The news is that Eric Swalwell, remember Eric Swalwell, the former future president, he ran for president last time, total joke, total goofball out of Congress. He was gonna be the leading Democrat for governor of California. And it seems that Mr. Swalwell has a little bit of a trouser issue. All these women coming out of the woodwork to say either when I worked for Swalwell, he slept with me even though he was married and he pressured me to do this stuff and he did all this degenerate sex stuff. Some women going so far as to say, I think he raped me. I will get into those claims as well. I mean, this was just a brutal pile on. And I had been telling you, though, you know, I hate to say, I told you so, I'd been telling you this is coming for weeks because it started with the attack from Tom Steyer, who's another Democrat running for a governor of California. That attack came out and said Eric Swalwell is not qualified to be, he's not legally qualified to be the governor of California because he's not a California resident. And the California state constitution says you have to be a resident to be governor. Swalwell's a resident of Washington, DC. He's not actually a resident of California. It looked like there might have been a little fraud there. So I said, look, that's the shot across the bow. That's the first signal Swalwell get out of this race from the Democrats, not from the Republicans. Then the next shoe to drop was that Swalwell was apparently paying his wife out of campaign funds to watch their kids. Maybe that's not illegal. I don't know. I'd have to look into the finance regulations, but even if it's not illegal, it's so corrupt. That expose too is really being pushed by the Democrats, not by the Republicans. Said they're gonna chase this guy out of the race. If Swalwell had been smart, he would have gotten out after the second shot at him, but he didn't get out. Therefore, logic would tell you, he might not be the brightest bulb in the condolabra. Anyway, this was the political death shot. This was the one, all these women, all, I mean, just an avalanche of women coming out saying, this guy, he cheated on his wife. He was getting drunk all the time. He was pressuring his staff to sleep with him. He was exploiting power dynamics all the way up to, I was too drunk to consent and he raped me. Now this takes us back. Many people have short memories in politics. This takes me back at least to the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, where the best that the Democrats had on Kavanaugh to try to torpedo him was a sex scandal, quote unquote. From decades earlier, when Kavanaugh was a teenager, a campaign kicked off by this woman who constantly was contradicting her own story, whose best friends were coming out saying, this didn't happen. I mean, it was just totally bogus. It was the most ridiculous railroading we've probably ever seen of a Supreme Court justice that includes Robert Bork, that includes Clarence Thomas. And Eric Swalwell was one of the Democrats leading the charge, the Me Too Charge, against Brett Kavanaugh saying, we need accountability for these men abusing their power and taking advantage of women. Here he is on MSNBC. What was important to you about anything that you heard tonight from President Trump, speaking out at length from Mr. Abinadi, who I believe you just were able to hear, and new reports that there are new allegations being probed by the Senate regarding Judge Kavanaugh. Good evening, Ari. I saw continued demeaning of victims of sexual assault, people who deserve to be heard, who deserve for their allegations to be investigated, and a president who wants to just rush this through. He criticized the Senate for even taking this long, Ari. And so for Brett Kavanaugh's sake, if he is innocent, I hope tomorrow he opens his statement and says, you know what, bring in all the victims, allow them to be heard, allow them to be questioned. That will clear his name if he's indeed innocent, and if he's not, for the sake of the credibility of the court, I hope that the senators would vote against him. How the turntables, my oh my, how the turntables. Is that how the expression goes? Swalwell, one of the leaders here, along with, you heard him reference Michael Abinadi. That was the other one, you remember him? He was the man, he was known as the creepy porn lawyer. He represented Stormy Daniels. Then it turned out he was a fraudster. He was robbing his own porn star client, blind, totally dishonest lawyer. Abinadi went down some years ago. Now, Swalwell says these victims deserve to be heard. We need to air it all out. Not only are there allegations, there's video. I won't even play you the whole video, but you can see a little bit of it in the B role. This is Eric Swalwell on what seems like a hotel room bed, I don't know, with some kind of hooker looking lady, I don't know, with other guys and girls in the room kissing this woman, not good. Not good, Swalwell's been married for 10 years, very sad, he has a bunch of kids. So, you know, we should pray for the family. It's very unfortunate, this guy obviously has no self-control, no surprise there, he's a bit of a doofus, that one. A reminder of one eternal maxim. The male feminists are always the biggest predators, always, all the time. I remember one time when I was in college, this was at the beginning of the Title IX investigations, which actually started at my school, and then it kind of spread around the country. This idea that American campuses are rape cultures, and women are less safe on Harvard Yard than they are in the back alleys of Botswana. It was all these girls talking about the rape culture, and it was very interesting. Some friends and I had a conversation one day with one of our real feminist friends on campus, Super Lib, hated all of our politics, and he said, are you kidding me? You think this is a rape culture? What are you talking about? And she said, you know, it's not you guys, it's not the conservatives, it's not the right wingers generally. I mean, everyone's a little irresponsible on college campuses, but he was like, this issue here is not the conservatives, it's the liberal guys, it's the male feminists. They're the ones, the ones who say women need to be empowered, and casual sex is empowering, and you know, men should never take any special care of women, and chivalry is bogus and ridiculous. Come on, girl, let's empower yourself by sleeping with me. It's so that I can just discard you the next day. It was plenty of blame to go around, but it was mostly the liberal guys, it was mostly the male feminist guys, it's always those male feminist guys. So what was this guy doing? I think it was Michael Tracy, the kind of liberal journalist who came out and said, you know, look, these girls who are claiming rape, I don't really buy it, because some of the staffers who were claiming this a better ex-Wallwell, you know, they engaged in sexting with him, and they had long standing sexual relationships with him, and they say, you know, they got drunk one night and slept with him, but then they kept hanging out with him, and they kept seeing him multiple times, and this doesn't really sound like rape, and so this isn't really sexual misconduct, because it's consenting adults. And the point here is, one, the women are saying, well, I was too drunk to consent, but even beyond that, I think the reason that you've seen a lot of the Me Too arguments center around this notion that women, even if they seem to consent or not really consenting, is because we all realize that there is more to misconduct than just consent or lack thereof. We all know that. We all know that there are things that ostensibly consenting adults can do that are still wrong. We all know that, but the liberal morality tells us we can't admit that. The liberal morality tells us that the source and summit of all morality is just consent, and that raises legitimate questions about consent. Can people really consent if they're drunk? No. Can people really consent if they're underage? We were told that kids could consent to transgender therapies and surgeries, but kids can't consent. That's why we have an age of consent, which is not for kids. Can people, I'll go further, can people really consent if they're addicts? No, we would say no. He couldn't control himself. That's just his condition. He has the disease of alcoholism or drug addiction or sex addiction. Could Eric Swalwell really consent? Could he control himself? No, he obviously can't control himself. Does that let him off the hook? It obviously doesn't let him off the hook. Because there is more to morality than consent, and because freedom, this is a point I come back to again and again, freedom is not, as the liberals would have it, neutrality and choosing. Oh, I could pick this, I could pick that. Freedom, rather, is willing. It's the ability to will, to pursue your desires, predicated on knowledge, which is why if your will is messed up, like for instance, if you're an addict, you can't really consent. And if you're ignorant, you just don't know what you're choosing, you also can't really consent. So what's the misconduct here? Well, I think we would at least say that a member of Congress has a greater degree of power than his staffers. And a member of Congress who's hitting on his staffers, who's asking his staffers to have sex with him, even if the staffers say they wanna go along with it, that's misconduct. That's not appropriate. That would be disqualifying. Cheating on your wife, probably not appropriate, right? Probably that counts as misconduct. Doing this for years and years and years. While you are a hypocrite on television, going after Brett Kavanaugh for nothing, not good, misconduct. This is, hypocrisy is the only other slight caveat to liberal morality. It's all about consent, but hypocrisy is a big point there too. This is why Norm MacDonald, he had this great bit when it's kind of sad story with Bill Cosby doing all the creepy sex stuff. And he said, you know, someone told me that the worst part about the Cosby scenario is the hypocrisy, but I don't think that's the worst part. I think it's the raping. I think hypocrisy is the raping, the scheming, the drugging. Hypocrisy is pretty low down on the list. So all weekend people say, is Swalwell gonna drop out? Is he not gonna drop out? Republicans jumping on, making fun of Swalwell? I was making fun of Swalwell. Everybody was doing it. What's he gonna do? And is that actually good for Republicans? We'll get to that in a second. First, I wanna tell you about Hillsdale College. Go to Hillsdale.edu slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. You do not need to be Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg or Winston Churchill rallying a nation to make a powerful point. You just need to know how to use your words. The truth is, language is one of the best tools that we have when you learn to wield it well. It can move minds, shape culture, and even change history. If you've ever wanted to sharpen your ability to think clearly, speak persuasively, and argue with precision rather than mere passion, Hillsdale College has you covered with their brand new course, Classical Logic and Rhetoric. You don't see a lot of these classes anymore. I was very lucky. There's a very small seminar when I was in college on Oratory and Statecraft. They used to teach this. This was part of the trivia, part of medieval education, ancient education, but it's fallen by the wayside. Hillsdale's brought it back. One of their leading professors is leading this completely free online course that walks you through the tools of sound reasoning and rhetoric, the same skills that form the backbone of every good debate in every civilized society. Once you're in, you'll find Hillsdale offers 40 other courses for free, everything from the book of Genesis to how the Allies won World War II, the fall of the Roman Republic, the American founding constitution. It's really, really great. I just love Hillsdale. I've been honored to do some work with Hillsdale over the years, including a new series that they've got coming out soon. Go right now to hillsdale.edu slash nobles to enroll. No cost, easy to get started, hillsdale.edu slash canowls to enroll for free. Last night, 7.36 p.m., Eric Swalwell posts, I am suspending my campaign for governor. Oh man, they got him. The illegal residency that he was, he was gonna just knuckle through it, white knuckle through it. Then the payouts to his wife from the campaign, very corrupt, he was gonna get through. This one, they got him. I said it to sweet little Lisa. After like the third woman came out, I said, they got him. They got him dead to right. They already had him. I'm suspending my campaign for governor to my family, staff, friends and supporters. I am dead to them. I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I've made in my past. In my past, by the way, not being 20, 30, 40 years ago, my past in this case being like yesterday. And then he concludes, I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made. But that's my fight, not a campaign. In other words, let me translate that for you. I'm dropping out of the governor's race. I'm deeply sorry for all the things I didn't do. What a joke. What a joke. This goofball at the end of his political career can't even make a coherent statement. This guy, he's been in politics his whole life. He's accomplished precisely nothing. He's humiliated himself. He's humiliated his family and friends. He's out and he still doesn't understand the basics of logic or the English language. Now, he gives himself a little out, I should be fair. He says, I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made. He doesn't say all of the allegations are false. He doesn't say I will fight all of these allegations. He says, I'll fight the serious, false allegations that have been made. What are, all of the allegations, it would seem, are true. There's a lot of evidence for all of them. He slept with his staff, he cheated on his wife, he hung out in hotel rooms with hookers or whatever, there's a video that appears to show that. But I don't know, maybe at some point someone called Swalwell late for dinner, I don't know. And maybe at some point they said, Swalwell was wearing a blue shirt, he was really wearing a white shirt. So there could be a minor false allegation there, but pathetic, really pathetic. Now, why is he quitting in this way? I'm quitting. I'm really sorry for all the things that you've now seen not only alleged but on video, but I didn't actually do them. The reason he's quitting in this way, and the reason this is bad for Republicans, is because he's gonna quit the race for governor. He says, look, I'm totally unqualified to be governor. I'm unfit as a matter of morality and my character. I do not deserve the public trust to be governor, but I will remain in Congress. Look, I know that Congress doesn't have the best reputation right now or ever, really. But how is it that you do not have the character for the public to trust you to be governor, but you're totally fine to remain in Congress? Well, I'll tell you why, because it would be very bad for the Democrats to kick Swalwell out of Congress, so they're gonna try to avoid doing it. But it's very good for Democrats, for him to drop out of the governor's race. And you know what, this is really all about. Let me see. A lot of headlines here today to pick through. Here it is. This from April 9th. It's from governing.com, but it's backed up in a lot of other polls and outlets. Top three candidates in the California governor's race. You got two Republicans up there. Polls show some Democrats in a large primary field gaining support, but if the election were held today, two Republicans would likely advance to the runoffs, shutting Democrats out. So there's so many Democrats running for California governor that they're splitting up the Democrat vote. Also, Democrats under Gavin Newsom have so destroyed California that even in California, voters are looking to Republicans right now. And because of the way the California electoral system works, if the race were held right now, a Republican would win. That's what this is about. That's all that this is about. This has nothing to do with sexual misconduct. This has everything to do with Democrats losing power. So the Democrats came in and they said, sorry, Swalwell, you're out. People have known, I was talking to some friends of mine in Congress, people have known these stories about Swalwell forever. In fact, you had some Democrats as they were pulling their endorsements from him over the weekend saying, you know, I knew about these rumors and I asked Swalwell about it. I said, do you think this is gonna hurt your chances at governor? He said, no, it's no big deal. Don't worry, we'll get through them. And he would have gotten through. If the top two guys in the Republican poll, in the California governor polls right now or not Republicans, not one Democrat would have said people about this. This guy would be governor of California. This is entirely, entirely about power. So the only thing Republicans can do now is try to force a vote to kick Swalwell out of Congress. If he doesn't have the integrity, which he obviously doesn't, to resign himself, you at least have to shame, not even him, he is incapable of shame, but the other Democrats, you at least have to put them in a bad spot in Congress and make them vote to keep Swalwell in Congress. Now, again, this is California. So if they boot out Swalwell, they'll just send another Democrat in there. This is something they're willing to deal with. It's the same reason why the Democrats were fine getting rid of Al Franken. Al Franken had this scandal where he was shown taking a picture pretending to grab a girl's boobs. And apparently he got a little grab happy in some photo lines. And so they threw him out and the Democrats say, see, this is proof we police our own party. That's not true. They just booted him out because they knew they could easily replace him with another Democrat. And it'd be simple and they wouldn't lose any power. When push comes to shove though, when it comes to the real tough races, when it comes to Bill Clinton, greatest example, when it comes to impeaching Bill Clinton for not only sexual misconduct, but perjuring himself. For the same misconduct that Eric Swalwell seems to have engaged in, but also perjuring himself, breaking the law, the Democrats close ranks. It's strictly about power. What's so amazing, you have this leading candidate for a Democrat governor of California, and he was taken out entirely by Democrats because he wasn't a strong enough candidate. So now you're gonna get someone like Katie Porter or some other Democrat to come up there to maybe pose a greater challenge, consolidate the field, take those Swalwell votes, such that the Republicans are not gonna win in California. Not good, not good. I mean, I'm tempted to start a Republicans for Swalwell campaign right now. I can't bring myself to do it and still be able to keep my breakfast down, but not every time a Democrat goes down is that a win for Republicans. In this case, it's a loss. In fact, the whole thing was coordinated by Democrats. Now you're seeing a similar thing happen in Hungary, Hungary, which was the exemplar, the last remaining bastion of conservatism at any extreme degree in Europe. The one guy who stood up to Brussels and said, we are not taking the migrants in. We're not gonna destroy our country. We're not gonna erase our cultural patrimony. We're not gonna ruin our society by flooding it with foreigners who don't want to assimilate. And he went down in flames in the election last night. And some people, some unfortunately benighted, ignorant people on the right think that it's a good thing because they say the candidate who beat him, he's actually even more right-wing than Victor Orban. The ousted prime minister, we'll get to that in a second, folks. You should be in taken for a ride. First though, then of course, we'll get to President Trump's posts about the pope and his later post about religion generally that offended even Protestants. We'll get to that momentarily. First, I wanna tell you about Brickhouse Nutrition. Go to takelean.com, code NOLS. This episode is sponsored by Brickhouse Nutrition. You probably heard about those weight loss injections everyone's talking about for good reason. The results can be pretty incredible. They work by helping regulate blood sugar and keeping your appetite in check, but here's the thing. Not everyone wants to deal with weekly injections, especially when you start hearing about some of the side effects that can come with them. That's where lean comes in. It's a weight loss supplement developed by doctors and people are seeing some really impressive results. The ingredients in lean are backed by research showing they can help lower blood sugar, turn stored fat into energy, reduce those constant cravings, and hunger pangs that make dieting so hard. One important thing to know, lean is not just designed for someone who wants to drop a couple of pounds. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition formulated it for people who've been struggling to lose 10 pounds or more and are ready for something that actually works. Multiple producers and employees at the Daily Wire have tried lean. They are looking sexier than ever. They have been very impressed by how effective lean has been in such a short period of time. Get started with 20% off and free rush shipping so you can add lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Go to takelean.com, enter code NOLS for your discount. Criminal code NOLS at takelean.com. Orban, the great conservative right wing leader of Hungary has gone down. The guy who beat him is this guy, Peter Majar. Majar, M-A-G-Y-A-R. Majar is the name of the Hungarian language. It's like a name of Hungary. His name is basically Peter Hungary. And this guy wins. And he's a center right candidate. But some are now arguing he's even more right wing than Orban. So we shouldn't be upset about losing Orban because yeah, it's too bad. A guy who's a real ally of American conservatives. So much so that the vice president just flew over to help campaign for him. So much so that President Trump endorsed him. So much so that a lot of American conservatives have gone there to help support Hungarian conservatism, myself included. I've been to Hungary three times in the last three years, I think, twice in one year. I wanted to get back there this year. Unfortunately, I couldn't make the schedule work. He goes down and people say, no, don't worry. The new guy who took over, he's even more right wing. The only reason they ousted Orban is because he's corrupt. I would just say, guys, please try to recognize that politics is not debate club. This is one of my big problems. This is one of my big problems with the way some of the wonks and the academic people in politics debate. This is one of my big problems with the podcast war. This is one of my big problems with how people are reacting to these election results and campaign collapses. Politics is not just about ideology. Politics is not debate club. I want to just show you my evidence here. Here are the people celebrating Orban losing to the supposedly far right anti-immigration candidate in Hungary, Hillary Clinton. The end of Viktor Orban's autocratic regime is a victory not just for Hungary, but for people who value democracy around the world. Congratulations to Tisa, the party of the one, to incoming leader Peter Majar and to Hungarians everywhere. First of all, I love this first line. The end of Viktor Orban's autocratic regime. They've been saying that Orban is a dictator, he's an autocrat, he destroyed democracy for years, it was always total nonsense. I've seen it firsthand and now the whole world has seen it firsthand because he lost an election and he conceded power immediately. Small consolation for us is, see, we were right. You called us fascists, but we're not really fascists. The Libs don't care. They level these accusations totally cynically. But the question you gotta ask yourself, why if a far right-wing anti-immigration candidate just won in Hungary, why is Hillary Clinton so happy about it? Alex Soros, who's now running the Soros organization, son of George Soros. The people of Hungary have taken back their country a resounding rejection of entrenched corruption of foreign interference. Gavin Newsom, JD Vance, I love also Alex Soros saying, hey, we ousted Orban in Hungary. Thank goodness there's no foreign interference. Hillary Clinton and I and Barack Obama and Gavin Newsom and the EU, we all ousted the Hungarian leader. Thank goodness there's no more foreign interference. Give me a break. Gavin Newsom, JD Vance proves he's a lightweight. Congratulations to the people at Y. Because Newsom is trying to attack JD because JD is the heir apparent to the Trumpism and to the Republican Party. So Newsom wants to be president. He realizes JD is the toughest guy in the race. Most likely gonna be the nominee. I'm just gonna use any excuse to attack JD. Congratulations to the people of Hungary. Democracy, free press and human rights win. There's hope. Tim Walls, that old knucklehead, former vice presidential candidate for the Dems, a big win for freedom and democracy. The tide's turning. Barack Obama, the victory of the opposition in Hungary yesterday, like the Polish election in 2023, is a victory for democracy, not just in Europe but around the world. Most of all, it's a testament to the resilience and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If Orban's loss in Hungary is secretly really good for the right, how come the entire global left, the very worst elements of the global left are unanimously celebrating it? It doesn't take a PhD in political science. Doesn't take a dissertation on Machiavelli and Count von Metternich to know this is a loss for conservatives. Major loss. Now, their rejoinder is, well, no, this is actually just about corruption. See, Orban was corrupt and this new guy, he's not corrupt. Yeah, okay. We're talking about Central and Eastern Europe, okay? Corruption is just kind of part of the game. All right, we're talking about former Soviet bloc countries. Corruption is just kind of part of the game here. But you're telling me, hold on, you're telling me that the global left is excited about a truly anti-immigration, right-wing, stalwart, conservative, new prime minister because they're so concerned about corruption? Hillary Clinton, that vaunted enemy of corruption. She's just so ex, oh, thank goodness, corruption loss today. If there's one thing Hillary hates, it's corruption. Wouldn't you say? Obama, Newsom, Brussels, the Soros family. No. I'd love to be proven wrong. I hope that this guy, Peter Majar in Hungary, can resist Brussels, but if I were a gambler man, I would say probably not. Okay, speaking of tough news for the global right, generally, especially the American right, President Trump last night, he Pope posted. He launched this broadside against the Pope. I won't read the whole thing, it was very, very long. But here's the first part. Pope Leo is weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy. So right off the top. What, foreign policy, one can debate. What does it mean that the Pope is weak on crime? You know, there used to be a Vatican executioner who killed some, executed some 500 criminals back when the papacy controlled substantial territory called the Papal States. We haven't had that in like 150 years. So what does it mean weak on crime? There is a Vatican penitentiary, because it is a city state, but I don't, what does it mean for the Pope to be weak on crime? You can say foreign policy, okay, there's this disagreement. This tweet comes in the context of a disagreement between the president and the Pope on the Iran war. The crime thing, I don't really get that. Then terrible for foreign policy. He talks about fear of the Trump administration, but he doesn't mention the fear that the Catholic Church and all other Christian organizations had during COVID. When there were arresting priests, ministers, hold on, the Catholic Church was arresting priests? No, I think probably what the president means here is when the liberal politicians, the secular authority was arresting priests and a lot of Christians rolled over for COVID lockdowns. That's true. Not sure the church exactly rolled over for the arresting of priests, but sure, not just the Catholic Church, but Christians broadly did go along with the COVID lockdowns in a way that I didn't like, certainly. Okay, so I see that. He goes, I like his brother, Louis. The Pope's brother, Louis is apparently more right-wing. I like Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, Leo doesn't. I don't want to Pope who thinks it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. So this is really what it's about. It's not about crime, it's not about COVID. This is about Iran. I don't want to Pope who thinks it's terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a country that was sending massive amounts of drugs in here. I was elected in a landslide, and the only reason Leo was elected is because they wanted an American to counter me and the Vatican, and he met with David Axelrod. The Pope apparently met with this liberal advisor to Obama, and that's bad, Axelrod's a loser from the left. And this Pope should focus on being a great Pope, not a politician. It's hurting him very badly, and more importantly, it's hurting the Catholic Church. Okay, okay. Not great, don't love this, don't love this at all. One in five Americans is Catholic. One in five Americans is Catholic. And there are plenty of non-Catholics who don't like seeing attacks on the Pope. One in five Americans is Catholic. The Catholic Church is the largest single Christian denomination in the United States to use the modern terms. President Trump sends out the post, and he also clarifies to the reporters what he means. I don't think he's doing a very good job. He likes crime, I guess. He hit us, think of it. He's worried about fear. What about the fear when the ministers and the priests and all of those great people that were arrested during COVID, and in many cases, they're outside 10 feet apart, and they were arrested? So we don't like a Pope that's gonna say that it's okay to have a nuclear weapon. We don't want a Pope that says crime is okay in our cities. I don't like it, I'm not a big fan of Pope Leo. Okay, so he said, I don't like the Pope. Now you'll remember, some of you will remember, some of you were too young, in the early days of the Iraq war, one of the last things that Pope John Paul II did was speak out against the Iraq war. And you didn't see President Bush say, I don't like the Pope, which I hold is spiritually a very bad thing to do, but even politically, politically I think it's not a good thing to do. And I assume someone has told this to the president already, but if not, I'm as a bona fide a Trump supporter as ever there was. I have voted for Trump in every presidential election that he's run in, and I really like the guy and I love all the good that he's done. Spiritually I think this is bad, and politically, this is not good. I get it because there's a tension that goes not just through the Trump era or the Bush era, but goes all the way back to antiquity between the Pope and the emperor. There's a tension that goes back between the spiritual authority and the secular authority, all the way back to the beginning of our civilization. But I don't think this is very helpful. So the Pope himself has now responded to reporters on the papal airplane. I will not enter into debate. I think the things that I say are certainly not meant as a text on anyone, and the message of the gospel is very clear, bless it on the peace makers. I will not shy away from announcing the message of the gospel. I'm inviting all people to look for ways of building bridges for peace and reconciliation, of looking for ways to avoid for any time that's possible. To put my message on the same plane as what the president attempted to do here, I think is not understanding what the message of the gospel is. And I started here that, but I will continue on what I believe is a commission of the church in the morgue today. That's the key. That's the key phrase here. To put my message on the same plane is not a good understanding. That's the key phrase. And this gets back to this perennial tension between the secular ruler and the spiritual ruler. I mean, let's not forget, in the Middle Ages, you had popes and emperors fighting wars against each other. So actually by historical standards, this is relatively tame. But this idea that there are different planes here, this I think is the key. And I think the pope's statement here was very effective. And the way to understand this conflict and the way I think to move forward in a good way requires us to reacquaint ourselves with how this debate has been settled going back to the fifth century. We'll get to that. And then we'll get to how the president also seemed to have offended Protestants, Christians generally. We'll get to that momentarily. First though, as we clear the air, I wanna tell you about rabbit air. Go to rabbitair.com. The other day, a pal here at the office stops me. He said, Michael, I heard you say something earlier. Is it, do you really smoke cigars in your car? I said, of course I smoke cigars in my car. I'm a man, of course I do. And I don't, I'll buy the cheapest car in the world, but I, you know, the one thing I ask for is I want leather seats, so I get smoke in the car, doesn't stay in the fabric. For people who wanna smoke in their home, in the man cave, in the office, and wherever, you know, you wanna do it, it's nice, especially when it's rainy outside, but you don't want that air to linger lest your wife yell at you. Sorry, you know, you just did, you know what you did? You need the rabbit air A3. It is the best, I've used them for years. I have multiple in my house, and I smoke a lot of cigars. The rabbit air A3 is not merely an air purifier, it's a sentry ever watchful, ever refined. With built-in laser particle and odor sensors, it conducts constant reconnaissance on your indoor environment, detecting cigar smoke and other pollutants with incredible efficiency. You just have to try to believe it. It's just, it's the best. I've smoked cigars with a lot of air purifiers before. This is the one, it's great, it's easy to use, you can do it from your app, it's amazing, you can automate it, change the different settings, it's just simply phenomenal. It's so good that it can deal with cigar smoke. And then if you don't smoke cigars, you can just use it for your air, and it's just wonderful. Rabbitair.com, call their consultants 24-7 for personalized recommendation on the best setup for your smoking space. Folks, you need to go to dailywire.com slash subscribe. There's a lot going on, as you may have noticed from this show, and just from reading the news. So you need to know what's actually happening, very hard to find these days. You need to know why it matters from people that you trust who are not just complete lunatics, and I want you to be part of the conversation. So right now, DailyWire Plus members can be part of the chat, of the shows live. You have to join though, dailywire.com slash subscribe. My favorite comments, I have two favorite comments from Friday. One is from AldousHuckstable, great name, wow, great name, says, also providential that I mentioned Bill Coss, I never mentioned Bill Coss, see all nature is but art unknown to thee, I'll chance direction, which that can't not see. Anyway, the comment is, Michael, I'm being sincere when I say this, your sane washing is truly brilliant. Oh, thank you, I really appreciate that. I like that phrase, sane washing. There's brainwashing, that's what you get on the other shows. That's what you get from governments, but there's sane washing, that's what I like to do. And there's a related comment, it's kind of funny people, but I don't even remember what this is in directly in response to, but it does get to something I try to do, which is from A Studios 9930, it says, well done, Knowles, your real one, most logical coverage over this dumb mess. I don't even know what that's in response to, but that's why I try to do. And folks, sometimes I think it hurts my ratings, because the temptation in political media, especially in podcasting, is to take the most extreme stance, is to take the most provocative extreme stance. I find a lot of podcasts, is what they do, they often, sometimes they'll just say totally crazy things, but sometimes they'll say relatively moderate things, but they'll say them in the most provocative, offensive way possible. Whereas what I try to do is the opposite. I try to say sometimes radical things in the most moderate, reasonable way possible, and it's not always the best for ratings. That's why I try to do, folks. That's what I'm trying to offer you, trying to offer you a constructive way forward. My friend Yoram Hazoni made the point one time, when all the right was talking about how we need more critical thinking. We need critical thinking. I said, do we need critical thinking? And Yoram made this point, he said, we don't need critical thinking. We have enough of that. We need constructive thinking. That's what I try to offer. An insight of the conservatives is that it's easier to destroy than to build. So often people just want to destroy. We've all done it, we all have those videos, so and so destroy, so and so. But we want to build, we want to build, especially when we're in power. So how do we think about this fight between the Pope and the president? Two planes here. I go back to my old buddy Pope Galatius I. I mean, hardly a day goes by, we don't talk about Pope Galatius. He writes a letter in AD 494 to emperor Anastasius, the Byzantine emperor. And he opens the letter, he says, hey, I'm sorry, you seem to be offended that I didn't send you greetings. It opens up, he said, I heard you're offended. I heard you're upset with me, emperor. Mr. President, Mr. President, emperor, I heard you're offended with me, because I wasn't flattering enough, or I wasn't courteous enough or something. But hey, the only reason that I didn't send you a letter, the reason that I didn't call is because you were upset with me. So I didn't want to further annoy you or anything like that. But I'm gonna say what I'm gonna say, and you're gonna say what you're gonna say. And then here's what he says. Verbeda, I pray your piety, not to judge my duty toward the divine plan as arrogance, far be it from the Roman prince, I beg, that he judge the truth that he senses in his heart to be an injury. This is the key. For there are two, oh emperor Augustus, by which the world is principally ruled, the sacred authority of Pontiffs and the royal power, the spiritual authority and the temporal power, among which, how much heavier is the burden of priests such that they will have to render an account to the Lord at the time of judgment, even for the very kings? This is their two powers in the world, the spiritual authority and the temporal power, and they're distinct. But the greater weight lies with the spiritual authority, because the pope is responsible for the president in a way that the president is not responsible for the pope. This is this long-standing debate. Now, fast forward to the middle ages, you have Dante, truly hardly a show goes by, I don't talk about Dante. Dante is fighting the pope. He's a member of the pro-pope party. There were the Guelphs and the Ghiblians, the Guelphs are pro-pope, the Ghiblians are pro-emperor. Dante's part of the pro-pope party, but the pro-pope party divides into factions, the black-welves and the white-welves. Dante is part of the more favorable to the emperor side of the pro-pope party. He's kind of like a medieval rhino. Dante there, even as he is fighting, he wants to diminish the temporal power of the pope. He wants to increase the temporal power of the emperor. He'd be inclined to take the president's side over the pope's side. He writes this in his treatise about how the pope is wrong and the emperor needs more power. He concludes it with this line. Important for us to keep in mind. Let Caesar honor Peter as a firstborn son should honor his father. So that, refulgent with the light of paternal grace, he may illumine with greater radiance the earthly sphere over which he has been set by him, God, who alone is ruler of all things spiritual and temporal. Even Dante was saying, hey, pope, lay off. Hey, emperor, you should get a lot more power. But even there, he says, but emperor, you should be respectful toward the pope. You should allow the spiritual authority to illumine the temporal authority, which is distinct. I think the issue with the president's commentary here is less the substance and more the tone. It's actually, I hate to sound like a lib or like a woman, but you know, like sometimes, like a liberal woman really. He was like, it's not what you said, it's how you said it. But really here, the tone is the key because reasonable minds can disagree over foreign policy. Reasonable minds can disagree over certain political judgments. The president does have the politics as his lane, but it's the tone. The temporal authority, well, distinct, should be respectful of the spiritual authority. As we are respectful of our fathers, you don't always have to agree with your father, like your dad, your regular dad. You don't always have to agree with him. Sometimes you do. In certain limited circumstances, you do have to do what your father says. But a lot of the time, you don't have to do what he says. You're your own man, especially when you're, but you always have to be respectful toward him. God tells you to be respectful to your father. And that's how we feel with the spiritual authority. So what do we make of this? Some people are saying, well, look, even Catholics, you're saying, well, the Pope is only infallible on certain matters of faith and morals defined through a definitive act, ex-cathedra. And so you don't have to listen to the Pope on anything else. That's not quite it either. Because some people basically want to say, the president should do politics and the Pope should do religion and never the twins show me. That's not gonna cut it, guys. That's a cheap way out, but it's not gonna cut it. There's a reason this issue has been going on since the fifth century, at least. It's not gonna cut it because you can't do politics. The president can't do politics without recourse to religion because you can't do politics without laws and you can't do laws without morality. And you can't do morality without religion. So the president has to engage in religion, even if he doesn't want to admit it. This president, I think, does want to admit it. This president is openly pro-religious, most of the time, the vast majority of the time. Same with the Pope. You can't just say, hey, Pope, just do religion, don't do politics. Because the Pope has to shepherd a flock that lives in the world. So the Pope necessarily has to do politics, even if you're not Catholic, you don't care about the Pope. Your pastor has to do politics. Whoever your spiritual guidance comes from, that guy has to do politics to some degree. There is overlap, there is a relation between the two. And so we want the two to work together, each respecting the legitimate prerogatives of the other, but cooperating. That's how it's gotta work. It's really the tone. You can say, Pope, I respectfully disagree with you here. But those are the two planes that we're talking about. Okay, the Pope, before we get to Cabot, the line that I think then offended not only the Catholics, but the Protestants as well, is the post that followed immediately after the post, the Pope post. Sally sold seashells by the seashore. It's very difficult to say all those words in a row. The president posts this picture of, it's a meme, it's like an art meme of him. It appears to be as Jesus holding what might, divine light, whether that's the Blessed Sacrament or whether that's just a divine light in clothing that is typical of Christ in artistic depictions, putting his hand on an ailing man, healing him with these angels or demons or celestial beings coming out of the clouds at the American flag. And it's obviously kind of trolly. It's Trump is, what I think Trump is trying to say here is, look, I'm healing the country. I'm really great for the country. And I think even further he's trying to say, I've been really good for Christians. Joe Biden locked up Christians, locked up pro-life Catholic grannies, and I pardoned them and I let them out. And I overruled Roe v. Wade, and I've been good for religious liberty. I'm good, what's the matter with you Christians? What more do you want from me? I think that's what he's trying to say. But the post is sacrilegious. It just is, it's just inescapable. It's just a sacrilegious post. To put oneself in the position of Christ is just sacrilegious. It just, I don't think that was the intention exactly. I don't think this was thought out for all that long. I think it was a meme. And so it's say, with all the grace that we can give and all the charity with which we can speak, it is a fact that in an irreverent age, sometimes people don't know what taboos are legit and what taboos are nonsense. What taboos are woke, shibboleths that should be made fun of. In that irreverent age, we just, sometimes comedians, they tell a joke that's a little out of line. And I would say in this case, for both spiritual reasons and political reasons, I'm sure someone's already told the president this, but if not, the post should come down. Simple as. I think I think I could go further and say, I think it would benefit the president spiritually and politically to just take it down. It's okay. And we can remember that he's been very good at promoting Christian causes against the godless left that wants to destroy the church. But sometimes people make mistakes. Even a guy who's right 99.7% of the time politically, sometimes people make mistakes. I think it should probably definitely come down. Okay. There's so much more I wanna get to. There's a guy who went viral for saying religion stole his sexual prime. He's really upset. He got married young, then he divorced. And now he's upset that he didn't go to orgies or something in his twenties. I wanna get to that because it's just, it's the most, oh my goodness, it's the most millennial 2026 complaint I've ever heard in my entire life. I also wanna get to the left wanting to kill us all. This basically admitted by Ezra Klein in the New York Times. I also wanna get, I do have to get, well, I can cover this story quickly. They sent the vice president last best hope to go get a deal with the Iranians in Pakistan. Just didn't happen. We've been trying to get a deal with the Iranians for 47 years. It hasn't worked out. So the Iran war continues on really, really tough because it means that there's a very good chance that the United States will either have to lose stature or invade Iran, neither of which people really wanna do. So as we said, when I was sitting with Cabin on the day the Iran war started, I said, this is the highest stakes action the president's ever undertaken. Had I been on the National Security Council, I would have argued against it as I'd been arguing against it, but I see the good that could be done. I see what the good that President Trump is aiming at. If this works, it'll be the greatest stroke of grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. If it doesn't work, this is the greatest danger that Trump's presidency's ever had. I think that's what we're seeing out of Pakistan. But speaking of Cabin, we'll have to get to all those things tomorrow because I wanna bring Cabin on right now to talk about his new show and some actual good news. A little sliver of good news in a rough news day. Cabin, excellent to see you. You scared me a bit. You said we're gonna get to Cabin and then you said we're gonna talk to a millennial who's mad that religion stole a sexual prime and I thought that's not what I'm ready to talk about. I'm not ready, yeah, that's good. At least six more months before you're willing to go into that story. Absolutely, of course. Now, actually, what you are talking about from your beautiful set of the new show Wired in Live is that the conservatives are, if not having more sex, they're at least having much better sex and doubtless, more fruitful sex than the liberals, are we going to win by outbreeding the left? We are, Michael. That is the pace that we're on right now. And first, I have to get the promo out of the way. Like you said, Wired in Live, The Daily Wire is doing a live news show Monday through Thursday, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time. Tune in if you're saying, hey, I wish there was more live coverage happening when I'm driving home from work. So tune in every day at this beautiful set. But beautiful set. And also let's talk about beautiful sex, the kind that produces babies. There is a study that came out from the University of Chicago showing how many more babies conservative women are having than their liberal counterparts. So if you look back to 1980, conservative women, before they hit the age of 35, 65% had had a baby. For liberals, it was 61%. So libs and conservatives, they're both having babies at about the same rate. Jump to 2010, the conservative women by 35, 67% had had babies. For liberals, it had trickled down to 51%. Today, Michael, 71% of conservative women have had a baby by the age of 35. For liberals, it's 40%. So the trend is going in completely different directions. And for what this means for the future, if this current rate holds, by the year 2100, there by the standard of this century, that's not that far away. If the current rate holds, 80% of babies in America will be born to conservative women. And I think a lot of us wonder like, why is the left trying so hard to dominate what's being taught in schools? A big part of it, I think, is that, hey, they're not having enough kids to influence with their worldview at home. So they have to start doing this to our kids. And also this plays, I think, into immigration policy where they're saying, hey, we're not raising our own children. So let's just bring in these third world masses that we can influence by giving endless free taxes, free welfare, whatever it is. And so I think that it kind of explains a lot of their policies when you look at, oh, they're not having kids. And all of this anti-baby rhetoric and all of this thing about, hey, we're gonna give people the right to not be mothers by killing their babies. Yeah, that actually has an impact on the amount of babies being born. You see this explicitly, the teachers unions will come out and say, your kids are our kids. When they go to school, they're our kids. Hillary Clinton was straight. It takes a village, a true enough maxim in itself, which she meant by that is, we're gonna raise your kids. Now bring me that chart again. This is too happy a story that conservatives are having all these kids and liberals aren't having kids. So I wanna just look at the numbers here and make this sad again. That's kind of the theme of the show today is some apparently good news is actually kind of bad. I look at this, okay. So the mean children by ideology, 0.87 for the liberal women, but for the conservative women, it's only 1.67. So they're both well below replacement rate. Replacement rate is what, 2.1? And you want it to be 3, 4, 5. You know what, I want it to be like 10, 11, 12 kids per family. Both well below replacement rate. So to your point, Cabot, if the Libs do succeed at winning the elections and flooding the country with illegals and giving amnesty to the illegals here, they're gonna reshape the demographics of the country anyway. It doesn't matter if the conservative women start having six kids each. And then to your point on education, you think, all right, well, that means that the Libs are gonna redouble their efforts. I mean, how many conservative families do you know where one or all of the kids goes woke? Yeah, that is the other big issue here is the, we do know that, and you feel like it studies anywhere from like 30 to 50% of political ideology can be explained from heritability. So there is a genetic aspect here where people are more predisposed to the political views of their parents. But of course, when you see the domination of the left in all of our institutions, social media, Hollywood and the big one education, yeah, you gotta make sure that you're not just having kids, but you're making sure that they stay conservative. And I wanna also get to one of the responses from the left to this, because they look at this and they say, well, number one, well, that's no problem. Women are more free and they're tied down by childbirth. And the other thing that the left says as well, that's because liberal women are more educated and more successful professionally and more educated women. They just have fewer kids. But if they're actually- They're so smart, they're gonna go extinct. Yeah, but like- Yeah, real geniuses there, huh? If you dig into the numbers and you look at college educated women, college educated conservative women are still twice as likely to have kids. Women in the workforce are still twice as likely conservatives to have kids. And if you look at the, the study actually broke down IQ based on vocabulary, which is a good marker for that. High IQ conservative women are three times as likely as high IQ liberal women to have children by the age of 35. And by the way, I think they're more pulchritudinous too. Yes, that word that you just said, I think that I agree with that word that you just said, Michael. We don't use words like that on Wired and Live. We're much more accessible. If you watch Michael just so that your friends see you watching Michael, but you're not actually understanding a lot of what he's saying, come to my show, the Everyman's show, Wired and Live, because we're for the people and we don't smoke cigars on our set. We just have good old fashioned conversations. That's beautiful. You know what, yeah, the other reason they do it, the other reason some of these people watch the show is they accidentally think they're tuning in to Rachel Maddow, who is one of those liberal women actually. And I don't think as kids. I'm actually not totally sure about that. It's a complicated role these days, but in any case, you're right. You get different things, you get different outcomes, depending on what you watch and what you do. And I think the key here, the key takeaway from this study, which is really, really helpful is, it's not enough just to be conservative. And oh, it's great, we're gonna have some more kids and maybe we'll out-read them. You gotta be so conservative. You gotta be so thoroughgoing. You need to be so comprehensive in your view of things, going all the way down to the deepest spiritual level, because you are going to have to inoculate your kids against the leftism that is going to be redoubled the minute they get to schools. Cabot, when and where can people see Wired in Live? 4 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Thursday. You gotta go to dailywired.com though, to watch it. That's the only place where we're going out to dailywired.com. Become a subscriber and you can jump in the chat every episode, I get to live questions at the end. It's a lot of fun, but 4 to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Why, it pains me to say it? It takes a big handsome man to say something that pains him so much. It's an excellent show and you should all go watch it. Go watch Wired in Live at Daily Wire. Cabot, good to see you. Wonderful to see all of you. I will see some of you, the Haim nila Haim, not the Hoy Ploy public, but the Haim nila Haim. In the member block, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber to see it. Today is Music Monday. Head on over to dailywire.com, use code NOLS to become a member now and get two months free on all annual plans.