Ep. 1987 - INFURIATING: Shocking Body Cam Shows Henry Nowak’s Final Moments

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Stop letting sportsbooks steal from you. Download Poly Market and use promo code BOLT for $50 free on your first trade. Use promo code BOLT. Trading not available in all jurisdictions. Check local regulations before trading. Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. An 18-year-old English boy was stabbed five times by a 23-year-old Punjabi. And rather than administer medical care, local police arrested the boy and joked with his killer as the young man bled out on the pavement uttering the words, I can't breathe. New body camp footage has shocked anyone with even a slightly functioning conscience. But the most arresting aspect of the video, as I was watching it, was the realization that Henry Nowak actually was who the left tried to make George Floyd out to be. They uttered the same dying words. The phenomenon that the George Floyd mythologists pointed to was real. The only difference was that the details were precisely inverted. A Michael Knowles' The Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. Smash the like button and subscribe. Also, check us out on Spotify, where you can download full episode audio and video to watch or listen wherever, whenever you want without using your data. Do not miss an episode. Big updates coming out of the White House in the Middle East. President Trump and BB Netanyahu reportedly on a very tense phone call, Trump calling BB crazy. What's really crazy, Nolstra Dhamma strikes again. I predicted when the first little news that phone call came out, I predicted that Trump had yelled at BB. And according to the reporting, he did. But I don't think it's so simple as all that. So we'll get into it first, though. Want to tell you about fast growing trees. Go to fastgrowingtrees.com, promo code, NOLS, K-N-W-L-E-S. There's something deeply satisfying about planting a tree. Not the abstract, just actually planting one. 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This story out of the UK, coincidentally, as I'm heading out to the UK now, this story from the UK is one of the most shocking stories in the news right now in the establishment media, or doing anything they can to cover this up. And I think you'll see why. The broad outlines of the story are that an 18-year-old English boy was stabbed five times by a British-born Punjabi guy who was 23 years old. The 18-year-old English guy was coming back from a pub, but he wasn't drinking very much. They tested his blood alcohol. His blood alcohol was way below the legal driving limit. So he'd gone, he had a beer or two, something like that. He was walking back. He was singing to himself on camera. He was snapchatting as he was walking, and he was just singing to himself. And then I guess he walks by this Punjabi guy and he says, quote, in it, bad man. What bad man? You're a bad man. Say you're a bad man. Go on. It's unclear exactly what the significance of that is, but he's just kind of talking, just kind of joking around. The killer then turns to him and says, I am a bad man, and then stabbed this 18-year-old boy five times. The killer then filmed Henry running away. Then the killer called his parents, and the parents, it seems, covered up for him. So the killer tells police that Henry Noak, this boy, had called him racial slurs. Again, we have the video. This did not happen. Then came out later on that the killer made all of this up. The killer apparently in a conversation with his brother that was secretly recorded, the brother advised this killer to claim self-defense so they concoct this story, that it was actually a racist white guy who was threatening him and calling him racial slurs. And even the killer went on to say, he attacked me. So this was self-defense. So the cops show up and they say, oh, sir, sir, are you okay? You've got this English boy bleeding to death on the ground. They're totally ignoring the guy at first. And they're talking to the killer and the killer says, oh, yeah, yeah, you can see my eye is swollen. You can see he's got, he has no injuries whatsoever, of course, because he wasn't attacked. He's just making it up, oh my eye was swollen. Oh no, oh, that's so terrible. Finally, finally, the police turn their attention to the actual victim, this 18-year-old English guy who is bleeding out on the pavement. This is, this isn't even the whole body cam footage, but I want you to see enough of it to grasp what's going on here. There is obviously, he's fallen off and then he slipped from there. There's other shoes that's over there, mate. What's your name, mate? Huh? Has anyone been hurt other than him? Yeah, me. He's grabbed my brother, he's put my turban off. So I grab on my head. Are you injured? Yeah, yeah, I've got swollen eye, little bruises. Smaller eye, there's not a scratch on this guy. Meanwhile, you can see the poor kid on the ground, he's dying. And so the cops just drag this guy from in front of a car. Grab his upper arm. I can't breathe. What's happened to you, all right? Stop, mate. This stud. I've been stabbed. You've been stabbed, whereabouts? I don't think you have, mate. I don't think you have, mate. The boy at this point has been stabbed five times. What does he do? He puts the handcuffs on the kid. Put the hand in the cuff, mate. I can't breathe, put the hand in the cuff, mate. I've been stabbed, don't think you have, mate. The killer says you haven't been stabbed, nothing happened. You're all standing around, family standing around, they don't exactly what happened. He's been stabbed in the face. Oh no, but we have to check, don't we? In the face. That word there. Just get his back off, get down to his chest. I've been stabbed, he hasn't been stabbed. And what does the cop say? The female cop says, oh, I know. He tells the killer, oh, I know he hasn't been stabbed. We've got to check anyway, don't we? Get him to the side, mate. You've got to read, read, read, then. It's the same term, keeping him on his side. We will set up when we have the man, but you don't have to. Not doing anything, they're just holding him to arrest him. What's your name, mate? By the moment you are under arrest, that's for assault, so you do not have to say anything, may harm and defence, if you do not make your own questions, that's up to which later line of court. Anything you do say, maybe give him an evidence, all right? No first aid. They're arresting him and reading him his rights, he might be dead by then already. The line that really drives the story home, I think, is from that female cop. He says, I've been stabbed. The killer, the Punjabi killer says he hasn't been stabbed. The killer guy just stabbed him five times, he hasn't been stabbed. And what does the female cop say? She turns to the killer, she says, oh, I know. Oh, I know killer, of course you're right. Of course the guy who's dying on the ground right now, of course he's just lying, but look, we have to check it out. Just procedure, I guess we got to check. They don't even really check it out, they just arrest him. What was most striking to me about the body camp footage, just so awful to watch, it goes on for minutes and minutes. That's all we have time to get to, you get most of the story there. What's most striking is, this is what they said happened to George Floyd. George Floyd, who had just committed a crime, who was resisting arrest for how long, for 10 minutes? We have the footage of that too. The cops trying to be really gentle with George Floyd, hey, come on, calm down, George Floyd acting all crazy. Why? In part because he had just taken a lethal dose of drugs. He had illegal drugs on him, he swallowed it to try to avoid an arrest. And then what does George Floyd say? George Floyd says the exact same thing that this young man says. He says, I can't breathe. Of course, in the case of George Floyd, he was resisting arrest for 10 minutes. The cops were being as polite and courteous and soft on him as they possibly could have been. In this case, no benefit of the doubt given to this victim. He says, I can't breathe. And then he dies as they're arresting him. Police totally, not only shirking their responsibilities, but treating the perpetrator as if he's the victim and the victim as if he's the perpetrator. And it's so dark, but in the grand scheme of providence, there's a lot of meaning that we can pull out of this. And the meaning that we can pull out of this is, in a certain sense, BLM was right about George Floyd. They weren't right in the details. They weren't right about Derek Chauvin. They weren't right about George Floyd. They weren't right about the circumstances of George Floyd's death. They weren't right about the meaning of the phrase, I can't breathe. But they were right in principle. And the principle here was, there's a two-tiered system of justice. What do we hear in George Floyd? We heard it's these racist whites who are always giving preferential treatment to white people. And they're always going much harder on brown people. And this is the two-tiered system of injustice, of injustice is what it is. And that is real. That phenomenon really happened. You're seeing almost the exact same thing play out in the killing of Henry Nowak with the exact same words. The only difference is the details were precisely inverted. Yes, there is a two-tier system of justice. This taking place in the UK, the two-tier system of justice is, anyone who is not white is given every benefit of the doubt. Far beyond anything reasonable. And if you are white, you are never given the benefit of the doubt. The worst motives are always assumed. And even the lies of criminals are to be believed, even if that's going to lead to your death. It's exactly the opposite. And you see this so often with liberalism. It's just what they claim is opposite day. It's always just opposite day. All the way up to the apotheosis of the liberal ideology, which is transgenderism, which says men are women and women are men. But it's always the opposite. They say we have a system of racial discrimination in this country. That was true in America. That was true. We had a system of racial discrimination. We still kind of do, except it's not the one that they say that exists. We have a system of racial discrimination when it comes to job applications, when it comes to college applications. But the racial discrimination is if you're white, you're docked points. If you're white, you're disadvantaged. And if you can claim to be not white, you get all the benefits in the world. It's exactly the opposite. And of course, it's the opposite in the reaction. In the case of George Floyd, where the circumstances were completely dishonest, even in the earlier BLM incidents, the Michael Brown shooting, they said Michael Brown was executed, gentle giant. He was just trying to comply with the law. And then that racist cop showed up in Ferguson and blew his head off. Of course, it was exactly the opposite. Michael Brown had gone up, had charged at the cop. He had just committed a crime. He reached for the cop's weapon. He discharged the cop's weapon. It was totally the opposite. And what was the response to the lies of BLM? The response was looting, burning, pillaging, rioting, dozens of murders, billions of dollars in property damage. And you know what the response is going to be here? To the mirror image of BLM? The response is going to be basically nothing. It's going to be a media blackout. It's going to be politicians. Some politicians mention it, and then they're all going to move on. There aren't going to be any riots in the streets, which is good. We don't want vigilante violence, but more to the point, there's going to be very little political reform. The only hope of political reform is to play that video everywhere. This little segment here, going through, breaking it down, send it to your friends. Doesn't have to be my segment. I want it to seem self-serving. Just send the video around. Send the context of this around. You have to show people what this is. So much of the way that the left operates is just by creating an illusion. By creating a mythology, like the mythology of George Floyd, the mythology of BLM, creating an illusion and that really persuading people, that really coloring the way they view the world. And the only way to crack through that is not going to be with debates. It's not going to be owning people by facts and logic. It's not going to be by writing corrections to news stories six months later that show up on page 3000 of the newspaper instead of the front page headline that you see from the left. You're not going to argue your way out of this. You have to show people. You have to show people what it is. I'm reminded. I come back to it again and again. Joseph Conrad, the great writer, in the introduction to Nigger of Narcissus, he points out that there's a distinction between the scientist and the thinker and the artist. That the scientist deals in facts, the thinker deals in ideas, and the artist just makes people see things. The artist is dealing in images. You have to show people this. You have to crack through the illusions that they are told. Because what's so heartbreaking is that the left is describing something that is real. They're just presenting it completely upside down. Okay, speaking of violence, a lot to get to on the violence front because we have this evolving situation with regard to Iran, explosive phone calls coming out of the White House, and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifying before the Senate, in which he made a declaration I think a lot of people have waited for for a long time, namely, that the Iran War is over. We'll get to that momentarily first though. I want to tell you about Mizan and Main. Go to MizanandMain.com, promo code Michael20. I love Mizan and Main. They make terrific clothes, especially for the summer season, because what Mizan and Main does is they occupy that nice lane between what looks good, what looks presentable, what looks proper, and what feels good and what can be worn in the heat when you need a little more performance. Mizan and Main is classic menswear made with performance fabrics. They look polished, but feel more like athletic wear. 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If you would rather shop in person, you can find Mizan and Main stores in select states. Folks, big, big news. There is a new candle. The new candle for the summer. We've been working on this for a long time. It is for sale at thecandleclub.com. The summer candle this year. It's a little beach cocktail themed candle. It's called My Suit and My Tie. My Tie. Get it? My Suit and My Tie. Do you get it? Do you get it? I'm a sucker for a good pun. Well, not only will you get this candle when you go to thecandleclub.com, but there's a special little Easter egg in there. It might involve the ukulele. It might involve an original musical composition. It might involve a very elaborate music video where I'm just setting the daily wires money on fire. And anyway, you're not going to want to miss it. Go to thecandleclub.com. Get that summer candle today. Big news. Coming out of Capitol Hill, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, declares that the Iran War is over. Mr. Rubio, you keep telling us how we're winning this war. The President keeps saying... Well, the war is over. Completely annihilated. The war is not over. And yet the American people see how we're losing at the pump. Okay, so the big headline. The big headline, Secretary of State says the Iran War is over. But you see here in this exchange, it's actually not that big a headline. Because what Rubio is saying is what the administration has said for weeks now. Namely, the war, Operation Epic Fury is over. Now we are in a ceasefire. And this is very precise wording because the President has the unilateral authority as Commander-in-Chief to issue military strikes. But it is somewhat circumscribed by the war powers resolution. And even that, plenty of Democrat presidents blow past the limits of the War Powers Act. It's supposed to be 30 days, then you can extend it to 60 days. Barack Obama and Joe Biden extended it way, way, way beyond that. But in any case, I think what the White House is clearly delineating here is that there was this war. It went on well within the scope of the War Powers Act. Now that war is over. Operation Epic Fury is over. But we're in this ceasefire, and Iran still has the Strait of Hormuz closed. So the Strait of Hormuz is closed off. 20% of the world's oil and natural gas can't get through. Petrochemicals, fertilizer, a bunch of other stuff. The US responded to the Iranian blockade with their own double reverse unicard blockade. And then for the last few days, we've been hearing that they were close to a peace deal. Then the Iranians say, no, you're not going to get a peace deal. We're not negotiating anymore because the Israelis keep bombing Lebanon. And that should be included in the ceasefire. And the Israelis say, no, Lebanon's not included in the ceasefire. You just deal with the United States. And but then the White House is saying, no, they actually haven't stopped negotiating. The negotiations are ongoing. And then there was this reported phone call between Trump and Netanyahu, as well as a call between the White House and Hezbollah. But let's zero in on the call between Trump and Netanyahu. Big headlines out of that, which I predicted on the show yesterday, even before this news broke, that the headline of that phone call is that Trump yelled at Netanyahu. According to Axios, Trump told BB, you're effing crazy. In other words, stop screwing up my ceasefire. Stop screwing up my peace negotiations. Lay off Southern Lebanon. We want to get a deal to open the Strait of Hormuz. So here's the reporting from Axios. The reporting from Axios is coming from Brock Ravid. Brock Ravid, who clearly has a lot of access to the White House, and we'll get to what that signifies in just a moment. First though, the article says, President Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel's escalation in Lebanon in an expletive laden call on Monday, two U.S. officials and a third source briefed on the call told Axios. So it's not just one source, and if it's Brock Ravid, he's probably getting pretty highly placed sources. It's two sources plus a third source who wasn't on the call, but heard about the call summarizing Trump's remarks to Netanyahu. The U.S. official said, quote, you're effing crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your dairy air. I'm cleaning up the language a little bit. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this. Clearly referring to the poll numbers that have really cratered for support of Israel across the political spectrum in the United States. A second source briefed on the call said, Trump was irritated. I got to clean up the language. You know, I don't like to go blue. This is a family show. Trump was irritated, and at one point yelled at Netanyahu, what the eff are you doing? The U.S. official said Trump knew Hezbollah had been shooting at Israel, and that Israel needed to defend itself, but felt in recent days that Netanyahu was escalating in a disproportionate way. So when I saw this headline, everybody always takes the catnip. Everybody loves, and so you say, look, I think Barack Ravid has good sources in the White House. So I don't think he's making this up. I don't think this is someone just trying to gum up the works. However, you can't just take this all at face value. Whenever you're analyzing any political operation, you have to say, okay, who does it benefit? Why am I being told this now in this format? And my first instinct is to say, well, it benefits the White House to get this news out there. The White House does not want it to seem like BB Netanyahu is the senior partner in this alliance. The White House doesn't want it to look like BB Netanyahu is calling the shots, and we don't have anything to do about it. I mean, the state of Israel is a relatively small country. We're the global hegemon. We cannot have that. So it's beneficial to the White House for this news to get out here. The question that then follows is, did this really happen? Now, Trump is known for his salty language. So I guess it could be the case, but Trump and Netanyahu have a famously good relationship. I mean, the state of Israel loves Trump so much, they named a town after him. So did, how tense was this call? Netanyahu posts his own version. Netanyahu says, tonight I spoke with President Trump and told him that if his blood does not cease attacking our cities and citizens, Israel will attack terror targets in Beirut. This stance of ours remains unchanged. In parallel, the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon. So, it's so funny about trying to read the political tea leaves is when I get reporting that says, according to senior White House officials, Trump screamed at Netanyahu. My natural skepticism of political communications is to say, oh, maybe that didn't happen. I don't know that that actually happened. People want us to believe that happened. I don't know if that really happened. But then I read Netanyahu coming out in this very measured way, not saying he got into a big fight with Trump. Just saying, no, no, no. But I was firm. And we will continue to attack targets in Lebanon if we feel that they're threatening us. But it's very measured, very statesman-like. And so I read that measured report and I say, oh, you know what? I bet Trump actually screamed at him. I bet that did happen. Because the White House wants me to believe this one thing. So I'm maybe gonna take the other view. But then Israel wants me to believe the other view. So now I'm kind of going back to the first view. Maybe they actually did yell at each other. On top of this, you have Mark Levin, a very famous conservative commentator, definitely more on the neocon side of conservatism. He goes apoplectic about this leak. All caps, he posts, the leak in Axios was a violation of federal law and provided support to the Iranian regime in its Hesbola proxy. And then in regular capitalization, whomever leaked that story to Barak Ravid at Axios did a grave... Why did he say whom? It would be who, whoever leaked that story. Anyway, I'm picking. Did a grave disservice to our country, to our president, to Israel, to Israel's prime minister? Goes on and on and on. I mean, the guy's writing novels on X right now. So then I say, well, hold on. Mark Levin is a staunch supporter of Israel. He talks about Israel all the time. He's furious about this leak. Now I think, okay, I guess this was a really tense phone call and Trump was really giving it good to Netanyahu. But then I have to read even deeper into this and say, well, hold on. Is that just part of the political show of it all? Getting people to believe that Trump was being really harsh on Netanyahu and getting Mark Levin to believe that Trump was being really harsh on Netanyahu, to get Mark Levin to complain about it, to get the people who don't really like Mark Levin and who were skeptical of the war in Iran, to be more on Trump's side. And the layers that you have to peel back of this political communications onion can leave us scratching our heads. Levin goes on. He says, there's all caps again. More regarding yesterday's leak about the phone call between POTUS and BB. Barack Revead at Axios should be fired. He should be fired? What? Barack Revead is one of the most trusted reporters on the Trump White House. If Barack Revead is getting a story, I don't think it's behind the back of senior people at the White House. I think the White House is probably aware of this. They know that Barack Revead gets a lot of good scoops. So he should be fired for reporting this? I don't think the White House is angry that this came out. Then Levin goes on again. He says, this is one of the reasons I posted last evening. There needs to be a criminal investigation of the leak to Barack Revead at Axios. Goes on. This is good for Hezbollah, terrible for Israel. On and on and on and on and on. You know what I take away from all of this? All the drama, all the play acting, all the maybe legitimate emotions. What I take away from this is, the situation between the United States and Israel and Iran is essentially unchanged. Once you get past all the emotion and the invective and the high blood pressure and the, he leaked this to him, but it wasn't real, but it was real. And the situation is unchanged. I described this on the show yesterday. The situation here is Trump clearly wants a deal. I think most Americans want a deal. There is no political appetite whatsoever for an escalation in Iran to a regime change war in Iran to an invasion of Iran. The United States is the global hegemon. We would need to be involved if that were to happen. And Americans don't want to do it. But Israel does want to do it. That's my read on it. I'm not talking to highly placed sources about this in either the White House or in the state of Israel. This is just common sense. The U.S. and Israel are allies. And our interests align a lot of the time. But sometimes they don't align because we're different countries. And this is one of those instances where the interest of the United States and the interest of Israel are just diverging. The United States has an interest in stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. The United States has an interest in weakening the Iranian regime. The United States has an interest in weakening the other geopolitical adversaries who support the Iranian regime. Yeah, yeah, that's true. But it's not that big a deal to us. It's really not worth it from a matter of proportionality to go in and launch a ground invasion of Iran for a regime change war that can bog us down in another Middle Eastern quagmire like we saw in Iraq. People are sick of that, especially on the right. So we're not that interested. We would rather have a deal. And for the state of Israel, Iran poses a truly existential threat. They're right there in the neighborhood. Israel is looking at the poll numbers of support in the United States. They're seeing that support is cratering, including among Republicans. So they say this might be our last shout. We have a good friend in the White House and Trump. So we got to take our shot. We got to go for gold here and replace the Iranian regime. So Israel does not want a peace deal. Israel wants an escalation of the war to once and for all cut off the head of the snake in Iran. That's totally understandable. If I were the prime minister of Israel, I would want the exact same thing. But if I were the president of the United States, I would want something different. And I, being an American, am more inclined to favor the American interest here. This does not have to be, as so many pundits and tweeters and podcasters want to make it seem, a matter of all or nothing, some pure ideology, pure ideology, which by the way, is contrary to the actual practice of politics. You don't have to say that Israel is the worst country in the world, terrible, leading us into all sorts of bad stuff. Nor do you have to say that Israel is our greatest ally ever and our interests are perfectly aligned. And, you know, George Washington, most of all, would have wanted to invade Iran. You don't have to say that. You can say Israel is an ally. We work with them very well. A lot of the time our interests are aligned. A lot of the time we have a good relationship. Sometimes our interests diverge. And when our interests diverge, we sometimes need to bring them back in. We got to restrain them a little bit. And we got to get what we want, even if that is not exactly what the Israeli state wants. That's really what it's about. That's the situation here. Whatever phone call took place between Trump and BB Netanyahu, whether it was fully yelling or whether they were being old pals, that fundamental situation was a little bit more difficult. That fundamental situation does not change. And that's really what this is all about. Will Netanyahu go along with some kind of a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon? It seems like they will. BB Netanyahu has been supportive of Trump. And will Trump pursue this peace deal? And then, of course, the biggest wild card in all of this is totally beyond the U.S. and Israel. It's whether Iran is going to come to the table. Furthermore, whether Iran can come to the table. Who are we even negotiating with? The government of Iran doesn't really seem to have control over the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has control over the Strait of Hormuz. So it's a brutal, dicey, terrible situation, which is why Trump's messaging, his explicit messaging, is always, don't worry, stop talking about it. It'll all work out in the end, just like it always does. In other words, Trump is saying, come on, enough of the chattering. Don't worry. I'll figure it out. Trust me, trust me, trust me. And he's got a lot of credibility on foreign policies, so I kind of get it. But the intractable nature of the diverging interests of the two partners in this war on Iran is what makes this so difficult. And the durability of the regime, which is far greater than a lot of the war hawks we're trying to persuade us of three months ago. That's what makes this situation so tense, so intractable. And however it will be worked out, it will not be worked out on the level of pure ideology. It will be worked out in a brutal, but conciliatory, and ultimately unsatisfying way. That is how politics actually works. Okay, speaking of the Holy Land, James Talerico, the hits just keep on coming. We got a new one from him. And the new pastor Talerico clip is that God is not a noun, and God doesn't really like religion. We will talk about that. First, though, I want to tell you about Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash nulls, Canada WLS. America turns 250 years old this year. That is a remarkable thing. And that is why Pure Talk, its customers, are raising $250,000 for America's Warrior partnership by the end of July. America's Warrior partnership works on the front lines of preventing veteran suicide, housing, transportation, access to VA benefits, counseling, the practical things that can help veterans get back on their feet. Here's how you can help. When you switch your cell phone service to Pure Talk this month, you'll have the opportunity to round up your bill to support America's Warrior partnership. Pure Talk will match those donations until they reach a quarter million bucks. By the way, at the same time, you're getting unlimited talk, unlimited text, unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99 a month. That is a fraction of what many people are paying right now. Pure Talk is a veteran-led company. Go to puretalk.com slash nulls, Canada WLS. Make the switch to Pure Talk. That is puretalk.com slash nulls, Canada WLS. To switch to my wireless company, America's Wireless Company, Pure Talk, a company that I have used for some six years now, and it is excellent. Best service you are going to get at the absolute best price from the best people, and they actually speak English when you call customer service. Puretalk.com slash nulls. Pastor would be Senator Talarico. Please illuminate us with your deep theological wisdom. There are so many pathways to the sacred. The Islamic mystic Rumi said, every religion has love, but love has no religion. God is so much bigger than our human categories. God is not a Presbyterian. God is not a Christian. God is not a noun at all. God is a verb. God is not A being. God is being itself. Yeah. God is love. Yes. And that's why Jesus is against anything that gets in the way of that love between neighbors, including religion. You almost had me, James. I try to be open-minded. I don't want to just take cheap dunks. A lot of what he's saying here is fair. He says God's not a Presbyterian. He's a Catholic. I'm perfectly happy to affirm that. God is not a Presbyterian. If you know no offense to our Presbyterian friends. But he says God is not a Christian. Well, that's true. God is Christ. You know, he is the subject of worship. He's not merely one who worships. He is who he is, which is why he says God is not a noun. Now, like literally speaking, God is a noun because he's three distinct persons in one divine unity. So he is, but he is also a verb in the sense that when Moses is talking to God in the burning bush, he says, who shall I tell the people you are? And he says, God says, I am that I am. Just a verb. Says I am, I am being himself. Yes, very, very true. Says, and that's why God, God is love. Yes, God is love. We talked about that. I don't know if I mentioned on the show, I tweeted about it for Trinity Sunday. I heard a wonderful homily in which a verse of a verse, a passage of Chesterton was read, in which Chesterton points out that, you know, even the most liberal, watered down, sappy religion will at least acknowledge that God is love. Even the people who hate doctrines and sacraments and rules, obligations, and even the weakest form of religion will acknowledge God is love. But for God to be love implies the Trinity. This is one of Chesterton's great observations. He says, and I think this is an everlasting man. If God is merely alone, existing from all time, before creation, then how can God be love? Love requires a relationship. Love requires an object. You have to love someone or something. And so to say that God is love actually implies the Trinity, that God is Father and Son. Born, begotten before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father. That for God to be love, there is God the Father and God the Son. And indeed, the bond of love between the Father and the Son is so real that He is a person whom we call the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. So I actually like where Talarico is going. And then he just kind of ruins it at the end. He says, that's why Jesus doesn't want anything to come between you and love of your neighbor, including religion. Okay, you just lost me. Because religion is a habit, a virtue, that impels the person to inclines the will to give to God what he deserves, the worship that he deserves. So, yes, Jesus tells you to love your neighbor. But before he tells you to love your neighbor, he says, love your God above all things, with all your heart, with everything you have. Love God. Talarico, you know, he says a lot of things that are true here, and he speaks in a way that is very slippery, very reminiscent of a certain creature on his belly in the Garden of Eden. Because it's almost right, but it's actually satanically wrong. He says, God doesn't want you to love God above all things. God doesn't want you to give to God what he deserves above all things, if that would impede your relationship with your neighbor. Well, no, no, no, no, hold on. Now what Talarico is doing is replacing love of God with love of man. He is taking a religion that worships God and reducing it, inverting it really, to a kind of religion, a pseudo-religion that worships man instead. And of course, that is what he's after. Because in the Talarico version of Christianity, it's not really Christianity at all. It's nothing more than liberalism. It's the false religion of the worship of mankind. To do whatever we want. There are no rules. There's nothing God really wants us to do. Ignore it. You kill your baby. It's actually good to kill your baby. He justifies killing babies by pointing to the Virgin Mary. Can you imagine something so blasphemous? But keep your eyes out for him because it's really slippery. It's not enough just to make fun of this guy or to call him the gay pee-bootage or whatever. You know, it's all fun and everything, but he's really slippery. Because he almost gets it right. He can cite, he can quote scripture. You know who else quotes scripture? To Christ himself in the desert. The devil knows his scripture pretty well, but he twists it to perverse and satanic ends. Exactly what Talarico is doing. But that's really the whole project of liberalism. Liberalism endeavors to, from the very beginning, endeavors to take all the goods of Christianity, the nice art and functioning societies and rights and propriety, to just keep all of that, but take God out of it. Take God out of the center and make instead a religion of man. No kings, no priests, only men. That's Talarico. Talarico is just the modern week sappy version of that same awful replacement of Christianity that has destroyed our civilization. Who helps America go farther? Fly higher. Dream even bigger. People do. Since 1879, our people have been more than a source of energy. They've been a source of progress. Today, that same progress is helping deliver record U.S. energy production, fueling the workers, the makers, the boundary pushers, and risk takers who sparked the breakthroughs that move America forward. Learn more about what our people do at chevron.com.usa250. Okay, speaking of humanity, we have some numbers, some news, word to the wise, of what is calling the causes, causing the existential threat of the decline in births. And it's not just that kids don't go out anymore. It's not just contraception. It's not just abortion. We'll get to what that is in a second. It's pretty basic. First though, my favorite comment yesterday is from Scotty Adi Biscotti. What a name. Who says, bad timing, but Michael looks great in light blue. Thank you. And I'm wearing light blue again. This is great. That's my favorite comment because it compliments me. I like that. I enjoy that very much. Okay, the birth rate has been on the decline since 1971. The U.S. has had a below replacement birth rate since then for almost 60 years now. This is an existential threat to the country. This is the chief motivating factor for mass migration, which has further destroyed our country. It's existential. Some political problems are bad, but we don't need to worry about them too much, like marginal tax rates or whatever. They're bad. I don't mean to undermine it, but some are existential. Like you don't have a country anymore if you have this problem, and one of those is declining birth rates. Well, the Institute for Family Studies has identified the cause of the declining birth rates. And the cause is very simple. It's not contraception. It's not abortion. It's not technology. It's not social media. It's not whatever. It's just that people aren't getting married. 75% of the decline in U.S. fertility is attributable to declining marriage rates. You have a counterfactual here, which is you see that fertility rate just absolutely plummeting. But if marital rates by age were stable at just 2007 levels, we're not even talking about 1950s levels, just 2007 levels. If that were the case, you would basically have no decline in the fertility rate since 2003. But instead, you have a massive decline in the fertility rate since 2003. So what is causing the decline in marriage? It seems to me there are three big factors. One is economics, and a lot of the more establishment Republicans don't want to deal with this. A lot of the neocon types, even a lot of the libertarian types, they don't want to deal with it. The ones who say that government causes all the problems, and we just need to get the government out of it and lower taxes, and then everything will be hunky dory. That doesn't really work. One of the drivers of the decline in marriage is men with falling real earnings, especially in the medium to lower percentiles. Those men, the men who are at the bottom of the economic ladder, so the steepest declines in marriage rates. On top of that, we're not just going to have an economic explanation, we're not Marxists. On top of that, you have norms. There's a greater acceptance of substitutions for marriage. Cohabitation, single parenthood, fornication, long-term situationships, obviously all the weird gay and trans stuff, all of these, the redefinition of marriage. All of those factors give, they're kind of like a pressure release valve. All the things that were impaling people to get married before, those social restraints are gone. On top of that, a really under discussed factor that anecdotally I'm quite confident of is that for the millennial generation and maybe the zoomer generation, everyone's parents are divorced, not like literally everyone, but the divorce rates so spiked with the baby boomers into Gen X that everyone's parents are divorced. No wonder people are delaying getting married because they don't want to end up divorced too, because divorce sucks. But then the biggest predictor, the biggest driver, is the decline in religion. Now that's a little bit of good news, or there's a silver lining there, because religion is ticking up ever so slightly again. The decline in religion at the very least is plateaued, and there's a lot of evidence that's starting to tick up again. But of those three things, economic, social norms, and religion, the greatest predictor of marriage and having kids is religion. You really can't replace it. That's it. So my question for everybody out there, especially the establishment Republicans and Neocons and the Libertarians, coming from a more classical traditional conservative, more religious conservative, here's my question. Are you willing to do things to change that? If we acknowledge that the below replacement birth rates are an existential problem, if we acknowledge that they're driven by the decline in marriage, which itself is an existential problem, because marriage is the fundamental building block of society, then my question for you, establishment Republicans and Neocons and Libertarians, is, are you willing to do something about it? Are you willing to craft economic policies that might violate the various chivalrous and taboos about small government in order to promote marriage? Are you willing to do that? Are you too much of an ideologue, a Libertarian, say ideologue, to do that? I'm willing to do that, for sure, because I don't think that we're a country that serves a market. I don't think that politics exists to serve ideological theories. I think politics is just the practice of how people live together to advance the common good and to flourish, for the general welfare and for ourselves and our posterity, as our founding fathers and framers wrote in the Constitution. Are you willing to do something about that? I would be. How about norms? Are you willing to discourage contraception? Are you willing to outlaw abortion? Are you willing to discourage cohabitation? Are you willing to re- redefine marriage so that it makes sense? Are you willing to put a cap on the weird sex stuff? Are you? I'm certainly willing to do that. Are you? Or do you think that's authoritarian? Do you think, oh, that's, is that fascistic? Is that, okay, well, if you're not willing to do anything about it, okay, just don't, don't say you weren't warned. Are you, if divorce is a big factor in this, are you willing to undo the liberalization of divorce laws? Don't forget, New York, freaking liberal New York, did not have no fault divorce until like 15 years ago. Are you willing to unwind that and make divorce harder to get and force people to stick by their vows that they make to God? Yes, but also to the public and to the government and to your neighbors when you get married. You're signing a contract and you're making a vow. Are you going to force people to live up to their vows or at the very least make it difficult to get out of your vows? Are you going to get rid of no fault divorce? Are you willing to do that? I'm willing to do that. Are you? Or no, is that too authoritarian? Is that too much trouble? Is that too, is that restricting people's license and liberty? And okay, don't say you weren't warned. And then when it comes to religion, are we willing to acknowledge that secularism and atheism and kicking religion out of the public square is bad? It's not what our framers intended. It's not what the men who came on the Mayflower, which is a great cigar brand by the way, intended. It's not what the people who put in God we trust on our money intended or in our Pledge of Allegiance or in our national anthem, all these references to God. It's not what any of them intended. Are you willing to promote religion in public life? Not just take the boot off the neck of religion, which would be an improvement, but to actually promote religion in public life? Or no, is that authoritarian and blah, blah, blah. I'm willing to do those things. The left obviously doesn't want to do those things. But so it's my question is for the centrists, the neocons, the establishment, the libertarians, the squishier types. Are you willing? Are you willing to promote good things? Things that we know are good. And even if you're not sure if they're good, at the very least we can acknowledge are existential. Because if you're not, then maybe we should just pack it up. Because if you're not willing to improve things, to do the things that we know will improve the existential threat, then what are we doing? Then we're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Speaking of marriage, Jill Biden is on a book tour. Did you know that? Jill Biden is on a book tour, and she's got a whole host of excuses as to why she allowed her poor husband to drool all over himself from the Oval Office and on a debate stage. We will get to truth and reconciliation from the Biden administration. We don't have time to get to it today though, you know why? Because I'm going to the UK, baby. I will be debating at the Oxford Union. Very exciting debate. The resolution of the debate is this house believes that Trump has betrayed conservatism. I will be speaking in the negative. I don't think Trump has betrayed conservatism. But there are a lot of great speakers. I think Brett Stevens is speaking in the affirmative. I think we've got a couple of former heritage foundation people, directors, board members are going to be there. On my side, we've got more of the pro-Trump people. So anyway, it should be good debate. I think it's going to be aired on the Oxford Union YouTube channel. Much more to get to. We'll have to get to it from the UK. I'm Michael Noles, this is the Michael Noles Show. See you tomorrow.