Ep. 1560 - RFK Jr. & Trump Join Forces Against the Woke Left
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One day after Kamala's coronation at the DNC, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stole the spotlight back for the good guys by dropping out of the race and endorsing President Trump in the swing states. Three great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place, primarily. And these are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent. And now to throw my support to President Trump.

The causes were free speech, a war in Ukraine, and the war on our children. The chronic disease crisis was one of the primary reasons for my running for president, along with ending censorship and the Ukraine war. It's the reason I've made the heart-wrenching decision to suspend my campaign and to support President Trump. This decision is agonizing for me because of the difficulties it causes my wife and my children and my friends.

But I have the certainty that this is what I've meant to do. And that certainty gives me internal peace. While Biden was in the race, you know, I strongly supported RFK remaining in the race, as I believed that he would pull more voters from Biden than from Trump. He would win the normie Democrat, I can't vote for a dead guy vote.

Kamala's ascension to the top of the ticket changed that calculation by injecting energy into the Democrat campaign. So now we're looking at a race separated by just two or three points in the swing states with the swing of a guy claiming around five points in the swing states decidedly into Trump's camp. But there's even better news, and very few people are talking about it. There is still a left-wing spoiler in this race, Cornel West.

And despite Democrats trying to kick him off the ballot, a Michigan judge has just ruled that he must appear in that extremely important swing state. We will get into what all of that means for the race. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

Welcome back to the show. There was one moment of the DNC that I've seen basically nobody talking about, and it's making me think that the camera operator for the Democrat National Convention is a secret Republican. We'll get to that in just a moment. First, though, you need to go to thecandleclub.com because the time has come, my friends. The Sicilian summer is pretty much over.

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Do it right at thecandleclub.com. I really liked RFK being in the race while it was Biden. However, I...

As politics changes, as circumstances change, you have to react to those things. You know, politics, I admonish the squishes all the time. I say politics is not just eternal principles. It's certainly not static. It's applying principles to ever-changing political circumstances. And so in this case, you had a really tight race. It's in the swing states that will decide the election. It's two to three points between Kamala and Trump. And then you got this guy, RFK, who's commanding about 5% of the vote in those states, which

If RFK comes out, no subtlety here, just says, hey, you all who support me should vote for Trump. Maybe they don't bring all five percentage points with them, but maybe that means you get three. Maybe it means you get four. Well, there's the election right there.

But then what about the left-wing spoiler? Because we still want some candidate who is left-wing to pull votes from Kamala. Who can do that? The person who can do that best is still in the race, and that's Cornel West. Cornel West is a radical leftist professor. He's taught at Princeton. He's taught at Harvard. He's got crazy hair. He's released a rap album. He's really out there. And he's a left-wing academic, and one of his big issues is Israel-Gaza.

So, this intifada within the Democrat Party, it's one of the biggest wedge issues for the Democrats, is the handling of the Israel war. Because on the one hand, you've got the Dem base that is chanting river to the sea, make Palestine free. And on the other hand, you have the Democrat donors, you have the Democrat establishment, which is...

certainly more pro-Israel. And even Joe Biden, even if he's not totally pro-Israel, he's still the one sending all the weapons to Israel. So it's created a big problem. That's where you saw all the big protests outside of the DNC. It's where you saw that the campus uprisings in the spring that are probably going to kick back up as school gets back in session. And then you've got Michigan, which has a huge Muslim population. The Muslims and the Arabs in America tend to break overwhelmingly for the Democrats. But this is our opportunity. This is one big issue where you can really

really make a move to claim some of that vote. Now, are the Muslims and the Arabs going to vote for Trump? The polling suggests they're not going to. But what if you have a left-wing candidate

who is running, who is running specifically on this issue, all of a sudden you've got a place to take those disaffected Arab and Muslim Democrats away from Kamala Harris, certainly away from Joe Biden, and give it to someone else. So this is why the Democrats are so eager to kick this professor, Cornel West, off the ballot. And yet we got great news.

A Michigan judge, James Redford, has just ruled that Cornel West must appear on the ballot in Michigan. With Bobby Kennedy out, this is a great, even with Bobby Kennedy in, this would be a great opportunity. Republicans, I don't want to be subtle about this either. Republicans should pour money into boosting Cornel West in Michigan.

Republicans should put their money where my mouth is and invest in making this guy a thing, making his presence on the ballot known in Michigan. Cornel West is not going to take one single vote from Donald Trump. Anyone who is even considering voting for Cornel West isn't simply not going to vote for Trump. But he very plausibly could take votes away from Kamala Harris. And with Bobby Kennedy out of the race,

Here's your spoiler. This is your one spoiler left. Now, Democrats are not going down without a fight. Probably the biggest political operation to swing this election is taking place not from the Trump camp or the Kamala camp or the Cornel West camp. It's taking place at the Federal Reserve because Jay Powell, the head of the Fed, has just announced.

that the Fed is going to lower interest rates. We have very high interest rates right now. Part of the reason we have relatively high interest rates to what we've seen in recent years is because we've had historically low interest rates, and this causes all sorts of economic problems. We have a massive inflation problem right now. So that's one of the reasons that the Fed is going to raise rates. However, the economy is stalling out. And so just in time for election season,

The Fed is announcing they're going to cut rates. They're announcing at least what the analysts are interpreting the Fed's announcement to be is three quarter point cuts, one in September, one in November, and then one in December to look forward to. Even steeper rate cuts are possible.

This is not about sound monetary policy. This is not about the independent Fed that is just making decisions for the good of the economy, absent political considerations. This is about the election. This is about the head of the Fed, Jay Powell, deciding that he's going to go out there and campaign for Kamala Harris in the best way he knows how.

Because if the economy continues to sputter, if we really look like we're headed into a recession, that's going to be very bad for the incumbent party. Democrats have done a good job at keeping Kamala clean, separating her from the horrible legacy of the Biden-Harris administration. But if the economy is headed into the gutter, Harris is going to receive a lot of blame for that. So the Fed is going to try to artificially prop up the economy just long enough

to get the Democrats over the finish line. This is about the election and it could work.

Now, I'm not sure how much the Fed actually can cut interest rates because they've just been historically low for so long. And I was talking about this with a friend of mine in the financial services industry over the weekend. And he pointed out, you know, at a certain point, it's difficult to attract investment for a bankrupt country that has tens of trillions of dollars, dozens of trillions of dollars in debt. So we'll see how constrained the Federal Reserve is. But make no mistake.

Plan A was kick Trump off the ballot. Plan B was imprison Trump. Plan C was at the very least, let's say, establish the justification for assassinating Trump. Someone tried to do it. Didn't work. Plan D. OK, swap out the candidate plan. OK, now we're now we're plan E, F, G, H, O.

wield the government, wield the Federal Reserve to cut rates. Okay, we'll see if that works. Not all Democrats are feeling so good about Kamala's chances. The New York Times is actually coming out with a big critique of Kamala's campaign, and I think you'll be shocked to hear this. The New York Times is totally wrong. Go to preborn.com slash Knowles. When a woman experiences an unplanned pregnancy, she often feels alone and afraid. Too often, her first response is to seek out an abortion because that's what left-leaning institutions have conditioned her to do.

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and consider making a donation today to support their life-saving work. You can sponsor one ultrasound for just 28 bucks. If you have the means, you can sponsor Preborn's whole network for a day for 5,000. Go to preborn.com slash Knowles to donate today. That's preborn.com slash Knowles or dial pound 250, say the keyword baby. That is pound 250, keyword baby. Big op-ed went viral in the New York Times. This is from Deputy Opinion Editor Patrick Healy.

who says joy is not a strategy. You remember at the DNC coronation of Kamala after the palace coup that swapped Biden for Kamala Harris, we saw two big shifts in messaging. The first was Democrats are no longer running on saving democracy. That had been Biden's campaign slogan. But because Kamala now has the nomination without receiving a single vote,

Now they've switched from democracy to freedom. So freedom is one big word of the slogan. And then the other one is joy. The Democrats keep it in a really...

on-the-nose kind of way, pushing this contrived campaign theme of joy. We're so joyful. Kamala's, you know, witch cackle, her uncontrollable babbling, the ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, that's actually just an expression of joy. And the Republicans hate when the Democrats are so joyous. Okay, well, at least the deputy opinion editor at the time says joy is not a strategy.

Right, so don't get me wrong. There are many worse things than joy, but I cringed a little in the conventional Tuesday night when Bill Clinton said Harris would be the president of joy. Joy is the new fetch from mean girls. Democrats are bent on making the word happen, but joy is not a political strategy, and God is not a political strategy. The good news for Democrats is that Harris seems to understand this. Americans want to lower their household costs and make it easier to find housing. Being our joyful mamala is not going to win the election. I

agree that I cringe when I hear the Democrats use this word joy. Democrats, a party that had an infanticide van outside of their national convention. Democrats, the party of chopping up your bodies just to feel some kind of sexual thrill because of your confusion and depression. Democrats, not the most joyful party as far as I'm concerned. They seem rather joyless, actually. So I agree it's contrived and it makes you cringe a little bit.

But I totally disagree that this is not a political strategy. This kind of platitudinous ambiguity is a very effective political strategy. Barack Obama won the presidency on two words, hope and change. You remember that? Some of us are old enough to remember the Obama election. I know some of you listening probably don't remember that because you're too young. But

Barack Obama ran on hope and change. This is a guy who had no discernible accomplishments in the U.S. Senate when he was a state senator in Illinois. This is a guy about whose platform we knew basically nothing, who even when controversial votes came up, he would vote present. He didn't want to tip his hand one way or the other. Hope and change. That's what he ran on. There were big posters, hope and change, and hope and change won.

The vice presidential nominee that year, Sarah Palin, made fun of it. She goes, you know, how's that hopey changey stuff working out for you? But it did work. It worked pretty well.

Hope and change was a successful strategy. Joy could be a successful strategy. And in fact, it's Kamala's best chance because the deputy opinion editor here for the time says, look, people care about their pocketbook. They care about household costs. They care about inflation. They care about their retirement funds. They care. Yeah, sure. They do. But Kamala can't run on any of that. The Fed is going to do its best to artificially prop up the economy to get her over the finish line. But even so,

First of all, cutting rates is not going to do it, do any help for inflation. But but second of all, there's really not all that much that can be done now. Anyway, the Biden Harris administration has failed on the economy. They can't run on the economy. The Biden Harris administration has failed on immigration. They can't run on immigration. Kamala Harris right now, I kid you not, is is airing commercials showing photos of Trump's border wall and saying that Kamala Harris is tough on the border.

The border wall that the Biden-Harris administration tore down, they're running on that now. The only issues other than abortion, other than the Democrats' bloodlust for infants, the only actual practical political issues that Democrats can run on are Trump policies. They're running on Trump's border wall. They're running on Trump's tax plan to end taxes on tips for service workers. They're running on Trump's child care tax credit.

Actually, they're trying to even up it. Trump runs on a $5,000 child tax credit. The Democrats say, okay, we're going to do $6,000. Whatever the Republicans want to do, we're going to do it even more. But in terms of their own record, Kamala Harris saying, I'm going to change everything when I'm in office. Girl, you're in office right now, and your record is horrible. So she can't run on any of those issues. She's got to run on some kind of ambiguous nonsense. And Joy is as persuasive, ambiguous nonsense as ever I've seen.

In any case, it's their only shot. The one issue, as I mentioned, the one practical political issue that they are running on, and it's their own position, is abortion. And the Republicans have taken notice. President Trump got in a lot of hot water on the right over the weekend because President Trump posted something just a few days ago, August 23rd. He said, quote, my administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.

A lot of pro-lifers up in arms about this. And I understand why this raises eyebrows. So how do we interpret this? Well, first of all, I think it's worth pointing out

I don't want to be accused of reading too deeply into this. I'm just telling you what the word really means. That, you know, in modern American politics, words are thrown about and they're used and abused. And very often they're used in a way that is the opposite of their meaning. You know, like when the Democrats say, if most people vote for Trump, it's a threat to democracy. That's a nonsense saying, right? Because democracy is just whatever most people vote for. Well, the same goes for reproductive rights. Properly speaking,

The only reproductive rights are the rights of a child to be the product of the specific conjugal act of his parents who are married and to be respected as a person from the moment of conception. Those are the only reproductive rights.

In our modern society, the liberals try to convince people that murdering a baby is a reproductive right. This is, of course, the opposite of a reproductive right. It is the opposite of reproduction, and it's the opposite of right. It's totally wrong. So that's not a reproductive right. The modern liberals will say that people have a right to a child. You don't have a right to a child, just like you don't have a right to a slave, because a human being is not a commodity to be bought and sold. It's not something that you possess. A human being is a proper subject in himself.

Some people will say that two men have the right to produce a child. That's not how it works. Two men can't make a child together. The best they can do is go rent the womb of a poor woman and then purchase the eggs from another woman and then go to the baby store and have some scientists in a laboratory create a human being in a way that is contrary to the rights of that human being who's being created. It's totally denying those rights. That's not a reproductive right. The only...

such thing as reproductive. The only things that can be called reproductive rights are the rights of a child to be the product of the specific conjugal act of his parents who are married and to be respected as a person from the moment that he's conceived. That's it. So if you read Trump's Truth Social post, understanding what the phrase actually means, then there's really nothing wrong with it, right? Yeah, we'll respect

It will be great for women. Obviously, nothing wrong with that. And it will be great for reproductive rights. Now, you might say, Michael, you're taking this too far. You're doing your best to flack for Donald Trump. But, you know, that's not really how he meant it. Well, how are we supposed to understand how we meant it, how he meant it? Some people are reading the worst that they can into this and saying Trump is now radically pro-abortion. Okay, well, how can we judge that claim? Well, we can look at how he was in office. In office, Donald Trump was the most pro-life president we've ever had.

Full stop. He's the first sitting president. This is, of course, since abortion became a national political issue with Roe v. Wade. He's the first sitting president to show up to the March for Life. Ronald Reagan didn't do it. Jerry Ford didn't do it. Richard Nixon didn't do it. Was Nixon, I guess Nixon, he could have done it and he didn't do it. Bush didn't do it. Bush II didn't do it. Only Trump.

He is the president who appointed the judges that overruled Roe v. Wade. All those other Republican presidents didn't get it done. So I'm willing to extend a little grace here, especially as President Trump has said, we need to talk about abortion in such a way that we get elected, especially as Democrats are campaigning on this issue and this issue alone. Because in recent years, when abortion has come up as a ballot initiative, it has lost. Trump says we got to get elected. So does this mean Trump is going to be pro-abortion? I certainly hope not.

But I think there's good reason to believe he won't be pro-abortion in office because when he was in office, he was the most pro-life president we've ever had. So what does this mean?

It means that Trump is going to speak in a vague way that's going to hopefully assuage some moderate voters. I'm extremely pro-life. Very few Americans are extremely pro-life. Okay. If Trump had come out and said, I'm going to support abortion in the first trimester, I would say that's really awful. That's indefensible. If Trump had come out and said, I'm going to support abortion, I think there needs to be a right to abortion up until 20 weeks or something or 15 weeks or even whatever, even six weeks. That would be awful. That would be a terrible thing.

But that's not what he's doing here. He's speaking in really vague terms. And I think the ambiguity here is helpful and should assuage some of the fears of right-wingers. He did the same thing with Project 2025. I think Project 2025 is great. The Democrats have no idea what it is, or they're just totally lying about it. The Project 2025 is essentially a personnel list from the Heritage Foundation, which is the most established conservative think tank out there. It's a great thing. But...

The left has lied and said Project 2025 is, you know, I don't know, it's going to ban tacos from America. Project 2025 is going to get rid of the designated hitter from the American League. Project 2025 does all these crazy things that it doesn't really do. And what did Trump say? He says, oh, I'm opposed to Project 2025. I have nothing to do with that. Some of Project 2025 is good, but some of it's terrible. But notice he's not getting specific.

And so it seems to me when Trump is not getting specific and he's just being a little bit vague in his language, he's doing that intentionally. He's doing that intentionally because at this point in the campaign, he's trying to win moderate voters. And final point on Trump's comments on abortion.

Even if Trump were now making this huge total pivot and he went from being the most pro-life president ever to supporting abortion in some way, you're running against the most radically pro-abortion candidate in the country. And so even then the decision wouldn't be difficult. However, it just seems to me that

basically all of the evidence, how Trump has approached the abortion issue, how Trump approaches language, how Trump is speaking about instrumentality in politics. It just seems to me this is not the sort of thing to pull our hair out over, at least not yet. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. History.

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How to apply those lessons to your life. Hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. Start now. It's free. It's easy to get started. Hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. Hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. Like President Trump, J.D. Vance is now getting in hot water on the right because of an answer that he gave on abortion.

Let's talk about another big issue that was talked about at the Democratic National Convention. It's being talked about on the campaign trail, abortion. Democrats made the case this week and beyond this week that Donald Trump, if elected, will impose a federal ban on abortion if he wins. Now, Donald Trump says he won't. But can you commit, Senator, sitting right here with me today,

that if you and Donald Trump are elected, that you will not impose a federal ban on abortion. I can absolutely commit that, Kristen. Donald Trump has been as clear about that as possible. Okay, well, there are gonna be pro-lifers who say, that's terrible, JD, we want a national ban on abortion. Sure.

However, what J.D. Vance just said should be relatively uncontroversial because the Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision overruling Roe v. Wade said that the president can't institute a national ban on abortion because in Dobbs, the Supreme Court said the issue is going to go back to the states. Now, you might say it shouldn't go back to the states. As a matter of the 14th Amendment, all people are entitled to equal protection and due process, and so abortion should be outlawed across the country. This is an argument argued well by

by Robbie George and John Finnis and other conservative legal scholars. Sure, okay, let's go. Let's get that court decision. But as a practical matter, the Supreme Court has said, if you try to do this, we're going to shoot it down. So J.D. Vance says, okay, we're not going to do it. Does anyone think that J.D. Vance is pro-abortion? No. I understand the unease that conservatives feel, and especially pro-lifers feel, with some of this language that Trump and J.D. Vance are using. However, I'll point out

The left outright lies all the time about their views. Kamala Harris is running on closing the border. Kamala Harris is the borders are today. Kamala Harris does not want to close the border for five minutes. Kamala Harris wants mass migration and a totally open border. And that is, in fact, the policy that she has affected imbued with the power of the president that Biden gave to her as the borders are. And she's just lying to get elected.

I don't think Republicans should lie to get elected. But if we need to dance around certain issues, if we need to use words in a precise and careful way, I'm not opposed to that. There's no substitute for winning. You don't want to compromise your integrity. You don't want to do something immoral in order to win. But if you can speak in a way that is somewhat ambiguous, I'm not opposed to that. Not opposed to that in the least.

We all want to stop abortion. Okay. We all want to save babies. We're not going to save babies by letting the most radically pro-abortion candidate win. Now, on this point, on this most radically pro-abortion candidate, here's something that I missed at the DNC. I think a lot of people missed. Kamala was talking about the one issue that she can really talk about, how much she wants to kill babies. And as she's talking about abortion,

The camera at the DNC cut to a little baby. And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. I will proudly sign it. And here we have a lady.

Some Harris sign and a guy holding a tiny little baby, just rocking a little baby. When I'm president, I am going to slaughter beautiful little innocent babies. I am going to slaughter them. And then the camera because she doesn't really say that. Right. That's that's the meaning.

that she's conveying. But she uses all these euphemisms. We're going to restore reproductive freedoms and rights and women's health and all these ways that the left has to dance around the reality of abortion, which is poisoning and chopping up a little baby as he screams.

And then vacuuming him out of his mother's womb. I mean, the most horrifying, ghastly thing you can possibly imagine. They have to dance around that reality. And then the DNC cameraman, or the director of the show who was switching the cameras, cuts to the reality. A little baby. Of course, it...

We all recall, I'm still actually giggling over this cameraman's choice from the night before when Oprah was talking about childless cat ladies and then the camera just switched to some poor woman. We mentioned it on the show last week, in case you forgot. We just try to do the best we can to save them. And if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady. This just cuts to some poor woman looking down. She looks up, wait, what? Are you talking about me?

And then after Kamala says, we're going to support reproductive freedom. And then just it cuts right to a cute little baby, shows you the reality. I don't know, man. Did a Republican sneak in there and he ended up getting the job switching the cameras at the DNC? I don't know. But whoever did it, hats off to the camera guys. Hats off to the director in the control room at the DNC. Because in the Oprah clip,

you see that Democrats are trying to embrace this, that the childless cat lady, how dare you suggest that people don't want to be a childless cat lady. But then when it cuts to the woman that they're calling a childless cat lady, she looks up, wait, what? I don't want to be a childless cat lady. Wait, hold on. No, go on. She's kind of admitting that J.D. Vance's criticism of not individuals, not people who through circumstances have ended up in a certain place, but the exaltation of a caricature of a way of life

The Democrats are admitting, oh yeah, we actually don't want that. Kamala says, yeah, we need reproductive freedom. But no one ever wants to talk about what that really means. If you know what it really means, you don't really want that. And no one who isn't a total psycho or possessed by demons actually wants that. Good stuff. Good stuff from the DNC technical team. Now, speaking of women's issues, there was an excellent, excellent article in the free press by my friend, Maddie Kearns.

Maddie Kearns has been on the show a number of times, formerly of National Review, now at Barry Weiss's outlet, The Free Press. This article I ended up seeing right at the top of the Drudge Report. OK, this article has gone viral. And what's it about? It's about women wearing veils at church.

You think that's such a niche issue. Why on earth would this make it to the top of the Drudge Report? Why would it go viral? Because it speaks to something really profound happening in religion and in politics. Maddie's article, highly recommend you read the whole thing, is The Young Catholic Women Bringing Back Veils. A New Generation of Worshippers is Longing for a Lost Type of Catholicism. This article,

It's not just Catholics who can wear veils or cover their heads at church, though it's mostly Catholics, I suppose, or you specifically think of Catholics, but it comes from 1 Corinthians. You know, 1 Corinthians 11, verse 4, every man praying or prophesying with his head covered disgraceth his head, but every woman praying or prophesying with her head not covered disgraceth her head, for it is all one as if she were shaven. This notion that

And, you know, I encourage you to read the first letter to the Corinthians broadly about the relation of man to woman and man to God. And it sort of explains how we can symbolize this in our lives. But in the 1960s, there was this radical shift. In the 1960s, in the Catholic Church, outside the Catholic Church, in the secular society, everywhere,

Radicals thought that it would be a good idea to sever our connection to the past. You know, we were going to enter a new age of Aquarius, man. We were going to have a cultural revolution, man. You know, here's the moment, man. And so they thought this was a good thing. And it wasn't just the hippies in the drum circles with flowers in their hair. This happened in every institution throughout the West, even in the most enduring and ancient institution in the world, the Catholic Church.

There was a major liturgical reform. They upended the mass of the ages, the way that the mass had been celebrated for at least 1,400 years. And really, even earlier than that, they just kind of upended all that stuff, man, and really radically changed things, including they encouraged women to stop wearing the veils. Now, people are realizing that...

There's usually a reason that things that endure for millennia endure. That actually maybe when a tradition persists for many centuries or more millennia,

that maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe, maybe we do not have a sufficient stock of reason that we can just reinvent the world anew and it'll be much better, that that would be an advisable thing to do. Maybe those older generations knew something that we don't. Maybe we're not perfectly intelligent. Maybe we're not even as intelligent as our grandparents were.

And maybe we need to return to tradition. Maybe that would benefit us. Maybe that's actually the way forward. It's not the way back. It's not regression. Maybe that's actually the way forward because tradition is not some dusty old thing. There are plenty of dusty old things that have popped up in history and then they fell away because they just didn't have staying power. That's not what tradition is. In fact, that's what fads are. That's what radical innovation is.

All those dusty old things that have been left in the dustbin of history all the way in the past, those were fads. Those were fashions. There was some genius, supposedly genius idea from some radical who wanted to upend everything, and then it didn't work. Tradition is not the oldest thing. Tradition is, in some ways, the newest thing, or at least we would say the most enduring. It's the kind of thing that can link the past and the present and the future. Maybe there's a reason that Christians have...

acted as they've acted and believed as they've believed and lived as they've lived for millennia. Maybe there's some connection between those things. There's a saying, lex orandi, lex credendi. Sometimes you could even add lex vivendi, which is Latin. It means the way that we worship

that influences the way that we believe. It's not just that religion is not just a thing you do in your head and you just, you ignore that you have a body at all and that you're in time and space at all. Religion is a thing that you do. You worship God. There's a difference between praying on your knees and praying, sitting down and praying while you're driving. There's a difference between saying some prayer that you just invented yesterday or saying the Lord's prayer. Don't forget, our Lord tells us in the gospels how to pray. He gives us the, our father prayer, our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name and so on.

So there's, and he tells you how to do it. And then the church and her wisdom going all the way back to the apostolic age has established ways in which we can pray. And that's going to affect the way that we believe. If you receive the Eucharist on the tongue kneeling, you're going to believe something about what the Eucharist is, what the Holy Communion is.

If you just kind of, you know, you're driving in your car and you stick your hand out like you're going through the McDonald's drive-thru, that's also going to affect the way that you believe because we're incarnate creatures. And that's going to affect the way that you live too. And maybe these young women, it's not the old women who want to go back to the veils, it's the young women who want to go back to the veils. Maybe it's because they realize something has been lost. Maybe they realize that all that innovation that was supposed to free us and make everything better has maybe made things worse.

And maybe the real update that we need right now, this is a popular term at the time of these breaks, it's called aggiornamento, an update. Maybe the real update is to return, return to the faith as it was practiced for, I don't know, 1800, 1900 years. Probably a good idea. The Daily Wire's first ever theatrical release, Am I Racist?,

Hitting theaters on September 13th has already more than doubled the number of theaters nationwide since it was first announced. Every ticket sold pushes the film into more theaters across the country. Matt Walsh, the same man who eviscerated gender theory in What is a Woman, is back this time. He's taking on the world of DEI. What he exposes in this film is both hilarious and infuriating. Check out this teaser. Decolonize yourself. Do your own thing.

white supremacy dismantling. And then you can start to bring in other people. Can I just say one last thing? Can I just propose a toast? I mean, just raise a glass if you're racist. And that's the thing. Oh, I'm not racist. Let me just raise a glass. To racist. Am I racist? Rated PG-13. Buy tickets now.

I've not seen the cut yet. I'm sort of intentionally not watching the movie until I see it in a theater. So every one of these new trailers, I'm kind of just seeing for the first time. And Matt is just a total sociopath. He's just a complete cold-blooded killer. And I cannot wait to watch this movie. If Am I Racist is playing in a theater near you, head on over to amiracist.com.

Grab your advance tickets today. Let's make sure this movie reaches as many theaters and minds as possible across America. My favorite comment on Friday is from Razzle07, who says, Look at how angry Tim Walls is when he speaks. It's a window into his soul. He's as unhinged as Joe Biden. The only difference is Walls can actually finish a sentence. Yeah, Walls does. He seems...

He seems, to use Freudian language, he seems a little repressed or something. I don't know. He's got this real... People are trying to suggest that he's just like your dad or something. Oh, there's Tim Walls. He reminds me of my dad. You

You know my dad who's fanatically obsessed with LGBT issues for decades and who really wants to talk to little kids about those issues and loves communist China and has visited dozens of times? You know that? Just like your dad. Doesn't that just remind you of your dad?

You know how your dad turned Minnesota into the windowless white van of the Midwest? Yeah, you know that. Doesn't it just remind you of your dad? I don't know. It doesn't remind me of my dad, rather. I said that like I was Irish. It doesn't remind me of my dad. It certainly doesn't. I imagine it doesn't remind you of your dad either. Now, speaking of religion, there is...

A rather good pop science article going around from the conversation about the relation between food and depression. That doesn't seem to have anything to do with religion, but we'll get to that in one moment. This is based on some new studies, shows blood sugar fluctuations after eating play an important role in anxiety and depression. So are you feeling depressed? Maybe it's what you're eating.

Feeling anxious? Maybe it's what you're eating. Now, maybe it's something else. There are a lot of things that can make one depressed and anxious today, as there are in all eras. But maybe it really does have something to do with your food. Increasingly, conservatives are concerned about our food. You heard RFK Jr. RFK Jr. says, really, my big issue is the poisoning of America's children through big pharma and big agriculture and all this crap that they're putting into our foods.

That used to be a left-wing position. The fact that RFK is endorsing the Republican in this election and not the Democrat actually shows you an important way in which the two sides have flipped. When I was growing up, all the crunchy people who wanted to eat the organic granola with the grass-fed college-educated cows were on the left, and the conservatives were the ones pushing Twinkies and McDonald's. And now it's flipped.

Now it's the conservatives who don't want seed oils in their food. It's all the crunchy trads, the real kind of homesteading traditionalist right-wingers, many of whom veil at Latin mass, who are looking for raw milk and fresh eggs and all that kind of organic stuff. So that's all real. I think those concerns are real. But also, there's a really basic...

bit of religious and practical spiritual wisdom here in that your food can affect your mood. And it comes from the first epistle of St. John. In the first epistle, St. John identifies three temptations, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

And the lust of the eyes is when you covet things, you know, your buddy's new Rolex or his Corvette or something like that. And then lust of the flesh is, you know, when you see a nice lady walking across the street and you're like, you know, Wile E. Coyote at Wooga, your tongue unfurls and, you know, steam comes out of your ears. And then the pride of life is when you get too attached to this world and you don't want to die because you like this stuff too much and you can't figure out how to take it with you. Those are three big temptations.

And the traditional Christian advice on how to deal with these temptations that we all deal with fairly regularly is when you're tempted by the lust of the eyes, when you want, when you're coveting other people's stuff, give alms. Give stuff away. Give to charity. When you're tempted by the lust of the flesh, fast. Just eat less food.

It seems so practical. It's like you're going into a doctor. So he says, okay, I prescribe you. Okay, you're dealing with this, this lust. Okay, well eat, eat 20% less food or something like that, but it works. And when you're dealing with the pride of life, when you're tempted by your attachment to this world,

The advice is to pray. Pray and put yourself into eternity. Remind yourself of eternity. Those are real bits of practical wisdom. And we deny that stuff today because in liberalism and modernity, we make everything out to be totally abstract and fleeting.

free-floating and distinct from the body. I mean, the reason the gender ideology has so taken off and been able to take off is because we have already, in liberal modernity, accepted the premise that our bodies don't really have anything to do with who we really are. This premise that the body doesn't really matter.

And that goes way back. I mean, that goes back to feminism. Feminists saying it doesn't matter that I have the body of a woman. You know, I don't I don't that doesn't mean anything. I can be just like a man. And so it's not a far leap to go from from that idea to I really can be a man. And, you know, maybe I'll mutilate my body. Maybe I won't mutilate my body. I'll just identify as a man. And that can be who I really am. But no, the body really matters.

And sometimes if you're feeling really angry and you might actually just be a little hangry and you should have a piece of beef jerky or something. Or if you're really tempted by lust of the flesh, maybe just put down the cupcake a little bit. That will go away. There is a very close relation between your body and your mind and your soul because we are, contrary to what the Libs would have us believe, we are hylomorphic beings. Turning now to international politics. This is a huge news story and we have to get to it today.

The founder of Telegram. Telegram is a, I guess you'd call it a social media platform, but it's also kind of like a private messaging service. It's encrypted. I don't really use it. I think I have one, but I don't really know how to use it because I'm spiritually a boomer. So, you know, I'm not hip and young and Zoomer and cool. But

It's a very prominent app. It's got a ton of users and it was founded by a Russian born billionaire, this guy, Pavel Durov. He was just arrested in France. Uh, Durov has French citizenship and UAE, United Arab Emirates citizenship. Uh, this is part of a preliminary police investigation into alleged crimes such as, uh, owing to a lack of moderators on Telegram. And these crimes include, you know, uh,

drugs and everything, you know, violence, all sorts of crimes that they're saying because Telegram has a lack of moderators and is not cooperating with investigations, they're going to arrest this guy. He's extremely wealthy. This guy has a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at about $15.5 billion. He's also pretty weird. He has 100 biological children. He's really into sperm donation and IVF. And I don't know, he's clearly an odd duck.

But the application, Telegram, has nearly a billion users according to their own numbers. And it's especially influential. The way that I hear about Telegram a lot is that it has a lot of information on the platform about the Russia-Ukraine war. It has a lot of information about the old Eastern Bloc.

What do we make of this? There are some people coming out saying this is an assault on free speech. This is an assault on an open public square. This is, I don't know, you know, where they're blaming the West or they're blaming Russia. Medvedev, who is Vladimir Putin's right-hand man in Russia and who uses Telegram to attack the West, said that Durov, this billionaire, wanted to be a brilliant man of the world who lives wonderfully without a motherland.

He's miscalculated. For all our common enemies now, he is Russian and therefore unpredictable and dangerous. I think Medvedev actually has the most insightful take on what the arrest of this Telegram founder means. I don't think it's really about drugs or whatever supposedly was going on on the app in terms of petty crime. I don't think it's necessarily about even...

even the free speech or whatever Elon's making it out to be. I think it is largely about the Russia-Ukraine war. What's funny is this guy was a dissident within Russia. So it's not as though he's being propped up by the Russians. The West might be arresting him now, but he was not exactly friendly with the Putin regime. He doesn't seem to have friends anywhere. The most significant meaning of the arrest of the Telegram founder

is that globalism is fake news, that cosmopolitanism is fake news, that it is not possible to be a citizen of the world, even in our enlightened liberal age where we're all just, we're everywhere, man.

People remain citizens of nations. And ultimately, you're going to need to turn to that nation to protect you from hostile nations. And if you want to, as Medvedev says, if you want to be a brilliant man of the world, okay, well, then you're going to get arrested at the French airport the minute that you start to have any effect that will threaten national interests.

That's sure. This probably is all about the Russia-Ukraine war and the kind of information that is contrary to the interests of nation states that comes out on Telegram. Okay, well, this man has no one to defend him because national identity still matters. And there are globalists on the left. There are globalists on the right. There are people who want to put themselves in total opposition to their own country, even in America, even people on the right. Okay, but ultimately,

That's where identity still lies. You even see this a little bit in the crypto and Bitcoin world, this notion that we're no longer going to have to rely on national currencies. Maybe. I don't know. You know what really backs up the national currency of the United States? What really backs it up? It's not gold anymore. Obviously, we're taking off the gold standard many decades ago. It's lots of guns and missiles and nuclear warheads. That's what backs it up.

state political power. That's what backs it up. And that's still what describes the world order. And if you put yourself outside of that, you're going to wind up in trouble. The rest of the show continues now. It's Music Monday. You don't want to miss it. Become a member and use code NOLS, K-N-O-L-E-S, at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. ...

Republicans or Nazis, you cannot separate yourselves from the bad white people. Growing up, I never thought much about race. It never really seemed to matter that much, at least not to me. Am I racist? I would really appreciate it if you left. I'm trying to learn. I'm on this journey. I'm going to sort this out. I need to go deeper undercover. I'm going to go deeper undercover.

Joining us now is Matt, certified DEI expert. Here's my certification. What you're doing is you're stretching out of your whiteness. This is more for you than this for you. Is America inherently racist? The word inherent is challenging there. I'm going to rename the George Washington Monument to the George Floyd Monument. America is racist to its bones. So inherently. Yeah, this country is a piece of shit.

White. Folks. Trash. White supremacy. White woman. White boy. Is there a black person around here? There's a black person right here. Does he not exist? Hi, Robin. Hi. What's your name? I'm Matt. I just had to ask who you are because you have to be careful. Never be too careful. Buy your tickets now in theaters September 13th, rated PG-13.