Ep. 1688 - DeSantis Picks a Fight with Andrew Tate

Bums usually can't recover until they hit rock bottom.

For Democrats, rock bottom seems to have come Tuesday night during President Trump's joint session address. After which, top Democrat strategists excoriated their own party.
Ten Democrats in Congress joined the Republicans to censure that lunatic Al Green, who was screaming so much he had to be dragged out of the chamber. And the leading Democrat candidate for president in 2028 just came out against transgenderism in sports.

I'm Michael Knowles. This after the Tates were on trial in Romania, then they came to America.
Now breaking news, it looks like they're leaving America, going back to Romania. What does it all mean? There's so much more to say.
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policygenius.com slash Knowles or click the link in the description, policygenius.com slash Knowles. Speaking of maintaining our health, I'm in New York right now.
You can tell if you're watching the show instead of just listening that I'm in a hotel room right now. And apparently in hotel rooms in New York now, instead of giving you bottles of water, they give you little milk cartons of water.
And I don't know how to feel about it. On the one hand, this seems very, very silly.
But on the other hand, now the conservatives are the group that hate all the microplastics and they recognize that the chemicals are turning the frog skin and everything. So I don't, I guess I like it.
I have Professor Jacob in the room with me right now. Is this, it's good, right? I guess this is based now.
I guess milk carton water is based. In any case, there are a lot of, there's a lot of flip-flopping going on.
We got the crunchies are now on the right. We got the corporatists are now on the left.
And Gavin Newsom, in my mind, the leading candidate for president for the Democrats in 2028, even though he burned one of his major cities to the ground and is one of the worst governors in America, still I think he's one of the leading candidates. He just broke with his own party on the issue of transgenderism in sports.
Would you say no men and female sports? Well, I think it's an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that.
It is an issue of fairness. So it's deeply unfair.
A Democrat strategist would say, oh, Charlie, you're weaponizing stuff. Not you.
But that's a typical thing. But the most effective ad of this election cycle, the most effective ad, you know what it is.
Yeah. Devastating.
Trump's for you. She's for they, them.
Devastating. Again.
Devastating. Devast Devastating.
And she didn't even react to it, which was even more devastating. And let's talk about why it was devastating.
Number one, it was the trans issue that was just monopolizing. And this was even more challenging because it's issues of people that are incarcerated.
And illegal. And illegal incarcerated individuals getting taxpayer funding.
Yes. And gender reassignment surgeries.
And that is a 90-10, not an 80-20. And then she's enthusiastically defending it, bragging, being like, I'm all for this, I'm all for this.
And then you had the video that was a validator. Brutal.
Yeah. Tens of millions of dollars, brutal.
The targeted focus from the Trump campaign. It was brutal.
It was devastating. I think it's an issue of fairness.
I agree with you. It's deeply unfair to have men in women's sports.
Who is this guy? This is Gavin Newsom, right? Gavin Newsom is not a moderate. He sometimes pretends to be a moderate because he looks like Patrick Bateman and he looks like every other normal looking white guy that's ever been in political office in America.
But he's not. He's a radical, including and especially on sexual issues.
When he was mayor of San Francisco in 2004, Gavin Newsom defied federal law to redefine marriage and create these ceremonies where two fellows or two ladies could pretend that they were being married. This was long before Barack Obama ever came around on gay marriage.
This was long before the Obergefell decision. In 2004, Barack Obama would campaign four years later.
Hillary Clinton would campaign four years after that, saying marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. Obama wouldn't change his view until 2011, 2012.
Obergefell didn't come down redefining marriage until 2015. Gavin Newsom was one of the earliest figures in the country advocating for weird sex stuff at our national scene.
Now, all of a sudden, he's the voice of reason on transgenderism. By the way, you heard that voice, that other voice in the conversation, that was Charlie Kirk, but they were not on Charlie Kirk's podcast.

That was Gavin Newsom's podcast. Gavin Newsom launches a show and the first person he invites

on is a Republican activist so that he could agree with the Republican activist on an issue

that has been defining for Democrats. And what's going on here? Newsom realizes that the Democrats are currently on a path to oblivion.
If they keep down this road, they're going to lose more black male voters. They're going to lose more Hispanic voters.
They're going to lose more female voters. They're going to get destroyed.
I think Gavin Newsom recognizes, and this show comes out after that debacle for the Democrats at Trump's joint session address, I think Newsom realizes that even if he were the nominee in 2028, if he kept to the current Democrat policies on immigration, on maybe even foreign policy, certainly on gender, that he would go down in flames. Now, the one reason that Newsom might not be the nominee, and if he were the nominee, the reason he might not win, is because one of his major cities went down in flames because he was a totally incompetent governor.
And in 2018, President Trump warned him, said, hey, you're not dealing with your forests. You're not cleaning up the brush.

Your state is going to catch on fire because of those Santa Ana winds.

And Newsom said, anyway, never mind.

I've got to get back to the French laundry.

Have a little pate de foie gras.

Come on, man.

It's hip to be squared.

You like Huey Lewis in the news?

And so he totally ignored that.

Let the city burn to the ground.

Looks terrible.

Probably his chances went down with him. Except for this.
except for this. Who else is it going to be? He's one of the few prominent Democrats to say, all right, the party has gone a little crazy.
Now, Newsom is going to have one other problem. And this is a word to the wise for any Democrats who realize that this trans issue is killing them and they have to change course.
You can't just oppose transgenderism in sports. That doesn't make any sense.
There's no middle ground position. This was the thesis of my CPAC speech that went viral a couple years ago.
Certain issues you can have a middle ground, like taxes or immigration or whatever. Human nature, you can't have a middle ground.
Either our bodies have something to do with who we are or they don't. So if you say, look, I accept transgenderism.
I accept transing the kids even. I accept men in women's bathrooms.
I accept dudes walking around, wearing dresses, doing drag queen story hour. But I draw the line at volleyball.
Why? You just told him. You've accepted the anthropology that says that a man can be a woman.
So then if a man can be a woman, why wouldn't you let that true woman, you know, that true woman with his big broad shoulders and his big Adam's apple and his hairy chest, why won't you let that true woman play volleyball with the other gals? It's not going to hold. So Newsom, he's testing the waters here, trans and women's sports.
But I think he's smart enough to realize that he's going to have to go further for that position to be at all coherent. Will the Democrat base let him go further? Not clear.
Does the Democrat base want to win elections again? Not clear. It's not just Newsom, though.
Ten Democrats in Congress just joined with Republicans to censure one of their fellow Democrats, Al Green.

He's that lunatic, not the singer.

The singer is great.

Talking about Al Green, the congressman.

He's tried to impeach Trump like 150 times already.

He interrupted the State of the Union, sorry, the joint session address.

And he was screaming and carrying on.

He was brandishing his cane.

He had to be dragged out by the sergeant of arms.

Ten Democrats.

Want to give him credit here. Ami Barra of California, Ed Case of Hawaii, Jim Costa of California, Laura Gillen of New York, Jim Himes of Connecticut, Chrissy Houlihan of Pennsylvania, Marcy Capter of Ohio, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, Marie Gluzenkamp-Perez of Washington, and Tom Swotze of New York all voted against their fellow Democrat.
Why? Because they're reasonable? I don't know. Probably not.
Because they're coming over to common sense? No, probably not. I think it's because they realized Democrats just looked absolutely horrible the other night.
It was so embarrassing. Just for an ordinary citizen, not an elected official, just an ordinary citizen, if you're watching that humiliating display by the Democrats, especially by Al Green, you're not going to want to admit that you're a Democrat.
Okay? You're going to be much more inclined to say, oh, no, I'm an independent. Or who knows? Maybe, you know, actually, I'm kind of with Trump.
Pull a Bobby Kennedy. Pull a Joe Rogan.
Pull a Tulsi Gabbard. You know, I don't know.
I'm out. Whatever they're selling, I don't want it.
They're starting to realize, on the night of that speech, when they all showed up with their stupid signs and screaming and yelling and not standing for American citizens being returned from prison in Russia, not standing for cute little 13-year-old kids getting nominated or actually being certified as honorary Secret Service agents, not standing for their own policies, no tax on tips. I thought, man, these people haven't learned anything since the election.
And that was true at the time. I think they might have hit rock bottom.
I think we might be at rock bottom lib. And some of them are recognizing, man, I got to get to rehab.
I got to. All right, I'm done with trans.
All right, one more hit of trans. There's just one.
Oh, all right, let's ride that. Let's ride that abolish police and open borders dragon just one more time.
All right, now I'm done. I'm done.
I need help. There's so much more to say.
First, though, go to showallegiance.com. We won a huge victory in November, getting America back on the right track.
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showallegiance.com for American flags made by Americans for Americans. I love New York for all of its problems and all the terrible government and all, you know, the bums.
Now, I'm two blocks away from one of the main hotels where they house the illegal aliens that Biden invited into the country. So New York's got problems, but I still love it.
I like the town, you know, coming in and out every so often. One thing, though, I will admit about New York, it doesn't always smell great, okay? One thing that could really help this city, getting rid of all the illegals, President Trump already fixed the congestion tax, cleaning up the bombs and all the rest, but the Smells and Bells candle.

That would help.

If the city invested in Smells and Bells candles from thecandleclub.com slash Michael, I think that would really help New York.

So if the city is considering doing that, I want you to go get your candle first because that would probably sell out. If you wanted to clean up the smells in New York, that would sell out very quickly.
So go head on over to thecandleclub.com slash Michael. All right, I'm going to say nice things about Democrats for approximately five more seconds.
Then we'll get back to just pummeling

them into the dirt. But some of them are getting it.
And it's not even just the moderate ones. As

I mentioned, Gavin Newsom is not a moderate. Just because he's a white guy with gray hair doesn't

mean he's a moderate, okay? Just because he doesn't have a bunch of piercings and face tattoos.

He's not, but he realizes the Democrats have to moderate. Same can be said of Simone Sanders.

Simone Sanders was an advisor to

Bernie Sanders, then an advisor to the Biden campaign, then an advisor to Kamala Harris. She's a true blue left winger.
She's worked at very high levels of Democrat politics. She goes on MSNBC with Michael Steele, who was the head of the Republican National Committee, but he's a huge lib.
And Simone and Steele agree the Democrats just looked like absolute gutter bums in the Capitol chambers. I don't know who thought up the bingo signs, but they should be fired.
Michael, this is an indictment, in my opinion, on the Democratic leadership. I talked to a lot of members during the they were texting the staff or on my phones and they were calling.
And I think the best way to describe it is the Democratic leadership said they didn't want disruptions and they wanted people to attend and bring a guest. And they wanted, you know, little business as usual.
And we're fighting back in other ways. There is a palpable disgust, as Claire said, from said from not just the members but their constituents and it's like a pot that someone described it to me that's boiling and it's about to bubble over if you do not allow the members a space to a release valve it's going to bubble over and this was a the members in the visuals are not taken back to house in 20 2026 there you have it okay you, you're Michael Steele.
I know he's sort of a Republican, but he's really a huge lib. And Simone Sanders, big Republican operative, is saying, Dems, you are not taking back the House if you keep this up.
Those stupid little signs that are now just memed all over Rashida Tlaib saying all sorts of crazy things because they set themselves up to become a meme. Just a farce.
You got Trump coming out, resolving multiple world conflicts, renaming, whether you agree with it or not, renaming bodies of water, making moves to retake the Panama Canal, add new territories to the United States like Greenland, which the U.S. State Department has been trying to acquire for 150 years, changing the economic order in line with his campaign promises, in line with what people want.
He's doing stuff. And these feckless, ridiculous Democrats are sitting with their little sourpuss on their face, holding up bingo signs.
It doesn't look good. It was so fine by me.
Again, I'm not upset about it. Keep it coming, guys.
You know, the Republican reign

will last a thousand years if you guys keep it up. But some people, some Dems, I think, are realizing something has to change.
Now, speaking of learning, President Trump, it was reported yesterday as I was flying up to New York, that Trump already had a draft of an executive order to abolish the Department of Education, which is fabulous news. Republicans have been campaigning on abolishing the Department of Education since the Reagan administration.
Don't forget, the Department of Education was only founded at the end of the Carter administration. I think it was 1979.
So it was a very live issue in 1980 and again in 1984. And then all these Republicans are campaigning on abolishing the Department of Education.
And none of them do it. And then Trump decides he's actually going to do it.
And everyone loses their minds. Some have pointed out that if you really want to abolish it for good, probably you have to get Congress involved in that.
The legislature has to make it more permanent. But Trump could do a lot to bring it to the brink of extinction.
So Wall Street Journal first reports this. CBS News confirms it.
This has been in the works for a little while. What does the Department of Education do? Because you know what the Libs are going to say.
The Republicans are attacking education. and they're attacking public education,

and they're going to destroy the ability of young Americans to learn and to better themselves.

So what does it do?

I think people, they just hear Department of Education.

They think it educates people.

It does not do that.

Department of Education does three things, basically.

The Department of Education supports college loans and financial aid. In other words, the Department of Education encourages this blank check system to American universities that has caused the cost of tuition to soar from single-digit thousands of dollars to now $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year, miring students in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that they probably won't be able to repay because the quality of the education has become so bad.
And because certain universities, without any scruples whatsoever, will just admit basically anyone, even if those students have no business being at a university, and then they'll owe the standards, and then the certificate, the diploma means nothing. So that's one thing they do.
That's bad. Okay? It's good for some people to go to some colleges in some circumstances.
I'm not an anti-university conservative. Far from it.
I'm a great defender of the true mission of real universities. But I think even people who are pretty liberal would recognize the current American university system is completely insane.
And a lot of it is driven by the Department of Education. So right there, that's one red flag.
Next, the Department of Education collects data and disseminates data that pertain to schools. Okay, we have plenty of think tanks and institutions that can do that.
And many of the data that have been collected over the years, in fact, all the data, consistently have shown that since the founding of the Department of Education, American test scores have declined. You'd think the one thing that the Department of Education would be doing is improving test scores.
Actually, the opposite has occurred. So there you go, second red flag.
Third thing the Department of Education does, it enforces non-discrimination policies. And what do we mean by non-discrimination policies? Are we talking about, you know, Klansmen burning a cross at your local high school? No, I don't think that really happens.
That's not what the Department of Education deals with. When they say non-discrimination policy, they mean they force schools through, dear colleague letters, they force schools through all sorts of regulations to promote radical leftist ideology.
They're talking about LGBTism, being taught in schools, K through 12 and beyond. The kind of policies that were roundly rejected toward the very, very top of people's minds at the ballot box in November.
The Department of Education does very, very little good, if any good at all. Do you know how many people work for the Department of Education? 4,400.
4,400 people. $268 billion budget.
That's actually a significant chunk of the U.S. federal budget.
It's not just a little nothing department where if you eliminate it, you don't save any money. That's a lot of money.
You could fund Ukraine for another five years, 10 years with that kind of money. No, that's pretty serious.
The case for dramatically reducing or just outright abolishing the Department of Ed seems pretty much watertight. Can you make me an argument, other than you're a leftist and you want to promote transgenderism in kindergarten or whatever, but can you give me a common sense argument that would actually appeal to people for keeping the Department of Education around or keeping it as it is? I can't think of one.
People are learning. They're learning despite the Department of Education.
And Europe is learning too. Major, major news out of Europe and Ukraine and Russia before we get to Romania with the Tate brothers.
There's so much more to say. First, though, go to donewithdebt.com.
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Go to donewithdebt.com, donewithdebt.com. The Europeans are learning a little bit.
After President Trump's joint session address, Emmanuel Macron, the leader of France, he came out and he said, Europe cannot remain spectators. Now, before I get into the story, I'm going to be a spectator of my favorite comment of the day from yesterday.
That is from GrahamSmith7892, who says, I love how tempted I was to be anxious when I heard that China had threatened us with war. But once I heard the Michael Knowles theme song, all those thoughts went away.
I'm so glad to hear that. So glad to hear that I could assuage your fears.
I try to. Padre Pio said, pray, hope, and don't worry.
Macron, speaking of war, global affairs, Macron said, Europe cannot remain spectators to the war in Ukraine, that Europe needs drastic rearmament. He said he wants to believe that the United States will stay by our side, but we have to be ready if that is not the case.
He said the future of Europe does not have to be decided in Washington or Moscow. The threat is returning to the east and the innocence of the last 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall is now over.
So he's saying, look, Trump might not be all in on Ukraine. And so we need to protect ourselves.
We need to pay more for our own security. We're not just going rely on daddy America.
That's what Trump has been asking for for eight years. So Macron's saying, okay, Trump, I'll give you exactly what you want.
Now, what is Russia saying? Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov is so furious at Europe potentially re-arming, paying more for their security, getting more involved in Ukraine. Russia just came out and said that Macron was extremely confrontational, looking for the continuation of war.
It can hardly be perceived as a speech by a peace-minded head of state. France is already ready to use its nuclear weapons for security and so on.
This is already such nuclear rhetoric. This is a claim to nuclear leadership in Europe.
So it is very, very confrontational.

I will suck your blood.

Russia furious.

Well, hold on.

Hold on.

I was told that Europe was not going to do what Trump said, couldn't do what Trump said,

was going to be furious.

We were abandoning our ally.

And Russia loved the notion that Europe was going to rearm.

Russia loved that America wasn't going to be the daddy to Europe anymore. But that's not actually what we're seeing is the opposite.
Trump says, Europe, help to defend yourselves. Macron says, OK, Trump will do that.
Russia says, ah, that's not what we want. Stop that.
This is terrible rhetoric. This is nuclear rhetoric.
The chairman of the International Affairs Committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, Leonid Slutsky, said that Macron is trying new Napoleonic armor on Versailles. He's comparing Macron to Napoleon.
They're both somewhat petite, so I guess there's that. Well, actually, Napoleon isn't French.
He was Corsican. But in any case, foreign minister of Russia, Sergei Lavrov, said, unlike his predecessors, who also sought to fight with Russia, Napoleon, Hitler, Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister is comparing Macron to Hitler.

Mr. Macron does not act very diplomatically.

He's saying that Hitler and Napoleon were more diplomatic than Macron.

Russia's furious over this.

Trump gets exactly what he wants. Russia, making quite clear this is not what Russia wants.
The Democrats, who accused Trump of being a Russian stooge, look like even bigger fools than they did before. What is this? What you're going to hear from the foreign policy genius experts is the sober-minded ones.
The stupid ones are going to say, Trump's a stooge for Russia. Again, I don't see how you read these comments and come to that conclusion.
But the sober-minded ones are going to say, well, this is the dismantling of the American empire. Since World War II, we've been the hegemon in the world, but certainly even during the Cold War, we were the leader of the West.
And so the European nations were really just U.S. vassal states.
And it's good that we paid for their defense. We don't want them having their own militaries.
Because we get to call the shots now. Okay.
I get it. But I don't know that this is really the dismantling of the American empire.
I think the American empire was headed for a crash. If we tried to keep things up, if we tried to remain overextended, if we wanted to continue on our course of debt, now it's what, 125% debt to GDP.
If we wanted to continue to import the entire third world, if we wanted to continue to send our manufacturing even over to our enemies, yeah, then I think empire's fall. That is a persistent rule of history.
I think what you're seeing here, what Trump is doing, is not a dismantling of the American empire. I don't think it's that.
I also don't think it's business as usual. I think it actually is, I think it's business.
I think that's the best way to understand this. If you have a business, if you've ever worked in a business, if you've ever owned a small business, you know.
Sometimes you have really high times, boom times, and sometimes the business starts to fail. And if you can see the business starting to fail, if you can see that you're going to have a cash problem, say, in six months or 12 months, then you need to start making decisions now that will allow you to get by those really bad times.
You need to plan ahead. You need to sometimes pull in some of your resources, battle down the hatches, prepare for difficult times so that you can maintain your strength into the future.
Because if you don't do anything until the very end, until the moment that you have to, the whole thing is going to come crumbling down. And I think it's no coincidence that Donald Trump is a businessman.
And I think he is looking at the American empire like a failing business because it is like a failing business. And he's saying, okay, look, I think America's greatest days are ahead.
I think we're headed for a golden age. I don't want to disassemble this American empire, but we need to restructure this thing.
Okay. And if we're really, we got to really restructure it.
We need to, we need to get another genius businessman in and start restructuring how the government works and some domestic policy. And then we got to look overseas at our commitments.
We're going to maintain our leadership. We're even going to talk about expanding.
We're going to talk about taking back the Panama Canal and taking on Canada, America's Evil Toppat, and Greenland. And we're going to project strength and we're going to plan for growth.
But we are going to get our resources in line. And we're going to recognize that if we put all of our chips on, say, Ukraine or something like that, we might not be prepared for other conflicts that could be more significant, say, with China or someone else.
Just a little bit of prudence, a little bit of that business acumen when you actually have to deal with a bottom line. 125% debt to GDP.
Our politicians haven't thought about serious bottom lines or consequences in a while. Okay.
Speaking of international controversies, the Tate brothers. I talked about this yesterday, a little bit, but I was cut off.
The Tate brothers, who are the Tate brothers? Just a quick little whirlwind. These guys, Andrew and Tristan, they're very famous.
They became famous because they give young men advice on the internet and they work out and smoke cigars. I like smoking cigars.
They get some things right. But they also say things that are very offensive about women.
And they don't promote, they're not leftists. They promote a kind of right-wing view, but they're not conservative, really, in any way.
They're not married. They have been pimps.
They're accused in Romania of sex trafficking, of pimping underage girls, and running a criminal organization. And they've admitted on camera to pimping, to I think, Andrew was filmed or filmed himself beating a young woman, maybe even underage, on camera.
Now, the defense was, well, it was consensual. But for a conservative, I don't care if it's consensual.
You don't beat a woman. You don't be especially not a really young one.
Good grief. You know, that's completely indefensible.
And so anyway, there are all these cases in Romania. Then they go to Florida.
Ron DeSantis and the attorney general in Florida say, we're going to open an investigation into the Tates for sex trafficking, for pimping, for whatever they've been doing. Okay.
So the Tates previously said, we're going to stay in America for a long time. It was a big coup when they were able to leave Romania, come to the States.
Then they just announced yesterday, actually, we're going back to Romania. This is just a little vacation.
We're going back to Romania before DeSantis tries to lock us up. The Tates are arguing, and the Tates' defenders are arguing, that people are only trying to prosecute them because of the right-wing things they say, or because they have unfashionable international views.
For instance, they're opposed to the state of Israel. So maybe that's it.
Maybe it's just a political lobby that's trying to get them. Okay, whatever.
I haven't followed them all that closely. However, I guess even beyond the legal questions, I guess that'll all be sorted out.
They'll be prosecuted in Romania or the UK or Florida. But my question is this.
For the people who are defending the Tates and for the Tates themselves, putting aside the criminal questions, and if they committed crimes, they'll serve their time, one hopes. Have they ever expressed remorse and repentance for those things that they've done? Crimes according to statutes or just immoral actions? I don't know.
I'm asking this sincerely. I don't know.
I don't follow their content. Have they ever, I know Andrew Tate identifies as a Muslim now.
Okay. Have they expressed remorse for womanizing, for promoting pornography, for beating women on camera, for, I'm not even saying what they've done is a crime necessarily.
Prosecutors are saying, I'm not saying, I don't know. But just, those are very bad things.
Now, I'm all for people repenting, turning their lives around. You know, I'm really for it.
I don't think anyone is too far gone. But I guess my question for them and for anyone defending them is,

have they repented? Even if they have, they might still have to pay their debt to society, in a criminal context. But I just need to know from a cultural perspective, have they expressed regret and remorse and repentance? Have they said that's bad? Actually, it's good to get married and to have children within wedlock, as is knowable from the natural law.
And it's good to engage in virtue, not just physical virtue, which they obviously have some physical virtues and excellence and athleticism, but moral virtues. And have they done any of that? That's what I want to know.
And I can't get a straight answer from people. I haven't seen evidence that they have, but if they have, great.
Show me the evidence. Because if not, then what are people defending? I don't get it.
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Finally, finally, we have arrived at my favorite time of the week. When I get to hear from you in the mailbag.
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Take it away. Hey, Michael, slap my bass here.
Been a hot minute, but I have some good news. No, I am not signing a record deal and becoming a famous bassist like I always wanted, but for the first time in 10 years, I have worked up the confidence to start dating and found a potential girlfriend.
Now I say potential because even though we have been going out for three months, she has said to me that she does not find me attractive, but enjoys my company and wants to continue to see me. This was the result of my last relationship and the girl who friend zoned me ended up getting married to somebody else.
My question to you is how does one get out of the friend zone and convince the other person to see someone as a potential life partner? Considering my options are very limited and my responses on dating sites are about as scarce as Reasons to Vote for Democrat, also a best-selling book by Michael Knowles, pick up a copy today, I want to do everything in my power to ensure I am not waiting around another 10 years for a candidate to come, nor do I want to break up with this girl with no other options readily available. Thanks.
Well, I think you got to start pimping, you know, and take pickup artist classes. No, I'm joking.
You shouldn't. You shouldn't do that.
I don't know. Maybe I should try out.
I should become the new Andrew Tate. Could I do that? I don't know.
I don't know if I could pull it off. It's a little unclear from your question.
Are you saying that your current girlfriend says that she's not attracted to you, but she wants to keep seeing you? Or are you saying that you had this girlfriend and she wasn't attracted to you and you broke up? It's a little bit unclear. So maybe I'll have to go back and listen to the tape.
If it's the former, if the girl says, look, I'm not really that attracted to you, but I'd like the idea of dating you. I don't know.
It's a little blunt. It would probably be difficult for my ego to take it.
But she is expressing a kind of attraction to you. She's saying, look, it's not like I'm getting the vapors because you're so physically hot, but she is attracted to you, obviously.
Now, if it's that there was an ex-girlfriend who said that to you, okay, or a friend who said that to you, how do you get out of the friend zone? You got to meet new girls, I guess. That's the thing.
You're not going to, probably you're not going to convince a girl who has friendzoned you to unfriendzone you. It has happened.
Stranger things have happened, but it might be tough. And if she said, look, I'm really not, it's really not going to happen.
Probably I would move on. So you say, dating sites aren't great, you know, but so where, what would I do if it were me? I would? I guess I would just think of it very clinically.
Where do you meet anyone? You meet people at parties, at the gatherings of your friends and family. Don't date your family, but you can date your friends and family members or friends of friends.
You meet people at work. You meet people at social activities, you know, whether you're in a cigar club, probably not going to meet too many women there.
Or if you're in a political club or wherever, meet people there. And then, let's say that brings you to 10 people.
You then have to remember those 10 people also have social circles. And so I would enlist them, you know.
Just as you're enlisting me right now to give you advice, I would enlist them to introduce you to a woman. Because I think real flesh and blood meetings and experiences and relationships are more conducive to results, in my experience.
So that's what I would do. You're not going to do it on your own.
We're a political animal. So pray about it, of course.
That's the first resort. But then I would pray your friends and say, hey, friends, family, co-workers, whoever, hey, someone needs to set me up.
That might work. Next question.
Hi, Michael. When St.
Athanasius discusses the Pope's defection from orthodoxy during the Arian crisis, he's completely unbothered by it. There's no hand-wringing over infallibility, over obedience, over primacy.
It's worth a paragraph of his time in his history on the Arian crisis, and then he moves on. Today, such a defection by the Pope would cause Catholics to freak out over any number of doctrines.
How do we as a church get back to the point where we can be as unbothered by papal shortcomings as St. Athanasius was.
You have to return either to your physical origins or at least your spiritual origins in the Mediterranean. That's what you have to do, and I'm only being a little bit cute about it.
I once, it's funny, Charlie Kirk asked me this one time, and I was, people were upset because I gave him kind of a cute answer on it. But there's actually a lot of truth to that cute answer.
Where Charlie said, you know, the Pope is terrible, and he said all these terrible things, and he couldn't name any of the terrible things. And most people who really freak out about what any Pope, this Pope or any other says, they often can't point to exactly what he said.
But there's this sense that, oh no, the Pope's saying terrible things, and this is a huge problem. You say, look, I'm not saying it's not a problem.
Even when the Pope says genuinely terrible things, like during the Arian crisis, people denying the divinity of Christ. But, you know, he's not a totalitarian dictator, the Pope.
Okay? And so, you know, the Anglos are very, you know, they take things very, very seriously. But the Mediterranean approach is, oh, what did the Papa say? Oh, okay, well, is it a bit? He just kind of said it to like a journalist? Okay, well, all right, maybe I got a little wax into my ears.
I don't know. Maybe I didn't quite hear that so much.
I don't mean to doubt, it matters if the Pope were to say something that's genuinely contrary to the faith and really to hammer it home. And the Pope does have a lot of power.
But the church measures her life in centuries and millennia, not in tweets and errant phrases to liberal journalists. It's okay.
Take a deep breath. It's going to be okay.
Next question. Good morning, Michael.
I am one of those all too rare Southern Baptist women who is opposed to birth control both for health reasons and theological ones. Recently, I have driven to engage in casual conversation with my friends about it to provoke thought about the theological aspects of it that I had never considered until relatively recently.
In doing so, I have observed an interesting phenomenon. The men I know are willing to have a thoughtful conversation about the theological ramifications of birth control, but virtually none of the women are even willing to talk about it.
These are pro-life Christian women who love children, but if I even mention that I have been rethinking this issue, they get visibly uncomfortable and very quickly change the subject. Seeing as how this is a topic that you speak about fairly frequently, I was curious if you have experienced the same phenomenon and would love to hear both insight into why you think this may be, as well as any advice for approaching the topic in a winsome manner.
Thank you so much. Yes, well, to quote Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets,

a man is, or a woman rather, is a man if you take away reason and accountability.

But I didn't say that.

That's what Jack Nicholson said.

I didn't say that.

Women have a rational nature too.

I'm not denying that fact.

But I'm not surprised, actually, that your female friends don't want to talk about this. Not because they're not rational.
But women generally don't like confrontation. Especially with friends.
They want to get along with their friends. Sometimes men, look, we get along with our friends too.
But sometimes men, we like it when we really disagree with our friends. We go at it and we get in each other's face.
We say, you're totally wrong. You're nuts.
You're stupid. What are you talking about? Women are nicer than that, I guess.
So they don't like that as much. So I think that's probably why.
Because your friends are thinking, well, hold on. I agree with this person on everything.
But wait, are you challenging not only a view that I hold, but a behavior that I engage in? A really personal behavior that is really convenient to me because I don't want to have to be pregnant every 12 months? Oh, hey, let's just change the subject. I think that's a big reason why.
Also because, in fairness to the women, the women do bear most of the physical discomfort and suffering that goes along with carrying a child. So I would say just keep hitting it head on.
Because you say you're one of the few Baptists who takes this seriously. And maybe that's true for now, but I told you the Southern Baptists issued this beautiful statement on IVF and said people aren't going to come around to it just yet, but really it's bioethically pretty much indefensible.
And so don't undersell the Southern Baptists. They get quite a lot.
Okay, there's so much more to get to. There's another voice mailbag question I want to get to.
There's written mailbag questions I want to get to. But I got to let the hoi polloi go because today is Fake Headline Friday.
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