Ep. 1683 - Phase 1 Epstein Files EXPLAINED in 5 Minutes

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A single heartbeat can echo across generations. Six years after Jeffrey Epstein's death and 20 years after his first arrest, we finally have the first batch of declassified files on the most notorious sex ring in American history.
And still, almost no one is asking the only question that really

matters. I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.

Welcome back to the show. After years, decades even, of a decline in religion, there is some shocking, for many people, unexpected, really, really good news for religion coming out of Pew Research.
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The Epstein files are out. I have in my hand a binder.
Yep. The Epstein files have been released in phase one.
There will be multiple phases. What information is in them? One little tidbit of news that some people didn't know, though I think many people might have deduced, is that there were a lot of victims.
There were some 250 plus victims of the Epstein sex ring. Some people will find that number a little surprising.
Maybe, I don't know, maybe they thought it was 50 victims or a hundred victims. I figured there'd be a lot of victims.
We're talking about a major sex ring with extremely famous, influential people all over the world with an island. They had their own island in the Caribbean.
So even that number doesn't really surprise me. It's great that the Trump administration is declassifying this.
He ended up declassifying it by giving the files to conservative media figures rather than to establishment journalists like the Associated Press. And so there, once again, you get a pummel to the establishment media and an exaltation of independent journalists.
So all great stuff. However, here's my big however.
We already know most of this stuff, don't we? I hate to throw water on this because a lot of people are so happy to see the release of these files. There are many more files, not just held by the federal government, but even the Southern District of New York seems to be holding files away from the DOJ and the FBI.
So I think we already knew a lot of this, didn't we? We know Epstein's crimes. Is anyone confused about Epstein's crimes? I'm not.
I haven't been for years. We already know many of the most prominent people associated with Epstein.
Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Les Wexner, Prince Andrew, the list goes on and on. We have pictures of them all together.
So I know some people are saying, well, I want people in prison. All right, go arrest Bill Clinton.
We know who the prominent people are. I'm sure there are many other people.
We can find the CEO of some Fortune 500 company maybe. I don't know.
I'm sure there are a lot of people. I guess what I'm saying is we know what Epstein did.
We know many of the most prominent people who were not only palling around with him. The Libs sometimes try to tie Trump in with this because Epstein was a member of the Mar-a-Lago club.
But the Libs, despite trying for years, have never been able to tie him to the airplane, to the island, to the sex ring, to none of it. But we do know that Bill Clinton flew on that airplane quite a bit.
We do know that Bill Gates was palling around with him. We know a lot of those figures.
So we even know the who. As far as I am concerned, politically speaking, there is only one question that matters regarding Jeffrey Epstein, and that is, what purpose did his operation serve? That's the question.
You might say, well, as a matter of justice, I want to see people prosecuted. Yeah, sure, but you don't need to declassify any information for that.
Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't, but we want justice for the victims. Okay, yeah, sure, as a matter of justice, great, you can pursue that with, but politically speaking, there is only one question that matters.
What purpose did the Epstein operation serve? Was it just so he could get his jollies off? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Why did he bring in all of these really rich and famous people? Was it blackmail? It seems like there was a healthy degree of blackmail in there.
Cameras all over the homes and the islands. Sure.
Where did Jeffrey Epstein get all his money? Was it just his money? I guess it could have been, but he's got a pretty weird biography, doesn't he? Jeffrey Epstein did not graduate from college and then became a teacher at a very fancy prep school in New York, the Dalton School. That's kind of weird.
How do you become a teacher at a really fancy prep school if you don't graduate college? And then he went from the prep school to Bear Stearns, major financial institution, rose up the ranks there. Then he started his own financial firm and he bragged about having big clients.
But look, people can make money in private wealth management, sure. But can they make that kind of money? Can that guy make that kind of money in the honest business of private wealth management if everything's above board? We're talking private Caribbean island money? Color me a little skeptical.
What did Alex Acosta mean, Trump's Secretary of Labor, when he was interviewed for that job and he was asked about his time as U.S. attorney prosecuting Jeffrey Epstein, and he says that he was told that Jeffrey Epstein belonged to intelligence.
What did he mean by that? What intelligence? Is it our intelligence, CIA? Is it foreign intelligence? Is it multiple intelligence outlets? We know that Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's paramour and business partner, had ties to, well, her father had ties to Mossad, MI6, possibly the KGB. Who was he working for? What was the purpose of the operation? It is possible, I guess, that Epstein was just working for himself.
And he made some money in finance. And he just created this elaborate blackmail ring to enrich himself and to continue to engage in depraved sexual activities.
I guess that's possible. What does that mean Epstein belongs to intelligence? I want that answer.
That's what's interesting to me. That signals a great deal more significant political corruption, politically relevant information, than finding out who the perps were.
Good, find the perps, prosecute the perps. I'm all for it.
We already know a lot of the perps and they're not being prosecuted, but transparency wasn't the issue there. We have the pictures of Epstein palling around with Prince Andrew and Bill Gates and Bill Clinton and all the rest of it.
Where's that? Until that question is answered, I'm taking all the Epstein stuff with a grain of salt. Because I think we're ignoring the most important question that there is politically in that case.
Now, moving on from Epstein, moving to pop culture. Some really, really good news coming out of the pop culture.
Timothy Chalamet, the actor who played Bob Dylan in this new movie, he just won the Screen Actors Guild Award for that, and no one watches these award shows anymore. Virtually all of the speeches are terrible.
People generally hate Hollywood now. They're tuning out the movies.
They're tuning out TV. But this was a bright spot.
This was a sign of hope. This is Timothy Chalamet's acceptance speech.
I know the classiest thing would be to downplay the effort that went into this role and how much this means to me. But the truth is, this was five and a half years of my life.
I poured everything I had into playing this incomparable artist, Mr. Bob Dylan.
and I know we're in a subjective business, but the truth is I'm really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don't usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats.
I'm inspired by the greats. I'm inspired by the greats here tonight.
I'm as inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis and Marlon Brando and Viola Davis as I am by Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps. and I want to be up there.
So I'm deeply grateful to that. This doesn't signify that, but it's a little more fuel.
It's a little more ammo to keep going. Thank you so much.
This is the golden age of America aura. That's what this is.
I love that. There's even humility at the end.
He says, look, thank you for this award. I want to be great.
I want to be great. And this award doesn't make me great, and I'm not great yet, but this is giving me fuel.
This is a step along the way, and I want to be greater. I want to be really great.
That word great, where did that word great come from in the popular consciousness in the last decade or so? Did it maybe come from Trump? make America great again. We hadn't really heard at the presidential level about a platform for American greatness in my lifetime, really.
We heard about American stasis. We heard about managing the global empire.
We heard about the world is flat. We heard about the end of history.
But Trump brings with him a new focus on greatness.

And that is now seeping throughout the whole culture.

And it didn't quite hit in 2016 and didn't hit in 2020 because there were all these questions about Trump and all these corrupt attacks to take him down and this denial that his views were mainstream.

2024, though, popular vote, big win.

Now we can talk about it.

Now it's been percolating for a little bit of time. Greatness.
I want to be great, kid. That reminds me of one of the best movies of the last 25 years, Hail Caesar, about the movie industry, when the villain is George Clooney and Herbert Marcuse, the father of the new left.
And the heroes are the American industrialists, studio heads, capitalists, conservatives, Republicans, priests, the faithful. And in one of the great climactic scenes, the studio head grabs George Clooney, playing himself, smacks him across the face.
He says, hey, you go out there and you'd be great. You go be a star.
This is beautiful stuff. What does it mean for the culture? It means that the hallmarks of the millennials of the Obama era, of the past 10, 20 years, the millennial cynicism and irony, that is dead.
Vocal fry, glottal fry, that's the way that millennials talked. That's the late 2000s, early 20-teens, you know, people just kind of talk like this, like that hipster, like I don't really care.
You know, I'm just totally indifferent to anything. You know, it's like whatever, man.
That thing, gone. That is being replaced.
Millennial irony and cynicism are being replaced by Zoomer earnestness and sincerity.

Earnestness and sincerity are back. I am totally here for it.
This is strong stuff. This is good stuff.

This is reflected at the political level. It's in the popular culture.
It is a generational shift, and it is one for the better.

And conservatives, myself included, we always talk about everything's getting worse, and we're all going to hell in a handbasket, and the West has fallen, and all of that, and that's often true. But this is an improvement, and I am here for it.
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Speaking of film stars, Michael Moore, big lib documentarian, just, he made an argument that in his head sounded so good to take down the conservatives and to take down Trump and specifically to target the mass deportations that most voters voted for. And it sounded so good in his head.
And he unfortunately undermined his entire political side of the aisle. He said, this was in a Substack post, who's really being removed by ICE tonight? The child who would have discovered the cure for cancer in 2046.
The ninth grade nerd who would have stopped that asteroid, Michael Moore misspelled asteroid, would have stopped that asteroid that's going to hit us in 2032. First of all, I'm not sure that the 45-year-old face-tattooed Satan-worshipping MS-13 gangsters are really on the brink of the cure for cancer.
Color me skeptical. That's what he says.
That's who's being deported. We get nothing from that Syrian Muslim who sired a junior Abdul Fattah, a nothing migrant with a nothing out of wedlock baby, except that nothing baby was soon adopted and given an American name, Steve Jobs.
Yes, that's Steve Jobs. I'm grateful for that Muslim migrant baby being born here 70 years ago today, because if he hadn't, it's possible we would have none of his inventions.
This little story, I hope, will give pause to any bigot who constantly rails against the danger we're all in because of these filthy low-life aliens. Okay.
I really like that little story he just told because that little story he just told undermined the central sacrament of his side of the aisle. How many people did President Trump deport in his first month? 37,660, according to Reuters.
So if you extrapolate that out one month to 12 months, now hopefully Tom Homan and the Trump admin ramp up the deportations as they get their sea legs. But if you just extrapolate that out month over month, that's 451,920 people in a year to be deported.
Let's say they ramp it up and it's a little higher, 500,000, 600,000. 1.2 million babies are aborted per year.
1.2 million babies. So you're so concerned.
Oh no, we're going to lose the person who cures cancer. We're going to lose the person who stops that asteroid.
We're going to lose the person who invents Apple. Hold on a second.
How did we get Steve Jobs and Apple? Is that a story of migration? No, that's a story of a baby who was not planned and not wanted to be raised by his parents, whose parents decided to give him up for adoption. Instead of doing what the left insists they do, which is murder the baby in the womb, his parents made the much better choice to give him up for adoption.
The Steve Jobs story is not an immigrant story. It's an abortion story.
It's a pro-life story. It's just amazing.
The arguments, the real pertinent arguments over whether or not to deport illegal aliens are i think much deeper than just michael moore's instrumentalist consequentialist view of you know well hey one of those migrants might cure cancer but if you're just playing a numbers game here like michael moore wants to do you have a much better chance of curing cancer and stopping the asteroid and inventing Apple. Literally, in this case, we know the guy who invented Apple was saved because his parents didn't choose abortion.
You have a much better chance by just not murdering the babies through abortion than you do by stopping the deportation of despicable, murderous, rapist, face-tattooed gangsters from Mexico and Venezuela and other Latin American countries. Crazy that this guy could write that story out, write out this beautiful pro-life parable, and then think he's making a point in favor of the left.
Beautiful stuff. Michael Moore hoisted by his own petard.
Difficult thing to do, but he was hoisted. Hoisted with his own rhetorical petard.
I think a lot of the left is like that now. But good stuff, I love it.
Send that substack around, let's go. Good argument against abortion.
Now, speaking of morality, Pew Research has some encouraging news. Is this the good news day? We're getting a little more transparency in government.
We're getting good moves in the pop culture. And Pew Research says that the decline in Christianity in the United States is leveling off.
Pew Religious Landscape Study showed 62% of poll respondents identify as Christian, while 29% are religiously unaffiliated. So the number is still too low, 62% Christian.
Okay. UPI reports that Pew said in an executive summary that, quote, the Christian share of the population after years of decline has been relatively stable since 2019, might even be growing a little bit.
This is golden age aura. And it ties in with what we're talking about with Timothy Chalamet, because much of that millennial, it's not just the millennials, but it was that era, the 2000s, early 20-teens, that era of just kind of hipster apathy and irony and cynicism, and I don't care, I'm blasé, I'm nonchalant.
I'm above it all. I don't even care enough to put breath behind my voice.
This was the vocal tick of that era. They just kind of talk like this, and their throat kind of just like it scratches together.
It's like a voluntary Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy has a medical condition.
These guys don't have any excuse. They just don't care.
They're just like, yeah, whatever, man, whatever. That's done.
People are now enthusiastic. They're taking things seriously.
They're taking themselves seriously. They're speaking from their chest, supported by their voice.
They're saying, I want to be great. I don't want to be mediocre.
I don't want to just be nothing. I remember to really highlight what that era and that culture was like.
I remember I was in an Apple store in Grand Central in, I don't know, 2012 or something. And the hipster employee there, a nice enough guy, but he had two tattoos on his fingers.
One was a little mustache on his finger, and the other said, S-H-I-T, Cray. S-H-I-T, Cray.
It's this nihilistic, almost Dadaist kind of mutilation of his body. Say, yeah, whatever.
It's all nothing. Nothing means anything.
It's all kind of pointless. Yeah, whatever, man.
That was the aura of that era. And that's the era of agnosticism or even the new atheism.
That's the era of subjectivism of, you know, who cares? We're all just kind of meat sacks and you know nothing makes any sense it's all absurd do whatever you want if it feels good do it whatever make america great again i want to be great i want to do things i want to achieve things that era cannot be one of indifference you can't indifferently be be great. You got to believe something.
And you really want to be great? Well, then you got to believe true things. And you got to believe them down all the way to the core of what it means to be.
And that means Christianity is going to stop declining. And I think if trends continue, it's going to be on the rise yet again, ever ancient, ever new.
Many tyrants thought they had beaten Christianity, not so much. There's so much more to say first though.
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It says, the Vake needs to change the name back to the Cleveland Indians. I don't care what kind.
Just do it for America. For America.
Okay, it can be the Cherokee. It can be the Choctaw, even be the Comanche.
You're right. And actually, I still call them the Cleveland Indians.
I teach my children to call them the Cleveland Indians. Indians fans call them the Cleveland Indians.
It's true. Technically, the baseball team from Ohio is known as the Cleveland Guardians.
Nobody calls them that other than the MLB color commentators because they have to because the league makes them. But the Indians, I agree.
Vivek is already going to win. I mean, I think he is so far ahead of the pack in that race in terms of name recognition, support, money, endorsements.
I think it's his if he wants it. But if he came out and he said, hey, by the way, it's the Cleveland Indians again.
I, a different kind of Indian, am telling you that we got the Indians back. It's an Indian Ohio November.
He would win 150% of the vote. He's going to get 70 or something now, but he would get 150.
Okay, speaking of Christianity, George Janko, a popular YouTuber, has just created a major controversy because a video of his went viral in which he mocked the Eucharist, the blessed sacrament, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here's what he had to say.
I don't look at things that are dirt and put it to the holiness of God. I can never do that.
When they take the Eucharist or when they take this and they truly believe that it is actually his body and his blood, to me, that's a big no-no. So they believe that it is actually his body.
Yeah, I think it's called trans obsession. Yes.
To me, it's like, isn't that blasphemy? Isn't that like idolatry at a whole different level when you're worshiping something? We're just taking dirt and worshiping it as if it's our presence of God. And I just, I can't wrap my head around that.
I can't wrap my head that like if the piece of bread falls to the ground, legitimately hell breaks loose in that church and they bow and pick it up with their mouth and they treat it like it is actually my god that's in that bread i can't get behind that i think little movements like this could set a projectory to move a man away from god that's why i like i fight for it so hard it's because i truly have brothers and sisters that sat with me in the pew but they no longer see god as god anymore because they weren't nourished the way they should have been nourished. They were taught to fear the wrong things and to practice the wrong things.
Okay. So what George Janko is, he's Protestant, obviously, what he's saying here is blasphemous and it is theologically ignorant and it is contrary to sacred scripture.
All of those things are true, completely indefensible, what he said. And we'll get into why he's so powerfully wrong about this issue.
But

I have to point out that George Janko, even with these unfortunate comments,

deeply wrong comments, is taking Eucharistic theology more seriously than 69% of American

Thank you. Unfortunate comments.
Deeply wrong comments. Is taking Eucharistic theology more seriously than 69% of American Catholics? That's a shocking number, but this comes also, I think, from Pew Research.
This survey came out just some years ago now. Pretty recent, 2019, I want to say.
Just one-third of U.S. Catholics believe that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
69%, nearly 7 in 10 Catholics, say they personally believe that during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in communion are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Just one-third of U.S.
Catholics, 31%, say they believe that, quote, during Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Just one-third of U.S.
Catholics, 31%, say they believe that, during Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus. So, this is a non-negotiable teaching of the church, certainly dogmatic, that the Eucharist is the Eucharist, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Just one-third, less than one-third, believe that. So, in a way, you have to say, well, at least George Janko is taking Eucharistic theology seriously, though he's saying things about it that are false and very offensive.
What is he saying? He says it's dirt. He compares it to dirt.
Now, when he says it's dirt, he can't mean even an unconsecrated host that it's literally dirt, right? It's a wafer. It's bread.
When Janko says that the Eucharist is dirt, he's saying that it's stuff, right? I don't think he thinks that the unconsecrated host or the bread is like literally dirt. So he's saying it's stuff.
And he's saying that it's wrong to deal with stuff or to treat stuff as holy. But of course, this seems to be undermined by the incarnation, the central fact of Christianity.
When our Lord, who is God, also becomes flesh and dwells among us as a human nature and a divine nature. We read in the Gospels of a person in an act of faith, touching the hem of our Lord's garment to be healed, to be saved? Why is there this physical aspect? Why does our Lord spit in the dirt and give the blind sight, restore sight to the blind with stuff? Why does he become incarnate? Because stuff matters, that's why.
Why does our Lord give us sacraments? He says, you know, Catholics believe this is actually his body.

Yes.

And this is scriptural.

This comes from John chapter six, when our Lord says,

whoever does not eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood has no life in him. And this was as shocking a statement then as it is to some people now.

And the Jews who hear this dispute among themselves and many disciples go away.

And our Lord says, my flesh is true food. My blood is true drink.
And then we see at the Last Supper when our Lord says, this is my body, which will be given up for you. This wine, this is my blood.
Do this in memory of me. The institution of the Eucharist.
But the theology of the Eucharist is explained in John chapter 6. And so many go away, and our Lord turns to St.
Peter, and St. Peter says, he says, you do not go away.
And he says, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life. So anyway, that's why Catholics believe that.
The notion that this would move a man away from God, I can imagine no better way to become close to God than to actually to receive our Lord. You know, when we eat ordinary food, the food becomes like us, breaks down and becomes part of our body.
The Eucharist, the heavenly bread, is the food that makes us more like God, brings us closer to God, we in the mystical body of Christ. That's the idea.
Because we're bodies too. We're not just, in modernity, we think we're all just abstract ideas floating in outer space.
We're not. We are bodies.
And so we pray, and our bodies are involved in that, whether we're on our knees or whether we're, I don't know, scrolling on our phones or something. We communicate via images.
You can't ignore that. Even if you close your eyes and try not to picture any images, not have any icons or statues or anything, you're still going to make images in your head.
That's how we communicate. It's a semiotic world.
So I think it moves you closer to God. And George Janko says, you know, they practice the wrong things.
I think those are the right things because the Eucharist is not some Catholic invention from the Middle Ages or something like that. We see evidence of the Eucharist from the various earliest days of the church, the first and second centuries.
I mean, I think of the Didache, the first catechism. We're dating back to within living memory of the resurrection.
The Didache, St. Ignatius of Antioch, St.
Irenaeus of Lyon, St. Justin Martyr.
St. Justin Martyr, I mean, I could quote all these guys and many others, but St.
Justin Martyr in the first apology, this is written around AD 150, says, quote, we do not receive these as common bread or common drink, but just as Jesus Christ, our Savior, having been made flesh by the word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation. So likewise, the food which is blessed by the prayer of his word and from which our flesh and blood by transmutation areished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.
And you will see many, many other examples from the church fathers. Again, it's scriptural as well, and then throughout the ages of the doctors of the church.
So, you know, he's wrong. He should correct his views.
His views are contrary to the Christian religion. However, I'm not going to totally dogpile on him because he is at least engaging with Eucharistic theology.
He's at least taking the theology seriously, which I'm sorry to say is more than can be said of 69% of US Catholics. So maybe they need to take it more seriously too.
And then we can all believe the right things and do the right things and be together doing what our Lord commanded us to do. Now, speaking of media figures, turning back to politics, Jake Tapper of CNN has a new book out.
And this book is on the scandal of the coverup of Joe Biden's dementia. It's called Original Sin.
So I guess that actually ties back into religion. The subheader is President Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again.
This decline and the cover-up of the decline, that's the real media scandal. I mean, what kind of incompetent, devious, lying journalists would cover up Joe Biden's obvious decline? How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that? It's very clearly a cognitive decline.
That's what I'm referring to. It makes me uncomfortable.
You are no. This is so amazing.
It's so amazing to me that. And try and figure out an answer.
A cognitive decline. Biden embraces his stutter, talking about it, while Trump mocks it, exaggerates it, belittles it.
He's sharp physically. I mean, mentally.
Yeah. I think the question is physically, right? Right.
Or so. Right.
Right. And the guy who's his chief opponent is only three or four years younger than me.
I mean, you have questioned President Biden's age, mental fitness, ability to lead of those supporting Biden. You said, shame on all of you, pretending everything is OK.
You're leading us and him into a disaster. Do you worry that you damaged him at all? I don't doubt that you got hugs and handshakes behind closed doors today and maybe even publicly some of them because they like you personally.
But I've heard a lot of really nasty stuff about you from your Democratic colleagues. I mean, just like, what is he thinking, exercise in exercise in narcissism i mean false claims to the wall street journal about president biden's mental fitness and acuity he's 81 and his memory you know it doesn't seem great it's not horrible but i don't understand the no it's not horrible and maybe he stumbles a little bit you know mentally he's all still there you know wait hold on.
It kind of seems like Jake Tapper was covering up that decline. And he wasn't the only one.
There were many other journalists. But it's amazing.
I got to give a hat tip here to Tom Elliott for that supercut. It goes on longer.
I just don't have time to play the whole thing. I think Jake Tapper here, he's trying to shift that blame away from him himself and his colleagues in the media, from the Democrats.
So he says, it's the journalists, some of the journalists' fault. It's the White House staffers' fault.
Anybody with eyes knew that Joe Biden had dementia. You guys lied about it.
It's not that the White House covered it up. Everyone knew.
You could see it. You guys lied about it.
And ultimately, he tries to place blame on Biden himself, the disastrous decision to run again. There is no evidence that Joe Biden would have done worse than Kamala Harris did had he stayed in the race even after that first debate.
And in fact, I said it from the beginning and through the debate. I think Biden would have done better.
I think Trump would have beaten Biden, but I think Biden would have done better than Kamala. It's hard to do much worse than Kamala.
You lose the popular vote as a Democrat for the first time in 20 years, lose the Sun Belt, the Rust Belt, you lose everything basically. This is an admission.
The book itself is an admission from Jake Tapper, who's one of the most prominent people in the liberal media, that the news media are fake. Trump was right about that.
That's why it's right to give big explosive stories, not to those guys who are even admitting, albeit implicitly, their own failures, incompetence, and deceit, but to give it to independent journalists who care about the truth. Now, it all goes down.
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Hi, Michael. Regarding the messaging about Christian engagement in all aspects of society, and most specifically, the differentiation between Christian nationalism and the average Christian citizen who wants to exert their influence? Is Christian dumb, starting with Constantine and Christian nationalism, one and the same thing? And how do we fight the progressive strategy to lump all Christians who are concerned and active, but do not want to exclude other citizens from debate and influence in the public forum into the Christian nationalist bucket.
It seems we need our understanding and messaging to be clear on this subject. Good question.
No, Christendom and Christian nationalism are not synonymous. Constantine is not a Christian nationalist because he's not a nationalist.
The distinguishing feature here is that nationalism comes much later, really in the 19th century. That bubbles up a little bit before that.
And nationalism arises out of Christendom because Christendom used to have a religious unity and then a multiplicity of kingdoms, a multiplicity of polities that were overlapping and different feudal arrangements, but that were distinct and had distinct cultures. Not exactly nation states like we think of them today, but they did have a shared religious identity, albeit they had different cultural and ethnic identities.
That cracks at modernity. And the Protestant Revolution is the clearest example of this because it cracks up the religious scheme of what was Christendom.
And it establishes through the Peace of Augsburg and the Peace of Westphalia the notion cuius regio eius religio, whose realm his religion. So different kings, different proto-nation states could establish their own flavor of religion, which would be Christian in some regard, but it would be different kinds.
So then you see a greater emphasis on nationalism. And then, at least looking at Europe, the Christianity was mostly thrown out altogether over time.
And there was just a greater focus on the state and on nationalism. You see fascism becomes a nationalistic ideology.
Then you have communism as an internationalist ideology.

And so that's what cracks it up.

So now Christian nationalism is the great enemy of the left.

And I say, well, you know, I support my nation.

I'm a patriot and I'm a Christian.

So you can call me a Christian nationalist if you want.

I just suppose I wouldn't identify that way because I'm a Christian imperialist.

Next question.

Hi, Michael.

It's Julie, a big fan of the show and a proud American.

I live in McDowell County, West Virginia, where on February 15th, we experienced extreme flooding.

Our rivers flood at 24 feet, and we peaked at almost 31 feet, breaking the previous record by four feet.

In just a small amount of time, we received almost four inches of rain flooding many of our mountain towns back hollow roads and homes we are already a very low income area and fema has not declared it a disaster yet limiting our resources just wanted to share our story and we have been able to set up a call line here at our local Armory, which is 888-929-4966 to be able to reach citizens that are stranded or need supplies. And also for those that would call in, be willing to help.
Thanks for all you do. Love the show.
Sorry to hear about the troubles you had, but glad that we could publicize that a little bit for anyone in the administration who's tied to FEMA. It would be great if you could look into this problem, McDowell County, and try to help out.
So I certainly wish you luck, and we can pray for you, and hopefully get you some material resources too. Next question.
Hi, Michael. My husband has listened to your show every day since 2023, and I have overheard your show a lot over the last two years.
Good man, good strong husband. Over the last eight months, our marriage has become hard to navigate at times as he believes the Lord is calling him to lead our family to become Catholic.
He's been attending OCIA for a few months and plans to become confirmed, I think they call it, on Easter. We were both raised Protestant and I've never felt called to the Catholic Church and still don't.
I have concerns and issues with practices and beliefs I've looked into and seen firsthand. Family has been very vocal about how they feel about his steadfast pursuit of becoming Catholic, which makes this all the more hard.
Relationships aren't the same, and time together feels tainted by this. Just curious how you would encourage a young godly woman to go about this situation.
This has been really shocking for me, and I haven't always done the best at honoring the Lord or my husband. Thank you.
We had a lot of Catholic questions and topics today, which is fitting, I guess, because today is the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. So, providential, I suppose.
I'm sorry for the difficulties in your marriage, though it might turn out to be good in the long run. You know my view of things.
I think it's good that your husband is feeling called that way, And I think it's true. And so that's all great.
But I totally sympathize with your issue because you say, look, I didn't sign up for this. Hold on, wait, you're moving the bedrock of our relationship here.
Hold on a second here. I'm a little, I've got a lot of questions.
And this reminds me of St. John Henry Newman, who was Protestant, very anti-Catholic, and then he converted, and he was, you know, the Oxford movement, one of the, probably the greatest English language theologian ever, and became a cardinal and then became a saint.
And he had a great line. He said, 10,000 questions don't make one doubt.
You, a lay person raised in a different religious tradition, you have all these questions about the Catholic Church.

Well, I got news for you, lady.

I'm a cradle Catholic.

I fell away for 10 years, and I reverted about 10 years ago.

And I got a lot of questions, too.

And John Henry Newman would say, you know, I'm a cardinal, and I'm one of the greatest theologians ever to live.

And I have questions, too.

That's actually one argument, I think, for the faith, is that it doesn't all just kind of fit in your tiny little head, you know, my tiny little head. But 10,000 questions don't make one doubt.
So I would encourage you, I mean, think about it this way. If your husband, let's say you guys are Baptist or something, and your husband said, you know, I'm convinced to be Methodist.
I think Methodism, I think that's the true version of Christianity. Would you feel more comfortable with that? Maybe you would, because you'd say, well, it's still Protestant,

but I don't know much about Methodist theology.

But maybe you'd feel a little more comfortable.

In that way, I would not call Catholicism a denomination.

I would call it, well, it's Catholic.

It means universal.

It's the fundament of the one true faith.

But if you view it a little bit like a denomination,

maybe that can encourage you to ask those questions that you have. And they're good resources for this.
Catholic answers, you always just Google in, you know,

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you know, you know, you know, you know, Answers, you always just Google in, you know, this, whatever, praying to Mary or something, you know. Why do Catholics do that? Catholic Answers.
And you get a good answer. Or, I don't know, you can read some of the Church Fathers, who I think the more you read the Church Fathers, that's also what works for John Henry Newman.
The more open you might be to Catholicism. I talked to your husband about it.
Be very honest, because you're not obligated to convert. It doesn't really work if you do it under duress.
You have to believe it. But I would say honor your husband.
Be open to it at least. Recognize no one's forcing you.
No one's putting a gun to your head. He is the head of your household, so he might want to, you know, lead your household in that way.
But I would just say explore, you know. It's a wonderful thing.
In my experience, having reverted from atheism and having, you know, really benefited from reading a lot of Protestants, and too, you know, I ended up coming to the same conclusion. It sounds like your husband did.
But, you know, it's a nice process. It's nice to be led along a journey of faith.
So I would say just be open to it and be honest. Bring your objections.
Either the church can withstand your objections or the church isn't really the church. So don't be afraid of it.
Don't be afraid. Next question.
Hi, Michael. Over the weekend, I was watching your appearance on the Surrounded podcast and your subsequent breakdown of your experience on it.
And I didn't find myself getting enraged at the crazy transvestites and activists that engaged with you. However, I was appalled when the individual who said that he works to get votes for the Republican Party harshly criticized you for your so-called extremist rhetoric.
This made me really frustrated because, one, I've always found you to be one of the most charitable figures on the right, and two, it seems despicable to suggest you stop advocating for conservative beliefs in an attempt to win votes for the party. I was wondering if you think the same way or if you had any other thoughts on that specific interaction.
Thanks and appreciate all that you do. Yeah, well, thank you for the compliments.
Very kind. This guy, for those of you who didn't catch the whole hour 40-minute debate fest on Jubilee, which you can go watch on the Jubilee YouTube channel, this one guy, he might have been the most hostile, oddly enough, of any of them, and he said that he's a Republican.
He said, I'm a Republican, Michael, and I watched some of your stuff and I like it, but I hate you actually because you're just provocative needlessly. And I said, I don't think I am.
I think I'm one of the least likely people to say needlessly provocative things, pointlessly provocative things. He said, but you know, I'm trying to go out and win votes for the Republican party among gay and lesbian and transgender and all these kinds of people who are engaged in, you know, more left-wing sexual views and behaviors.
And I'm trying to win over their votes and I got to deal with you, you know, because I'm trying to convince them that the Republican party is totally cool with transgenderism and redefining marriage contrary to what it is and all this stuff. And then there's

you with your provocative extremism saying that, no, you don't believe in transgenderism or no, you don't believe in gay marriage or whatever. I thought, wow, that's really wild.
Because one, why would I prioritize the partisan desires of the Republican Party over the truth?

Why would I compromise my integrity, my conscience, my understanding of the truth

for the Republican Party? I like the Republican Party, but come on, it's a political party. Give

me a break, man. That's like your highest good.
That's insane. But then furthermore,

the views, the supposedly far extremist, needlessly provocative bomb throwing views I'm espousing were held by Barack Obama in 2011. That basically what he's saying is, hey, I'm trying to convince all of these leftists to become Republicans.
And the way I'm trying to convince them to become Republicans is to tell them that the Republican Party is leftist. But sometimes you, right-wingers and conservatives, insist that the Republican Party should be conservative.
So like, yeah, okay. I want to get more votes for the Republican Party, I guess, but I don't want to do it at the expense of giving up all my beliefs.
Then that would be a pyrrhic victory for the Republican Party. Okay, today is Fake Headline Friday.
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