Ep. 1798 - Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Challenges Me To A Debate

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Here is why you should do it now you will save 40 on new annual memberships when you join today use code summer at dailywireplus.com in 2016 trump won the electoral college and democrats wrote it off as a quirk of a system in which they should have won because they won the popular vote then in 2024 Trump won both the Electoral College and the popular vote and Democrats wrote it off as a quirk of having had a zombie incumbent and an incompetent replacement.

Then, in 2025,

the Democrat die-off trend is continuing, and the party is all out of excuses.

And even the New York Times has to admit it.

I'm Michael Knowles, this is the Michael Knowles Show.

Welcome back to the show, Shmuly Botayak.

Do you know Shmuly Botayak?

I mentioned him on the show yesterday.

He is a rabbi, apparently, and Shmuly has challenged me to a debate.

We'll get into the details of that debate and whether or not that debate will happen.

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This is my favorite New York Times article I think I've ever read because it's an article 10 years in the making.

The Democratic Party faces a voter registration crisis.

The party is bleeding support beyond the ballot box.

A new analysis shows.

It's under this little subheader here section, out of power.

Two of their journalists writing on this, National Political Correspondent, super duper long, lots of charts, lots of graphs.

The reason I love this article so much and the news so much is because it means that the Democrats are out of excuses.

The Dems love excuses.

Oh,

it was gerrymandered.

Oh, it was rigged.

Oh, we actually won the popular vote, which doesn't really matter, but that means that we should have won.

Oh, it's because we switched our candidate at the last minute.

Oh, it's because the Russians like Trump.

Oh, it's because of,

bro, it's

it's 11 years into this.

We're 11 years into this, and Trump won twice,

and Trump then did win the popular vote, and he won.

a big portion, increasing portion of black men and of Hispanics and of women and of young women.

And now

the last thing the Democrats could have said is, well, you know, listen, we still, we still have the people.

They just, they didn't turn out to vote.

They weren't as motivated.

They were suppressed.

They weren't, no, man, you don't even have the voter registration anymore.

The Democrats have had a voter registration advantage on Republicans forever.

And they're even losing that.

Just a few little points from this article.

Before we move on to the next way that the Democrats are going to try to rig the system because they have a trick up their sleeve that they're trying to work on.

More new voters nationwide chose to be Republicans than Democrats for the first time since 2018, according to a report for the New York Times, which relies on voter registration data compiled by L2, a nonpartisan data firm.

Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans

in every single one between 2020 and 2024 elections, often by a lot.

That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to four and a half million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.

So

the other excuse is, well, the country is becoming polarized.

We're balkanizing.

The red states are getting redder and the blue states are getting bluer.

It's the great sorting.

No.

No.

I mean, there's, yes, sure, people are,

it's not even so much the great sorting is just the country is becoming more Republican and the country is becoming more conservative.

And in all 30 states that track this,

the Republicans have the advantage.

Democrats lost in every single one.

All told, says the New York Times,

Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states along with Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party.

In the remaining 20 states, voters do not register with a political party.

I mean, when you go to register to vote, you don't need to indicate a party.

There, Republicans gained 2.4 million.

This is devastating.

Add on to that, and the New York Times doesn't mention this, that Democrats have sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, relied on illegal immigration to boost their voter numbers.

That's why that's the chief reason they support open borders.

Because even if the illegals don't vote, and sometimes illegals do vote, but even if the illegals don't vote, their kids are going to get birthright citizenship, their grandkids are going to get birthright citizenship, and they are, or at least have been, statistically much more likely to vote for Democrats.

But the issue for them here is Trump is deporting the illegal aliens.

And you could say, well, he's not deporting enough illegal aliens.

And the official numbers for the deportations, you know, Stephen Miller and Tom Homan and Christy Noam, that's only going to wind up at, I don't know,

400,000 by the end of this term.

Maybe, maybe a little bit more, but they're not on track to deport a ton with ice throwing them in the back of a van.

That might be true, except that most deportations are occurring thanks to self-deportation, which is an initiative put forward by Trump quite intentionally.

There's even an app for it at ICE.

If you self-deport and you are geolocated in your country of origin, the government will send you a little bit of money.

But even beyond the app, we have the Center for Immigration Studies report that came out that showed that over 2 million illegal aliens, over 2 million foreign-born people have self-deported since January, 1.6 million of them illegal aliens.

That's one-tenth of the high end of the conservative estimate of how many illegal aliens are in the country.

So not only are Democrats losing the registration

fight among people who are ostensibly here illegally, they're also losing all their future voters.

And of the future voters who remain, that is to say, Hispanics of legal or illegal status, that whole group is moving into Trump's camp.

It's just a catastrophe for the Democrats.

It's great news for us, and it's great news for America.

But this is a catastrophe, man.

And even the New York Times admits it.

No more excuses.

The Democrats, if they wish to survive and thrive in the foreseeable future, they have to offer voters something different.

Something beyond promoting weird gay stuff, something beyond promoting racial animosity, something beyond scaring people that the sun monster is going to destroy the world, something beyond whining about how evil America is.

But what are they going to offer?

What's the platform?

What are democrats running on

what the republicans are running on is clear enough we're going to make america great again we're going to put the american interests first we're going to put american citizens first we're going to strive for peace not for endless imperial wars we're going to defend the nation

what are the democrats pushing for the problem is it's not even that they're just defending the opposite they don't even know what they're defending Are they for open borders or secure borders?

I don't know.

Ask one of them.

Try to get me a straight answer.

Are they for more imperial wars?

Are they for peace?

I don't know.

Ask them about Ukraine.

Ask them about Israel-Gaza.

Ask them about any of that.

Are they for tariffs to protect U.S.

workers?

Are they for free trade?

You can't get a straight answer.

No clue.

And while they're trying to figure it out, they're going to bleed voters.

So there's one trick that the Democrats have that would immediately reverse all the Republican gains and give them basically a lock on the political order for the foreseeable future.

That would be if Washington, D.C.

became a state.

That's why they pushed for D.C.

statehood.

The whole point of Washington, D.C., the whole reason it was created with territory ceded from Maryland and Virginia is so that the nation's capital would not be in a state because no individual state should have a lock on the nation's capital.

So the whole reason, the raison debt for Washington, D.C., is that it not be a state.

And the Democrats say, well, it's a grave injustice.

It's what an oversight that we didn't make it into a state.

Either they're totally ignorant, which is plausible, or they're being disingenuous and they realize that if Washington, D.C.

became a state, that means that Democrats would immediately get another representative in Congress,

two senators in the U.S.

Senate, shift the Electoral College, give Democrats the country.

So it should not happen as a matter of justice, as a matter of the law, and as a matter of practical politics.

But let's just entertain it for a second.

If D.C.

were to become a state, the latest blue state, the latest Democrat state, it would, and I have to give a hat tip to the Federalist for compiling these data, if D.C.

were to become a state, it would become the most dangerous one.

It is often said, if Washington, D.C.

were its own country, the State Department would tell Americans not to go there because it's too dangerous.

And if Washington, D.C.

were a state, it would...

immediately become the most dangerous state.

D.C.'s violent crime rate, per the federalist, was 54% higher than New Mexico, which is the most dangerous state in the country.

D.C.'s violent crime rate was 220% higher than the national average.

D.C.'s murder rate,

169% higher than Louisiana's.

Louisiana is the deadliest state in the country.

D.C.'s murder rate is 523% higher than that of the average state.

How about robbery?

D.C.'s robbery rate is 370% higher than Maryland's, which is the worst state for robbery.

And D.C.'s robbery, I shouldn't laugh, it's sad for the D.C.

residents.

D.C.'s robbery rate is 955% higher than that of the average, almost 1,000% higher than the average state.

Of the 25 most populous cities in the country, D.C.

is the first in robberies.

So when the Democrats say, we need D.C.

statehood, on its face, it's ridiculous, constitutionally ridiculous, politically so crass and vulgar and obviously self-interested.

But even if you're trying to make an argument, this is a great functioning place with its own independent political culture, and it deserves to have the dignity of statehood.

And these residents need to have a greater say in our federal government.

This, if it became a state, it would be the worst one immediately.

But, and here's the cherry on top of the Sunday, things are turning around for Washington, D.C.

And you won't believe why.

You actually will believe why.

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So

DC on violence, on murder, on robberies, on everything, it's doing so much worse than basically anywhere else in the country.

But crime is dropping.

And I don't just mean crime is dropping for the last two years.

Some of the liberals tried to pretend that that were the case after a massive spike up to 2023.

They said, DC's crime rate has been dropping for 18 months.

And then actually now a DC police commander is being investigated for cooking the books, for lying about those data to try to make it look like DC's crime was going down.

Well, now D.C.'s crime is going down.

Basically, just in the last week.

What happened in the last week?

Remember anything about D.C.

in the last?

Oh, yes.

President Trump

launched a federal takeover of Washington, D.C.

The liberal media breathlessly reporting on this.

He's federalizing the federal district.

He's not, he's actually,

he's merely asserting his own authority that comes from the Constitution, from 250 years of American history, and from the DC Home Rule Act itself.

The very thing that gave D.C.

some home rule allows Trump to do what he's been doing.

But he's been using that authority, took over the D.C.

police department, got tough on crime.

And guess what happened?

According to the local police union,

robberies immediately dropped 46%.

First week after the Trump takeover of Washington, D.C.

Robberies dropped 46%.

Carjackings, the sort of thing that affected a Democrat congressman, Henry Quellar at Capitol Hill, the sort of thing that could have

began to affect the granddaughter of the then president, Naomi Biden, in a Secret Service vehicle.

Carjackings dropped 83%.

Violent crime dropped 22%

immediately.

This is

when Joe Biden was letting millions of illegal aliens in per year, rapists and murderers and satanic gang members, and he was letting them all in.

And Republicans and reasonable Democrats said, Hey, can you please stop that?

People are dying.

Young people are being raped.

And this is just horrible.

And Biden said, Well, I can't do it, Jack.

I can't do it.

I need a new law.

Buster, listen, come here, chief.

You got to pass a new law.

Trump is calling his friends in Congress, and they won't let me pass a new law.

And without that law, I can't stop it.

right?

Which was always bogus, it was ridiculous.

He just wanted amnesty, basically, for the illegals.

He wanted to make the problem worse.

So, anyway, they don't get the new law.

Then, Trump comes in, day one, stops it.

He just stops illegal immigration.

And you say, Well, oh, I guess Biden lied.

Either he was totally incompetent or he lied.

But they didn't need a new law.

They didn't need a new law.

They just had to enforce the existing law.

Turns out the same thing is true in D.C.

It turns out you don't need to pass new laws and re-examine community policing and address the systemic historical inequalities and causes of oppression.

Turns out you just enforce the law.

You just put like, you, you let cops, you let the cops who already exist do their job.

Maybe you bring in some more cops.

You just let them enforce the law.

And it turns out the criminals stop doing the crimes.

It turns out it's really, really simple.

Robbery, carjackings, violent crime, all way, way, way, way down.

And that also means that the Democrats are on the other side of that issue.

The Democrats who raised such a ruckus about Trump doing his most basic right and responsibility in the federal district made life so much better for the residents.

Democrats taking the other side means that Democrats are the party of carjackings.

Well, you know, we are divided on a lot of issues in this country.

Some people

don't want to see carjackings.

Some people are very pro-carjackings.

Okay, and that's just one of those debates we're going to have.

There's one party in this country.

Listen, these crazy Republicans,

they want to stop robberies.

We want to defend your robberies.

It's the same thing with the border.

When Trump showed that Biden was just incompetent and or a liar on the border, when he showed

you could enforce the border, Democrats just didn't want to.

He revealed that Democrats just are the party of the open border.

They want face-tatooed, face-tatooed, Satan-worshiping gangsters to come into the country and rape your daughter and kill your kids with fentanyl.

They're just,

if they don't actively want that, they're at least passively desiring that because they think it'll give them an electoral advantage.

And the Republicans are the party of not doing that.

And Republicans are the party of stopping the robberies and the carjackings and the murders.

And it's just that simple.

The best argument for DC statehood that I've ever seen is letting Trump be the governor of the state.

Would they do that?

Would they go for that?

I don't think so.

So the only way,

I'm not saying the only way Democrats can ever win again is for them to cheat.

That's not true.

Political wins change, desires change, people have a short attention span,

events happen beyond our control.

So at some point, the Democrats might be in a good position again.

Right now, they are in the worst position I've ever seen them in in my whole life.

They don't control a single part of the government at the federal level, not the presidency, neither House of Congress, not the Supreme Court.

They can't count on the popular vote.

The trend lines are totally in the wrong directions for them.

They are deeply unpopular.

So I think it is perfectly fair to say the only way that they can win today is to cheat.

And one way that Democrats cheat is they have some shenanigans with the voting.

This is not some radical, crazy conspiracy theory.

I'm not talking about any voter systems in 2020.

I'm using their own words.

LBJ stole a Senate seat in 1948 in Texas.

Case went all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court didn't want anything to do with it.

This really, it really was only confirmed in, what was it, 1990, 1991 with the Robert Carroll biographies, which note that when LBJ lost an earlier race, his mentor, Franklin Roosevelt, told him, Lyndon, you ran a good race, but you forgot to sit on the ballot box.

You forgot the shenanigans on the day of elections.

You forgot that you got to control the vote count.

Okay, so Democrats have admitted this at the highest levels.

Two Democrat presidents have talked about this, okay?

One way that they can cheat is through mail-in voting, which is often not secure.

I have to choose my words very carefully here because of the liberal censors.

Trump knows this.

Trump posts about this on Truth Social in one of these monologue posts.

I won't read the whole thing, but he says, I'm going to lead a movement to get rid of mail-in ballots and also while we're at it, highly inaccurate, very expensive, and seriously controversial voting machines, which cost 10 times more than accurate and sophisticated watermark paper, which is faster and leaves no doubt at the end of the evening as to who won and who lost the election.

So true.

We are now the only country in the world that uses mail in voting.

All others gave it up because of the massive voter fraud encountered.

We will begin this effort, which will be strongly opposed by Democrats because they cheat at levels never seen before, by signing an executive order to help bring honesty to the 2026 midterm elections.

Okay.

And he says, remember, the states are merely an agent for the federal government in counting and tabulating the votes.

They must do what the federal government as represented by the president of the United States tells them for the good of the country to do.

So this is the controversial part.

Because the states in themselves are not merely instruments for the federal government.

The states in themselves are not merely managers for the president.

That's not the job of a governor.

But that's not quite what Trump's saying.

Trump is saying in these votes, we're talking about the midterm elections, the states are an agent for the federal government.

Because we're talking, at the very least, when we're talking about federal offices, that is a much more defensible point.

But the states do control the elections.

That's what he's admitting here.

So the question is, can he, from the federal government,

force the states to change their voter laws?

And the answer is, yeah, maybe.

Yeah, maybe.

Congress could pass a law.

That's not some new twisting and perversion of our system because of the Supreme Court or whatever.

That's just in the Constitution.

Article 1, Section 4, quote, the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.

But the Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the

places of choosing senators.

The other thing Trump could do

would be even more delicious, because it would be using

what is usually a tool of the left.

to hoist the liberals with their own petards.

We'll get into exactly what that trick is in one second.

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The other thing that Trump could do to deal with the mail-in voting problem.

And we'll get into it, you know, look,

the Democrats are going to say mail-in voting is totally secure.

They're going to say there's never a problem with mail-in voting.

There's no reason mail-in voting.

The Republicans are just questioning it to throw a wrench in our elections because they're authoritarian and they deny democracy.

And how dare anyone ever question the security of mail-in voting?

I think we have a clip here.

2008,

Chris Matthews show, Barack Obama being asked his opinion of mail-in voting.

What did Obama have to say then?

Very last question.

There's word from Florida that they intend to put out a mailing sort of a campaign, I mean, an election process whereby they make up for

the primary they had before, which was ruled out of order by the Democratic National Committee, and you did not campaign.

And they're talking about mailing in, people mailing in their ballots.

Do you trust the security, the honesty of such an election process?

Well, I think we'd have to figure out whether this was fraud proof.

I mean,

I think we'd have to figure out whether this was fraud proof.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

I was told, I was reliably informed in recent years by the likes of Barack Obama included,

that mail-in voting was absolutely totally secure.

There is no question as to its integrity.

Even ballot drop boxes where you take your mail-in votes and you just drop it off in an unsecure location, sometimes far away from the county clerk's office.

I was told that if you question, the security of that system, you are an existential threat to democracy.

But in that old pixelated clip that's kind of hard to find on the internet these days from that old show by Chris Matthews, way back when Barack Obama was running for president,

he admitted

that mail-in voting is vulnerable to fraud.

He demonstrated that it is reasonable to question the security of mail-in voting.

He and Trump basically agree.

at least on raising the question about mail-in voting.

So what could Trump do from a federal level?

Getting back to the juicy little thing he could do.

He could, it seems to me,

invoke the Voting Rights Act.

Now, the Voting Rights Act is this ostensibly noble piece of legislation to defend the right to vote of every single American.

But usually what it is, is an instrument for the left to stop basic protections for people's right to vote.

Ironically, it is used contrary to its purpose.

The purpose is to make sure one man, one vote.

The way the Voting Rights Act is often employed is to stop states from implementing reasonable voter security, because when a fraudulent vote is cast, that actually deprives an eligible citizen of his vote.

When you have a legit vote and an illegitimate vote, they cancel each other out.

So really, the Voting Rights Act should be defending measures like voter ID,

but they're not.

It's usually to strike down measures like voter ID.

So what Trump could do is is invoke Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to challenge some of these mail-in voting laws as a civil rights violation.

He'd say, look, we have evidence.

You'd have to present serious evidence that there is fraud in mail-in voting.

And you'd have to make a case to a judge who would be willing to hear it.

And it would be a little bit tricky.

You could at least make the argument to the public, but you could do it in a court and say, look, the way that mail-in voting is being carried out in America is tantamount to a civil rights violation because you are robbing eligible voters of their vote by canceling them out with fraud.

And in some cases, the mail-in votes are just simply illegal, like

in Pennsylvania.

Widespread, unsolicited mail-in voting.

In any case, lots and lots of options, some trollier than others, and Trump's got the wind at his back.

Now,

the liberals are very upset about this.

And they're accusing Republicans of rigging the vote.

Timothy McBride, who goes by Sarah, he's a fella in Congress who thinks he's a woman.

And because we live in a decadent late-stage empire, we tolerate this and pretend that this is normal.

This is, who was the Roman emperor who sent his horse to the U.S.

Senate?

That's a kind of absurdity.

Well, a man pretending that he's a woman, passing laws that are ostensibly based on reason,

not far off.

In any case, he's accusing Republicans of gerrymandering.

He says, this president is taking notes from his favorite dictator.

Who's he talking about here?

Is it Putin or something?

Let's be clear.

A president with popular policies wouldn't need to illegally gerrymander districts, ban voting machines, or abolish vote by mail.

This is an all-out assault, not just on free and fair elections, but on American democracy itself.

So questioning vote by mail.

That's something that Trump and Obama agree on.

Take that one off the list.

Ban voting machines.

Well, the the question, we just want to make sure that the voting machines don't have any problems.

There were lots of questions raised, well, in many elections, but including the most recent ones about voting machines where more ballots were tabulated than voters who came in to vote, for instance.

In any case,

if we can hack Bitcoin wallets,

probably we can hack some voting machines.

And we just need to be careful about it.

We need to make sure that voting machines are secure.

Okay, cross that one off the list.

Go back.

Hold on.

Go back.

There we go.

They're trying to move me past.

No, leave me on Tim McBride's tweet.

Sorry, Sarah.

Sarah McBride.

You wouldn't need to illegally gerrymander districts.

That's my favorite one.

Now you can move on to the vice president's note.

Illegally gerrymander districts.

These Republicans are gerrymandering.

They're carving up congressional districts that shouldn't exist to get a cynical political advantage.

As I mentioned on the show some weeks ago now, and as the vice president mentioned on Twitter, California, Democrat state, is currently gerrymandering its districts in one of the most egregious ways I've ever seen.

As Vance says, of their 52 congressional districts, nine of them are Republican.

That means 17% of their delegation is Republican when Republicans regularly win 40% of the vote in that state.

How can this possibly be allowed?

Not just California, Illinois 13.

Illinois 13.

If you're just looking at the

show right now, if you're not just listening to it, it looks like a pistol.

It looks like this weird little snake snaking snaking around St.

Louis, all the way up northeast.

Obviously, gerrymandered to keep the Republicans out and give a solid Democrat win.

Maryland, six,

the Maryland sixth congressional district, the what is this?

This is the earmuffs district.

Cuts around, looks like a pair of earmuffs, totally ridiculous, only

carved up that way to leave in just enough Republicans to disenfranchise Republicans, but not enough Republicans to actually threaten to make it swing.

Illinois Congressional District 4, I could be here all day.

I could be here all day.

None of these arguments work.

None of these arguments are persuading anybody.

And the arguments are being made by a person who, in his very behavior and comportment and appearance, is an exemplar of the Democrats having totally lost touch with reason and is one of the chief reasons that ordinary people who don't even pay that much attention to politics turned off the Democrats in the last election.

That was why that issue, which we've harped on for a number of years now, the transgender issue, especially transing the kids, that the Democrats kept arguing it's trivial, it doesn't affect a lot of people, it's minor, it's a distraction.

That was the issue because it said, oh, wow, Democrats rather have totally lost the plot.

You cannot be a normal person and vote for Democrats anymore because they are exhibiting obviously terrible judgment.

If you think a man is a woman, you have lost your capacity to reason.

Doesn't work.

Might explain the Democrats' broader problem.

Okay, enough about the Democrats, enough about the hard, in the weeds, in the districts.

Soup to nuts politics, because speaking of eccentric fellas, I've been challenged to a debate by a man who is purportedly a rabbi.

I believe he is also a vendor of sex toys.

That would be Shmuly Botaic.

Quick question.

Do you have the Daily Wire Plus app on your phone or TV?

If not, you should, because when you tap follow under my picture, you will get notified the second I go live, the second I drop an episode.

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Watch my shorts.

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And with the Explore tab, every show, every episode is all in one place.

Easy to find.

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join us download the daily wire plus app now at the app store google play roku samsung and more these are questions that take cultures thousands of years to answer during answer the call i take questions from people just like you about their problems opportunities challenges or when they simply need advice how do i balance all of this grief responsibility how do you repair this kind of damage my daughter michaela guides the conversations as we hopefully help people navigate their lives Everyone has their own destiny.

Everyone.

I want to tell you my favorite comment yesterday.

Tracy Jacobs, P5I, who says, Trump truly believes, as many of us do, that his life was spared by God in Butler PA.

Yeah, I think that's true.

I loved Trump's point when they said, why do you want to stop the meat grinder in Ukraine?

Like, it's so crazy.

Why do you want to end an 11-year war that has led to the deaths of well over a million people?

And he says,

as though he even has to answer that question.

He says,

gee, because I want to go to heaven.

I want to go to heaven.

Okay.

And I know that right now, my odds aren't looking so good.

You know, I might be at the bottom of the totem pole, actually, which is an expression of humility, a recognition of his own fallenness, original sin and his own personal sins.

a recognition of the need for God's grace, contrary to what some people were saying when they were reading a bunch of nonsense into his tweet.

That is a recognition.

I need God's grace because I'm not trying to earn my salvation.

I don't think that I can deserve to go to heaven.

I need God's grace, and I'm going to try to cooperate with God's grace because faith looks like something.

Because as St.

James tells us, man is justified by works and not by faith alone.

Faith without works is dead.

We need God's grace.

Our initial justification comes entirely from God, not from us.

But

as St.

Thomas Aquinas paraphrases St.

Augustine, while God God made us without our participation, he will not save us without our participation.

Love that.

I don't think you can be shot in the head and not thinking about the final things.

Speaking of religion, Rabbi Shmuly Botayak.

Shmule

has challenged me to a debate because, as I mentioned on the show, I think it was yesterday, but Shmuly has this piece in The Times of Israel attacking me and Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire of, quote, desecrating the six million by supposedly

propping up a Nazi collaborator.

They were calling Pope Pius XII, one of the great men of the 20th century, a hero not only to Christians in the whole world, but especially to Jews.

Being a Nazi collaborator was very, very silly.

So I pointed out that this was silly and that Shmuly Botayak is frequently wrong, but never in doubt.

And I encourage people to go get the facts at my show, The Pope and the Fuhrer, available exclusively at Daily Wire Plus.

So Shmuley tweets at me yesterday, and he says to Michael J.

Knowles, if I'm so ignorant on the Nazi collaborator, Pope Pius XII, Hitler's Pope, then surely you'll agree to a live debate against me where each of us puts up a $10,000 bond beforehand and a panel of independent people decide who won the debate.

Like, he doesn't say $10,000, you know, to a charity of our choice or something.

It's just $10,000.

Okay.

You have my guarantee that I will annihilate you on any debate about the ignominious and downright shameful Pius XII, one of the most execrable popes in Roman Catholic.

I don't even want to read this

sacrilegious talk.

Even the Catholics want no part of Pius XII, which is why he has not been canonized, beatified, or made into a saint.

Just usage note, canonized and made into a saint mean the same thing.

So a little repetitive there.

Not sure if Shmoulay

quite gets the nuance.

Though Pope Pius XII has been named not only servant of God, but the venerable.

So he's on his way to sainthood, sainthood, which usually takes a little bit of a longer time.

In recent history, some popes have been fast-tracked, but can take centuries.

In any case, I would be delighted to debate Shmuly on this topic.

I would be delighted to do it as I let him know.

It was kind of odd because Shmuly tweets this at me, and I saw he tweeted it multiple times and posting pictures of me.

It was a little weird.

And then when I saw it, basically the moment I saw it, I said, oh, great.

I would be delighted to debate you on this topic, Shmooli.

Um, just message me.

I started following, he was following me.

I followed him so he could DM me.

I said, just message me a good email address to connect our teams together so that we can set the terms for a proper debate.

Uh,

and I haven't heard back.

Funny that.

So he's tweeting all these sort of nasty insults.

And I said, Okay, I'd be happy to debate you.

Just message me and we can debate.

And then didn't hear back, but I don't know, maybe it's busy.

I'm not on Twitter that much.

But I saw he did

tweet this multiple times.

He was tweeting a bunch about this hours after I accepted,

in general, the opportunity to debate him.

He actually tweeted this like 11 times yesterday,

including several after I accepted his offer to debate.

So anyway, I don't know what's going on with Chamuli, but this seems like a fun opportunity.

I would be happy to do it.

So anyway,

if you're serious about it, Chamuli, and you're listening to the show, just shoot me a note with a good email address.

We'll connect the teams.

We'll set up the terms and

it'll be a great deal of fun.

Okay, speaking of unfortunate public relations,

this is the most important story of the day.

I've been a little loose today about how the libs are losing everything, and they've lost in the political order, and they lost the government, and they've been losing in the culture.

Well,

there's one institution that they still seem to have their claws into.

The libs are trying to ruin Cracker Barrel.

Cracker, I love Cracker Barrel.

Cracker Barrel is apparently rebranding.

The beloved restaurant and old country store is rebranding.

They are going from their old logo.

If you're watching this right now, you can see it.

You got the man sitting on the chair next to the barrel, nice Cracker Barrel, nice beautiful.

stylized font with a stylized little kind of shape behind and then old country store

cracker barrel old country store Oh, what a trip back in time when you go into Cracker Barrel.

They got the little, the candies and the little toys for the kids.

And then you walk in and you sit and you have your nice, delicious grits or whatever you're going to have.

And it's just great.

It's my kid's favorite restaurant.

My kid's favorite restaurant is Cracker Barrel.

And they're trying to take it from us.

In fact, in the new logo,

the genius executives at Cracker Barrel have removed the cracker and the barrel.

They took away the old guy and and the barrel are out they changed the shape they changed the font and now it looks like just some generic millennial clinical sterile soulless slop here is the ceo of cracker barrel explaining the change on good morning america

honestly the feedback's been overwhelmingly positive that people like what we're doing i'll give you another sound bite i actually happened to be in orlando last week with all of our managers we bring them together and once every other year and the number number one question that I got asked, Michael, was, how can I get a remodel?

When can I get a remodel?

How do I get on the list?

Oh, really?

So, because the feedback and the buzz is so good, not only from our customers, but from our team members.

They want to work in a wonderful restaurant.

So we're doing everything for our guests and our team members.

We're Julia Messino.

It's wonderful to have you here.

Pleasure to be here.

Thank you, Panthe, for answering those questions for all the Cracker Barrel fans out there.

A lot of great changes.

Thank you so much.

All right, thank you.

Here we go.

You're Laden.

so are the rocking chairs fireplace vintage decor it's all there all right oh it's all there oh it's all there cut it cut it i don't need to listen to this woman lie anymore so she's lying this new ceo she was appointed a couple years ago this new ceo says oh yeah the feedback's been really great now

already i know she's a liar or has no idea what she's talking about because if you look on the internet The changes to Cracker Barrel are universally deplored.

Universally.

You will not see one positive comment about it because they're awful.

And we were just looking at the logo, weren't we?

And

just the logo change.

You think, oh, no.

Oh, no, they're taking this beautiful, ornamented, rich, traditional, cool store and restaurant.

You're going to turn it into a dentist's office.

You're going to turn it into some bougie, like, brunch place.

some mid-tier bougie brunch place from midtown manhattan you're going to ruin my cracker barrel

oh but no don't worry says the CEO.

Oh, the inside's all going to be great.

It's that same old cracker barrel you love, traditional, sweet, cool.

So we have a clip from what it looks like on the inside.

I'll describe it to you.

On the wall, instead of the nice old, cool, traditional banjos and stuff with old tin pans, it's just a bunch of gay millennial art.

It's just gay millennial.

I don't know how else to put it.

This,

all they had to do, this is one of the most beloved brands in America.

All they had to do was keep the nice southern, traditional, nice southern, traditional, comfortable, home-style scratch cooking, step back in time, nostalgia.

And the new CEO said, great, great.

It's like the Don Draper meme, you know, great.

Oh, that's great.

But instead of that,

How about your

gay middle-class millennials bougie, soulless, sterile apartment outside of New York City.

How about we just do that instead?

I hate it.

I hate it.

I hate when they do stuff like this.

There have been a number of other places, even some speaking of New York, even old, nice, traditional places in New York and the remodel, the Renaults, just turn it into, they turn it into a dentist's office.

They turn it into like a modern gym.

They say, how about instead of places with charm and character, we make everything Panera?

And the key here, she says, oh, and the customer, the customers love it.

But even it's not just the customers.

This is for our team members too.

That's the giveaway that the customers hate it.

She says, oh, yes, our customers.

And you know what?

We're doing this remodel.

It's not just the excitement from our customers.

It's also from our team members.

One, I don't really believe you.

Two, I don't care what your team members want or think.

I don't care what that.

I've actually met some great over the years, I've met some great Cracker Barrel team members, but I don't care what their taste is for wall decor.

I don't care what

utopian vision they have to turn Cracker Barrel into.

I care

about Cracker Barrel.

I want the little pig game and I want the little like dumplings on the side and I want my iced tea and I want to buy my kid a candy when we walk out and I want that and I want banjos on the walls and I want that.

And I,

it's like you can never let your guard down

you can never let your guard you think oh man we're winning the libs are done everything is liberalism's on retreat we're getting our country back we're making america great again the federal buildings are going to be neoclassical again this is awesome we're not topline statues anymore we get to we get to have our norm and you're taking cracker barrel from me

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, I guess.

Trump needs to arrest this woman.

We need to federalize, forget about just federalizing Washington, D.C.

I'm calling on the president and on the White House.

We need to federalize Cracker Barrel.

We need to federalize Cracker Barrel.

We need to arrest the CEO.

We need to deport her to Bukele's mega prison in El Salvador.

Just to be safe, so that she can't do this to any other beloved brand.

Stop this now.

It's not too late.

I bet most Cracker Barrels still look good.

Stop this, but it's not too late.

We all thought it was too late in 2020, 2022, 2023.

We've lost our country.

It's too late.

No, we can take our country back.

We can take Cracker Barrel back too.

All right.

There is so much more to get to.

Yes, today is Theology Thursday.

I am Michael Knowles.

We will get to all of that in the membrane segmentum.

You don't want to miss it.

Use code Knowles and check out for two months free on all annual plans.

And you'll get to watch the Pope and the Führer, Secret Vatican Files for World War II.

We will be right back in the membroom membrane segmentum.