Ep. 1805 - BREAKING: President Trump Is Not Dead

Is President Trump dead?

No.

I'm Michael Knowles.

This is the Michael Knowles Show.

Welcome back to the show.

President Trump not dead, but might move over 2 million Gazans out of the Gaza Strip to where we're not sure, it costs a lot of money.

And then we're going to build big, beautiful, I don't know.

We'll get into what this plan is in a second.

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I'm sitting on my chair enjoying my Labor Day weekend, and sweet little Alisa turns to me, Mac?

Yeah, girl.

Mac, is Trump dead?

What?

That's what social media says.

And you look, social media the whole weekend.

Is Trump dead?

There were, according to one report, 158,000 posts on X

that specifically said Trump is dead.

There were another 42,000 that said Trump died.

Many, many, many others with various permutations of that phrase.

One TikTok alone suggesting that Trump had died got 3.5 million views.

That was all instantly.

That was all within one day.

Headline, is Trump dead?

Answer, no, he's not.

Okay, moving on.

Can we get to actual news?

Why was everyone wondering if Trump had died?

I've investigated the story.

I've tried to get to the bottom of it.

And from what I can tell, the whole reason is that he went golfing on Labor Day weekend

and he had a bruise on his hand.

That is why all of social media thought that the president of the United States was dead.

It wasn't just domestically, internationally.

Russian TV had this to say.

Now the whole world is saying,

Trump has a bruise on his hand.

The British Queen also had a bruise.

And then she died.

Everybody dies.

Whether or not they have a bruise.

People are mortal.

That's it.

Trump's gone.

It's a kind of irony to it, but this was actually the take.

He has a bruise.

You know, my great-grandpa had a bruise once, then he died.

Trump is dead.

What is this about?

I think that this kind of rumor, these spread sometimes, you'll say some random person died.

He didn't really die.

I think part of the reason why you're hearing the Trump health rumors is because they can't hit him on anything else.

I think this might be the best they've got because they can't hit him on, I don't know, immigration.

They can't hit him on war and peace.

He's not launched World War III.

He's actually been very, very popular when it comes to his foreign policy.

They can't knock him on the tariffs.

Remember, oh, the tariffs were going to destroy the world and the economy was going to collapse and the bond market was in shambles and then

that didn't happen.

They can't really hit him on any of that.

So the best they can do

is

say

and hope that he's died.

I think that's really what it comes down to.

And there's a little bit of a reactive aspect because Biden really did seem to be on the brink of death for most of his presidency.

And he would kind of disappear for periods and he would wander off the stage.

But I knew this was BS because I saw Trump up close and personal last Tuesday.

I was in a very small room called the cabinet room.

And

not only did he not look like he was on the brink of death, he had more energy than his cabinet secretaries, most of whom are much younger than him.

The thing went for four hours.

I was exhausted.

I was standing up the whole time.

And Trump just going and going.

I look over, I'm not going to name names, but some of the cabinet secretaries looked like they were about to collapse.

And Trump keeps going.

So I think this is it.

This is the culmination of 10 years of Trump wearing down his opponents.

They can't call him a fascist.

They can't call him a Nazi.

They can't call him a murderer.

They can't call him a rapist.

They can't call him a Russian.

They can't call him.

They can't.

go after him really on anything.

So at this point, what they're saying is, please die.

Please just die.

They, in fact, justified killing him.

They set up the conditions for him to be assassinated.

He very nearly was assassinated.

He got a bullet through the ear.

He then was almost assassinated again.

They've done everything.

And then that's it.

So expect more of this.

There's going to be more virality.

You know, Trump,

his tie was a bit askew yesterday.

Is he dead?

Is he dead now?

Please.

It's our only hope as Democrats.

Okay.

Now.

Speaking of President Trump and death, I guess,

really

surprising report coming out of the Washington Post.

Gaza post-war plans envision voluntary relocation of the entire population.

Now, I say this is surprising, not because Trump hasn't proposed it before.

Trump proposed earlier this year to get all the Gazans out of Gaza temporarily, and then he would build a big, beautiful hotel and casino somewhere, and then they could all come back in, but it would be really nice.

This, however, has a lot more specificity to it.

So this is coming out of the deep state paper of record, the Washington Post.

The Trump administration and international partners are discussing proposals to build a Riviera of the Middle East on the rubble of Gaza.

One would establish U.S.

control and pay Palestinians to leave.

What does this come from?

It's a 38-page document circulating in the administration called the Gaza Reconstruction Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, or GREAT.

Great,

did you catch it?

Great.

And according to the report,

this was developed by some Israelis who were involved in creating the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

And the financial planning was conducted by a team from Boston Consulting Group.

Okay.

Now I know everyone's immediate reaction.

What the hell is this about?

Why is America getting dragged into some awful conflict in the Middle East?

And even if it doesn't seem like a conflict right now, it's not going to win us any friends.

It's not going to help influence people.

We're kicking out two million Gazans and we're involving ourselves in this awful part of the world.

We should just stay out of it.

Why?

And hold on.

This is being promoted by the Israelis.

Why?

We don't want the Israelis to pull us into this.

What on earth is going on?

Hold on.

Before you inveigh against this plan, just wait until you find how much it's going to cost.

Because according to the reports,

we would pay Gazans $5,000 each,

2 million people, more than 2 million people.

That's $10 billion right up front.

Then

we would pay for four years of rent wherever they go.

Then, on top of that, we would pay for food for one year.

The Gazans would voluntarily leave.

If they didn't want to leave, they could stay.

They would just be taken into restricted, secured zones.

It's a euphemistic way to put it.

They'd be brought to some camp somewhere in Gaza.

And then the Gazans who own land would be given a digital token by this trust in exchange for development rights.

So they could develop nice, big, beautiful, futuristic communities there.

And they could redeem the token some years from now, five years, 10 years, who knows, for an apartment.

What's the catch?

People are going to freak out.

I think a lot of Americans, not even just pro-Trump Americans or just conservatives, I think a lot of people are going to say, well, we don't want any part of this.

This is going to be expensive.

Hold on.

We don't want to attract any more ire in Gaza.

We don't.

It's not worth the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

I think this is a negotiation.

I do not think we can take this report at face value.

First of all, nothing is printed in the Washington Post unintentionally.

This was obviously leaked.

The fact that the little detail was included, that this was developed by Israelis involved in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, makes me think that the whole purpose of this plan

is to freak out the Arabs.

Because don't forget what happened back in March.

Do you remember earlier this year,

President Trump said, okay, look, you people can't figure out what to do with this ceasefire.

You're not going to have a ceasefire.

You can't figure out what to do with Gaza.

The Israelis won't stop the war.

Hamas won't give back the hostages.

The whole thing, it's just the Arabs are totally useless on this.

Okay, okay, then we're going to take it over.

Yeah, if you two, it's just when you talk to your little kids, if you two can't play nicely, I'm taking that toy right now.

That's my ball.

I'm getting that.

No, but we want it, mom.

Oh, yeah, well, you then,

you better play nice with that.

You better work this out between yourselves.

Otherwise, I'm taking it and I'm building a casino there.

I think that, I don't think I'm reading too much into this here.

Because on the domestic front, nobody is going to want that.

Very, very few people in America.

are going to want us to involve ourselves, risk our resources to help rebuild Gaza.

Most people don't want anything to do with Gaza.

But what happened when Trump pitched this at the top of the year?

Remember?

He said, okay, we're going to take it over.

It's mine.

During this press conference, it's him and you see Netanyahu.

Did not appear that they had talked about this before, and Netanyahu just kind of looks over.

He says, Wait, what was that?

Trump says, Yeah, it's ours now.

We're taking control of it.

It's going to be great.

I'm a great land developer.

It's going to be terrific.

And Netanyahu starts sort of shuffling nervously, looking out at the press.

Okay, hey, we'll keep talking about that.

And then what happened, not just on Netanyahu's side, but on the Arab side, the Arab League immediately responded, said, We have our own version of Gaza reconstruction.

And we're going to spend $53 billion on it.

And it's going to be led by Egypt.

And it's going to be governed by Palestinians, but not by Hamas.

We're going to probably disarm Hamas.

Hamas says they don't want to disarm, but we're going to have to disarm.

And we're going to have this governed by Palestinian technocrats.

And we just don't do Trump's plan.

I think Trump is negotiating.

Whether that means to push Israel to action or the Arab League to action or both of them, I think that's what this is about.

Because Trump came in, he said, I want to solve these wars.

And he has ended an insane number of conflicts around the world.

The Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict, the Cambodia-Thailand conflict that just opened up, the India-Pakistan conflict, the Israel-Iran conflict for now.

And I think on this one, he's just saying, look, you got to figure something out do.

And most people are not going to tolerate the forcible removal of Gazans or the voluntary.

You don't voluntarily remove over 2 million people.

It's just not going to happen.

They're not going to tolerate that.

They don't want the U.S.

to be leading the charge.

So you don't want that, Arabs?

Then you fix it.

Because the Arabs don't want any part of the Palestine issue.

The Arabs don't want any part of it.

It's so easy to blame the Israelis, but the Arabs don't want to deal with this.

I wouldn't want to deal with it either.

And the Israelis don't want to bring this to a culmination.

So, okay, Trump's going to come in.

You can knock him for his unorthodox tactics, but the guy's generally gotten results, okay?

A lot more than other people.

Now, speaking of Trump plans closer to home, I don't know how public health in America is going to continue because the

homosexual Satanist fetishist who was helping to run our public health system, he's quit.

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Dimitri Daskalakis.

Do you remember Dimitri Daskalakis?

He was this guy, if you're only listening, he is relatively buff-looking, has a beard, totally bald, a little bit odd.

He came to the forefront.

during the end of the Biden administration because he was in charge of monkeypox at the White House.

So

he's a public health official.

I guess he was trying to stop the spread of monkeypox.

When you started to look a little more into this guy, it seemed like he was in charge of monkeypox at the White House.

Like

he was the chief promoter of monkeypox.

No,

I'm sort of joking.

Because you saw this picture of him all buttoned up in his suit and everything at the White House.

But then this other picture came out.

This one, credit to HIVplusmag.com, I guess, where it's him wearing a suit, but he's unbuttoned it, and he's wearing a leather pentagram harness, a leather pentagram harness over his pentagram chest tattoo.

This is one of the most wholesome pictures I can find of this guy.

You have to take my word for it.

It gets a lot worse from here.

Weird, like leather stuff, face masks, like sick, pervy, freaky sex stuff.

This guy was a major public health official.

Now,

he's quit.

The big scandal, of course, being that he was still working there.

Hold on, wait, that guy is still working there.

He quit.

There are a lot of apparatches in the federal government.

He quit, along with other members of the public health team, along with the director of the CDC.

And they all quit because of RFK's vaccine policies.

Specifically, this guy has the temerity to put, take the leather harness off, maybe it's on underneath the suit.

I don't know.

Pull up the tie, go on ABC News to explain how Trump and RFK are destroying public health in America.

I mean, from my vantage point as a doctor who's taken the Hippocratic oath, I only see harm coming.

I may be wrong, but based on what I'm seeing, based on what I've heard with the new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices or ACIP, they're really moving in an ideologic direction where they want to see the undoing of vaccination.

They do want to see the undoing of mRNA vaccination.

They have a very specific target on COVID, but I do fear that they have other other things that they are going to be working on.

Hepatitis B vaccine is on the agenda for the meeting in September.

I predict that what they're going to do is try to change the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine so that kids don't get it when they're born.

So if you have a mother who is well connected to care, you know her hepatitis B status, that may not matter very much.

But if you have a mother who's not gone to

prenatal care, who comes in to deliver, we have one bite at that apple so that child gets that important hepatitis B vaccine.

Hold on.

I'll keep making fun of his leather harnesses in a second.

That was a really rare, candid, honest point he just made.

And it proves RFK right and it proves Trump right and it proves him and all of his fellow liberal malcontents wrong.

Did you catch what he said?

He goes, and this guy, RFK, he's going to get rid of the vaccines and he hates mRNA vaccines and he's even going to get rid of the hepatitis vaccines.

And look, that mostly doesn't matter.

But for some kids, it will matter.

I remember, you know, I have three little boys.

And our first kid, we're at the hospital, and they say, okay, well, you got to give the kid a bunch of shots right now.

I said, why do I have to give the kid a bunch of shots?

I said, well, because we recommend certain vaccines.

Okay, like what?

He goes, well, we recommend giving your one-day-old child the hepatitis B vaccine.

I remember vaguely what hepatitis is.

I say,

isn't that hepatitis is the thing you get from shooting up heroin in an alley or visiting a hooker, right?

They say, yeah, yeah, right.

And my kid has not done that.

To my, the best of my knowledge, my one-day-old child has not been frequenting prostitutes or shooting up intravenous illicit drugs.

Yeah, that's right.

So

why am I injecting this powerful concoction into my sweet little newborn baby?

So, well, that's just what we recommend.

And I'm

pushing on this a little bit.

And I, okay, so the only, seems to me,

the only reason is if the mother has hepatitis, but you can check she doesn't, you've already checked that, or if I have contracted hepatitis in the interview.

In other words, the only way that the baby would benefit from the vaccine without having known, you know, without having detected this hepatitis in the mother before, is if the father cheated during the pregnancy with a hooker or if I started doing heroin or something, which I didn't.

And they will admit, they'll say, look, it's not for you.

The hepatitis B vaccine is not for you, regular middle class family.

The hepatitis B vaccine is not for you, well-behaved,

wealthy or working class or any kind of class family.

It's because we got the kids in the system, they're in the hospital, we might not be able to see them again.

And so in case their mother is a hooker or, you know, shooting up drugs, we're just going to inject them.

And it's not necessary for most kids, but you know, we're willing to take the risks associated with any vaccine because we're going to reach some kids.

It's not necessary.

Oh, well, isn't that what RFK is saying?

Isn't that why you're quitting?

Isn't that why the CDC director quit?

It's because RFK

is saying, look, we need to prioritize the health of Americans, not just your ideological concerns.

It's so ironic because this guy, Descalakis, is accusing his opponents, he's accusing the right, of

inserting ideology into public health.

But of course, first of all, public health refers to politics, okay?

There's the health part, which is more scientific, and then there's the public part, which is political.

So obviously there's going to be an ideological component.

But moreover, he's admitting his own ideological component here, which is it's better to subject all American babies to the risk, however small, of these vaccines.

because some very, very small portion of the babies might benefit from them.

And we're just going to lie and pretend and tell everyone that everyone benefits from them, or we're going to evade the question entirely.

They are guilty of what they accuse their opponents of doing, okay?

Furthermore,

They lost their credibility during COVID.

They want to paper over COVID.

They lied during COVID.

They lied to us about vaccines.

They lied to us about the efficacy of the vaccine.

They lied to us about the safety of the vaccine.

They lied to us about everything regarding the vaccine.

They lied to us about the efficacy of social distancing.

They lied to us about the efficacy of the Hankeys.

They lied to us about where the virus came from.

They lied to us about who funded the virus.

They lied to us about everything.

And the reason that this guy Daskalakis is getting more attention than the other malcontents who quit is because he dresses himself in a way that is degrading.

And he behaves in ways that are degrading and that are contrary to public health.

Doing that kind of weird stuff in the leather harnesses at the nightclubs and all that, that's not good for public health.

He does it anyway.

He's been photographed doing these sorts of things anyway

because he has an ideological preference for certain deviant behaviors over the advancement of public health.

Right.

He's just the most obvious, uncredible person.

That's it.

Yes, he's just the most obvious ideologue and hypocrite when it comes to ideologue.

Yeah, he's like the face of it.

This is it.

Our public health officials go on TV

and they dress really nice and they have their tie and they speak in really clinical, scientific sounding jargon.

But then when we see

the way they actually behave and the way they actually think, they look like complete lunatics who literally worship Satan.

Okay.

And that is just an extreme version of all these guys.

Dr.

Fauci, I am the science.

I am.

People are attacking me because I am the science.

And then privately, when you ask him, hey, where'd you get that six foot social distancing rule?

He goes, my source, I made it up, of course.

And you just real, you say, oh, these people aren't what they appear to be.

These people aren't who they present themselves to be.

So they're gone.

And the head of the CDC is stepping down.

But there's a little wrinkle with this because President Trump was going to make this woman the permanent head of the CDC, this woman, Susan Menarez.

So what changed?

Why did she quit?

What does it mean for the future of the administration?

We can draw a very important conclusion from the whole administration.

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The head of the CDC is stepping down.

She's being replaced right now by the acting CDC director, Jim O'Neill, who I happen to know is fantastic.

Really, really excellent choice.

He's the deputy secretary at HHS, longtime excellent healthcare expert with all the right priorities, all the right thoughts.

He's just really terrific.

So who knows?

Maybe he'll take this over permanently.

I don't know.

However,

I mentioned at the top of the show, people have nothing to attack Trump on, on healthcare, on migration, on tariffs.

Well, think about it from another perspective.

This CDC director was being pushed by Trump.

She was going to be installed permanently by Trump.

And then she said, no, no, I can't take this job because Trump's actually doing what he said he would do.

Trump put RFK Jr.

in front of healthcare.

Okay, Trump campaigned with RFK Jr.

He said, we're going to unleash Bobby on health care.

Bobby Jr.

has campaigned against vaccines for decades, for my entire life.

Okay, and then the CDC director is shocked and clutches her pearls because Bobby Kennedy, the secretary for Donald Trump, is doing what he campaigned on.

It's not just on health care.

On health care, yes.

On tariffs.

Everyone was so shocked.

Trump campaigns for years on implementing tariffs.

He tried it out a little bit in the first term.

He campaigned this whole cycle.

I'm going to implement very heavy tariffs on everybody.

We're going to fix trade imbalances.

He campaigns on the tariffs.

And then the minute he implements the tariffs, everyone's shocked.

I can't believe he actually did it.

The deportations.

He campaigned on mass deportations.

He won the popular vote on mass deportations.

Mass deportations became a mainstream political issue.

And then he's elected and 1.6 million illegals are out of the country, self-deported or arrested by Tom Holman, going city to city, and everyone clutches his pearls.

Trump's deporting people?

Do you have cotton in your ears?

Were you not paying attention during the

10 years he's been campaigning on this?

Same thing on healthcare.

This woman, she has no one to blame but herself and the

rest of the CDC people, the HHS people who were quitting, up to and including Mr.

Satan Harness Guy.

They have no one to blame but their own negligence.

He campaigned on this.

They were serious.

The Trump campaign, all of the appointees, they were serious, okay?

And they have every right to be.

Many Americans were really, really turned off, really ticked when the entire public health apparatus lied to them, specifically about vaccines, during COVID.

There was a cost to the CDC.

There was a cost to HHS when that happened.

There was a cost to the NIH.

So when that happened, they lost their credibility.

And then people voted based on that.

And if the CDC and the HHS want to have credibility, then they need to put credible people forward who say credible things

and not

like

real weirdos who lie all the time and who admit they lie.

You got to give Doscalakis some credit.

At least he's saying, yeah, look, it doesn't actually affect public health if we stop giving little babies the hepatitis B vaccines.

It's totally fine for basically all of them.

But we have to lie and keep telling people that the vaccines are necessary because some mothers are hookers and heroin addicts.

Okay, got it.

Okay, speaking of Trump figures, this is a little clip.

I want to come back to it.

It actually comes from when I was at the cabinet meeting, but it's a clip no one really focused on.

And it tells you a little bit about the future, especially if Trump dies, God forbid, God forbid, everyone's going to be vying for power.

And right now, one of the situations that's been set up is that J.D.

Vance is the heir apparent.

He's the successor.

But maybe Marco Rubio could run too.

And maybe Bobby Kennedy will run.

And who knows?

Pete Hegseth could run.

And there are plenty of people who can run, even just from the administration.

Tulsi Gabbard could run.

But Marco has

been working, I think, four or five jobs for the Trump administration right now.

He's run for president before against Trump back in 2016.

He obviously wants it.

So,

are we going to get down to a Vance Rubio fight in 2028?

Just listen.

I don't know how I caught it in the room.

My eyebrows went right up.

Listen to what Trump says as everyone is complimenting Rubio on the job that he's doing.

Marco has been

really, I think you're born for this job.

I don't think you should ever run for another officer.

I don't think you should, really.

You're so good at this.

He is so good, and everybody likes him.

Oh, man.

That's that compliment sandwich.

And I'm sure Trump is totally sincere about this.

He said, Marco is doing a great job.

Everyone loves what he's been doing.

He's a breath of fresh air after the Trump administration.

It's impressive that he's doing four of the toughest jobs in the world.

And Trump says, man, Marco, everyone's complimenting him.

He said, Marco, you're so good at this.

You're so good at this.

You should never run for another office.

You should just keep doing this because you're so good good at it.

Look, being Secretary of State is very, very cool.

It's one of the most important offices in the entire world.

You're talking to a guy who's been running for president since 2016.

There were rumors he was going to try to run in 2012.

This is a guy who wants the top job.

And it's Trump signaling.

Maybe you don't.

You're doing great.

It's nothing against you, but there are other plans.

And J.D.

Vance is sitting directly across the table.

Now, this then speaks even more to what we heard in that interview with Marco Rubio about a month ago when Rubio was asked if he was going to run again.

He said, Look, if I stay Secretary of State, that's if this is the peak of my career, that's great.

I think J.D.

would be a great nominee.

There's another mark in the JD column.

Now, it seems like the party is kind of coalescing.

It's still early, but this is an unusual circumstance.

You have a non-consecutive second term.

People are beginning to look ahead at the future.

Where is this thing going?

I think this is really what this is about.

And this is what the Trump is dead stuff is about, too.

You didn't get a ton of Trump is dead stuff in the first term.

Even if he looked the same, he's got as much energy now as he did then.

The guy is a machine.

He's just built differently.

And so there's no evidence that Trump is dying at all.

He has some vein problem in his leg.

It's nothing.

So why is everyone talking about Trump is dead?

Because

he's term limited.

Unless we change the Constitution, which Ronald Reagan wanted to do to take away term limits, because there is a term limit.

It exists at the ballot box.

We're not going to get a third Trump term or a fourth Trump term.

And I think people are beginning to realize, one,

there's going to be a new person to carry on this mantle in 2028.

We need to start getting serious about who it is.

And two, Trump has dominated American politics now for a decade.

By the end of it, he'll have dominated American politics for a dozen years or more.

That's the beauty of the non-consecutive second term is there was this four-year period in the middle when Trump was still dominating politics.

It was still kind of all about Trump.

They were still trying to throw Trump in jail.

They were still raiding Trump's house.

They were still trying to murder Trump.

It wasn't about Biden.

Biden was a second thought.

So Trump has dominated this.

It actually gives you a little insight into what it must have been like to grow up under FDR.

I remember I was speaking to my older relatives who've said, oh, even ones who are Republican, they had this admiration for FDR because FDR was a king.

He was the American king.

He gets elected to a fourth term.

Totally ignored the precedent set by Washington, honored by Washington's successors.

And he just says, I'm going to become a king.

You had the rise of strongman leaders in Italy, in Germany, in Spain, and in America in the person of FDR.

You had different ideologies, fascism, Nazism, political Catholicism in Spain, and in America, you had liberalism, but they were all all these still these strongman leaders, and they dominated, and even their enemies, even the people who hated them, couldn't help but revere them as these larger-than-life figures.

That's kind of Trump because of the weird circumstance of the non-consecutive second term.

And this Trump is dead, Trump is dead stuff is a reckoning with the fact that there will come a time, I've been explaining it to my four-year-old kid who's just discovered death.

He says, are we going to die?

So we're all going to die someday, buddy.

Yeah, we are.

What comes next?

On the political front, on the electoral front, Trump's signaling in the cabinet meeting, JD comes next.

It's not going to be Rubio.

It's probably not going to be any of the other people around that table.

For now, in August 2025, now into September 2025, the signal is it's going to be JD.

What comes next ideologically?

What comes next for the coalition?

Can this coalition be held together?

Will this coalition fall apart?

What comes next for our national self-understanding?

We're in the bisesquicentennial.

What comes in year 251 of America?

What comes next for the world order as you're moving from a hegemonic world where America is dominating everything to potentially a multipolar world where you have France instructing public health officials and hospitals to arm up as though there could be a major global conflict, World War III?

What comes next?

That's the anxiety.

That's why people are freaking out over a bruise on Trump's hand.

After four years, countless arguments destroyed, millions of libs triggered, Ben Shapiro returns to what he started at, where it all began.

He's written a new book.

The result is Lions and Scavengers, The True Story of America and Her Critics.

Let's be clear, this is not just another book release.

This is one of the biggest books of the fall.

The kind of book that goes straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, which is especially fun.

Because that means the New York Times is going to have to put Ben Shapiro's name in bold letters again.

And I don't feel threatened by it because at least half of my bestsellers haven't had any words in it.

Ben's book has a ton of of words in it, okay?

And those words are available everywhere.

Amazon, Walmart, Target, Barnes ⁇ Noble.

Super easy.

Go to dailywire.com slash Ben.

If you want a signed copy from Ben himself, you go to the Daily Wire shop.

That is dailywire.com slash Ben.

My favorite comment yesterday is from Mark Debbie, 1993, who says, Will you remember where you were during the battle for Cracker Barrel?

I will.

In fact, do you know where I was?

On Sunday after church, my eldest son, his favorite restaurant, is Cracker Barrel.

We said, we got to go.

I got to investigate this for myself.

I'm a journalist.

There's a big story.

I'm getting out the shoe leather.

And something I've noticed, I travel to Cracker Barrels often when I'm traveling, when I'm on the road, but I went even in my town of Nashville the other day.

And it's very sweet because no matter where I am, no matter where,

I always meet people who are on the team.

I always meet like-minded people.

I get, I'm happy to say, I get a lot of atta-boys when I walk into a Cracker Barrel anywhere in the country.

Doesn't matter the state.

Doesn't matter staff, customers, men, women, white, black, everything in the middle.

If I ever

am not well received at Cracker Barrel, my show is over, okay?

This is the audience.

This is the audience, which is why it was so, so insane.

for Cracker Barrel to rebrand.

This is a beloved right-wing institution, okay?

Reactionary almost.

It was so tone deaf.

And anyway, so it was nice to chat with people and

the food was great.

It was good.

We won.

We won.

They didn't, no weird millennial clinical lame stuff.

It was great.

Loved it.

Okay.

Speaking of death, there's not a lot of death on the show today, isn't there?

Speaking of death.

Really, really spooky story

regarding artificial intelligence.

Okay, and there are a number of stories like this, really, really sad stuff, even involving teenagers.

Young people have been killing themselves with AI.

So there's one photo in particular.

This is a 16-year-old kid being reported by NBC News.

He's a teenager.

We can pray for him.

He killed himself because of AI.

His father said he would be here but for ChatGPT.

I 100% believe that.

According to the 40-page lawsuit, ChatGPT actively helped this young man explore suicide methods.

Despite acknowledging his suicide attempt and his statement that he would do it one of these days, ChatGPT neither terminated the session nor initiated any emergency protocol.

And the parents seek, quote, both damages for their son's death and injunctive relief to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.

So he went, this kid went into ChatGPT, how can I kill myself?

And they said, here are the ways.

It's not even the first time this has happened.

According to NBC, this illegal action comes one year after a similar complaint in which a Florida mom sued character.ai, it's a different AI platform, claiming that one of its AI companions initiated sexual interactions with her teenage son and persuaded him to kill himself.

And others and others and others.

Here's what OpenAI had to say in their defense.

They say, ChatGPT includes safeguards such as directing people to crisis helplines and referring them to real-world resources.

While these safeguards work work best in common short exchanges, we've learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model's safety training may degrade.

Okay.

Yeah, sorry, we tried to prevent this, but sometimes it doesn't work.

Just a random piece of equipment is one thing.

Sometimes it doesn't work when it is a computer designed to simulate a human being persuading vulnerable kids to kill themselves.

Very different scenario.

And it reminds us of the ethics of AI and the need for ethics in all of these technological endeavors, which is very scary because we live at a time when we don't take ethics seriously.

Think about the people who are building this technology.

Are these the most morally grounded people in the world?

I don't mean to just like cast stones and stuff.

I know we were going after the Satan-worshiping public health official earlier, but it's to that point too.

It's to all of this.

The people who have political, at the very least, public roles

in all of this technology and all of this science don't appear to have very well-formed morality.

Whether we're talking about the CDC or whether we're talking about Silicon Valley, they have very weird morality.

They do really weird stuff.

They're very strange people and they have strange views about life and death and the soul and the human person and how we relate to the world.

And they have a lot of power in their hands right now.

At the public health level, they have the power to shut down society and to force you to let your loved ones die alone and to cancel Christmas.

Okay, that's a lot of power.

And in Silicon Valley, they have the power to convince you that a machine is a human being.

And they convince you to worship this machine like a god.

How often do you hear?

Oh, I'm going to ask Chad GPT.

I'm going to ask Grock.

You know, in some debate on social media now, it's just all, hey, Grock, is this true?

Hey, Grok, tell me about this.

Hey, Grok.

As though we're worshiping this dumb idol.

And if we make gods out of these things,

these aren't necessarily the best gods.

And sometimes they might tell you to kill yourself, and they might give you very morally dubious advice.

This is,

I'm not really apocalyptic.

I know in my line of work, people are always apocalyptic, and they're always catastrophizing, and I'm not.

But this is really dangerous.

If I were inclined to believe I'm living in the end times, it would be because of stuff like this.

Because

you have a moment where human technology and art and power are vastly accelerating and human morality is vastly degrading.

That's a recipe for disaster.

That's the story of the Tower of Babel, okay?

That's the story.

Wow, we're going to make ourselves into gods.

We're going to reach heaven.

We can do it.

We can build a tower to heaven.

That's pretty impressive, isn't it?

And then...

As morality is degrading,

you need an intervention from the real God to prevent bigger problems.

Okay, speaking of morality, Christianity, did you know, this is from a few days ago,

did you know that the foundation of the Christian church, some would say Christ Himself is the cornerstone,

some would observe that Christ says to Peter, You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

A delegate to the Democrat National Committee summer meeting says that actually the pillar, the foundation of Christianity is DEI.

Republican friends and fellow citizens,

I say,

who profess to be

active Christians, I remind them that DEI is the very foundation of the Christian church.

Now there's the KJV version of the Bible, there's the RSVCE version of the Bible, Bible, there's the ESV version of the Bible, and then there's the DNC version of the Bible.

And in the DNC translation,

not done by St.

Jerome, I think,

in the DNC translation, the foundation of Christianity is DEI.

There is a kind of truth to this.

People were making fun of them and making fun of the Democrats for saying this, but the kernel of insight in this is not that DEI has obviously nothing to do with Christianity.

in itself,

but DEI is one of the foundations of modern liberalism.

And modern liberalism is an aping of Christianity.

It's a perversion of Christianity.

It takes Christian morality and it twists it and it chooses things and it pulls them out of place.

And it sounds like Christianity.

It uses some of the same moral rhetoric as Christianity.

It has its own sacraments like Christianity.

It has its own liturgical days like Christianity.

It's feasts, its months of pride, and all the same.

The only difference is in what it worships, because Christianity worships God and liberalism worships worships the self.

And so that's how other than that one minor difference, that's what you see.

Yeah.

It's no surprise that some Democrat delegate would say that DEI is the foundation of Christianity because they have substituted Christianity for their own religion and DEI is the foundation of that.

Okay.

Speaking of Democrats, a great story, have to get to.

Ilhan Omar.

Ilhan Omar is rich.

Ilhan Omar used to not have any money.

She was broke.

In fact, all the way, this was back in February.

Someone accused her of secretly being a millionaire and she mocked them.

And she said in an interview with Business Insider, she goes, it's ridiculous.

She says it's categorically false.

She responds.

She says,

dummy, first of all,

I...

Haven't been in Congress for eight years and my net worth isn't $83 million.

I know your brain is rotten.

My salary is $174,000 before taxes.

I'm still paying off student debt.

Maybe try checking my public financial statements.

You'll see I barely have thousands, let alone millions.

She barely has thousands.

Now, it turns out, according to Ilhan Omer's own financial statements, she's worth between $6 and $30 million.

That was fast.

She went from having a ton of debt and maybe thousands of dollars in the bank account.

to between $6 and $30 million

five months later, six months later.

How did that happen?

Oh, it gets even better.

Was not her congressional salary, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Ilhan Omar reported that she and her current husband, former political consultant Tim Minette, have just made millions.

This is derived from Minette's ownership stake in two companies that a little over a year ago were worth no more than $51,000.

Now they're worth many millions of dollars.

The exact value At the end of last year is unclear because they just give ranges, the lawmakers.

But their net worth has skyrocketed by at least 3,500% in just one year.

Those are Pelosi returns.

That's good stuff.

One company that the husband owns is a winery or something.

The other one is called Rose Lake Capital.

Rose Lake Capital is this venture capital fund founded three years ago.

Again, it had like basically no money until about a year ago, and now it appears to be worth many millions of dollars because the fund is not necessarily known for its quantitative expertise.

It boasts about its quote extensive global network and its expertise at structuring legislation.

Oh, it's one of those funds.

It's not because of the math whiz Mynette.

It's because Mynette's wife, current wife, is a prominent legislator.

God.

And it's funny because money,

when you're investing your money, either you want to go with the really smart investor guys, the real quants, or

you want to go with the real connected people.

And Ilhan Omar is getting real connected.

You might have heard this name Tim Minette before, the husband, because back when Ilhan and Minette were married to different people, they reportedly had an affair.

And they had an affair while this guy's company was working for Ilhan Omar's campaign, and Ilhan was shoveling $2.2 million to his company.

But now they're married, so I guess they all have the same assets, which are worth between $6 and $30 million.

This is corruption par excellence.

I know, and I'm not saying I like it, but I actually feel relatively good about this because the knock on Ilhan Omar for years is that she's a radical.

She jokes about al-Qaeda.

You remember there's that video of her laughing, giggling at the name of Al-Qaeda.

She has this not only Muslim ideology, but socialist ideology.

And that was all, she was a total radical.

Now we're beginning to see, no, she's just another corrupt Washington politician.

And

I can deal with that.

Our system is built to withstand corrupt politicians.

Much of Congress is built to just kind of ensnare corrupt people and rein in their ambitions.

A true believer, an actual ideologue, an actual radical, that might be a little bit dangerous.

We have not generally had socialists flourish or jihadis flourish in America, but

regular regular swamp creatures, that's fine by me.

Otto von Bismarck says that politics is the art of the possible, the art of the second best.

I'm not saying this is, it's good to promote corruption.

I'll deal with that all day over a jihadi or a socialist.

Okay, last point before we go.

There's a story that two women

Chloe Grace Moretz and Kate Harrison have gotten married.

I've never heard of either of these people, but apparently they're famous.

And Chloe Grace Moretz and Kate Harrison have gotten married.

They posted a picture of the two of them together.

I think this is really great news.

My only question is, where are their husbands?

Because you see, this is the strangest thing.

I know people like my stepbrother and I got married in the same year, but you'll post a picture together.

Usually, if you say we got married, you'd post a picture of the two of you with your husbands.

So anyway, I don't know.

I'm glad.

Look, it's good to be good friends, and I'm glad you're celebrating.

You can go on anniversary trips.

I just don't.

Where are there?

That's really all I have to say about that story.

It's kind of like the Trump is dead story at the top of the show.

Is Trump dead?

No.

Are these ladies married to each other?

No, because that's not possible.

Okay.

I'm on the road right now, so we can't do a membrane segmentum.

I'm sorry.

Sorry to say.

I'm in Maine because I'm going on Tucker.

And Tucker lives in the middle of the woods.

And I got to go drive into the middle of the woods to go do Tucker's show.

So anyway, it should be fun.

That interview will be coming out soon.

I'm Michael Knowles.

This is the Michael Knowles Show.

See you tomorrow.

On the Matt Wall Show, we talk about the things that really matter: real issues that affect you, your family, and our country.

We don't just focus on politics, but also culture and current events.

If you're looking for a daily dose of realism mixed with sarcasm, come check out the Matt Wall Show streaming on Daily Wire Plus at 1:30 Eastern Time.

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