Ep. 1841 - Dems Now Arguing JD Vance Is *Worse* Than Hitler

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Donald Trump is Hitler.

That's what the Democrats and the media have told us for 10 years.

Hitler is the worst person ever.

It's not possible to be worse than Hitler.

And Donald Trump could not possibly be more bad.

Therefore, Donald Trump is Hitler.

You're following this?

This is what they've been telling us.

That's what they told us 10 years ago.

That's what they told us even after an assassin almost killed Trump twice.

That's what they continue to tell us today.

Except now, as the Democrats look ahead to 2028,

many of them, prominent Democrats, are turning their sights on J.D.

Vance.

They got to beat Vance.

And that is why they are falling into what I call the Hitler paradox.

Democrats, bereft of good issues to argue on, they're on the losing side of basically every major issue.

They need to resort to the most hyperbolic rhetoric possible to scare people out of voting for the more attractive candidate.

So they call Trump Hitler.

But when the next Republican hits the scene, J.D.

Vance, when Hitler's time is through, they have to argue that the next guy is even worse.

But it is not possible, in the imagination, to be worse than Hitler.

If there were someone worse than Hitler, then Trump would cease to be the worst person in the world, thereby making it less bad to be worse than Trump, thereby making Vance look better.

Do you see how this works?

If they say he's worse, they make him look better.

If Democrats argue that Vance is better than Trump, then the Democrats make Vance look better than he does today.

But by arguing that Vance is worse than Trump, the Democrats inadvertently rehabilitate the images of Trump and J.D.

Vance and weirdly also Hitler.

I'm Michael Knowles.

This is the Michael Knowles Show.

Welcome back to the show.

Very excited.

You know, I'm still on the road.

I'm in central Germany, or central Europe, I should say, traveling around Germany, other places.

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So, I'm still on the road.

I'll be back next week.

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In the meantime, I have a friend stopping by today to give us a look into a very, very hot political seat.

This guy, a little bit of a blast from the past, with maybe a little look into the Republican future.

Maybe we'll talk about some eyes-wide shop parties.

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We're going to get to that coming up.

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Where did the Hitler paradox come from?

Well, it comes from logic, but why are we talking about it right now?

Because Gen Saki, this is not just some random Democrat, this was the spokesperson for Joe Biden and the only competent one that he had.

This is the voice of the White House under the most recent Republican, most recent Democrat president making the argument right here.

I think the little Manchurian candidate, J.D.

Vance,

wants to be president more than anything else.

I always wonder what's going on in the mind of his wife.

Like, are you okay?

Please blink four times.

We'll come over here.

We'll save you.

And that he's willing to do anything to get there.

And that your whole iteration you just outlined, I mean, he's scarier in certain ways.

He's smarter in some ways.

And he's young and ambitious.

And ambitious and agile in the sense that he is a chameleon who makes himself into whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear from him.

Now, what's also true, though, is J.D.

Vance

is not, he's in some ways goodish on paper, if you like what he believes in, I don't know, but I don't, I don't know that he can take the whole movement with him

away.

I don't think so either.

He has no Riz.

It's got no Riz, right?

And he's got, he just is a little odd.

And so

Trump's odd in a different way.

So I'm skeptical of that.

So yeah, he's got to.

I mean, everything going on right now, and I think we have to be very clear-eyed about this, is about trying to manipulate the public around elections.

This happens every time.

Some of you are not going to remember this.

Some of you sweet little darlings out there who do not remember the Bush administration.

They called Bush Hitler.

They had little Hitler mustaches on Bush.

Bush was Hitler.

It's hard to imagine now because now Bush hangs out with Michelle Obama and Bush is looked to as that Halcyon golden era when lovable Republicans who are normal, who are good, when you go, I could talk to this Republican.

He's not like Trump, who's Hitler, but he was Hitler.

And George H.W.

Bush wasn't around all that.

He's obviously a one-termer.

Reagan was Hitler.

They called him Hitler.

And so this time around, some people really believe that Trump was Hitler.

It's not even to say you have to like Trump.

You could totally hate Trump or whatever.

But it is pathetic that people would still fall for that, going, no, this one's really different.

No, no, it's different this time.

It's the most important election of our lifetime.

And they went so far to the wall on this.

This was not just some op-eds calling Trump Hitler.

They tried to keep him off the ballot.

They said that he posed an existential threat to democracy.

They justified his assassination.

They raided his home.

They tried to throw him in prison four times.

This was another level.

This was the we're super duper serious this time.

He's Hitler.

And already you're getting the former White House spokesman saying, yeah, but JD is worse.

If JD is worse

than

you lied to us about Trump.

I guess you lied to us about Hitler.

In as much as not even Hitler is really Hitler.

In as much as in the popular conception, Hitler is the actual physical instantiation, the incarnation of absolute evil, which Christians don't even believe exists.

We believe that God is the incarnation of good, and then all evil is a privation of the good.

So it kind of flips that on its head.

And so they're even wrong.

They even go too far about Hitler.

And Hitler was a very nasty fellow.

It means if they actually go out and say Vance is worse than Trump, they're saying we lied to you about the fundamental thing.

We justified the assassination of a president.

We upended centuries of constitutional norms, and we did it all based on a lie.

But believe us this time.

Okay, good luck with that.

I don't think that one's really going to work.

Now, speaking of Nazis,

really disturbing video coming out of a campus that a TPUSA chapter was on.

I won't even preface it.

Take a listen.

Hey, Nazis, can you set up somewhere where I can avoid you easily?

Yeah, thank you.

Have a great day.

Thanks.

Watch your neck.

If...

You haven't been paying attention the last month.

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

The Democrats, the liberals, the left broadly, minimized and excused and even celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk.

We don't want that to have been true.

We don't want that to be possible, but that's what happened.

And

they've told us time and time again.

They've told us on TV.

They've told us in the legislature.

They've told us on campus.

They've told us on Facebook.

They continue to tell us today.

They go up to the TPUSA chapter, they threaten them with violence again.

And they make light of the murderer, they celebrate the murder.

So,

two things we could do about this.

We could either bury our heads in the sand and say, we just need to free marketplace of ideas even harder, bro.

We just need to do that harder.

We just need to...

La la la, we didn't hear you say that.

We didn't know.

We're just going to exchange ideas graciously even harder.

Or

we need consequences.

And I think most reasonable Republicans and conservatives and fair-minded independents know it's the latter.

So what needs to happen here is people need to identify this young woman.

They need to figure out who she is.

They need to confirm who she is through the relevant authorities.

They need to check with the school.

They need to.

Then

She needs to be expelled.

If this is a state-run school, ideally in a red red state, then it might be a little bit easier to do that, to put some pressure from the right-minded legislators and governors.

If not, it might be a little bit harder.

Donors, trustees might have to make calls.

But this girl needs to be expelled.

She needs to be prevented from gaining employment in most places.

I don't know what she studies, if she studies anything.

She cannot be hired to be a nurse.

or a teacher or this or that or the other thing.

She needs to repent.

She needs to be impelled to repent.

If she doesn't want to do it, if it's not sincere, then she needs to repent like a three-year-old toddler who is having a temper tantrum, who beat up his brother, who has to say sorry because daddy said so.

And if daddy makes him say it enough, maybe he'll start to really believe it.

But she needs to lose a lot of her status and her access in society.

And it needs to be done all the right way and all through the relevant authorities.

But

she needs to be be booted.

She needs to be ostracized.

And if she wants to come back into society, she needs to repent and she needs to grovel.

She needs to beg on her knees.

That cannot be tolerated.

That girl has no business at a university whatsoever.

Universities are not for her.

Universities are for civilized people to be perfected in their education.

They're not for that.

And as far as I'm concerned, if I were running a company, if I were running a public institution, I would not want her anywhere near it.

And people need to see that example.

They need to have a proper fear of transgressing the right taboos and limits in society.

They need to see what happens, otherwise.

And then maybe eventually they'll sincerely change their minds.

But I don't care if it's sincere in the first part.

We will have an ordered society.

And as far as I'm concerned, the consequences will continue until the behavior improves.

Okay.

Now, speaking of viral videos of bad behavior, people are crashing out because they're about to lose their EBT cards.

We will get to that momentarily.

They're going to lose EBT cards if the government continues to be shut down, the government shut down, which is not being blamed on the Republicans for the first time ever in my lifetime.

It's a Democrat shutdown, but still people crashing out.

We'll get to that in one second.

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The government shutdown is rolling on.

The Republicans have no real ability to stop it.

This was an entirely Democrat shutdown.

The Republicans offered a continuing resolution to keep funding the government according to the Biden budget, according to prior spending levels, the things that the Democrats had already previously voted for.

Democrats are saying no, we want all sorts of other stuff like funding health care for illegals and

other things.

And the Republicans said, we're not, that's crazy, we're not doing that.

The people gave us the White House and the House and the Congress, or sorry, the Senate, and we already, because of the presidential elections, had the Supreme Court.

And no, we're not, no, we're not giving into your ridiculous demands when you have no political mojo.

And they said, well, that's fine.

We're going to shut down the government.

And then you guys are going to get blamed for it.

And a lot of Republicans were afraid of that.

I said, I don't think the Republicans are going to get blamed.

I know that's always happened in the past, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the situation is different now.

And you know how much I hate to say I told you so?

I was totally right.

So

now we're starting finally to see some real concrete consequences.

from the shutdown, one of which is snap benefits, EBT, food stamps might be put on delay.

A lot of people don't like it.

Here's one, just a little taste of the commentary going around TikTok.

I say if they don't give food stamps next month, we all just say f ⁇ it and rob the grocery store and tell them to make me a woman.

They're just going to rob the store.

There are a lot of videos like this.

Some of them are rage bait.

I think some of them are probably real and might actually be threats because people do rob stores a fair bit, especially in

the cities, especially

people who don't vote for Donald Trump, let's let's say.

And so there's this kind of lawlessness that's tolerated by Democrat mayors and governors.

And the way the libs always justify it is they say, well, the reason that the people are robbing the stores is because

they lack the material resources that they need.

They need to go steal a loaf of bread to feed their families, which could be illicit.

If you need a loaf of bread to feed your families, it could be illicit to steal that loaf of bread.

It would not be illicit to steal Air Jordans.

It would not be illicit to go rob cosmetic products from CVS.

It would not be illicit to go rob a liquor store.

And so

I'm a little bit skeptical of the whole point that these people are robbing because they just can't feed their families.

Frankly, I'm not so sure they have intact families.

I don't think this is father knows best, okay?

But it's very important, not just because we're making making fun of people.

And you actually don't want to really make light of EBT and food stamps and things, because some people really do rely on those things.

And I know the libertarians might get angry at me for saying this, but I think it is important to have a social safety net in a society ideally governed in a manner of subsidiarity that does not crowd out the church, that does not have accidental secondhand effects.

But in principle, yes, a society should look after the poor.

There will always be some poor.

The poor will always be with you.

And you need to care for them.

You don't want to accidentally create people in bad behaviors that make them more poor over time.

But in principle, we actually have to do that.

It's a good thing to do that.

It's a mark of a good and healthy society.

But people don't rob the store because they lack money.

There are very, very virtuous, very, very poor people.

And there are very, very vicious, very, very rich people.

And the connection between virtue and material wealth is

far from direct.

Here's a good example of how I know this is the case.

What do people say now?

You know, we don't have any kids anymore.

Our birth rate continues to plummet and it's just a disaster.

We haven't had an above replacement birth rate in 50 years or so and there's no end in sight to the problem.

It seems to be getting worse.

Well, some people say the reason that the birth rate has plummeted is because people don't have enough money anymore.

They're not rich enough.

If only we had a policy that would give people more money.

Then, then we could have more children.

But the contrary example to that is we live in the richest society ever in the history of the world.

People are richer.

Your person that you pluck off the street at random is richer today in America than anyone has ever been ever for all of human history.

And they're having fewer kids.

It is far, look, I wish that there were just like some policy that we could institute that would dramatically tick up the birth rate.

There's some evidence that if you provide certain subsidies and tax breaks, that maybe people will have marginally more children, maybe kind of, if you like completely flood the zone.

But that's really not it.

You know what does get people to have more kids?

Having them practice religion.

That does.

Christianity, Orthodox forms of Christianity, more traditional forms of Protestantism, Catholicism practiced in a serious way, Orthodox Judaism.

Mormonism,

these

traditions that take their doctrine seriously

and that are open to life.

That makes you have kids, regardless of how much money you have.

These guys, I bet, regardless of whether they get their EBT money, I don't think that will affect whether or not they rob the store.

And it will probably be a liquor store.

Okay, I want to talk about all of the ladyboys who beat up Luigi Mangioni before he murdered the United Healthcare CEO.

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I guess I kind of blew the story, didn't I?

So the guy, Luigi,

the left-wing, one of the left-wing terrorists, we have to specify now, but one of the recent left-wing terrorists who murdered the United Healthcare CEO, apparently, allegedly, reportedly, because he

had this kind of ideological axe to grind about wealth inequality or the healthcare system or whatever, murdered this poor guy, this father and this husband.

Now it's coming out that Luigi,

according to a report by the New York Post, was beaten up by seven ladyboys in Thailand shortly before he allegedly committed this murder.

For those of you who are wondering what a ladyboy is, I remember I heard about this because a buddy of mine went to visit Thailand.

He did like a world trip.

I don't know, we were in our early 20s or something.

And he told me, yeah, I didn't go, but he came back and he said, yeah, he was going, man, the lady boys are crazy, man.

That's a weird thing.

I said, what's a ladyboy?

He said, oh, they're like boys.

who dress up like girls and in some cases get the surgery, you know, the transgender surgery and they're hookers.

But they, anyway, he was like, it's weird.

They're all over the place.

I said, oh, that's pretty weird.

What a strange aspect of society.

I guess now, even though American liberals are encouraging this in elementary schools and stuff, you don't really see that as a widespread phenomenon.

I guess that's what they have in Thailand.

And a bunch of them beat up Luigi Mangioni.

Sorry, ladies.

Sorry.

It would appear from the evidence that those who were thirsting over Luigi,

they're not his type.

In any case, what's the actual practical relevance of this tabloid news story?

The practical relevance, especially for you,

is a reminder

that sexual sins are really, really bad.

You know, I sometimes say it's always the ones you most expect.

You look at the disproportionate violence that appears to come from the transgender identifying community.

You notice that Ed Gein, this trans serial killer, was the inspiration for some of the most prominent horror movies ever.

Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and a number of others.

There is a rejoinder to this from especially more liberal Christians.

And they'll say, we just want you to know that sexual sins are not the worst sins.

You guys need to stop focusing on sexual sins so much.

You're the image of the traditional Catholic who's just focused on

all manner of sexual sins.

And yeah,

you're right, they're not the worst sins.

My main man, Dante, you know,

greatest poet ever, right, describes the divine comedy and hell, and he doesn't put the sexual sinners in the lowest pits of hell, far from it so they're they're not the worst sins treachery deceit fraud these are much worse sins

but but sexual sins probably are the ones you should be most concerned about

you know be concerned about all of them but there is a reason that people have focused on them because i think they're the most pervasive sins i believe there have been some kind of mystical apparitions uh in which our lady has has observed that The sexual sins are the ones that ensnare this huge number of people into hell.

Why?

Because sex is so much a part of our nature.

That's why.

Because it's so easy to fall into them.

You can fall into pride

and wrath and gluttony and you can fall into all of these, but there's just something about sex.

It's so central to our nature.

It's so easy to go wrong.

And because sin darkens the intellect,

It just happens to be the case that when people fall into like weird sexual sin, a lot of other sins tend to follow.

Now, there's some good news on this.

Because you remember, remember, oh, was it a week or so ago?

There was that study that came out of the UK that said that non-binary identity is in freefall among young people.

And some had concluded from that that

trans identity was also in free fall among young people.

But it was unclear actually from that study whether or not that was true.

People could make that inference, but it wasn't really backed up by the numbers.

Now

we got the numbers.

The cooperative election study shows that trans identity is in freefall among young people.

Look at this graph.

2021,

you see the non-binary identity there and the transgender identity.

It's way, way up.

Non-binary is a little over 3%.

Trans is between 5.5% and 6%.

Then it goes even higher in 2022.

This is post-year two of the year of R.

Floyd.

This is reaching peak wokeness, which is around 2022, 2023.

And then what happens?

Then what happens is it's kind of weird.

In 2023, non-binary ticks up a little bit, but it was still trailing

trans identity in 2022.

But trans starts to go down, down, down, down, down.

Now they're both in free fold,

which means that, you know how much I hate to say I told you so, but I went on the Jubilee show.

I was debating LGBT activists.

I said, I think this identity is a social contagion.

And they were all furious about it.

Because you're not allowed to say that.

This was supposed to be an inborn immutable characteristic.

That's what we were told about the L, G, B, T, Q, L, M, N, O, P.

We were told it was all immutable characteristics.

You're born that way.

It's an orientation.

You can't change it.

If you ever try to change it, it's conversion therapy.

It's evil.

It's wicked.

It's terrible.

It's wrong.

It's not.

Then why are the numbers going down?

Is it because the trans-identifying young people are being forced back into the closet?

Say it's no longer socially acceptable?

You're talking about in our civil rights laws now.

This is as socially acceptable just about as it's ever been in all of history.

The numbers are still going down.

So you have to then turn from your one thesis, which was the innate, unchangeable, that thesis, born this way thesis, to maybe human beings are mimetic creatures and we actually emulate each other's behaviors and even desires.

And maybe

if that's the case, maybe we can actually do things to discourage those kinds of aberrant identities.

Okay, that's good news.

That's a good place to leave that on.

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My favorite comment yesterday is from YouTube Kathy, who says, imagine believing that words such as man can never become a woman is violence, but then actively promoting to shoot people in the neck is a peaceful protest.

Yeah, I can imagine that because for the left,

They look at us and they say that our speech is violence.

But then they look at themselves and they say their violence is speech.

That's how it goes.

That's how it always goes.

Okay, very excited right now to bring on my friend, former congressman, maybe future congressman, going to give us a look at the midterms, Madison Cawthorne.

The midterms will be upon us before we know it.

A lot of the political calculations are out the window now.

Typically, the party in the White House loses the midterm elections, but the Democrats are openly embracing political violence and they've lost the popular vote for the first time in 20 years.

And who knows?

We just don't know what's going to happen.

A lot of Republicans getting into the fray, which means that the Republican candidates at least think there's a good chance we do well in the midterms.

One of those candidates, don't call it a comeback, is Madison Cawthorne, who was the youngest member of Congress elected to his class.

He previously served in North Carolina's 11th district, if I'm not mistaken.

And now he is looking to replace Byron Donalds in his seat in Florida when Byron runs for governor of Florida.

I am joined by Madison Cawthorne.

Madison, good to have you here.

Michael, it's great to be on, my friend.

I wish I had a Mayflower cigar.

It would complete the whole ensemble.

I was going to say, not only are you a great patriot, but also you have a great, great taste in cigars as well.

So, Madison, your race in particular is very, very interesting.

You got some of the most attention of anyone in your class.

Obviously, you know, very talented politician to manage to get yourself elected as the youngest member of your class.

A lot of people really liked you.

A lot of people in Washington really didn't like you very much.

And so anyway, you lost re-election.

That was in Carolina.

Now you're going to be running in Florida.

Some people are going to say it's weird to switch states.

I actually don't really think it's all that weird because in the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton and our other framers envisioned that we'd have a more national kind of country over time.

And really what matters more today, just as a fact of politics, is party allegiance rather than, you know, this district or that district.

People switch districts all the time.

That to me isn't all that surprising.

What challenges do you think you're going to face in the race?

Well, you know, I think if I was someone that just kind of parachuted in right at the last minute when I realized that Byron was going to run for governor, I'd be facing a much more uphill battle.

But, you know, I've lived in the district for four years.

I've been very active in the community.

I know a lot, a lot of great connections all around Southwest Florida.

And it's my home.

It's the place that I love.

You know, I remember right when I moved back down there, I was hit by Hurricane Ian about three weeks after I closed on my house.

And so I always tell everyone I got baptized as a Floridian, Floridian, you know, just getting to see how all the community came together, start helping one another.

It really gave me a love for the district and it showed me what the kind of people are.

And since then, it's been my home.

I'm never looking back.

Okay, so then the question that's going to be on a lot of voters' minds, I'm sure, is, all right, well, you lost last time and you're going to run again this time.

What have you learned since then?

You know, did you take any lessons away from it?

Was it just a fluke that you lost?

Have you changed your views or your behavior in some way?

What's the difference between Madison 1.0 and Madison 2.0?

Well, Michael, I'll tell you, I think the biggest thing, and I hesitate to ever call myself wise, but I will tell you that I've gained a lot of shrewdness.

I've gained a lot more wisdom since that time.

And, you know, when you're 24 years old, I hold almost all the exact same beliefs and convictions that I held when I was first elected.

But now I've gotten more of maturity and more of a sense of how to fight those battles rather than just going in like a bull in a china shop.

It's more so, you know, how can we actually move the needle in essence to be able to help the American people?

You know, we are facing a lot of damaging situations in our country right now.

And if we start electing people who are just going to go there and get led around like puppies by the leadership on both sides of the aisle, then we're going to face exactly the same status quo we've faced for the last six decades.

And that's not something that we can afford right now, especially with the temperature that's going on inside of our country.

We need people who are going to go there, who are going to have the backbone to stand up fearlessly, but also have the shrewdness to be able to actually accomplish their objectives.

Yeah, I know, I think that's an important point on shrewdness because I can't help but notice a lot of the personal attacks on you came out after you called out some bad behavior in Washington, D.C.

You said a lot of people in our government, they do kind of weird, freaky stuff that's sometimes illegal and generally disreputable.

And then I noticed all these personal attacks started coming out on you.

I thought that's kind of, I wonder if there's a connection between those two things.

So, okay, let's let's look into this race.

Obviously, it's a different year than the last time you were in Congress.

Different issues are rising to the fore, a different calculation.

What are the Republicans in the midterms going to be running on?

You know, you talked to Republicans across the country in 2024.

They were running on the kitchen table issues, but transgenderism, transing the kids, was a big issue, you know, protecting girls' sports or whatever.

That was just a big issue that viscerally hit people.

What are the issues you're running on now?

You know, I'll tell you, I think that now that we have President Trump in the White House in Washington, D.C., I think we're seeing a lot of those national issues start being handled in a timely manner, which I'm very thankful of.

But right now, I think just as a whole, as the conservative movement, we need to take a step back and say, why are the policies that our country is pushing forward not helping the next generation?

Why can people that are around my age not be able to afford a home?

Why is insurance so out of control?

Why is our infrastructure so outdated and has not been actually tackled in a way that makes sense for everyday Americans?

And so right now, I'm thinking about ways to diversify the economy in Southwest Florida.

I'm thinking about ways to make sure that people can get into the home ownership game.

And also because it's not just because owning a home is cool and it's a great investment.

It's more so that owning a home is something that is paramount to the american idea it's something that is so crucial for people to be able to own private property rights because in this country you know your house is your castle you are the royalty in this nation you are supposed to lead you look at the first three words of the preamble of the constitution you know it's we the people we the people the ones who are supposed to be steering the ship and i think there's been such a movement by the left for the last several decades to try and encourage people to have children later and later to abort their children so they don't have to have them and not to own homes to be a renter society.

And I think that gives a much longer, a much more long-term political game plan.

Because if you don't actually own the dirt that you're living on, you don't care about the status of the nation, you don't have any vested interest in the next generation, you don't care about the financial outcome of the country in the next 30 years, and then you're just going to, of course, say, vote, give me me, me, me, me, me.

Whatever I can take from others is going to be better in the long term because I don't actually care about what happens in the future.

And so I think we need to start attacking that.

And even if we have to go outside of

the normal conservative doctrine to be able to make homeownership affordable for people, I think that is the way we should be doing things.

And what do you mean by that?

Because this is really interesting to me.

When I was growing up, there were three bullet points on the back of a napkin on conservative economic policy.

And if you ever questioned any of them, you know, any of the great doctors of the church of libertarianism, you know, St.

Milton Friedman or something, on anything, you were cast into the outer darkness.

In recent years, there's been, I think, a kind of reduction in the influence of that hardcore, laissez-faire economic mindset.

And not an abandonment of that exactly, but just a recognition that we don't want to put the cart before the horse.

You know, we're not a political community serving an economic market, but rather we have economic markets to serve our political community.

So what kind of policies are you talking about here to make home ownership more affordable?

So, you know, I think what people consider is what we do want with like laissez-faire economic policy is, I think, actually the way to go, especially if we're talking about overseas trade and here in America.

But unfortunately, for the last four to five decades, we have not been having that.

We have been having things that are just completely attacked.

And the federal government has become so far involved that we really don't have any free markets anymore.

You look at the cost of insurance in the state of Florida.

There is literal regulations all across this country that make insurance prices, whether it's healthcare or home insurance, go through the roof.

And it's because they stifle the ability for people to have competition.

I'm all for a free market with actual free competition, but when you have overseas multinational conglomerates buying up single-family homes, obviously we're pointing the finger mainly at Blackstone and BlackRock here.

Obviously, that's going to make the ability for a single mother with three kids who lost her husband in a forever war that we shouldn't have been fighting in the first place, ability to be able to buy a home going to be impossible.

When those children deserve to be raised, you know, in an American cul-de-sac, where they get to go to prom, they go on vacation a couple of times a year, they get to have a great life.

And so anything that we can do to encourage more competition in the marketplace, to bring prices down for everyday Americans, to make it so that we don't have such runaway inflation, whether that means going back to the gold standard or whether that means putting very, very strict dampeners on the amount of economic easing that the Federal Reserve is allowed to do, all of those things will net positives for the American people having more buying power with their dollars and for being able to be into

the housing market.

Okay.

Now, before I let you go.

It's a red district you're looking at.

So if you, you know, if you get the nomination, you're good.

That's great.

You don't need to worry about that.

The makeup of the Congress, generally, a little less clear, where there are swing districts or gettable districts maybe for the Dems and for the Republicans.

So if passed as precedent, Republicans are going to face a tough year because it's the first midterm after the big presidential election.

We are supposed to lose the House and we've got a razor-thin majority as it stands.

So

all of history, all things being equal, says we should lose the House.

Republicans should lose seats.

But all things are not equal.

We're in a very, very strange moment.

Republicans have a unified government right now.

The Democrats are celebrating, you know, murdering Republicans and, you know, open borders and rioting in the streets.

And they're just on the wrong side of like every single AD-20 issue almost.

So I'm open to the possibility that things shift.

But if you had to be a brutal, cold-blooded political analyst right now, put your race aside.

Do the Republicans gain seats or lose seats in the midterms?

I think we gain seats.

You know, the left has been playing without rules for so long in our economic, our political process, whether you look at the way that they're gerrymandering districts, the way that they're trying to subvert people's actual voice to be able to select their own representatives.

That's no longer the game that's being played.

You know, for so long, for the last, you know, again, I know I've said this probably three times now, for the last six decades, Republicans' entire dogma and mantra was, hey, don't rock the boat too much.

We don't want to rock the boat.

We don't want to upset the apple cart.

My entire mantra is that the boat is sinking.

We need to fight right now like we're about to lose the Republic because we absolutely are.

And so I completely applaud what the GOP is doing trying to redraw districts all around the country to make it more competitive for Republicans to be able to hold the majority because this is what the Democrats have been doing for so long.

And you ask yourself, well, that doesn't sound fair.

Is that really right?

These people have absolutely no values.

Their only value is the gaining of power.

And once they gain power, they're willing to use force.

We saw this all through 2020 and the COVID,

watching how they used force to perpetuate and make sure that people abided by whatever they were saying their values were at the time.

But if you look, I mean, if if you ask yourself, who is legitimately the leader of the Democratic Party?

Is it AOC?

Is it Chuck Schumer?

They're both marching on this ridiculous death cult, trying to make sure that we can have a shutdown government while the Republicans are out bringing world peace, sowing economic change that's going to change the face of America for decades to come.

We are the party with a plan.

We are the party who is a big tent party.

We don't say that, hey, you have to be completely ideologically aligned with us or else you have no place in this party.

No, we welcome people from different ideological backgrounds.

I mean, the thing that I love about the right is we can have open debate without having to shoot somebody, or we can have open debate without saying, no, you're actually not a Democrat.

You have to go to the other side.

And, you know, I hesitate to paint with a broad brush saying Democrats are all evil.

I think people that were JFK Democrats, you know, in the mid-90s, who are now starting to, you know, they're kind of out of touch with what's going on in America today, I view them very differently than what's going on with leftists in this country.

The leftists in this country hate everything that America stands for.

They hate the direction our country's going in, and they will do anything so long as it gets Trump, even if it hurts Americans.

Yeah, well, I think you're right.

I mean, those, those JFK Democrats, I don't know.

I think the last one of them, you know, went away long ago.

The battle lines are pretty clear.

And I'm sympathetic to your point.

You say, who's the leader of the Democrat Party?

Because I remember the Democrats tried to pull this thing 10, 15 years ago.

They said, Rush Limbaugh is the de facto leader of the Republican Party.

And that, look, Rush was awesome.

Would that he was the leader of the Republican Party?

But, you know, there was a kind of a gap between the base and the GOP at that point.

And I thought it was a disingenuous kind of attack.

Today, though, if we say AOC is the leader of the Democrat Party, I would just ask the Democrats, well, give me an alternative.

Who do you think is the leader of the party?

I'm saying AOC sincerely, but do you have an alternative?

Gavin Newsom, like not really, maybe.

That's probably just as bad.

Schumer, I don't think anyone really thinks it's Schumer, kind of, and that's also no good.

So I don't know.

Give me the answer, but I agree.

The leadership all the way on down among the Democrats right now is just deeply unpopular.

They picked those positions.

They made themselves captive to their base, and they might upend precedent and give Republican seats in the midterms.

Okay, Madison, where can people go to check out more of your campaign?

You can go to my website at madisoncawthorne.com or follow me on any social media at Madison Cawthorne.

You know, Michael, I got to say, I'm such a big fan of your show, everything that you guys do.

Thank you so much for all the cigars that you and I have gotten to smoke over the times.

You're just a big hero in the conservative movement, and I really appreciate everything you do.

Well, I appreciate, as I told you all, it's very kind of you to say, Madison.

And I said, you can judge a lot about a man by his taste in cigars.

You know, it's a real symbol of wisdom and judgment.

And Michael, I'll go even further.

I think that Americans smoking cigars can actually save our republic.

And I am not being facetious when I say this, because what's the one thing that's so unique about a cigar is it locks you into a 20 to 30 minute conversation.

And I think almost every American, regardless of what political side you walk on, I think we all have about 10 to 15 minutes minutes of pre-recorded messaging that's just been ingrained into our minds by whatever media we consume.

But once people have to start doing actual critical thinking, you get to realize that most people just want what's best for the country.

And they get all bought in, especially on the left, they get bought into these emotional pleas that make them want to hate our country and hate the way that our society and hate our lineage.

But in reality, America is the greatest uplifter of Americans in all of history.

And people have an actual conversation where they're not relying on these hard line talking points that's been told by them by some talking head on CNN, then genuinely they'll realize, well, yeah, I do want more of my money in my pocket.

And you're right, I don't want to send money overseas for no pointless reason.

And you're right, I don't want our sons and daughters to go die overseas.

And that is the way I think we're going to save a country.

It's by getting more cigars in more people's hands.

I couldn't possibly agree more.

They're also, cigars are very lowercase D democratic.

You know, they're very, they're a social equalizer.

You get blue collar, white collar, all sorts of backgrounds.

People come together, good conversation.

Very wise statement.

Okay, so go to to Madison's website.

Madison, excellent to see you as always.

Great to see you, Michael.

Have a great one, brother.

Good to see all of you.

I'm Michael Knowles.

This is the Michael Knowles Show.

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