Pints With Aquinas - BONUS: Catholic Objections to Voting for Trump w/ Michael Knowles

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

I sit down with Michael Knowles from the Daily Wire to discuss objections some Catholics have for voting for Trump in 2020.   SPONSORS Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/ Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd Covenant Eyes: https://www.covenanteyes.com/ (use promo code: mattfradd) STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/   GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show.   LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd   MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx   CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

G'day, g'day everybody. Hello and welcome to this special episode of Pints with Aquinas in which we will be interviewing, chatting with Michael Knowles from The Daily Wire. I plan on throwing at Michael Knowles objections that Catholics sometimes have for voting for Trump. Now both Michael and myself are practicing Catholics and so in today's episode we'll try to see if we can respond to these objections. You might be on the fence, not sure who you should be voting for. Maybe you've decided you're not going to vote at all. Maybe you're a Biden supporter but are open to voting for Trump. Wherever you're at, thanks for being here.

We plan on chatting for about 30 minutes or so and then taking questions in the live stream. So again, thanks for being here. I think, too, it's probably worth recognizing that sometimes Catholics get a little exhausted by all this political talk. And I totally get that. Living in Australia, we didn't have the same emphasis on politics as y'all do here. And I'm a little exhausted as well. But I don't think that means that we should avoid or abandon our civic duty. Obviously, we have to play a part in the civic discourse. And Thomas Aquinas himself even wrote a document called De Ragnos in which he discussed the merits of different political systems. So that's what we'll be doing today.

Before I bring Michael on, though, I want to let you know that this, let's have a look here, this two weeks from now, I will be hosting the largest Catholic apologetics conference that has ever taken place in the history of mankind. You're welcome. We have well over 60 presenters like Dr. William Lane Craig, who's not even a Catholic, but he'll be there giving a talk. Very Catholic friendly. Dr. Ed Fazer, Dr. Scott Hahn, Dr. Peter Kreeft. The list goes on and on. It's from October 23rd through 25th.

It's 100% free and it's 100% virtual. So no matter where you are, you can participate. I've put a link in the description below. Be sure to register because we're going to have a ton of talks. We're looking at having about 60,000 participants from all over the world. But after that weekend, the talks will no longer be available. And so you'll miss it if you don't go right now and register. Again, it's 100% free. So be sure to go check out the Pints with Aquinas Virtual Catholic Apologetics Conference. Michael Knowles, what's going on, mate? Good to see you. I'm so glad to be here, especially after you made what I felt was a very persuasive argument for why you can't vote for Donald Trump. Of all the arguments I've heard

for why someone can't vote for Donald Trump, I felt yours was the most compelling. Thank you very much. For those who didn't see it, it was because I'm Australian. It was funny. Somebody called me today and they said, hey, someone's really upset with you. I said, why? And they said,

they can't believe you're voting for Biden. And I went, no. And they went, oh. So I guess some people didn't click on the greatest clickbait of the year to discover that that was the reason. But anyway, mate, it's really great to have you on the show.

I said before the show, it's lovely. I was sitting here watching you get your hair done. This is why you look so good. I'm over here sweating. I like to think that I just wake up like this, but this is all artificial prosthetics. Whereas you, you have this natural sheen. I don't know if it's that Australian living. I don't know what it is, but you just don't need it.

Very good. Well, thank you very much. Kind of you. Okay, well, let's get into this. First of all, did you watch the debate last night? What did you think about it? Oh, I loved it. I really loved it because it was a real debate, to quote Kamala Harris when she short-circuited on Stephen Colbert's show. It was a debate. It was a debate. And so we saw that when these arguments are presented, even with what I felt was pretty clearly biased moderator, when the arguments are presented openly without too much interruption, it was very clear that the conservative arguments were more persuasive.

Kamala Harris had very little to say responding to court packing, responding to her flips on energy, on fracking, on all sorts of issues, on the Green New Deal, which she actually co-sponsored in the Senate. And so I thought that was terrific. Pence clearly won the debate. Both sides evaded questions, which is a practice as old as time. But I felt he did it much more convincingly than she did. It was kind of like getting into a time machine, though. It was like looking back at pre-Trump debates. Trump completely upended this. And there's a good side to it and there's a bad side.

On the one hand, I liked that it was more civilized. I liked that we could hear what the candidates were saying. On the other hand though, it did seem a little bit more disingenuous. It was political speech, really, from both sides. And so you had to kind of parse, what does he mean? What does she mean? What does that? Whereas Trump, you know, does this thing that is totally novel in politics, which is he'll actually answer the question that he's being asked. And so often

you'll say, no, Mr. President, don't answer that question. That's questions of trap, but, but he doesn't, it makes it much more alive. It seems much more earnest. And so what it really, what I concluded from it was that the the balanced ticket of Trump Pence is really quite brilliant. Early on in the year, there were calls to dump Mike Pence. He doesn't add too much. I feel he does add quite a lot. You know, there's a bit of a yin and yang going on with them, whereas for Biden and Harris, I don't really see what she adds to the ticket. Biden had backed himself into a corner where he said he was going to pick a black woman. And in terms of black women who are prominent in democratic politics, he really only had two or

three choices. There was Karen Bass, who's the head of the Congressional Black Caucus. That wasn't going to work because she's an actual communist and has worked for communists for decades. And Kamala Harris, who is very prominent, but she's not likable. There's a reason that democratic voters rejected her very early in the primaries, and I don't see really what she adds to the ticket. But it does seem as though Biden's going to be able to evade future debates. President Trump's saying he won't participate in a virtual debate now because obviously they'll just mute his microphone. So I don't know that it's going to have a huge effect on the race, but it was a good

night for the Republicans. Before we look at some of these objections Catholics have for voting for Trump, I wanted to ask you, how has your opinion changed on, or has it changed on President Donald Trump from back, you know, 2016 before the election and now? Like, were you pro-Trump? Did you vote for him last time? And how has that changed? Will you vote for him this time?

I did end up voting for him in the general. I supported Senator Cruz in the primaries. I actually did a couple of TV commercials for Senator Cruz. Obviously, I host a podcast with him now. So really, I was very much drawn to him. I knew he was a reliable conservative. With President Trump, I wasn't so sure. I was off put a little bit by some of the eccentric language, some might say vulgar language. But really, my concern with President Trump was not that kind of stylistic or aesthetic question. My worry was that he had been friends with these Democratic politicians for a long time, donated to them.

I feared he would govern as a left winger. He obviously hasn't. He's the most conservative president, certainly in my lifetime, probably the last hundred years or so. So though I voted for him somewhat cautiously,, I basically think that the guy should not have four more years, but 40 more years. And I think I'd essentially crawl over broken glass to vote for him over Joe Biden. So he's really won me over in a way that I think is true for many conservatives who were skeptical of him in 2016, but who have been impressed with the job he's done. One of the things Shapiro says, which I really liked, is that people who are voting for Trump, many people are voting for him, not because they think he's fantastic, but because they see him as

a bulwark against what's coming, whether that have to do with religious censorship, free speech, gun rights, these sorts of things. Would you agree with that? I think that's true, though. I think it doesn't quite give Trump enough credit. I think that's true, though I think it doesn't quite give Trump enough credit. You know, I don't think that the state of the conservative movement such as it is was particularly strong before Donald Trump. You had these weak political candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney who gave in to the premises of the left. I mean, let's not forget Mitt Romney, who's now styling himself a principled conservative. I mean, let's not forget Mitt Romney, who's now styling himself a principled conservative. When he was running for Senate against Ted Kennedy, he ran in favor of abortion and he ran against the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

He said, I wasn't a Republican during the time of Reagan Bush. I was an independent during the time of Reagan Bush. And let's not forget, when we were putting up a candidate against Obama, we picked the one guy in America who invented Obamacare. It was like the worst possible decision. who invented Obamacare. It was like the worst possible decision. And so I think President Trump, when he upset these ossified dogmas of the conservative movement with a trademark over the T, he said maybe free trade isn't always a wonderful thing,

at least not as it's practiced. Maybe a rising China isn't so great for the world. Maybe these wars in the Middle East aren't particularly helpful to the national interest. When he said that, the official conservative movement was shocked and appalled, but actually the things he was saying were, I think, much more closely in line with the great conservative tradition, which contrary to popular belief goes back before 1987. It actually has further grounding, even before some of the more modern liberal thinkers, all the way back

to perhaps St. Thomas Aquinas. And so I'm glad that he was able to shake things up, break up that tradition. And now I am not merely voting for him as a bulwark against this mania on the increasingly radical left. I am voting for him because he had a political vision that was more precise and wiser than many of his contemporaries. Okay. Well, let's look at some of these objections to voting for Donald Trump. Again, these aren't ones that I necessarily hold, but these are ones that I have heard. These are ones that I have received over social media when I said we'd be doing this interview. And here's the first one. And maybe we can go through these pretty quickly, unless you feel some need more time. First, he's a racist. He's refused to denounce white supremacy. Even in the recent debate,

he told a white supremacist group to stand by. We're not really sure what that means. There was a lot of speculation, but we shouldn't be voting for racists and therefore we shouldn't be voting for Donald Trump. What do you say to that? Well, the so-called white supremacist group that he said to stand by is called the Proud Boys. The Proud Boys is not a white supremacist group. The Proud Boys is led by a black Cuban man. And so either he's the most confused white supremacist in the history of white supremacism or that characterization is not correct. He was asked in that debate, do you condemn white supremacy? He said, sure. He said it three times. So even the idea that he didn't condemn white supremacy is preposterous. He's of course condemned white supremacy a zillion

times. The only reason they continue to ask him this question is because it is a setup, but it's sort of like asking someone, do you still beat your wife? Any way you answer it, you don't look good, right? Because you've accepted this premise that he would endorse white supremacism. He did this at Charlottesville where Joe Biden launched his campaign. The first words in the campaign launch ad were that President Trump refused to condemn white supremacists, called them fine people at Charlottesville. That is not true. You can go back to the tape. You can read the transcript. He said there were fine people on both sides of this issue of tearing down historical statues. And then not three or

four sentences later, he says, I'm not talking about neo-Nazis and white supremacists who should be condemned totally. He's done this so many times since then. I played a clip on my show the other day. I think it went for 90 seconds of various versions. There's a photo of President Trump receiving an award next to Rosa Parks. This was from, I believe, the 1980s. It was sometime in his early New York tabloid life. I don't think white supremacists accept awards next to Rosa Parks. So I think the charge of racism, just not very much to it. Okay. Well, as we go through these other questions, these other objections, we mentioned Thomas Aquinas once. And for those who are tuning in who haven't been before, the show's called Pints with Aquinas.

And one of the things Thomas Aquinas, 13th century philosopher, theologian, did well is he articulated his opponents' objections better than they could before responding. So as we go through these, Michael, feel free to make them stronger than they are before responding. stronger than they are before responding. I think one of the difficulties in kind of modern political discourse is that you're so afraid to give an inch to the other side because then that becomes the headline for the other side. And then so no one is admitting where their guy has messed up. And I just, I don't want to live in that world. So here's the second objection. People will say he's an asshole. The way he's treated women from the Access Hollywood tapes to apparently his lawyer paying around $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to shut her up. The sorts of things he said about women. I mean, you said that you have that show with Ted Cruz. He posted a photo of Melania and Heidi

Cruz and said the images are worth a thousand words. That just seems like a crappy thing to do. And so he's a crappy person who's kind of a misogynist. And so we shouldn't vote for someone like that. What do you say to that? Well, regarding the retweet of his wife and Senator Cruz's wife, it is a subtle distinction, but it is worth pointing out that he didn't write that tweet. He did retweet it. It was still obviously ghastly that he did it and indefensible. But he pointed out in a recent interview, I think it was with the head of Barstool Sports. He said he was asked, do you regret any of your tweets? And he said, do I? Of course I regret my tweets. And I mostly regret my retweets. It's the retweets that get you in

trouble. So I'm not going to defend some of his more lurid statements and tweets, but neither does Donald Trump defend them. And he's come out. And I think, especially as you say, in politics, no one ever wants to give an inch. The man for all the accusations that he's a narcissist and he never admits he's wrong. He actually has admitted he's wrong a few times. And that requires a political humility. I'm glad he has that humility. He told another joke, but one time he was describing how he doesn't drink. He said, I think I'm the only president who's never had a beer. That's the only good thing you can say about me. Could you imagine if I drank? Oh, I'd be the worst. Okay. Yeah. That sort of self-effacing humor is helpful, but you did

just sort of refer to Donald Trump as humble. I don't know if you want to back that up a bit, because I think there's a lot of people watching right now who might be like, are you kidding me? I do. No, I would like to back this up. I think there is a profound humility to President Trump. And the reason that people don't get it, and I think the reason that I get it, is because I'm from New York and I know how New Yorkers talk. And a lot of people don't know how New Yorkers talk. So they'll say he's lying about the crowd sizes when he says they're the biggest crowds ever.

That's just how New Yorkers talk. So many of my friends, my family members, especially the ones who are a little bit older, they speak in hyperbole. They speak with their hands, as I am doing, as President Trump often does. That sort of thing, when he says, oh man, I'm the strongest guy in the world, I'm a physical specimen. There is an irony to that. He is being self-effacing. He's actually said this sometimes to reporters. When he makes a joke, he'll say, ah, you didn't get that one. When he says, I'm a young, vibrant man, he doesn't believe he is 30 years old. He's making a sort of ironic statement and joking about his age with regard to the age of other candidates,

for instance, Joe Biden. But I don't even care. Obviously, the guy wears gold ties and puts his name up on buildings. And so I'm not suggesting that he doesn't have an ego. An ego is not only an occupational hazard of the presidency. It is a prerequisite, it is a job requirement. If you think that Joe Biden and Barack Obama don't have egos, give me a break. Barack Obama said that his election would cause the seas to lower and the earth to heal. That kind of messianic talk,

AOC says that she will save the world from global warming. Donald Trump does not have that kind of egotism. And the difference is not a personality difference necessarily. It's a view of politics. And this is where the true humility comes in. The left believes that there is no limit to politics. The left often falls into utopianism. This is the premise of progressivism. You can see the architects of political progressivism write about this clearly. Woodrow Wilson in particular, he says that we're no longer living in the world of Newton like the founding fathers did. We now live in the world of Darwin. There is no fixed nature. We just need to harness the power of government and we can solve these problems of

poverty, war, disease, whatever. President Trump, going back to a profound conservative insight, President Trump, going back to a profound conservative insight, realizes there are limits to politics. For instance, you see it in the coronavirus debate. We're told by the left that Donald Trump is responsible for every death from the coronavirus. Every death. Is he responsible for the deaths in Italy? Is he responsible for the deaths in China where the virus began? Of course not. But what they are saying is that there is some government policy

that will eradicate disease. And we know that that is not the case. They say there's some government policy that will eradicate poverty. We know that the poor will always be with us. We know we have that on good authority. The left believes that there is some policy where we will not have any troubles in this world. And we need to be afraid. They say, be afraid as long as we do have these troubles. What does Christ tell us? He tells us you will have trouble in this world, but take heart. Do not fear. Be encouraged because I have overcome the world. That limited view of politics that derives from Christianity, that is the conservative view. And regardless of how many buildings Donald

Trump has his name on, that reflects a much deeper and more important humility. That leads us to the next objection I've heard. You've quoted Christ as saying the poor you will always have with us. But of course, Christ has taught us to take care of the poor. The Bible talks about taking in the widow, the orphan. And so the next objection I've heard is that he's anti-immigrant. He calls Mexicans who come across the border drug dealers and rapists and separates families at the border, according to Michelle Obama, through kids in cages. What do you have to say about that?

Well, the kids in cages is just a complete farce because the photos that circulated during that dishonest political attack actually didn't come from the Trump administration. political attack actually didn't come from the Trump administration. They came from 2014. They came from a moment when parents were sending their children across the border illegally during the Obama administration and the Obama administration put the kids in cages in as much as we can say that kids were ever put in cages. So that, that one is just a complete lie. I don't remember reading anywhere in scripture, our Lord telling us that nations have become illegitimate. I think Christ says go out and preach to all the nations, but he doesn't say that there may no longer be any nations. We may no longer have any national boundaries. I don't recall that being the teaching of the Catholic Church ever from the first century all the way up to the present.

There is a humanitarian, I even hesitate to use that word because it's so horrifically abused, but there is a compassionate case for reducing illegal immigration. There was a survey from Fusion and from the Huffington Post, which showed that upwards of 60 to 80% of women and girls who are brought across that border illegally are raped, sexually assaulted along the way. That is a horrific system that should be shut down immediately. And people who create incentives toward illegal immigration, namely the open borders calling left, are encouraging that system and they should think deeply about the consequences of that. Beyond that, we have a right in our country to determine who comes in. We have a

right to determine who takes part in our politics. We do have a constitutional system of self-government, at least for now. And if you can't control who becomes a citizen, then you no longer have self-government. There was a survey that came out a couple of years ago, showed that the majority of Americans, cutting across both parties, want to reduce dramatically, not just illegal, but also legal immigration by about 60%. Now, is this because these are cruel, racist people? No, of course not. It cuts across races too. It's because over the last 60 years, since Ted Kennedy's immigration reform, over the last 60 years, we have had the largest transplantation of human beings that were going into the United States in the history of the world. This is the largest

movement of people in the history of the world. And at the same time, if you're discouraging assimilation, which is what the same left that has encouraged this migration program has been calling for, then you no longer will have a country. You no longer have respect for the rule of law. You no longer have a common culture. And if you look around, that's what we've got. America is a wonderful place. We're more generous on immigration than any other country, again, in the history of the world. But we need to have a country in order for it to be a good country for other people to come to. And President Trump has not called for any kind of dramatic reduction to immigration.

Actually, he's just tried to reduce illegal immigration largely and slightly bring down some other numbers. And he's been called a fascist for it. But there's simply no argument if you look at the – if you get down to the actual numbers. Nobody's calling to turn off immigration. We just want to bring it somewhere in line with historical norms. Right. Because that was going to be my next point, that sometimes people look at conservatives and say, you don't seem to care about the immigrant. So I agree that you have a right to defend your borders and to allow in who you want to allow in. But isn't there some duty to the immigrant that's fleeing from a war-torn country? I mean, that wasn't my case. I am an

immigrant, but I was fleeing because my wife was pretty and she lived here. But what about those people? What duty do we have to them who are fleeing those countries into the United States? And has Trump said anything about that? Well, sure. Right now we have, I don't know, about 15,000 refugees that want to come into the country. It depends on how you define refugee, of course. But President Trump wants to bring that number to about 15,000 per year, which is still a very high number. That number was about 96,000 per year under the Obama administration. It was much higher, and the definition of refugee became much cloudier because Barack Obama was much more in favor of immigration because the Democrats believe it will give them an electoral advantage. But don't forget, we're talking about anywhere from 15,000

to 100,000 people out of 2 million. We have 2 million people coming here every year. These are not refugees for the overwhelming majority. And even many of the people who come from Latin America who are claiming refugee status are not actually refugees. They're economic migrants, the vast majority of them. And here's the evidence. They will come from countries like El Salvador, Guatemala. They will come up,

but they will not remain in the first country that they can enter into. They will not remain, for instance, in Mexico. If they're merely fleeing political persecution, then you get into a country, you leave your former country, you're safe. But that's not what they, and of course not. I wouldn't want to stay in Mexico either. I'd want to come to the United States as well. But I don't think we should pretend that that is because they're being persecuted or they're at risk of death. It's because they seek better economic opportunity. That's fine. But we need to make sure that we're taking care of the citizens we already have. And we have an immigration regime that is fair, that is equitable, that is just and doesn't give totally undue priority to people from three countries over the rest of the

world. Okay. here's another objection. There was that tape that recently surfaced between Trump and Bob Woodward, in which he seems to downplay the virus and suggested that he was downplaying that to the American people. So the Democrats are arguing that he's really botched this whole COVID thing.

So isn't that a good reason not to vote for Trump? Not at all. Don't forget the original models about coronavirus that we were presented with said that two and a half million Americans would die. So the number 200,000 is very high, and I suspect it'll go up higher. But we're talking about a tenth of the number that the original models showed us. By any standard, that is an amazing success. Early on, President Trump took the virus much more seriously than Joe Biden did. You'll recall that President Trump shut down travel from China. He was

excoriated for this. Joe Biden called it hysterical xenophobia. Nancy Pelosi went to Chinatown in San Francisco without a mask, with a crowd, and said famously, come on down to Chinatown, right as the virus is spiking in America. So I think it's very rich of them to accuse President Trump of not taking this seriously. Now, on the other hand, we should point out that the virus is much, much, much, much less lethal than they were all trying to convince us of in the first place. I do observe that our rather 74-year-old

fast food chomping, physical exercise eschewing president just beat this thing in three days. That's very impressive and should give us all a lot of hope. A higher than a 99% survival rate is a wonderful thing. And by the way, the median, uh, median COVID victim is older than the life expectancy in the United States. That's not an argument for throwing granny over the bus, but that's saying we need to target how we're going to protect people and we don't need to lock down the entire country. I do wish that President Trump had used the power of the federal government to push to reopen the country a little bit sooner

than he has. He hasn't done that. He's actually deferred to the states, in my opinion, a little bit too much. But that's really my only criticism. Otherwise, he was presented with an historic problem and I feel he's handled it very well. Here's another objection that's a little different that I hear from some people. They're talking about, look, there's all this rioting and looting and mayhem in the cities. If we just elect Biden, things will go back to normal. Like maybe we disagree with him, but he kind of seems harmless. If we vote for Trump, we can foresee maybe a lot more rioting and we don't really want that. So let's just go ahead and give the Democrats what they want and vote for vote for Biden. What's wrong with that? This is an excellent observation. I do not in any way contradict the observation they're making. Namely, if Biden gets elected,

you'll see less rioting and looting and arson in the streets. I think you probably will. Joe Biden actually promised us this. Maybe it was a threat. He said, we can't take four more years of this as the cities were on fire. Why were the cities on fire? Because Democrats were burning them down, exclusively Democrats. We're talking about Antifa, BLM, and associated anarchists. None of those people, not one single person out there burning down the cities is going to vote for Donald Trump. And I suspect the vast majority will vote for Joe Biden. Ronald Reagan put this very well in his time for choosing speech. He said, there's only one guaranteed way that you can have peace and you can have it in the next minute. Surrender. What, what Joe Biden and the Democrats are offering is extortion. What they're saying is,

it's a nice country you got there. That's a lot of nice cities you got there. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it. Elect us and we'll stop burning it down. If we acquiesce to that kind of intimidation and extortion, we have surrendered our right to self-government. There is at that point no purpose to a conservative movement. There is no purpose to a Republican Party. There is no purpose to pretending

that we live under some constitutional order because we don't. That will have been extra legal gang justice, also known as injustice. And it's a graver threat probably than anything we could look at from abroad, at China or from Russia or anything like that, because that would utterly upend the constitutional system. I think it was Cardinal Tobin who came out recently and said that a Catholic in good conscience can vote for Biden. What do you think about that? With great deference to Cardinal Tobin, I don't see that in the tradition of the Catholic Church. I don't see that in the obvious support for killing a million babies a year that Joe Biden has articulated. I don't see that in the obvious support for killing a million babies a year that Joe Biden has articulated. I don't see that in Joe Biden's having already sued the Little Sisters of the Poor because they

refused to pay for abortion drugs and promising to do so again. I don't see that in the Democratic establishment's promise to shut down churches and yet to reopen riot venues for BLM anarchists and socialists. Seems pretty clear to me. A Catholic cannot, in good conscience, vote for a pro-abortion politician in an election such as ours when the stakes are so clear. It's not possible. There have been some dubious theories suggested that if a candidate supports, say, capital punishment, on which topic, by the way, there can be legitimate disagreement among Catholics per Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and per Thomas Aquinas and per St. Paul and per Blessed Pius IX, who not only supported capital punishment but actually carried out many capital punishments in the papal states. So I think that attempt, the so-called seamless garment theory, is a way to muddy the waters on this issue. The issue has never been more clear. And I fear this kind of advice coming from people such as Cardinal Tobin, because wittingly or unwittingly, I fear that it puts people's souls in great jeopardy. Do you think we've just kind of grown deaf to the horror of abortion?

It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. It's bad, but there's other issues. It's like we've been talking about it for so long, we fail to realize that this is a real thing that's happening, that babies are having scissors jammed in the back of their head. Their brains are being sucked outside of their skulls. They're being discarded like waste. And yet we don't... We seem to be ashamed to say that, yeah, I'm a one party voter. Abso-bloody-lutely. Like if Trump came out tomorrow, let's not use an individual, but maybe

somewhere in the future, someone comes out and they were against interracial marriages, let's say. I think a lot of people would be like, yeah, that's a really good reason not to vote for that person. And maybe it is. I think it is. But abortion is even worse than that. And yet we're ashamed to say we are one issue voters. But what do you say to those who say, well, really, Trump hasn't done a great deal for the pro-life movement? I know he showed up to the March for Life. I know he's given lip service to it.

But he could have done a heck of a lot more than he has done. He's not doing it and he won't do it. So abortions are going to continue to happen no matter who we vote for. So to say that, you know, it's a bit of a false dilemma, someone might say, to say that Biden is sort of pro-choice and Trump is 100% pro-life. No, I don't think so at all. I think President Trump is by far the most pro-life president we've ever had. I think your point is exactly right. And the dulling of our census to abortion, by the way, is not accidental. It hasn't come up from the grassroots either. This was an intentional movement, in particular by

left-wing Catholics, to muddy the waters here and tell you that if you don't vote to raise taxes on the rich, that's just as bad as not voting, voting rather for a pro-abortion politician. just as bad as not voting, voting rather for a pro-abortion politician. The tax issue is nothing. It is nothing at all compared to the question of abortion, the slaughter of a million babies per year. President Trump did defund Planned Parenthood, not by the totality of their funding, but he defunded them by about $60 million. That was very important. He showed up to the March for Life, first president to do that. I actually saw him do it there and it was wonderful and wonderfully inspiring. I was very proud of that. He has appointed well over 200 judges to the bench and he, as of now, is slated to have three conservative judges on the court. If he wins reelection, you could be looking at at least one,

very possibly two more judges. You're talking about a fundamental reordering of the court. Roe versus Wade cannot be overturned overnight. We've been trying that for a long time, but it was entrenched. It has led to the absolutely vicious Supreme Court confirmation process we've seen since 1987 in Judge Bork. You saw Planned Parenthood v. Casey come up in the early 1990s. You thought that was the opportunity to overturn Roe. And then Justice Kennedy, Justice Kennedy, who then stepped in after Bork got borked, Justice Kennedy came in and reaffirmed not merely the invisible constitutional right to abortion, which I guess was written in invisible ink beneath the penumbras and above

the emanations, but he affirmed the individual right to redefine reality, to define one's own concept of existence and the meaning of life. That is the most radical Supreme Court decision probably in the history of our country. And so that is not going to be overturned overnight. It's not going to hinge on one vote. We need a solidly conservative court. Trump has been crystal clear about this. And I have to tell you, judges always disappoint people. But the extraordinarily Catholic mother of seven law professor, former clerk for Scalia and appellate judge Amy Barrett, if I were a gambling man and I had to put money on her views of the preposterous

decision Roe versus Wade, I think she's on the right side of it. All right. Well, what I want to do for everybody watching, we're going to take some questions from those watching on YouTube. So get your questions ready. Feel free to write them in the live chat. Before we do, do us a favor and click or smash, destroy that like button. Give us a subscribe because that would help us. But before we do that, I want to say thank you to Halo. I understand you also promote Halo. I love Halo. It's terrific. It's a wonderful app. It's not just one of these sort of mindfulness meditation apps. I mean, those are fine too, but it actually takes it a step further toward prayer. I tell you, I'm a pretty kind of trad guy. I'm more of like a physical rosary kind of guy. I tried out Halo. Oh my gosh, it's wonderful. And it really does

elevate your prayer life. Keep talking. I won't have to do the ad read. No, for those of you who are trying to grow in your prayer life, I would really highly suggest going to halo.com slash Matt Fradd. There is a link below. You can get access to the entire app for a full month. They have a free version, so you can download it right now and start listening to it. But to get access to the entire thing, try it out. Halo.com slash Matt Fradd. H the entire thing, try it out. hallow.com slash Matt Fradd. H-A-L-L-O-W dot com slash Matt Fradd. You can listen to sleep stories, Bible sleep stories. I even submitted one, Michael, but no one makes mention of it on this bloody website.

Apparently, Father Mike Schmitz is worth mentioning. That's fair enough. I don't think anyone wants to hear me say, in the beginning, God created. I don't know. But there's some really great stuff. It's really sophisticated. It's 100% Catholic. I highly recommend going and checking out hallo.com.

Click below in the description, hallo.com slash Matt Fradd. hallo.com slash Matt Fradd. And now I'm going to try and get back to this bloody thing. There we go. See, what do you do when things don't work? You probably have people behind the scenes. I have an army of people, but they don't manage to fix it ever either. So I'm just sort of stuck.

That's fine on screen, though. I sort of prefer ad-libbing anyway, you know. All right. Let's take some questions here. First question comes from KT Bell. A wild question for Knowles. What are his thoughts about the Latin Mass? Maybe we can keep this somewhat brief so we can get back to politics. I should have read that more carefully. Oh, I can keep it very brief. I love it. I love it. It's so great. I wish I had done it. You know, obviously it didn't exist when I was a kid and then I'd fallen away from the

church when the modu proprio came out and then I discovered it in 2013 or something. I said, where has this been all my life? Oh my God, it's just wonderful. I go whenever I can. Yeah. I know that Matt Fradd deserves hell, not a beautiful liturgy. I get that. But I wish somebody had have respected me enough to present me with the beautiful tradition of the Catholic church rather than giving me the terrible music, the bringing up weird objects for the offertory, like grass, like field hockey sticks and posters we made for school. I don't know why people thought that was a good idea. But anyway. No, no. Here's a question from Jesse Martin.

Why do you think SCOTUS justices are always overwhelmingly Catholic and Jewish? Are there specific worldview reasons? Because they tend to have a greater respect for the law and not merely the laws written on paper, but a deeper understanding of the law, of common law and civic law and natural law, ultimately, from which all of that derives. So I do think there is, it is not accidental that Catholics and Jews tend to gravitate a little bit more toward the law. And, you know, I think we booted out those antinomian heretics quite some time ago. And actually, Martin Luther, I believe, booted out antinomian heretics as well. So there

are, I think, theological as well as cultural reasons that undergird it. Here's a good question from Evan Collins. He says, I would love to see Michael actually steel man arguments against Trump. He is not a perfect politician. I really desire to genuinely hear an olive branch in this discussion. So here's a perfect politician. I really desire to genuinely hear an olive branch in this discussion. So here's a good point. We obviously have Democrats listening to this and us just telling them like, well, you're wrong. Isn't going to help anybody. So how would you kind of like, where would you meet them? How would you say to them? Look, I get it. I see why you think this is the case, but here's why you should see differently. Um, cause I think sometimes

people are turned off by this kind of conservative punditry. Go for it. Sure. I would be more than happy to. I think before you can steel man the arguments, you've got to reject all the stupid ones. The idea that President Trump is somehow out of line in American policy and what he's doing is unprecedented. That's just preposterous. That's silly and is easily refuted by even a cursory glance at history. So get rid of that one. The idea that he's a fascist or a racist or thisist or that is just ridiculous. So get rid of that one too. The best argument I think against President Trump is that he is not statesmanlike in his oratory. I actually think oratory is the issue. It comes down to speech. President Trump famously speaks

off the cuff. He uses words that are maybe not as high soaring as the rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln. For instance, if you read the Lincoln-Douglas debates compared to say the Trump-Biden debates, you will weep for your country. And so I think that's a real problem because in politics, especially in self-government, speech is politics and politics is speech. That is how we govern ourselves is with speech. We are referring to objects that are outside of ourselves, and we use these symbols called words, and we articulate them. And then the other guy who's listening understands what we're referring to, and then we try to persuade one another of how to live. And on that front, President Trump

uses a degraded vocabulary. There's no question about that. The issue of this, though, is what he is running against. People think he of this though, is what he is running against. People think he's running against immigration or what he's running against high taxes or no, it's not. He told us what he's running against. He's running against political correctness. He said, I think political correctness is killing this country and we don't have time for it. And what is political correctness? Political correctness is an attempt to undermine our traditional standards of speech and create a new standard of speech, which is it's kind of like an anti speech code speech code. It's a speech code that undermines the old speech code.

And and conservatives misunderstand what political correctness is, too. I'm going to try to write a long piece about this because both sides get this issue wrong, especially when it when it comes to Trump. But they are they are undermining the traditional standards of speech and enforcing this kind of censorship on conservatives right now. But what's even worse than that is they are denying objective reality itself. I just quoted Justice Kennedy's decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where he said we can just redefine reality. But we can't. That's not true. This idea of intersectionality, of the supremacy of suffering rather than objective truth, the idea that everything is subjective or relative, that has

utterly infected the left. And it's kind of behind political correctness, which is the idea that through euphemism, we can recreate the world. We can define our own reality. And because of that, we now have a politics on the left that is advocated as not one of reason, not one where we use logic to come to our own conclusions, right? We're told all the reasonable arguments our founders and statesmen ever made are just lies to cover up their own interests as white men. And we've got this kind of anti-logical framework on the left. And then on the right, what do we have? Well, we can either play by the old system and be nice and amiable and get completely crushed, or we can have this bulldog who also yells and exerts his interest and basically creates a politics that is rooted somewhat in reason, but largely in will.

And that is an unfortunate fact. I wish that we could have a politics that exalted reason above the will, but we don't. And that's actually not Trump's fault. Trump is playing that game, but he is not the one who started that game. And so for people who are really put off by that, I'd say, I get it. I'm with you. I totally understand it. But we can't play by a set of rules that our opponents are not playing by. In war and in politics, your opponents get a say. And so I think it's a good argument against Trump, but you've got to apply that same standard to the left.

Okay. What about the idea that Trump is against science? We heard a bit of that in the Harris-Pence debate last night. He seems to deny that human action is having an effect on climate change. What do you say to that? I think it's charming that people who tell us that babies are not babies and people who tell us that men are really women tell us that we are science deniers. That's a very ironic sort of statement to make. This requires also an understanding of what science is. Science comes from the Latin word scire, shire, which means to know it referred to all of knowledge. And then at the beginning of the progressive project, well, really it begins during the scientific revolution, but then it really hits its stride during the beginning of

the progressive project in the 19th century. You see this real split between science and, and philosophy. You see the advent of the social sciences, which were created to fund the progressive administrative state that separates politics from politics and that uses statistics, which comes from the word statista in Italian or statistic in German, which is literally meaning relating to the state or statist, to feed those scientific data in to the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is going to make our decisions. No longer are we going to be tasked with governing ourselves and persuading one another based on eternal questions using philosophy and reason. No, we don't have to do that now

because science is just gonna run our lives for us. We don't need to make decisions. We have Dr. Fauci, we have statistics, we have social science. Now this creates a very unfortunate dilemma where the Constitution is totally undermined. But the sort of innovator of this, Woodrow Wilson, told us he was doing it. He said this is a foreign concept.

I'm bringing this in from Germany. And we're going to now create this kind of bizarro world in which everything is political, your choice of shoes, your choice of coffee. Everything is going to become politicized except for politics. Politics is now now the actual political decisions are gonna be taken out of the public realm. They're going to be given to the experts in science. So I always refer to science with a capital S and a trademark over the E because when they refer to science, they're, they're merely asserting, they're making a political assertion that their view of politics rooted in their philosophical premises is the exclusively true political premise. And they call that science so that you cannot debate about it. But whenever you actually point them to limited scientific sort of materialist phenomena,

such as babies or biological sex, or even their claims about the climate, they never have an answer on it. I mean, they say that President Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord and that's going to destroy the world. But based on the actual scientific estimates of what the Paris Climate Accord would affect, you see that within a whole century of the Paris Climate Accord, it would barely reduce the global mean temperature at all. The global mean temperature, by the way, a problematic measurement, but I'm just taking them at their own terms. It's not that Republicans or conservatives or Trump in particular are denying science. I mean, that statement is almost meaningless. The real problem here is that the so-called advocates of science

don't know what science is. They've redefined their political views as science, as a way to shut up people who have different philosophical premises, which is why I frankly think we should ban the word science from political discourse, because it's merely a word for demagoguery that cuts off actual substantive political conversation. Here's a question from Rebecca Edmondson. Can Catholics support the BLM organization? Obviously, racism is wrong, but what about the organization itself? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is very clear about this, right? Catholics cannot be socialists. Not just the Catechism. You've heard this from Pope Leo XIII. He called socialism a

pest, a plague, a wicked confederacy. You've heard this from Blessed Pope Pius IX. You've heard this from St. Pius X. You've heard this from Pius XI, Pius XII. You've heard this from all the way, Pope Pius, you've heard this from rather John XXIII, who is considered a little bit more of a liberal pope, and yet John XXIII very clearly says that no Catholic can commit even to a moderate form of socialism. And the BLM movement is explicitly and avowedly socialist, Marxist. The founder of it, Patrice Collors, says that she and her co-founder, Alicia Garza, are trained Marxists. They seek to dismantle the Western trained Marxists. They seek to dismantle the Western prescribed nuclear family. They seek to undermine traditional sexual ethics. They seek to undermine, in a phrase, all of Christian civilization. And I understand that, I don't

know, Catholics don't want to be called racist or something. What a ridiculous idea that we even have to indulge. Can I just throw this out there? I find it interesting that conservative Catholics are sometimes accused of being racist when we would literally kill for a black pope right now. That's right. I'm being facetious. That is a great point, though. I made this point to a liberal Catholic friend of mine who is talking about how conservatives are just awful and terrible and we should support BLM and all this. And I said, oh, great. Well, I can't

wait for your support of Cardinal Sarah at the next conclave. That'll be so wonderful. And I didn't have much to say about that. Of course, it's ridiculous. And BLM, you know, they chose this very deceptive title, Black Lives Matter. It's brilliant, really. It's a brilliant title. Obviously, nobody disagrees with the statement. There are many people who believe that many other people think that black lives do not matter, right? It couldn't be us. We're such wonderful people, but they all think they're all evil, evil people out there. But of course, not a soul disagrees with it. And if I were to form an organization called Save the Puppies International, and my organization worked to, I don't know, slaughter hundreds of innocent people per day, would you oppose

my organization? I mean, does that mean that you don't love puppies? I don't think so. And the organization is just, once again, to not put too fine a point on it, you are imperiling your soul if you support that organization. Well, that was a fine point. Thank you. What do you think about those? Some people say, look, I'm tired of the two-party system. And the only way we're going to break out of that was when people refuse to vote. And so let's just either not vote at all or vote for a third party candidate. I do think that some people should choose not to vote, namely people

who don't know anything about, namely people who don't know anything about the issues and who don't have any particular interest in civic life. I don't think there's anything to be gained by those people voting. It's kind of a very novel idea that people who have no interest in the political life of the country should vote. For what reason? Because this is now the sacrament and the liturgy of liberalism? I don't know.

It doesn't have any actual effect on the flourishing of our society, on our liberties, or on justice. I always am taken aback by the criticisms of the two-party system, because I never understand what is to replace it. Are we going to have some, what is the magical third party, and what are the positions of the party? The reason that the two parties exist as they do is because their ideas actually largely cohere. Early on, about a century ago, there was a big complaint among political scientists that there was no distinction between the parties, that they were not polarized enough. You could vote for a Republican, he might be a Democrat or vice versa. Phyllis Schlafly, great Catholic conservative activist famously said that we need a choice, not an echo. And now we we need a choice, not an

echo. And now we do have a choice. I'm very pleased by that. The other problems of third parties is that they can be spoilers in elections so that the majority of people want basically a similar idea of government, but then the least popular idea of government gets in because you split the vote of the former two. You can have the chaos of the European parliaments, which I don't think any of us particularly want that. So I'm very pleased with the state of the party. I think the states, the positions of the two parties are pretty clear. And I know which side of that I'm on. And I think I'm surprised that people are so confused over which side they would be on. Well, speaking of that, here's a comment, and I think it's kind of illustrative of what a lot

of Catholics are saying right now and Christians in general. This person says, it is so saddening to see Christians making such rhetorical stunts to justify a man like Trump. No end justifies every means. This is something a lot of people say. I was working out with somebody recently and they were like, he's just, he's gross. I don't want to have to vote for somebody like that. I want to vote for somebody who's like Jesus, who's, if not morally perfect, obviously nobody's perfect, but at least a moral person who I can get behind. I think that this person is saying something similar. Yeah. It's an extraordinarily cowardly point of view to say that. I think these are people who would have tried to impeach King David. David, oh my gosh, you know what that guy did? He sent a man

to his death just so he could sleep with his wife. That's worse than anything Trump ever did, isn't it? The prerequisite for all of these virtues, especially in public life, is courage. You need to have courage. And if you sit at home and you preen about how awful these nasty little politicians are, I'm sure you could feel very good about yourself, but you would do absolutely no good for your country, but you'd feel really good. You'd feel very morally superior. And that's what we're supposed to do, right? Self-righteousness. That's what we're supposed to pursue. I don't think sanctimony. Is that what Christ calls for? I don't think he calls for sanctity. I don't think he calls for self-righteousness and sanctimony.

People who engage in politics in public life, like all people, are going to have flaws. And people who are drawn toward politics tend to have more outsized flaws or their flaws sometimes can even be their downfall. Yeah, I mean, I just think like if I was, you or I were running for office and we had a spotlight

and cameras from every angle examining us, I don't think I'd come out pretty squeaky clean. I'd look probably just as disgusting as I know that I am. That's right. Brett Kavanaugh, who is maybe the most mild-mannered milquetoast lawyer in Washington, D.C., Brett Kavanaugh was accused without any basis whatsoever of gang rape. It was absolutely disgusting. And he was accused he was accused of this. There was even an opening for it because he would go over in high school and have beers with his friends sometimes. What a monster, that animal. And so I, I just, I have absolutely no patience for this kind of moral preening from cowardly Catholics. You know, uh, the church militant is supposed to have a backbone. And I'm sorry to see

so many weak, lily-livered Catholics rolling over and letting the cruel rape the earth. I mean, it's just absolutely unconscionable. And I'm sorry if you have to vote for the mean old orange man with the funny hair who says mean things on Twitter to try to get some sort of protection for any kind of semblance of virtue or justice in the country. But that's the costs. And I think people have to man up and do it. Well, Benjamin Handelman is pushing back a little bit against this. He's saying, how could you call it cowardly to want a moral leader? And sure, David's actions were terrible, but they weren't meant to be a prescriptive for future leaders. What's so cowardly

about not settling for someone one considers to be morally inept? It's not prescriptive, it's a descriptive. And what I am doing is not prescribing politics or telling you the sort of politics I'd like to live in. I'd like to live in a perfect, wonderful world. The name for that kind of world, by the way, is utopia, which does not mean the best place. It means no place, you, no, topia, place. The reason that we see these examples going back, not just to the Bible, but throughout all of history is because that's the way politics really is. And so you can sit there and maybe perhaps if you're sitting with your liberal friends, as I know, sometimes we all get pressure from our liberal friends and you say, no, I hate him. I'm a, I'm a conservative, but I'm not one of those

conservatives. I'm a Republican. I'm not one of those Republicans. I would never vote for anyone who would actually, you know, succeed at doing anything in politics. I'm a Mitt Romney kind of Republican. Gosh, darn it. And I hate, aren't both parties terrible. Okay. Let's have a nice tea. That's that, that is cowardice because we have to live in reality. I'm reminded there's a famous line that Democrats have used now for about 50 years. John F. Kennedy started it. His brother RFK used it. We've heard it ever since, which is, he said, some people see things that are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not? This is supposed to be inspirational to the very point that the person we're speaking with

just mentioned. What Kennedy left out is that that line was written by the socialist playwright, George Bernard Shaw, in a play called Back to Methuselah. And the phrase comes from the mouth of the serpent tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden. Living in fantasy and indulging fantasy as a matter of politics is not compassionate, it's not virtuous, and it's not kind. Virtue exists, if it is to exist at all, in reality. And I think a lot of conservatives and Catholics in the realm of politics need a reality check. All right. Well, as we wrap up here, I'd love your predictions for the election. Who wins? And what's this going to look like if there's a kind of dispute over who wins? I think that if the election were held fairly, I would guess with,

I don't know, call it 60% certainty that Trump wins. I think as you see, even as the polls show Biden up nationally, let's not forget, by the way, they're saying Biden's up 14 points nationally, somewhere between nine and 14 points. October, same time in 2016, they said Hillary Clinton was up by the exact same amount nationally, 14 points. Obviously, it didn't work out for her. So you see Biden up nationally in the polls, but in the swing states, you see President Trump is surging. So all the momentum in the states that are actually going to decide the election is going for Trump. And I think probably that is going to continue as Biden and Harris get a greater examination or a slight examination even by the mainstream media. So I think if the election

rolled fairly, Trump probably wins it. You know, I'd put a little bit of money on it. However, we're already in a constitutional crisis. They're expecting 80 to 100 million mail-in votes. We've never had a system of unsolicited mail-in votes. You know, there's a line, a fact check going around. Michael, there's never been a problem with mail-in votes before. We've had mail-in votes for a long time. That cannot be true because we have never had a system of widespread unsolicited mail-in votes. So there is no precedent. There is nothing to look back on.

We do know that there is voter fraud in mail-in, and we do know that this system is more susceptible to voter fraud. So it's obviously going gonna be litigated. Biden has already hired 600 lawyers to deal with this. They're already telling us on the left there won't be a result on election night. They're saying actually on election night it will look like Trump has won, but it will be a red mirage.

And after they, I don't know, they pick up a bunch of votes of dead people in Illinois and Ohio or something, then they're going to see that Joe Biden has won the election. Hillary Clinton has said Joe Biden should not concede the election under any circumstances, including President Trump winning, right? I mean, that is a radical statement. So it is going to be litigated. I think you're probably going to see a Bush v. Gore situation. I wasn't here during that time, but I am interested in seeing what

happens just within this country of yours. See how I put that distance between me and your country? Just because I'm afraid the whole thing's going to burn down and I need an escape route. It is pretty frigging desperate, isn't it? I know that we can say that the news magnifies things, and it's really not that bad everywhere, but I'm looking around like, it's pretty bad, right? Is this normal? Shnikes. Well, Matt, if it makes you feel better, it's going to get worse. It's going to get a lot worse. And I think you're, I think very likely you're going to get a kind of Bush v. Gore situation, but Bush v. Gore was one state, man. I mean, that was that we're just talking about Florida here. You're going to see, I don't know, it could be three or five states.

It could be more than that even. And so presumably this will be litigated up to the Supreme Court. They're going to call the court decision illegitimate because Judge Barrett replaced Ruth Ginsburg. We are headed, I'm sorry to predict, for chaos. There's a part of me, it might be a part of me that I hate that wants the whole thing to burn down anyway. I'm just kind of tired. I'm ready for the walking dead. I think actually- I know that's a terrible thing to say. I'm fully aware of it.. I think actually, I know that's a terrible thing to say. I'm fully aware of it. But there's a part of me that's like, you know what? The Catholic Church has survived the rise and fall of different civilizations. This one feels rotted from the

inside out anyway. So just kick the whole thing over and let's start again. Go on. By the way, no, I'm not going to correct you at all. I'm going to totally agree. I think actually, if we're going to make a good case for Trump that no one's really making, cause it sounds too, too unpopular. This is one of the good cases, which is that president Trump is not the beginning of some new thing. He's the end of something. My friend, Andrew Klavan makes this point all the time. Donald Trump is like, is, is the vengeance. Donald Trump is the guy who comes in and clears the table from a desiccated political system that had been growing for, I don't know, call it half of a century. And he wipes out the dynasty of Clinton. He also wipes

out the dynasty of Bush. He's kind of a big reset button. And, you know, chaos does breed opportunity. I hope we use the opportunity for good, but I'm with you. I think there's a lot of this desiccated old system, particularly within the bureaucracy, which tried to undermine the election in 2016. I think there's a lot of that that needs to be cleaned out. And what comes next? I hope it's up to us and I hope we make the right decision. Well, Michael Knowles, I thank you kindly for agreeing to be on the show. I'm sure most of my listeners are familiar with you, but for those who aren't, where can they watch, listen to your podcast? You can find me on Twitter for now until I get banned at Michael J. Knowles. You can find me. I do the Michael Knowles show at The Daily Wire. You can get that wherever you get your podcasts. I do another show at PragerU

called The Book Club. It's completely different. We just talk about great books with friends of ours. And then I do a show with Senator Cruz called Verdict. And you can also get my blank book, very, very important blank book called Reasons to Vote for Democrats, a Comprehensive Guide. I would appreciate it. It will take you as long to read as it took me to write. How well has that sold? Matt, I can't even tell you. I mean, you want to talk about unearned praise and manna from heaven. I think we're up to now about a quarter million copies or more. So it's just really... All that time I spent writing and researching, I could have just done nothing. You know, it shows you that scholarship has not

completely fallen apart in America. People still have a hunger to learn. Do you want to explain to those who aren't familiar what we're talking about it, or should they just go ahead and buy the book? I think you'll buy the book. I think President Trump called it a great book for your reading enjoyment. It has a very thorough bibliography, and that's about it. So I hope you'll buy the book. I think President Trump called it a great book for your reading enjoyment. It has a very thorough bibliography and that's about it. So I hope you enjoy it. Thank you kindly, Michael. God bless you. Thanks, Matt. Always great to talk to you, man. Bye. All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that show with Michael Knowles.

Love to know in the comment section what you think. I think it's probably no surprise that I side more with Michael than I do those who would say we ought to abstain or vote for Biden. But I'd love to hear your thoughts anyway and to learn from you in the comment section below. Before we wrap up, I want to say big thanks to Exodus 90. You might be familiar with Exodus 90 because they are fantastic. So basically this is like a spiritual boot camp for men. It begins in, let's see, 27 days, 15 hours, January, rather January 13th is when it's going to start. Basically you and a group of men get together. You abstain from things you'd rather not abstain from, right? Like warm showers and

snacks between meals and candy and alcohol. And then you start doing things that are difficult, like praying for an hour a day, meeting with your brotherhood once a week. So this country might be falling apart, but you don't have to be. You can grow strong in the Lord. Go to exodus90.com slash Matt Fradd to sign up. Exodus90.com slash Matt Fradd to sign up. Just put in your name and email address and I'll send you some more information about it. It's a 90-day spiritual exercise for men. It's a proven path to freedom through prayer, asceticism, and fraternity. I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like here, obviously in the United States, we have a very cushy life. We're in Western countries, a very cushy life. And we're

often not doing anything very difficult. And so the smallest things annoy us and frustrate us, which isn't conducive to a good spiritual life. But if we kind of impose upon ourselves difficult things, we can certainly grow spiritually. So please check it out, exodus90.com slash Matt Fradd, exodus90.com slash Matt Fradd. All right. Let's see here. God bless you. Thank you for being here. Do us a favor. Click that like button. Don't just click it. Destroy it. Right now, hover your mouse cursor above the thumbs up, and I want you to just crush it. Just drop a nuke on it. And then I want you to click subscribe and do us a favor and share this video. I don't think Google is thoroughly impressed with people like Michael Knowles sharing his opinions on Trump and Biden.

But you can help this video go further by clicking like, clicking subscribe, leaving a comment and sharing this on Facebook or social media. God bless you.