Ep. 1847 - What No One Noticed About Sydney Sweeney's Dress

There's a lot I want to get to. A prominent Democrat in Congress can't explain why she voted to shut the government down. A former major conservative thought leader just endorsed Zoran Mamdani for New York mayor. Support for so-called same-sex marriage is cratering all massive developments. But speaking of massive developments, I have to speak for a moment about Sidney Sweeney. Yesterday, I got a lot of flak from the producers because I did not cover Sidney Sweeney. Sidney Sweeney did not cover Sidney Sweeney, it turns out. I didn't really know what they were talking about. I had seen her name trending in the morning, I was writing my show, but I didn't pay much attention. Then, sometime yesterday afternoon, a photo of the reason she was trending finally hit my Twitter feed, and after I regained custody of my eyes, I understood why the producers wanted me to talk about it. For the few who did not catch it, Sidney Sweeney showed up to some awards gala wearing a see-through dress. And, you know, this is a family show, so we'll blur it out a little bit. But to be fair, it was not a full Kanye wife dress, it was not completely transparent, but it left very little to the imagination, which excited lots of people, but it also disappointed a lot of people, especially conservatives who like to claim Ms. Sweeney is one of our own. The only two takes I saw on the dress yesterday were disapproval on the one hand that it's immodest, and approval on the other hand if you got it flaunted. But I think there is actually a third option that I've not heard anyone else mention, and it is an option that reconciles the dress, which we know she wore, with the fact that Sidney Sweeney is a Republican, which we know because of reporting about her voter ID. I think the dress was subversive. I don't want to give two esoteric astraussian reading here, but I think the dress was subversive, because, here's my evidence, the event that she wore it to was Variety magazine's Power of Women gala. That was the name of it. And while we've been told for decades that women only have power when their feminist boss ladies who wear pantsuits and act like men, Sidney Sweeney's dress said no. The power of women is in our femininity. The power of women is especially in some particular anatomical features that men don't have. It has a actually a vital biological power. And yes, the power of women is in no part, no small part rather, in women's physics. I'm not saying the dress is conservative exactly, but it sure ain't feminist. I'm Michael Knowles is the Michael Knowles show. Welcome back to the show. Kamala Harris wants to lower the voting age to 16. I used to oppose that kind of thing. Now, I think the way young Gen Z is trending, lowering the voting age might actually end up giving us like Francisco Franco or something. So anyway, we'll get to that. Also, question of the day, it's in the comments. Give me your thoughts below. What is the best Halloween candy? I have the correct answer, but I'll check to see if you do as well. Before we get into anything, I want to tell you about Done With Debt. Go to donewithdebt.com. Are you drowning in credit card and loan debt? You're not alone, but here's something most people don't know. Fall is actually the best time of year to negotiate with lenders. Why? Because credit card companies and lenders are doing year-end accounting. They desperately need to clear problem accounts from their books before audits begin. This creates a narrow window where they are far more willing to cut deals than any other time of year. Done With Debt has cracked the code on this timing advantage. They know exactly which companies are most motivated to negotiate right now and use this insider knowledge to get results you can't achieve on your own. Best part? No bankruptcy, no new loans, no credit damage. In fact, most clients end up with more money in their pocket within the first month because they're no longer drowning in minimum payments. This window will not stay open forever. Once Q4 hits, lenders tighten up again and your leverage totally disappears. I've seen how debt can really screw up people's lives. Do not let it happen. Get started right now. While you still have time, go to donewithdebt.com. Talk with one of your specialists for free that is donewithdebt.com. DoneWithDebt.com. Do you know what today is? Today is Friend Friday. That's what I'm calling it now. I tried this out last week or two weeks ago when I was still in the country and I really liked it where I bring on a friend and we kind of beat up the stories. I get, listen, sometimes I get in a vacuum here. It's just me and the microphone in the camera and my cigars and my beautiful candles, which we'll talk about later and all, but I got to bring in another voice sometimes. Make sure I'm not totally off, especially on a topic as controversial as Sidney Sweeney's dress. So anyway, this time I'm bringing on my friend, Jack Basovic. Jack, thank you for coming on the show. Happy Christian Halloween to you, Michael Knowles. Hey, I want to get to that later too. I had a big debate on this yesterday and I suspect, and in fact, I know that you're totally right about this. So before we get into Halloween, I do want to talk about dressing up for a second. Sidney Sweeney, you saw the dress? No, I didn't see Sidney Sweeney trending at all yesterday. I have no idea what you're referring to. Yeah, I only have a completely wholesome Twitter feed. So, well, I'll fill you in then, Jack, obviously. Sidney Sweeney wore a dress that some are calling slightly immodest. However, I kind of wonder if there's some subversion here. Like, is there, look, I really want to claim Sidney Sweeney is one of our own. She's apparently a registered Republican. I like that she is pretty in a normal way, not in like a weird 20 teens androgynous freaky way. And so is there, what's your take on the dress? So, I mean, look, I've got to take on it. It might be a little bit of a thought crime, but the, all right, all right, it's not necessarily conservative, but it is right wing coded. And the reason that I say that it's right wing coded is because it's anti-Kardashian. Sidney Sweeney is the anti-Kardashian. Okay, because I just, I don't know if you were plugged in during the monologue, but I said it, I said almost a similar thing. I said it's not quite conservative, but it's at least anti-feminist. What do you mean anti-Kardashian? Yeah, so Kardashian is this sort of, like that look that's been kind of going around. I think it started in like the late 2000s, really blew up in like the 2010s along with the Kardashian. Look, and you see this everywhere. You see like the huge contours. And I'm just going to say it, man. It's like twerking culture. It's just full-on twerking culture. And more about that space, no trouble. We all know what Sidney Sweeney is bringing back. She went on SNL, she did the little sketch where she dressed, I'm going to say it, she dressed as a Hooters girl, and they're talking about certain large assets in terms of her, obviously her intellect and her poise that she is bringing back to the forefront. And this has been something that has been de-emphasized in our culture for a very long time. And I'm just going to say it is right-wing coded because it is nurturing. It is life-giving. It is, and it is the true essence of femininity, which is of course motherhood. Wow, because if you're saying, you know, if the culture is all about that base, no trouble, that feature is kind of left-coded because it's androgynous. You know, men and women have that feature, but only women have the other feature. Correct. Wow, that's pretty, wow. This has been kind of like a topic on the internet for a while too. It's sort of one of those, there's a website that I've heard of, it's four channel or something like that. I've never seen it myself, but you know, where this topic has come up to quite an extent and Sidney Sweeney is sort of like the avatar of this side of the debate, where if you want to bring true femininity back, that means, and look, go back to America circa 1992. I saw this like internet hall of fame clip that was going around yesterday or earlier this week on Twitter, where it was the, it was Apache helicopters were flying the pace car of NASCAR at the Hooters 500 in like Charlotte, North Carolina. And it was like, it's like, that was the America I grew up in. And you know something? It was just better. Yeah. I'm not saying it was the 1950s exactly, but it was probably preferable. No, listen, it wasn't the conservative 1950s, but it was just better. This ties in to a major news story that a lot of people said was not possible, which is according to an economist, you gov poll, so it's not necessarily a right wing poll, support for same sex marriage, so called, has fallen to 54%. And this is one of these issues. You know, I grew up, I'm old enough to remember when marriage was between a man and a woman. And some of our audience actually is probably so young, they don't remember that. Then you had 2015, Obergefell, the Supreme Court redefines marriage that push had been building for some time, really since Willing Grace in the late 90s. And then it just, it stopped being a political issue. And there were a handful of us who said, yo, guys, you can't give up on marriage. It's the fundamental political institution. But all the Republicans, virtually all of the prominent conservatives, they said, now guys, we lost marriage, move on, Obergefell will never be overturned. This is just how it is now. And I thought like, there's no way, right? This is the basic political unit. The gods of the copy bookings are going to come back. Is this a sign that we will see the overturning of Obergefell and the restatement of proper true marriage? We'll get to that in one second. First though, I want to tell you about Legacy Box. Go to legacybox.com/knolls. Natural disasters like fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes strike every year. Just recently, we've seen the devastation of Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean. When nature takes its toll, your most precious memories trapped on VHS, camcorder tapes, as well as old family pictures could be lost forever in an instant. Decades, maybe who knows, a century of memories just gone forever. 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Jack, is Obergefell getting overruled? I think if you look at the traction, right, if you look at the traction where it's going on this, and Obergefell, people could say what they want, and I think it's actually a separate issue from same-sex marriage, even though it's sort of like in political psychology, isn't because we know that the justices take up cases based on public opinion. We certainly know that Roberts has done this. It's been sort of a hallmark of his time on the court that, look, it was not properly judged in the same way that Roe v. Wade was not properly judged. This is just not something that's covered in the Constitution. It's not there. It's not the Bill of Rights. It's certainly not in any of the amendments. Marriage was always a state institution. It is covered by the 10th Amendment because no powers that are given to the federal government are, all of those are left with the states. And so it's always been that way, and they can't just write things into the Constitution. No one ever tried to put this up. No one ever tried to make this an amendment. They just sort of pushed it through the courts, which we've seen the left doing since the 1960s, so they can't win at the ballot box. They go to the courtroom. And so it is something where, when you realize that, look, and you mentioned there weren't a lot of Republicans and conservatives that spoke out, but the very first Republican that I ever worked for many moons ago, first as an intern, there was a campaign staffer, was Rick Santorum. And Rick Santorum, my senator in Pennsylvania, he took a lot of flack and people can go back and look at his comments, which were colorful, to say the least, about this. And he said, if you put this into practice, right, if you put it into law and trying it anywhere, that what it will do will open up a Pandora's box of trouble, where if you say that anything can be marriage, then all of a sudden you will completely distort society. And it won't just be men and men and women and women, but we'll have all sorts of relationships being enshrined, being enshrined by government in law. And guess what? That's exactly what we're seeing, certainly with the rise of surrogacy, certainly with the rise of new technologies. We're not seeing like polyamorous marriages and children being raised by three fathers and three women and all sorts of just complete and utter wildness, which ultimately always turns out very badly for the children. And so, you know, he took a lot, a lot of flack for that. If anyone remembers the comments I'm referring to from like 0506, you'll know what I'm saying, that it's something where he was completely right because they didn't stop there. That's what led to the push for the trans movement. That's what led to like drag queen story hour and all the rest of it. Because the minute that they got that, the entire machinery, the political machinery that they had built are starting with, by the way, you're totally right on milling grace. That was like the first and then modern family became the second. This is the mass media. This is the, you know, the mass normalization of this type of stuff. And it was pushed on society in a way that nobody ever really sat down and had a debate about. We just sort of were told that we have to accept this. And they've completely gone over the rails with it. And a lot of people are pointing back to 2013, really a lot of these bad decisions, bad policies that came out of the Obama era, that it's time to take a look at again. And I will, by the way, just add as an anecdote to my son, my oldest son, he had his first reconciliation class a couple of nights ago. And since it was the first class, we were sort of talking about all of the sacraments. And when they brought up matrimony, the, you know, the teacher, she said, you know, and by the way, just so everybody knows marriage is between one man and one woman kind of like looks around the room. Everybody got that. Good. Moving on. Well, even, you know, it's so funny. It only occurred to me recently. The word matrimony comes from the word mater, you know, like mother in Latin. And so the notion that you could have matrimony between two men is, is undercut by the very word itself. Yes. Rick Santorum is one of the most vindicated men in America. Every day that goes by, he is more and more vindicated. And you make a good point on Obergefell being different from same-sex marriage, quote, unquote. You know, I do wonder, though, on the state versus federal issue. I remember I was a student and I got to talk to Scalia once or twice. And we, one of the times, one of the students asked him about marriage and whether it was a state's issue or federal issue. And he said, well, you know, the problem is it's very hard for it to be a state's issue because you can't have a country where someone is married in Massachusetts but not married in Oklahoma. What happens when they move? What happens when they travel? So it creates problems. What they did with the Massachusetts, I think it was Massachusetts was the first state. And this is exactly what they were trying to do with that under the, under the contract clause of the Constitution is same, same idea as having a driver's license in one state. You can, you know, you shouldn't have to get a driver's license in every state. Yeah. So then my question is, regardless of what the, well, I actually have two questions. We were told that this issue like abortion and Roe v. Wade was just done. It was set in law. It was never going to be overturned in our lifetimes. Two questions. Will we see the overruling of Obergefell in our lifetime on any kind of grounds on, you know, textualist grounds, originalist grounds or substantive grounds? And two, will the culture, will we see the majority of people turn against gay marriage so-called in our lifetimes? I think we will. I think, and I caught what you were saying about Gen Z. I caught you what you're saying about the polling on this. I think a lot of people realize, you know, especially Gen Z, when they look at, you know, sort of the, the laws that came out of the sixties that was sort of seen as the boomer era, then the laws that came out of the nineties, the Clinton, the Gen X era, and then the laws that came out of Obama and the policy changes. This was the millennial era of politics where they had primacy and the idea being that everything has gone a little bit too far in one direction and we need to look at things that we want to reel back and you look at some of those big changes. There's no way that you can say Obergefell wasn't a major change to the way things have been done. By the way, not just in the United States of America, throughout all of human history, the nuclear family is the oldest institution on planet Earth. It predates literally everything. It predates the Bible. It predates history itself. We go into the caves of the cavemen and what do we find? We find mom, dad, kids. It's all there. Yeah, I agree. I just think these people who thought that they were going to bet on their own ideology over human nature and the fact that we're social creatures and coupling creatures and biological creatures, that was really a bad bet. Okay, I want to turn to more mundane political. Say it again. Which gets us back to Sidney Sweeney. Which does get us back to Sidney Sweeney. In fact, now I want to move to much less pleasant matters, unfortunately. More mundane matters. Democrat representative Janelle Bynum was just being interviewed by C-Span Washington Journal, which I've done that show a number of times and it's kind of a liberal show, but it's on C-Span. It's not supposed to be polemical. It's certainly not right wing. She goes on C-Span. They ask her about the government shutdown. She doesn't have an answer. They did have a clean CR vote on September 19th in the House. Did you vote for it? I disagree with your characterization and want to make sure that we're very clear about what Republicans have been doing. Any bill that they've put forth, they've always had some extra stuff to it. There's always been a poison pill to it. So I disagree with your characterization. What were the poison pills of the clean CR or the continuing resolution you say it's not clean that was voted on in the House in mid-September? Here's what's important. I think what you're trying to do is shift the responsibility to Democrats. So for those who haven't followed the shutdown all that closely, the Republicans offered a continuing resolution to keep current spending levels through November and then there would be more of a budgetary fight. But that means that they offered to Democrats the opportunity to vote for a budget that was essentially the same budget they had already voted for under Biden. And the Democrats voted for it under Biden and they refused to vote for the exact same thing under Trump. And so Washington Journal calls this lady out for it, Janelle Bynum, and says, "Hey, why'd you vote for it one time, not the other?" She says, "I totally dispute your characterization because there's a poison pill." Simple follow-up question. What's the poison pill? Humana, humana, humana, humana. Jack, two questions. One, what is the average IQ in the House of Representatives here on Capitol Hill broadly? And two, that might be too difficult a question to answer or too depressing a question. Two, what were Democrats thinking getting into the shutdown fight? Look, I'm just going to say this, that it has been remarked to me, it has been remarked to me on more than one occasion that when you move from the House side of the Capitol Hill to the Senate side that you can actually feel the rise in IQ when you're going over. And not all senators, I would add, but there is a sense that the seriousness, it just kind of elevates a little bit. And to all the House members that I'm friends with, you know exactly what I mean. Some of my best friends are members of the House of Representatives, but never the less. Some of my best friends, they're not all of them. Some I assume are good people. And what were they thinking? Look, the Democrats singular focus since 2025, even actually go back further since 2016, is just do the opposite of Trump. Whatever Trump wants, just do the opposite, which I've often argued that this is something that Trump should actually take into consideration when he's like, "I'm going to breathe air today." And the Democrats are going, "We're not going to breathe air at all anymore." Just start supporting things that you know they have to also support just to like complete them, drive them crazy and have them chasing their tail all the time. They walk themselves into a corner. This isn't the first time they've done this. And they'll sit there and you ask them a basic follow-up question, a really simple, totally fair question. You said there were poison pills. Okay, great. What's the poison pill? Can't answer. I saw Tara Pell-Mary had this former media matters like intern on who's running for Congress up in the Chicago area and said, "So you were indicted for obstructing ICE." Well, I was indicted for free speech. Okay, let's play the video of what you did. They said you were beating on the hood. She plays the video. She's beating on the hood of the ICE car and said, "Well, what do you think about this video?" And these charges, there's a six-year possible penalty, which could, by the way, preclude your ability to serve in the house. She hangs up. She just hangs up. It's one of the most stunning things I've ever seen. Doesn't even have a basic answer to a simple question. And so, look, hats off to, you know, as Rush Limbaugh used to call them, random acts of journalism, because this is journalists actually doing their job. Just ask basic follow-up questions and you see them completely fall apart. Yes. In a way, that exchange was like a figure of the whole shutdown fight. In as much as there was an obvious follow-up that the Democrat never thought about, they never seem to think or to understand how this story was going to end. So on the shutdown, they say, "Oh, look, we're on the wrong side of virtually every 80/20 issue other than abortion, environmentalism, and healthcare, and no one cares about abortion, environmentalism. Okay, we're going to make this about healthcare. All right, we're shutting the government down." And the Republicans come out and they say, "Hold on, you're shutting the government down because you want to give healthcare to illegals. That's one change you want to make to healthcare. And because you want to give more federal subsidies to rich people, that's another change you want to make to healthcare." And the Democrats say, and they don't know what to do. They're, according to all available reporting, they're feeling the pressure right now. This is the first locked shutdown, rather, in my lifetime that has not been blamed on Republicans. Trump's numbers are going up during this shutdown. So it's Schumer's plan completely backfired. The Dems are probably going to have to cave and be in a worse position than they were before. It's the same thing with this lady on TV. Well, there was a poison pill. Okay, what was it? Humana, humana, humana. You got to, you got to, like, guys, you don't need to count von Metternich here, but you have to figure out, like, step one, two, and three. How is the plan going to end? Okay, speaking of strange electoral matters, a former major conservative thought leader is endorsing Zoran in New York. We'll get to that momentarily. 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Join the movement and learn to share your faith confidently starting November 5th. Sign up at stpaulcenter.com/america. Also, folks, very, very exciting. You're getting the first glimpse of this. The Michael Knowles Luke's Adventus Advent Calendar Set. Advent Candle Set. I'm so sorry. It pairs with your Advent calendar. Last year, we had the smells and bells candles. We've had many candles, especially liturgically-themed ones, and we sold us a zillion of them, and they're just so good. You went out, you bought them, they sold out, then you yelled at me because they sold out. Well, we have this year. It smells like just a fresh, beautiful pine forest. You have the three purple candles with the one pink candle to meditate on the last four things, death, judgment, heaven, and hell. This is being sold for a very, very limited time. It's beeswax, like the ancient Christian tradition of beeswax candles. It's just magnificent. You need to get them now. They're being sold for a very, very limited time because we want to be able to ship them so that you have them for Advent. If you want it right now, go to thecandleclub.com. You can get them there. Order them now, though, because they're going to sell out, and I want you to get them for Advent, and they're just magnificent. Okay, Jack, Bill Crystal. Remember him? Bill Crystal. I want the candles, man. You're selling me on this. We need the candles in the pozo household. It is actually, this is a product almost perfectly tailor-made for the pozo household. I just love it. We were going to do a different kind of candle. I said, guys, you know what we have? We need to do a full Advent, like one for each week, last four things. I'm very excited for it. I look forward to smuggling a few out of you. I love especially, like right when you get to Christmas, the week one candle is like hanging on for dear life. It's like right at the bottom because you always have the different, you know, because of one week to week, and then gaudete. But then we always get that last one of it. Come on, come on. I can get, there's a little bit of wick left, and you could just get in there. Also, did you know, so some of our high church mainline Protestant friends, they do that tradition of the four, you know, candles for the four weeks. That's awesome. But they make it, they make it like really nice and happy. So, and a friend had sent me a kind of like a Protestant Advent wreath, and it was, it was like hope, joy, happiness, where it was all this like happy stuff. And I said, no, no, no, but the Catholic version is the last four things. So as you're leading up to Christmas, you meditate on death, judgment, heaven and hell, which I love. I listen, but we have to get you some candles, Jack. I also, I need to get your take on Bill Crystal, former, I don't know, one of the grand poobas of the conservative movement. He, he caught a terminal case of TDS 10 years ago, turned on Trump. He now says he would vote for Mamdani, for mayor of New York. He wouldn't even vote for Cuomo. He's not even that kind of Democrat anymore. He's going to vote for the Muslim communist. This was so extreme that even Jonah Goldberg, another, you know, once real thought leader on the right, kind of shifted a little bit after Trump because he really hated Trump. But, but even Jonah comes out yesterday, he says, hold on. Look, I like Bill. He's a friend of mine, but what the hell are we doing? Why are you voting for, why, or why, why are you supporting Zoran Mamdani? He can't understand it. Can you? Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's really simple. I mean, it just kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier about the Democrats. They've taken the exact same tack where if someone is anti-Trump, they see that as, okay, you're my friend. So I'm going to be friends with you. I'm going to be supportive of you. If someone is as further to the left or as for, as someone that Trump has attacked, therefore must be someone that I will lend my support to. So they're, they're North Star, right? Which we were told was true conservatives. Remember, these were the true conservatives, TM. True conservatives would always oppose Trump and always support, let me just, and let me just follow this line of thought, always support the Constitution, always support the founders, always support the Muslim communists who have only been American for about five minutes, but also whose parents say that they're not American at all, who have spent their entire public life, let's see, demonizing, demonizing white people, telling us that the NYPD is the tool of the IDF, telling us that they are going to basically strip everything from anyone who's built anything in New York City and give it to the migrants. This is the true blessings of conservatism. Yes, of course. It makes total sense. It does. It does. No, there is a, there's a kind of internal logic to the way you're describing it, Jack. And it, you know, at a really basic level, I wonder if Jonah Goldberg is confused, because he's been invading against tribalism and politics and all, you know, that became really popular in the late 20s for people to say, "Well, I'm against tribalism," or whatever. I just think at a basic level, politics is a team sport. You know, Machiavelli writes well of this in the Discourses on Levy, but this is, it's not a particularly profound insight. It's just how politics works. You got to bring people together because politics is how we all live together. And it's a team sport. And 10 years ago, Bill Crystal switched teams. And so now he's on the other team. And I mean, that's substantially what you just said to Jack. But I don't know, why is that so complicated? I don't even think that's bad. Some people say, well, it's just awful to think of politics as a team sport. Why is it? I don't know. We're social creatures. That's how we got to do stuff together. We have to cooperate. And in any society, they're going to be differing opinions. And so you got to build coalitions. I don't know. In a way, I think Crystal is being kind of honest here. He's saying, look, I left the team 10 years ago. Now I'm on the other team. I'm going all the way. I'm in. You know, give me the Jersey coach. I'm, yes, Bill Crystal, Principal Conservatives for Muslim Ugandan Communists before I let you go, Jim. And actually, if, if just to add on that, you know, if you look at, so if you look at his father, Irving Crystal, so he is a former Democrat as well. So and you saw this with a lot of yeah, the birth of the neoconservative movement was sort of like, they were the Democrats who left over the Vietnam War and then moved over to the Republican Party and then have sort of been kind of like in sconce there and then through the Bush years, etc. So really, this is sort of just a return to form. Yes. And, you know, it's funny, the neocons are justifiably, you know, beaten about in political discourse. And a lot of them, they were like ex-Trotzkyites who became Democrats and then became conservatives when they were mugged by reality, they said. But I'll tell you, though, that first gen of neoconservatives, you read some of like Irving Crystal's writings, a lot of it's very thoughtful, very serious. And I don't know, it'd be, it's hard for me to imagine Irving Crystal supporting Mamdani. It's a, it's a, it's a sad turn of events. Before I let you go, Pamela Harris wants to lower the voting age to 16. Give it to you in her own words. I think we should reduce voting age to 16. I'll tell you why. So, Gen Z, they're aged about 13 through 27. They've only been on the climate crisis. They missed substantial parts of their education because of the pandemic. If they're in high school or college, especially in college, it is very likely that whatever they've chosen as their major for study may not result in an affordable wage. They've coined the term climate anxiety to describe fear of not only being able to buy a home, but that fear will be wiped out by extreme weather, but fear of having children. It goes on. I just, I don't have time or, or patience. Jack, I'm reflexively opposed to this, especially if the argument for letting 16-year-olds vote is that they're completely neurotic and afraid of an imaginary problem. But then I look around at Gen Z and I notice, at least on the right, these guys are pretty trad, you know? I mean, they're pretty right-wing and I mean, in many ways, the kids are all right. Oh, should we lower the voting age? I mean, I, I'm like you. I think I'm reflexively against anything that allows more people to vote. I think universal software is just one of those things that we, that we really should be having more conversations about and something I talked to Charlie about quite a bit on, on thought crime, on our, our sort of like taboo breaking show. But, but no, you're right though. I will say, though, about Gen Z that you're right. The, the, the thing with Gen Z is this, there's no middle in Gen Z, right? It's either you're like all the way to the right or you're all the way to like, you know, Zora Mamdani and Luigi Maggioni. There's no middle. There's no middle ground. There's no centrist. There's no half measures. It's either you're like full on trad. I support Trump, deport everyone, you know, that, that hasn't been America for like more than 10 years or you're like all the way on the left and you just want to burn it all the way down. So I'm not sure exactly how it strikes out, but I will say this, that when you talk about the neurosis, you were talking about the anxiety. People don't blame Republicans for the lockdowns. They don't blame the conservatives for the, for the shutdowns in, in their formative years, right? That is very squarely blamed on her party, on Joe Biden or whoever it was that was making those decisions in the White House. And I think that's one of the big reasons that you're seeing people who are just totally out for revenge against the government. Yes. And now finally, before I let you go, what will you be dressing as for Halloween tonight, Jack? Or are you boycotting it because it's a terrible evil satanic holiday? So Halloween is Christian. Halloween has been Christian since 735 when Pope Gregory ordained All Saints Day as November 1st. It has no connection whatsoever to any Irish folk holidays. There's no evidence of this whatsoever, despite what 19th century bad history tells you. There's also no evidence, by the way, that that Irish folk holiday had anything to do with paganism. This is totally made up, just like Wiccanism is totally made up in the modern era. It has no connection or bearing to anything historical. And in fact, Halloween itself has always been a Christian holiday. Now, just like Christmas, that doesn't mean it hasn't been secularized over the years. And certainly we've seen that. And we have seen the rise of occultists and paganists that are trying to invert a Christian holiday. So it's, it's the start of All Hallow Tide, as you know. So All Hallows Eve, All Hallows Day, All Saints Day, and then followed by All Souls Day, which we pray for the souls of the faithful departed in purgatory. So we are going up as a family, as a family costume, as we do every single year. I am not at liberty yet to say I cannot even give any clues as to what it might be. But check our social media, because my wife is very insistent that we do not, that we do not divulge this. But I would just say this to everybody out there. There's a right way and a wrong way to do Halloween. If you're doing it in a way that's having fun, if you're going out and you're remembering the souls of the faithful departed, that's absolutely the best way to do it. Remember your mortality. Mock the demons, mock the occult, mock Satanism in all of its forms, and then go out and have fun. That's the best way to do it. It's a great, what a great idea, Jack. A man who basically needs no introduction or salutation or valediction. But as at least a perfunctory matter, where can people go find you to see more? What's @JackPosobic all over Twitter, and the podcast is Human Events Daily. We're actually, we're going to be running our normal Halloween special with Dr. Taylor Marshall, discussing the Christian origins of Halloween. I'm sure it'll be very, very politically correct for retain. Jack, always excellent to see you. Thank you for coming on. God bless, man. Good to see you. Okay. Before we get to the mailbag, I want to tell you about Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com/knolls. I love Pure Talk, and I'm very, very proud to say that it's my wireless company because they don't just talk the talk, they walk the walk, especially when it comes to supporting our veterans. This month, Pure Talk is choosing to support Canines for Warriors, an incredible organization that rescues and trains dogs, and pairs them with veterans struggling with PTSD. These are men and women who served with honor, but when they come home, that brotherhood, that support network they had in the military, too often disappears. Canines for Warriors steps up to fill that gap, giving these heroes purpose, companionship, and healing. That is exactly why Pure Talk, a veteran-led company, supports them. Choose a wireless company that shares your values, and, with talk, text, and plenty of 5G data for just 25 bucks a month, you could also be saving a lot of money. I've had Pure Talk for five years now or something. It is fabulous. Best service you're going to get, best customer service you're going to get, the people on the other end of the phone speak English. That's a good start, and they support great causes. And, by the way, you're going to save a ton of money. Go to PureTalk.com/Nolz/CanadaWLAS, make the switch today that is PureTalk.com/Nolz/CanadaWLAS, switch to America's wireless company, Pure Talk. Ladies and gentlemen, it's that glorious time of year again, the season of giving. And this time, we're the ones doing the giving. Once a year, every single year, we offer our best deal of the year, and yes, it's happening right now. A deal where our plus memberships are 50% off. Half off, this year, is more to enjoy than ever before. More new series, documentaries, and films. More of Ben, Matt, Drew, Isabel, you boy. Even our newest host, Matt Fradd, a fellow Catholic, and Man of Impeccable Taste, joining us here at The Daily Wire. We are also ramping up our investigative journalism, real journalism, by the way, and of course, bringing you our massive seven-part cinematic series, The Pendragon Cycle, The Rise of Merlin, premiering January 22nd, 2026. It's epic. It's mythic. It's everything Holly would forgot how to make, so do not wait. Get your Daily Wire+ membership today. Save 50% and join us in the fight. Okay, my favorite comment yesterday is from Magred7364. "Funny, the pope blesses a hunk of ice and suddenly climate change is no longer going to destroy humanity." I know that's kind of a joke. God works in mysterious ways. It is, it is, the pope had this like pre-scheduled climate thing. It's part of one of his many events he goes to, and he was asked to bless ice and popes and bishops and priests bless water, so he blesses the water. And then Bill Gates comes out and says, "Climate change isn't a threat anymore." "All nature, my friends, is but art unknown to the all-chance direction, which thou canst not see." Finally, finally, we arrive at my favorite time of the week, the mailbag. The mailbag is sponsored by PureTalk at PureTalk.com/KnollsCanadaBLES to make the switch today. Take it away. Hey, Michael. My girlfriend and I are kind of going through a rocky patch right now. I'd say, in fact, she'd like to break up with me for the one reason that I do not believe that Jesus Christ is the literal Son of God and incarnate, come down to earth. Like, I do believe God is real, absolutely, but I don't think he'd do that. And I do believe Jesus was real, a very, very incredibly smart man, incredibly intelligent man. Somebody we should absolutely model our lives after, you know, to die for his convictions. And please, sell me on the Catholic Church, sell me on Jesus. I don't understand, and I don't want to lose her. She's literally perfect. That's very sweet. Okay, well, sorry that you're going through this rough patch in your relationship, but this might be a good opportunity to reexamine exactly what you think and believe and what the issue really is. Because you say, you know, look, I love Jesus. I think he's great. I think he's really smart. I think he's really moral. I think he's the kind of person to model your life after. I just don't think he's God. And my girlfriend has a problem with this, and she doesn't see a future with me if I don't, I don't think he's God, but I think he's really great in everything. But he says he's God. He says in no uncertain terms that he is God before Abraham was I am. And he says it many other times in many different ways. So he says that, which means, and he might say, well, I just don't believe that part. Okay, but now you get to C.S. Lewis's Trilemma, which is that if he says he's God, and he's not really God, then he's either a lunatic, but you said he's not a lunatic. You said he seems really intelligent and, you know, really, really great in everything, really with it. Or he's a liar, but you said he's someone to model your life after. So you're saying he's someone to model your life after, but he's dishonest and he's a fraud. Or there's one third option, which is that he is who he says he is, and he really is the Lord. But that's it. I think maybe the conflict that you're arriving at is, you want to occupy a middle ground that is not tenable when it comes to faith. And your girlfriend is rightly intuiting that that's unstable and you're not going to remain there. You can't remain there because it doesn't make any sense. Either Christ is intelligent and moral and someone to model your life after, a great moral teacher and all these things, and God and literally God, the Son of God incarnate, second person of the Holy Trinity, or he's none of those things. Or he's not particularly intelligent, or at least he's not particularly moral, or at least he's not someone to model your life after. He's not those things. But what he can't be is a really intelligent, great moral teacher who's a liar or duped. He can't be that thing. So the only view that is really not plausible at all is the view that you hold right now. And so anyway, I think the evidence for Christ's divinity is manifest. And I think it's totally persuasive. And I think the resurrection is totally persuasive. And I think that when you encounter Christ, even just reading the Bible in your room, you have the reaction that you say, "This is true. This just rings true because you have reason and you are able to perceive the truth and it just kind of stirs something in you." And I think all the history and the church and all the rest of it also speak to that. But whatever answer, maybe you're going to ask this question and say, "Oh, no, I think it's all fake and you're going to be like a Reddit tier atheist or something." I guess you could arrive at that conclusion, though it would be mistaken. But the one place you can't remain is where you are right now. And your girlfriend's intuiting that. And she realizes you're either going to fall one way or the other. And she doesn't want to bet her life on that kind of instability. And I don't really blame her for it. So it's wonderful that you love your girlfriend. You don't want to lose her. But I think you got to just buckle down on this question and come to whatever the honest answer is and then be honest with your girlfriend. Okay, next question. Hi, Michael. My name is Megan and I'm a devoted member of the Krim De La Krim. Without getting into the details of why I'm a divorced mother, I just turned 40 and I would like to get remarried and maybe have one more kid. Due to recent events, I have been advised by the internet that because I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that many other Christians do not view me as a Christian, I would like your advice on how I can go about dating and finding a godly man. Thank you for your advice. Okay, well, a lot of these questions are probably a little above my pay grade given the particularity of your beliefs and religious practices. So I'll give you the, through my Catholic lens, I'll give you the view. We don't believe in divorce. We don't think it's sacramentally possible. However, it doesn't mean that you're just necessarily consigned to, you know, throwing your hands in the air or something like that. I guess the question would be, it was your marriage valid in the first place? That would be the first answer, the question that I would ask if I were trying to figure out if someone could continue to date, whatever. Was your marriage valid in the first place? Was something withheld, you know, unjustly before the marriage? Was it done with coercion or under duress? This is why the Catholic Church has annulment investigations. Is the marriage reputable? Maybe not. Anyway, so that would be how I would first approach that question. Now, put that aside for a second. Let's get to your second question. Your second question is, you know, look, I'm Mormon and people don't consider me Christian. And you are just going to encounter that because, you know, LDS doesn't affirm the Nicene Creed, say, or the, you know, the Trinity, the central mystery of the faith. And so I don't think you're going to persuade a lot of Protestants or Catholics that, you know, it's all the same thing. And I say this as someone who really, really loves the LDS. I was with a good LDS friend of mine just a few days ago. But I just think if you're going to remain and within that religious view and religious tradition, you're going to be running up against a wall if you're going to try to convince Protestants or Catholics or Eastern Orthodox or whatever, that it's the same view. I don't think it's really going to work. So I guess as a practical matter, you could, assuming the question of the nullity of the marriage or whatever is figured out, you could continue to date within LDS. Anyway, those are all just little hints of how to maybe try to proceed. But I really, I feel for the position that you're in, it's a very, very difficult position. And, you know, sometimes on the internet, you're describing these kind of feuds with people on Twitter or something. Sometimes people just view everything as a cold intellectual calculation. And that's not really what you're talking about. You're saying, look, I'm a human being. I've had this problem. It's a fallen world. And, you know, I've got my kid and I've got, I'd like to, this marriage fell apart and I'd like to date. And it's, you know, it's, it's like a real personal social kind of question. And so I really feel for you. I think we can all pray for you in your difficult situation and then hope you can navigate things in such a way that, that are conducive to the truth and therefore conducive to your flourishing. Because, you know, you're not, I don't think you're, you're exactly going to flourish and be happy if you, if you pursue a line of life that is, that is contrary to the truth, try to paper over things, you know, that's, it's not going to work. You're going to, you're going to face the problem that you're facing right now, which is you're trying to beat your head against a wall, trying to convince, you know, like a Southern Baptist or something that LDS Theology is substantially the same as, as his Theology. It's not, not going to work. Okay. It is Fake Headline Friday. 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