Ep. 2079 - BREAKING: ICE Raids Ilhan Omar’s D.C. Home

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Calchi products are not available in all jurisdictions. Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see calchi.com slash regulatory. This episode is brought to you by Cardiff, America's favorite small business lender, with over $12 billion funded since 2004. Applying under three minutes for same-day funding up to $500,000 at cardiff.co slash knolls, K-N-W-L-E-S. President Trump renames Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, while reports swirl that a different Democrat Senate candidate just spent 10 days in a loony bin. The Pope comes out swinging against the death penalty as condemned murderer Krista Pike is discharged from the hospital after her execution. And a crazy British man gets mauled to death by a tiger after jumping into the animal's enclosure at the zoo. By the way, the feds just raided Ilhan Omar's house. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. Also, we got a new White House press secretary who is phenomenal. I'll get to that. I need five hours to do today's show. There is so much happening. Cancel your plans. Don't go to work. Actually, you should not be going to work because today is Columbus Day, a very, very important American holiday that President Trump commemorated on Friday. I'm Michael Knowles. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the an excellent ceremony at the White House. Christopher Columbus, you will recall, was a brave Italian explorer. And in this house, he's a hero. The only reason I'm at work today is for love of the game. I'm actually here to celebrate Columbus Day. There is so, so much to get to. Right off the top, breaking news, hearing it now for the first time, the feds have raided Ilhan Omar's house. This is the Department of Homeland Security. They executed a warrant on Today in the Washington, D.C. area, Homeland Security investigations executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice. This enforcement action is part of an ongoing federal investigation, according to the DOJ spokesman. It's unclear exactly what this is all about. It's unclear what charges, if any, could be brought against Ilhan Omar. But this is not the first time that Ilhan Omar has been investigated. There has been an ongoing criminal investigation. The border czar, Tom Homan, talked about publicly beginning last month. We do know that Ilhan Omar has been credibly accused of immigration fraud because she married her brother. So this is a real ongoing issue. On top of that, we know that Ilhan Omar hates America, giggles at Al-Qaeda, and is just an all-around terrible person who should be deported from the country. But this is a big October surprise. This really, if, if, if the Trump administration actually were able to nail a sitting member of Congress on immigration fraud, that would be dramatic, to say the least. There is precedent for Americans who have citizenship to be denaturalized because of immigration fraud. In this case, the immigration fraud would have pertained to Ilhan Omar's brother-husband's immigration, not to her own. But this could, this could lead to the denaturalization and deportation of members of Ilhan Omar's family there's a slight chance, I guess, that it could involve her denaturalization and deportation. That's one way to remove someone from Congress. Unclear. It is, what, October 12th? That's a pretty good October surprise, and everything is just going to heat up more and more as we head into the midterms. Okay, we'll, we'll keep you updated on that. If anything new comes in during the show, we'll, we'll bring you more on it. I now have to turn, speaking of the midterms, to another very prominent wacky Democrat, James Taylor. Rico, who reportedly was in a loony bin. So now this story, I totally ignored this story. I didn't talk about it on the show. I didn't plan to talk about it on the show, but it really began to pick up steam over the weekend to the point that I tweeted out. I said, wait a second. Is, is Taylor Rico actually in a loony bin? I thought it was just a meme. Here's what we know. We know that James Taylor Rico had an in-person event in New York, September 28th. It was this big Democrat fundraiser with Robert De Niro and all these big libs. That was reported by the New York Post. He then just disappeared for 10 days. No Taylor Rico to be found. Next time he showed up again, it was October 9th. So just this past Friday, he showed up to a music festival in Austin. So what some of the social media influencers and tabloids and different blogs were reporting was that Taylor Rico was in a loony bin. Taylor Rico's campaign said he just came down with the flu. The loony bin that it was a Nick Sorter, I think was really behind this story a lot. The loony bin was called the Lindner Center of Hope. And part of the reason that people started to pay attention to this story was that there was a phone call that was released and the phone call seemed to depict a receptionist at the loony bin, describing Taylor Rico's stay there. Okay, so nothing for James Taylor Rico? Yes, it looks, well, this is what it's today. It looks like just this, he was just discharged this evening. That's why I don't have it. Oh, he was discharged then? Yeah. Okay. And this is the Hope? So he should be. Okay. I'm sorry. This is, let me make sure I have it right. This is Hope Lindner? Yes. Okay. And you're in Hamilton, Ohio? No, we're not in Hamilton. We're in Mason. Okay. So that's why he's not a system. He's a recent. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Okay. So again, we don't know. I mean, Nick Sorter, he gets good stuff. He's a good, you know, good, uh, independent journalist, social media influencer. So, he posts this, but we don't know the provenance of the call. It sounds like a receptionist. She says, yeah, yeah, there was a, there was a James Taylor Rico here. He was discharged. Some people were saying she couldn't have said that at the medical clinic because that would violate HIPAA. I don't think it actually does violate HIPAA to say someone was there. If she had disclosed his treatment, that would violate HIPAA. But I'm not sure that just saying there is a patient there actually violates HIPAA. In any case, the Taylor Rico campaign denied this, that from the beginning, they said he had the flu. And, uh, since then the loony bin, has come out and said, no, no, no, James Taylor Rico was not here contradicting that statement. They didn't really even refer to the statement. So anyway, there are more questions now than answers because of this. Taylor Rico disappears 10 days before a hotly, hotly contested election that right now has a slight edge to giving Democrats something they've been after for decades, namely flipping Texas blue. Candidates don't disappear for 10 days in October before a very, very hot election that is at a razor's edge right now. That doesn't happen. And the flu excuse does not cut it. I don't care if the guy's got pneumonia, he is going to be campaigning. A campaign cannot lose one day at this time. A campaign cannot lose two hours at this time in a campaign. I'm not saying he was in a loony bin. He might not have been in a loony bin. I didn't take the story seriously when I first heard about it. And I guess the, the Lindner, Lindner center of denies it. So, okay, I'll take that for what it's worth, but we are not getting the full story on where James Taylor Rico was. That was not the flu. And if it wasn't the flu and it wasn't that he was in a loony bin or it wasn't in that loony bin or whatever it was, the Taylor Rico campaign needs to provide more details. I want to be as fair-minded as I can. When stories are a little too perfect, a little too convenient, I usually just dismiss them as I was doing with the Taylor Rico's and not story. I mean, he is a nut for sure. And he could use an in treatment in-person facility without question, but I don't know if he's actually been to one of those. I don't know anything about it. Gone for 10 days without anything resembling a plausible explanation, not going to cut it. As of now, the rational conclusion is that the Taylor Rico campaign was lying to voters, lying to Texans. I want to know where he was. Obviously, obviously a nut. But what was he doing? What was he up to? Okay. Speaking of the midterms, President Trump has been going very, very hard on the campaign trail. I'm going to give you a few of the highlights. Israelites because Trump is just producing bangers left and right, just absolutely magnificent campaign lines. They pertain to the race in Michigan, in Texas. They pertain to Islamophobia. They pertain to immigration. They pertain to the framing of the whole midterm. So I'll get to that in a second. First, though, I want to tell you about pre-born. There's a lot more to say. First, though, go to preborn.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. Here is some excellent news. Through the ministry of pre-born, more than 50,000 babies have been saved this year alone, and more than 5,100 people have made commitments to Christ. Those are extraordinary numbers. The reason this ministry works is pretty simple. Here is Dan Steiner, the president of pre-born. He says, quote, because of you, we can invite mothers considering abortion into a pre-born network clinic to meet their baby, and when she has that close encounter of the best kind in her womb, she's 80% more likely to choose life. 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He comes out, he reminds voters of one of the biggest issues, one of the decisive issues from 2024. Change the terms of mother and father to gestating and non-gestating parents. You can no longer say, mother, hi, mom. It's, hi, gestating. Hi, gestating. I love you so much, gestating mom. So he's doing all of these campaign steps, their standup routines. And some people are going to be tempted to say, oh, you know, the trans issue, that's passe. That's over. You're beating a dead horse. I don't think that's true. One, every one of these Democrats who's running for office right now is running on transing the kids. So they've not changed their opinion on the issue. The issue remains a live issue. It lay dormant right now because the Republicans won the whole government in 2024, but the Dems have not seen the light. They've not changed their mind. They're going to bring that back the second that they get back into power. This is a very powerful issue. This is the issue, the issue that stopped Democrats from taking Texas in 2024, Colin Allred versus Ted Cruz. This is perhaps the issue that let President Trump win the election in 2024. Not because people care that much about weird sex stuff or, or deviance or whatever, but because the fact that the Democrats believe a man can become a woman and they want to go so far as to castrate little kids shows you that their judgment is impaired on every single issue. That, that was always the potency of the trans issue. So Trump gets out there and goes, what are we going to say now? We used to say, hi, mom, love you, mom. Now we're going to say, hi, gestating. Hi, gestating. What is that? That is, it's not just like kind of funny. It's not, it's not a joke that really landed, two years ago, but not anymore. It's a, it's a vital political issue. Okay. Then President Trump renamed the Democrats Senate nominee in Michigan. There's a lot of people don't put them together, but that's how it all happened. Yet, as you know, the radical left communists hate Columbus and they want to abolish Columbus day. They're still trying very hard. You know, this guy, I call him Muhammad Al-Fayyad. Some people call him Abdul. I call him Muhammad. Somebody said, why? I said, I don't know. I feel like it, but he wants to abolish Columbus day. He wants the, no reference to, can you believe it? You could write a dissertation about the political diction in, in just that joke. There's so much here. Before Trump, the GOP was considered really nerdy and self-serious and lame. Trump comes in and he makes the GOP seem cool because Trump was a major global celebrity, a very colorful figure, brash billionaire TV star, right? So that was just aesthetically, that was a big shift that Trump brought in. And he brings that with his attitude. The, the old GOP pre-Trump would have said, uh, now listen here. I listen, I do not want to engage in any kind of untoward rhetoric or any kind of bigotry. I just want to point out that, uh, this guy, Mr. Abdul is, uh, he is an extremist. Uh, Islam may be a religion of peace, but this man is taking it to, it just would have been this annoying, tedious, self-serious thing. And Trump comes in and he goes, he just, you know, it's that smirk. It's that, look, I think we all, what's his name? I call him Muhammad. I call, it's that blase, uh, let it all go. Yeah, whatever. Deal with it. Shrugs his shoulders. What are you going to, yeah, I made a comment that's politically, what are you going to do about it? That attitude is, is crucial. And it comes out in all manner of now for over, over 10 years. So that's the setting. Then he says, I call him Muhammad. And at first you say, that's so, that's so blunt. It's so stupid. How could you? That's so, you know, are we children now? Why are you, oh, what? Just because he's Muslim, you call him Muhammad? No, no, no, no, no, no. One of the brilliant little turns about the renaming is Abdul's name actually is Muhammad. Did you know that? I didn't know that. I looked it up. It's his middle name, isn't it? His name is Abdul Muhammad. Al-Sayed. But the part that I haven't seen anyone pick up on is the, the key to the renaming here actually has nothing to do with his first name. Did you hear what Trump did? It's the second part. It's the last name. Trump opens up, he goes, some people call him Abdul Al-Sayed. I call him Muhammad. Why? I don't know. I feel like it. He called him Al-Sayed. His name is Al-Sayed. The Al-Sayed is actually more potent than Abdul to Muhammad because the Al- Sayed is so disrespectful. It's as if to say, I don't care. You know, this guy doesn't mean that much to me. I heard about him though. Isn't he a weirdo? I'm Trump. All the politics is about me, but you hear about this guy? You hear about this guy? Spotlight on, light the cigarette. Yeah, you hear about this guy? Al-Sayed, whatever. It's that kind of thing. If you ever were chatting up a girl in college, I don't know, in your twenties, you're chatting up a girl and she's got a boyfriend and you really don't like that. And you say, yeah, how's your boyfriend Mark doing? Oh, it's yeah, whatever. It's that. It's that. It's so disrespectful. Yeah. I don't even, whatever his name is. I don't know. He doesn't matter to me. Yeah. Abdul Al-Sayed, Al-Bayed, whatever. Who cares? I call him Muhammad. You know, I don't know. Cause it's funny. I don't know. It's funny, isn't it? It's perfectly disrespectful. It's perfectly dismissive. Really, really well done. That is the kind of rhetoric from a guy who has definitely taken a lot of girls from a lot of we know that president Trump has done. You saw a similar dynamic play out. President Trump was at the white house. He got a question from a reporter who had a very thick accent. If you're only listening right now, you couldn't see the magnificent reaction, you know, worthy of Lee Strasberg's acting studio. When Trump, he's listening, totally locked in on this guy. And the guy has this thick accent. And then Trump's just looking at him and he's trying, you know, it's not, he it's not that he's mocking this guy or he's just looking at him. You can't make out a word he's saying. No, just looks at him. And then he just turns to another reporter. And as he's turning, he just kind of shrugs, whatever that was. Okay. Whatever. Look, hey, I'm, I'm, this is America, man. I can't, you can't expect, I'll listen to your question, but if you can't speak English, you can't expect me to have to listen. I don't know. I can't, I can't, I can't understand what you're saying. Okay. Now, sorry. It's that, it's that shrug. It's that sense of cool. It's that moving on. We got things to do. Uh, parents do this to their kids. Sometimes the kid comes up, ah, daddy, mommy, huh? What, what is it? What's it? What's the matter? And you let you say, okay, I don't, I don't, I don't know. Come to me when you can speak properly. I don't, I can't, I don't know what, whatever you're crying about, whatever you're whining with your brother, your sister. I don't know. Come to me when you, when we're serious. Okay. That's what Trump did to the reporter. Okay. Then tripling down on the Islamophobia, Trump gives his best impression of a Muslim. They are, they speak. We will kill. We will kill everyone. Everyone. We will kill everyone on a hill. Like 20 guys behind him. He's talking. This is, it'll talk that way anymore. By the way, we will kill everyone. And behind, I got 20 guys. Praise be to Allah. Praise be to Allah. Praise be to Allah. So he's, he's really doubling down here. Now what's interesting is president Trump can win votes from Muslims. He can, and Muslims increasing matter because of mass migration to the United States, especially in places like Michigan, forget about places like Minnesota. They're never going to go Republican, but Michigan. and that is important. That is a swing state. It's a very hot election right now for the Senate in Michigan. So what could Trump do? He could do the egghead GOP thing and say like, well, you know, look, America's welcome to everybody. As long as you work hard and you're willing to follow the meritocracy, you adopt certain aspects of the civic religion, then we could, no, no, no. He goes, Islam is pretty crazy, right? You hear these guys that go, la, la, la, la, la, and they're all kind of nuts, aren't they? In a way, I think this plays a lot better, even with Muslims. It'll definitely play better with people who are skeptical of Islam or fearful of Islam, but I think in a way it plays better with Muslims because it's Trump speaking like an ordinary person. It's like how guys talk to each other in the locker room, or just generally, it's how guys talk to each other, which is you kind of make fun of each other a little bit. The kind of Muslim who can vote for Trump is the kind of Muslim who can vote for Trump. The kind of Muslim who can take that joke. The kind of Muslim who doesn't like that joke ain't voting for Trump. The kind of Muslim who can't take that joke is probably trying to murder Trump. I remember one time I was visiting Beirut. This was 10 years ago or more, and I'm driving around in a cab in Beirut. The guy barely speaks any English, and I asked him about his prayer beads. No, no, no. I asked him about a mosque we were driving by, and I think the guy was Muslim, but he didn't. He was a low-voltage Muslim, and I said, what's that? What's that building? He goes, oh. Allahu Akbar, blah, blah, blah. I said, okay, that low voltage you want to assimilate, you don't take it all that seriously, that's the kind of guy that's going to be attracted to Trump. This is why the GOP establishment couldn't understand that Trump did so well with the working class all the way from the moment he descended the golden escalator. They say, this man, he was born rich. He's been privileged his whole life. He's a billionaire. He flies around in a 747. Why does the working class like this guy? Well, it's because he's not trying to fool anybody. He's not hiding who he is. He's not really a chameleon. He goes out there. He'll speak to Muslim voters and say, you guys, some of you guys are pretty crazy. He invites the new head of Syria over, the former al-Qaeda guy who's now running Syria. He comes over to the White House. He says, okay, I got a gift here for your wife. How many wives do you have? I got to ask you guys sometimes. It's not always clear. We have one wife in America, but you guys sometimes. And in a way, that conveys respect, actually, more than trying to dance around other issues. Okay, I want to get to the one line from Trump that the left is going nuts with. They're using to try to make fun of all of us in a second, where Trump said he could say the stupidest things and we would all keep applauding him. Then I got to get to the Pope on the death penalty. Then I got to get to the new White House press secretary. Then I got to get to a guy getting mauled to death by a tiger. First, though, I want to tell you about Lean. First, though, go to takelean.com, promo code Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, fall. It's a wonderful time of year. The weather gets cooler. The sweaters come out. Football's back. Some people appreciate. Apparently, every social occasion requires an enormous amount of food. I'm already getting fat. Football on Sunday, wings and beer. Halloween, candy everywhere. Thanksgiving, all holiday devoted to stuffing your fat face. 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There are dozens of individual contests, each reacting to its own headlines and developments. In Maine, Troy Jackson and Susan Collins are competing in one of CalShe's most actively traded Senate markets. Track the race live in CalShe's midterms hub and trade the outcome you believe will happen. A correct contract is worth $1 at settlement. Don't just watch the race. Take your position on CalShe. Use code DAILY, D-A-I-L-Y, to get up to $25 when you trade at $25. It's CalShe, K-A-L-S-H-I, CalShe. Trade on anything. 18 plus only. Restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. CalShe products are not available in all jurisdictions. For more information, see calshe.com slash regulatory. Last banger from Trump. This is the one that went really, really viral. The left is taking this clip and using it to make fun of all of us Trump supporters. Now it's true. No, there's such love. It's like, like, I mean, it's amazing. When you stand up here, it's just like the love. I could say the stupidest things and you clap, you know, I love you so much. That's true. But we don't say the stupidest things. We say things of common sense. Okay. So the left seizes on this clip. They say Trump is making fun of his supporters to their faces. He says that he can say the stupidest things and they'd still applaud him because they love him. And what the left misunderstands is they think that Trump is commenting on intelligence when in fact he's commenting on love and the left doesn't understand love. So it's no surprise they can't understand that statement. Trump is coming out. He says, it's so wonderful. Thank you. I really feel the love. You guys, this is wonderful. Thank you so much for being here and giving me all this support. You really love me. That's really nice. That makes me feel really, really good. I could come out here and say the stupidest things and you'd still love me. And he's right about that. But notice it's, he's not saying you guys are too stupid to realize that I'm saying stupid things. He's, he's not commenting on intelligence at all. Actually. He's saying, oh, you love me. You guys really, you guys really like me. You guys, that's right. And I love you. And that's, we got a good thing. Go on here. That's what he's saying. And that has been at the heart of the Trump movement from the beginning, a real sense of personal connection that his supporters really care about him more than, than the supporters of Congressman Joe Schmo care about Congressman Joe Schmo. There's this real personal connection to Trump and Trump clearly really cares about us, about the American people. This is a guy who opened himself up to four prosecutions, who took a bullet in the ear, didn't have to. Didn't have to. Don't forget at that point, he had already been president. He already got everything he could possibly want professionally virtually, or I guess there's always something more, but he got, he reached the top. He got to the mountaintop and then he kept doing it. And he subjected himself to all of this liability, all of this risk, all of this danger, all of this. Why? Because he, he wants to do something good for the country that will, that will give him a legacy. Not that he'll be appreciated for that mostly in his time, but he will have done something good. He, he clearly has a real common touch with people. And for the many, many people who know the president personally, you hear the story again and again and again, but he actually does care about people. And that comes through that, that shines through on screen. This is what the left doesn't understand. When he comes out there and he says, I can say the stupidest things and you would still love me. He's not, he's not making fun of the audience. He's really making fun of himself. He's saying, I would be the one saying the stupid things, but even when I do say stupid things, you still love me. And that that's true. Sometimes Trump says something. You say, I don't know if I agree with that. Ah, that was a little, ah, that came out a little wrong. I don't know how many Trump supporters diehard Trump supporters say, I wish he wouldn't talk so much all the time. Sometimes he really puts his foot in his mouth. Doesn't he? They say that, but they say that in a spirit of love. Those same people who say that would crawl over broken glass to elect this guy. Cause there's a real feeling of connection there. That's what this is about. And I, I don't know. I, it totally came through to me. That is what political movements are about. They're not, uh, this is what, the ideological left and the egghead right. Doesn't understand is that politics is about spirit. It's about relationships. It's about coalitions. It's very personal. Okay. It's really, really personal. And it's not just about the forms of ideas of policies floating in the abstract. Trump gets it and he's totally right about it. Okay. Uh, now I want to turn to a little local issue, which is Krista Pike. You remember her? She was the woman who was supposed to be executed a couple of weeks ago in Tennessee. And then they, uh, tried to execute her twice and it didn't work. She ended up in the hospital, but she survived now. Then she, she woke up. Then she was speaking. Now she has been discharged. She's been discharged after being executed. Here is Krista Pike's lawyer discussing what the future holds. Chris is a survivor. She survived child sexual abuse. She survived rapes of multiple men. She survived a suicide attempt when she was 12 and she survived the state's attempt to execute her. She deserves, answers about what was done to her and the people of Tennessee deserve those answers too. On Monday night, it was our understanding that Krista was brain dead and that life support would be removed the next day. But on Tuesday to the shock of everyone, including me, including her team and including the medical team, Krista woke up and began talking. I do not have an explanation for what happened between Monday night and Tuesday morning. But what we do know, is that Krista has a long road to recovery. Okay, hold up right there. Hold up. Yes, it's very impressive. It is impressive. It actually changes my opinion of this particular case that she survived two execution attempts. And then when they thought she was brain dead, she woke up and started talking. I'm open to commuting her sentence. Not because of the justice of the situation, but because sometimes we need to be open to signs from God. There's actually precedent all the way back to antiquity and certainly through the Middle Ages that if you try to execute someone a few times and it doesn't work, you just take it as a sign and you move on. But the statement I take issue with from that lawyer is that it is unimaginable that we would now once again go on to execute her. That's not true. It's eminently imaginable because he talks about all the tough life that she had. She did also lure a teenage girl into the woods, torture her, slash her across the throat 10 times, bludgeon her, torture her. Then her boyfriend drew a pentagram, carved it on her chest. Then Krista crushed the woman's skull with asphalt, took a piece of her skull and showed it off as a trophy back on campus. So, you know, it's imaginable to me that the state would execute her in accordance with the laws and justice. The normal thing to do in this case would have been to just put a pillow over her head. You know, it's kind of, it's the James Franco meme from that Buster Scruggs movie on Netflix. He's standing on the scaffold. He's got the noose around his neck. He just like, he says, first time? What's your first time being executed? I'm old hat at this. The normal thing to do would be when she's in the hospital, okay, the pentobarbital didn't work. We're just going to take a pillow. This is going to take me about 60 seconds and then problem solved. So the extraordinary thing to do would be to commute her sentence. Now, maybe there's an argument for that, but I'll tell you what people who have any sense of justice whatsoever are going to be much less persuaded that we should commute her sentence. If you insist that that's the normal, perfectly right, just thing to do. No, no, no. In the course of justice, that woman's head gets crushed with asphalt. Okay. At the very least she is executed by poison in the veins or an electric chair or a firing squad. That is what is normal. That is what is to be expected. That is what would be just anything beyond that is extraordinary. Maybe in reaction to signs of the times, but please spare me the sob story. It's totally ridiculous. Okay. Now this brings us to, uh, a big story that didn't begin over the weekend, but it really, really took steam over the weekend. And this is Pope Leo the 14th doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on his view that the death penalty is inadmissible. So once again, he comes out, he sends this tweet on October 10th. The death penalty is inadmissible. Strange choice of words. The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment. Effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are in a state of emergency from the possibility of redemption. Hashtag no death penalty. Okay. This is a very difficult statement from the Holy Father because there were three statements here, two sentences, three statements. And it seems like those statements, when all put together in the tweet form an argument, but they don't. What's, what's strange about this statement, this larger statement is that the three component parts of it are totally disconnected. So right off the bat, you have the first statement. Notice it's a strange word. It doesn't say is evil, is immoral. It doesn't say that. It says inadmissible. The reason that the Pope is saying that he's borrowing this language from Pope Francis, his predecessor, because for 2000 years, almost the Catholic church has consistently upheld the legitimacy of the death penalty in principle and in practice, going back to St. Paul and the letter to the Romans, up through the church fathers, the great doctors of the church, the common doctor of the church, St. Thomas Aquinas, up through blessed Pius IX, who, when he controlled the papal states, oversaw some 500 executions himself. And when he was asked for a reprieve for the very final execution before he lost the papal states, put blessed Pius IX on his way to being canonized, said, I cannot do it. And I do not want to, and let the execution go through. There was a papal executioner who would, who, by the way, speaking of what we were, just talking about, uh, would, would execute criminals sometimes with something called a mazzatello, which is a giant hammer to crush the condemned skull. So you couldn't say the death penalty is intrinsically evil because that would contradict scripture and 2000 years of church tradition. So you say the death penalty is inadmissible, whatever precisely that means. But the real key here is it says, because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. Well, hold on. Previous popes, well, the vast majority of previous popes just were fine with the death penalty and carried it out. Sometimes, uh, beginning with John Paul, the second in the latter part of the 20th century, a St. John Paul, the second said that he was opposed to the death penalty, but as a prudential matter. So it wasn't that he changed church teaching. It wasn't anything like that. You can't change church teaching. So he said, okay, as a prudential matter, I think that we can deal with, uh, criminals with life in prison now. So let's just do that. Pope Benedict who followed John Paul, the second said much the same thing. I'm opposed to the death penalty, but reasonable minds can disagree here. If you're, you can be a Catholic in good conscience and support the death penalty. It's Francis, Pope Francis in 2018. He increases the invective here. He says, okay, it's inadmissible because of this, that, and the other. But then to say that the death penalty is an attack on the dignity of the person raises a big question because don't forget the death penalty is first found in scripture. In the book of Genesis, the book of Genesis, which says whosoever sheds the blood of man by man, shall his blood be shed comma for man is made in the image and likeness of God. So whatever you think about current church teaching, whatever your exegesis, it is simply a grammatical fact, a syntactical and grammatical fact that the argument for the death penalty in the book of Genesis is based on the fact that the death penalty is based on the fact that the human dignity, not that, not that the, the death penalty is contrary to human dignity, not that we tolerate it, even though it undermines human dignity. No, no, no. We have the death penalty from the very beginning in order to defend human dignity. So this statement from the Pope is confusing. It also means if, if the death penalty is in itself contrary to the dignity of the human person, then that means that, uh, St. Thomas Aquinas promoted some of the words of St. Thomas Aquinas in the letter to the Romans, he endorsed something that was contrary to the dignity of the human person. In other words, that was immoral. It means that, uh, St. Paul in the letter to the Romans endorsed something that was immoral. That means that blessed Pius the ninth and many other popes in, in enacted policies that are immoral in the papal states. This is very, very strange. This is very, very confusing. So the Vatican will have to explain that. Then there's the second statement, which is disconnected from the first. The second statement is the second statement returns to the prudential argument. The Pope says the common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment. Okay. Okay. Hold on. Now we're making a total. Now we're back to JP two and Benedict. Okay. I can get with that argument. I can understand that argument. You're saying, look now in the old days, we needed capital punishment to protect people and the common good. And, but now we don't really need that because we have maximum security prisons. So you, you can argue that the maximum security prisons don't prudentially actually protect the common good, but whatever. Okay. At least there I see a prudential argument. And that is an argument, by the way, with which a Catholic in good faith can disagree, albeit in a spirit of reverence to the Pope. Okay. What, what that second statement does not say is what Pope Francis said, which is that, and I think Pope Leo has said, which is that the death penalty is contrary to the gospel per se. Whoa, whoa. That's a big statement. That's not what the second statement says. Then the third one finally says effective systems of detention have been developed that protects citizens while at the same time, do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. Now, this is a third argument again, which is that, uh, one of the arguments against the death penalty is that it deprives people of the possibility of repentance because if you kill them, they won't have 30 years to get their lives in order and to see the light and to, you know, have a, have a truly a come to Jesus moment, which can save their souls. But that is far from clear to me. In fact, I don't think that's true. I would say it's probably the opposite. I'm with Dr. Johnson who says, depend upon it, sir. When a man is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. I don't, I don't think it's at all clear that giving someone 30 years to languish on death row will make them more likely to repent. In fact, I think there's a good chance it makes them less likely to repent. I think that when a man is facing the scaffold immediately, that might very well make him more likely to repent. So again, I, I read the statement of the Pope in a spirit of obedience and respect but I'm not sure about that. And once again, this would be a kind of prudential judgment that does not demand that we all, you know, uh, totally agree with it all of the time. So what does that mean? It means that, especially for something that seems like a change here, we're going to have to, the church is going to have to clarify this. Luckily, the church measures her ages in centuries, not just years and days. But this is unclear. The situation before 2018 was a lot easier. You say, okay, well, the Pope is making a prudential judgment. I don't really agree with that, but I'm still, I hear it respectfully. I think about it. I contemplate it. He deserves my consideration. Okay. But when you raise the stakes here to this attacks the human dignity and it's contrary to the gospel per se, now you're in a situation where either the Pope is actually calling 2,000 years of church tradition and the 2,000 year reading of scripture immoral, or you're in a situation where either the Pope is actually calling 2,000 years of church tradition immoral, or you're in a situation where either the Pope is actually calling 2,000 years of immoral, or you're in a situation where either the Pope is actually calling 2,000 years I'm just not quite understanding what it is that the Pope is saying because the church teaching cannot change in this way. I mean, this is not a minor issue. And so I think all of that to say, the reason that the death penalty debate has become so focused among Catholics and Christians more broadly is not really about the death penalty. That's it. Because a lot of people say, well, who cares? The death penalty, really? You're going to allow this, how we punish criminals to really cause problems in your faith. And I say, no, no, it's not going to cause problems. But we also can't brush it aside because it's not really about the death penalty. It's about whether or not perennial church teaching can change, how it can change, the degrees to which it can change. That's the issue. Most people don't care that much about the death penalty. At this point, I kind of want Krista Pike to live. At this point, I see the signs. I say, okay, you know what? Maybe we should let this lady live. But what about other issues? On what grounds is a church teaching a legitimate development of doctrine? And at what point is it an illegitimate changing of perennial teaching? There's a lot more at stake than just the lives of the condemned here. Okay. Speaking of justice, the DOJ is, going after major news networks, major, including Fox News, by the way, the liberal news networks and Fox News for boycotting coverage of President Trump after Trump kicked CNN out of the White House. And you got some squish Republicans here who are really driving me up a wall. We'll get to that in a second. First, I want to tell you about GOP votes. First, they'll go to gopvotes.org. The Democratic Socialists of America won primaries across the country. Next, they're coming for Congress and they're coming for you. If they win the midterms, they'll defund the police, reopen our border and force men into women's sports. You are the last line of defense and gopvotes.org is your partner in the fight. Go to gopvotes.org right now. Make a plan to vote early. If you live in the critical Senate battleground states of Maine, Ohio, or Iowa, early voting is already underway. This week, Democrats are energized. The stakes have never been higher. We cannot afford to have people like AOC and her communist cronies running the show. That is why I need you to make a plan to vote early right now. Go to gopvotes.org to find your polling location. Vote early. Stop the socialist takeover of America paid for by SLF PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. In Maine, Troy Jackson and Susan Collins are competing in one of Cal Shee's most actively traded Senate markets. Track the race live in Cal Shee's midterms hub and trade the outcome you believe will happen. A correct contract is worth $1, $1 at settlement. Take your position on Cal Shee. It's Cal Shee, K-A-L-S-H-I, Cal Shee. Trade on anything. 18 plus only. Cal Shee products are not available in all jurisdictions. For more information, visit CalShee.com. We'll get to that. We don't have time to get to all that today. Right now, I want to get to at least, oh gosh, there's so much more I want to get to. Okay, you know what? I'm going to skip the DOJ story. We'll get to, there's a DOJ. The DHS is going after Ilhan Omar. The DOJ is going after the news media. The squish Republicans are being squishy like usual. I want to get to this poor guy in the tiger enclosure. Did you see this? There was a guy in the UK and he was at the zoo. He hands his phone to someone. He says, hey, can you get a picture of me in front of the tigers? They get a picture of him in front of the tigers. And then he jumps into the tiger enclosure and the tiger mauls him to death. We have some B-roll of it. It's not the goriest B-roll. So, you know, viewer discretion advised, but you're not going to see the tiger like bite his head off or anything, but they're getting a little rough in there. And then happily the video cuts out before things get really, really bad. Okay. This raised an immediate question to me, which is if you see a guy in the tiger enclosure and the tiger, has not yet eaten this guy or mauled this guy to death. This goes on for a little while at 20, 30 seconds when something could have been done. Uh, why didn't the zoo shoot the tiger? That's my question. If I were running the zoo, no question. I shoot the tiger immediately. And a lot of people are saying you can't shoot the tiger. The tiger didn't do anything wrong. It's this guy's fault. I don't know if this guy had disabilities, if you were a little impaired, if you were just a total nut, if he wanted to commit suicide, I don't know. We, we don't really know the details about it. But you say, but it's this guy's fault. The tiger was behaving like a tiger. The tiger tigers are not rational creatures. You know, they're just going off instinct. So you can't blame a tiger when he mauls a guy who falls into his cage or who jumps into his cage. Why would you kill the tiger for that? You see a lot of this argument coming up, but there is no question. The only moral thing to do in this instance is to shoot the tiger. That there was a chance you could have saved this guy's life. And maybe you'd be angry with the guy and maybe you'd make the guy pay to buy a new tiger. But it's amazing coming off the death penalty conversation. Think about how we talk about the death penalty. Think about this. This woman, Krista Pike, drags a teenage girl into the woods, commits unspeakable crimes against her, tortures her, murders her, takes part of her skull as a trophy. And what do we say? We say, well, we cannot, even 30 years later, we cannot kill Krista Pike. Think about the human dignity. We cannot commit the death penalty. Think about how we talk about cops arresting criminals. What do we say about cops arresting criminals? We say, no, but society failed the criminals and they're all really good boys. You just don't understand. They're misunderstood. You don't know. We need to, we need less policing. We need to let the criminals run free, even if they're rapists and murderers and they keep killing people. And no, no, no. The dignity of the human person demands that we do anything we can for these people. Did the person who fell into the tiger pit, he didn't have dignity. That guy didn't have dignity, right? I think he has dignity. I think he, I think that there is a much stronger case that the state needs to protect his life than that the state needs to protect the life of condemned criminals on death row or of, or of criminals committing crimes in the streets for that matter. This guy's totally innocent, maybe a little kooky, maybe a little crazy, maybe committed a minor crime by jumping in there. But why, why would they not shoot the tiger? It's the UK. So I don't know. They probably, they would just like politely ask the tiger to stop. And the zoo was doing stuff. They were playing sounds. They were trying to distract the animal. That's not going to cut it. You got to shoot the animal. It's like Harambee. Why didn't they shoot the tiger? Why are we having these conversations about the death penalty? At least in the secular society, I'll put aside the debates going on within the church. This is the consequence of no longer believing that man is made in the image and likeness of God. This is the consequence of a doing that. We believe that we're not really all that different from the tiger. We believe that we're not really all that different from other animals. The old view was that man is essentially different from other animals because we possess will and intellect. Other animals possess appetite and instinct. Those are just different things. We have language, language with recursion. We have self-reflection. We can deal in abstract concepts. We are, in other words, made in the image and likeness of God. And the animals are great and they're beautiful. Tigers are really beautiful, but they're not made in the image and likeness of God in the way that we are. And so we treat them differently. Every tiger on earth is not worth one human being, even a kind of wacky, crazy human being who fell into the cage. So what do we do? We just engage in these utilitarian calculations. We're, we are what you want to, you want to pretend like we're so much more humane now because we hand ring over the death penalty. We are the most bloodthirsty generation that has ever walked the earth. We murder 1.2 million innocent babies a year, and the number's going up. Even after conservatives got a big win overturning Roe v. Wade, the problem was that big win happened right at the same time as the technological development of the abortion pill. So the abortions are skyrocketing, regardless of surgical abortion. We murder 1.2 innocent babies per year. We murder 5% of all the grannies in Canada every single year, and throughout continental Europe, and increasing the UK, and it's coming to America too. Forget about just the grannies. We now use euthanasia on retarded people, on depressed people, on poor people, on anyone who we find unproductive in society or inconvenient in society. We are the most bloodthirsty, cruel generation that has ever walked the face of the earth, and you want to pretend that you're immoral, that you're pure because you have reservations about the death penalty? Give me a break. The people at that zoo decided that abortion is a crime. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're pretty orange animal was more important than a human being who fell in there. And they really believe it because they don't really see much of a difference between the animal and the human being. We live in an age when everybody's a vegetarian and everybody supports abortion. That is completely morally perverse. And perhaps if we restore the older conception of society, which we now consider to be retrogressive and cruel and violent, I strongly suspect, first of all, the violence would decrease. But our humanity, our respect for the dignity of the human person would increase tremendously. I know I'm running late. I don't care. I have to get to someone who I think is probably doing her first press briefing right this very second, the new press secretary, Katie Zachariah. Well, I've watched Katie, who is taking the place of Caroline, who you know how fabulous Caroline was. Caroline's going to have some very big success, I believe. I know because she's very outstanding. I think Katie is going to do a great job. I've known Katie a little bit, but I've watched her a lot on television and she does a very good job. And she believes in us and she believes in what we're doing, which is making America great again. She really does. Thank you for that question. Okay. Now, I, like President Trump, also know Katie Zachariah a little bit. You know, not very, very well, but we have very close mutual friends. I've known her for some years now. Excellent, excellent pick. Really, really smart. So, you know, Trump announces, it's my great honor to have just appointed as press secretary Katie Zachariah. Katie currently serves as senior communications advisor to Truth Social, Trump Media and Technology Group, where she's been outstanding, native of California. She's worked at DHS, was it? Yes, she worked at DHS, and she's been outstanding. She's been outstanding. She's a graduate of Pepperdine, a great conservative school, and on and on and on. Looks the part, you know, very, very good looking, blonde, you know, totally looks the part of the great press secretary who's under President Trump. And anyway, I think this is a terrific pick. Someone who's very loyal to the president, very smart, very articulate. Not some, a lot of people were talking about some of the celebrity people who could come in and do it. A big, a big name that was floated was Scott Jennings. Scott is terrific. Scott's great on CNN. He should be on CNN, and he's doing a great job of that. I always thought the press sec was going to be an intelligent, good-looking, articulate woman. It does seem to be President Trump's preference in that role. I think that helps to soften the administration. And anyway, I'm just very, very pleased. I don't always know the people who are getting picked for these positions, but I think that this is a phenomenal pick for press secretary. There have been a lot of great picks in this administration. I really want to get to the letter that the president wrote. Secretary Scott Besant sent over to Elizabeth Warren, because it's just a work of art. I want to frame it. We don't have time, though. I'm way over anyway. So we'll have to get to it tomorrow. It's Music Monday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code NOLS, K-N-W-L-E-S, to check out for two months free on all annual plans. Well, some races draw attention. Others become the race everyone watches. In Texas, James Tallarico and Ken Paxton are facing off in one of Cal Shee's most traded midterm markets. Follow the race in real time on Cal Shee, and then trade on the candidate you think is going to win. Trade what happens next on Cal Shee. That's Cal Shee, K-A-L-S-E-E. S-H-I, Cal Shee. Trade on anything. 18 plus only. For more information, see calshee.com slash regulatory.