DEBATE: Michael Knowles CHALLENGED On Feminism, IVF, Trump
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If Donald Trump loses the November election, what do you think went wrong? How is it possible that Biden could get 10 million more votes in 2020 than Democrats had done in 2016? One answer to that is, well, because all the rules changed. So, you know, you got a new game and you've got new results as a consequence of that. I would just point out, I was down in D.C. on January 21st.

2017 covering the Women's March. Something like 5 million people, most of them women, came out and marched that day against Donald Trump. Continue with a historically inaccurate analysis and you're going to have an improper kind of strategy out of it. All right, welcome to CounterPoints Friday. We're now about a week and a half away from the November election. And Ryan and I are joined today by Michael Knowles, the host of The Michael Knowles Show, who also has a candle line, Michael?

You know, I only sell combustibles now. So I have my Mayflower cigars. I wasn't sure if I'd become a candle mogul, but I guess a lot of the audience is a kind of live, laugh, love, suburban, feminine type because we are selling bazillions of candles at thecandleclub.com. They're a great product. I'm not surprised.

Ryan, maybe it's time for you to get into candles. Everyone needs a good candle. Yeah, that's for sure. Well, Michael, one thing we wanted to start off with, just putting all of our cards on the table, I can't think of two people that probably disagree more than you and Ryan Grimm. So we're hoping for a lively conversation, but one place to start could be if Donald Trump

loses the November election, what do you think went wrong? Who would deserve the blame? It is basically a tied race right now, so that's not outside the realm of possibility. Kamala Harris, despite all of the flaws that you and I might ascribe to her, and I think reasonably so, is still popular among some swath of the American people. Significant swath among the American people. Looks like an even swath compared with Donald Trump. So if Trump actually loses in November, who's to blame?

I think the blame would have to lie in the way that the system has been changed.

So, you know, in 2020, the election rules were largely changed to extend election day to election season and to encourage widespread mail-in ballots, which makes ballot harvesting a little bit easier. I'm not even really getting into the shenanigans that sometimes crop up in the city machines. I'm just talking about the actual now legal and official modes of conducting the election that obviously radically changed

the nature of the election in 2020. A lot of people said, how is it possible that Biden could get 10 million more votes in 2020 than Democrats had done in 2016? And one answer to that is, well, because all the rules changed. So, you know, you got a new game and you've got new results as a consequence of that.

I think that would be really the only way to explain it. You know, I love Trump, not a big Kamala fan. I'm a conservative Republican. But even trying to take some distance here, it seems to me that the issues basically all cut for Trump right now. The economy cuts for Trump, foreign policy cuts for Trump, immigration cuts for Trump.

Some of the social issues cut for Trump. Probably the one issue that the Democrats are getting. Before you get into that, because I think that's an interesting point to make, I did want to flag one point you made there, that access to the ballot is the only explanation for why there were so many more people voting in 2020 than 2016. I would just point out, I was down in D.C. on January 21st, 2017, covering the Women's March.

uh i have never seen a march that big in my life in washington dc something like five million people most of them women came out and marched that day against donald trump this is the day after he was inaugurated democrats themselves the democratic leadership

Was hostile to or skeptical of that Women's March. They didn't they were flat on their back It was it this was an organic kind of Facebook generated reaction to the election of Donald Trump and it was it was real like the anger at and a shock that Trump had become president was a real thing and you saw that energy for four straight years and you saw it metastasize in some really interesting ways that we can talk about and I think that that

played a significant role in why so many people voted in 2020. Like they were just living. I'm not so sure. I'm not denying that the left is good at street organizing. They do it a lot. But I don't think the Women's March was unique. You saw similar street protests with the George Floyd riots. Even before that, you saw it with Occupy Wall Street. Even before that, you saw it with the anti-Bush war protests. Occupy Wall Street, I covered that too. There were dozens of people at

occupy Wall Street hundreds at the most.

But there were Occupy protests throughout the country, too. There was even in New Haven. I was in college at the time, and they had Occupy New Haven, which I agree was pretty pitiful. Two dozen people, yeah. But even going back to the Bush era, you know, you had Code Pink. You had all of these kind of protests. So the left does that. The left takes to the streets throughout the 1970s. That doesn't always translate to votes. It was like substantially different numbers of people. Five million people, the most in American history, came out against Trump. I'm just saying, it's just worth understanding that as history.

Like, know your enemy, know your adversary. Like, they were pissed.

And it was real. Yeah, maybe. The left gets very angry and they do it in different numbers at different times. My only contention is I don't know that street protests always translate to success at the ballot box. If that were the case, I think probably Kerry would have won in 04 and I think probably Hillary would have won in 16. So what changed here was not that the Democrats were especially angry or that a certain segment, women were especially angry. I think what changed

and what accounts for 10 million new votes is that they changed the election rules. And so you described that as access to the ballot. I suppose certain people who otherwise would not be motivated to vote, who weren't paying attention to the election, might have cast a ballot because of ballot harvesting. But it also does open up the system to- - I don't wanna get bogged down in it. I'm just saying you can't compare

The women's march and the amount of energy that pulsed into the streets in 2017 to the Iraq war. I was actually participating in those before I was a journalist. There were a couple hundred thousand at the peak that came out for that. Code Pink is like

six people in a group house in DC. These are not remotely comparable movements. You don't have to absorb any of this that I'm saying, but your analysis is going to continue to be confused if you really believe that Code Pink during the Iraq war is the same as five million women coming out of the streets in 2017 and the effect that had on our politics.

I think the libs come out every four years or so, and they yell and they scream. Okay, but they don't. It's just historically inaccurate. But good, continue with a historically inaccurate analysis, and you're going to have an improper kind of strategy out of it. Well, Michael, maybe here's a good question. I don't know. It kind of looks like we're winning the election right now. So I think the Republican strategy has played pretty well. We'll see if the Republicans can overcome the new rule changes that the Democrats have

crammed in everybody's throats. But as of right now, the polls are looking very, very good for Trump. So if anyone needs to rethink strategy, I think it would probably be the party that ran a guy who obviously had dementia, lied about it, swapped out the candidate at the last minute for a woman who never got a primary vote while she was running for president on issues that she can't win other than maybe trying to promote infanticide, even then probably not going to push her over the finish line.

Well, let's talk about that because to your point, now Donald Trump has never been, this is a weird figure, but he's actually never been more or less unpopular. If you look at his favorability ratings, they've gone up since like 2020, which is baffling. And if you had told me on January 7th, that would happen. The only way I would believe it is if the media continued to react very poorly to Donald

like legitimately objectionable things that Donald Trump was doing, but having the exact opposite of what made sense of a reaction to the media, not understanding his voters, not understanding why people continue to like him. That was the only way that it would make sense to me. But the point that I wanted to ask is, as you mentioned, it looks like a lot of the issues that are front of mind for voters are cutting in Republicans' favor, cutting in Trump's favor. But even so,

This is basically a statistically tied race, meaning there's a lot of support for Kamala Harris. And I guess maybe to Ryan's point, what do you make of that? Why are so many people, if all of those issues are cutting in Donald Trump's election? The media right now is asking, why isn't Kamala Harris running away with the election? But maybe the question is, why isn't Donald Trump running away with the election if the issues are so in his favor?

Well, I think that there are a lot of historical issues with it, but I think that the big, the chief issue right now is the way that the election is being conducted. So we talk about new voters being brought in. Obviously, the Biden-Harris administration has flooded the country with foreign nationals, many of whom are planning to vote in the election. You don't need to take my word for it. The Heritage Foundation got

video interviewing illegal aliens who admitted on camera, I'm an illegal alien. I have been registered to vote and I intend to vote for Kamala Harris. So this is all available online. You've seen some pushback against that in various states, but it's just a fact that when you have 8 million new border encounters over a three and a half year period, foreign nationals who overwhelmingly identify with Democrats, that's going to have downstream demographic effects, especially because we know that the children, even the grandchildren,

of these immigrants, many of whom are illegal immigrants, identify as Democrats, and they will have the right to vote. But she's at 49% in the RTP average. Just one final point on this. This is after the largest movement of people in recorded history, which is immigration into the United States since 1965. So I think that's

Part of the reason is that the Democrats have explicitly campaigned on changing the demographics of a country in a cynical way that actually often harms the people they're bringing in, but will help them electorally. I think that's why this election looks different than if it were taking place, say, 20 years ago. Walk us through how somebody who is here illegally would vote. Like what...

- And why have we failed to catch anybody other than like one or two people in the past? - No, we've caught more than one or two people. - Like maybe six. - Yeah, I think it's probably more than six. The way that we-- - Seven? It's nothing. It's like minuscule. And then they're all in Texas.

Yeah, no, they're not. They're actually throughout a number of states, including some liberal states like California. But California would be a good place to start because of motor voter laws. So that's the easiest way. When illegal aliens in states with liberal policies go to the DMV, they're allowed to get driver's licenses and other identification forms.

and at the DMV, they're allowed to register to vote. Now, of course, officially speaking, they're not supposed to register to vote, but if everyone is automatically being offered the opportunity to register to vote when they're getting their driver's license, then the people who don't have that eligibility, but nonetheless can get a driver's license,

sometimes fall into that pile. You're seeing a big issue right now in Arizona because there's a difference between the federal law and the state and the local law. So for state and local elections, people have to show proof of citizenship to register to vote.

for the federal level, they don't, which to me is pretty crazy. It seems to me that if anything, it ought to be flipped and the federal elections are the more important ones. But in any case, that's the rule right now. So now Arizona has to deal with hundreds of thousands of people who are

potentially ineligible to vote. And they're probably gonna be able to vote anyway, and it will be fought. - If this is so widespread, why don't- - Just one final point on this. This is why the establishment media right now are trying to normalize the notion that we won't have the results on election night, which is preposterous. PBS had a headline. They said, "Not only will we not have the results on election night, but it's normal not to have the results on election night." Every election in my lifetime, including Bush v. Gore,

when Democrats tried to overturn the results of that election before it became unpatriotic to try to overturn the results of an election. Even in 2000, we had the results on election night. So I'm not sure when it became normal. I guess it's just when the Dems waved their magic wand four years ago. Well, they didn't have the results until December when the Supreme Court decided, right? Because Al Gore challenged the election, but they actually did call the election that night.

But they hadn't needed a recount. But Kamala Harris is up 49. Well, they didn't need an Al Gore push for it and then tried to overturn the election. And there are laws that allow for a recount. That was back, though, when Democrats enjoyed an overturning election. But, okay, so in the RCP average, Kamala Harris is at like 49%. So basically, the thing I would disagree with that you're saying is that the amount of, I mean, there's obviously been a huge flood of both legal and legal.

illegal migration into the country over the course of the Biden administration. But if I were to ascribe a percentage point of like the RCP average that is boosting Kamala Harris to 49.4%, I think they have Trump around 48%. I just don't know how significant that would be, to be honest. I mean, it seems like the American people are genuinely torn between Trump and Harris. Do you disagree with that?

I think the American people are torn between the right and the left. That's certainly true. And I think that the left controls basically all of the institutions at this point. And so America has liberalized significantly. I mean, whatever you think about the so-called social issues, it's simply a fact that when Hillary Clinton was running in 2008, she ran on abortion being safe, legal, and rare. She ran on abortion being a bad thing. Now the Democrats shout their abortion.

When Barack Obama was president during his first term, he believed that marriage was a sacred union between a man and a woman. That was as recent as 2011. And then Joe Biden blabbed that they were going to change position, and they finally did. But it was pretty recent. You know, you're talking about 13 years ago. So the country has moved significantly to the left, and that gives an advantage to Kamala. She just happens to be so weak a candidate. And Trump happens to be

more sympathetic than he's ever been because after years of the Democrats justifying his assassination,

someone actually pulled out the gun and tried to do it and nearly succeeded the first time and tried again a second time. So he, as you say, he's the least unpopular that he's ever been right now. And also all of the issues are cutting in the Republicans' favor. So I agree with you. This is bad news for Republicans that even with all of the headwinds working for Republicans, it's still a close election. But

That's what happens when the Democrats have succeeded at reshaping the country and the laws that shape cultural attitudes.

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And Democrats would say that the reason that they're competitive or the reason that why they have might even have a slight advantage at this point is Trump's success in overturning Roe v. Wade and that the country has kind of recoiled, recoiled at that. What's your what's your assessment of that? And tell me, like for people who like I.

Our ecosystems don't overlap enough. So a lot of our viewers might not know what exactly your politics are, where you are on this site. My understanding is you're like pretty hardcore on the life side. I prepped it, Michael. You're like down the line. She prepped me a little bit. You're like down the line, like as out there as you can get on it, right?

Yeah, I think we ought to protect babies. I think it's bad to kill babies. It's basically my, I guess that's an extreme position now. I used to be a kind of a moderate and common sense position. I'm for protecting babies too. You want to elaborate on that? We agree. Yeah.

I don't think we really need to elaborate. I think it's bad to kill babies. So that would inform my election choices. I agree with you that Roe v. Wade's overruling is an issue in the campaign. I think it's really the only issue that helps Democrats at all, and then only in certain places.

But conservatives have debated how to react to this. You've seen a lot of Republicans just basically trying to downplay the issue on the campaign trail, which is probably fine as a matter of prudence. I think what happened with Roe v. Wade being overruled is not that pro-lifers merely won a victory. It's not that Democrats won a political victory, as some of them claim. It's that the whole conversation changed.

So now the Supreme Court says in the Dobbs ruling that the issue has to go back to the states. The Supreme Court could have said that the 14th Amendment provides equal protection and so you can't kill babies anywhere. That's certainly an argument. Professor Robbie George, John Finnis made that argument in an amicus brief to the court. But that's not what they said. They said the issue goes back to the states and people can vote on it. And so the issue for pro-lifers is that when abortion has come up as a ballot initiative—

the pro-abortion policies have succeeded. They've prevailed pretty much every time. So Republicans are in a bad position right now because we're in a whole new ballgame. And so what is required is to win hearts and minds and persuade people that it's wrong to kill babies and it's good to protect life at the state level. But that's not really a federal matter right now. The Supreme Court has ruled on it. So when Trump and J.D. Vance

downplay the issue of abortion. I think they're doing so as a matter of political prudence, but it's also just common sense. They really have nothing to do with that issue right now, unless the Supreme Court is gonna reverse its position, which it's not, then that's really a matter for the states and it's a matter for gubernatorial candidates and state legislature candidates to fight. - And not to debate the point, but just on the definition of babies again, do you think that an IUD kills babies?

Well, an IUD is a contraceptive device, right? So in principle, I'm not the biggest expert in contraception. I have three kids under four. But from what I understand, that would prevent the conception of a baby. So it in general prevents the implantation.

Oh, well, in as much, I suppose this would be similar to certain abortive fashion drugs where the nature of it, like Plan B, is debated. And some people, you're being, I suppose, a little bit more blunt about it than many pro-sexual revolution types on the left. But many people argue that things like Plan B or things like IUDs

are merely contraceptive and not abortifacient. But if they are contraceptive, then they prevent contraception. If they're abortifacient, they obviously involve abortions. Yeah, it's just a matter of basic fact that sometimes they prevent implantation. Right, right. So you would consider that a baby. So you would say IUDs, if that's the case, if I'm right about that, that you think that IUDs

a woman with an id is like killing babies the question you're asking me i guess the question you're asking is when do i think human life begins and so my answer is i think it begins at the beginning i don't know what else you would say it begins uh now of course no one's really campaigning in this uh this election well they're not even campaigning on abortion but no one's really campaigning against iuds or any contraception or anything like that

We're pointing out that the Democrats have taken their safe legal rare position. Well, the reason is because the Democrats have moved the goalposts. You just said you're voting on killing, you don't want to kill babies. Yeah, go ahead. The reason that they're not campaigning on that is because the Democrats have moved the goalposts so far. They used to campaign on safe, legal, and rare. Now they campaign on abortion at any moment up until birth and including after birth.

So I know the Democrats are trying to run away with this because it's unpopular, but Andrew Cuomo, when he was governor of New York, was one of the first Democrat governors to change the law to say there will be no restrictions on abortion, even change the penal code such that if you killed a woman who was pregnant, it would no longer be double homicide. It would only be a single homicide. And then he lit up the Freedom Tower pink to celebrate. Tim Walz is governor of Minnesota.

repealed legal protections for babies who are born alive, who survive abortions. Babies can survive outside of the womb now as early as 24 weeks, 23 weeks, 22 weeks, even 21 weeks. So it's very, very young. Abortions take place up until the moment of birth. And so previously in Minnesota, there was a law that required doctors to provide medical care to babies who survive abortions. And

just as you would provide medical care to anybody who needed it. Tim Walz removed those protections. Tim Walz then also removed the reporting requirements. Now we know the number is disputable. We know some way at least five, maybe eight, maybe more babies actually were born alive and they were callously left to die without any medical care. So that's where we're fighting the issue right now because it clarifies the issue so much. And it's where Democrats have brought the issue. It's not Republicans who have done that.

Well, Ryan, I saw your reaction to the afterbirth thing. Did you want to follow up on... I mean, Michael explained what happened in Minnesota, for example, which is it's a matter of not providing care, legalizing the declining to provide care. Is that not...

I mean, that is a real thing that both Cuomo, it was something that Ralph Northam advocated for. I guess, why don't we leave this to doctors? Like, who am I to, like...

- I didn't go to medical school. - Because we're citizens of a self-governing republic and we have laws against murder. You know, it's so amazing that the Democrats who have been campaigning for socialized medicine for decades now say on this one healthcare issue, we just need to get the government out of it. What are you talking about? We're citizens, we live in a self-governing republic. We have something to say about the laws. That's why we're all talking about an election here. And we're talking about a matter of life and death. Even if you take the babies out of it, for some reason you don't like the babies.

But let's say you're just talking about, I don't know, a disabled woman or something, just an adult who is in the room who requires desperate medical care in an emergency room. Would you say that doctors should just ignore her? Wouldn't you say that the law ought to impel medical providers to provide that urgent medical care? We have plenty of those laws on the books right now. Why is it just the case that when it comes to the most vulnerable little babies,

that for them, we, in the words of Ralph Northam, we just kind of put them on a table, you know, maybe make them a little comfortable and have a conversation between the doctor and the mutter to see if you want to kill them. Yeah, I don't, I don't want babies to die either, but we're also, but I think it becomes very difficult to talk about when,

there is an entire movement that thinks that having an IUD is killing a baby. So at that point, you're like, well, we can't- So you keep trying to change the subject from the real political issue to a contrived political issue because you know that the real political issue, as it's being fought, the Democrat position is completely indefensible and abhorrent to anyone who has even a modicum of a conscience. So you try to move to a contrived political issue- But so why not argue around there? That nobody's debating right now. Like, why not-

Why not argue around the final trimester and supporting if a fetus is viable,

like that. Hold on. There's a big difference between the final trimester and an IUD or something, right? There's a lot of space in the middle. And right now, the issue is that abortion is effectively legal at any point, including in some places after birth, which is just called murder. So I think what the Democrats are trying to do is really blur this issue. And I'm all for having, you know,

bioethical debates over the origin of life and all the right. I find that all very interesting, but we're in an election season. And what I'm observing is the actual political issue, the actual political, the policies that are being advanced by the Democrats right now, all concern those latter stages, the much clearer point of this, you know, up until the moment of birth, shout your abortion, changing the penal code for goodness sakes in New York.

Why is it that the Democrats, why is it that you, Ryan, when we're debating this right now, you are desperately trying to avoid that part of it? Because you know that that's a losing issue for people. - Well, I'll tell you the reason. My view on this is I don't even wanna have a view on this. I don't wanna have anything to do with it. I want this decision to be left between women and their doctor. - Slavery doesn't concern me. That's an issue for the southern states. Forget about that. It's not the southern states. It's for women and their doctors just work this, I trust them.

to make the decision that is best for them. And there's so much to think about in this world that like, why do I need to- There's so much to think about. So why do I have to talk about infanticide or the law or elections or politics? I don't know, bro. Where on your list is this? Because you're a citizen in a self-governing republic and this is a deeply important moral issue. There's a lot of deeply important moral issues. Why do you care so much about this? I'm just curious. I don't even necessarily want to debate the...

- I'm not sure there's even that much point, but what-- - I'm happy to tell you why. Because the right to life is not just one right among many. It's not like the privilege to drive a car or the right to smoke a cigarette at the age of 21. The right to life is the fundamental right on which all of the other rights rely.

it cuts down to the very core of our being. So this is why we have very serious laws against murder. It's why we take murder laws and murder trials more seriously than laws about jaywalking or tickets about parking. So this is obviously a really important issue. Cuts to the heart of who we are, how we think about all of morality and all of the law.

and all of the human person. And the people who we're talking about here are the most vulnerable people among us who don't have a voice, who are innocent little babies. So to me, that seems kind of important. I know there are a lot of big issues in the world, but I think I would put jaywalking or even tax rates at a less significant part of this debate than, say, the right to life. Yeah. Again, pursuing that question, when in your life did

women's pregnancies become like something that you were like, this is the thing I really am going to make my... Well, it's not... Women's pregnancies became important to me when my wife was pregnant for the first time because I had to go get her snacks and things at night. But life, the question of human life, morality has been a question for a long time. I mean, if you're interested in politics and you're not interested in practical morality, well, I don't really know...

what you're doing because the law by definition is a codification of practical moral views. And I, by the way, I guess for you, is this like an always thing? Like, is this an always thing? Like the first time in like middle school, you learned about it. You're like, this is, I need to fight for these things.

I mean, he's Catholic, right, Michael? No, no. I'm Catholic, but I was an apostate for a long time. So I was, from the age of 13 to 23, I was pretty irreligious. And so I was in favor of legal abortion. I had no problem with it. I didn't understand why pro-lifers believed in it. And I was having a lunch one day during a summer fellowship with a bioethicist.

And she was asking me my views on things. And I said, oh, you know, I'm a Republican. I like low taxes, but I don't care about abortion. I think it's fine. And then we had a lunch, a long conversation about it.

and she persuaded me that I was wrong. So I know in our modern day, it's unusual for people to be persuaded by arguments, but she persuaded me that there's really no argument for abortion and that the argument in favor of life and defending the preborn is pretty much rock solid. - You were 23? - No, I was 21 during that lunch. I was 23 when I reverted to the church. - And so you're 21 and you got argued into?

Yep. Anti-abortion? By a very intelligent bioethicist. Okay. So on that point, now, Ryan asked a question earlier to all of this, at the heart of all of this. He said, well, when is the beginning? When does the beginning begin? And an issue where that question is...

incredibly salient is on IVF, which has become something of an election issue because Donald Trump is now campaigning on being, what did he say, the father of IVF, something to that extent. And Michael, you're a staunch opponent of IVF for a lot of the reasons that we've already talked about. So how do you sort of square that circle? How do you justify support for Donald Trump, somebody who's even walked back

prior pro-life statements and seemed to, at least for the sake of political expediency, I don't actually know what's in his heart or what he really believes, kind of moderate on that particular issue and then extend it to him calling himself the father of IVF, campaigning on free IVF, like universal IVF access by the federal government or through some combination of federal grants and state grants. How does that

How do you sort of rationalize supporting Trump if, as you say, human life is really the fundamental question of our politics? Sure. Well, there are two parts to that. One, on President Trump speaking more ambiguously about pro-life. I actually think that's probably a good idea. I would encourage him to be a little more ambiguous just as a matter of political prudence. I wouldn't encourage him to lie. It would be immoral to lie. But in terms of downplaying an issue, the one issue that the Democrats seem to be winning on

I think that's probably a good idea because to quote cocaine Mitch McConnell, the winners go to Washington to make laws and the losers go home. So I really don't have a problem with prudence in politics. When it comes to in vitro fertilization, there's another reminder that politics is the art of the possible. It's the art of the second best and the art of inclusion. A lot of arts in politics. And in vitro fertilization is a relatively novel technology that poses complex bioethical questions

that most people have never considered because it's not their job to consider it. And it's just, you know, they go about their lives and it's kind of a new idea. This is true even among pro-lifers. So when we're talking about a relatively small subset of the population that views IVF to be morally unacceptable,

You know, you're talking about a small number of people. Add on to that that many people know someone or know someone who knows someone who was conceived via IVF. And though that would not be morally dispositive, just as you'd say, I know people who have been conceived in the case of rape. Their lives are

of course, as valuable as anyone else's life. They have a right to life, but that's not to justify rape, of course, like that, you know, good ends don't justify immoral means. But it's difficult to overcome that emotional hurdle, that hurdle of pathos. So I think probably the prudent thing to do here

The Catholics have always been opposed to IVF because the Catholics take bioethics very seriously. But it's not just the Catholics. The Southern Baptist Convention just came out, this is the largest Protestant denomination in the country, just came out and said, IVF is probably morally unacceptable. Most people just don't know why. They don't realize that IVF

creates lots and lots of embryos that will be destroyed or frozen indefinitely. They don't consider that IVF commoditizes human life. It turns human life, humans from proper subjects with rights into objects, commodities to be bought and sold, traded at the baby store. It raises all sorts of questions over who has rights in reproduction. Traditionally understood, the only people who have rights in reproduction are babies to be the right

to be the product of the specific conjugal act of their parents joined together in marriage. Now we have this notion that people have a right to a baby, just like, I don't know, a wealthy woman has the right to a handbag or something. That's obviously not acceptable. But people haven't really considered all of this.

You know, I mean, this is kind of new stuff. And so I give people a lot of grace on it, you know, and I just think we need to work this out. I really agree with the Baptists in their statement. People need to work this out, consider this issue. I hope they do it before some of the negative consequences emerge because IVF, no matter what fine effects come as a result, IVF establishes the domination of science and technology

over the origin and destiny of human life. All that said, 13 days to a presidential election, you are not going to radically persuade hundreds of millions of people of a complex and nuanced bioethical point with regard to a novel technology that most people consider to be an unmitigated good. It's just not going to happen. So if some political candidates want to kind of dance around the issue or not address it,

Well, look, Trump's leaning all into it. Trump's leaning fully into it. He's like, I'm the father of IVF. Other Republican senators have done that too. And, you know, the thing is, I don't think he's being cynical about that. I don't think he's being opportunistic. I...

I fully grant, as somebody who takes this matter very seriously, and I think about bioethics a lot, it's complex. It requires some nuanced understanding and an examination of first principles. And so I bet Trump is right. And I bet if he could have a conversation with a bioethicist like I had, I don't know, maybe he might be persuaded like I was. Trump being persuaded of something is...

Trump talking to a bioethicist is funny. All of that's pretty amusing to think of. Let me run something past you, get your reaction to it. From the feminist perspective and also broadly from a left-wing perspective, there's always a lot of skepticism of people who say that they are opposed to abortion because they're out to protect babies. The idea is like,

Okay, maybe some of the people who are marching in the streets believe that but the leaders of the movement They actually have a much bigger agenda at play here and that agenda is pushing back against women's rights against the entire sexual revolution which they think was a mistake in the 60s and the 70s that mean they may be modernity itself was a was a giant mistake all these women in the workplace that they want you want to go back to a much

a different time, make America great again, maybe even back to before America. Emily was telling me you had a funny quote of like, you don't want to go back to the 1950s. Not 2012, 1220. 1220, yeah. Okay, right. So people hear that and they're like, oh, okay, I get it. This guy's just against all of modernity, basically, and women's liberation that came along with it. So is it a coincidence that those things align? Yeah.

and that they just happen to be separate? Or do you see your mission against abortion rights as part and parcel of a kind of cultural counterrevolution? I think you're thinking about it too deeply. I just think it's wrong to kill babies. Now, when you're talking about cynical or opportunistic motivations among leadership, I don't know. I see more cynicism on the side of the men who say that they're totally in favor of abortionism

abortion. I think that allows men to use women for their sexual pleasure and then to not have any accountability. And, you know, I think it's just men saying, hey, honey, don't worry, I'll pay for the abortion. Please allow me to use you without any accountability. So I find a lot more cynicism there. In terms of women's liberation, I don't know, it doesn't seem to have worked out very well. There was a study that came out of Yale, I think in 2008, somewhere around there, that measured female happiness. The study is that

the paradox of declining female happiness. And it observed that since women's liberation, so-called, in the early 1970s,

women's happiness, self-reported happiness, has declined both in objective measures and relative to men. So they've become significantly less happy than men have over that time. Now you have huge swaths of American women who are on anti-depression. Although men have also become, yeah, men have also become significantly unhappy over the decades. I think we should go back to the kitchen. That would be another argument. Well, that would be a, I think you can prove that. That's where we would find happiness, right? We could be cooking clean.

Well, no, I think probably your point here is making my point, which is that men also are becoming less happy. Maybe there's something going a little bit wrong in the modern world. To bring us back to our first point, we used to conduct elections neatly and easily. We don't do that. Maybe something's going wrong in the modern world. By the way, I'm just skeptical of a lot of those surveys. I wrote a book

it's actually is it back here yeah there it is uh on uh social history of drug use there was a thing in the 40s and 50s um called mother's little helper

All of the women's magazines were heavily marketing amphetamines to women throughout the country. They're absolutely miserable and just hopped up on this speed that they were getting. - Now we just put them on Xanax. There's so much progress we've had. It seems to me that when people say it's a paradox of declining female happiness because of all of the advantages of the women's lib, I don't think there have been advantages.

I think it's robbed women of a lot of things they like. And you can see this in a debate, not between conservatives, but among feminists. There was a famous debate between Betty Friedan, an American feminist, and Simone de Beauvoir, who's a French feminist and the strumpet of Jean-Paul Sartre. And they were debating whether or not women should be permitted to stay home of Sartre. Yes.

They were debating whether women ought to be permitted to stay home and keep house and raise a family. And Betty Friedan, being the American, she said, yes, of course women should have that choice, but they should also have the choice to go into the workplace if they want. And Simone de Beauvoir, who I think is a more intelligent and insightful feminist, she said no.

women cannot be given the choice to stay home because if women are given that choice, uh, too many of them will take it. Uh, they, they would prefer most women will be inclined to do something like that. And that will inhibit women's liberation. So I, I take the feminists at their word. I think they really did want to weaken the family structures, uh, diminish women's opportunities to stay home, to raise a family. Uh,

You've seen, obviously, declining family sizes. We've now been below replacement birth rate in America since the beginning of this era, since 1971 or so. So I don't know, it just hasn't really worked out that well. And I think people are becoming really sad and really angry all the time. And I think anger is a consequence of sadness because people don't know how to deal with their sorrow. And so that just seems objectively true. And if things are really fraying and have been fraying over the past 50 years,

It doesn't seem so crazy to me to say, hey, how about we avail ourselves of the wisdom of the ages? Not the stuff that worked in the 1950s or the 1220s or whatever, but the things that have consistently worked throughout all of history. That seems like the common sense position.

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Ryan mentioned, or you mentioned Occupy Wall Street earlier. And I think, I don't want to put words in Ryan's mouth, but I think a lot of the left would posit that this decline in happiness came alongside deindustrialization and heightened predatory capitalism, essentially. And I actually think there's probably something to that. And

And you and I probably agree on a lot of these cultural questions, Michael. I know we agree on a lot of these cultural questions. I think people's misery and selfishness is reflected in the business community. And then I see Donald Trump campaigning with Elon Musk and

I think Elon Musk is amusing, but I also wonder how that's hitting people in the Rust Belt. I was at Butler when Elon Musk was there and people were going crazy for him. They really liked him. Granted, those were people at a MAGA rally. But anyway, all that is to say, to what level do you think actually predatory industrial capitalism run by, as you and I would describe them, like secular business predators or just secular businessmen

to what level do you think that's contributed to declining happiness?

Yeah, I think Elon is sort of the exception, or he's a contrarian, which is why people who otherwise would despise these, you know, zillionaires, people like Bill Gates, say, are applauding for him because he's saying, look, there's something that's really gone wrong in our society, and he's trying to fix it. But I totally agree. I think there are perfectly legitimate right-wing conservative criticisms of modern capitalism.

I mean, and I think Trump would make that point. I think this is why Trump also was able to bring the head of the Teamsters union over to the RNC, you know, and have major labor unions not endorse Kamala. Kamala still has that guy who's like Tony Soprano and Archie Bunker from the Longshoremen, you know, but she's really lost support among labor. So, you know, this is a critique that's come up through Trump, but also beyond that. And what is it? Well, it's that

The markets are great and we support economic prosperity, but you can't put the cart before the horse. You have to recognize, to the point we were discussing earlier with Ryan, that there are moral considerations here. And if you untether the market from any moral considerations,

you're going to be sunk and everybody's going to be miserable. And maybe your GDP ticks up, but it's not even reflecting economic health because you can game the system very easily. I mean, if drug dealers are trading fentanyl or people are going to brothels, I guess that could be reflected in a higher GDP, but it doesn't mean your country is really healthier. So to the point, I think Ryan made a really good point earlier that we have to take into consideration, which is

when our friend here waved the white flag on talking about later term abortion. He said, look, I just don't want to think about it. Why do I have to think about these moral questions? And the answer is, well, because you're a citizen and we're supposed to have a self-government here. And when John Adams says,

the Constitution's built for moral and religious people. That's not just some nice platitude that you hear at evangelical camps and brunches, that he's really warning you of something. John Adams was not the most Orthodox Christian in the world by any stretch. He was making an empirical observation that our constitutional system and things like markets and things like free enterprise

"do not work if people are not constrained by morality." What could happen then is you could have something that is used for a great good, like markets, be used for terrible evil, for the exploitation of workers, which if you're a Christian, that's one of the four sins that cries out to God for vengeance. I mean, that's a really awful and evil thing to do. People who are putting mere profits

over the common good and the health of their country. That's something that the conservatives have to watch out for too. But I think really the rise of the Trump movement and populism and the MAGA movement, whatever you want to call it, over the old stale chamber of commerce kind of republicanism, I think it's responding to that need. And I think it's why you're seeing labor come over. I think it's why you're seeing

a Kennedy, for goodness sakes, come over. I think it's why you're seeing people like Tulsi Gabbard come over. The Republicans, bizarrely, you wouldn't have predicted it 20 years ago, have become the party that are responding to the real moral crisis brought about by markets and labor. I mean, it's just funny that Donald Trump is the guy leading that party to its moral victory.

So, I mean, I think I don't know why it's funny. I really, you know, the guy has probably promised to pay for I don't think he's paid for any abortion because he doesn't pay his contractors or subcontractors. Why would he actually go through on paying for an abortion? But you don't think you don't think he's like suggested to somebody that he would pay for their abortion. I mean, look at the guy like the guys. The guy's life is a caricature of abortion.

- Immorality, like you can, it's fine. Like you can do whatever he wants. I don't care. - I don't know, I don't really speculate on all of those. - Like the idea that like this is the guy that would be a role model for this moral rectitude is kind of comical. - Ryan, if you were religious, you wouldn't find it comical. You might find it delightful, but you wouldn't find it comical.

because God uses all sorts of imperfect people for his ends. If you're Christian, you certainly believe that. And so the left, ironically, I was speaking with a very close left-wing friend of mine who said she really hated Trump and she just is a good person, you know, unlike Trump. And what's funny is that was Trump's answer. He says, I try to be a good person. You know, I try not to

commit sins. But of course, all sin and fall short of the glory of God. So you're speculating without any basis on all sorts of private sins that Trump in principle could have committed, even though, again, there's no evidence for it. Unfortunately, we don't have to do as much speculation as I wish we did. I mean, he's definitely an open adulterer, that much is. He's lived a very flamboyant life and he's done all sorts of terrible things and he's been totally open about a lot of those things. But I suppose the point here, from my perspective as a Christian is,

Yeah, right, that is how God works. God uses flawed vessels. And believe it or not, Donald Trump, 'cause he's had the spotlight on him for a long time, it's very easy to say he did that terrible thing and he did that awful thing and he did that evil thing. But believe it or not, Ryan, you've done very evil things too. And if you think that God can use you to do good things, if God can use me to do good things, it shouldn't be surprising that God can use Trump. But what Christians say on Easter Sunday is they say, oh, happy fault,

that one for us so great, so glorious a redeemer. They actually celebrate the fall of man, the original sin, because it can, not that it's a good thing in itself, but it actually brought about this great glory and redemption. So I don't know. I think Americans like a comeback story. I think Americans like redemption and they like grace. And I think the gracelessness of the left, the total lack of charity of the left has repelled a lot of people. - A redemption story though requires somebody to be seeking redemption. Is there any evidence?

I think there's a lot of evidence that Trump's white potential.

Yeah, I think so. I think he's recanted a lot of his previous views and behaviors. And I think he's owned up to being kind of a rough guy. I remember one time he was asked if he had a beer and he said, no, you know, I'm the only president that's never had a beer. It's the only good thing you can say about me. Can you imagine if I were a drinker, I'd be the worst. That's called humility. And I think Donald Trump, ironically enough, exhibits a lot more humility than most people in our political class, certainly than the sanctimonious left, which I

ironically, is totally bereft of sanctity. - Pretty sure you just said that Trump betrays a lot of humility. - Yeah, I think Trump demonstrates humility, ironically, yeah. A lot more than the left, yeah. - I think there is something that people miss with why Trump appeals to normal Americans, because he is self-deprecating. - It's his humility. - Sometimes. - It's his humility. He does make fun of himself. - He does make fun of himself, yeah. He let Fallon ruffle his hair, something like that.

I'm curious what you made of Michael's answer about essentially predatory capitalism or the excesses of it. Yeah, there's a good book on this subject that was actually controversial among some feminists at the time by Elizabeth Warren and her daughter. You've probably read it called The Two Income Trap. And it was controversial because it suggested... As you said, there are some who would say no, like...

both parents ought to be in the workforce. There shouldn't be a choice necessarily, because if there is a choice, then the patriarchy is going to dominate and the woman's going to be pushed out of that. What Elizabeth Warren pointed out in her book is that

What we did is we reduced wages along the way. We drove up the cost of doing all this. We broke up families in a way that there wasn't the same help from aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandparents and raising a family. So all of a sudden now you have less money, less family help,

And two of you are now working for the same amount of wages. And it shouldn't surprise anybody that out of that comes just complete collapse in people's happiness and well-being, even as

quality of life by all other measures is growing. That we're living in better houses, there's more access to food, more access to clean water, environment. - But think about that. I mean, I love this point 'cause yes, I agree with that analysis pretty much entirely. I just love this point where they say, yeah, so people are working all the time and they're making way less money for their work and their families are falling apart and they're getting married later and they can't have kids and they can't really do anything.

But their quality of life is so much better. On all the other measures, you think, well, on everything that matters, their quality of life is worse. I guess now they have an iPad, so that's nice. But other than that, it looks like their quality of life is diminished. I think the points are in concert because what you're saying is, like, despite the fact that, like, if you look at, like, an average house, just the house itself, the average house today versus the average house in 1955, like,

Houses are much nicer. Cars are much nicer. Things are much nicer. Yet people are still suffering in a much more significant way. What I'd say is everybody ought to be working 20 hours a week. 20? Yeah. 20? Yeah, let's start with 20 and see how that goes. There's not that much work to be done.

We don't actually all need to be driving ourselves into the ground like this. So, Ryan, I actually agree. Just having worked at businesses, a number of businesses now, I think... You don't need 40 hours to do that job. Well, even just 60% of the time, people are kind of just twiddling their thumbs and popping sins and, like, going to the coffee break. So, yes, I agree. The question is, though, I remember when this issue came up during the Obamacare debates, Nancy Pelosi, that was Freudian slip, Nancy Pelosi was...

asked what people would do with all the extra time that they had now that they didn't have to work to keep their health insurance. And she said, "Well, you know, they can write poetry or they can go take an art class." - That's great. - Actually, most people are not very good poets and most people aren't that good at art. And so the question then becomes what are we going to do? - Most people can play softball. They can do basket weaving. Like they can do things that are like enjoyable and meaningful. They can volunteer.

And what's funny here, I think it's with summing up some of our disagreement, but oddly kind of agreement is on this point of the realignment. It used to be that the left talked about the common good and the Republicans just talked about individualism and making money and driving up GDP. And now it seems like it's kind of flipped. You hear the Republicans, especially the conservatives and the Catholic conservatives, speaking constantly about the common good. And it's the left talking about radical individualism.

to choose one's own gender, to have an abortion, to do this, to do that, to leave the family, to do whatever. And so, you know, I think it's important to care for the common good.

And when you talk about what people would do, I think it would be nice, I think something people are yearning for is to feel like we're doing something together, that we're all kind of in it together. We have a common purpose as Americans. Barack Obama said this on the campaign trail the other day. He said, when did we become so nasty and divided? We need to be much more unified. Well, I think if you're debating which side to vote for in this election and you rightly recognize that we're divided, we don't have common purpose and we don't know what we're going to do,

This go around at least, it's the Republicans who are talking about the common good and a common purpose in unity. It's the Democrats who are totally ignoring that. I think you should cast your votes accordingly.

Yeah, Bernie Sanders is right, yeah. He talks about the common good and in a way that is like a representative of the best values of the left. I'll give a little credit to Bernie Sanders. A little credit to Bernie in the same way that Chesterton gave credit to George Bernard Shaw. Chesterton, a conservative Christian, was friends with George Bernard Shaw, who was an atheist socialist. And he said, George Bernard Shaw is a man with a very great heart.

but his heart is in the wrong place. And that's what I'd say about Bernie Sanders. The man does have a great heart and he's like kind of trying to get at something, but it's totally in the wrong place. So he ends up a commie, which is not good because that's a pale imitation of the true common good.

And thus we have reached the impasse between Ryan Grimm and Michael Knowles. And I Googled strumpet. You had to Google strumpet? I thought I kind of had heard that word before. Deployed accurately. Yeah. That'll be the title of your next book, Michael. Right. Our new Daily Wire documentary. My new candle. Not beating the charges that like the like obsession with abortion is actually about just pushing back on feminism.

- Final-- - Feminism is bad. We're not pushing back on abortion because we don't like feminism. We don't like feminism in part because of abortion. They're overlapping issues, but they're different. But feminism's bad. It's really, it's made women miserable and we should cut it out. Because the reason is it's wrong about human nature. - Well, yeah, I mean, we could do another hour on that actually.

Might as well. Might as well. A couple of dudes debating feminism. Yeah, I'll just... That's what we need. Well, what I'll do is I'll serve you guys drinks and you guys will hash it out. A couple of dudes and Emily and we'll figure it out. Lighter cigars. Yeah. All right. Well, Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show. Thank you so much for joining us. Great to be with you both. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. We'll be back with more CounterPoints on Wednesday.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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