Transcript: YouTuber Michael Knowles’ Interview on The Tucker Carlson Show

Oh, I know. You remember, you were allowed to have marijuana, fentanyl, you were anything in between. But the one thing you couldn’t have was you couldn’t have a cigar, you couldn’t have a pouch, you couldn’t have anything. And now it’s just like.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because it raises testosterone, whereas weed lowers it. So it makes you less obedient, more free thinking, happier, stronger. And those are all the last qualities authoritarians want the population to have.

Saints and Smoking

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I was looking back because I was trying to figure out the morality of, I’ve smoked cigars since I was 15, and I was trying to figure out the morality. Is this a vice? And I said, well, I don’t think so. There’s a story about Saint Pius X. He was talking to a cardinal, called him in, offered him a cigar. The cardinal said, “I don’t have that vice.” He says, “it’s not a vice. You would have it if it were a vice. You have enough vices.”

And then there was the case of St. Philip Neri, who, the devil’s advocate in his canonization process, said that he might not be a saint because his body was corrupt, because part of his nose had worn away. I said, “no, no, no, it wasn’t corrupted after he died. It was corrupted while he was alive from all the nasal snuff that he did.” And Pope Leo XIII, the most prolific pope ever, wrote the most encyclicals, apparently drank cocaine, wine, vain. Mariani, is that true? It is. I’ve never tried it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Along with Sherlock Holmes. Cocoa wine.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Cocoa wine, yes. Yeah. I’d probably have written more books had I tried it, but I have.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s funny, somebody told me a really interesting story recently about the number of cardinals, current Catholic cardinals, who smoke cigarettes, and I just love that. I’m not Catholic, but I have always loved cigarette smoking. I know you’re not supposed to say that. I know it’s bad. Killed a close relative of mine. You know, I’m aware of the health effects, but I just thought, I don’t know. There’s something about that.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And because it’s, Benedict XVI loved to smoke cigarettes, and he would have one or two a day.

TUCKER CARLSON: When was he pope?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He was the pope before Francis. So he was Pope. Oh, Benedict.

TUCKER CARLSON: The one we just had, the German Pope, yes.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He would smoke a couple cigarettes a day. And I thought, this is something beautiful. This is another thing that’s come back since our cultural revolution.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is that widely known?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: You know, I don’t know. I’m sure they’ve tried to suppress that. You know, they probably want to make him into, like a kombucha drinking, hemp smoking person. But no, he liked Marlboro Reds and, but for him. And he would smoke them. This is the chief political virtue. He would smoke them in moderation and with prudence.

And this is the thing. We live in this crazy schizophrenic age where you have to be all one thing or all the exact opposite. What does Aristotle tell us virtue is that mean right between the two extremes? You can have a Marlboro Red every once in a while.

TUCKER CARLSON: Boy, if I could do that, I would still be doing it. I have a friend who’s over 80 who smoked two Marlboro Lights. Which men should not be smoking those, but whatever. The white ones every day, his whole life.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I think it was after Obergefell, they let men smoke Marlboro Lights. It was a little red part of my decision.

The Minneapolis Shooting

TUCKER CARLSON: It was out by then. So, speaking of gender bending, what do you make of the shooting in Minneapolis? Like, how should we think of, there’s so many different threads there. I don’t really understand.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Did you read the manifesto? So I took a look.

TUCKER CARLSON: I saw they were in Cyrillic script.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, Cyrillic. My Cyrillic’s not great, but I, we had some translations done, and you could read the writing on the magazines. And the first thing that struck me, I mean, after the horror of it, you know, you just think the most vulnerable people of the church being attacked by this maniac.

The first thing that struck me was how apparently incoherent it all was. Because it’s an attack on a Catholic Church, on these, like, innocent little kids in a Catholic Church. And then if you look on the guns and on the magazines, it’s not just anti Christian, it’s anti Muslim. It says, “remove kebab.” It’s anti Jewish. “Six million wasn’t enough.” It’s nihilistic. It’s anti gay. The guy was a tranny.

And then there’s, the scariest part of it is on this page, there’s a picture he drew of himself, and it’s him looking in a mirror, and he’s got the gun behind him. And in the mirror is a picture of a demon. And that’s scary enough.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like a goat headed demon.

The Question of Identity

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Like a goat headed baphomet looking demon. When you read, when you translate the Cyrillic, the first thing that’s written top left of the page is “who am I?” And this is really jarring because you recognize that Moses at the burning bush, he asks God, “who are you? Who will I tell them that you are?” And God says, “I am who I am. I am.” You know, Christ says, “before Abraham was I am.” This is his declaration that he’s God I am.

And a great priest friend of mine, Father Rutler, once observed that when you’re with God, you know who you are, you know your identity. Modernity thinks that you have to leave God and just totally go make yourself a God and then you’ll be truly yourself, you’ll find yourself. That’s not true. You become much more yourself, much more perfectly yourself. If you do what you’re supposed to do and align yourself with God.

And when you don’t identify yourself with I am, then you’re left with this pathetic question, “who am I?” So you see this obvious demonic influence there. And what struck me too, with all of these apparent contradictions, it’s anti Christian and also anti Muslim and Jew, it’s radically LGBT, but also kind of anti gay, it’s anti Trump, “Kill Trump right now.” But it’s also has all these kind of far right wing slogans.

And it reminded me, which is very important to remember, especially in our line of work, because you’re constantly reading all this radical stuff. You’re on Twitter.

TUCKER CARLSON: Easy explanation, like this is a representative of this group or this idea that I already dislike and now you’ve confirmed that I have every reason to dislike this group. I mean, this is the effect of social media. But this guy, it’s like, obviously I’m opposed to the training thing passionately.

The Reality of Spiritual Warfare

MICHAEL KNOWLES: But you realize that demons which are real, they’re not under every rock, but they’re real. There is such a thing as spirits.

TUCKER CARLSON: And.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: They’ll try to get you from any angle they’ll try to get. If they think they’re going to bang you from the right, they’ll get you from the right. If they’re going to get you from the left, they’ll get you from up or down. All they want to do is devour you. It’s like Lewis and the Screwtape letters, all that. Just any tactic that will let them get a hold of you. And it’s so clear with this guy, because you realize this guy was being obsessed from every angle.

The Spiritual Battle and Modern Errors

TUCKER CARLSON: The fact that he drew a picture, and that is one of the few things I saw from the manifesto. Pretty clear rendition too. I mean, he was a decent artist.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of himself looking in the mirror and a demon staring back at him. I mean, that seems like a page one story.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: This guy was possessed, or at least influenced by. In him was some supernatural force causing him to murder kids.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And think about the two opposing errors that have led to this just in the last quarter century. In the 2000s, I remember it vividly because I fell away from faith during this time. There was the new atheism, materialism. “God’s a spaghetti monster. Come on. There’s nothing but flesh, blood. We’re just synapses firing. It’s a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.” That was one error. I think that’s fallen away.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t think anyone believes that anymore.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: No, but now we’ve fallen into the opposing error, which is to say actually the material world has nothing to do with who you really are. Your body has nothing to do with who you really are. Your true self is this purely immaterial thing. So if you’re a man, you can really be a woman or what have you. And those are opposing errors that oppose the real dignity of the human person who is both spirit, soul, and body.

Digital Life and Physical Reality

TUCKER CARLSON: Once again, something I hadn’t thought of. So we’ve… Interesting. Do you think that the fact that people live their lives digitally has allowed them to imagine that the body has no significance?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Precisely. And this is the point that I think a lot of people have not made, which is that, of course, the trans ideology is in many ways deader than disco at this point. The Democrats are running away from it. I think so. They’re downplaying it. It really hurt them. In 2024, I think they realized we reached peak sexual madness in 2023. They at least have to publicly back off.

However, how did we get to that place? You could say, well, it begins with feminism. The idea that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Men and women are the same goes into the LGBT movement, which says men and women are the same. Goes into gay marriage, so called, which says men and women are the same. So two men and two women are the same as a man and a woman leads into transgenderism. A man can be a woman. Okay, I see that through line.

But just think about the technological aspect. If I live my life on this little portal to hell that’s in my…

TUCKER CARLSON: Pocket, it is a portal to hell.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: All day long, I’m thinking exactly where it goes. If that’s where I live, in my own perception, then my body really doesn’t matter that much, does it? I’m not the biggest Achilles in the world, right? I’m not some hulking Adonis, I’m not an athlete. But it doesn’t really matter. I just live in this virtual world. So is it so crazy to think that your body doesn’t matter at that point?

TUCKER CARLSON: I think that’s my instinct, has been for the last few years that physical reality does really matter. Even as I feel like I’ve had a heightened spiritual awareness and the dead, certain knowledge that there is a spiritual, an unseen realm that is acting on us all the time and that that’s as real as anything. I sincerely believe that. But on the other hand, I do see a lot of ignoring of the physical reality around us.

The Catholic Revival and Sacramental Theology

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. This is why, by the way, everyone’s becoming Catholic now. You’ve noticed a strange phenomenon. I think this is a big reason why the decline in religion has tapered off. Other denominations and traditions are growing, but Catholicism in particular is exploding. Why? I think it’s because it’s a sacramental theology.

TUCKER CARLSON: I never would have called that.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Isn’t it? Yeah. Twenty years ago. Could you imagine at all? Certainly not.

TUCKER CARLSON: No. The Spotlight series had just come out and you’re just like, this church is too corrupt to continue. And I just want to say, again, I’m not Catholic, but I strongly agree that there’s a revival. And I just see it all around me.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And I think this is why, I mean, the words at the sacrifice of the Mass are, “This is my body, which will be given up for you,” and which is mocked. The phrase “hocus pocus,” like in magic, is a mockery of “hoc est enim corpus meum.” This is my body. Yeah, it’s a kind of “hocus corpus.” “Hocus pocus” is… At least that’s a popular etymology, and I’m persuaded by it.

So there’s always this mockery in all of the kind of false religions. There’s always this mockery of the real sacrifice, but in a lot of religious traditions, and I don’t cast aspersions. I had a Baptist grandpa. The Knowles has come from Maine, actually. This is the ancestral homeland of the Knowleses.

TUCKER CARLSON: Amazing.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. Yeah. I haven’t made it up very often, but a lot of Puritan in the line.

TUCKER CARLSON: But a lot of us had ancestors in Maine and it’s, they left.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s kind of cold. Cold and barren.

TUCKER CARLSON: It is cold, yes.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: But I think the reason why the sacramental theology is kicking up again is because we say, “I’ve been living in a computer for twenty years, and I don’t even remember if I’m a man or a woman anymore. But maybe my body really has something to do with who I am. And actually, maybe this whole religion is about God becoming man and taking on flesh and dwelling among us and broiling fish.” I mean, the first thing you see our Lord doing when he comes back…

TUCKER CARLSON: His resurrection, he’s standing on the shores of the lake, he’s cooking…

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Fish for his friends and eating for breakfast. For breakfast, which is a hardcore. Do they do that?

TUCKER CARLSON: Only in Japan do they do that.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: In Maine, it’s lobster, but there’s brook trout. Actually.

TUCKER CARLSON: People eat them with baked beans.

COVID and the Rejection of Pure Materialism

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I think that’s why. I think there’s just… And COVID ties into this, too, because during COVID you were told your grandma has to die alone and you can’t see her. You can’t go to Christmas, she has to die alone in a hospital bed. If you’re lucky, you can say goodbye on Zoom.

And people recoil against that because it’s just contrary to human nature. Human beings are like the angels in one way because we have reason, we have intellect and will, and spirits don’t have bodies, but we’re like the animals in another way. The animals don’t have intellect and will. They have instinct and appetite, but they’re bodies. And we’re kind of in the middle of those two things.

And you can only ignore the body for so long before people say, “No, I’m a man. Actually, believe it or not, even in modernity, I’m a man. I want to do stuff.”

Understanding Sacramental vs. Non-Sacramental Theology

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s a sacramental religion? How is that… Or theology? How is that distinct? What’s a non-sacramental theology?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It would be like the kind of religion that says that… Well, the kind of religion Obama pushed. You remember Obama, he wouldn’t talk about freedom of religion, not religion. He’d say, “Oh, you have freedom of worship, your freedom.” We’re going to sue nuns, we’re going to sue nuns. We’re going to persecute Catholics, we’re going to… Biden’s going to imprison pro-lifers for praying outside of abortion clinics. But you can have your worship in your own head. Close your eyes. You can think things in your own head, but you can’t do anything.

And that’s not what religion is. Religion is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, it’s a habit of virtue that inclines the will to give to God what he deserves. And you do it in your whole life.

And so a sacrament is the meeting of the material and the immaterial. The clearest example, the highest blessed sacrament, is the Eucharist, which we believe and certain Protestant traditions also believe is really Christ. Body, blood, soul, and divinity really, really present. And this is confounding to modern man who says, “Well, get me an electron microscope. Let me… I don’t see.” And actually, there have been eucharistic miracles where the appearance of the bread is not maintained and actually gives way to cardiac tissue. That’s a separate topic.

Even in the ordinary sacrament, it’s this meeting of the two things. When I go to confession, I confess my terrible sins. I get down on my knees in a box with a priest and the priest is acting in the person of Christ. It comes from scripture because Christ says to the apostles, you have the power to forgive sins. “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven. Whose sins you retain are retained.” That’s a real authority.

TUCKER CARLSON: It says that to the disciples.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, and that’s a real authority. It’s not just a kind of abstract, you can just forgive sins by spreading a message or something. No, he’s saying you have an actual authority. You can retain sins if the person isn’t really repentant. And that means that when I’m in there confessing in a box to a guy in a collar, God is actually forgiving my sins in the person of the priest or not. But that’s a meeting of something I can see and something I can’t see.

Martin Luther and the Question of Confession

TUCKER CARLSON: Can I ask you, as I’ve said, a Protestant. I love Martin Luther. I’m sure you hate Martin Luther, but I really love Martin Luther.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He had some very funny prose, he had really…

TUCKER CARLSON: He was a spicy character. Yes, the real Martin Luther. Not Michael Luther who changed his name. Michael King who changed his name. But anyway the actual German monk. But one of the things he didn’t… got rid of indulgences, thank God in my view. But he also got rid of confession. And I don’t understand why that has always struck me as a mistake and such a great thing Catholics do.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And do you know… I mean, do you know the answer? The Anglicans still have confession. C.S. Lewis confessed every week of his life.

TUCKER CARLSON: I grew up in the Anglican Church. Who never had that.

The Episcopal Church and Modern Christianity

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I’ve never heard of it these days, unfortunately. They used to say, the Episcopalians, it was twice the liturgy, half the guilt.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, well, zero guilt.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: You only feel bad about feeling bad about yourself.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I was at the national prayer service at the inauguration when that bishopress lady decided to take the occasion to scold the president. Vice president. Do you remember that?

TUCKER CARLSON: Do I remember? That’s the head of my church. Yeah. Do I remember it? Like every Episcopalian I know. They’re all. We’re all texting each other. Former Episcopalian. But yeah. No, she was.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: She.

TUCKER CARLSON: I loved that because then the world could see what it’s really become. It’s just. It’s. It’s repulsive. It’s not Christianity. And she was just so obviously, like, furious in torment.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: This is not someone who’s, like, experiencing God’s forgiving love. This is someone who’s filled with hate. And they all are filled with hate. It’s all a bunch of recovering alcoholic ladies with multiple divorces deciding they’re lesbian. Love the little outfits. And then the priests are these kind of beta males or gay guys who love the outfits. The whole thing is fake.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, but what do you really think, Tucker? Hold on. What do you really think about it?

TUCKER CARLSON: About the Episcopal Church? How much time do you have? Yeah, that’s.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: That is a similarly Lutheran or Hilaire Belloc, like vituperations.

TUCKER CARLSON: I totally get it. I’m not being very Christian, but. No, no. I mean, it’s had a huge effect on my life. So obviously I’m a little mad about it. I need to repent of my anger. But I was just delighted that the rest of the world could see what it has become, because obviously, you know, the Episcopalians ran the country and did a great job. I would say much better job than the current people around the country are doing. And they had a wonderful taste.

And so they built the prettiest churches, each with a red door. My whole life, we had a red door on our house, always every house, because we’re Episcopalians. Red door. And it’s just. There’s a lot that was good about them, and I think people haven’t updated their files, and they don’t know what goes on inside and not in every Episcopal church. One of my closest friends is an Episcopal priest and a sincere and wonderful man. Godfather one of my kids. But in a lot of Episcopal churches, it’s hateful menopausal ladies like that and their gay sidekicks, and it’s just the saddest, ugliest, cruelest thing ever. And now everyone saw it.

The Decline of Liberal Christianity

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Everyone saw it. And the other thing about it is, if you go to church and your church is, you know, some. Some lady spouting off about, I don’t know, like, you know, the latest migration policy and whining about Trump.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Then. Then put aside the political issue. You just ask yourself, well, why am I going here?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s exactly the question we asked.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I get this six days a week. Why do I need to get this on the seventh day, especially when I.

TUCKER CARLSON: Could be in bed with my wife and my dogs? She just asked me to get out of bed and take a shower at 7 in the morning, which I hate doing, to go to church, which I really feel like I should be doing. And this is what I get. There’s nothing transcendent. It’s all you and your little therapy session, and you’re filled with hate.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: No, but this is why. This is how, in answer to your question, how did these things sort of decline? I think part of it is it’s a spirit of liberalism that comes out and abstracts everything, first of all, away from time and place and community and family and body and just all like these really tangible things. It abstracts it all into outer space.

And then on the other side of it, it brings everything down. Everything has to be totally. Not even egalitarian. It’s like a kind of Harrison Bergeron handicapping of everything. You’ve got to make the church like the world. And there’s a great line from, I think it was Fulton Sheen who says that if you wed the spirit of the age, you’ll find yourself a widow in the next.

And that’s what these. And the Catholics are not guiltless in this, by the way, because after the Second Vatican Council, there was a liturgical reform to turn everything into some happy, clappy sort of party. The priest then faces the people instead of facing God as leading us all in worship and whatever. The Age of Aquarius, I guess, demanded that in the 60s or something. But I think people have had enough of that. And I think people hate the disenchantment and the degradation of the world and just the physical ugliness of it, and we want to look up again.

The Loss of Beauty and Tradition

TUCKER CARLSON: When was the last time someone built like a cathedral? I mean, you go to downtown London, which has got to be the saddest place on the planet. And if I didn’t have family there, I wouldn’t go there. But I do, and so I do. And you go and you see that the prettiest buildings in the city were built before electricity machines of any kind, actually.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And it’s also tough to get around London now because my Arabic isn’t very good.

TUCKER CARLSON: So there’s that.

By the way, speaking of, like, things.

TUCKER CARLSON: You couldn’t have imagined even two years ago, I read Elon is now calling for the repatriation of, like, a lot of European non Europeans out of Europe.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I’m like, which obviously, you know, I understand why he feels that way, but to say something like that, I would sort of casually drop that yesterday. I think it’s like we’re living in a different time.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Of course we are.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s not 2020 anymore.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I just hope that the return to sanity happens while Angela Merkel is still alive, so she gets to see the undoing of her policies to flood Europe. I mean, it’s crazy to destroy it.

TUCKER CARLSON: To destroy Christian Europe forever.

Belloc’s Warning About Islam and Christendom

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, you know, this was the part I mentioned, Hilaire Belloc, who has a similarly sort of delightfully acerbic style to. What?

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re allowed to mention him.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Are you allowed? Is it Belloc is. Listen, he was buddies with Chesterton. Chesterton’s slightly more clubbable, so I thought maybe you’re allowed to mention Belloc. But Belloc said in his excellent book on the Crusades, he said, look, excellent, excellent. Highly recommended reading. I can’t even do justice to the vividness of his prose. His kind of both bloodthirsty and totally charitable way of writing.

But he says, look, the Crusades were lost. We lost the Battle of Hattin. It was 1187. That was it. It was done. And we flatter ourselves. We think that Islam is sort of done. He’s writing this in the 20s or 30s.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: We think Islam is done and Christianity is strong. He goes, no, Islam remains intact. The only reason it seems like Christendom is on top is because we have certain technological industrial advantages. He goes, once that passes away, he goes, our moral certitude is totally cracked up. We are in a much worse place than our opponents in the Crusades were.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. I think that’s really prescient and wise and true. I mean, it’s so obviously true. And it was the affluence born of technology that rotted the soul of the Christian West. I mean, wealth did this just as it does to families. And I’m not against wealth. I mean, I haven’t accrued much, but you know, I’m not for poverty for sure. But it’s also true that like generational wealth like makes you into a horrible person.

The Dangers of Material Comfort

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I mean, this is. I carry around a prayer card. Listen, I haven’t sold enough cigars yet that I’m too worried about generation.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m asking you about the cigars because I don’t, I don’t know how did you end up the cigar business? But hold on. But I, well, but I take it too seriously to address it parenthetically.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: So I, I feel as though I’ve got a really nice life, you know, I got a nice house, I got this beautiful family. I have nice little doodads and things like that.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you have three sons.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Three sons. Three sons.

TUCKER CARLSON: I cannot produce true wealth.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It is true wealth. And I can’t produce a daughter, which means I’m going to go to a nursing home someday if I don’t. I need a daughter.

TUCKER CARLSON: So that is the truest thing I. I’m sad for you that you already know that at 35 that your final hours will be spent alone and your boys will be somewhere with some hawker. I’ll be like, you know, he was a good guy. Whatever happened to him?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: What was his name?

TUCKER CARLSON: Matt or Mark or something. Anyway, he. Whereas if you had daughters. Bedside vigil.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Dad needs a catheter. Whatever it takes. Like they will do it.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: This is that’s actually why I need generational wealth, is just to pay for my long term care.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you’re going to have some Haitian lady who’s out for a cigarette when you croak. You need some daughters, man.

St. Jerome’s Wisdom on Worldly Pleasures

MICHAEL KNOWLES: But I carry around a prayer card of St. Jerome, who translated the Bible, who’s also a great, kind of a rhetorical pugilist. And there’s a great quote from letter 22, I think he would write all these letters to Roman noblewomen, and it says, whenever you start to be enchanted by the pleasures of this world, it’s not that you have to totally deny them all the time, but whenever you start to be enchanted, think about where you’re going, think about how this is all going to end up, and try to be now what you will be hereafter. Easier said than done.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, it’s yes, I couldn’t agree. I don’t have my phone or I would read you my favorite quote on that exact subject. Every New Year’s, my wife and I go to church. We don’t go to the service because it’s Episcopal church, but we go in the afternoon to say our prayers for the year. And every year you serve, I always feel like I get a message or something resonant. Like this year is going to require this quality in order to get through it and thrive in it.

And this year, man, the message was so clear. Like, this is all passing away. And to the extent that you love, you know, material things and take great, you know, undue pride in your own stupid accomplishments, like, you’re a fool. You’re a fool.

Trump and the Transience of Power

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I, I think you can kind of see this with, with Trump now, actually. I think Trump is, and I probably. It happened after Butler, Pennsylvania. Something seems to have changed in the way that he speaks. I was just there. I visited the White House to do some interviews and things just a week ago. And what’s so amazing is you are at the peak of imperial power on Earth, the absolute head of the strongest government maybe that has ever existed technologically, certainly that has ever existed.

And you walk around and you think, you know, it’s great and I’m glad to be here. Even this, it’s a government building, first of all.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s kind of drab, which is why Trump’s trying to fix it up a little bit. And even this, even this will pass away four years. Well, even Trump’s been kind of president for 12 years. He’s been the dominant figure in public life for 12. His president will have been for eight and I think even this is going to pass away and you’re going to be sitting in your bed with your Haitian nurse as you watch Truth.

TUCKER CARLSON: What.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: What is this about?

TUCKER CARLSON: And she’s going to be listening to some game show at high volume, and you’re going to want her to turn it down. But you’ve got a tube in your throat and you can’t tell her no.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: She doesn’t speak English literally.

TUCKER CARLSON: Nothing you can do about it. You can’t extend your life by one day. You have no power actually, to control the things that matter. And most of our power is destructive power.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: You can kill people.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s why heads of state love killing people. Whatever they say, they love it because it makes them feel like God.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. Obama would joke about it. “I got drones. I’m coming for you, Jonas Brothers.” They love it.

TUCKER CARLSON: They all love it. I’ve talked to a lot of them about it. They love it. And the clever ones try and hide the fact they love it. “Well, you know, it’s the burden of the office.” But that’s not how they feel. They take delight in it because it’s an expression of power. But, I mean, it is the weakest kind of, most transitory kind of power.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, of course. And, you know, the three killing people, the three material things that people want. Fame, money, and power.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And they’re… And I’m not saying I don’t want them. I’m not saying I haven’t enjoyed the modicum I’ve gotten of any of them. But one thing that happens when you get a little taste of each is you realize that it ultimately is unsatisfying. Yeah, it does. It’s… And I was talking to a friend the other day.

TUCKER CARLSON: The prize is not worth winning.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. Right. Because you get there and you say, “Okay, well, now what do I want?” And do you know the exact… I’ve done a scientific analysis. The exact amount of money, fame, and power that will make you happy? Just a little bit more. Just a little bit more.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Yeah. I got into it so young that I don’t… I don’t feel that way at all anymore. But I do think fame is not… Not something anyone should ever want. Look. See the upside in that at all?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I don’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: What could possibly be…

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Sometimes you’ll get a free appetizer at dinner if someone likes your show or something. That’s great. I like free appetizers.

TUCKER CARLSON: I feel so obligated. What does that mean? Do I have to name my next kid after you? I don’t like presents. You know what I mean?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: My next child. Truffle French fry nose.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: After. Yes.

The Catholic Church Revival

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s so true. But just to go back to what’s happening in the Catholic Church, I don’t know, is it happening in the church or is it happening under the sort of wings of the auspices of the church? Is it happening around the church, or is the church itself experiencing a revival?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, it’s, you know, we’re all the mystical body of Christ, so it’s, you know, at the level of the episcopate, you know, the bishops and the Pope and every… There’s a new Pope, but the laity too. We’re all part of the body of Christ. And there is just something kind of happening.

And I think even I have this doc series called “The Pope and the Fuhrer,” which is about… It’s really about Pius XII, who was the… He was the Pope during World War II until 1958. And he’s this image of the old school pope, you know, the papal tiara, arms extended.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re supposed to feel bad about that Pope. You’re supposed to cause the war or something, right? Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And it turns out none of that is true. And so there was a famous play attacking him. This is everything you need to know about Pius XII. There was a play that came out in 1963, so long after the war, five years after, but right before the…

TUCKER CARLSON: Papal Council, I noticed.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Right. Yes. Right around the time of the… Of the Second Vatican Council.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: How odd. Promoted by the KGB and Communists. And interesting. The way that…

TUCKER CARLSON: Literally promoted by communists and the way…

MICHAEL KNOWLES: That, you know that it’s all nonsense is first of all, after… After the war and then after Pius XII died, everybody lauded him. Everybody. Not… Not the Communists, I guess, but secular religious Christians, Jews. Everybody lauded this guy. He was an amazing hero.

The Chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism right after the war and took his name. Eugenio. Eugenio Pacelli was the Pope and he was… Eugenio Zoli. He said this man was an amazing friend of Jews and all of humanity. It was just an amazing…

TUCKER CARLSON: He was painted as a Nazi.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. “Hitler’s Pope” is what these ridiculous people really promoted by Communists tell you. But the way that, you know, it’s all nonsense is…

TUCKER CARLSON: Was the point to influence the council?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I think, really my kind of deep thesis on the Pius battles, which really exploded even in the 90s, much, much later, I see it as a kind of intra Catholic battle. So in that way, I guess it would involve the Second Vatican Council and reforms afterward, which is you had this man as a symbol of Catholic tradition.

And you had people within the church who didn’t really like the tradition and maybe wanted to change things. And one thing about the church, you can’t change anything. Doctrine develops but you don’t change. And I think it was a battle for the identity of the Church.

You know in order to radically change everything, Pius XII had to be slandered and calumniated. The fact that the chief evidence against this man is an eight hour work of fiction that no one has ever fully staged. Absolute garbage by this random playwright Rock Hochhuth or something is promoted by the KGB tells you everything you need to know because the facts are just totally contrary to that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting. But even now lo these many years later that the stench hangs in the air.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, it’s absurd. It will dissipate with time. You know, the church measures her years not in weeks and months but in centuries.

Vatican II and Its Impact

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no, no, no. That’s right. That’s just interesting. I know so little about it but my instinct tells me strongly that that was a pivot point in history of the modern history of, of the church. What did, what was Vatican II as we non Catholics call it?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well listen, I’m a trad. A traditionalist in good standing. I attend the traditional Latin mass. I have my totally unexpired trad card. But the trick here is one can’t criticize, one can’t totally reject the council. This is an ecumenical council that was legitimately called by the church with dogmatic constitutions. So you don’t just say throw it out.

And the funny thing is people who talk about Vatican II pro and against have never read the documents. I certainly haven’t, no.

TUCKER CARLSON: What was it? Can you just summarize it for us?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well yes, it was an Ecumenical council. There have been many of these.

TUCKER CARLSON: What does that mean, Ecumenical council?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: The bishops all get together. So this is the real deal. This goes all the way back to antiquity. And the fact that we talk about this one council as kind of the biggest one in the whole church is silly. You don’t talk about the spirit of the fourth Lateran Council. You don’t talk about the…

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I think the reason that I’m fixated on it is because as someone who’s kind of pro Catholic, I guess.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I mean, Catholic curious, I’m not.

TUCKER CARLSON: Catholic curious, I’m not going there. I’m a Luther man. But the idea that in 1950 the majority of immigrant kids in our biggest cities were schooled in Catholic schools and that went to church every week and it provided order and, well, Christianity, which I believe in and I’m very in favor of that.

And then post Vatican II, this is just my ignorant overview that all collapsed and those, I don’t know how many Catholic schools there were in 1965. They’re probably less than half now. All those churches closed. There are lots of factors, but and then you have the molestation scandal, which was to some extent real and horrifying, and all these people leaving the priesthood and fewer people becoming religious. I don’t know, it’s hard not to see a connection between the two. But maybe I’m wrong.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Pope Benedict, when he stepped down, he kept writing and he wrote a non encyclical, but it was…

TUCKER CARLSON: He was the Pope before Francis. He was the cigarette smoking German.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, the cigarette smoking German. He observed, he said, you know, part of what happened because you have to distinguish between what the council actually said, which was relatively minor. It’s pastoral council, it’s, you know, and then there was this big reform that totally changed the mass and totally, you know, changed the smells and bells and the ornamentations, which, which matters because the way we worship dictates how we believe.

There’s a phrase lex orandi, lex credendi. You know, if you, if you worship a certain way, obviously that’s going to change how you think about that. Of course it’s going to change how you live your life.

And he said, you know, the Catholic Church was swept up just like every other institution in the entire west was swept up in this cultural fervent, this cultural fervor of the 1960s. And in some cases it helped impel that fervor. And it was a kind of a madness took over all of these Reforms.

And then what happened is the fever started to break. And so after Vatican II, you get John Paul I, who was pope for 30 days, and then you get John Paul II. John Paul II in my mind, is kind of the Napoleon of the Catholic Church. He’s a child of the revolution, but he’s also the undoing of the revolution and is lauded, loved by conservatives, profoundly anti communist, helped end the Cold War. Really important man now canonized a saint.

After him, you get Benedict. And Benedict said something really brilliant, which has been… He said many brilliant things, but this is a real antidote to the spirit of the age. He said there were kind of bad actors. I’m reading into this. There were some bad actors who tried to use the council to exploit the council to say that everything that came before that contradicts what we want to do in modernity, that’s got to go.

We’ve got to read the past only through the lens of where we are now. This is a broader cultural phenomenon we do with American history. We do it everywhere. Everything is just about us. And looking back, of course, and what he said is, no, no, no.

TUCKER CARLSON: We do it generationally.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: We do it generationally.

TUCKER CARLSON: You can’t imagine your parents having sex.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. I don’t know about yours, but mine did.

TUCKER CARLSON: Every generation imagines it’s inventing everything out of nothing.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. What Benedict said was, no, no. There is a hermeneutic of continuity. The way we interpret the past is not by going in reverse. It’s that whatever we think, with our limited store of reason in modernity, with all of our fashions and temptations and novel aspects, we have to understand that as being in continuity with the past.

And if we think there’s been some radical break, we’re probably wrong. Who’s more likely to be wrong? The smartest, most serious men for 1950 years? Or, you, Me, I’m more likely right. And so that was the fog breaking, I think.

TUCKER CARLSON: But can I ask, what were the… Were there meaningful changes made during that Council?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. It changes in the sense that there were certain pastoral elements that were… that were discussed and written into dogmatic constitutions. So an understanding of religious liberty. This one is sometimes Protestants love religious liberty and Catholics do, too. Properly understood. But this is sometimes considered somewhat radical because the Church also believes error has no rights. Error non abet jus.

The Nature of Error and Rights

TUCKER CARLSON: What does that mean, error has no rights?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, in liberal modernity, we say that every cockamamie idea, every deviant, ridiculous behavior is some human right, and we have to protect it with Federal subsidies. And the Church says, no, no, error. When you say things that aren’t true, when you do things that are contrary to your flourishing and to nature. There’s no right to that. But of course, the rejoinder is error has no right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that is pretty anti modern.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s quite anti modern, yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s about as anti modern as you can get.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And you can say people who err have rights. So not saying error has rights, people who err. And the Catholic Church has a long history of toleration, contrary to what polemicists in the Enlightenment or what have you would say, but a long, long history of toleration going all the way back to the earliest days of the church.

Beautifully articulated by Gregory the Great, all the way up through the Middle Ages. It’s, again, these are the stories that no one’s taught in school anymore. However, that could be misinterpreted as to saying that we have the right to some Satanist display in the courthouse or something, as activists argue today. Totally ridiculous. What else does Vatican II contain?

Christianity’s Exclusive Claims

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, so here’s my actual question. So at the core of Christianity is a claim of exclusivity. Every human being, every human being on earth reaches God only through Jesus.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. Period.

TUCKER CARLSON: Doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. That’s it. That’s the one. That’s your ticket. You can’t board the train without it. Did that change?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: No. The answer is no. Some of the confusion of this is…

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, there’s quite a bit of confusion about that.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Part of the confusion is there’s the claim in Latin, “extra ecclesiam nulla salus.” There’s no salvation outside of the Church. The Church does not change her view on that. However, people are always asked this question, what about my Protestant grandpa or my atheist dad or my Jewish or my Hindu or my Muslim or whatever.

TUCKER CARLSON: One of these is not like the others.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: But that’s my view. The Protestants, yeah, I would say yes. No, but if you take a really rigorous, exclusive claim here, you say no. Sorry, you’re all totally without any hope. And I guess what the council clarifies is that we pray for these people. There is no salvation outside of Christ. There is no salvation outside of the Church. Salvation subsists within the church. However, it allows for some, as a pastoral matter, some greater dialogue in this modern world.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wait, no. What’s the difference between Jesus and the church?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, Christ founds the church, and Christ is the bridegroom, and the church is the bride.

TUCKER CARLSON: So Catholics, the official church position is unless you’re a member of the church, you don’t go to heaven.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, this is something that would be sort of clarified at the Second Vatican Council, or maybe not clarified. Maybe it just leads to more ecumenical dialogue or something like this. But that one could say, when you’re baptized, you’re a Christian, you might never receive any of the sacraments, you might never go to church, but you’re baptized.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s…

MICHAEL KNOWLES: That’s what delineates you as a Christian. Right. And so we pray for the salvation of everyone. A good example would be because this is coming after the Second World War. So obviously they’re addressing the Jews in particular. And the council states clearly that the Jews are our elder brothers in faith, which is another line that’s used polemically in all sorts of ways. And so God doesn’t revoke his promises to his people. And this can be taken into all different kinds of ideologies.

TUCKER CARLSON: That was the conclusion of the council.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, that’s a statement of the council. But this comes from St. Paul.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: St. Paul says that for the sake of the gospel, the Jews aren’t with it, but for the sake of their forebears, God loves the Jews because the call of God and the gifts of God are irrevocable. So what does that mean?

TUCKER CARLSON: This means Paul was a Jew, obviously, he was a Pharisee.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

The Balance Between Extremes

MICHAEL KNOWLES: What this means, and this gets back to what we’re talking about at the top with sort of Aristotelian virtue is the mean between two extremes. There are two views on this. One is a view that says that you don’t need Christ to be saved, and specifically, the Jews don’t need Christ to be saved. And another view is that God’s done with the Jews and forget about the Jews now, and it’s just only the church.

And what St. Paul is saying and what the council is clarifying is there’s kind of a little bit of room for both. Christ is the Savior. He’s the one Savior. He’s the way, and the road is narrow, and he’s the way and the truth and the life. And also, God doesn’t hate the Jews, and God still has a plan for the Jews.

And so this is something that the Catholic Church does that other denominations and ideologies don’t always. They fall to one side or the other is she brings in, well, what I would call the fullness of truth.

TUCKER CARLSON: So what does that… So that means that there are people who can go to heaven without believing in Jesus.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: No, though one could sort of unwittingly be following Christ and one could have a… I don’t know, the firmness unwittingly. Well, really you can’t, I mean, actually zoom out a little bit again to natural religion. This is another error that was debated in antiquity and still comes up in modernity, which is the notion that these pagan natural religions, they just have nothing of value. “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem,” that sort of thing.

But that’s not really true because natural religion does have something to recommend it. And I think Pope Francis got in trouble for recognizing that in all sorts of traditions there is often a kernel of truth. There is at least some truth in it. In paganism, there’s a kernel of truth. You think of CS Lewis Barfield and those guys loved the myths because it tells us something about our human nature. And the First Vatican Council tells us that the existence of God can be known with certainty from human reason. Looking at the created world, there’s more to it. You got to keep going, that God also reveals himself, but that…

TUCKER CARLSON: You can be certain God exists just by looking at his creation.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the truest thing ever.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. So science gets you to God in the end because there’s no…

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I think so. Thomas Aquinas thinks so. But a lot of people in the modern world, they say, oh no, religion is just… It’s just kind of a private matter of judgment.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, they’re children, they’ve never thought about it. I mean that’s…

John Henry Newman and Religious Truth

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And think about… There was a new doctor of the church just named just within the last few weeks. That would be John Henry Newman, great, greatest theologian in the English language. He was made a doctor of the Church. And Newman’s entire life was spent inveighing against liberalism in religion. This kind of wishy washy sense.

TUCKER CARLSON: Who is Newman?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Newman is great. He was a Protestant and very anti Catholic and then he became a Catholic and then he became a cardinal and then he became a saint.

TUCKER CARLSON: He was American.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He was… No British. He was British. I don’t think we have any American doctors of the church yet. I’m working on it, but unfortunately I have like a fifth grader’s understanding of theology. So I don’t think I’m going to…

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I don’t even have that. But I certainly… I believe. But in a childlike way.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: So Newman was a British Catholic theologian.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. And he became Catholic. And one of his conclusions, and it’s something that we’re coming to grips with today, is we can know things. We can actually know things. That this modern idea that religion is just a matter of private judgment, and so you’re a Shinto and I’m a Methodist, and it’s like, whatever, man, who knows, you just do you. And it’s all good. And he says, no, religion is a public thing. It’s a scientific thing. We can know something about it. He wrote a great book. You look at the crises of the universities today. There’s a remedy to it, which is a book that he wrote called “The Idea of a University.”

And in this book he says, it’s so crazy. We have these institutions that purport to universal knowledge, and increasingly they won’t even acknowledge God, but just on its face. Even if you’re like the most hardcore atheist you can imagine, how can you even pretend to universal knowledge while denying God the source and summit of all knowledge? What are we talking about then? We’re talking about just chemistry problems, that’s kind of so silly.

TUCKER CARLSON: We’re talking about data. It’s an accumulation of numbers.

The Impossibility of Moral Neutrality

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And what they say is, no, no, no, because we live in this world after the crackup of Christendom, where everyone has their own private ideas. There’s just no way of knowing anything for certain. So we’re just going to settle on certain economic matters. We’re all going to try to get rich. We’re all going to try to live in relative peace, and we’re going to leave that heady stuff. You do that on Sunday morning, and that’s obviously impossible.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you remember 20 years ago there…

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Oh, it hasn’t worked.

TUCKER CARLSON: Look around. Well, actually, looking around here is okay, but if you look in the city, it’s not so great. There was this idea that you can’t legislate morality. Do you remember that?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I remember the idea. It was the operating thesis of the United States of America.

TUCKER CARLSON: And yet not one person ever practically believed it.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Of course not.

TUCKER CARLSON: You can’t pass a law about speeding, you can’t pass a law about jaywalking without recourse to morality, of course. And when you come to that conclusion about practical morality, which is ultimately derived from your understanding of Religion. You are going to impose a moral view on someone else. Maybe someone else is very pro jaywalking. Maybe someone else deeply feels in their sincere religious beliefs they need to jaywalk.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: All rules are based on a moral code.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. And they’re exclusive. You can’t violate the law of non contradiction. Either you’re going to have a law against jaywalking or you’re not. Either you’re going to have a law against murdering babies or you’re not. And you’re going to impose that on people. That’s just, that’s how government, that’s what government is.

The New Secular Religion

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, as soon as people started saying you can’t legislate morality, they started giving everybody very much, including me, these moralizing lectures. The country got more rigid and moralistic. It’s why you were described as disgusting for noting that Greta Thunberg is unwell.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: When it’s obvious her mother wrote a book about it and…

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. And sad. And she’s worthy of compassion. But that what happened to you as a result of this epidemic of shallow but highly aggressive moralizing that took the place of something that we had before.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. And that’s why I think, okay, now we’re going to get on our puritanical high horses about pronouns or whatever, which, where you must put rainbow flags, which is in front of every doorstep everywhere in the country. We’re going to get on our high horse about that, but we’re going to shrug our shoulders when it comes to murdering babies, when it comes to the meaning of marriage, when it comes to whether a people can have borders in a nation, we can’t know about that. But we can know about some ridiculous gnostic heresy about pronouns and identity or whatever. It’s totally incoherent. And so what you’re seeing and this…

TUCKER CARLSON: To me, well, they just replaced Christianity with a much less forgiving religion.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: A much harsher, crueler, less compassionate religion.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And false religion.

The Path from Atheism to Faith

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, of course, definitely false. But in its effects, you could tell it was bad because it didn’t elevate people or forgive people. It wasn’t kind to people. It was cruel and unyielding and vicious and I mean, all these people got destroyed, literally driven to suicide.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: If you don’t like the God who loves you, just wait till you meet all the other gods. Yes. Because everyone’s got to worship something, you know, Bob Dylan was right about that.

TUCKER CARLSON: So how did you go. So you said that you were an atheist when you were at Yale.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I guess from. No, when I was 13. I was confirmed at 13 in the Catholic Church. In the Catholic Church. And before my confirmation, I told my mother, I said, you know, I don’t believe it. Christopher Hitchens, he’s so smart. And, you know, Richard Dawkins. And I’m really taken. I’m such a.

TUCKER CARLSON: You thought Richard Dawkins was smart?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Listen, I was 13, okay? Come on, come on. And actually, the new atheist really appealed to punk 13 year olds who thought they were smarter than they are. That is the ideal audience for the new atheism.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I think so. And I told her, I said, I don’t want to be confirmed. My mother, “You’re going through a phase, you kid. You’re going through a phase.” Wise woman, wise woman. She goes, “Receive the sacrament.” She wasn’t even like super duper religious, but she said, “Receive the sacrament. You’re going to regret it if you don’t and you’re going to come to your senses in a few years.” She was totally right.

So I did that. I was away from the church. Would have called myself an atheist or at least an agnostic for 10 years.

TUCKER CARLSON: Can I just ask, what did you think was cool about. I mean, Hitchens was. I knew him well, it was, you know. Yeah, lots of good things about, About Hitchens, but his life was so sad that he was not really an advertisement for atheism. I didn’t think. Yes, but what did you think was cool about that whole.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, I thought religion was for stupid people. Yeah, I thought religion was for stupid people. And I, of course, didn’t know anything and hadn’t read anything and my brain was lived. I hadn’t lived, but I was quite wrong. But I was never in doubt. And so I been there. Yes, yes.

I said, look, I just don’t. I don’t see God. Bad things happen to good people and, you know, science has microscopes and anyway, and actually getting back to the point on the reforms of the church and everything changing, it was kind of weak liturgically. There were all these sappy, effeminate hymns that were about eagle’s wings and stuff that was not really appealing to a young boy and all this nonsense.

TUCKER CARLSON: The eagle swings. Got you, huh?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Oh, God, it’s such, you know, it wasn’t even cool in the 70s when those. Now I know. Oh, I was there. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

The College Revelation

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And so I said, well, look, it’s just so obvious, social proof, all the smart people are atheists. And then I get to college and everyone’s an atheist and many people are much smarter than me in college. But I did notice the smartest people believed in God.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, exactly. Yes. There weren’t a ton of Muslims, though. There were a couple, but across the board, the Muslims, the Jews, the Protestants, the Catholics were smarter. They seemed smarter. Maybe their IQs weren’t even higher, but they just seemed more with it. They made better arguments than some stupid spaghetti monster nonsense from Christopher Hitchens. And I said, huh? And then I was presented with an argument for the existence of God.

TUCKER CARLSON: What an interesting observation.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, there weren’t even that many of them there, but you kind of say, oh, wow, it’s a little bit the wheat from the chaff, you know, they’d.

TUCKER CARLSON: Have to be the braver section of the population too.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: This is one of the arguments. To go to a liberal college is even just in your own politics. If you can make it through and not be swept along the tide of liberalism and you make it through to the end, you will have heard every argument, you will have heard every refutation of everything you believe. You will either give up some of your beliefs, maybe some of you should, or you will become much stronger in your beliefs, which is what happened to me. I left Yale much more right wing than I went in, without question. And I’m not the only one.

So I was presented with an argument from a guy who’s smarter than me, and he said, “You think God doesn’t exist? What about the ontological argument?” And I won’t be tedious with the art, but the argument is basically God’s the maximally great being. That’s this definition. He has all the great making characteristics, none of the corrupting characteristics. It’s better to exist than not to exist. We would all agree with that. We’d go off ourselves right now if we disagreed with that. Therefore, God exists.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s it.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: That’s the argument. And Bertrand Russell, a great logician atheist, famously threw his tin of tobacco in the air. He would have had Alps if it had been around at the time. He famously threw his Alps his tobacco in the air. He said, “By golly, the ontological argument is sound.” It’s easier to think there’s a flaw in the argument than to actually point out the flaw. And I said, well, darn, I can’t refute that. Then I read Lewis CS Lewis.

TUCKER CARLSON: So who is this person who said that to you?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: This is my roommate, actually.

TUCKER CARLSON: Whatever happened to him?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Oh, he’s my best friend still this day.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Very, very close.

TUCKER CARLSON: And he’s a Christian.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, yeah. And he. He was a cradle Catholic Raised kind of megachurch Protestant. And then he. He reverted to the church. He was confirmed in the church later on. And. But, well, you know, he and I and some other people were kind of going through this together, you know, So I would say 18 to 23. I was. I was really dragging my feet. You know, I said, oh, CS Lewis makes good arguments. Chesterton makes good arguments. Maybe I should read the Bible at some point. That might be smart. I’ll do that later.

And I’m going through. I finally seriously read the Bible at 23. I said, oh, this is true. This is right. You know, first you have to accept that God exists. Then you say, okay, well, is Jesus who he says he is? If he’s not, that’s going to lead me in one direction. If he does, it’s going to lead me in another direction. Then you have to ask yourself, well, is the church? What kind of church did he establish that’s going to lead? And there were plenty of Protestants along the way who were really helpful in my return and thinking so, you know, it was very helpful this whole period. But I took the long road. I took the long route. I could have just, you know, Norm MacDonald, the comedian?

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course.

The Norm MacDonald Connection

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Of course. Greatest comedian, probably ever. I didn’t know him really, but he and I, we would write each other long letters on Twitter, DMs for weeks. This is the strangest thing, because I saw he was following me on Twitter and he wasn’t following a lot of people, and I was a huge fan of his, so I didn’t even want to message him. I was so. And one time he sent out a tweet, and it sounded kind of despairing. Now we know he was dying of cancer. I thought he was suicidal or something. I just sent him a note. I said I’d feel bad if I didn’t. I said, “Hey, Norm, huge fan of yours. If I can be of any help, I don’t know that I can, but I’d be happy to.” And we started writing each other these letters. And. Really? Yeah, for weeks, every night, just for weeks. Long essays, really.

TUCKER CARLSON: To Norm MacDonald on Twitter, DM.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s weird. This is one of the strangers every night. And he would do this thing where he’d say, “Michael, hey, I can’t do it right, Norm?” He’d say, “It would be prideful for me not to take you up on your offer because, Michael, I’m not an educated man. You’re an educated man. I don’t really have an undergraduate degree. I’m not an educated man. I didn’t really go to college.” And then he would do this thing where he’d make it seem like he’s just some old chunk of coal, and then he’d use a word that I didn’t know. He was certainly much better read than I am and loved the Russian novelists.

And we were talking about religion basically the whole time. And he said to me, I don’t know his. I still don’t know the particulars of all of his religious views, but he said, you know, for me, I told him how I converted, reverted. And he said, “Oh, yeah, for me, I’ve just always known the Bible’s true. I just always knew I’d read it. I just knew.” So anyway, that’s it. And I thought, well, that’s the better way. You know, it’s like Christ to Thomas the Apostle. He says, you know, “Blessed are you. You’ve seen and believed, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.” And that was Norm.

And that’s another example, too, of you think, okay, the whole culture and all these smart people are atheists. Norm is one of the smartest pop culture figures that’s been around for decades. Yes. But he knew. It’s just like everyone kind of knows. Deep depth.

TUCKER CARLSON: Everyone kind of knows. That’s totally right. And that’s why they’re mad.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: People feel judged.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: They feel judged.

TUCKER CARLSON: I never feel judged by the Earth is flat people, you know, I don’t think the earth is flat, but I don’t. It doesn’t bother me that you do. You know what I mean?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I get a kick out of it. I’ll go down the.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, whatever.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s not a threat.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t. Because I just. I know in my heart they’re probably not.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s probably not flat. You know what I mean? Yeah, but the ancient Greeks.

The Conscience and Moral Truth

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I remember thinking that even in early high school with the question of abortion, and, you know, people just get hysterical about it, hysterical. “How dare you judge me?” And all this is like, whoa, I wasn’t even really judging you. But clearly you’re judging yourself.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because you know that you took a life and that, you know, there are all kinds of extenuating circumstances. I get it. But in the end, you killed the.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Kid, and that’s how they know that you did. The devil gets you this way because he says. And before you commit the sin, he says, “It’s no big deal. It’s no big deal. It’s nothing. It’s a clump of cells. It’s nothing. It’s your freedom, it’s your body, it’s your choice. It’s. Come on, it’s no big deal. You’re not going to feel bad. I mean, you just got to do it.” And then you do it. And then one second later, he’s in your ear, he says, “You’ll never be forgiven. You can never admit this is wrong. The second you do, you are damned walking the earth. You are done. You’re done.” And I think that explains a lot of modern behavior.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re totally right. It’s totally right. If you ever watched a shout. Your abortion event, she always fascinating, weirdly fascinating to me. And I always feel so bad for the girls because they, they. But they never really can muster enthusiasm for the abortions they had because. And you can see it right in their faces. It’s oh, I feel so sorry for them. Can you imagine?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, this. You know, to make it fully religious, Peter Kreeft made this observation that even the language of the abortion, “This is my body” is a satanic inversion of the Eucharist. “This is my body.”

TUCKER CARLSON: But everybody know. I guess it’s. I’m just tying to the Norm MacDonald observation, which is, gosh, the truest thing. You read it, you’re “Oh, wow, that’s true.”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Even.

TUCKER CARLSON: That was certainly my experience in reading and even things. I was “Ugh, I don’t like that.” But I still thought, that’s true. Yes, 100% true.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: So, you know, you all know, because everyone does have a conscience, even if it’s darkened by sin and a little bit and drugs and porn and, you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Know, like dumb class, shiny like stainless steel. But yes, I can imagine there are others who had darkened consciences.

The Illusion of Human Control

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. Yes. And you all kind of know. And then the other impulse, which is centuries in the making, well, it really goes back to the fall, but especially politically with liberalism, is this notion that we are really to be gods. Ultimately, we are in control. No gods and no kings, only men. And we decide.

TUCKER CARLSON: And so I never fell for that. That’s so obvious.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I fell for it. I totally fell for it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really? Then I never thought that was for all my many problems and lies I believed, and lies I’ve unwittingly repeated. And all my many sins. I never bought the “we’re gods” thing because we can’t extend our lives, really. And if you can’t do that, then you have no power.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Tucker, you clearly don’t read the news. We’re on the brink. We’re this close to curing death. I see it every day in the headlines. They’ve been trying it since Pharaoh, but they’re this close now. Don’t you know.

The Salmon Farm Analogy

TUCKER CARLSON: You know, it’s like salmon farming. Salmon farming is my favorite idea because it was something I just thought, because obviously I love to catch that. You know, I’m a fisherman. I love Atlantic salmon fishing. They’re hard to catch them. There aren’t that many of them.

And so the idea was people love to eat salmon. Let’s just have a salmon farm out there, make a giant net, just breed them right there in the ocean. Like, there’s no downside. It cures the problem.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And salmon farms have basically destroyed wild salmon, both through the pollution and for crossbreeding with the salmon. And they don’t spawn. And they’ve… I mean, we’re in danger of losing Atlantic salmon as a species because of salmon farming. People are just starting to figure this out.

But it’s like it’s a species of the same lie. Like, “I’m in control of nature.” Oh, shit.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: We don’t spawn either, by the way.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, exactly. But we’re in danger of losing Atlantic salmon as a species because of salmon farming. People are just starting to figure this out. But it’s like it’s a species of the same lie. Like, “I’m in control of nature.” Oh, shit. Salmon farm, like, duh. You know what I mean?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: We’ll just… Whatever it is, we have done that, we have now exercised increasing control over how we spawn through contraception.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly right.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Oh, now we’re in control. Now this is going to lead to flourishing. We’re going to die off. I mean, we have a global population collapse on the horizon.

The Burden of Extended Life

TUCKER CARLSON: So if you ended up extending human life to 150 years, the last 80 years of the life would just be like a living hell. Do you know what I mean? I mean, for one thing, I’ve always thought, this is one insight I did have when I was young.

Which is the problem with getting old is not like bladder control. And it’s not even dementia. It’s instead remembering your youth and how much has changed. And it’s the burden of the past becomes unbearable.

And any old person will tell you this in their moments of lucid thought. They’ll tell you, “I’m just… I can’t believe how fast it went.” And they’re crushed by that. So imagine living to 150.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And think about when they’re all promising this and there are people on the right who are really into this too. Radical life extension and say, “Michael, if you could take the pill to live for 500 years, would you do it?” I said, “Not a chance, dude.”

TUCKER CARLSON: I won’t take an Advil. Pills are bad.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Okay?

TUCKER CARLSON: Pills are just… Let’s just start there. Pills are bad. Anyone who wants you to take a pill, fuck off. Okay? That’s how I feel. So I just strongly feel that way. But why would you want to live to 150?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And this is the understanding. I mean, the curse when we fall out of the garden, is that we die. But is that really a curse? If you live in a world that’s fallen, it’s full of misery. I don’t think it’s actually a great mercy.

TUCKER CARLSON: It depends what you think happens next, I guess.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, that’s true. And people are, I think, also increasingly aware that something might happen next. They’re kind of clinging on to this hope that, “Well, I hope this is all there is,” and “I just turn to worm food and take a dirt nap.”

And I don’t think that makes sense at all. And the smartest people in history didn’t think it made any sense.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t think anyone in history has really thought that. No. Until Hiroshima, which was the ultimate expression of God-like power and that is what killed…

MICHAEL KNOWLES: “I am the destroyer of worlds.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: “And become death,” you know?

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

The Catholic Revival Among Young People

TUCKER CARLSON: So what? Okay, so if all these young people are becoming Catholic, of all unfashionable things, looks like that’s for the most unfashionable, you know? But by the standards of 30 years ago, becoming a Catholic, crazy.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s crazy.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s insane.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. This is why I think the vice president is probably the most famous convert in recent years. And people, his political enemies, are always saying, “Oh, he’s cynical. He’s just changing his views with the times, whatever.”

I think, hold on. You’re telling me a guy who had a tough upbringing, who graduates Yale Law School, wants to start, is in Silicon Valley, then goes back, he wants to launch a political career in Ohio. The way he thinks he’s going to do that is by becoming Catholic. Do you think that’s going to help you? No, that’s like the craziest thing to do if you were thinking cynically.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s a radical move, I guess. And again, I’m not promoting it, I’m not doing it, but I just… As an observer, I’m like, wow, that’s pretty wild. So I guess here’s my question. It’s a political question. If people, if young people are converting to Catholicism, what else about their views is changing?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Everything.

TUCKER CARLSON: So that’s my sense.

Rediscovering Cultural Heritage

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, on the political level, and I think this also touches on part of the conversions. We’re beginning to realize that history didn’t start in 1965. History didn’t start in 1865. History didn’t start in 1776 or even 1620. We’re part of something that’s much bigger and much broader and much more beautiful.

And even just in our political order, we used to call it Christendom. Now we call it the West. And there has been an attack on that going back many decades. Now I think of Jesse Jackson marching down Stanford. “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.”

And people are beginning to realize, it’s not that I just want to preserve my town or my 90s liberalism or my… What? I want to preserve this great cultural patrimony that I’ve been given. And that cultural patrimony has to go deeper than just aesthetics. It has to go deeper than just abstract ideology.

Cult and culture come from the same root word. So what you worship is going to define your culture. And so what’s the bottom, what’s the foundation? What’s the ballast for all of that?

I think people, even beyond questions of conviction of the Holy Spirit and rational arguments and all that, they’re just saying, “Well, this thing’s pretty sturdy. It’s been around a long time.”

Belloc again, Belloc keeps coming to mind. He had this line. He says, “I am required as a matter of faith to hold that the church is divinely instituted. But for those who doubt it, one proof of its divine institution is that no other group conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.” Obviously true.

Honest Conversations About Faith

TUCKER CARLSON: The best thing I ever heard from a practicing Catholic in the last five years. There was no one around who was a very close friend of mine and he was going on about Catholicism. I was like, “Okay, but that Pope is just…” I just can’t. I won’t even tell you what I said. But it was hostile because that’s how I felt.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And he goes, “Are you sure you’re not Catholic?”

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He was the greatest thing ever.

TUCKER CARLSON: He goes, “Yeah, I totally agree, but he’s not the worst Pope we’ve had.”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Was it completely non-defensive? This happens.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s like, “Let me tell you about the 9th century.”

TUCKER CARLSON: No, but I think that’s right. If you want to win people over, don’t be defensive.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, totally.

TUCKER CARLSON: Don’t tell me that there’s no… That what I’m seeing isn’t real.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Be honest.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Of course, of course. I mean, it is. Okay.

TUCKER CARLSON: But I don’t know that I’ve talked to too many Catholics about Catholicism. Maybe they all feel that way. But I thought that was just a wonderful response.

The Francis Pontificate and Church History

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Totally. You know, we have to remember that the Pope is fallible, except when he’s infallible. And sometimes God gives us bad popes to make us really grateful for good popes.

And the other point I’ll mention on Francis, because obviously I had some questions about the Francis pontificate.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I reverted during the Francis pontificate. This trend started during Francis. Yes. It might have been in reaction against many of the things that Pope Francis was said to stand for. I don’t know exactly how it worked. That’s above my pay grade.

But that’s… You think of the progress of the church and our whole civilization, and we think of it as just like a straight line, but I think it’s a little bit more kind of like this, you know, and the papacy goes to Avignon for a little bit, and there’s some king arresting the pope. And it’s kind of a little bit more circuitous, but it’s always pointed in the same direction.

TUCKER CARLSON: It just reminds me of God using Pharaoh, blinding Pharaoh to the truth in order to save the Jews from slavery, which is what’s described. And I always imagine that there’s a direct line between the quality of the leadership and the quality of the people.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Of course, this is why I came.

TUCKER CARLSON: But that’s not always true. So as America becomes more prosperous, the people become weaker and sillier.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, that’s how I grew up. I grew up in the richest country in history, but there was a steady decline in the quality of thinking, certainly.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And of behavior and of leadership.

TUCKER CARLSON: End of leadership.

Democracy and the Common Good

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. I mean, I forget who it was who said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

This is why I can’t get into many… I love the populist movement. I was so into the rise of Trump. I remain into the rise of Trump. I think this has been the healthiest political awakening in my lifetime. I think I’m all about it, but I can’t throw too many stones merely at the leadership class because one, the civil authority is there for our own good. It’s in that way appointed by God in a certain sense.

And also we kind of get the government that we deserve. If you don’t know anything about your country and you don’t care about your civic life and you’re just going to be greedy, you’re either going to on the left side of things, just indulge in weird social stuff that’s purely selfish. And on the right side of things you get engaged in economic selfishness and no one cares about the common good and no one cares about the body politic, then that’s kind of where we are right there.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And you’re going to get crappy leadership a lot of the time and sometimes you get a second chance.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it’s just like greed and lust, those your choices.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. And look, this is classic political philosophy going all the way back, which is that greed, avarice is the beginning of evils in the city and it’s natural and you have to draw worship of…

TUCKER CARLSON: Money is the root of all evil.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, that’s right.

The Generational Shift in Political Attitudes

TUCKER CARLSON: So okay, have you noticed, I mean I have a lot of young people who work for me, I have children and all that but every month or two I’ll run into a younger person, like an airport or something and always strike up a conversation and they’ll say things that, super nice or whatever, but you just feel like, wow, the attitudes are. People are getting by my middle aged standards pretty freaking radical.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s crazy. I was talking, hey, you’ve had this experience for sure. I have always been the most right wing person in any room.

TUCKER CARLSON: Me too, me too. I’ve always been the radical. I’m like, man, I better shut up because my thoughts are not welcome in public at all. And all of a sudden and I’m like feeling a little bit more moderate.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, well that’s good. Listen, now we can go on TV, say look, I’m the moderate, okay?

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve never felt moderate in my life.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I was talking to a professor who is very, very right wing and he said, “Michael, it’s the craziest thing. For the first time in my life, I’m being outflanked by my students. I’m being outflanked.” He says, never happened before.

And now part of this obviously is like a pendulum was so far over here, trans your kids and kill the ones that you don’t transport. It’s going to fly back in the other direction, which is good. That’s a healthy impulse. This is where, however, one must have a solid foundation with proper authority and guardrails. I agree with that and everything, because you need to make sure that you don’t fall into the same error on the other side. You want to get back to sanity and reason and be fully in command of your will and your intellect.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you don’t want to center your views on hating people.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: You certainly don’t want that. You need charity. I mean, St. Paul says if you don’t have charity, you got nothing.

The Failure of Female Leadership and Democracy

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, well, every wedding service in the country, 1 Corinthians 13. So. No, I think that’s exactly right. But I just wonder, as a political matter, here’s a few of the things that I sense. People feel free to say what they think in a way that is so inspiring and great and refreshing, but also a little shocking, because what they think is not what they’re supposed to think at all or have been supposed to think.

I feel like there’s a recognition that the whole, “let’s put women in charge of everything” just didn’t work.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Cracker Barrel didn’t work out.

TUCKER CARLSON: It didn’t work. Female leadership just didn’t work. I mean, I guess I wanted it to work. I don’t know how I felt about it, but it didn’t work. And people feel free to say that.

There’s also, I have noticed from talking to younger people, a recognition that democracy just kind of isn’t working for our conception of democracy. I don’t meet really anybody who uses the term democracy non-ironically.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you?

The Mixed Regime and Constitutional Framework

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, when you go back to the framers of our Constitution, you’ll recognize that they use the phrase democracy in a derisive way and as a warning of impending peril. Because even the notion that our country is a liberal democracy, that is a self conception that came up in the 20th century. It started a little bit in the 30s. It really took off after the World War, and then it reaches its peak in the 80s. That’s when it gets escaped velocity.

We’re not a liberal democracy. We have a democratic element, a healthy democratic element to our country. Actually, in large part, I think it comes in because of Tocqueville’s great book, Democracy in America, Best study of America ever. But even there, our regime is a mixed regime. Our regime has a strong democratic element as it was initially instituted. It has an aristocratic element in the Senate, and it has a monarchical element in the President.

So you even think today of all the kings around the world. The president of the United States probably has more practical monarchical authority than, say, King Charles. Right. Adrian Vermeule made this point the other day. I’m pretty sure the president of the United States is a more robust king than the king of Norway or whatever.

And so our regime, this was intentional, by the way, and it’s outlined as the ideal regime in the Summa Theologia. But it goes all the way back to Polybius, this notion that there’s a cycle of regimes because it’s a fallen world. And so maybe you have a monarchy, but it’s going to degrade over time and it’s going to become a tyranny. What’s the difference between a monarchy and a tyranny? A monarchy is for the common good. Tyranny is for private interest.

You can have an aristocracy, government by good, lots of, a small number of good people that will degrade into an oligarchy. I think we’ve seen a lot of that in recent years. Common good versus private interest. And you can have a democracy, and a democracy can be quite good, the virtue of the early American republic that can degrade into a kind of mob rule, where it’s just people pulling for their own factions and their own private interests.

And so you’re going to have this cycle of revolutions that’s going to go on. What the framers of the Constitution tried to do was escape that cycle by instituting a mixed regime, no matter what. They called it a republic, if you can keep it, or a constitutional system or whatever. And it has held pretty well. It has been increasingly democratized. So it’s probably leaned a little bit too much onto that side.

Trump, I think, now, is trying to restore, and this is part of a program that had been going on for decades, restore a little bit more executive authority to balance the whole thing out. But regimes fall. That’s the norm in world history. And so we are at a real risk of that if we don’t correct some of the degradations in our own regime.

The 17th Amendment and Senate Problems

TUCKER CARLSON: So what would that mean? What degradations seem to be corrected in order to forestall revolution?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, here’s one. The 17th Amendment.

TUCKER CARLSON: I do feel like this country’s much more volatile than people publicly acknowledge.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Oh, yeah, the 17th amendment creates direct election of senators. Today we say, what would be wrong with that? There’s nothing wrong. It’s more democracy. Isn’t that good.

TUCKER CARLSON: Have you met senators?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I’ve met a lot of senators.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s the densest collection of douchebags and liars and sex freaks I’ve ever met in my life.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I mean it. And just wait till you go to the house. I work on television.

TUCKER CARLSON: I feel like there are more normal House members, but the Senate, I mean, there are some exceptions. Guys I like a lot, but only a handful.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I like that. Listen, some of my best friends are senators, but a lot of them I was just with.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m friends with a couple of them, and I say, well, these guys are freaks, man. They’re all freaks. Like John Cornyn. What’s his search history? No, I’m serious.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I actually don’t know John Cornyn, but.

TUCKER CARLSON: If you had a hold of that guy’s iPhone, what would you find? Any of these people? Ted Cruz has a. I love Ted. Oh, my God.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I love. He’s a good friend of mine.

TUCKER CARLSON: He is. Okay, but I get. But I’m just saying I’ll leave Ted out. I’m not going to attack Ted. I’ve always liked his wife, but I’m just. I don’t know. Yeah, it’s not working.

The Loss of States’ Rights

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s not. It’s not. And think about how these guys got elected. These guys, it used to be they would be elected by the states, which meant that the states had a role in the government. We’re supposed to have states. Yeah, we don’t really have states.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, we certainly don’t.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: They’re kind of all vassals for this imperial blob of bureaucracy. But why did we lose that? Antonin Scalia said this to me when I was a student. I got to meet him a couple times undergrad, and he said. We asked him about states rights. He said, “Why are you asking me about states rights? I’m a fed. I’m a fed. What do I care about states rights? You got rid of your state’s rights in the Progressive Amendments when you had the direct election of senators, that states rights are done.”

TUCKER CARLSON: And the civil rights movement killed it.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Civil rights movement killed it. The implementation of this. I mean, every government office has a civil rights division now. It’s like Christopher Caldwell, an excellent guest on your show.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wonderful.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And a great writer.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wonderful guy.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: His book Age of Entitlement basically proves this thesis that there’s a parallel constitution which is in tension with the old Constitution. So you do have a crisis of regime that’s coming up.

Avoiding Civil War

TUCKER CARLSON: How does that play out?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I hope peacefully. I really hope. I think it can play out peacefully. Some people on the right, they’ll say, “I want a civil war.” You heard this a lot during BLM and Covid. I want a civil war on the left and the right. They say, “I don’t want a civil war. If there’s a civil war, I’m going to have to shoot my cousins.” Do you know what you’re saying? I want a civil war. Do you know what a civil war is like?

Dante is one of my favorite writers. Civil war ruined his life. He said it’s the worst thing that can happen. Because the whole point of a political community is to secure peace and order for the common good so that we can flourish. And when you crack that, I mean, the whole political community is just an extension of a family.

TUCKER CARLSON: The Spanish Civil War ended 85 years ago. And you go to Spain now, they’re still mad about it. It still divides that country.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Greece the same way. Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: We have to be angry that the communists were defeated. The Bolsheviks who were killing priests and rape.

TUCKER CARLSON: Spain is a uniquely sad country. It’s a wonderful country, wonderful people. But, oh, my gosh. Yeah, they had a. That was demonic, obviously.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Obviously.

TUCKER CARLSON: They began by shooting a statue of Jesus. So that was kind of a sign. But.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. And every evil person in the United States joined and.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. What is the Abraham Lincoln Brigade?

TUCKER CARLSON: Abraham Lincoln Brigades.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I remember when I was a kid, I heard that some guy died. He was in the Abraham Lincoln. I said, oh, it’s Abraham Lincoln Brigade. I looked into it. I said he was a communist.

TUCKER CARLSON: Stalinist. Yes, Stalinist. Like the entire American left was Stalinist.

Nixon and the Communist Infiltration

MICHAEL KNOWLES: This is why. Talk about the changes in the 60s into the. This is why they had to get Nixon. They never forgave Richard Nixon because he got Alger Hiss. Richard Nixon knew that there were actual communists in the government at the highest levels of the State Department helping to found the United Nations. And he knew it. And he got him dead. And he believed Whitaker Chambers and he got him dead to rights. They never forgave him for it.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s totally true. And they made up this whole fake scandal and took out the most popular president in American history.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, No, I know.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s very distress. But anyway, I guess the point is the Civil War has our own civil war. It’s only finally kind of cooling down.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And we’re relitigating it well.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because Reconstruction never really ended.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Let’s just humiliate the south and turn its cities into slums, which we’ve done. So. Yeah. No, it’s all. We don’t want a civil war. I totally. So how do we avoid that?

Strong Leadership and Executive Action

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, I think we need strong leadership, which we are getting in Trump. We actually do have an executive who on the right who’s willing to do things. This has been a big problem for the right because of ideologies that were essentially liberal, where the right said, “You need to elect us so that we do nothing.” That was their explicit pitch. “If you elect me, I won’t do anything because I want to, principally with great dignity and integrity and principles, give away all the power. Because if I ever do anything, then the minute the Democrats come into office, they might do all the things they’ve been doing for 50 years.” So we can’t have that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, it was National Review Republicanism. I would have voted for that.

The Conservative Coalition and Trump’s Unique Leadership

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I mean, Buckley. Buckley at least. I mean, Buckley defended McCarthy, for goodness sakes.

TUCKER CARLSON: He did. No, he absolutely did. Then he turned on him.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: But at a certain point, it was politically incorrect. But you think of those early days. Brent Bozell, who goes for “A Conscience of a Conservative,” an amazing book.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, Brent Bozell meant it. Right. So he was exiled. Because he really meant it. He was mentally ill.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And he went over in the. After the Spanish Civil War.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I know. Raised his family in Franco, Spain. Oh, I know he meant it.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: But that. Look, there’s always been this hodgepodge on the right of disparate groups, as you well know, that don’t totally make sense together. So you have the traditional conservatives. Well, the fusionist coalition was the traditional conservatives and the libertarians and some warhawk Democrats who wanted to take down the Soviet Union.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And I think it made sense at the time. Common Enemy in the Soviet Union.

TUCKER CARLSON: I was there for that.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: I read Commentary every month growing up.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Did you?

TUCKER CARLSON: We got it at home. Yes, we did.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: You don’t have any copies around here anymore.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, I don’t know where I was raised on Commentary. I mean, we’re like this Protestant family getting the official publication of the American Jewish Committee. I read every issue. Arch Puddington, Ruth Vissa or whatever. I think they hate me now, but whatever.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I grew up reading that. One of my favorite lines recently was from Norman Podhoretz, who said. They said, “You’re the founder of neoconservatism.” He said, “No, no, I’m so old that I’m now a Paleo neoconservative. I’m too old for that.” And this is, you know, there’s the Paleos and the Neos and the Libertarians and the Traditionalists and the. This and obscure political monikers are the Right wing version of gender pronouns.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, it’s totally.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Everyone’s got his own thing. And this is what I love about Trump. Is Trump an ideologue?

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: What kind of ism does Trump ascribe to? Trumpism? Trump, Trump. That’s what he ascribes to. Americanism, I guess. I don’t know. This is a man who has brought together a disparate coalition of weirdo crunchy hippies and bow tie wearing traditionalists and libertarians and Silicon Valley tech futurists and it’s the craziest coalition ever.

And he has brought them together and won the popular vote for the first time in 20 years as a Republican. And it’s an amazing thing to see in action. Because he’s got a vision and he’s just a force of nature.

And so the question, I think on a lot of our minds now, I think this is what all this “Trump is dead” discourse is about. There was this viral meme that Trump died because he got a bruise on his hand or something. He went to play golf one day, they said he was dead.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, he’s still around.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He’s around?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, he’s still around.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And I think a lot of that is an anxiety of, wow, we got this reprieve from all the craziness and all the decay and all the division and we won the popular vote. You know, things are on track. And what happens next when the patriarch’s gone?

The Future of the Trump Coalition

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I mean, you know, what happens in families when the. Yeah, it can be really hard. Yes, it can be really hard. I have a lot of confidence in J.D. Vance.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. I think he’s quite clearly at this point set up the vice president as the successor.

TUCKER CARLSON: I hope that’s right.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It seems like in the cabinet meeting the other day he said, look, Rubio’s done a great job in the 15 jobs that he’s doing in the admin. At least 15. But he said in the cabinet meeting the other day and I noticed it and no one around me seemed to have heard this line, he goes, “Everyone is talking about what a great job Rubio was doing.” And he said, “Wow, Marco, you’ve just been amazing, frankly, I hope you never run for another office because I want you to do this for the rest of your life.”

And I said, well, that seems like a win. If those are the two most not popular, they’re most presidential viable, you know, for 2028. So that seems like he’s saying, no, the vice president is my natural successor.

Trump’s Unpredictable Statements

TUCKER CARLSON: Trump drops these bombs in every conversation you have with him. I haven’t interviewed him that many times because it’s so difficult, dizzying, because he does the weave famously. But every time I’ve interviewed him, three days later, I’ll think, did he just say that? Right in the middle of the.

Right. Yesterday he was doing an interview with the Daily Caller. Right in the middle of the interview, he was talking about Israel, and “I love Israel, and no one’s done more for Israel than I’ve done.” And, you know, rooting for his. He’s very pro Israel, of course. And then he goes, they used to.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Own Congress or whatever.

TUCKER CARLSON: He said that. He goes, “You know, the Israel lobbies totally control Congress like nobody else. That’s not true anymore.” I’m like, did you just say that?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, it was amazing. I remember in the. What, the interview or the press conference with Netanyahu, this was months ago, and I don’t think I was taken in by theatricality. I think this was real. When he said, “Look, what we’re going to do is the United States is going to take over Gaza.”

And you look at Netanyahu and he sort of. He looks at Trump and he kind of looks nervously at the audience. He’s kind of laughing, but kind of not laughing. And he’s like, what is it? He goes, “We’re going to take over Gaza. We’re going to build a big Trump casino there,” or whatever. I don’t know what he’s going to do. You know, “We’re going to build. It’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be the Riviera of the Middle East.”

And it was so apparently out of left field. And I’m not even convinced he’s totally sincere on that. I think he’s a great negotiator, and he’s working other angles.

Middle East Reactions and Strategy

TUCKER CARLSON: It was weird. I was actually in the Middle East that day when that happened, and I meeting with a bunch of, you know, local residents who run the government in the country it was in, and I’m like, dude, what? You know, And I was actually sitting at the table and they played that. Everyone’s staring at this, and I thought, I don’t know. What the hell is that?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do we have to do with Gaza? My instinct is always we got nothing to do with this.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I’m good.

TUCKER CARLSON: You know, it’s like when girls fight, I don’t want to get involved.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I’ll take Monaco, I’ll take the French Riviera. I don’t need the Gaza Riviera. That’s exactly right.

TUCKER CARLSON: But their reaction was, I have no idea if this is true or not, but it was so interesting. They’re sophisticated, very sophisticated. They’re like, “Oh, no, no, that’s an attack on Netanyahu.” Yes, that was their gut reaction. He’s basically tweaking Netanyahu. It wasn’t.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It wasn’t a, you know, a haymaker. It wasn’t collaborating on that. It was a little poke. And I.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think that too?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, I think it was a little poke. In what way? In the sense that it’s. In the Cabinet meeting the other day, Trump was asked, he said, “You promised that this war would be over permanently in five seconds after you were inaugurated. And so when are we going to get a definitive conclusion to the war?”

And he laughs. “Definitive. A definitive conclusion.” He turns to Steve Witkoff, he says, “Hey, Steve, how long this conflict, this has been going on?” “Thousands of years.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Is it.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. There’s no definitive conclusion. We’re just trying to stop the bloodshed. We’re trying to establish some kind of peace. And so, brilliant move, because in what other way are you going to get the Israelis and the Arab League and the Iranian regime all united in not liking this one plan by suggesting we’re going to go in and take it?

And so it’s basically an intractable situation. There will not be any permanent resolution probably until the second coming. So what you want to do is just establish some modicum of political order. What I would especially like to see happen is a preservation of the holy sites and pilgrimage access and all.

Christian Access to Holy Sites

TUCKER CARLSON: But you just demand that. I mean, that’s not even. It’s like no one owns Jerusalem. Sorry.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, of course. But there is easier said than done in a messy neck of the woods.

TUCKER CARLSON: When you’re paying for it. You can just be like, look, our first demand is Christians need to be able to visit the church, the Holy Sepulcher. So.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Of course, of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you know, I don’t know.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I don’t know. It seems to me that the holy sites still seem to be okay. In Gaza, there was, unfortunately, the attack on Saint Porphyrius, which I grant was accidental. I don’t think it was. I don’t see why, from a strategic perspective, it would be beneficial to the Israelis to particularly stick a finger in the eye of the Christians when America is your last political protector.

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s been a lot of it. I don’t know. I don’t understand it. I think it’s self destructive behavior, but what I care about is the effect on Christians, and that’s just not good at all.

Gaza’s Future and Trump’s Imperial Vision

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, and you have to ask yourself, too, okay, what’s the conclusion? You could either have the state of Israel take over Gaza again, had Gaza from, what, ’67 until ’05, then just gave it away in ’05, Hamas gets elected. Hamas runs it for a little bit. And then there’s the October 7th attack. Israel’s going to say now, “Okay, this is an unacceptable security risk. We’re not dealing with this anymore.”

So you could have Israel take it over. That’s going to be probably an unsatisfactory resolution. You could have the Arab League take it over, some of Egypt take it over. I don’t know that they really want to do it. No one wants to touch that hot potato.

You could have. And then Trump just drops out of the air and he says, “Yeah, we’re taking it, and we’re going to develop condominiums and we’re going to ship all of the residents to South Sudan.” That was floated, I think, in the Israeli government. South Sudan, the one place on earth that’s less pleasant than Gaza. And I don’t think that’s going to work out well at all.

And what is. I think Trump is totally sincere in what he says. He goes, “My solution here is not some permanent answer that will totally make the Israelis happy and totally irritate all the Arabs and the Persians. My answer is not going to totally make the Israelis unhappy and totally satisfy Egypt or whatever the Arab League. It’s, I just want some semblance of peace.”

Which is where I feel totally vindicated on this. I’ve said for years, when everyone is calling Trump the N word, you know, they always call him the N word. A nationalist. Oh, yeah, always they call him the N word. And I said, I don’t really think he’s a nationalist. He loves the nation, He’s a great patriot, he supports strong borders. I don’t think he’s really a nationalist. I think he’s kind of an imperialist. He wants to acquire Greenland and invade Canada. I don’t think that’s not generally what yeoman farmers do, you know?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no. That’s a Teddy Roosevelt move.

America’s Role as Global Hegemon

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. I think his vision of America first is that America will take due care to prioritize her national interests. Part of which is accepting the political reality that we’re the global hegemon and we need to maintain some modicum of world order.

And this back to the really, really ancient conception of the political order, which is that the purpose of empire is to just have peace and order. This is in the Aeneid. In book six of the Aeneid, Aeneas goes down to his dad in the underworld and the dad gives him this whole view of what’s going to happen to Rome.

And he says, “Look, different peoples are given different arts. The Greeks are good at making souvlaki. The Chinese are good at making bad soup and the Romans, awful soup. Awful.” The Romans, their art is to govern. And it’s not governing is not fun. It’s not the most glorious, necessarily thing. In some ways it’d be more fun to be a writer. It’d be more fun to be a poet. But that’s what the Romans are given, is to govern. And it’s just a job in the world and someone’s got to do it. And you just need to establish relative peace and protect the rights of nations and just keep on keeping on.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think we’re suited for that?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I think Trump is quite suited for it as an individual, as a national leader. Is America suited for it? It’s not how we started. We weren’t looking for it when the country began, but we got it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, I totally agree. Someone’s got to be dad. I mean, that is absolutely just the nature of man. And there’s no getting around it in shirking it. Doesn’t make it go away. So I completely agree with that. That’s where I do agree with the neocons, I guess.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, conceptually, yeah, but in a different way, because the neocons at their most extreme would say we have an obligation because of the demands of history with a capital H to spread liberal democracy around the world.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s just stupid.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s crazy.

The Problem with Neoconservative Foreign Policy

TUCKER CARLSON: But like the smart, like, I remember David Brooks, who was impressive. I know it’s hard to believe, but at one point when I knew him 30 years ago, smart. And he would say, “Look, someone’s got to take control because there has to be order at the center.” And that’s not stupid.

Where I began to really hate the neocons, where my whole politics began to revolve around opposing them as an ideology, not as individuals. But just the idea is bad.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Some of the individuals. So.

TUCKER CARLSON: John Podhoretz. But no, it’s when I went to Iraq and the main takeaway for me is we’re not good at it.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: We’re just like leaving aside the dumb, spread democracy and all that nonsense, turn Baghdad into Belgium. It’s stupid. But what’s not stupid is the idea that you can’t have disorder because it metastasizes.

And I’m getting there. My assessment and has not changed in 25 years is we just not. We’re not suited for this at all because we don’t have the self confidence required to do it because our society at its core is really thin. There’s nothing really there actually, other than some distorted version of capitalism, which is kind of disgusting.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Do you think that was true, say in the 50s and 60s? And it’s changed.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think the fight in the Cold War, the battle against the Soviets, gave a kind of clarity and purpose. But even then, the US sided with the Viet Minh, actually in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu against the French. Like there was never really a kind of consistent. That’s little known. Yeah, but not even grand strategy, but like a consistent worldview or instinct.

Like the English, for all their many faults at the height of empire, the height of the Victorian period, like, they really believed they were superior. Now, we deride that as racist, but you have to have that. You have to believe my way is the better way. Or why are we doing this in the first place? To extract minerals. Like, that’s not. Over time, people can’t sustain that. You really have to have an evangelical spirit and we don’t have that.

Trump’s Diplomatic Approach

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, and think about what Trump’s been knocked for, especially in the recent Alaska summit. He’s been knocked for shaking hands with Putin and being nice to him.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And I think. Well, hold on. We’ve tried the other way. W. Bush tried to talk a little tough or tried to be sweet and then talk tough. And Putin invaded Georgia. And then Obama. Oh, man, he talked tough after the reset failed. And Hillary Clinton couldn’t spell a simple word in Russian that failed. And he talked really tough. Oh, boy, was he tough. And Putin invaded into Crimea.

And then you had Trump and everyone just kind of chilled. And then you had Biden. Man, no one talked tougher than Biden. Huh? Oh, didn’t he have such moral clarity? And Putin invaded further into Ukraine. The world order collapse. Well, clarity. Thing is a clarity.

TUCKER CARLSON: If you think that Joe Biden was a better leader or a better man than Vladimir Putin. Like, I don’t even know what to say to you. That’s insane. There’s by no measure by no measure did Joe Biden’s country, the people he solemnly swore to help and defend, did they thrive? No, they withered. Putin, who’s been there for 25 years, his country’s improved. The people are happier. They like him.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Actually, the war has been a little tough on the war. Of course it’s been tough.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course it’s been tough.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I’d be curious about public opinion today, this far into the war.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, actually, it’s measured a lot. Yeah. Look it up and you could say, “Oh, that’s all a lie.” Okay, well, show me one. Okay, Go there. And look, I’m not moving to Russia, but, I mean, Putin has been the most effective leader in my lifetime. I can’t think of a more effective one.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He’s been a very stable leader for Russia.

TUCKER CARLSON: But why is he more evil than Joe Biden? Well, I can’t even conceptualize that.

Patriotism vs. Moral Clarity

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Like, you know, you could say, “Look, he.” I don’t know his religious views, but he’s promoted Christianity within Russia aggressively. Yes. To combat liberalism and all these other forces. Joe Biden has imprisoned pro lifers and sued nuns.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, exactly. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, whatever.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I guess the reason that I kind of pull away a little bit from this is kind of neo Connie, to me, is the sort of purely good and evil inside. I totally agree with that. And to me, I think, “Well, look, I’m on the side of my country, even if Joe Biden is running it,” which is a great pity if he is and I am, because it’s do them with you.

Of course, patriotism is an extension of filial piety. Just like. Just like, all liberalism comes down to saying, “Screw you, dad. Like, I hate my mom or whatever.” And I think, no, no. We are called to respect our parents and to love our countries.

And Russia has interests that are not aligned with ours, and they have missiles pointed at us. And you think, “Well, okay, Putin, for all of his sins, Putin is defending the interests of Russia.” And I think there was a sense, “Look, Biden would say he was defending the interests of the United States or NATO or what,” do a very good job at it. At the very. By the way, NATO.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, exactly.

Trump’s Realist Approach to Foreign Policy

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And this is why. This is why you’ll notice Trump doesn’t use this good and evil language all the time. And the way he talks about Putin, he says, “Look, Putin has interests. He has hard interests, and I have hard interests. And if I can be a little diplomatic with him, I’m going to do it.”

I’m reminded of. Do you remember the Jeffrey Goldberg article in the Atlantic which said it was the Obama doctrine? This is back in 2016.

TUCKER CARLSON: Never forget it.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: This piece, and what’s so funny now.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is it was a fascinating piece.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Fascinating piece.

TUCKER CARLSON: Goldberg is a liar. I know him. And one of the most dishonest people I’ve ever met. Truly dishonest, but a very talented prose stylist.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. And the piece, it’s like an interesting reporter.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I read every word of that piece.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: In that piece, they are lauding Obama for saying things like Russia’s always going.

TUCKER CARLSON: To have a. Oh, I remember.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: They’re always going to have escalatory power. Trump says the exact same thing and all that.

TUCKER CARLSON: By the way, Obama, who I think kind of wrecked America, comes off as pretty reasonable in that piece. Just being honest.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: If you read that piece now and just like take Obama out and just put another name in there, it’s like I kind of agree with most of this.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And Trump is saying most of those.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I know.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And there’s one big difference. Trump can actually implement it and Obama couldn’t really implement it. The world order was fraying under him. And so it is so ironic that these people who accuse Trump of being like a KGB agent or whatever, that these people would knock Trump for saying the same thing that they were parroting for years.

The Shallow Nature of Political Leadership

TUCKER CARLSON: They’re all just children. Like, these are not. They’re the people who told you that Russia was a gas station with nuclear weapons. People like John McCain, like 95 IQ and his sad idiot daughter. I mean, these are just like, not.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I’ve just gotten along with it. No, no, I never met John McCain.

TUCKER CARLSON: She’s fine. I mean, McCain was charming in his way. I mean, I love McCain actually, when I knew him well, but very charming guy.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: But like, he did kill him.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not a serious person at all.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He killed the repeal of Obamacare, which is very difficult to get over.

TUCKER CARLSON: But he wasn’t serious. Just. He was just shy, just a shallow wasp.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And he was one of the last of the true hawkish, anti Russia, coming out of the Cold War, though he was younger, just, you’ve, you just got to bomb. You just got to, implement your.

TUCKER CARLSON: It was this deep. I mean, I spent a lot of time talking to the guy on the road, traveled to various countries with him. Knew him, I think, as well as I’ve ever known a politician. And there was so much to like about the guy. He just really was a charming, very aristocratic bearing hilarious, vulgar in a way that I always enjoy. But if you pushed him on any issue, like he hadn’t spent 15 minutes thinking about anything.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. You know, this is something you notice on Capitol Hill generally, is there are some people who are very intelligent and decently well read. A lot of them, though their skill is not doing a lot of reading. You know, that’s not the skill that’s led to.

TUCKER CARLSON: Dude, I went to boarding school. I know what that is. That’s like, memorize three famous quotes, throw them out like you’ve read the whole book. Yes. And that was McCain, man.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He.

TUCKER CARLSON: On any question, including the foreign policy questions he was supposedly an expert on. He knew nothing to say Russia’s a gas station with nuclear weapons. Like, you’re an idiot.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: This is the nation of Tolstoy. I got the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. All right. There’s no city in Europe. There’s certainly no city in the United States that approaches their two mainstreams.

The Challenge of National Identity

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, this is what was fascinating. I mean, I’m now remembering, it’s just a fact, and the fact that you got to interview Putin. And when you listen to that interview, this is a man say what you will about his yarn that he spun, it was a very compelling yarn. He had a view of his own country. There was a very strong view.

And I wonder, look, Trump, in his own way, tells a story about America. He hugs the flag, he kisses the flag. He’s got it really in his gut. How many American statesmen today, after all these decades of just dissolution and hatred of country, how many of them can tell a compelling story about what the country is, why we ought to love the country beyond mere filial piety? And where we’re going, how many of them are there? It’s hard, I mean, because.

TUCKER CARLSON: Who are the American people? That’s the question. And that’s what really bothers me as someone who is not a race guy. And I don’t think your DNA should determine the course of your life or the nation you live in. I just don’t. I’m American. I’m from California. I don’t feel that way. However, all of history suggests I’m wrong, because when Putin talks about Russia, he’s talking about the Russian people whose DNA you can map, and they’re the indigenous population.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He’s not talking about the Chechnyans.

TUCKER CARLSON: He’s not?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: No, no.

TUCKER CARLSON: By the way, he gets along with them really well.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, well, that’s the other thing.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, he’s got 20% Muslim population. He’s promoting Christianity, but the Muslims all like him. Like, how do you do that?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Don’t try that at home. That’s hard.

America as Empire vs. Republic

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And it’s a skill that is. I mean, this is why I keep coming back to empire, is because our country looks more like an empire than it does like a yeoman republic. Russia certainly looks like an empire. You know, it’s got all spanning a continent. It has all these peoples and so on. This question, which is, well, we don’t.

TUCKER CARLSON: Even know who lives here.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Trump said to me recently, we think there are about maybe 50 million people here illegally. Yeah, 50 million. I mean, but who? No one knows. The president of the United States doesn’t really know. We’ve got facial recognition technology, but somehow we can’t know who lives here.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And so when you talk about my country are people who. You can’t even visualize who they are.

Beyond “America as an Idea”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. And this. This gets. I mean, you just said, look, I’m not a race guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not a race guy.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Of course you’re. But when you say I’m a sexist.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not a racist, I always say that. No one believes me.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I think about sex all the time, actually, I do, too. When you think, what is America now? You know, in 2025, there was this line where it’s, “America’s just an idea,” you know, or, “diversity is our strength” or what. All these kind of slogans from the 90s and 2000s. You think, well, no, it’s not. A country is not just an idea. There is a critical aspect, but it’s not like an idea floating in outer space. What are you talking about?

And so there has to be a real grappling with. Okay, well, look, a country is also geography, you know, like, there is no America without the rivers, for instance. Okay. You know, it’s not. The rivers aren’t just an idea.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re speaking to a fly fisherman now, Mr. Knowles. Yes.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s not a country without trout. It’s not. It’s not a country without the oceans. And it’s. It’s not a country without people. And this. This also is where someone can just.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like, show up from Delhi and, like, start lecturing me about American values.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Can’t even speak American English, and no one says anything like, “Hey, son, settle down. You just got here. Don’t start lecturing someone whose family’s been here 400 years about what America is.” Then there’s kind of no America, actually, at that point.

The Contradiction of Race and Ethnicity

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Of course. And so this is where even the grappling, scary, even the grappling with ethnicity, you know, like what we’ve come out of this very liberal period where we have been told there’s no such thing as ethnicity or race or anything like that. And except it, but simultaneously, it’s the most important thing.

TUCKER CARLSON: All that matters is race, but it doesn’t exist.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And the reality is, again, to this kind of via media, it’s okay when Joe DiMaggio hit a home run. It’s okay that the Italian Americans in New York got a special little thrill out of that. It’s okay. They say, “That guy kind of looks like me and he hit that home run.” That’s kind of. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with recognizing that there are differences between peoples.

The. There are two simultaneous errors which we fall into, it seems actually at the same time, which is we say ethnicity means nothing at all whatsoever. And ethnicity is totally deterministic and means everything. And the reality is, I mean, this is where our Christian heritage, the Christianity which animates the whole civilization comes in. You say, no, we are, in a very real way, all children of God. In a very real way. There’s only one race, the human race or whatever, like the liberals like to say. That is true. And also there is vibrant diversity among peoples. And that’s fine to acknowledge God created that. Created that.

TUCKER CARLSON: He created different peoples.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: As long as that is ordered toward charity, as long as a proper love of that which is similar to one is not ordered toward cruelty and is ordered within charity for the common good. Yeah. That’s called having a country. Of course, we’re not allowed to say that now.

The Coming Backlash

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. I just feel like it’s gotten. I don’t know. They’ve been so tough on whites for so long.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: So cruel to whites that I think, like, there’s a crazy backlash coming.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Without question. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well deserved backlash.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s already happening.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is it?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I think so. And, you know, as Tucker, you know.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m part Sicilian, not a non white people.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: A non white, racially liminal people. We Sicilian.

TUCKER CARLSON: I love Sicilian children.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Messogiorno. Yes. And so you get a kind of look at it, which is. I mean, even early on, I got these WASP ancestors and I got some Irish ancestors in there. The Italians came in a little bit later. And so there’s a little, little mixing of all of Europe in there.

And the reality is, in order to have a, like a sense of a country, you do need to have some kind of a sense of a common people. And so to your point on the guy from Delhi? It’s not even that the guy from Delhi can’t be like, like quite American three generations from now, but you can’t just like land in a place and because you read a book about America or because you watched a YouTube video, you just totally get America.

To have a country is to have a lived experience that is passed sometimes ineffably, you know, without words, from generation to generation. I’m looking around your house here. I mean, there’s pretty old stuff and you just kind of do it. And there are habits that are inculcated in people and there are inclinations that the American, American people have observed by Tocqueville back in the 19th century that they’re not even aware of, that it takes some random Frenchman to come in and notice it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I totally agree.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: You got to be very careful.

TUCKER CARLSON: I just want to be clear, since I have a million Indian friends and actually like India a lot as a country.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: You hate the Indians.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m like probably the most pro Indian right winger you’ll ever meet. But sincerely. But it’s not, it’s. It’s not even lecturing, showing up and lecturing me about what it is to be an American. It’s showing up and attacking whites.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And boy, did you see a lot of that. And not just. It wasn’t just Indians, but like people, immigrants would show up, you know, taking all these benefits from the country and the permanent population here and then start immediately attacking whites. Now they attack whites because they were encouraged to do that by a ruling class. Like they got into Stanford schools 100% and then they get to Stanford and it’s like, “Oh, you want to succeed? You have to attack the whites.”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And they just, they’re status oriented. All immigrants just like want to fit in and want to do get the merit badges that this society demands they get. And one of those merit badges required them to denounce whites. And I felt like that is the most destructive thing that you could ever do.

Changing Incentives Through Politics

MICHAEL KNOWLES: You know, I have a solution to this though. My solution to this. We’re always told, you know, it’s all just got to be kind of organic from the culture and the people. And that’s. Politics is purely downstream of culture and whatever. I have a little more of a classical political view of that. I think people respond to incentives.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s exactly right.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: When you mention these institutions, I think, and Trump is very good at this, at taking beating up Harvard, I think was a brilliant political attack. You see some of that in Florida, taking in some of the universities. It’s happening around the country. I’ll give you a Pete Buttigieg. I don’t know Pete Buttigieg, the fake gay guy. I have a friend who thinks he’s a fake guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: My gay producer was always like, “He’s not gay. He was with a girl like 20 minutes ago.” And like, he wants to be the Democratic nominee. It’s like time for a gay guy.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: He’s playing the long game. I mean, that is. That’s going down.

TUCKER CARLSON: Look, well, it’s suffering for your art. I’ll say that.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: That he. Look, just because I don’t know him. I know a hundred people to judges. I know this character. And he went to the elite school and then he goes to McKinsey and then he does the checks and I.

TUCKER CARLSON: Think then find some benighted Midwestern town that he can just like, become mayor of.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Plop. I’m a mayor now. Talking about the great. I was talking to a big Democrat figure and he said, you know, “Say what you will about Pete, he’s the greatest careerist we’ve ever seen.” You’re mayor of this tiny town, you become the secretary of transportation. No, but over.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course. But the town kind of sucks, actually. He didn’t do a good job if he didn’t have the college. But I’ve always wanted to interview him. He’s never agreed to interview, but I’m going to ask him, like, some very specific questions about gay sex and see if he can even answer. I doubt he even knows where does. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I don’t.

TUCKER CARLSON: Gay. Dude, stop.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Think about Pete Buttigieg. If we controlled the universities, if we controlled the culture, and if the incentives in the corporations and all of the. The DEI offices, we can rename them. If all the incentives were not to be like, America hating gay liberal, totally Pete Buttigieg. I am convinced. Look, this is purely my gut telling me this. He would be like, waving the stars and bars, doing purpose. Like, whatever incentive were there, he would go to it.

And so I think this is where the Trump. A little more muscular view of politics comes in. He says, “No, forget about the stupid. Like, oh, everything’s just going to be organic. That’s never how culture has changed. We’re going to go in, I’m going to pummel Harvard into the dirt. I’m going to go in, I’m going to pummel these bureaucracy, the Kennedy center, whatever, and I’m going to create new incentives such that the best and the brightest and the most ambitious are incentivized to like our country and do good stuff.”

The Power of Incentives

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s totally right. I’m at the inauguration, January 20, sitting there, and it was indoors for. So I can’t remember why, but I’m sitting there chatting away, of course, that ex, Laura Ingraham Rah, rah, rah, rah, gossiping about Fox. And all of a sudden, look up and there’s Jeff Bezos sitting, like, right in front of me.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s Jeff Bezos doing here? And then all these people fired Cook Sundar Pichai. Wow.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, that’s right. I noticed all of a sudden, after the inauguration, after the election, really, my phone starts ringing from news networks that have never been interested in talking to me before.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And all of a sudden, some of the big corporations that we work with, with my show, they’re more interested in helping us. And they want to make sure our experience. I say, oh, this is what power is.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And it is incumbent upon statesmen on the happy occasions that they get power from the people, that they actually use it in a good way and make hay while the sun shines.

Viewer Questions

TUCKER CARLSON: So we have a couple of viewer questions. We’ve never done this before, but it’s the Internet.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I’m in.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay. Lots of people asked this one. My producer said, “Michael Knowles, do you miss working with Candace Owens?”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Well, I still see Candace all the time. I’m the godfather to Candace’s daughter. Did you actually. Yeah, yeah. I’m the godfather to Candace’s daughter. I’m very good friends with her husband and it’s kind of weird for me to hang out with. Yeah, we have many Mayflower cigars over the time.

And I still. I don’t see Candace at work, obviously, anymore. But I do see her at church. She actually goes to the earlier mass than I do because she converted. She came into the church like a year or something ago. In fact, I was the godfather to her daughter before she came into the church. And then all those smells and bells just kept pulling her in.

And there was one time I was invited to the baptism of their next kid and I just couldn’t make it. I was visiting my grandma or something, and people kept telling me like, “No, you should really come.” I was like, “No, look, I mean, I love the Farmer family, but I’m going to go see my granny, whatever.” And they kept. I said, “What’s this about?” I don’t know. They have like a kid every six months, so they’ll have another one soon. But then I thought it was because she was being baptized and she wasn’t telling anybody. So anyway, she came in and now at least I get to see her at Mass.

TUCKER CARLSON: People love her. It is wild.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: She has actual star quality. She has this thing. She could tell me something. She could tell me something. Not only that I don’t agree with. She could tell me something about myself that she could tell me I had blonde hair. And I would just. The whole time, I’d just be like, “Go on, tell me everything.”

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s wild. I mean, I was telling this off air, but I should say it. I was in Oslo, Norway, last week, salmon fishing with my kids. And I’m walking back from dinner with one of my kids in downtown Oslo, in the sky, because it was Tucker Carlson. “Yes. You know, Candace Owens.” I was like, “Yes.” He goes, “Tell her that I love her.” And I was like, how famous do you have to be where people will come up to you on the street just because you know somebody else?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Where people will come up to another very famous guy. No. Had nothing to do with me at all. You say, “Oh, hey, you know, hi, I’m Tucker, by the way.”

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no, no, it didn’t. No. I was so impressed by it that I. It didn’t hurt my feelings at all. I, you know.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: You know, that is unbelievable.

TUCKER CARLSON: But, yes, the main thing that he liked about me was that I knew Candace Owens. I was like, wow, that. That’s devotion. So I was impressed. I called her, I said, “Wow, man, you’re really at another level.”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Got to start trying that at restaurants. Can I get. Hey, can I get a free dessert or something?

TUCKER CARLSON: I know Candace Owens.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Come on.

Marriage and Family Advice

TUCKER CARLSON: Not my birthday, but. Okay, this is an interesting one. This is a question. “I think I’ve inadvertently led my two sons, ages 25 and 23, to have a mindset to put off having a family. I think I’ve made a mistake. How do I convince them to hurry up, get married and have kids?”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: The question, the answer that I would or the evidence that I would need here is how old the kids are?

TUCKER CARLSON: 23 and 25.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: You got. Okay, 23 and 25. Yeah. You should get serious. I mean, these days you’d be like a child groom at that age. But you need to start getting serious. I guess the reason is this.

TUCKER CARLSON: I had a kid at 25.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. I mean, people used to get married. I have a good friend, very successful guy, though he struggled for a long time, six kids, got married at 20 or 19 or something and started spitting out kids right away. And the way to maybe present this to your sons is we screw up everything in modern life. We just get everything perverted or inverted or wrong. And we now view marriage as the capstone to our lives.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: We say, “I’ve lived. Now that I’ve lived, now that I’ve had sex with a hundred thousand people and I’ve made a million dollars, and now that I’ve done everything, traveled all over, now I’m going to get married.” And then now that I have drug.

TUCKER CARLSON: Resistant chlamydia, now that I have drug.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Resistant chlamydia and my brain is half melted, now I’m going to get married. And you think, okay, that’s not what marriage is. Marriage is when two people leave their families, come together, and become one flesh and do something together. And so it’s really supposed to be more like the beginning of your life.

But here’s a real practical reason why you shouldn’t do it that way. I married my high school sweetheart. You married your high school sweetheart?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, I did.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And highly recommend it. And I’ve seen many, many good marriages where people married their high school sweetheart. Because it’s like our bones, when you grow, your bones are kind of agile and malleable and they grow. Yeah. And then they harden.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And then it’s really hard when two people harden into their own ways to mash that together. But if you’re still kind of young and a little more malleable, even you know, in your 20s, you’re starting to really harden your views. You need to do that in such a way that you’re fused together. So I mean, to me.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, that’s right.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: The notion of divorce.

TUCKER CARLSON: Men get really rigid too, as they get older. Living alone.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. Get weird.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, so weird.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It gets weird. And I’m entirely opposed to divorce. I would not divorce under any circumstances. I know people do it. I know it happens. It’s a fallen world. But it seems to me that if you’re a whole set person and you marry someone and you sign a prenup and you keep separate bank accounts and you just, you’re kind of setting yourself up to prepare for when you’re just going to crack apart because. But if you do it a little bit younger and you’re just totally enmeshed.

TUCKER CARLSON: Go all the way.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s unthinkable. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I also think, young men especially are really concerned about the economy, which has like basically been designed to exclude them. And they feel like they’re not going to be able to succeed. And provide for their children, the lives that they had from their parents. Just as a math question, getting married is like. There’s a lot of research on. This is the single most effective thing you can do to be more successful.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. Yes, of course. I was talking to a buddy of mine. Even with the kids, when I had my. It took us a couple years, and then we had our first kid, I said, “Oh, I hope I have enough money.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, you will.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. My friend said that babies are like little money bags. You just. You just make more. You just make it work. You were? Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: When I had my first, I was working at the Weekly Standard. Hard to believe I ever worked there. But for Bill Kristol. I know, it’s so shocking, but, you.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Know, he was a teacher of mine. We have that in common.

TUCKER CARLSON: Bill Kristol was a teacher of yours.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I did one of these fellowships, like a summer fellowship. He taught me. I don’t know, like Machiavelli or something. And to think now. I mean, now his publications have taken shots at me over the years, and I just think, man, where did. Where’d you lose the plot, buddy?

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know. What happened? I don’t know. It’s. It’s. It’s distressing, but. But I think he kind of collapsed inside as a person. Depressing. It can happen, by the way. It can have to be on guard against it. But anyway, I remember I had this editor called Richard Starr, who was such a nice man, and I had this child at 25, and he goes, “Your life’s going to change.” And I was like, everyone says that.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: What do you mean?

TUCKER CARLSON: And he goes, “When you have a child, especially when you’re young, you realize you will do whatever it takes.”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: “To provide for that child. You need to rob a fucking liquor store.” Yes. No problem.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: I was like, wow, that’s so true.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It even made me.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not that I ever robbed any liquor stores, but, like, I.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: But you might have. I might still. I. When we got married, I was a little old. I was maybe 27 when he got engaged, 28 when we got married. This is my one. I kind of wish we’d gotten married younger. We were kind of moving, we’re long distance, all this stuff. And it’s. It’s all works out in Providence, but it’s. It’s one regret I have. We should have got. My wife says it, too. We should have gotten married younger and started having kids younger.

And. And I remember, though, I started my show after I got married or right around the time I got married. And I thought, man, thank goodness I’m not single. In this career in particular, because you’re public. Can you imagine? All you do is just, like, stay up late and go drink and screw around. And when you’re married and you have kids, you have a sense of purpose that you’re doing things for something. Of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course. And if you’re under, like, real stress, if you’ve, you know, kind of performing in public or whatever, any job where you’re, like, under pressure and you’re feeling her on a tightrope all the time, but if you didn’t have a wife, I don’t know how you would do that.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah, they all melt down.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, you know, you need a wife.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes, you do. I mean, even my wife will. She’ll sometimes do my show. She’ll listen to my show. She’ll come. “You know, Mac, you were a little bit kind of lib over there. You kind of went a little squishy.” I’ll be like, “Man, you’re the.” You know, she’s like the. The rock solid one. She’s the only person I’ll ever let write some of my show. She gets it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really? Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s not. She was no political nerd or anything like that, but she has a very conservative disposition, and she just has this gut instinct.

TUCKER CARLSON: When moms go right wing, boy, they’re not dicking around at all. I’ve seen that a lot. Members of Congress, who I respect 100% have wives who are like, “What? No.”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: You know what I mean? Yes. No. I can think of a couple.

On Boomers

Okay, last question. This is kind of a weird one. “Michael, do you detest boomers as much as Tucker seems to? I was born in 1951. What’s the main thing I ought to do or stop doing to help improve life here in the United States?”

MICHAEL KNOWLES: So this is a boomer, I take it?

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s a boomer.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: 1951, baby boom, 1946, 1964.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. I think the boomers have attracted a lot of ire. Yes, rightly so. My defense of the boomers is they came from somewhere. Yeah, they came from somewhere.

TUCKER CARLSON: So even.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I mean, you know, the. Our grandparents generation.

TUCKER CARLSON: And they’re human beings. I don’t mean to talk about them like they’re animals.

The Boomer Generation and Ideological Selfishness

MICHAEL KNOWLES: No. But things went really screwy during the boomer generation. You think you might have noticed. And I think what it has come down to is an ideological selfishness. I’m not even saying a lot of boomers have all this stress and anxiety for their kids and the future. So it’s not like even a personal selfishness. It’s an ideological selfishness that says, “Hey, I’m going to do what you want. Hey, follow your bliss. Do what makes you happy.”

And I would say that came from a good place for a lot of the boomers who are a little hippie dippy, whatever. I don’t think that’s helpful to kids. I actually think a little bit more clarity is better. Clarity is charity. And I think a little bit more on the guardrails, a little bit more of saying, “Hey, son, don’t just follow your bliss.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Ideological selfishness. Boy, that is. I’ve never thought of that. That is really smart. Because it is. Of course, it’s true that boomers, which again, is everybody born between the end of World War II and just before Woodstock. There are a lot of nice people who really care about their kids and grandkids, but it’s ideological.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yes. They can’t even. What are you talking about? If I were to say that right is right and wrong is wrong, well, I’d be. That would be, I don’t know, authoritarian or judgmental.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. You think, well, you have to make judgments in life. And sometimes parents actually do know what’s best for their kids. And you just need to, I think, have the confidence to state that. Have the confidence to help your kid, even if it might make him angry in the short run.

The Tobacco Business Origin Story

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s a really smart point. Let me just end by asking you, because I’m legit interested. How did you get into the tobacco business?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Can I offer you one? I don’t want to make you smoke at 10 o’clock in the morning.

TUCKER CARLSON: But I’m going shooting after this. I’m going to burn one of these.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Okay, great.

TUCKER CARLSON: I can’t wait.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I have loved cigars since I was 15, which is a little old to start in New York as an Italian American, but I was, you know, totally.

TUCKER CARLSON: If I ever get rich, I’m going to start a “Nicotine for the Children” foundation just to make sure that they have enough. I’m serious.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s charity.

TUCKER CARLSON: I agree.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I was 15 and I never liked cigarettes. I never liked. But I loved cigars and a family friend gave me one when I was 15. I really liked it. And I would go grocery shopping in the Bronx, in the Italian neighborhood, and they had these guys rolling the cigars and I was too young to buy them, so they would just give them to me. They’d give me four a week.

And I got into. I smoked them. So I wrote my college admission essay about how much I love cigars. I called it “The Count of Monte Cristo.” Because I said, write about something you’re passionate about. I’m very passionate about cigars.

TUCKER CARLSON: They let you into Yale. One of the cigars they.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I probably wouldn’t have worked out today. Yeah. Better than writing about my parents.

TUCKER CARLSON: Your parents, big donors.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: They were not.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Safe to say they were not. And I. So the story of this company, I wanted to start that for a long time because despite my swarthy appearance, I do have this kind of WASP Mayflower ancestry. And I said, I want it to be Mayflower. I want it to be patriotic, but I don’t want it to just be like, you know, guns and fried chicken cigars. I want it to be a little more elevated.

TUCKER CARLSON: But, yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And there’s this paradox with the Mayflower, which is kind of like the founding stock. On the one hand, they’re blue blood elites. On the other, this is. These are salt of the earth people.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: They’re rugged weirdos booted out of England. Yeah. And I said, I like that paradox, because cigars are a luxury, but they’re also very accessible. You can have an amazing cigar for like $12, you know?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

The Providential Connection

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And so I said, I want it to be that. And I wanted to work with a particular company. When I was a kid, my mother, shortly before she died, gave me a box of Oliva cigars. Oliva series O Robusto for Christmas.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: We did not have a lot of money, and this was a really nice present. When she died unexpectedly, I still had half the box. And I said, all right, well, this is. These are special. I need to save them for special occasions. Graduate high school, get married first kid, that kind of thing. Maybe I’ll give some to my kids if I have any leftover.

This is providential. I was trying to start the cigar company. It’s kind of tough, you know, Daily Wire was allowing me to kind of explore this and use the platform to start a cigar company. I said, oh, great. But what do I know? I don’t know anything about starting that.

I’m backstage at a TV show and a guy calls out to me, says, “Hey, Knowles, you’re a cigar guy, right?” I said, “Yeah, yeah.” He’s like, “Oh, yeah, I got the cigar. You got to come by this cigar club that I’m a member of.” I said, “Oh, that’s a great idea.” I don’t know him. He goes, “Yeah, I’ll give you one of mine. It’s a. It’s an Oliva rebanded Oliva.” I said, “Do you know Oliva cigars?”

TUCKER CARLSON: He said, yeah.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I said, “I can’t get in touch with them.” He goes, “I’ll put you in touch.” Well, that’s fortuitous. Fifteen minutes. We have the deal for production and distribution for a test cigar. Only because of a happenstance of business. It couldn’t. It basically couldn’t have worked with any other company.

We go through it, we blend. I’m blending meticulously. I wanted to go to Nicaragua, had a little trouble getting into the country of Nicaragua. I’m blending it long distance, all this. We finally launch it now.

TUCKER CARLSON: How hard is it to get to the right blend if you’re obsessive, if you’re horrifically obsessive. I’m such a terrible person to work with.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the way to be.

The Mayflower Cigar Lines

MICHAEL KNOWLES: But you have to be, because I said, with those. I said, I said, look, this is something I care about. I’m not really doing this primarily to make money. I’ll make money other ways. I’m doing this because this is a thrill. I’ve wanted to do it for 15 years.

And I landed on a blend, a Connecticut blend, which is the Mayflower Dawn. It’s kind of the more mainstream one. The Mayflower Dusk, which is an Ecuador Habana wrapper that was really blended just for my taste. And a double Maduro.

The Mayflower Dream comes from a painting by William Halsol of the Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor. And it’s an orange sky and you can’t tell if the sun is rising or setting on America. I love this ambiguous painting. Are we getting it tomorrow or is the light going? And I said, that’s what I want it to be. Dawn, dusk and dream.

We get the cigars. The cigars are made at the same factory that made the box that my mother gave me.

TUCKER CARLSON: No way.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. How do you plan that? Talk about Providence. How do you plan that?

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s wild.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Yeah. And so you smoke them all the time.

TUCKER CARLSON: You smoke your own brand?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Oh, yes. They were actually made for my taste. And they are, say, with no false modesty and true humility, they’re exquisite. And so we’ve got three lines now. I even made the. I was so brutal about it. I made these little mini ones. I call them Mayflower compacts. They’re little petite Coronas.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s pretty funny.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Thank you. But they’re a premium hand rolled long filler. So it’s not a cigarillo or something. I just love them. And they sold out immediately, which a good problem to have because I sold like four months supply in one day. And with out of stock for Black Friday, out of stock for Christmas, we’re picking up production now we’re in retail stores.

The Philosophy Behind Cigars

This brings us all the way back to the top of our conversation because one of the reasons I started this company is I want people, especially guys, to get out in the physical world and spend time together and speak. The best conversations I’ve had in my life are over cigars. I agree. And I want them to do that. Not be in their rooms, not be just on zoom. I want them to be in this and to recognize. Thus passeth the glories of the world. Sic transit gloria mundi.

45 minutes you have your conversation, then it’s over and you can light another one. Maybe tomorrow. But I think it’s instructive and it’s whatever people say about the health effects of cigars, I have always found, I think this quotes. Was it George Burns or someone that I’ve taken more out of cigars than cigars have taken out of that way.

Regulatory Challenges

TUCKER CARLSON: Very, very strongly about tobacco. Can you just start a cigar company and start selling them? Do you have to go through FDA hoops or.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: It’s so hard. And through sheer providential blessing, I was able to leapfrog over a lot of that. It still took me over a year, basically, to go from beginning the deal to launching to get them into stores is almost impossible. If I started because of all these stupid regulations. If I started a pot company, I’d probably be in 57 states in the country. Yes, it’s very different.

Certain states I just can’t do business in. I wish I could. I have stores begging me for them. I just can’t. Why the regulations are so brutal. I mean, certain places are trying to ban smoking just like forever. Massachusetts, you know, tried to set a date after which you could just never buy tobacco. So it kept aging with you. Crazy, crazy stuff like that. California’s awful on the regs, and so we’re trying to sneak them out as best we can.

TUCKER CARLSON: Now, it does seem like tobacco should be part of the backlash, of course.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Is it? Well, it’s the American crop for tobacco.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Help build the country. Washington grew it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Where did it come from?

MICHAEL KNOWLES: The American South, The American Indians and. Oh, originally. That’s right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. It’s not native to Europe, it’s native to North America.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And you know, who really discovered it was Christopher Columbus.

TUCKER CARLSON: I know.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: I grabbed the Taino Indians. They would smoke them up their nose, which I don’t think I’ve ever tried. But, yes, the two things he took.

TUCKER CARLSON: Away in addition to corn, tobacco and syphilis.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: And I don’t sell syphilis or have it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Michael Knowles, that was great.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Tucker. Thank you for that.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I really, really appreciate it. And it’s great to see you after six years, totally vindicated. You’re not the disgusting one, Michael Knowles.

MICHAEL KNOWLES: Thank you, Tucker. And thank you for your help. Oh, my gosh.

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