The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles has been in the news this week for a series of eliminationist comments about the trans community, suggesting that transness must be “eradicated.” Though Knowles' comments are extreme, he is not a fringe figure in Republican politics, having been a co-host on Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's podcast Verdict until October 2022. On the podcast, Knowles and the sitting senator frequently discussed anti-LGBTQ ideas, policies, and conspiracy theories.
In the past week Knowles has been pushing extremist rhetoric about transgender people, including calling for a ban on “transgenderism” and claiming, “There can't be a genocide” of trans people because “transgender people is not a real ontological category.” In a recent speech at the conservative convention CPAC, Knowles also stated, “Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”
Knowles co-hosted Verdict from its inception in 2020 until he was replaced by Ben Fergusen in October 2022, when the podcast was acquired by corporate radio giant iHeartRadio. In August 2022, Knowles and Cruz partnered with the right-wing student group, Young America’s Foundation, to go on tour speaking at college campuses across the country, again illustrating the strength of Knowles’ connection to the Republican Party mainstream.
Along with conversations on societal issues, Verdict frequently highlights Cruz’s views on legal or policy battles happening in Congress. Cruz discussed his positions on gay marriage codification, student loan forgiveness, and Republicans’ intention to impeach President Joe Biden on various episodes of the podcast.
In early 2022, Cruz took to the podcast to voice his distaste with Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court calling it “offensive” and “insulting.”
During Knowles’ tenure on Verdict, both Knowles and Cruz repeated blatantly anti-trans and anti-gay rhetoric. In one episode titled “Libs Gone Wild,” Cruz claimed, “The radical extreme left … they want to sexualize little kids so they're in this gay bar,” and Knowles conflated drag shows with bringing your child to a strip club where “you would have people calling Child Protective Services in the blink of an eye.”
On other episodes, Knowles claimed society is “redefining” what a woman is, that phrases like “birthing people” or “persons with the capacity to become pregnant” are “erasing women entirely from public life,” and stated, “I don't see any reason” to codify Obergefell v. Hodges and create a “new definition of marriage.”
Knowles has gone on multiple rants about trans actor Elliot Page, including claiming anyone who refers to him as a man is misgendering him. Knowles has also suggested that Page is an example of transgender ideology having no objective truth: “I think what it comes down to is the primacy of the will. Whatever [Elliot Page] says is true, even if what [Elliot] says contradicts what [Elliot] said yesterday.”
In another episode, Knowles lobbied Cruz to use his power as an elected official to eliminate gender affirming care. “Since you're a lawmaker, can, at least at the state level, can we get rid of this? Can we ban this?” To which Cruz responded, “Texas has moved to do that, but in places like California they want to celebrate it.” In the same segment, Cruz also claimed that anti-LGBTQ Twitter account Libs of TikTok was banned “for reporting the truth.”