Ep. 2026 - Why This 16-Year-Old Lifeguard Went Viral

**Michael Knowles** (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by Good Ranchers, Delivering 100% American Beef, Chicken, Pork and Seafood straight to your door from local farms and ranches. This summer, support the American Ranchers, Keeping Agriculture Alive, by going to goodranchers.com using code NOLTS, K-N-W-L-E-S at checkout to get free meat with every order and $50 off when you get your first order on a plan. goodranchers.com, American Meat Delivered. A 16-year-old lifeguard saves a 10-year-old boy from 10-foot waves in Santa Cruz as White Boy Summer reaches its absolute apotheosis. We will get into the hidden cultural reasons why everyone cannot get enough of this story. It's actually a lot more than the heroic act. Then, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani doxes nearly a million of his rich constituents as he promises to take away their property. This is a key insight into what socialism is really all about. Spoiler alert, it is not about helping the poor. And President Trump eulogizes Lindsey Graham as the late senator is laid to rest. Clips galore. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show, Ohio Republican ish Governor Mike DeWine is imploring the White House not to send Haitians back to Haiti. Haitians who were supposed to, they were given temporary status in America. They were supposed to leave like 14 years ago. They didn't, they kept putting it off and off and off. Now he says, you can't send them back to Haiti because Haiti is hell. Doesn't that kind of sounds to me like he's calling Haiti an SHIT whole country. I thought you weren't supposed to say that. Anyway, we'll get into it. But first, the biggest story, this 16-year-old hero, 16-year-old gigachad lifeguard in Santa Cruz. He's looking out, there are big waves, 8-10 foot waves. I think we have a video of it. People on the beach were capturing a video of this. 10 foot waves and this guy swims out because he sees a little kid's head, a little 10-year-old's head bobbing up for a little bit in the water and then going back down in the water. This kid was going to die. This kid was going to get pulled out. Major, major waves here. 16-year-old kid handles it perfectly, fights these waves for two minutes, just pulling this kid, lock grip on the kid, pulling him back into shore. Finally, some people from on the beach, a few other guys came in, they're trying to help the lifeguard and the kid get out, but the waves just keep pummeling these guys. 16-year-old saves the kid.
Unbelievable footage, unbelievable heroism, so much so that President Trump is inviting the lifeguard to the White House to give him a very high civilian honor. Trump says, we are going to bring this heroic young man and his family into the White House with perhaps the boy he saved to give him a high civilian honor, very brave, he deserves it, President Donald J. Trump. Trump, uncharacteristically, by the way, posted that to X. He usually posts everything to Truth Social, which he owns, and then the posts from Truth Social end up going viral on every other social media platform. Here, though, President Trump posted it directly to X. It shows you that this cultural moment matters even more than most of the things that President Trump weighs in on.
It seemed to tap into something in the popular culture. Trump has a great gut for these things, so he knew it. He could feel that viscerally. Why?
Why is this the moment?
Yes, the act of heroism was amazing. Yes, thank God the 10-year-old boy was saved. But why?
Plenty of people die every year drowning. There are plenty of acts of heroism every single day across the United States. They never get any mention. There's no viral clips, no high civilian honors. Why this one? People love this story, not just because it is virtuous, but because it shows all the things that we're told can't happen anymore. That's why people love this story.
What's the nuts and bolts of this story?
The action was not only virtuous, the action was not only heroic, it was manly. It was really manly. It may be manly for a 25-year-old guy to jump into those waves to save a kid, much less a 17-year-old kid.
And I mentioned at the top, this is the absolute apotheosis of white boy summer, this trend that showed up, what was it, three years ago now. They said, we're going to have a white boy summer. Tom Hanks' kid said, boys, this could be a white boy summer. And no one knew exactly what that meant. Is that a racial identitarian statement? No, is it? What is it? I think in the scope of Providence, the whole meme of white boy summer was the set up to this payoff. This is the punchline. This is the apotheosis of white boy summer. And it's all the good things that white boy summer could possibly be. And the culture loves this because this is all the stuff we're told can't happen. Because we are told, on the race point, we're told white people are bad. Whiteness is evil. Whiteness is toxic. Whiteness needs to be abolished. Whiteness is oppression. There are courses taught in universities around the country about the evils of whiteness. And here you got this white boy being aided by a more of a swerthy guy there at the end there and some other. But you see a white guy doing something really, really good. And it's a guy, by the way. Did I mention he's a guy? We're told masculinity is toxic. Masculinity is misogynistic. We can't have all this harsh. You see a bunch of guys, there were like four guys here, of all different builds and races, but they're all trying to help this lifeguard come in. We're told that young people are checked out, incels, losers, can't get anywhere, don't want to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they're whining, they're whining on the left because they're socialists, they're whining on the right because they're do-mers. And here's a young guy, here's a teenage kid, going out there, risking his life, not even for someone who's close to him, but for just someone who doesn't know, out there who needs saving.