Ep. 2074 - Christa Pike "May Not Fully Recover" After Being Executed

Michael Knowles (0:00)

Okay, fellas, since Hollywood can't do anything right anymore, we did their job for them. The Daily Wire's newest movie is an ode to the great funny action films of the 80s and 90s. Good guys win, bad guys lose. No one apologizes for it. Check out Run Hide Fight Infidels, now streaming only on The Daily Wire. This episode is brought to you by Cardiff, America's favorite small business lender with over 12 billion funded since 2004, applying under three minutes for same day funding up to $500,000 at cardiff.co.noles.

Undercover video has caught Texas Democrats right handed paying people to vote for them in November. Buying votes is a violation of both state and federal law. But on the other hand, it's also kind of the definition of democracy. We will get into what it all means for the midterms. Then women go viral standing with the female accuser of the Cornell Seven, as New York Governor Kathy Hochul proposes changing state law to reclassify many voluntary sexual encounters as rape. We will get into the one weird trick required to stand with Jane Doe. And then the New York Post is reporting that condemned inmate Christa Pike is still in the hospital and may not make a full recovery after her execution last week. That's the bad news. But looking on the bright side, very few people recover at all after being executed. Many people seem to be forgetting that fact and lots of other facts about this case. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

Welcome back to the show. A trans identifying New York Times executive was murdered by her Asian in-laws. She, who identified as a him after she threatened to murder the in-laws and her wife.

How many things had to go wrong for that to happen? How many? It's like 10,000 things had to go wrong. So many errors in thinking to get to trans New York Times executive murdered by her Asian in-laws. Anyway, before we get to that murder, we will get to the execution or almost execution of Christa Pike. I get into all the political stories. We are in the heat of mid-term season. Things are looking rough. But this story, it's the story that gets crazier by the day. New York Post headline, this one caught my attention just last night. Christa Pike remains in heavily guarded hospital room, quote, may not fully recover after botched Tennessee execution.

That very, very few people in history have fully recovered after being executed. Very, very few have recovered to any degree after execution.

NBC, rather, reporting, quote, there was no medical oxygen or mask in the execution chamber where Tennessee tried and failed to kill convicted murderer Christa Pike, which meant staff had to go and get it when things went wrong, according to a source who witnessed what happened. Can you believe there was no oxygen tank? There was no life-saving medical care in the execution chamber. Isn't that crazy? We need an investigation into this. We need, people need to be held to account. Why wasn't there life-saving care in the place where you kill people?

The reason that this story keeps fascinating me and fascinating so many other people, it is one of the leading news stories, is not so much the grisly detail. It's not even so much what a horrible life this woman had and lived and her victims and everyone involved. It's not even that. It's the absurdity. It's the incongruity. It's the absurdity. This is why people, myself included, keep making macabre jokes about it is because one of the central aspects of humor is incongruity. It's things being totally out of proportion and out of whack. And these are the craziest headlines you can imagine. There was no oxygen tank in the execution chamber. Next, you're going to tell me there was no surfboard in the desert. Next, you're going to tell me there was no ice tray in the oven.

Yes, one would expect that there would not be life-saving medical care in the execution chamber.

Saving lives is not what execution chambers are for.

The fact that the lawyer is saying might not make a full recovery, it's so absurd. And the reason that we keep entertaining this is because we refuse to accept what capital punishment is.

We still want capital punishment. We still kind of want the death penalty. But people don't want to admit that they want the death penalty. There's still a very strong moral argument for the death penalty. But we don't like making those moral arguments, because they kind of make us feel itchy. And so we're totally schizophrenic on this subject. One minute we're killing this lady, the next minute we're desperately trying to save her lives. Now there's an added legal question, because during the botched execution, which was really pretty rough, really grisly for this woman. If you didn't feel bad for this woman before, I think you probably do now. Her arm was like on the brink of exploding. They're now reporting she has brain damage. And so there's this interesting legal question, which is, okay, well, if she is brain damaged, can we still execute her?