Daily Wire host Michael Knowles sat down with PBS Newshour on Thursday as conservatives gathered in Washington, D.C., for the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
During the interview on the taxpayer-funded network, host Amna Nawaz asked Knowles questions on a range of issues before taking exception to some of his comments on transgenderism. Nawaz brought up a remark Knowles made at CPAC in 2023 about “eradicating” the ideology of transgenderism.
The PBS Newshour host asked Knowles to explain his belief further, saying, “I’ll confess, I don’t know what the difference is” between “eradicating” transgender ideology and “eradicating” transgender people.
“If I say that I want to eradicate poverty, I’m not saying that I want to eradicate all the poor people,” Knowles replied. “Quite the opposite. I would like to help the poor people by eradicating poverty.”
“For the good of society and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely, the whole preposterous ideology at every level,” he added.
Knowles pointed out that “men can’t really become women,” arguing that it’s unhelpful to “lie” to people who are “confused about their sex.”
Nawaz contended with Knowles over his statements about biological reality.
“This is a belief system that you hold. Transgenderism is something that has been acknowledged by medical professionals,” Nawaz said.
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“And rejected by medical professionals,” Knowles shot back.
“By a few. There’s an entire body of scientific and medical knowledge that back this up, and that’s what gender-affirming care has been based on in recent years,” Nawaz said.
The PBS Newshour host then reverted to asking Knowles about his use of the word “eradicate,” saying, “Do you worry that puts a target on peoples’ backs?”
“Certainly not,” Knowles responded. “In fact, the only targets that I’ve had on my own back are when I question these kinds of ideologies that have been so terrible for people. The only times I’ve ever been attacked in public — in one case, someone is in federal prison for trying to blow me up at a speech in Pittsburgh — is because I dared to question the trans ideology.”
“People are being introduced to this ideology at younger and younger ages,” Knowles continued. “It can lead to horrific outcomes, especially for younger people put on puberty blockers, which often cannot be reversed. It leads to castration, bone problems, and early death. These are not the sort of things that we should wish for people if we wish for their own good.”