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A
One of the strangest things about the modern economy is that everyone claims to love small businesses, but the systems that we've built make it harder and harder for small businesses to actually survive. Over 70% of small businesses need additional capital at least once a year. Meanwhile, banks are tightening underwriting and approving fewer loans than ever, even while small business revenue is at record highs. So what happens? Business owners get trapped in limbo. But if you want bank rates without the bank delays, you need to check out Cardiff co Knowles for up to half a million dollars in same day funding. Cardiff is the largest privately held small business lender in the United States. Since 2004, they funded more than $12 billion for businesses. The application takes under five minutes. There's no impact on personal credit, and businesses can often get approved in minutes and funded the very same day. Big banks may not want to approve your business loans. Cardiff does. If you've been in business for at least a year and are pulling in $20,000 a month in revenue, apply now for up to half a million dollars in same day business funding at Cardiff co Knowles. Cardiff co Knowles. Real growth Fast funding Cardiff borrow better. Tucker leaves the Republican Party. The Pope criticizes the free market. And Chicago declares a trans femicide. State of emergency on the 2000th episode of the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. It is the 2000th episode. Whoopi Goldberg believes President Trump should go to jail for repainting the reflecting pool. There's a lot going on, but did I mention it's the 2000th episode? I think it is an occasion that demands a Mayflower Cigar. It's really two holidays today. It's Juneti third, of course, and the 2000th episode. Many people did not think this show would make it that long, including many of my bosses, actually, and a lot of the people, but I don't know, they've continued to tolerate me. Thank you to all of you for being around for 2,000 episodes of this show. Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. Now, if you're watching politically unsavory content such as this that the powers that be do not love, you must use ExpressVPN. Go to expressvpn.com knowles Imagine for a moment that every book you've ever picked up, every article you've ever read, every question you've ever asked, every website you've ever visited was recorded in a file somewhere. Not because you've done anything wrong, just because someone thought they might want the information later. Most people would find that intrusive. That is essentially how much of the Internet works. Your Internet provider can see the websites you visit. In many countries, providers are required to keep online records of that activity for years. In the United States, Internet providers can even sell those data. The good news is you do not have to simply accept that arrangement. That is one of many reasons I use ExpressVPN. Express ExpressVPN encrypts your Internet activity before it reaches your Internet provider. So instead of seeing what websites you're visiting, all they see is encrypted data they can't make any sense of. In other words, they can't share, record, or sell that information because they never had it in the first place. I've used ExpressVPN for going on 10 years now. It is great. It's also super easy. I'm a big Luddite. Just click one button on your phone, on your laptop, on your tablet, boom, you're good to go. If you would like to join in the fight for digital privacy, now's the best time to do it. Because ExpressVPN is available at just 3.49amonth. That's $3.49, not 340. It's $3.49. If you use my special link, you get four extra months of service at expressvpn.com knowles e x p r e s s v p n.com knowles for four extra months of service Chicago has declared a trans femicide state of emergency. This, according to Mayor Brandon Johnson, quote, for too many transgender Chicagoans, the sense of belonging they deserve in their city has been denied by exclusion and barriers to opportunity in spaces that should feel safe and welcoming. Since declaring a transfemicide state of emergency, our administration has strengthened the city's capacity to support LGBTQ Chicagoans. This framework builds on that work by centering the voices and lived experiences of trans Chicagoans to chart a path toward a safer, more connected city. I looked into the numbers on the transfemicide state of emergency. How many. How many trans femmes have been homicided last year? The number is one. There was one trans identifying guy in Chicago who was murdered and he was murdered not by a phobic right wing person. He was murdered by his boyfriend. He was murdered in bed. The boyfriend apparently bludgeoned his skull in with a hammer. Very sad. But that would not seem to be an epidemic of trans femicide. To help me analyze this crucial story, I bring on someone who was around for the Great Chicago Fire. So has, you know, a good sense of the second city that would be arguably the founder of this show, Andy Millennial. Klavan. Drew, thank you for being here.
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B
Congratulations on. I thought it was your 5,000th show. It just maybe seemed like 5,000 shows.
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A
It feels like you are the founder of this show because I am.
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B
I'm gonna have to answer for that before the film.
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A
I mean, we can get into your precise views on purgatory, but most theologians would say that will get you 10 billion years in purgatory, I think.
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B
10 billion years in purgatory. Yeah. That was it. My recognition of Candace Owens talent and bringing you on my show.
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A
You discovered Candace.
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B
I did discover Candace. You know, that's. I don't know how I'm going to answer for this.
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A
You also discovered Jordan.
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B
I discovered. I just listen. I heard Ben Shapiro on his L A radio show and actually texted him and said, you know, you're actually an A level talent. You should be on without all those people around you. You know, I grew up in radio. My dad was a big time radio DJ in New York. And I've always just had this knack for knowing broadcast talent when I saw it.
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A
Yeah, and you said, you said, Ben is a major talent. Candace is a major media talent, Jordan is a major intellectual talent, and Michael brings me cigars. So you know what? Give him a show, too.
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B
And please get this kid out of my office and give him a show so he leaves me alone. That was the.
- [06:21]
A
A little bit of lore on this. My actual first appearance on the Daily Wire, I believe, was when you brought me on to talk about a filthy cartoon with a talking hot dog.
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B
Yes. You know, first of all, you came on and did my social media. It was then Twitter, and you did my Twitter feed. And I said, and I was only half joking. I said your imitation of me was so good that I literally was looking at your imitation of me to find out how I sounded so I could send out posts that sounded like me. I thought, that's pretty amazing.
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A
Well, this is why. So the thing I actually want to talk to you about is not transfemicide, Though I do want your last little thought on this, because when I see this story, you know, look, it's sad that this sexual aberrant guy, you know, was murdered one. One of them last year by his boyfriend in Chicago. But when I read that headline, I say, man, it's not 2022 anymore. It's not 2022. Why are we still doing this? I thought all that craziness was over and it was behind us. But then I look around at the left wing politicians, whether you talk about the mayor of Chicago or James Tallarico or whoever, or even Abigail Spanberger after she ran as a moderate, and you say, no, they're gonna keep doing this. The new Father's Day, we need to celebrate trans women or whatever, or trans men, I guess, lesbians with beards who say that they're fathers. And I just think, oh, maybe it hasn't changed. Maybe the woke hasn't gone away. And so I want your perspective on this. And this kind of pertains to the media too. When this company started and when Ben's show started, then your show started, then mine started later. There was this discreet era. It was right after the Tea Party, the Tea Party, which had followed the Bush era. And we were in this era of new media. The conservatives are really coming to their own in new media. And the big issue was free speech. And that was the issue for like five years. And then the big issue became the weird gay race Communism, we call it, you know, the weird kind of identity, especially sexual politics, culture wars, the peak of which was the transgender ideology. That was five or six years ago. Now we're in some new era, I thought at least. But then, you know, the weird trans femicide story keeps coming up. So I. If you're looking at all of these eras, someone with great chronological range, where are we right now and where is the conservative movement and the media going?
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B
Well, they can't change because they're in a very specific situation. And it does have a chronology to it, an important one that unfortunately young people don't remember, which is the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was going to be around forever. It was the future. I have seen the future and it works. This was it. They finally brought in the all of the Marxism you could possibly want. And not only did it go horrifically bad with tens of millions of people being murdered and countries being conquered, but it's then collapsed. It collapsed on its own. I mean, we didn't do anything. It just fell apart on its own. I mean, Reagan was smart enough to see it coming and to outspend them, but basically it doesn't work. It never works. It has never worked any place. When you listen to Bernie Sanders, we should be like, Norway. And he'll go like, Bernie, Norway doesn't have socialism. Oh, well, I don't know anything about Norway, but that's what we should be like. And people just follow this because it sounds like a dream. So you have a thing that doesn't work. Not only does it not work? But every single problem that America faces that is really troubling America, inflation, crime, Iran, it all started with leftist policies. Inflation is there because of the printing of money to pay for things that we can't afford. The crime is there because of lax policing and anti police movements. And Iran is because of Barack Obama as J.C. yeah, and Jimmy Carter. Exactly, exactly. So it's all of it because of left wing actions. So what do you got to do? You got to invent this world in which there are problems that the left can solve. I mean, transgender murder, this one guy gets murdered. Obviously every murder is a bad thing. But this is not a real problem. The Jews are not a real problem. This is not something that is going to affect it. But that's what they're running on in New York, these socialist candidates whose Zoramdani is blessing, these are the ones. That's what they're running on. They're running on the Jews. It's all Israel's. That's your big problem if you can't afford groceries in America, it's what's happening in Tel Aviv. And so all of this is fantasy. And if it weren't for the fact that they have 50 to 60 years of media willing to echo this fantasy and make it seem like reality by printing it as news, quote unquote news, they wouldn't get away with it. I mean, people would just know that. They'd be informed enough to know that it's nonsense. But what are they gonna do? That's why it' called progressivism. It's progressive like emphysema, you know, like cancer. It's progressive because you have to keep upping the ante of the fantasy, because the reality, it just doesn't work.
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A
Right, Right. So then, I mean, maybe an answer to the right wing question was there in your take on progressivism. But if I'm seeing these discrete errors correctly, which is, you know, look, we've been at this now for 10 years. Daily Wire was founded over 10, 11 years ago now.
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B
Right.
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A
And you think, okay, I remember I came to politics in the Tea Party era. That was when I did my first political campaign and I was doing a bunch of campaigns after that. The Tea Party era was really different from the early Bush era. And if you ran as a Republican politician on Bush era stuff in 2011, you were gonna get blown outta the water. It was just so different. And then five years later, it really radically changed again. At the beginning of the Trump era, if you ran like a Tea Party candidate, you Just seemed passe. The right wing base, both the media audience and the elector activist base, they had just moved on to different issues. They even changed their views a little bit on things like immigration, on trade, on foreign policy. Then it seemed to shift again into this. It went from, say, I don't know, immigration was the big issue in 2015, 2016, to the culture war issues. Covid obviously had a lot to do with that. Now we're in the big two six. What are the issues? What is the big enemy? What does the guy who's running in 2026, what do the talk? Who are focusing attention? What is it about?
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B
It's always about two things. It's about truth and liberty. This is always what the right has as its advantage and always the advantage that they squander. And if we've learned nothing from Donald Trump, is that you can speak the truth and win. Now, listen, Trump is a one off. I don't think everybody can pull off the kind of belligerence and sometimes rudeness that he uses. It was required. It was a godsend. It was a godsend to break the chains of niceness, censorship. You know, don't say that. It's not nice. You know, you say, well, you know, there's a lot of crime in black neighborhoods. Oh, you're a racist. You know, you say, well, like maybe homosexual marriage is not the best thing for this social, you know, network. Oh, you know, you're a homophobe. You have to say these things, I think in. With complete honesty, with complete, fearless honesty. But you also have to say them with, you know, as Paul Simon would have said with a little bit of tenderness in your honesty. I think that this is the thing that we miss and it hurts us, especially with women voters. And I think that the first thing we have to say is that liberty is a good. And it is the prime mover of the American founding individual liberty, your liberty. To say what you want to say, to worship the way you want to worship, to live the life that you want to live, and to build, not only build the things that you're capable of building, but to keep the money you make. Because money, you know, people talk about money like it's somehow dirty. Money is time. You know, you put in the time, you put in the effort, you get the money and you create wealth for other people. These are the kind of logical things that I think the Republicans party has been too chicken to say for too long because they believed that the press had more power than it did. I think the blessing of the Daily Wire with the exclusion of your show, of course. The blessing of the Daily Wire is. And all of the rebel media is that has broken the monopoly that the left wing, aged left wing press had. Why were they knocking us off the air? You know, you were there for the censorship of the Biden era. That was the worst censorship I've seen in my lifetime, which goes back as you know, to the Civil War. So it's like it was really bad.
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A
Worse than Woodrow Wilson when you had the old timey Drew show during the Wilson administration.
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B
That's right. That's right. With the coal engine, I have to keep cranking the engine. These are the two things that the left has, are silence and fantasy. They have to silence the truth with bullying and they have to invent problems that aren't really problems. I mean, transgenderism, let's face it, it's not a problem. Don't butcher children. Let people live their lives. Nobody was bothering the occas person who wanted to live, you know, dress up as a girl or whatever, as he wasn't going into, you know, men's bathrooms and vice versa. But this, this idea that you have to use a pronoun, you have to change your language to lie, you have to be a liar. That's all they've got. You know, if they cannot fix the world so that every, they really do believe that if everybody lies, the lie will become the truth. So for us, I think it's the opposite. The truth is our friend. Everything that conservatives believe in works. Countries don't become as powerful as America in just 250 years. Don't go from a bunch of guys clinging to the coast of a continent to this major superpower without freedom. Freedom works every time it's tried. Greece became an empire, Rome became an empire because they started out being free. The same thing has happened to us. That's the thing we're trying to defend. And you do it. You can't always be playing defense. I think that's the problem. You do have to solve problems, but you solve them in a free way. You solve them in a way that doesn't say, oh, the government is gonna do this for you, which means someone's money and freedom is being taken away. I think that this is. If I had to pick two things that I think the right could work on. Little less belligerence in telling the truth. Tell the truth fearlessly, absolutely fearlessly, but you don't have to be belligerent about it. And the other thing is notice the problems before the left does the left is really good at this, at picking up things that kind of bother people and then elevating them. And I think we actually have the solution to inflation. It's don't print so much money, which means don't spend so much money. And I think that that's the thing that we just. We are not fearless about facing, especially our politicians.
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A
Yeah, it's true. That is the one era where conservatives, I think, prefer fantasy over the left. The left has it 99.9% of the time, but we're a little too rosy, you know? And when the left brings up affordability, say, or problems in the healthcare system, we just try to dismiss it and minimize it. You say, no, those are real problems. We do have better solutions to those problems. But, you know, they're gonna get an optical advantage by calling attention to it first. And maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss it. Drew, it occurs to me also, before I let you go, this has been going on for so long that when you were coming on my show in the early days, you came on as Andy Millennial, because, you know, you had. Lauren Chen had heard nom de Plume was roaming Millennial. Ally Stuckey was going by conservative Millennial. So you came on as Andy Millennial. This has been on so long now that millennials are old. Now, when is Andy Zoomer coming on the show to become, like, a trans Nazi vaping?
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B
I have to say, I think we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you and I have the worst poker faces of any two people possibly on the planet. We used to have these hilarious routines, and we get about 20 seconds into them, and we do them dead and then fall off. We were shameful. We really were just the worst possible comedy routine in history. But it was. I'll never stop laughing over the Tide. Remember those Tide Pods?
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A
The Tide Pods.
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B
The Tide Pods.
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A
Well, to say if you can make it to Nashville, I'll let you go. But if you can make it to Nashville, we are having a delicious Tide pod reception afterward, so we might not make it to episode 2001. Drew, thank you once again for my career and founding the show and everything, and looking forward to recapping at the 4,000th episode as well.
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B
Absolutely. Congratulations, pal.
- [18:34]
A
Thanks.
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C
See you. Okay.
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A
Okay. There's a lot more I want to get to. I want to get to. Hey, Tucker's leaving the gop. You want to talk about shifts in conservative media. You have one of the biggest cable news host ever, who was the leading conservative on cable news, has just left the gop. Also, the Pope is criticizing the free market. Also, Tulsi Gabbard is nailing Anthony Fauci. Also, there's so much to get. I'm gonna need 2,000 episodes to get to all of this. Also, the Libs are trying to imprison Trump for repainting the reflecting pool. First, I want to tell you about Brickhouse nutrition. Go to takelean.com, code knowles. This episode is sponsored by Brickhouse Nutrition. You probably heard about those weight loss injections everyone's talking about for good reason. The results are pretty incredible. They work by helping regulate blood sugar and keeping your appetite in check. Plus, with summer swimsuit season right around the corner, everyone wants to show off. But here's the thing. 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Let's get you started with 20% off and free rush shipping so you can add Lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Go to takelean.com, enter code knowles, canada, wlas for your discount. This is promo code Knowles kennewlas@takelean.com Tucker Carlson is leaving the Republican Party. I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. Not gonna support the Democratic Party. I don't know what I'm gonna do. But at this point, you know, how could you support. How could I or any American voter support a political party that's not loyal to the United States, that puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens? Like, that's. That's, you know, it's not possible to vote for people like that. And I'm not going to. And I think I voted Republican. My entire life, I worked at Fox News, CNN, MSNBC. I've been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party. I mean, very consistent defender. But there's no defending this because it's immoral. And it's exactly the opposite of what a political party in a democracy is charged with doing, which is representing its own voters, its own citizens, its own nation. And they're not doing that. So, no, I'm out. And if I'm out, then I think a lot of other people are out. So Tucker's out of the gop. He's been one of the leading conservative voices for decades, and he's out of the gop. And a lot of people are asking, why not? Because the Republican Party is so great. As I frequently say, the Republican Party is the absolute worst party in the United States, other than the Democrats. But why is he doing this now? And what changed? And I think the most obvious answer is that Tucker, in this stage of his public life, is doing a Pat Buchanan thing. Pat Buchanan, who also was one of the leading Republicans who ran to get the GOP nomination for president in 1992 after Reagan, who advised Nixon, who advised Reagan, who ultimately lost the nomination to Bush. And then he left the GOP and ran for president on the Reform Party ticket. And then he was an independent for a few years, then he came back to be a Republican again. And so you could say, all right, maybe he's doing a Pat Buchanan kind of thing. You know, he feels that the Republican Party is not sufficiently conservative. We're not conservative in the right way. Even here, Tucker says the big issue is the GOP is too pro Israel. Pat Buchanan also was skeptical of Israeli influence on American politics, and then the gop. So the analogy, I think, works pretty well, except that if the issue is that the GOP is too pro Israel, the GOP has been pro Israel for the whole time Tucker's been a Republican, and for. Well before Tucker was a public Republican. You know, he says it was 35 years here. The GOP has been pro Israel since at least Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon saved the nation of Israel. The nation of Israel probably would not exist without Richard Nixon's help. And even before that, the gop, from the very founding of the state of Israel, the GOP was favorably inclined toward it. So what changed? If the issue for Tucker is the Iran war, if it's foreign intervention overseas, specifically the kind of foreign intervention that might help the state of Israel, what changed? Even with Trump? Don't forget, Trump ran against the Bush neocon wars of the 2000s. But George W. Bush, sorry, Donald Trump, after George W. Bush obliterated ISIS. In fact, he ran in 2016 on obliterating ISIS. He struck Syria again to go after Bashar Assad because of Assad's purported use of chemical weapons. He took out the Iranian general during the first term. He killed the top Iranian general, Soleimani. He intervened in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Africa. He issued the raid, killing the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, who died like a dog, infamously. What changed? Trump has been super pro Israel the whole time. They named a town after him in Israel during the first term, not during the second term. He was belligerent against Iran in the first term, not just during the second term. And then of course, George W. Bush intervened very heavily in the Middle East. Tucker was a Republican the whole time. So what changed? I don't think you could say it was the GOP that changed. I don't think you could really say it's Trump that changed. A lot of people say, well, Trump ran against foreign wars. Trump ran, but kind of. But he also, throughout his entire presidential career, from the first term through the now second term, he has been intervening in the Middle East. He has been dropping the Moab, he has been killing Iranian generals. He has been doing all of that. So I don't think he really changed. And Trump was talking about going after the Iranians since the late 70s. So you could say, well, maybe it's just Tucker's perspective has changed. Could well be the case. But the other thing to remember here, and Tucker has been open about this, is I don't think Tucker voted for Trump or for anybody in 2016. Tucker told Politico in 2021, quote, I never vote. So that's the truth. I didn't vote this time. I never do. I'm registered with a party that I sincerely despise because I think it's really a force for bad in this country. And it's the Democratic Party. But I'm registered because I live in the district. So he registered as a Dem. Cause he lived in a Dem area, wanted to influence the local elections. He goes, it's a one party state and the one election I always vote in is the mayor's race. Cause it matters. I own property there. I raised four children there. So he initially says, I never vote. Then he says, well, no, I actually do vote in these local races and. But I don't really care about the presidential race. He apparently didn't vote in 2016 or 2020, I don't know in 2020. Then there was other reporting that he might have written In Kanye west, this was Kanye before he kind of went very extreme when he was doing the birthday party thing. So it's very, very unclear to me over the 35 years that Tucker's talking about. Trump hasn't really changed. But in as much as the GOP has changed, it has only changed for the better. The GOP has gotten better on immigration. The GOP has gotten better on trade. The GOP has gotten better on national identity. The GOP has gotten better on the social issues. The gop. There were Republicans campaigning for partial birth abortion in the 90s. The GOP has gotten better on that. Then when the GOP had a little dalliance, embracing gay marriage, they've turned back on that one too. The GOP has gotten better on foreign intervention. So I just, I don't really know what changed about the gop. I'd be curious. Maybe we should have Tucker on to talk about it. Cuz I don't know. It seems to me the change is more just in his perspective rather than in the GOP or Trump itself. In any case, though, I'm sympathetic to the view that we want some independence. We don't want to be shills and partisans. Dante has this famous line that his grandfather tells him in paradise in the Divine Comedy where he says, sicatifia bello everti fatta parti perti tes desso. It will be better for you to be a party of yourself because you're gonna be betrayed by all these elements of your party and the other party. And so I'm sympathetic to that. But if you are gonna participate in politics, it's a team sport. So you pick one of the teams and you try to reform that team from within. You try to beat the other team. Crucially, if you take yourself out of that, you're just. You're going to embrace a kind of political quietism that seeds the ground to your opponents. Maybe we should have Tucker on to talk about it. I don't know. In any case, speaking of political independence, the Pope is criticizing the free market. Is this heresy? Is this a betrayal of John Paul ii, the man who destroyed communism? Is this. Is he a woke globalist, liberal, communist Pope? We'll get to that. First, I want to tell you about a LEAF filter. Go to leaffilter.com knowles One of the most expensive habits people have is trying to save money. They think they're going to be pennywise pound foolish is what they are when it comes to buying cheap versions of things that actually matter. Everybody has done it. You buy the Knockoff phone charger, the bargain power tool, the suspiciously affordable version of the thing you actually wanted. And for about three weeks you convince yourself you're a financial genius. And then it breaks. Then you buy the real one anyway. Now you paid twice over the years. Some things are worth doing right the first time. One of them is protecting your home. 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America the 4th of July is next weekend. The cutoff to ensure that your Mayflower cigars arrive in time is closing. You must order by this Thursday, June 25th at midnight Eastern. I am smoking the delicious Mayflower dawn right now. Mm mm. Delicious. This Thursday, June 25th. If it's not in before then, we cannot guarantee your Mayflower cigars will arrive in time to enjoy on the 4th. You need to enjoy America 250 the right way. Fireworks, various grilled meats and mayflower cigars. Do not miss out on the historic celebration. Lawyers tell me you must be 18, sorry, 21 years or older to order. Void where prohibited conditions and exclusions apply. Can you believe this? Can you believe that we used to be a proper country and you could smoke at 18 and some of us who are Italian Americans from New York maybe had our cigars starting about 15, and now you have to be 21 years. You're going to have to be 50. You don't have to be Drew's age pretty soon to have your first cigar. Okay, I want to get to the pope on the free market and his criticism of the free market. I want to get to Dr. Fauci. But before we get to any of that, I want to bring on Mr. Ben Shapiro, with his brilliant Harvard Law School legal knowledge, to talk about Whoopi Goldberg's suggestion that President Trump go to jail for repainting the reflection pool in Washington, D.C. before we bring on Ben, here's Whoopi. He is claiming that vandals are to blame. He says they illegally placed chemicals in the water and left a 300 foot gash in the pool. Now, five people are said to have been arrested. He says a 10 year prison sentence will be strictly enforced. Oh, well, if he's saying he's going to jail for 10 years, I'm gonna let him go. Cause, I mean, it seems to me that had he not messed with pool.
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C
Mm.
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A
You know, it would still be a reflecting pool instead of a liquid jungle, which is what it looks like. I want somebody to sue, because if a contractor did this at your house.
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C
Yeah. Yes.
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A
This is what you would do. I think the country needs to say, we're suing you. Suing you for doing this without our permission. And we're suing the people who did it, because clearly they didn't know what they were doing. Okay, I think I've got Whoopi's argument. I think I. Now I know. Ben, first of all, thank you for coming on.
- [31:56]
C
Well, I mean, first of all, congratulations on making your 2000th episode. I vowed on your 1000th episode you would not make your 1000 first episode. And yet here you are a thousand episodes later, and you are still here. So congrats on, if nothing else, your durability. Well done.
- [32:11]
A
Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, one, thank you for, at the very least, the benign neglect to allow this show to continue as you're focused on other things. I know that, Ben, you went to Harvard Law School. Whoopi, I think, went to Stanford or Yale Law School. I forget which one that was after her Rhodes Scholarship. What do you make of her legal argument here? That Trump, by repainting the reflecting pool, has committed the very crimes he's accusing the vandals of committing?
- [32:43]
C
I mean, it's a brilliant. It's a brilliant argument. I mean, I've rarely heard, outside of Atticus Finch argumentation this brilliant. It's really like something that Justice Scalia might have written, basically. It's always exciting when Whoopi decides to sign into chat with regard to her. Her legal analysis of the situation. Can I just point out that I think actually, what's going on with the reflecting pool is the best America 250 thing ever, because the entire country is apparently enthralled with this idiot story about a dumb pool that I don't care about. That is what happens when you have the richest country in the history of the world. That we are all so bored and rich that we can basically afford to sit around and caterwaul about amoebas in a pool that exists for most of us thousands of miles away. You know what they're not doing in, like, Russia or Ukraine or Iran or Saudi today? Worrying about a random pool in a place that was possibly refaced not properly and also properly and also might have been vandalized like that. It's a great signifier that America is doing fine, that we are all deeply worried about the color of a reflecting pool in the middle of the summer when the algae grow.
- [33:49]
A
That is maybe the most hopeful news story, I guess, I've heard in weeks. And you know, Whoopi here, she conflates a couple things. She suggests a criminal charge for Trump based on what he's suggesting. She then says someone should sue because the pool didn't come out precisely to her liking. And it does seem there's a real political story under this, which is that they still really hate this guy and they still actually do want him to go to jail. I mean, maybe Whoopi's half joking here, but in every joke, there's a little bit of truth. And I do wonder, as we look still a little far ahead, but we're looking toward the end of the Trump era, are they gonna try to put him in jail again? Are they ever going to get over it?
- [34:30]
C
Absolutely.
- [34:31]
A
They will, right?
- [34:33]
C
Yes. 100%. 100%. And this is why, you know, I heard you talking about the whole Tucker, I'm leaving the Republican Party thing, which, you know, listen, I've been calling for ideological borders for a long time. So I'm also in favor of ideological self deportation.
- [34:45]
A
Yeah.
- [34:46]
C
So self deportation is a perfectly fine policy for those who are illegal immigrants into the Republican Party and take advantage of our culture and values and refuse to assimilate. They can leave. It's okay. But, you know, are you send Tucker
- [34:58]
A
to Bukele's prison camp or anything? Can we make news on this show or.
- [35:03]
C
I mean, I'm not calling for him necessarily to be sent there, but if you wound up. No, I'm not. We're not doing that. But if he decides to self deport to his house in Qatar, that is perfectly fine with me. In any case, when, you know, you do that when. When you have people in the Republican Party who keep saying that they're going to leave because they're pissed off with the wrong. By the way, I'll point out I'm not super happy with our current Iran policy. I'm sticking around and voting for the Republicans because I don't want these schmucks to win in November. And this is, I think, the biggest thing that you've been pointing out for a while, which is, you know, the alternative to whatever is going on, whatever the issues we have with what's going on on any of the sides, the alternative is these people who are literally standing there protesting in favor of algae and calling for their political opponents to be jailed on the basis of they just don't like them. And so if you think that, that everything that we saw under Joe Biden has gone away permanently, whenever people say woke is dead, woke is not dead. Woke is just asleep. And it is perfectly capable of waking up at any second and being significantly worse than it ever was. By the way, if you think that it's going away or that it's moderated or something, that is absolutely untrue. The Left Unleash will come for revenge, not just on Trump, but on everybody who just doesn't share their value system. And I think that's what you're seeing there.
- [36:15]
A
I totally agree. This is one where I get the impulse to say, well, not everything is going exactly as I want and, oh, the GOP is imperfect and, oh, you know, I prefer this policy. I get it, of course. And look, I love cigars and port and tweed and talking about beautiful ideas in the realm of forms. I love it. Feels great light, a nice fire and a nice cozy study. Wouldn't that be fun? But as much as I enjoy the purity of that experience, politics is not pure. It's ugly and mucky and messy. And it involves being on teams with people who you don't like or who you don't think are competent or who you know. And it to your point, but you say, I don't like the Iran policy either from the exact opposite direction. But you say, I'm not thrilled with that, but I'm sticking on the team. I'm gonna try to change the team from within to some degree, but we gotta focus on who the big threats are. I totally agree. The impulse to just kind of of walk away from politics, I don't have it. Which is why I'm still here at 2000 episodes and which is why I'll be clinging to my desk at episode 4000 as you drag me kicking and screaming. You say, enough. I've had it with the cigars. You're leaving the studio, Michael? I will still be clinging to it. Cause it just seems to me that the political project is something we are called to do. And to your point, it's a great rejoinder, Ben, which is that in countries that have really explosive civil strife, you don't get to sit around debating a swimming pool. You don't get to do it. And it's actually a privilege to be able to do so.
- [37:43]
C
I think that's exactly right. And again, listen, I'm sympathetic to the idea that there are times when you do have to walk away so that you can walk back in in the future. Right. I mean that was actually my perspective in 2016 when I didn't actually vote for the presidency. And then by 2020 I realized like, this is the world that we live in and we have to vote for one of these two parties. Cuz one of them is going to win, one of them is going to lose. And I think that your point that you were making earlier and I was listening in, by the way, I thought it was brilliant up until the very moment you started quoting Dante in Italian. At which point I have to say, Michael, that is not. You're probably, if you're looking for like total available market, I feel like that is limiting your total available market. Quoting Dante in the original Italian in the medieval. On your show.
- [38:19]
B
Yeah.
- [38:20]
C
Yes, the populist, the populist angle to quoting Dante in the original Italian is limited. I mean, I'm just going to put that out there as a tactical matter. But if the, if the sort of idea is that, you know, the, that you're going to walk away and then you're going to walk back in, like your point is, is really well taken, which is that the Republican Party has moved in the direction of a lot of the people who are now complaining about the most over the course of the last 10 years in a lot of different ways it's gotten more conservative in a lot of different ways. It's also gotten bigger government in a lot of ways I don't like. Over the course of the last 10 years, I mean there've been a lot of changes in the, in the Republican Party. Some of them I like, some of them I don't. But again, when it comes right down to it, in November, one of these party is going to have a lot more control and I'd prefer that it not be the party that is busily attempting to trans the kids, which again, that will come back. If you think that's not going. If you think that's going away, it's never coming back. Nonsense. That absolutely 100% will come back.
- [39:13]
A
Yeah, that's right. The party that still wants to trans the kids, which is the craziest ideological policy of the last ever, and the party that wants to jail its opponents and the party that wants to do violence against us, and they're pretty open about it. I totally agree. All right, Ben, I'm gonna let you go do your show. I'm gonna finish my 2000th episode and we'll see if I make it to 2001. In any case, I appreciate you one for helping to give me my entire career and letting this show stay on for 2,000 years. And everybody will go watch your show after this.
- [39:47]
C
Thanks, Michael.
- [39:47]
A
Thank you. Did I say there was a Freudian slip where I said 2000 years? I meant 2000 episodes. We're looking ahead to 2000 years of my show, folks. Smash the like button and subscribe. Also, check us out on Spotify where you can download full episode audio and video to watch or listen whenever you want without using your data. Do not miss an episode. My favorite comment yesterday from Spotify is from Nope. Who says, Michael, you need to run for office. That's very kind of you. So you need to run for office. Your platform can be Make America normal again or Mana with the tagline leading us to the promised land. That is freaking good. That is good Manna Mana. Make America normal again. Ooh, that's significant. You might. Look, you might have convinced me. I'm not eager at this moment to run for office. Cause it's a terribly thankless job that these days can land you in prison or dead. And you have to be away from your family a lot. You don't make any money, and it's not the nicest career, but it is public service. And if I can run with a cool tagline like that, maybe I will. Okay, Speaking of political independence and confounding ideological purity, Pope Leo XIV has just come out. He's gone viral for criticizing the free market. Is he a woke globalist World Economic Forum Communist Pope? What did he say? What did he say? Here's what he said. He said it is important to resist the commodification of basic human needs. Food, water, and healthcare cannot be subordinated to market considerations or geopolitical interests. Access to adequate food is a fundamental human right grounded in the dignity of every person. Meeting this need not only alleviate suffering but also addresses underlying causes of geopolitical instability. Indeed, food security is an essential component of global and integral security. And cue all of the charges that he's a communist. He's betraying his conservative predecessors, Benedict XVI and John Paul ii, the great conqueror of communism. And is this out of step with the Catholic tradition? People say food costs money. What are you talking about? It can't be a commodity. Food costs money. Healthcare costs money. Shelter costs money. What did JP2 say? JP2 wrote an encyclical called Centesimus Annus 100 Years on the 100 anniversary of Rerum Navarum, which is the beginning of Catholic social teaching, written by Leo's predecessor, Leo xiii. And here's what John Paul II said. This is after the fall of communism. He says, it would appear that on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs. Boom. Owned Pope JP II. Owns Pope Leo XIV, right? Not quite. Because JP2 goes on, he says, but this is true only for those needs which are solvent insofar as they are endowed with purchasing power, and for those resources which are marketable, not like you can sell them online, but marketable, meaning they have a place in the market insofar as they are capable of obtaining a satisfactory price. But there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish. It is also necessary to help these needy people to acquire expertise, to enter the circle of exchange and to develop their skills in order to make the best use of their capacities and resources. He goes on, but this is crucial. He says the free market is the most efficient way to allocate resources. But we need to recognize that there are some resources that are not solvent and there are some that are not marketable. Sorry. There are some needs which are not solvent and there are some resources which are not marketable and don't achieve a satisfactory price. What he's saying, in other words, is perfectly harmonized with what Pope Leo is saying. He's saying, look, yeah, JP2 is focusing more explicitly on the free market and the goods of the free market. But he's saying, look, there's some people are destitute. And the arch ideological laissez faire capitalist would say, too bad you're on your own. I got mine and my property is 100%, perfectly, absolutely mine. And too bad I'm not my brother's keeper and you can go starve on the street. But what JP2 and Leo are saying is. No, no, no. When there are needs that are not solvent, when there are resources that are not marketable, that can't obtain a satisfactory price in the market, we have an obligation to intervene because men have dignity, which is prior to market regulations. And so that doesn't necessarily mean that you need some big government, some central planner to step in, though there probably is a role for the government. It could be charity, it could be the role of the church, it could be corporate philanthropy. But in any case, we actually do have an obligation to the poor people, to the elderly people, to the people who can't really take care of themselves, to the people who don't really find a place within the free market. We furthermore have an obligation to help try to bring those people into the market so that resources can be allocated efficiently. There is, in other words, a right to property and a universal destination of goods. And man actually does have a dignity that is prior to all of those market considerations. Market considerations that nonetheless are important when we're talking about the good of properly allocating resources in a society. There's really no contradiction whatsoever from what Leo is saying. He's not being as explicit in his promotion of the goods of the free market. But there is no contradiction here between him and JP2, who everybody loves and the long story of Catholic social teaching. This is really important. I mean, JP2 even goes on and says in third world contexts, certain objectives stated by Rerum Navarre remain valid and in some cases still constitute a goal to be reached if man's work and his very being are not to be reduced to the level of a mere commodity. That's what this is about. Okay, that's what this is about. We have responsibilities, one to another. We are not mere commodities, and we employ the goods that come out of market dynamics for something greater. That's how it works. Totally agree. Sorry. Trying to write off the Pope as a Commie. Not gonna work today. Unless you wanna do the same thing to John Paul ii. Okay, before we bring on, I have a very, very wonderful guest who's coming on for the Membrum segmentum. Before we do that, though, I gotta get to Rand Paul. Sorry, Rand Paul. And Congressman Brad Winstrup totally nailing Anthony Fauci because Tulsi Gabbard, as she is leaving the office of the Director of National Intelligence because her husband is sick with cancer, she goes out. We covered it a couple days ago. She goes out and says, hey, I'm releasing a bunch of documents that show that Fauci misled you during COVID He funded the kind of research that led to Covid at the place where Covid broke out and he lied about it and he perjured himself. And all of the Fauci defenders, they're gonna try to sweep this under the rug. All the liberals who locked down your life, they're gonna try to sweep this under the rug, but they have this guy dead to rights. There are two claims that are being made here by Tulsi Gabbard. One is that Fauci perjured himself when he was talking about the funding of gain of function research. This would have happened in 2021. Senate testimony with Rand Paul. Here's the clip. Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the NIH? Funding of the lab in Wuhan? Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute. Do they fund Dr. Baric? We do not fund. Do you fund Dr. Baric's gain of function research? Dr. Barrett does not doing gain of function research. And if it is, it's according to the guidelines and it is being conducted in North Carolina. You are entirely. Dr. Paul. Senator Paul, you are entirely incorrect. We do not fund gain of function. And then what happened? What did we find out? We found this out when I did my show still available on Daily Wire. Fauci unmasked. We found out. No, he actually did fund that research. He funded ecohealth alliance under Peter Dajak, and they funded gain of function research. This kind of research in Wuhan. We've come to find out it was research on bat coronaviruses. So that's perjury, right? Well, the way Fauci's getting out of that is he's relying on a very, very narrow definition of gain of function research that has all of these technical criteria that was instituted in 2017. Gain of function research just means beefing up viruses to make them more potent. That's the general definition, but there is a very, very narrow regulatory definition that maybe the kind of research that he was funding doesn't quite meet. Maybe, but this is cheap. I mean, this is real deception. It's like a 24 year old saying that he's a kid. You say, Hey, 24 year old. Are you an adult? And he'll say, no, no, no, I'm a child. Because there's some research in psychology that shows that the brain doesn't fully develop until age 25. So technically, I'm a child, I'm not an adult. You say. Well, look, I mean, maybe there is some really narrow definition by which you can try to make that really tenuous argument, but in plain language. If you were, for instance, speaking to a bunch of senators, you wouldn't be using that highly debatable and technical language. You would have to answer the question bluntly. And he didn't. He deceived here. But whatever. It's passed the statute of limitations for perjury. That was five years. It's now past the five year mark on the 2021 testimony. So Fauci's gonna get away with that. But that's not the only claim against Fauci. Fauci was then asked, also under oath, did you ever speak to the intelligence community about this kind of gain of function research regarding Covid? Here's Fauci's answer. Before, during, or after the COVID 19 pandemic, did you speak to the FBI, CIA, DIA, or any US intelligence agents agency concerning viral research of any kind? What time frame are you talking about, sir? I said before, during. Any time after. Could you be. Could you remind me what time, anytime. Did you speak to the FBI, CIA, dia, or any US intelligence agency concerning viral research of any kind? I can't give you the specifics of it, but back in the time of the anthrax attacks, we certainly had a number of briefings. We talk about anthrax, we talk about COVID by agencies that. That were intelligence agencies. I don't remember who they were. It could have been any of the above that you mentioned, but not as related to, say, COVID 19? Not to my knowledge about COVID Not to. There it is. There is the lie, there is the perjury. Did you ever have conversations with the intelligence community about the origin of COVID 19 and you know, they got him dead to rights here. Cause Fauci's always got a quick answer. You're totally, completely incorrect. And there he obfuscates. It's like the kid in class who doesn't know the answer or who doesn't wanna give the answer. Yes, Johnny, what's your. Could you hold on you. And he'll repeat the question. What time? Before, during or after Covid? Could you be a little.
- [50:54]
C
What?
- [50:55]
A
Could you repeat that, please? And he says, not to my knowledge. No. What Tulsi releases is troves of CIA memoranda, CIA briefings, whistleblower reports, intelligence community documents showing that Fauci did in fact have these conversations about the origin of COVID And he was trying to cover it up. He was trying to suppress it. Then he perjured himself under oath, and that was in 2024. So statute of limitations has not run out. The problem is Joe Biden gave him an unprecedented blanket presidential pardon. Every president uses pardons, but what Biden did was unique in that Biden pardoned people, including his criminal son, for 10 years of any federal crimes that might have been committed. In other words, he didn't specify the crime for which he would be pardoned. And this is not probably the presidential pardon. Power is too absolute to really question. But this is not found in American history. Even when Jimmy Carter gave these blanket pardons to the draft dodgers, he was giving the pardons for a specific crime. In the case of Fauci, he just got this blanket, I think, dubious presidential pardon. You're not gonna overcome it. He's gonna get away with it. But he lied. He perjured himself. They've got this guy dead to rights. He misled you. He screwed up your life. He funded the research. He tried to cover up his own crimes. He'll never pay a penny for it. He'll never spend one second in an orange jumpsuit, but he did that. They were entirely in the wrong. They were deceitful, they were liars, and they're going to try to do it again. Keep that in mind next time, okay? The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Knowles, Canada WLAS at checkout for two months free on all annual plan.