Michael Knowles (17:38)
What? You know, very little surprises me. What's that woman's name? Nicole Wallace? Is that her name? She's one of the real wackos, but she's one of the big stars of msnbc. And her reaction to this really sweet moment is she tries to put on a good face. You know, it's like that meme she's got, she's plastered on the smiling face. Oh, that was nice. I liked that. Yeah, that was really nice. But I hope he doesn't kill himself, that little kid. I hope that little 13 year old kid doesn't go kill himself after that. What kind of a demented psycho do you have to be for that to be your reaction? What kind of a demented psycho do you have to be to even think that, to even think that, Much less say that privately to someone, much less say that on national television. It's msnbc, so there are probably five people watching. It's like making an utterance in your own living room. But nevertheless, there are cameras and microphones in that studio. This is how contorted with hatred these people have become. This is how divorced from reality they have become because of their irrational contempt for the man that they consider to be the Mango Mussolini. That when Donald Trump, a very, very popular president who gave an even more popular speech, he's already very popular. His speech was extraordinarily popular with 3/4 of the country. And he says, hey, let's just give a nice honor to a kid who's fought a really brave fight against brain cancer. And this psycho's first reaction is, I hope he doesn't kill himself. Sick stuff. Sick stuff. And the Democrats performance in that room last night and the Democrats performance on television after the speech, I don't think it won them over one single vote. I think if anything, it sent more votes to President Trump and the Republicans and the MAGA movement because as Trump said in the speech, he was leading the common sense revolution. Common sense. That's a phrase I've been saying throughout the campaign. That's what the election's about. That's the meaning of this election. Trump articulating that beautifully. And I think anyone who watched the Democrats display in the Capitol or on television has to think, these people have a screw loose and I do not want them to have power. Now, the Democrats did their best to pick the most normal person in their party to give the response to the State of the Union. Even that wasn't Great. They selected a woman. I didn't even recognize her at first. I was watching her on the monitor last night. I said, who is this? I've never even seen this Democrat. And it's Alyssa Slotkin, who's a new Democrat senator from Michigan. Michigan, obviously a very important swing state. She is kind of new to the national spotlight. It was a tough election. We were hoping the Republican was gonna eke it out in November. So she makes her national debut and she tries to soften the edges of a Democrat party that increasingly embraces castrating little kids, makes murdering babies their sacrament, advocates a totally open border, wants to abolish prisons. Really crazy stuff that doesn't resonate with Americans. So they pick this woman to try to soften the edges. I don't think she does a very persuasive job. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to livemomentous.com, use code KNOWLES. Success is not built on resolutions. Resolutions are often broken. It is built on taking action and building unstoppable momentum. When it comes to optimizing your health span, living better and longer, certain things are non negotiable. Quality sits at the top of that list. And in the world of performance focused supplements, Momentous stands alone. Their commitment to NSF certification means every batch undergoes rigorous testing for heavy metals, harmful additives and label accuracy. 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We're going to focus on the middle class. Most Americans share three core beliefs that the middle class is the engine of our country, that strong national security protects us from harm, and that our democracy no matter how messy, is unparalleled and worth fighting for. Let's start with the economy. Michigan literally invented the middle class. Hold on, wait. So I was sort of. I was with you. Not that the Democrats care about those core beliefs. They don't. The main thing the Democrats care about is slaughtering kids, castrating little kids, and importing illegal aliens with face tattoos into our country. Those is a main. At least judging by their advocacy during the campaign. But Alyssa Slotkin probably thinks Democrats should focus on all the other stuff. But then she lost me at Michigan literally invented the middle class. I'm pretty sure the middle class was literally invented in like late 14th century Italy. I don't think. I think it was a development of the high Middle ages and early modern era in continental Europe, not a development of Michigan, you know, in the 1950s or something. So her history's already a little bit off. I'm starting to question her judgment. And then she makes a claim about illegal immigration cuz they can't help themselves. Cuz the Democrats just love mass migration because they think, all right, we can't convince actual Americans to vote for us, so let's just bring in foreigners who statistically are at least more likely to vote for Democrats. And then we'll give their kids birthright citizenship, we'll try to give them amnesty, and maybe we can just gain power politically by cheating. Here's the claim she makes. Securing the border without actually fixing our broken immigration system is dealing with the symptom and not the disease. So that just isn't true. Whatever you want to think about amnesty or immigration reform or even border security, just her logic doesn't make any sense. She's saying that the open border, in contravention of American federal law, the open border is a symptom of the disease of having lots of illegal aliens in the country that have not received amnesty and are living in quasi legal circumstances. But actually the opposite is true. The disease is that we have the open border. That is to say, the root cause of the immigration debates in the country is the open border across which the illegal aliens came. The symptom of that disease is that we have lots of millions, 11 to 16 million or maybe more, people living in this country, many of whom are committing crimes. People who are living in this country who are statistically much more likely than the native population to be using welfare programs and to be draining our public resources that we don't know what to do with because they're living in the shadows. And in quasi legal circumstances, it's not just that this woman is wrong about illegal immigration. She doesn't understand basic logic. Her fundamental reasoning is wrong. She's confusing cause for effect, symptom for disease. That's par for the course with a Democrat party that has increasingly failed to make persuasive arguments to the American people. So it's the toughest job in politics trying to give the opposition party response to the State of the Union. Pretty much everyone fails at it. I remember. Was it 2012 or something? Bobby Jindal gave it and everyone attacked him, said he did a bad job. Remember Bobby Jindal? He was the governor of Louisiana and then Marco Rubio. Everyone made fun of him cuz he drank out of a water bottle during the response. And it's just a bad job. And she didn't do the worst job I've ever seen. But she, I think, ultimately failed to make her case. And it's not even her fault. She's a perfectly attractive Democrat politician relative to the rest of her party, but her party is just so far gone. And she does have to defend things like mass migration. And she does have to defend things like LGBTQ ideology, which she alluded to last night that she tried to soft pedal it. And she just has to defend things that most people rejected, most voters rejected in November. So looking ahead to potential presidential candidates, we have our first name that's really being floated for the 2028 race, the President. The next presidential cycle begins almost immediately after the last one ends. And who is that candidate? That would be Minnesota governor, former vice presidential candidate Tim Waltz. Look, I never had an ambition to be president or vice president. I was honored to be asked. I told the vice president I would go wherever she asked me. If she didn't pick me. And she sent me to Omaha to win one electoral vote, that's what I would do. I've always done this. If I feel like I can serve, I will. And if nationally, that's what it looks like, you know, maybe people like, dude, we tried you and look how that worked out. I'm good with that. If I think I could offer something or if there's. There's a piece there that would do it, I would certainly consider that. Please. You know, I don't even feel like I need to get on my knees and beg for this guy to be a presidential candidate or to be the presidential nominee in 2028. Because the Democrats are already indicating that they have learned nothing from the election, and they're going to keep putting their least attractive candidates into positions of power. The clearest Example would be electing David Hogg, one of the least likable Democrats, even among Democrats in the country. The kid who. He created a media career for himself by going on television after his school had a shooting, and then he got into Harvard that way, even though academically it was a little suspect that he got in. And he's just really annoying, and he wants to take away people's guns, and he doesn't seem to know very much about the Constitution and our legal tradition. And they made that guy the vice chairman of the party. So they're clearly. They are clearly specifically interested in elevating liberal white guys that most people don't like. And so Tim Walsh fills that spot perfectly. Went down in flames as one of the worst vice presidential candidates in modern memory. And so if he's the nominee, please. Thank you. Please. Christmas came early. Christmas came four years early, I guess. Now we're getting some breaking news. This is, according to cnn, that the Supreme Court has rejected President Trump's request to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen. Foreign aid, remember, doesn't just mean. Doesn't even primarily mean sending javelins to the Ukrainians. Foreign aid doesn't just mean or even primarily mean helping with diseases in Africa. Foreign aid means, to use one notable example, sending a lot of money to the wife of some British politician to go teach Afghan peasants about Marcel Duchamp and how urinals actually constitute really beautiful modern art. There is a lot of graft and weird stuff in the foreign aid, promoting things like transgender ballet performances in Guatemala or Papua New guinea or whatever. Crazy stuff. And so President Trump and Dogecoin, and they say, okay, we're gonna freeze that. We're not sending out money out. Supreme Court now rejecting Trump's, reportedly, according to cnn, rejecting President Trump's plea to stop that. But there's gonna be a fight here, okay? And it's actually part of our constitutional system that there is a fight between the executive branch and the judiciary and the legislature. Sometimes that's a feature, not a bug of our system. What's weird about this kind of moment, though, is this is not a case of President Trump trying to exercise control over the legislature and the court coming in and saying, oh, actually, the executive has no right to exercise this kind of authority over the legislature, a co. Equal branch of government. This isn't an example of President Trump trying to exercise authority over the court, and the court stepping in saying, no, we're not going to do that. What's so weird about all of these executive agencies and all this money that is sent over to the executive branch to be sent overseas, really, just to promote leftism abroad and at home. Because some of that money gets funneled back into the United States. To use just one example, USAID sends money to the Tides Center. The Tide Center, a left wing organization, gives money to blm. BLM burns down your city and pressures the corporations in your country and the politicians in your communities to give them even more power and give in to even more of their demands. And then the cycle continues. Rinse and repeat. That's how this works. And so what's so strange about this situation is President Trump, the leader of the executive branch, is being told he can't even control the executive branch. This isn't one branch of government trying to take power from another. It's the duly elected leader of a branch of government trying to control that branch of government. And so that's what distinguishes this governmental fight. And how Trump reacts to the court's decision remains to be seen because this news is just breaking right now. In the meantime, though, you're gonna hear a lot of talk about true conservative principles. You hear a lot of talk about, well, you know, President Trump, he's a threat to our, our order and we stand by our principles. From a bunch of squishes who support Democrats. Well, I've got, I have now the apotheosis of the so called principled conservatives who won't support the Republican leader of the party, who has been the leader of the party for the past three presidential cycles and who's won non consecutive terms and who won the popular vote for a Republican first time in 20 years because it's so principled. That principled conservative is now embracing transgenderism. We'll get to that in a moment. First, if you're not a Daily Wire plus member, now is the time to join the fight. Get exclusive breaking stories from our investigative journalism team. The stories the mainstream media will not cover. Enjoy ad free uncensored daily wire shows plus live chat in the app with other members and yes, you get moi. Yours truly. Access Exclusive Daily Wire Documentaries, movies, series. Stay ahead with breaking news, instant reactions. Be the first to know what's going on at daily wire dailywire.com right now. Become a member. My favorite comment Yesterday is from Benbju4558 who says CS Lewis was walking with a friend when a beggar asked for money. Lewis gave him the money and his friend said, you know, he's just going to go buy booze with that. Lewis replied, well, that's What I was going to do with it. That's right. I've never heard that story. I don't know if that's a true story. Might be one of those, you know, Abraham Lincoln said, and might be an apocryphal attribution, but it might be real. Because I've had similar thoughts sometimes, you know, you walk around, guy says, can I have some money? I say, what do you want it for? He goes, I want it for cigarettes. So, like, well, you can have a cigarette if you want. I don't know. It's not better than, like, black tar heroin or something. But I remember one time I was walking. Actually, a friend of mine reminded me of this story. Just the other day, I was walking, and some bum comes up to us on the street. And I had just left a bar. Actually, I forget. It was in some city around the country. And the bum said, hey, can I have some money? I said, what do you want to do with the money? And he says, I want to buy a beer. I thought, well, that's honest. At least he's not. Sometimes bums will lie and say they want food, but they don't really want food. They want booze or drugs. But my friend reminded me. I said to him, well, why do you want the beer? He's like, well, I don't know, because I like beer. You were in a bar. I said, that's true. I was in a bar. I said, but is that beer gonna help you if I give you the money? If I give you the five bucks for a beer, is that really gonna help you? Because I can go have a beer. This is one of the cruel twists of addiction. I guess I can go have a beer and it's totally fine. Cause I'm not addicted to beer. I don't even like beer that much. But that guy, who's clearly an addict, he likes beer so much that he can't ever have beer. This is a line Norm MacDonald, the great philosopher, late, great philosopher Norm MacDonald made in his memoir based on a true story, said, you know, it's kind of crazy. My friend Adam Egot, he's an alcoholic. So that means he likes beer so much, he likes alcohol so much, he can never have any. But me, I don't like alcohol that much, and I can have as much as I want. And, yeah, that's how it works. That's how it works in a fallen world. Okay, speaking of a fallen world, this is a doozy. The Democrats are attracting very few people to their party. They've lost a Lot of ground with Hispanic voters, Black voters with women. 74, 75% of people said they liked Trump's speech last night. They thought it was good. A lot of people, 91%, said Trump was speaking about things that they care about. Trump won the popular vote, obviously, but one guy, at least one guy, has gone from Republican to Democrat, and that would be Bill Kristol. Bill Kristol, former chief of staff for the Republican Vice President Dan Quayle. Bill Kristol, the former head honcho over at the Weekly Standard, which was formerly, until it went out of business, it was a premier conservative publication. He was on Fox News as the conservative talking head. He had a real prominent position as a conservative thought leader. And Bill Kristol tweeted this yesterday. Stand with trans Americans. You don't have to understand everything about the transgender experience to know that Trump's acts of humiliation and dehumanization are unjust and dangerous. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you your principled conservatives embracing transgenderism. An ideology that presents a false view of human nature, that does not help anyone, that harms everyone that it touches, that tramples on the legitimate rights of women, that has led to rapes of women, women and girls in bathrooms, that has led to women's skulls being cracked in because of transgenderism in sports, that has led to women losing their medals and scholarships because transgender identifying men compete against them and beat them. Your principled conservatives are now embracing transgenderism. This is proof positive of the accusation against some Republicans that Republicans are just liberals. Five to ten years too late, they're conserving the liberalism of five years ago. I don't even know if it's five. It might be two years ago for this guy. I remember I was in college. Bill Kristol came up to speak and one of the conservative students in college, conservative, quote, unquote, he was defending same sex marriage. Now, this was before the Obergefell decision. This might have even been before. It was right around the time that Obama switched his view, but it was right around the time when Obama still defended marriage, as it truly is, and opposed so called same sex marriage. And he said, I think we can, Republicans should embrace gay marriage. You know, that'll be good for everyone. And I remember Bill Kristol scoffing at that idea. And I think he published at least one column about this, said, no, no, no, conservatives should not embrace same sex marriage. That's crazy, that's absurd. And now I'm waiting for Bill Kristol to paint his face in a rainbow. We stand with the trans Americans, Trans kids rights or human rights. Is he gonna wear a free Palestine kefia next? I don't know. Who knows? Who knows? What do these principled conservatives conserve? I've just noticed, having met a handful, having known even somewhat well, a handful of these malcontents over the years, the hard line never Trumpers. The Never Trumpers in 2025, they all describe themselves as principled conservatives and they are the least principled people in politics that I have ever seen. What principles do they hold? The principles of petty personal grudges and milking a little bit of money out of new donors. Even those who oppose everything you ever pretended to stand for in your whole life. Crazy. Crazy. Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to make themselves look totally ridiculous. Democrats in the California legislature are proposing a new bill after those devastating fires. So devastating fires occur, Burn the city down. There are lots of reasons those fires occurred. Totally predictable Santa Ana winds that the political leaders refused to prepare for because the California leaders in recent years didn't want a clear brush in their woody areas. President Trump warned Governor Gavin Newsom about this in 2018 because the city emptied reservoirs before those predictable Santa Ana winds. So the Palisades reservoir didn't have any water in it when the fires broke out. Because the global warming obsessed Democrats decided to send 95% of rainwater into the Pacific Ocean because they feared that if they collected the rainwater, like reasonable people, they might damage the delta. Smelt some tiny little, you know, sardine or something. So all of these political problems led to the fires. Some people took actions to protect themselves against the fires, notably Rick Caruso, who ran as a Republican for mayor of Los Angeles and lost to former communist, maybe current Communist Karen Bass. But like literally, this woman associated with communists. Terrible. She wasn't even on the continent during the fires. That's how neglectful she was of her duties. So Rick Caruso has a very popular property in the Palisades. Beautiful little mall, lovely property. And it didn't burn down because Rick Caruso hired private firefighters in advance of the Santa Ana winds to protect his property. So the California Democrats, trying to make life better, ostensibly for the constituents, they propose a bill. Does the bill say that they're gonna clear the brush? No. Does the bill say that they're gonna keep their reservoirs filled? No. Does the bill say that they are going to keep their rainwater so that they don't shove it all into the Pacific Ocean and they have water to fight the fires when they come? No. The bill that the California Democrats are proposing AB 1075 bans private firefighters. This is the perfect encapsulation of the Democrat Party. This is Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. They're not going to help anyone live a better life. They're just going to prevent certain people from living a good life. They're not going to elevate everyone. They're just going to handicap the people who are doing reasonable things and flourishing. They're not helping. They're just being vindictive. The guy who ran for mayor, who Angelenos could have had for mayor, who prepared at least his own properties for the fire as a private citizen, they're going to punish him. They're not even thinking, how could we have saved all of these homes in this historic fire? They're just thinking, how could we have burned Rick Caruso's property down? Okay, well, next time we'll burn that down. That's perfect. And this is not just the California Democrats. This is true of Democrats nationwide. They do not. They do not even think about how to help people. They are purely thinking about how to punish their opponents. Really, really weak stuff. Now, a big feature of the speech last night that a lot of people aren't really talking about, but it was a huge proportion. Proportionally, it was a huge part of the speech was when Trump was talking about tariffs. And we're getting mixed messages on tariffs. Are tariffs a negotiating tactic? Are tariffs just a sound economic policy to raise revenue? Is Trump really gonna levy 50% tariffs on Colombia? 25. No. Or is he gonna take them away the next day when Colombia acquiesces? Is he gonna levy big tariffs on Canada and Mexico? Is he gonna keep the tariffs on China? What's the deal? So he says he's gonna levy those tariffs on China or on Canada and Mexico, and then he says there's nothing that they can do to stop the tariffs. Then Howard Lutnick, his Commerce Secretary, comes out on television and says, actually, maybe the tariffs will disappear tomorrow. Maybe. Or at the very least, maybe he'll walk him back tomorrow. He's gonna come out today angry that Americans are still being killed. Now, both the Mexicans and the Canadians were on the phone with me all day today trying to show that they'll do better. And the President's listening, cuz, you know, he's very, very fair and very reasonable. So I think he's gonna work something out with them. It's not gonna be a pause, none of that pause stuff. But I think he's going to figure out, you do more and I'll meet You in the middle some way. And we're gonna probably be announcing that tomorrow. So somewhere in the middle will likely be the outcome. The president moving with the Canadians and Mexicans, but not all the way. So this is the big question to me, the interesting question, I was debating this a little bit last night with Ben on the backstage show. Is Ben very opposed to tariffs in principle? Now, Ben and Jeremy was saying this too. They're open to tariffs as a negotiating tool to get greater global trade, but they oppose tariffs as a matter of economics. And I pointed out, I said, you know, there actually is a principled economic argument for tariffs. I know these days everyone who's taken a seventh grade economics course and has watched like one Milton Friedman video thinks that they know everything about economics and there's no case for tariffs. But there's actually a long tradition in this country and in the Republican Party and just in global economics for tariffs. Abraham Lincoln famously said, give me a tariff, I'll give you the greatest nation on earth. So the question that exists is, is Trump using the tariffs to negotiate for better trade deals and open up global trade? Are the tariffs just instrumental to him for greater free trade? Or does he really believe in tariffs and does he really want those tariffs, whether or not he gets concessions from the trade partners so that we can reshore American manufacturing, so that we can rebuild America's industrial base so that we can reorder the economy of the United States to be more conducive to the kind of country that we had in the middle of the 20th century when things seemed to be going pretty well, when all things considered, America was pretty great and maybe we wanna make it great again. Which is it? Are the tariffs just, are they kind of a bluff or does he really believe in this? And I don't know the answer to that. I'm not a clairvoyant. I'm not reading Trump's mind. However, just wanna point out for any who doubt Trump's political skill, I can't believe anyone would doubt it. Now some people still say, oh, he's a dummy, oh, he doesn't know what he's doing. Oh, it's like, okay, hey, you get elected president on your first real go at it and then get elected to a non consecutive second term and then be historically and yeah, good luck. And then bring peace to the Middle east and yeah, good luck, you try it. I think he's pretty sophisticated. But my point on Trump's political sophistication is even I, I watch the guy pretty closely. Even I do not know if he's bluffing on the tariffs or if he really believes in them, because if he is bluffing, he is acting exactly as the kind of person who really believes in them. Even down to saying, we're going to have a new McKinley era. Okay? Even down to, we are gonna fundamentally, we'll get rid of the income tax because we're gonna make so much revenue on the tariffs. And that is the defining feature of Trump's foreign policy. The man is totally unpredictable, totally inscrutable. And if you are one of the people negotiating a trade deal right now with Trump, you have to believe that there is at least a 15, 20% chance that he just is dead set on the tariffs, and you got to do everything you can to head those off. It's like when Trump told Putin reportedly that if he invaded Ukraine, he'd bomb Moscow. And Putin might be thinking it's a 5% chance. He means that. But are you willing to take the risk? That is a great political skill. And he showed it. Trump showed it in spades last night. Today is woke Wednesday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Knowles K N W L E S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
