Michael Knowles (15:45)
There you have it. Okay, you heard it. Michael Steele, I know he's sort of a Republican, but he's really a huge lib. And Simone Sanders, big Republican operative, is saying, dems, you are not taking back the House if you keep this up. Those stupid little signs that are now just memed all over Rashida Tlaib, saying all sorts of crazy things because they set themselves up to become a meme, just a farce. You got Trump coming out, resolving multiple world conflicts, renaming, whether you agree with it or not, renaming bodies of water, making moves to retake the Panama Canal, add new territories to the United States, like Greenland, which the US State Department has been trying to acquire for 150 years, changing the economic order in line with his campaign promises, in line with what people want. He's doing stuff. And these feckless, ridiculous Democrats are sitting with their little sourpuss on their face, holding up bingo signs. It doesn't look good. It was so fine by me. Again, I'm not upset about it. Keep it coming, guys. The Republican reign will last a thousand years if you guys keep it up. But some people, some Dems, I think, are realizing something has to change now. Speaking of learning, President Trump, it was reported yesterday as I was flying up to New York, that Trump already had a draft of an executive order to abolish the Department of Education, which is fabulous news. Republicans have been campaigning on abolishing the Department of Education since the Reagan administration. Don't forget, the Department of Education was only founded at the end of the Carter administration. I think it was 1979. So it was a very live issue in 1980 and again in 1984 and then all these Republicans are campaigning on abolishing the Department of Education and none of them do it. And then Trump decides he's actually going to do it and everyone loses their minds. Some have pointed out that if you really want to abolish it for good, probably you have to get Congress involved in that. The legislature has to make it more permanent. But Trump could do a lot to bring it to the brink of extinction. So Wall Street Journal first reports this, CBS News confirms it. This has been in the works for a little while. What, what does the Department of Education do? Because you know what the libs are going to say? The Republicans are attacking education and they're attacking public education and they're going to destroy the ability of young Americans to learn and to better themselves. So what does it do? I think people, they just hear Department of Education, they think it educates people. It does not do that. Department of Education does three things. Basically the Department of Education supports college loans and financial aid. In other words, the Department of Education encourages this blank check system to American universities that has caused the cost of tuition to soar from single digit thousands of dollars to now 60, 70, $80,000 a year, miring students in hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that they probably won't be able to rep. The quality of the education has become so bad and because certain universities without any scruples whatsoever will just admit basically anyone, even if those students have no business being at a university and then they lower the standards and then the certificate, the diploma means nothing. So that's one thing they do that's bad. Okay, it's good for some people to go to some colleges in some circumstances. I'm not an anti university conservative, far from it. I'm a great defender of the true mission of real universities. But I think even people who are pretty liberal would recognize the current American university system is completely insane. And a lot of it is driven by the Department of Education. So right there as one red flag. Next, the Department of Education collects data and disseminates data that pertain to schools. Okay? We have plenty of think tanks and institutions that can do that. And many of the data that have been collected over the years, in fact all the data consistently have shown that since the founding of the Department of Education, American test scores have declined. You'd think the one thing that the Department of Education would be doing is improving test scores. Actually the opposite has occurred. So there you go. Second red flag. Third thing the Department of Education does, it enforces non discrimination policies. And what do we mean by non discrimination policies. Are we talking about Klansmen burning a cross at your local high school? No, I don't think that really happens. That's not what the Department of Education deals with. When they say non discrimination policy, they mean they force schools through Dear Colleague letters, force schools through all sorts of regulations to promote radical leftist ideology. They're talking about LGBTQ being taught in schools K through 12 and beyond, the kind of policies that were roundly rejected toward the very, very top of people's minds at the ballot box in November. The Department of Education does very, very little good, if any good at all. Do you know how many people work for the Department of Education? 4,400. 4,400 people. $268 billion budget. That's actually a significant chunk of the U.S. federal budget. It's not just a little nothing department where if you eliminate it, you don't save any money. That's a lot of money. You could fund Ukraine for another five years, 10 years with that kind of money. No, that's pretty serious. The case for dramatically reducing or just outright abolishing the Department of Ed seems pretty much watertight. Can you make me an argument other than you're a leftist and you want to promote transgenderism in kindergarten or whatever, but can you give me a common sense argument that would actually appeal to people for keeping the Department of Education around or keeping it as it is? I can't think of one. People are learning. They're learning despite the Department of Education. And Europe is learning too. Major, major news out of Europe and Ukraine and Russia. Before we get to Romania with the Tate brothers, there's so much more to say. First, though, go to donewithdebt.com do you wish you could have jumped into last year's stock market boom? I get it. When credit card bills and debt are piling up, investing feels impossible. But here's some good news. Done with Debt has your back. 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Go to donewithdebt.com donewithdebt.com the Europeans are learning a little bit. After President Trump's joint session address, Emmanuel Macron, the leader of France, he came out and he said, europe cannot remain spectators. Now, before I get into this story, I'm going to be a spectator of my favorite comment of the day from yesterday. That is from grahamsmith7892 who says, I love how tempted I was to be anxious when I heard that China had threatened us with war. But once I heard the Michael Knowles theme song, all those thoughts went away. I'm so glad to hear that. So glad to hear that I could assuage your fears. I try to. Padre Pio said, pray, hope and don't worry. Macron Speaking of war global affairs, Macron said Europe cannot remain spectators to the war in Ukraine, that Europe needs drastic rearmament. He said he wants to believe that the United States will stay by our side, but we have to be ready. If that is not the case, he said the future of Europe does not have to be decided in Washington or Moscow. The threat is returning to the east and the innocence of the last 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall is now over. So he's saying, look, Trump might not be all in on Ukraine and so we need to protect ourselves. We need to pay more for our own security. We're not just going to rely on Daddy America. That's what Trump has been asking for for eight years. So Macron saying, okay, Trump, I'll give you exactly what you want. Now what is Russia saying? Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov is so furious at Europe potentially rearming, rearming, paying more for their security, getting more involved in Ukraine. Russia just came out and said that Macron was extremely confrontational, looking for the continuation of war. It can hardly be perceived as a speech by a peace minded head of state. France is already ready to use its nuclear weapons for security and so on. This is already such nuclear rhetoric. This is a claim to nuclear leadership in China, Europe. So it is very, very confrontational. Suck your blood. Russia furious. Well, hold on, hold on. I was told that Europe was not going to do what Trump said couldn't do what Trump said was going to be furious. We were Abandoning our ally. And Russia loved the notion that Europe was going to rearm. Russia loved that America wasn't going to be the daddy to Europe anymore. But that's not actually what we're seeing is the opposite. Trump says, europe, help to defend yourselves. Macron says, okay, Trump will do that. Russia says, ugh, that's not what we want. Stop that. This is terrible rhetoric. This is nuclear rhetoric. The chairman of the International Affairs Committee in the lower house of the Russian Parliament, Leonidasky, said that Macron is trying new Napoleonic armor on Versailles. Comparing Macron to Napoleon. They're both somewhat petite, so I guess there's that. Well, actually Napoleon isn't French. He was Corsican. But in any case, Foreign Minister of Russia Sergei Lavrov said, unlike his predecessors who also sought to fight with Russia, Napoleon, Hitler. Lavrov, the Russian Foreign minister, is comparing Macron to Hitler. Mr. Macron does not act very diplomatically. He's saying that Hitler and Napoleon were more diplomatic than Macron. Russia's furious over this. Trump gets exactly what he wants. Russia making quite clear this is not what Russia wants. The democrats who accuse Trump of being a Russian stooge look like even bigger fools than they did before. What is this? What you're going to hear from the foreign policy genius experts is the sober minded ones, the stupid ones, are going to say Trump's a stooge for Russia. Again, I don't see how you read these comments and come to that conclusion. But the sober minded ones are going to say, well, this is the dismantling of the American Empire. Since World War II, we've been the hegemon in the world. But certainly even during the Cold War, we were the leader of the West. And so the European nations were really just US Vassal states. And it's good that we paid for their defense. We don't want them having their own militaries because we get to call the shots now. Okay, I get it. But I don't know that this is really the dismantling of the American Empire. I think the American empire was headed for a crash. If we tried to keep things up, if we tried to remain overextended, if we wanted to continue on our course of debt. Now it's what, 125% debt to GDP? If we wanted to continue to import the entire third world, if we wanted to continue to send our manufacturing even over to our enemies, yeah, then I think empires fall. That is a persistent rule of history. I think what you're seeing here, what Trump is doing is not a Dismantling of the American empire. I don't think it's that. I also don't think it's business as usual. I think it actually is. I think it's business. I think that's the best way to understand this. If you have a business, if you've ever worked in a business, if you've ever owned a small business, you know, sometimes you have really high times, boom times, and sometimes the business starts to fail. And if you can see the business starting to fail, if you can see that you're gonna have a cash problem, say in six months or 12 months, then you need to start making decisions now that will allow you to get by those really bad times. You need to plan ahead. You need to sometimes pull in some of your resources, battle down the hatches, prepare for difficult times so that you can maintain your strength into the future. Because if you don't do anything until the very end, until the moment that you have to, the whole thing is going to come crumbling down. And I think it's no coincidence that Donald Trump is a businessman. And I think he is looking at the American empire like a failing business, because it is like a failing business. And he's saying, okay, look, I think America's greatest days are ahead. I think we're headed for a golden age. I don't want to disassemble this American empire, but we need to restructure this thing, okay? And if we're really, we gotta really restructure it. We need to get another genius businessman in and start restructuring how the government works and some domestic policy. And then we got to look overseas at our commitments. We're going to maintain our leadership. We're even going to talk about expanding. We're going to talk about taking back the Panama Canal and taking on Canada, America's evil top hat, and Greenland. We're going to project strength and we're going to plan for growth, but we are going to get our resources in line. And we're going to recognize that if we put all of our chips on, say, Ukraine or something like that, we might not be prepared for other conflicts that could be more significant, say with China or someone else. Just a little bit of prudence, little bit of that business acumen, when you actually have to deal with the bottom line. 125% debt to GDP. Our politicians haven't thought about serious bottom lines or consequences in a while. Okay? Speaking of international controversies, the Tate brothers. I talked about this yesterday a little bit, but I was cut off. The Tate brothers, who are the Tate Brothers, Just a quick little whirlwind. They're these guys, Andrew and Tristan. They're very famous. They became famous because they give young men advice on the Internet and they work out and smoke cigars. I like smoking cigars. They get some things right, but they also say things that are very offensive about women. And they don't promote. They're not leftists. They promote a kind of right wing view, but they're not conservative really in any way. They're not married. They have been pimps. They're accused in Romania of sex trafficking, of pimping underage girls and running a criminal organization. And they've admitted on camera to pimping to. I think Andrew was filmed or filmed himself beating a young woman, maybe even underage, on camera. Now, the defense was, well, it was consensual, but for a conservative, I don't care if it's consensual. You don't beat a woman, especially not a really young one. Good grief. That's completely indefensible. And so anyway, there are all these cases in Romania. Then they go to Florida. Ron DeSantis and the attorney general in Florida say, we're going to open an investigation into the Tates for sex trafficking, for pimping, for whatever they've been doing. Okay, so the Tates previously said, we're going to stay in America for a long time. It was a big coup when they were able to leave Romania, come to the States. Then they just announced yesterday, actually, we're going back to Romania. This is just a little vacation. We're going back to Romania before Desantis tries to lock us up. The Tates are arguing, and the Tate's defenders are arguing that people are only trying to prosecute them because of the right wing things they say or because they have unfashionable international views. For instance, they're opposed to the state of Israel. So maybe that's it. Maybe it's just a political lobby that's trying to get them. Okay, whatever. I haven't followed them all that closely. However, I guess even beyond the legal questions, I guess that'll all be sorted out. They'll be prosecuted in Romania or the UK or Florida. But my question is this. For the people who are defending the Tates and for the Tates themselves, putting aside the criminal questions, and if they committed crimes, they'll serve their time, one hopes. Have they ever expressed remorse and repentance for those things that they've done? Crimes according to statutes or just immoral actions? I don't know. I'M asking this sincerely. I don't know. I don't follow their content. Have they ever. I know Andrew Tate identifies as a Muslim now, okay, have they expressed remorse for womanizing, for promoting pornography, for beating women on camera, for. I'm not even saying what they've done is a crime necessarily. Prosecutors are saying. I'm not saying that. I don't know, but just those are very bad things. Now, I'm all for people repenting, turning their lives around. I'm really for it. I don't think anyone is too far gone. But I guess my question for them and for anyone defending them is have they repented? Even if they have, they might still have to pay their debt to society in a criminal context. But I just need to know, from a cultural perspective, have they expressed regret and remorse and repentance? Have they said that's bad? Actually, it's good to get married and to have children within wedlock, as is knowable from the natural law. And it's good to engage in virtue, not just physical virtue, which they obviously have some physical virtues and excellence and athleticism, but moral virtues. And have they done any of that? That's what I want to know. And I can't get a straight answer from people. I haven't seen evidence that they have. But if they have, great, show me the evidence. Because if not, then what are people defending? I don't get it.