Michael Knowles (4:15)
This is a huge deal. Someone reacted to this news on social media, pointed out that Froot Loops are now just gonna have to be white loops. I guess this is actually gonna change our food. Cause in America we use a lot of food dyes which we've been told for decades now might be toxic, might be causing cancer and other diseases. And yet they've remained in our food. Bobby Kennedy comes in here after Trump is elected on the Healthy Again agenda and he says we're gonna get rid of a lot of these food dyes. And I don't really care about the food dyes. I care a lot about this story. I think this is a really important political story. But I don't actually care about the food dyes that much because I'm not a 25 to 35 year old white woman. So I go along with it. You know, let's get the seed oils out of the food and let's get the plastics out of our kitchen. And we need to get red dye 40. Is that the one that's bad? Red dye 40 and phthalates, are they lecithin is that. I don't know, whatever it is, whatever sweet little Elisa tells me about the food, I believe it. Whatever all the trad, crunchy zoomer millennial chicks say, I believe it. That's not that interesting to me because I'll also stuff my face with Twinkies. What I'm interested in is what this means for the political order, because with that little press conference yesterday, Bobby Kennedy has just provided definitive proof that this is not the Republican Party of your father or your grandfather. Republicans are cheering on a Kennedy, a Kennedy, a lifelong Democrat for regulating businesses. That's what this is. Republicans, the right wing, cool, populist Republicans, are cheering on massive new government regulation. And I'm not criticizing them for it. I'm cheering this on too. I think this probably is a good thing. I trust the science, I trust the Trump administration when it comes to regulating food. And it's probably better that we're not having all these dubious chemicals in our food. What I really love about this is that the Republican Party is no longer the party that the Democrats caricature. You know how the Democrats caricature the Republicans sometimes? We live up to the caricature. They say, you just want to end all regulation, you want to abolish the government. And then you have. The Republicans sometimes will say, yeah, we're the party of small government. We want to deregulate everything, baby. We need the free market to control everything. But that's not really what we believe. That's not what I believe. That's not what Republicans believe today. It's not what the President believes. It never made sense for the Republican Party to be the party of small government because we're a big country with a lot of people. You can't have small government in a country of 300 million plus people. What you can have is limited government. That is to say, a government that respects its proper limits and is strong and effective in the areas in which it is competent, in which it has authority, and a government which respects the limits that have been put on it by the people, by the Constitution, by the natural law. That's what we, we want limited government. We're going to have a big government. It's a big country. But the libs want that government to do all sorts of things that it shouldn't do. We want the government to do the things that it should do and not the things that it shouldn't do. Same thing when it comes to regulation. I'm for regulation. I don't want the Republican Party to be the party of no regulation. We do have a state, and the state is here for our own good. And the civil authority is supposed to conduce to the common good. I like some regulations. I just want them to be prudent regulations. I want them to be good regulations. The libs want all sorts of insane regulations that are really bad. Regulations that say that schools need to teach you about weird sex stuff and to hate whitey and Christianity. That's an example of a bad regulation. Okay. Regulations that tell me that I have to pay zillions of dollars in taxes to have a beautiful, delicious premium Mayflower cigar. That's a story I'm gonna try to get to in a little bit, too. Cause there's a related topic that the Trump administration should look at. I don't want stupid regulations. I want good regulate. Get the poison out of our food. That's a good regulation. And what that means politically for us, too, is that we now look like the reasonable ones. The Democrats are the party of opposing reasonable regulations. So now Democrats are the party of demanding that we have poisons in our food. I guess so. Now Democrats are the party of demanding that we outsource the political authority to corporations. Yeah, that has happened in my lifetime. When I grew up, I was told that the parties switched in the 1960s, and the exact timeline kept changing a little bit, but it was always that the parties switched at whatever point was most convenient for Democrats. And then one day all the Democrats said, you're Republicans now. And the Republicans said, you're Democrats now. And okay, that didn't seem really credible to me. But the parties are developing and they have switched in at least one important political respect. Democrats are now the party of corporate oligarchs and Republicans are the party of the people. Even the Democrats admit it when they say the Trump movement is populist. That's what you're saying. You're saying it's the party of the people. All right, fine by me. Now, what are the Democrats doing about it? How are they going to change their political fortunes? For that, we turn From RFK to RFK's wife's former TV husband, Larry David, who has a really incisive op ed out in the New York Times. Bill Maher just went to visit the White House. He had dinner with Trump. I don't know if they actually sat down for dinner. I don't know if he got the nice Big Mac special. But they had a lengthy meeting and Bill Maher came out afterward and he said, this dinner surprised me. Trump is really genial. In person. And he's not what you think he is if you only consume the media. And he had positive things to say about Trump. So Larry David comes out with this essay in the New York Times, My Dinner With Adolph. Do you get it? And then he goes on and he says, imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939, a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the old Chancellery with the world's most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I'd been a critic of him, but, you know, I found out he was really genial and he was kind of funny. And whatever goes on. Do you get it? Hey, do you get it? Larry David in the New York Times is saying that Trump is like Hitler. Do you get it? Wow. Wow, Larry, this is really making me think about President Trump in a new and interesting way. You've really shown me something that hadn't been presented to me before. Oh, it's just all so tedious. And Larry David is funny. He's funny. Seinfeld is funny. It's not as funny as people say it was, but it's funny. It's a good show. And Curb youb Enthusiasm is funny. Kind of hard to watch. You have to have a particular style of humor, but it's funny. It's a good show. This essay is not funny. And the reason that it is not funny is because it is so hackneyed, it is so painfully unoriginal, it is so profoundly predictable. To be funny, you have to subvert expectations. That is one of the keys to comedy. Incongruity, the subversion of your expectations, sometimes absurdity. And you don't get any of that. I mean, Larry David's essay is absurd, but he doesn't know it's absurd. And it's not supposed to be received as absurd. You're supposed to say, wow, Trump is Hitler. That doesn't land. Even the people who are responding positively to this op ed, it's just libs who are responding positively by saying, yeah, stick it to Bill Maher. It's the claps, not laugh style of comedy. No one's laughing at this. Really. It doesn't land. None of this lands for the libs. Trump and Bobby Kennedy and Elon Musk and the right wing coalition that Trump managed to assemble, they're all running laps around the Democrats right now. And the Democrats have no idea what to do about it. And you have people like the governor of this state that I find myself in right now, Gavin Newsom, who is flailing at the wind, trying to create a presidential campaign out of this political party which is lying in ruins. So what does he do? He starts a podcast and invites right wing podcast bros onto his podcast to try anything. That is how this new coalition has revolutionized the gop. Ain't your grandpa's gop. There's so much more to say. 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You go to tryarmora.com knowles or enter knowles K A W L E S at checkout. Get 15% off your first order. That is t r y a r m r a dot com knowles it's not just in America that you're seeing the left collapsing. Keir Starmer, extremely liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Extremely liberal prime minister. He was in an interview with Konstantin Kislen and he made the argument that you don't have to be English to be English. He said that a person could be from Timbuktu, could be black as the Congo, you know, the heart of darkness, and could be, I don't know, from Tahiti, and could could arrive in the uk, get his citizenship and instantly become an Englishman, more English than Winston Churchill. This is the kind of liberal PM we're talking about here. And yet Keir Starmer just came out and he said that he no longer believes that trans women are women. This after the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Equality act gender and sexual law that was passed in the UK some years ago does not mean that trans women, quote, unquote, are women that defines sex as biological, innate, immutable. So the Prime Minister said that the decision answered the question about sex and gender. And then Downing street had to later confirm and say, no, the Supreme Court judgment has made clear that when looking at the Equality Act, a woman is a biological woman. That is set out clearly by the court judgment. What this means is that liberals throughout the west have concluded that the trans thing is a losing issue. And when I spoke at CPAC a couple years ago and I said transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely for everyone's good, transgenderism doesn't help anyone. It's totally absurd. It's not grounded in reality that is now happening in real time. Transgenderism is being eradicated from public life entirely. Not even just in America, also in the uk. Not just the conservatives pushing it, even the liberals concluding it the most immediate cause. I don't want to take too much credit for that happening. You could give a lot of credit to Matt Walsh, obviously, with what is a woman really changing the conversation? You could give a lot of credit to many other conservatives who have been strong on the transgender issue. You could. You could give a lot of credit to radical feminists who have been talking about this issue for a long time too. It's not even just people who would call themselves on the right, it's even people who would consider themselves more on the far part of the left. But the most immediate cause of this shift on transgenderism and the broader surrender of the Western left, it's Trump's election. And specifically it's Trump's election by the popular vote or with the popular vote. Cuz the popular vote doesn't decide the election. But it's politically really, really significant. That was it. All sorts of cultural causes there. That was it. That was the shift. It's a loser. That issue's done. Now the left has to move on to something else. But what are they gonna move on to? What's their issue? They don't seem to have much, so they keep just trying to nip at Trump's heels. They keep trying to do whatever. They try to do whatever they can to stick a stick in the spokes of the Trump bicycle. How many metaphors can I mix here? I don't know, but they're not really succeeding. So the latest move, this is from the Washington Post, one of the most swampy establishment papers out there historically, is to try to take down Pete Hegseth as the Defense secretary. Headline, Pete Hegseth, isolated and Defiant, has Trump's backing for now. Because the White House keeps going out and saying, no, no, we're not firing Hegseth. We support Hegseth. They've been saying this since the confirmation hearings. And so the liberal media can't just Say, yeah, Trump supports Hegseth. He's going to be the Secretary of Defense. They have to say, well, okay, he has Trump's support for now, but he's isolated and defiant and I hate him and he's terrible and I wish he could be banned to St. Helena, but I think it's all pretty silly. This is nothing new. They're gonna pretend that there's this new scandal, which is that Pete Hegseth used telegram to talk about government work like every single person in politics of both parties does. But Pete Hegseth, he did it in a group chat where there was a liberal journalist added to it. And even though Pete Hegseth isn't the guy who added the liberal journalist to the chat, it was actually some other Trump administration official. Pete needs to resign. Why? Well, cause Pete talked about his very successful military operation. Wait, what did you just say? Well, yeah, Pete talked about the military operation. Now before that, what did you. Oh, the really successful military operation he carried out against the Houthi. He mentioned that in an encrypted chat and then news of that got out a little bit later and obviously after the Houthis were bombed. And why is he supposed to resign over cuz some other guy added a liberal journalist? Hold on, I'm scratching my head here. Well, he just needs to resign. Why? Well, because. Weren't you just saying a few months ago that he had to resign because he's an alcoholic? A claim that you made without any evidence whatsoever? Like not one scintilla of evidence that Pete Hegseth has a drinking problem. You had many people come out like me, actually. Coincidentally, I personally attested to. It's not like I was on air with Pete Hegseth every day, but I was on air with Pete Hegseth many mornings. Very, very early in the morning, remote and in person, in studio in New York, when Pete was doing that morning show at Fox 6am, he didn't look bloodshot eyed to me. He didn't look hungover to me. In fact, he had more energy than just about anybody in the building. So they made up the alcoholic thing and they said, well, no, he's gotta resign cuz he dated a lot of women. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, man, Democrats really wanna. The party of Bill Clinton really wants to bring up lady problems. I don't think you'd want to do that. So what is it about? Some people are concluding they want Pete Hegseth to resign because his ideology is too disruptive to the Washington establishment. Pete's great. He's a strong conservative, but I actually don't even think it's that. I don't think that Pete's ideological views are all that out of step with just, I don't know, mainstream kind of views. Certainly not out of step with mainstream conservative points of view. He's a very mainstream figure. Got a lot of qualifications. Graduate of Princeton and Harvard, which used to be considered a good thing. These days I guess it's more suspect, but the libs like it. Princeton, Harvard, served in the military honorably. Articulate, sharp guy. I don't know, seems like. Seems like he's got a lot of qualifications. I think the libs are going after Pete Hegseth so hard because they think he's the easiest one to pick off. They think that because they can portray him as just a pretty face on TV that he'll be the easiest one to pick off. What this is really all about is Trump, though. They just hate Trump. If they felt that Tulsi was more vulnerable than Pete Hegseth, they'd be going after Tulsi. If they felt that, I don't know, Stephen Miller were more vulnerable than Pete Hegseth, they'd be going after Milk. They're just trying to get a scalp and thus far Trump hasn't given them a scalp and I suspect he's not going to give him Pete Hegseth's scalp anytime soon. There's so much more to say first though. Tex Knowles KWLAS to 989898 tariffs have thrown the global economy into chaos. Potential widespread inflation tied to massive supply chain disruptions is weighing heavily on all of us. There's a silver lining and a gold lining. By the way, President Trump specifically exempted gold and silver bullion from these sweeping tariffs. While these new policies are triggering significant financial chaos and uncertainty, the administration preserved your ability to diversify into precious metals. If you're concerned about your savings, I encourage you to have a free consultation with a Birchgold precious metals specialist. The first step is to text Knowles KNLES to 989898 Receive your free no obligation info kit on gold. Learn how to hold gold and silver in a tax sheltered account. Birchgold will help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a gold IRA with no money out of pocket. Is it time for you finally to diversify with an A rating? With a Better Business Bureau, thousands of thankful customers. Birch Gold can help you diversify your savings through gold investments. Just Tex Knowles kwlas to the number 9898 98. You know, I have a fair bit of gold in my portfolio and I've been very happy about that. I've been very happy about that generally, but especially over the last few years. Text Knowles to 989898 Claim your free info kit right now. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has told investors in a closed door meeting arranged I think by JP Morgan that he thinks that there will soon be a de escalation in the trade war between the US And China. He says there will be a de escalation, according to reports in cnbc. It will be in the very near future, he thinks no one believes the current status quo is sustainable, according to reporting. And despite the US levying a 145% tariff on China, China retaliating with a 125% tariff on the US Besant reportedly said the goal of Trump's trade policy is not to decouple from China. So if all of that is true, if the goal is not to decouple, that means that the priority in the trade war, the priority for all the tariffs and Liberation Day, is not to reshore American jobs and it's not to grab a lot of revenue from trade from the tariffs that potentially, who knows, could be used to get rid of the income tax or something. If these comments are true, what that means is that the priority in the trade war is to gain leverage, get better trade deals and sell more American stuff overseas, which could have some effect in bringing back American manufacturing. Not as much as if you say we're not importing stuff anymore so you better make it here. That's a much more aggressive way that could succeed, could fail. You'll get more manufacturing jobs if we can sell more of our stuff overseas and we've got a more more of a competitive edge in getting into those markets. That's true, but it means that that's not the priority. Certainly the priority wouldn't be the revenue from the tariffs. It means that as many fairly old school conservatives have been saying for a while, Trump is he's just trying to get better trade deals. He's just trying to stop the United States from being taken advantage of. But he does want to sell more. He's a businessman. He wants to make more, he wants to sell more, he wants us to get more money. He thinks the business of America is business and the businessman probably knows his business best, to quote Calvin Coolidge. Which means Trump is a moderate. That's what it means. And this is what the libs can't stand. This is what they don't get. It's what the Trump Coalition understands. That's how Trump was able to pull people from the center left. That's how people. Trump was able to pull demographics that previously were not voting Republican. That's how Trump has multiple Democrat presidential candidates in his administration. He is a moderate, not in the squishy, give up, wimpy kind of way that we've come to associate that word in Republican politics, but moderate in I think, an Aristotelian way, moderation as being a virtue. Trump is a moderate in that. Trying to get a better trade deal with China so that we can have more trade but on better terms has been the standard GOP position for decades. At this point, every GOP candidate running for president has said, China needs to stop manipulating its currencies. China needs to stop dumping steel and subsidizing its various industries. China needs to stop doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then they don't. China needs to stop stealing our intellectual property. China needs to stop this. China needs to stop. We gotta get tough on trade with China. It's just that none of them have done anything about it. We basically just rolled over when Clinton brought China into the World Trade Organization and Trump is just doing something about it. So much of the Trump administration is just Trump doing things that GOP politicians have been promising to do for decades. And the fact that Trump actually fulfills those promises makes his presidency seem, and actually be, I suppose, transformative for the Republican Party and for the country. But you shouldn't call them a radical. In many, if not always, on immigration, on some parts of trade, in some ways, Trump is changing our trade view or restoring it to a century old trade view, but in many ways, on trade, many ways. On foreign policy, in most respects, I would say Trump is just keeping the promises that past Republicans failed to keep. And that is refreshing from my point of view, but it can seem shocking and transformative from many other people's point of view. One minor point I want to bring up, it's a major point for me when it comes to these trade policies. I have an inside view on only one industry, and that is the cigar industry. Because I'm an owner of Mayflower Cigars. I'm the founder of this boutique cigar company. And even though it's a very large cigar company, thanks to all of you who smoke Mayflower cigars. But it's still a relatively new, relatively boutique company. And cigar tobacco generally comes from Latin America, sometimes from Africa, sometimes from the South Pacific, sometimes from Connecticut and Pennsylvania as Mayflower is incorporating into maybe some new blends that we'll talk about later. But the vast majority, virtually all the premium cigar tobacco comes from Latin America. And there are these massive tariffs right now, relatively massive compared to other Latin American countries. On Nicaragua, which has become the cigar capital of the world after the communists took over Cuba and messed up that cigar industry. And it's where a lot of American investment has gone. It's where a lot of American cigars come from. And I think the tariffs are 18 or 19% right now. I think that while Trump is creating exemptions, I'm not just asking this because it helps Mayflower cigars. Looking at it more from a political angle, premium cigar consumers, they're basically all Trump supporters. Not all 80% are Trump supporters. The premium cigar industry, the actual manufacturers who are getting walloped not only with these tariffs, but with decades of horrible, burdensome regulation going back to Obama with S Chip hiking up all these taxes, all these different shakedowns to bring cigars into the country. The cigar manufacturers are 90%, 95%, probably Trump supporters. This is a small industry. It's an artisanal industry. Handmade product, accessible, luxury good. It seems to me, while we're carving out all of these exemptions on the tariffs, if we're not going to onshore cigar making, because that's not possible in the United States, it's certainly not possible at scale, but it's just not. You can't do it. It's just not how cigars work. If we're not going to get a lot of revenue, really from the tariffs as a matter of our US Budget, and if we want to maybe be a little nicer to our friends and a little tougher on some of our political opponents, it seems to me a great carve out for the Trump administration. Anyone listening right now in the admin? A great little carve out would be for all of the patriotic Americans who have been oppressed for too long, who work in the premium cigar industry, and for all of the premium cigar smokers. Just like the image that you have of the conservative man might be worth. We're talking real politics here, folks. Friends and enemies. Okay, Come on, come on. All right, enough on that. Speaking of incense, there's an amazing report out on the Pope's final hours. And I know people have strong feelings about Pope Francis. I'm a conservative. I get it. I love the traditional Latin mass, which was restricted under Pope Francis. I understand there's a little confusion sometimes about the pontificate, but this is really amazing. According to the reporting, Pope Francis thanked his personal nurse for encouraging him to go out. His last real action on earth was to go out and greet crowds in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican on Easter Sunday. 88 years old, he had been in ill health for a very, very long time. And against the wishes of many doctors, he went out, had the urbi et orbi, you know, gave an Easter blessing to the crowds, came back home and died. That's a good way to go. Even apparently when he got back in in the early hours of the next morning, the first signs of illness reappeared more than an hour later. He waved the Pope, waved to his personal nurse who had encouraged him to go out to the crowd, sort of waved in a gesture of farewell, fell into a coma, was dead about two hours later. This is what we call a good death. Whatever you think of the guy's pontificate, this is a strong way to go, and it's a good death. We now, in modernity, in our liberal society, we think a good death is a death that takes you totally by surprise. You don't have to think about it, you don't need to worry. Just someone comes up with a two by four and just clocks you in the head and takes you out without you even seeing it. You know, Lenny going to George, going to Lenny and putting the pistol behind his head and just saying, think of the bunny rabbits, George. That's the good death. That is not what a good death has been understood to be traditionally in our civilization. A good death is one that you know is coming so you can prepare your soul for it, so you can make peace with your maker, confess your sins, receive the sacrament viaticum to take it with you, and then go on to your eternal reward. That's what you want to do. You don't want to be caught unawares. You don't want to be caught outside of a state of grace. So the Pope obviously was well prepared for this. And then he gave out the last of his life to bless people as he's the supreme shepherd of the Church, earthly shepherd of the Church that has a cognizance of what life is for. This is what I love so much about this final recollection here of the Pope's last day. He knew, look, he could have listened to doctor's orders and stayed at home and rested and not given out the Easter blessing and on the holiest day of the Christian year. And maybe he would have lived a few more days or a few more weeks, or maybe even a few more months. But what's life for? Are you just living to Stuff your face and drink good wine and, I don't know, amuse yourself, well, then you're going to fail. You're going to fail at that because one day the food's going to run out, the wine's going to run out, the amusements are going to run out. And if they don't run out, you're going to run out. And you're not going to get to do that anymore. You're going to fail. You're setting. If your view of life is that life is for receiving as much pleasure as possible for as long as possible, if your view of life is that you want to minimize suffering, you want to get rid of suffering and pain, you're going to fail because eventually all of that is going to find you. In order for you to have a successful life, your life has to be about something more. And there is a goal to life and a purpose to it. And we can know what that is. And that is to know God, to serve him on Earth and to enjoy him forever in heaven. If that's your goal, you can succeed. If you recognize that you have particular purposes here on earth and they all tend toward your grand purpose, then what the Pope did, I don't care what you think of his pontificate. I know it was a rough one in many respects. Beautiful way to go. It's a model. That's a model for how you should shuffle off this mortal coil. Now, speaking of religion, if you're a fan of my longer form series, Michael, and do not miss the fastest growing and most popular episode yet, the Face of God, Michael and the Shroud of Turin. In this episode. I also want to thank people who've written in. A lot of friends have said that they really liked the episode. I'm glad we could get it out in time for Good Friday. Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday. Now we're in Easter week, so go check it out. I sat down with scholar Dr. Jeremiah Johnston to explore one of the most mysterious and controversial artifacts, relics in Christian history. The Shroud of Turin. Is it the burial cloth of Christ or is it something else entirely? Check out this teaser.