Michael Knowles (16:53)
This for people who doubt Trump's dexterity when it comes to negotiating. Some people say, oh, it's all just a TV show. It was all based on that show the Apprentice. He's not really a great deal maker. I don't know. I think the past four or five days would suggest otherwise. Trump is willing to carry through on threats to bring people to the negotiating table. For some, for the real hardcore war hawks, the negotiations were always just a pretext for regime change. That was always a facade covering up the true aims, which was regime change. I don't think that's true of Trump. I think Trump really wants a deal. And Trump is willing to kill people who are threatening security and America's interests if they're not gonna make a deal. This is what Trump said yesterday or two days ago. He said, I want a deal. Iran couldn't get to a deal. Now all the people I was negotiating with are dead. Is anyone else gonna come make a deal with me? Cuz I'd like to make a deal. I don't want more people to die. But I'm quite serious, as he was so consistent about for 10 years now. I'm not gonna let Iran get a bomb. Iran needs to prove to me that they're not going to develop a bomb. They at least need to agree to it in principle. And if they're not going to, I'm gonna kill all of you. Because this is a priority for me, Donald Trump, and I'm the guy who just got elected with the popular vote. So deal with it. Now, one last point on ideology in the Iran conflict before we move on to the really important issues like Pride Night at Dodger Stadium. I think ideologues on both sides of the Iran conflict are vastly overestimating the effect of America's potential, even minor involvement in the conflict on Trump's approval ratings. I know this is the least popular position among the political nerds and fanatics on Twitter, but I'm right, which is there are people saying if Donald Trump doesn't send in the entire US military right now, this will destroy his legacy because he won't have stopped Iran's weapon and whatever. He had the chance to overthrow the Mallahs. Yeah, okay, that's one side. Then the other side says if Donald Trump in any way is Commander in Chief, directs the US military against America's enemies in the Middle East. If Donald Trump does that, he'll have destroyed the whole MAGA coalition. He'll have betrayed every promise, every promise he ever made. Give me a break. He can't get us involved in the Middle East. This is the guy who dropped the MOAB in his first term. This is the guy who took out Iran's top general in his first term. This is the guy that destroyed ISIS in his first term. You remember him? This is the guy who campaigned on I don't wanna get us bogged down in the Middle east, but I'm not gonna let Iran have a bomb. And, and the mullahs can keep ruling, but they can't cross America's red lines. It's that guy. These ideologues on both sides continue to misunderstand Trump and MAGA because they think that Trump and his movement, and it's his movement, it's not anyone else's movement. It's not the movement of his strategists, it's not the movement of his staff. It's not the movement of his pundits and activists and supporters. It's his movement. He did it. And everyone wants to claim credit for it, but he did it. No one else. Trump is not some egghead political theorist. He's just not that. Which is a good thing. Now you're gonna have ideologues on both sides say, well, he needs to be more ideologically pure. No, he doesn't. Nerds, shut up. He doesn't. The brilliance of the coalition, the only way he could assemble that coalition is by not being ideologically pure, by being more practical and prudential, by recognizing that politics is the art of inclusion, the art of the possible, the art of the second best. All the things that we've heard from American politicians in recent years, going all the way back to Clausewitz, okay? He's able to assemble this coalition of people who have some practical interests in common through appeals to important issues and through the magnetism of his own charisma. He was able to do that, and that's what he's doing now. If you want to understand Trump's agenda, focus less on nerdy political ideologies and theories and focus more on what he said on the Joe Rogan show, which is that the guy weaves. He just kind of weaves. One day you think he's the biggest hawk in the world. One day you think he's the biggest isolationist in the world. That's how he operates. Okay? If that's too much for you, go pick a cookie cutter ideological candidate and lose elections, because that's not what Trump does. I have many more pearls of wisdom to pass along to you that you can string together in a necklace and wear to a black tie gathering. But first, you need to go to goodranchers.com use promo code knowles. Here's something that will blow your mind. Over 85% of the grass fed beef in your grocery store is imported from overseas, where they got completely different safety standards than we do here in America. That's one reason to switch to good ranchers. You know the real reason, though? Yes. I love that it supports American ranchers. Yeah, I don't want all the imported beef with the Weird safety standards. Yeah, I love that the prices cannot be beat from good ranchers. But the main reason why is because it is the best beef you are going to get. It is so freaking good. And the chicken is great. The chicken nuggets are exceptional. The best probably I've ever had. People are grilling all the time in the summer. It's just the greatest. And right now, when you use code Knolls K N O W L E S good ranchers.com you'll save an extra 40 bucks on your order. You can get that beef that is born, raised and harvested right here in the usa. No antibiotics ever. No hormones added, no seed oils. And when you go to goodranchers.com right now you will get 40 bucks off and free meat for life. Using code Knowles K W L E S Good Ranchers. American meat delivered. Moving on to really, really important issues. LA Dodgers just had Pride Night. Now, I'm not a huge Dodger fan, you know, I'm a Yankee fan. And the Dodgers and the Yankees have had something of a rivalry going back many decades now. In fact, my grandfather was at the World Series game where Don Larson pitched the perfect game against the Dodgers. The only perfect game ever in World Series history. Anyway, I wasn't surprised that the LA Dodgers had a pride night and they put the rainbow flag on their hat. It's the LA symbol. And then LA was in rainbow colors, not just the regular blue and white. So, you know, not surprised. However, got to give credit to a Dodger here, Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw wore the hat. Look, he's a member of the team. He's got to wear the hat. If you're on a team, you gotta. Sometimes you gotta go along with the team and you gotta follow the leader, even if that contradicts your own individual will. I know we're all radical individualists these days and we're fair weather fans and we only go along with the team so long as they agree with us on every single thing. But then the minute that they in any way disagree, we all become radical individuals. Well, Kershaw, look, he's gonna go along with his team, but he had a little twist. He put on the gay hat, but then right next to the rainbow he wrote Genesis 9, 12, 16. I love it. I love it so much. That is, he said, I'll wear the rainbow, but I'm going to wear the rainbow to symbolize its original meaning. The meaning that we have understood it to have for our whole civilization. The meaning that it ought to reflect and that At a deep level, it does reflect, namely, that God will never again destroy the world in a flood. That's what, in the book of Genesis, that's when God shows the rainbow. That's what it's supposed to symbolize, that God will never again destroy the world in a flood because the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. Now, in modern days, the rainbow is supposed to symbolize the imagination of man's heart being evil from his youth and that being a good thing. Oh, isn't this great? It's just supposed to symbolize vice and self indulgence. But Kershaw says, no, no, I'll wear the symbol, but I'm gonna wear it to mean what it really symbolizes. It's a great way to handle Pride Night. This is a time to really focus in, in all of our political issues on how to balance competing goods, the goods of security on the one hand, the goods of freedom and independence on the other. That's what we're dealing with in some of these global conflicts. Not just Iran, but also Ukraine and elsewhere. With Pride Night, Kershaw's got to deal with the good of being part of the team, the strength of the team, but also the good of the moral order. Not violating the moral order just to go along with the mob, which would be lunacy. How do you do that? He found a way to do it. I love it. That's very practical, very prudential. Probably the Dodgers, the LGBT Gestapo running the LA Dodgers, they probably wish he hadn't worn the hat at all because it calls more attention to the inanity and viciousness of the Pride symbols. Can you just not. No, sorry. You asked me to wear the rainbow, I'm wearing the rainbow. You know what it means? Goes back to the Book of Genesis. Now, let me tell you about the Book of Leviticus. No, no, don't tell us about the Book of Leviticus, please. Oh, yeah, it's about chapter 18. You know that one? No, no, no, please. Speaking of June festivals, the New York Times. I meant to get to this yesterday, but I have to get to it before we move too far past Father's Day. The New York Times celebrated Father's Day in the most typical way by running a column from some angry liberal woman attacking her father. I'm not gonna read you the whole thing, though. It's a short little essay, and it's worth reading because of how awful it is. Here's just a little bit. This is how it opens. What my dad gave me. My father gave me his freckly skin. And I like him. I had melanoma and. Oh, and like him. Not I like him. She doesn't like him. And like him, I had melanoma. He gave me asthma and protruding elbows that are identical to his. He gave me reddish hair that's kindly reluctant to go gray. He gave me an aversion to drinking by not having one himself. Hate you, dad. You're such an alcoholic. I hate you. You're drunk. He did not give me the seat next to him at the San Diego Chargers game. He had season tickets when I was a kid, but I only found out about it years later. He didn't even take me to that game that I didn't want to go to. He gave me the ability to talk to anyone because I couldn't stand the awkward silences he provided. He gave me really nice houses to grow up in. But we moved a lot for his work, and things never seemed to be going well. So. He gave me financial anxiety, too. Yeah, I mean, he provided me all the material things I needed, and he worked really hard, but, you know, he's still a loser. And he wasn't that good at his job, even though, I mean, he did well in his career, but he's a loser. He's a complete loser. I hate him. And I had financial anxiety because, you know, we were rich, but not as rich as I wanted to be. He gave me tools to withstand a sexist world. He would say, hillary looks ugly in her pantsuits. And her voice. Women don't belong on the golf course. Just pause here. All true. Find me the lie in any of those statements. This was my exposure therapy. He gave it generously. He didn't give me a response when I was little and watching a baseball game on TV with him, couldn't be bothered to explain my petulant, incessant questions. That's what I took. These are the things I took from him. His Fox News when I set up his cable. Yeah. My dad asked me to help him, and I took away his favorite TV channel. Goes on and on and on. And then you find out this is a real killer. About halfway through the column, you find out her dad is still alive. It's not even like he's dead and she's attacking him. He's still alive and apparently really likes her. And she goes on to, she stuck him in a nursing home. And then she goes to visit him and she says, she admits he's always so grateful when I visit him, and it's so sweet. And he really Likes me, but I hate him. And you look through everything this guy supposedly did, and his great crime was being a hardworking father who supported his family but was like kind of conservative. I don't even mean like conservative conservative, okay? I'm not talking like radical right. The guy wasn't reading Giovanni Gentile essays. He watched Fox News and read the Wall Street Journal. That's his great sin. And he didn't take his daughter to sports games that she almost certainly did not want to go to. She admits later she doesn't even have any love of sports. She was just complaining that he didn't take her to a game she didn't want to go to. And he what? And he made a lot of money, but not as much as she wanted. And then she stuck him in a home. And the whole point is that she's a good daughter for forgiving him, for the crimes that he didn't commit against her. All of liberalism. I say this without exaggeration and probably without exception. All of liberalism comes down to hating your dad. That's really what it's about. It comes down to hating your dad at a physical, temporal level, like your literal dad, your immediate biological dad, or at the extreme, to hating God, your father. Because liberalism ultimately is a turn away from classical philosophy, which says we're going to understand the world. And modern philosophy, as Marx says in the thesis on Feuerbach, modern philosophy is about changing the world, not about understanding the world. It turns you away from obedience, recognizing hierarchies and following ob, being obedient to hierarchy and order, toward a radical leveling so that we can all do what we want. Turning away from the family is the basic building block of society, toward the individual is the building block of society. And ultimately turning away from worshiping God and trying to serve him in this world and trying to unite your will to the will of God so that there's no difference between what you want for yourself and what God wants for you. Turning away from that which is the basis of ethics and morality, turning away from that toward a self deification that says that you are God. There's no gods, there's no kings, there's only men, and we can do whatever we want. All of liberalism comes down to hating your dad. And that's true in the loftiest ways, you know, the most abstract philosophical ways. And it's also true that people who write for the New York Times hate their dads, okay? And that's really sad. You really feel bad for this father who clearly gave a lot to this ungrateful woman, this just witchy little woman, and then she decides to try to humiliate him in the pages of the New York Times. The only good thing you can say for her father here is at least no one reads the New York Times. At least he doesn't have to suffer that indignity. And another great thing you can say about the father is he ostensibly doesn't read it either. Though he might, because he clearly loves his daughter, even though she doesn't like him. If you think Daily Wire plus is just a subscription to watch some shows, think again. The Daily Wire is building a home for people who've had enough enough lies, enough riots, enough cultural collapse, disguised compassion. We are here to fight. We're not just here to comment. We're not just here to criticize. We're here to fight with journalism exposing the lies with uncensored content that puts truth back in the spotlight. You are not just tuning in. You are linking arms with a community that fights back. And when we fight, we win. Join now@dailywireplus.com okay, my favorite comment yesterday is from Chrysostomusostomus 407 says, hold on now. I didn't pick. I didn't pick this comment. This was picked by the producers that sponsorship Elmau, and it refers to the ad that ran after I mentioned the war breaking in the Middle east, which is a reminder that all nature is but art unknown to thee and all chance direction which thou canst not see. Okay, speaking of paternal care, Justin Bieber might be placed in a conservatorship. So do we have. Yeah, here we go. This according to the Sun. So, you know, it's true. The entertainment editor there, Justin Bieber, could be placed in a conservatorship by Haley if she can prove three points to court amid his bizarre behavior. Okay, so I don't know. I haven't followed this that closely because I don't follow celebrity gossip all that closely. But apparently Justin Bieber has been looking a little rough lately and behaving in erratic ways. And so there's some rumor that he might be placed in a conservatorship like happened to Britney Spears. Like happens to many people who are in pop music and who become super rich and famous and then go off the rails. At the time that Britney's conservatorship was dominating the news, there were people who said, we need to free Britney. She's being controlled by her dad, who's the conservator, and he's controlling her finances. And even her freedom of movement. And we need to free Britney. And that reflected a misunderstanding of what freedom is. But ultimately Britney was freed and now she seems to be trapped in a prison of her own madness. And she posts videos dancing with knives and behaving in an erratic way. Maybe the same thing will happen to Bieber here. This is totally reflective of our politics right now. When you are sane, when you are sane and disciplined, freedom is. Is in your hands. When you are insane and self indulgent, freedom needs to be in someone else's hands. That's just how it works. And our founding fathers wrote about this in the framers of our Constitution. And they wrote about the nature of freedom. That when you are a disciplined person, when you subject your appetites to your rational will, when you have practiced good habits, when you can be trusted on your own character is what you do. When you think no one's watching, when you are that kind of person, then freedom is really in your hands. And you don't need a heavy government to enforce it. And you don't even need particularly heavy civic institutions. However, when you're undisciplined, when you're ignorant, when you're undisciplined, when you're given to vice, when you're addicted to things, when you're, when you're self indulgent, the way to make you free is actually not to place freedom in your hands. The way to make you free is to place control of you in someone else's hands. Someone else who can encourage you to get your act together and can teach you things and can help you to practice the habits of discipline that can perhaps one day allow you to have freedom in your own hands again. But that's it. Because freedom, as we've mentioned on the show a lot before, is not just neutrality and choosing, it is willing. It's how we will and how we will stuff. You know, I will that I'll drink this leftist year's tumbler. I will that I'll light this delicious Michael Knowles candle. I don't. You know, the willing is predicated on knowledge. So that's what freedom is. In the pithy phrase of Lord Acton, it's to do what we ought to, the right to do what we ought, not the ability to choose what we wish. So Justin Bieber can be free in a sort of way if he's in a conservatorship. Maybe Britney Spears, when she was in a conservatorship, was more free than she is today when she's out of the conservatorship, because today she's enslaved by all these vices and madness. That's it. There's no shortcut out of that. Liberalism tries to find a shortcut to that. Liberalism tries to have its cake and eat it, too. Liberalism says, well, hold on, I don't want any external constraints and I don't want any internal constraints, and I'm just gonna be totally self indulgent. I'm gonna make myself a God and I'm gonna remake the whole world, and I'm gonna go insane, ultimately. And I'm not gonna be free because I'm gonna become a slave to all of these passions and vices that are totally irrational. Sorry, no shortcut, man. Now, speaking of show business, Katy Perry is attacking Trump on another issue that he's catching flack for the deportations because she says that illegal aliens are being hunted like criminals in their ancestral home. Here I have her post. Los Angeles has lived under three flags. Spain, Mexico, and the United States. That land has seen borders shift, power change hands, and yet the people, especially the brown and indigenous people, have always been there. Eh, I don't know about that. You know, we did deport, what, like a million people or something during Operation Wetback in the 1950s. The people have moved around a little bit. And then when the Spanish came and met the indigenous, that actually created a new kind of race of people, the Hispanics, Latinos, just not fully indigenous, not fully European, not. You know, you can't just take the one and not the other. Anyway, she goes on, indigenous people have always been there, planting roots, building lives, raising families. And now, in 2025, the descendants of those same communities are being hunted like criminals in their own ancestral home. Wow. Wow, man. This presumes a lot about ancestral homes. First of all, it means that someone who is part indigenous and part white is truly indigenous and not at all white. And the good guys are the indigenous, and the bad guys are the white guys from Spain, which doesn't. But the people are actually both. Second, she acknowledges that borders have sovereignty, territory has changed hands. But then she refuses to accept the political consequences of that. Third, she's playing a little loose with the phrase ancestral home. You know what my ancestral home is? You might be tempted to say merry old England. You might be tempted to say the mezzo giorno Sicily or Calabria. But no, no, my ancestral home really is probably Iraq, isn't it? Isn't that true of all of us? All of us white people? Because don't we come from Mesopotamia, from the Levant? So what if I just roll up to Iraq and I start demanding stuff? I say, hey, this is my ancestral home. Hey, get out of the way. You guys wearing towels and stuff? Get out of here. This is my place. Plant the American flag there. Start lighting a Mayflower cigar. Maybe. Maybe pour a nice glass of Scotch. Hey, I know you modern inhabitants don't believe in drinking Scotch, but listen, this is my ancestral home. How would that go? I don't think that would go very well. None of these arguments really mean much of anything that you're hearing from the left, other than America always has to be bad at the national level. America always has to be bad at the racial level. White people always have to be bad at the, I don't know, political, philosophical level. The truly native populations always have to be bad, and the migrants and those always have to be good. That's just all it is. So what the left is advancing here is conclusions in search of arguments. And they'll change the arguments depending on the day. Just like, I mean, you think about lgbt. The conclusion is we need to upend traditional sexual morality. The argument used to be, there are men and there are women, and some men like men and some women like women. And it's how you're born. You're born that way, and that's just how it is. And your sexual orientation is immutable, and that's why we need to upend traditional sexual morality. And then five seconds later, they said, also, sexual orientation is not immutable. Sex is not even immutable. There aren't really men, and there aren't really women. And some men might like men, but they also might like women, or women might like men, or the women might become men and the men might become women. And anyway, none of the previous principles about sex we told you were true, but the conclusion is we need to upend traditional sexual morality. That's it. That's all the left plays with. Because for the left, politics is not a matter of reasoned debate or progression from first principles in an orderly way. It's just people clubbing each over their head with sticks. And so you're going to. They've come to their conclusion, they made up their mind, and they're gonna find out any way to try to defend it. Okay, which brings us back. Since we're talking about Iraq and unreasonable politics, this brings us back to the Middle East. Trump seems quite offended by some of the debate going on on the right. In fact, he's even going after Tucker, who's been a strong Trump defender, actually, Like a lot of people on the right, Tucker has been very pro Trump, and he's spoken at Trump rallies. He's also expressed a lot of skepticism of Trump or hostility. But that's true of a lot of people on the right. That's not just Tucker. But now they seem to be at a tough point in their relationship. Trump tweets out, somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. America first means many great things, including the fact that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Make America great again. Trump wants to emphasize this point, which, in his defense, he made on the campaign trail all the time, and a lot of people just didn't want to hear it. And I love Tucker, and I like a lot of the figures, many of whom are skeptical of Trump right now. And I even recognize that as we're talking about prudence and practicality in foreign policy, we need to be a little circumspect, and we need to temper expectations, and we need to make sure that we know exactly what we're doing when we get involved in places around the world. But all of that said, this is Trump's movement. He assembled the coalition, he got elected, he won the popular vote. Doesn't mean we don't ask questions, doesn't mean we don't advocate certain sides. But I think it does mean that we should not be turning on Trump at the drop of a hat. And as some people have been inclined to do for 10 years, all the walls are closing in. Now. I'm done with Trump now. I regret all my support. Now, now, now. And the reason is not that we blindly follow anyone. We don't put our trust in princes. It's just that I think Trump has a lot of credibility, especially on foreign policy. Trump is probably the best foreign policy president of my lifetime. George H.W. bush. I was very little when George H.W. bush was president. He was pretty good. But Trump, Trump might be better. He's certainly better than Clinton and Bush, too, and Obama and Biden. And so he's done very, very well on foreign policy. He's done very well on domestic policy, for that matter, too. And I just think he's kind of earned the right to have his supporters at least take a few breaths for a few days and just let him cook a little bit and see how things shake out, because the things they're accusing him of right now have not actually come to pass. So maybe let's not be like Wile E. Coyote here with the roadrunner and constantly falling into all of these traps which many ideologues around the country are trying to lay for him and for us. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Noel's Canada Wles at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
