Michael Knowles (9:58)

Deputy former deputy Director of the FBI Andy McCabe is with us as well. And Andy, I just want to ask you, you talk about a 40 floor, a 44 story building, as Brian is reporting and what John Miller just said, there were a few things that really stood out there among them that they did get. They do know what he looks like. Sunglasses, mustache, male, possibly white.

Ryan Reynolds (10:20)

Male, possibly white. Okay, so we've got, we're Getting info now, we don't know very much, but we do know he's possibly white. Do we have a picture of the. We have a picture of the suspected shooter, alleged shooter. He is the least white looking person you've ever seen in your entire life. This guy, I won't even say his name if you're just listening right now. He ain't white. He ain't white. But cnn, which never wants to speculate if there is an Islamic terror attack committed by a guy named Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed Abdul Muhammad, they will not speculate, speculate on any of the motives or the background of the shooter. But in this case, where they know nothing about what's going on, they immediately speculate to say, well, he's possibly white. And I guess technically that was true. He was possibly white from the standpoint of cnn, because CNN didn't know anything. So from the standpoint of CNN's ignorance, it was possible that he could turn out to be white, though he wasn't, and there was no evidence that he was. What is politically effective, the sort of thing that we can act on politically from this reaction is just a recognition of something that we already knew, which is that the political order does harbor, as the left argues, it does harbor certain racial biases and religious biases and sexual biases and all the rest. That is true when the libs argue and they say this is not merely a tabula rasa, this is not merely a neutral political order that treats everyone equally. Some people are treated better than others on the basis of race and religion and sex. That is true. It's just the opposite of what they say it is. So a non white person will always be given every single benefit of the doubt. A white person will always be considered guilty until proven innocent because of the sin of whiteness. A non Christian will always be given the benefit of the doubt. A Christian will always be suspected of harboring hatred and bigotry and all manner of egregious sin. A straight person will always be suspected of all manner of evil. Anyone who can identify as an LGBT elementop person will always be given every single benefit of the doubt. Even into the realm of the farcical and the implausible. That's just how it goes. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But when the establishment media reveal themselves to be what they are, when they expose themselves, it's important to pay attention, just to remind yourself they're good sometimes at hypnotizing you. Just pay attention. You look at this, there's not even really much of a conclusion to be drawn from the race of the shooter. In this particular instance, in a mass shooting, the only political conclusion to be drawn is about our media and about the broader political order. Just a little reminder. Tuck that one away for next time, okay? Speaking of horrifying stories and the LGBT elementop community and contradicting liberal narratives is a video that's gone viral of two homosexual men who purchased a child and are kissing the child, I guess on the child's birthday or something like that. And it's supposed to be heartwarming. And they're getting all the likes and the retweets and the shares and some people were making snide comments. Some people were assuming that these men were sexually depraved and the bad things could befall this child. And when those people made those claims, everyone else on social media rushed and said, that's terrible. That's prejudice. That's bigoted. How dare you. It's phobic. 24 hours later, you're not gonna believe what we've uncovered. We'll get to that momentarily. 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If you knew nothing else about the video, you would say it's just wrong because a baby has been deprived of a mother. And if you think that women contribute anything to the world at all, if you think that men contribute something to the world that women can't quite contribute and women contribute something to the world that men can't quite contribute, if you think there's a. A purpose for the existence of women, then you have to be nauseated at that video because what that video represents is that two men went to the baby store, spent money to create a child with the express intention of depriving that child of his natural mother. One of the most important bonds that a human being will ever have that especially little babies have. The most important bond that a little baby has in this world, intentionally being severed for the selfishness of sexually deviant men. So already absolutely nauseating off the top if you didn't know anything else. But we do know something else because Redux is reporting. I'll use their exact words. This is their reporting, not mine. Just 24 hours after the video went viral on social media, it has been confirmed that one of the men in the video is a registered child sex offender. Brandon Keith Mitchell is a Tier 1 sex offender in the state of Pennsylvania and was arrested in 2016 after attempting to solicit a 16 year old boy for sexual abuse. He was a 30 year old teacher at the time. Reportedly. According to records released by the Chester County District Attorney's office and the Downington Police Department, Mitchell solicited the boy to send him nude photographs. He also told the victim he wanted to watch him perform a sexual act and sent the victim approximately 20 nude photographs of himself. I think those two men still have that baby. I think shockingly and presumably this was known. He was already a registered child sex offender eight years ago, nine years ago. Now, somehow he got the baby anyway because our political order says that he's a married man. Maybe he made a mistake in the past, but he's a married man. He's totally in a real marriage and married people are allowed to adopt and married people are even in our depraved culture allowed to go to the baby store and purchase babies like they're handbags. And we're not allowed to judge or discriminate or come to any conclusions that every society, for all of history would have come to. Now, I can already hear the chorus of my critics on the left and some on the squishy right. They're gonna say, michael, you're honing in on one really unfortunate example of homosexuals adopting or purchasing a child where one of them is a sex offender. But that is not the norm. You're focusing in in a way that's unfair. In fact, Michael, and this is gonna be the kicker, they're gonna say scientific studies show that children raised in same sex households do just as well as children raised in households with a mother and a father. The science shows it, Michael, and you're bigoted and you're a science denier. This is a claim. And the claim, like a lot of these political propaganda claims, has a little tiny kernel of apparent almost but not quite truth to comes from a 2010 study by Michael Rosenfeld from Stanford. And the study finds this is the conclusion its own words. The prior literature has found no evidence that children raised by same sex couples suffer any important disadvantages. There it is. And you'll hear every LGBT element of PE activists talk about this and you will hear everyone defending that video cite this study. The problem is that conclusion is false and the study is bogus. And all of the other studies show the opposite. I don't know if literally all of the other studies, but many, many, many studies. For all intents and purposes, all of the other studies show the opposite. There might be some other bogus study too. Here's the reality. There's a study 2013 out of Canada by Douglas Allen, Simon Fraser University. Analyzed data from a very large population based sample found that children of gay and lesbian couples are 65% as likely to have graduated from high school as are the children of married opposite sex couples. 65%. That's a failing grade. Last I checked, the children who are raised by two fellas or two lesbians are 35% less likely to graduate from high school. Now this backs up a study that was conducted quite a while prior. 1996 out of Australia. Soterio Saran Tacos Cambridge University Press published IT study of 174 primary school children in Australia. Compare the social and educational development of 58 children living in married families, 58 living with cohabitating heterosexuals. Man and a woman living together, not married, living in sin and 58 living in homosexual unions. The authors found that married couples offer the best environment for a child's social and educational development. So the normal married actual couple, mommy and daddy, followed by cohabitating heterosexual couples, followed by homosexual couples. Without question, the kids raised by two daddies or two mommies do the worst. Without question. Now you might say, well, that was 96. That was before the gay rights movement. There has been so much Progress since then. No. 2007 Abby Goldberg out of Clark University has a study of 36 adults raised by lesbian, gay and bisexual parents. 15 of them, this is 42% of adults raised by LGB. Parents described challenges relating to their ability to trust other people. 42% of these people raised by two mommies or two daddies or just otherwise sexually bizarre parents, 42% say they have a difficulty trusting other people. Now you might say, well, that's just a small sample size. Okay. 2009 Theodora Sirota, Seton Hall University A study of 68 women with gay and bisexual fathers and 68 women with heterosexual fathers found that women with gay or bisexual fathers had difficulty in adult attachment areas. They were one, less comfortable with closeness and intimacy, two, less able to trust and depend on others, three experienced more anxiety in relationships compared with women raised by heterosexual fathers and mothers. Okay, well, Michael, that's still a small sample size. Okay, let's keep going. 2012 Daniel Potter, American Institutes for Research A study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that, quote, children in same sex parent families scored lower than their peers living in married two biological parent households on two academic outcomes. And then we got a really, really big study. If you want just one really big study to shut down this ridiculous argument that two mommies or two daddies is exactly the same as a mommy and a daddy and everyone turns out the same, something that we all know intuitively is not true, if you think that men or women contribute anything to the world, you intuitively know that isn't true. There was a 2012 study out of the University of Texas at Austin this found that young adult children ages 18 to 39 of parents who had same sex relationships before the subjects had reached the age of 18 were more likely to suffer from a broad range of emotional and social problems. This is the kicker. The children of lesbians and gay men fared worse than those in intact heterosexual families on 77 out of 80 outcomes. 77 out of 80. Almost all of them. And the exceptions, by the way, related to relatively minor points like voting habits, do you vote? Or alcohol use by children of lesbian mothers. So there were these little minor exceptions. Otherwise the kids of straight, normal couples did better on everything. 2013. Should I beat this horse into the ground? I think I will. I think I will. Because there are people on the left and on the right, horrifyingly, even on the right, who will defend that video. Even after it comes out that one of the guys is a child sex offender, they'll defend it. Oh, no, Michael. It's just one exception. The science says otherwise. The science says otherwise. How many more studies do I have to cite? 2013, Susan Golembach at Cambridge. This actually pertains to the IVF, because the only way that two fellas or two ladies can have a child if you've passed seventh grade biology class is if they adopt or if they go to the baby store and engage in in vitro fertilization and then hire a surrogate. Well, what happens then? Let's just focus in on the surrogacy aspect. There was a study in 2013, children gestated by a surrogate had higher adjustment difficulties at age 7 than other children who came about the old fashioned way. What does that mean, adjustment difficulties? They had aggressive or antisocial behavior, they had emotional problems, they had anxiety, they had depression. That's just if you're born via a surrogate, which heterosexual couples can use too, that's also very, very bad for children. It's wrong for other reasons as well, but it's also very bad for children. Last study, I'll cite 2015, Donald Sullins, British Journal of Education, found that emotional problems were over twice as prevalent for children with same sex parents as for children with opposite sex parents. I don't have that long a show. How many more studies do you need me to cite? This is horrifying. It's a crime against children and against nature and against common sense. Obviously, little babies need their mommies. And you know what? Kids need their daddies too. And they're not gonna do as well if they're being raised by two men who are selfishly purchasing kids or two women or a single parent who is intentionally depriving a child of a parent. Obviously. Look, it's a fallen world. Sometimes spouses die, sometimes divorce even happens, though we wanna discourage that as much as possible. It's a fallen world and we make do with what we can. But to intentionally set a child up for failure in this way, to feed the delusions and selfishness of adults, is horrifying. Okay, now there's one question, probably lingering, which is, well, how did the Rosenfeld study, the one study that the LGBT people cite. How did that study conclude that the kids turn out just as well? Because they cooked the data, that's how. This study from Rosenfeld out of Stanford 2010 excluded children who had changed domicile during the preceding five years of the analysis. So they said, okay, well, we want to just measure stable households, so we're gonna exclude kids who changed homes in the previous five years. When they did that, they significantly reduced the sample size of the homosexual households because the homosexual households are intrinsically less stable. So he just, he basically begged the question in the survey and came up with the. I'm not accusing him of doing it intentionally, but it's bad science and it came to a false conclusion that it's been disproven by countless studies and by common sense and by right reason and by everything. This is completely unacceptable. I know this is a hard saying. You know, listen, I grew up in New York, Louisiana, and I went to the gayest university in the world. A disproportionate number of my friends over the years have been, you know, of eccentric sexual desires and things like that. So I really don't say this from a position of irrational animus or hostility or anything like that. This is just wrong. It's wrong by every measure and it's really horrible for children. Even if one of the so called daddies isn't a registered child sex offender as he is in this case. It's just wrong. It's just bad. This is completely unacceptable and should be banned immediately, Period. We will look, mark my words, if you're a lib, there are plenty of libs who listen to this show. If you're a squishy Republican, there are plenty of them who listen to this show too. We will look back on the experiment of so called gay adoption and IVF and surrogacy with the same moral horror with which we are already beginning to look back on transing the kids. We were transing the kids in some places. They're still transing the kids, but it's clearly falling out of favor. We were transing the kids in a robust and excited way two years ago, three years ago. We are already beginning to look back on that experiment with abject moral horror. We will look back on gay adoption and surrogacy and IVF in exactly the same way. And it's not because all the men and all the women have terrible intentions and terrible desires. Many of them have very good desires and very good intentions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions and the evidence is clear. And to deny the evidence is deeply sinful. And we need to cut it up. Now, I want to get to some good news because there's a lot of rough news in the news, and there is some good news, which is that President Trump has just scored a sweet trade deal with the eu. We'll get to that momentarily. First, though, speaking of trade and commerce, folks, you know, I restocked my Mayflower Dream. This is the third in the trilogy. Mayflower dawn is the Connecticut smoke. The nice little bit lighter, more mild, medium bodied. Then there's the Mayflower Dusk. That's a little more robust, a little more of your evening smoke. And then to complete the trilogy, there's a lot of trinitarian imagery in the Mayflower series, a lot of pilgrim imagery. There's the dream, the Mayflower Dream. That's our double Maduro. I told you we're running low. Well, now I want to put a real number on that. We're running real, real low. Like, barely any left. We have 56 boxes of Mayflower Dream Robusto left. We have one box of the Toro Gordo Dream left. I actually had a. I had a dream about the Toro Gordo last night. It's kind of funny. That's it. 57 boxes total of the Mayflower Dream, most in the Robusto, which is actually the best size of it. And one left in the Toro Gordo, which some guys really love. In any case, get them now if you want it. Mayflowercigars.com you must be 21 years old or older to order. Some exclusions apply if we run out. When we run out, don't blame me. Great deal. Great. Talk about the art of the deal. Some have doubted the art of the deal. This is amazing. Trump has finally come to a trade deal with the European Union. The EU is going to be charged 15% tariffs on its exports to the U.S. they will commit to charging zero tariffs on U.S. imports into the EU. 15% tariffs. 15% is lower than the 30% Trump was threatening, but it's higher than the 10% baseline that Trump instituted back in April, I think it was. So you've got 15% tariffs. So we're going to get paid. America's getting paid for those exports. We're not going to have to pay to export our goods. The EU is agreeing to invest $600 billion in the United States. The EU will purchase hundreds of billions of dollars of American military equipment, and the EU will buy $750 billion worth of expensive US liquid natural gas, specifically $250 billion for each of the next three years. This is good stuff. Is there any panic hand left? There were many people who said when Trump's tariffs came out, they said, this is gonna tank the economy. Did it. The economy's recovered. This is gonna destroy the bond market. Bond market's recovered. This is gonna upset global trade. Global trade's recovered. This is gonna alienate our allies. Our allies are doing just fine. People wondered what Trump was aiming at with the tariffs. Could have been one of three things. Could have been trying to get better trade deals, could have been trying to reshore American jobs, could have been trying to raise revenue. Just get the money from the tariffs. You can't effectively do all three. You gotta have to compromises and you have to prioritize some. Obviously, as I called at the time, obviously, Trump was trying to get better trade deals and that will raise a little bit of revenue. It won't. It's not gonna reshore. All of American manufacturing, but certain goods you're not gonna reshore. And it is gonna be good for American manufacturing in as much as and American agriculture and all the rest of it in as much as now. We're going to have fewer trade barriers to get our goods out there to the marketplace. This is great. I don't care if you hate Trump. I don't care if you're on the left, I don't care if you're one of the Trump haters on the right. What is the argument? That this is not a phenomenal trade deal? What's the. Can anyone make it? Make it for me in the comments if you can make that argument. I can't see it. There's some policies from Trump where I say, okay, here's the plus side. Here's a little bit of the downside. You know, you take the good with the bad. This one. What's the downside? Who could have gotten a better trade deal? Who has gotten a better trade deal? How could this trade deal be better? Can someone explain it to me? No. Okay, then maybe when Trump proposes policies, domestic, foreign, economic, national security, immigration, whatever. How about before we all blow our tops and have steam coming out of our ears, how about we just take a deep breath, we look back at history, we realize that the reasonable conclusion to reach is that probably it's going to turn out fine. Not every time, but probably it's going to turn out fine. Speaking of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was just asked if he is running for president in 2028. Rubio considered one of the top contenders. He's been given, I think, half the jobs in the Trump administration so far. Rubio's answer shocking many people, surprising even me.

Michael Knowles (33:50)

Final question. You just brought up your run in 2016 for president. You are talked about quite frequently as a possible contender in 2028. Do you have your sights set outside of the State Department?

Marco Rubio (34:02)

Well, I think J.D. vance would be a great nominee. And if, you know, I think if he decides he wants to do that. And so, you know, and I think he's doing a great job as vice president. He's a close friend, and I hope he intends to do it. I know it's kind of early, you know, but being in the role that I'm in here at the Secretary of State, I really don't play in politics. There's actually rules against me being involved in domestic politics. And I want to do this job as long as the president allows me to do it and stay in that job, which would keep me here all the way through January of 2028. I feel, honestly, you never know what the future holds. You never rule things out or anything, because you just don't know. Things change very quickly. But that said, I believe that if I am able to be here through the duration of this presidency and we get things done at the pace that we've been doing the last six months, I'll be able to look back at my time in public service and say, I made a difference, I had an impact, and I served my country in a very positive way, and I would be satisfied with that as the apex of my career.

Ryan Reynolds (35:02)

Okay, I don't believe that last part. I don't believe that at all. I think he wants to be president. Now, I'm not calling him a liar. I think that answer was very, very good. Very interesting answer. But he wants to be president. There was talk that Rubio was gonna run for President in 2012. I remember that talk all around D.C. and then 2016, he obviously ran. Did pretty well. Ran against Trump then, didn't run in 2024. Now he's secretary of State. But the really interesting part of his answer is, are you gonna run in 2028? He obviously wants to. He says, I think JD Vance would be a great nominee. Now in the pecking order of the White House, at least as it's understood today, J.D. vance outranks Rubio, but Rubio's pretty close up there to the top. It's kind of like the president, the vice president, and the Secretary of state in past ages. The Secretary of State has outranked the Vice President in terms of political relevance, in terms of political future. Now that's not so much the case, but he says, I think JD would be a great nominee. He couches it with all sorts of caveats. Obviously, things change, we'll see how it goes. But if he wants to run, I think he'd be a great nominee. Which suggests something really important about the Trump administration. Not even about Rubio's career. Rubio has been preparing for the top job for a very long time, so he would be a strong presidential candidate. But what it shows you about the Trump administration is this thing is cohesive. The first term was not that cohesive. The first term there was a lot of infighting, a lot of rivalries. You look at these two guys, JD and Marco Rubio are the two most eminently nominable. They're the most eminently presidential able people in the administration for 2028. They should be at each other's throats, you would expect in a less disciplined administration. This is a highly disciplined administration. Rubio on the surface here is setting himself up for a vp spot in 2028. So it could be Vance. Rubio be pretty good. I bet a lot of people would like that. Especially if the administration continues to be successful and he's setting himself up to get JD's support. If for whatever reason the Vice President doesn't want to run, though presumably he will run in 2028. But this is what is most impressive about this answer has nothing to do with Vance's political career or Rubio's political career or anyone else in the admin. What's most impressive is this is a buttoned up administration. You are not the libs and the squishes are always trying to find cracks and ways to break the admin apart. If you can't pit the Vice President against the Secretary of State, if you can't pit Vance against Rubio at this moment for 2028, now you've got it on record. You got that video clip. If Rubio ever turned on Vance, Vance gets to play that on TV constantly. 2028, I think JD would be a great nominee. Gets to play at ad nauseam. If you can't break these two guys apart, you are not gonna break this administration apart. Okay, now we've got a lot more to talk about on foreign affairs. But first wanna talk about breaking people apart and close relationships because I just sat down with one of P. Diddy's escorts. That's right. Often in high profile cases and conspiracies. All we get are a few redacted documents from a litany of theories from sources close to the story that never totally pan out. Other times you get to sit down face to face with someone who was there. Like in this latest episode of Michael. And where I sit down with a former P. Diddy escort who was named in the trial. Graphic stories that will blow you away. Check out this teaser. So I don't know who I'm seeing. And so I show up to the address, I go up to the door, knock, and she opens the door. So you say it's very performative. She's like, okay, sit there. She puts the towel down, like, hey, just pour the baby oil all over me. I see like the little slit in the room. There were times in the sessions where I saw that demon, the demon that she talked about, personal demon, you know, these are the demons that are afflicting me. Or Diddy. Yeah, Diddy. You actually did this stuff. Your name and your picture were revealed in court. Revealed in court. And then it started to go mainstream. In 50 police posted that picture. So this guy is a sex crazed animal. She was in under his control because there's video of him beating her in a hallway. I was supposed to be there that night. I was supposed to watch the full episode now on the Michael Knowles YouTube channel for the uncensored ad. Free version. Subscribe to Daily Wire plus. My favorite comment yesterday is from Guy Ford who says, just because something isn't woke, that doesn't automatically make it good. Thank you. That is my thesis. That is my thesis on the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad. And I know it's an unpopular position, especially on the right. Cause we're all so sick of woke. But it's why I had to say two cheers for American Eagle. Two cheers. Not three cheers. Two cheers for American Eagle and the Sydney Sweeney jeans thing. Because it is better to sell sex in a normal way. Sex sells and marketing. And that's been true since antiquity. It's better to promote normal sexual desires in your advertising than abnormal aberrant ones like we've seen with all the LGBT ad campaigns. But it's still not good. You don't want to arouse lusts. You don't want to appeal to the prurient interest. So it's better. It's an improvement. And I'll take an improvement. But if 2020 was the high mark of wokeness, it's good that we've gone back in a way to 1998. That's good. But 1998 was not the peak of civilization. Wasn't the be all and end all. Wasn't all that in a bag of chips like we used to say in 1998. You gotta go a little deeper. Just because this is like when the conservatives are arguing with the socialists and the progressives and the lunatics. And then someone comes in and says, well, I'm a classical liberal. And the conservatives say, oh, finally a sane person. That's great. Yeah, classical liberalism is better than socialism and wokeness and progressivism, but it's not great. It's not. You know, it's still kind of liberal, you know. You know, what's better is conservatism. That's what I would say. Okay. Speaking of foreign affairs, a lot of people are beginning to change their views on the Israel Gaza conflict. I'm not talking about the Israel haters. I'm not talking about the anti Semites. There are those people who are pathologically opposed to the state of Israel or who just hate the Jews. Those people do exist. They're real. And I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about even people who have been broadly supportive of Israel, who are philosemitic, even people like President Trump. President Trump has a town named after him in Israel. No greater political friend of the Jewish state than President Trump. And even President Trump has said Israel's conduct in this war has gone a little bit too far. There is real starvation in Gaza.

Donald Trump (42:22)

It's going to be working with the United States. We'll be helping with the food. We have a lot of access to food. We got a lot of food ourselves, and we're going to bring it over there. We're also going to make sure that they don't have barriers stopping people. You know, you've seen the areas where they actually have food, and the people are screaming for the food, and they're 35, 40 yards away, and they won't let them because they have lines that are set up. And whether they're set up by Hamas or whoever, but they're very strict lines and we have to get rid of those lines. But we're going to be getting some good, strong food. We can save a lot of people. I mean, some of those kids are. That's real starvation stuff. I see it. And you can't fake that. So we're going to be even more involved. We did some airlifts before, some air drops, and the people are running for it, and the Prime Minister is going to help us. They're very effective with that. You've done that before and for many, they've done that for 100 years very well. So it's not very hard to do, actually.

Ryan Reynolds (43:28)

Okay, so there you have it. This is significant for Trump to come out and say, look, there is real starvation in Gaza, in some cases out of the state of Israel. You're hearing people argue there's no starvation in Gaza. It's all fake, it's all propaganda from Hamas. But then you have some people in Israel saying, no, there is starvation, but it's Hamas fault. And you even have some people saying, yeah, you're darn right there's starvation because they attacked us on October 7th and now this is just the consequence. These people elected Hamas and the consequence is war is ugly. So you're seeing a range of reactions to this, but Trump is coming out and saying, no, no, there is real starvation and there is an international outcry and Israel does play a part in that. And Trump's view, he's not going totally out on a limb here. This is the same view articulated by Ross Douthat, one of the most thoughtful public commentators, pundits out there. He writes for the New York Times, but don't hold it against him. Very thoughtful commentator. He wrote this piece how Israel's war became unjust. So it didn't start out unjust, but its conduct of the war right now is unjust. Sohrab Amari, who has been very supportive of the state of Israel Zionism even over the years, he wrote a very thoughtful piece on this. I forget what outlet published. I was just reading it yesterday. Very good piece because there's reporting in the Guardian here says the Israeli effort has continued even as one of its own government ministers, the far right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu appeared to describe an unapologetic policy of starvation, genocide and ethnic cleansing that Israel has denied and said is not official policy. So Israel saying Hamas is stealing the aid. But a separate US Assessment, even beyond what Trump is saying, says that isn't true. Reuters is reporting an internal U.S. government analysis found no evidence of systematic theft by the Palestinian militant group Hamas of US Funded humanitarian supplies, challenging the main rationale that Israel and the US Give for backing a new armed private aid operation. So Israel says, well, we can't let this aid in because Hamas just steals it. A US Assessment says that isn't true. So I don't know, I'm not an expert on it, but I also, I caught a little bit of flack for nuancing my view of the Israel Gaza war. Just a Week or two ago, when the only Catholic church in Gaza was hit, Israel said it was hit accidentally. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem was a little more circumspect on its analysis, but it killed three Christians, injured 10 people, including a priest, and it caused a lot of people to wake up and think this war has gone on for a long time, for goodness sakes. You have Mike Huckabee, the US Ambassador to Israel, very, very pro Israel, threatening to accuse Israel of discriminating against Christians because of a visa issue among American evangelicals. So even you're seeing a tide turning, not among the Jew haters and the Israel enemies, but among people who have been very supportive of the state of Israel for many years, myself included. People who are quite philo Semitic. You know, I'm a New Yorker, and I had a Katz's Deli pastrami sandwich just last week. I promise you, I love the Jewish people very much. But the facts are the facts. The war has gone on for a very, very long time. And even that would not be dispositive in determining the justice or injustice of the war. But the question is, what is the end of the war? What is the upshot of the war? And is the conduct in the war right now justifiable to Ross Douthat's point? You know, he asked the question in the headline here about whether or not Israel's war has become unjust. No one has more vigorously defended the state of Israel's justice in going to war than I have. And I don't know that anyone has much more rigorously defended Israel's justice in the conduct of the war than I have. But justice in going to war is different than justice in the conduct of a war. This is, you know, just. War theory is a phrase that's been thrown around a lot. It comes from antiquity, and it's been developed by thinkers like Cicero all the way up through Thomas Aquinas and into the 20th century and 21st century. But there are two aspects. Jus in bellum, sorry, jus ad bellum, justice in going to war, and jus in bello, justice in the conduct of the war. And there are some different criteria. And what's very important to the question of justice in the conduct of a war are discrimination and proportionality. Discrimination, meaning are you discriminating your attacks between civilians and militants? Here it's become a little less clear. There's a lot of suffering among civilians. There are some people even who argue that there's really no distinction between militants and civilians in Gaza because They all support Hamas. I mean, there was a prominent commentator who said even after the attack on the Catholic Church, that there's really no distinction here. All these people support Hamas as if to insinuate that it's all kind of the same and they could be just targets that would not be acceptable from the viewpoint of just war theory. And then proportionality, which means that proportionality is not just you kill one of mine, I kill one of yours. That's how a lot of people misinterpret it. Proportionality means that military actions cannot be excessive in light of military aims. So if the military aim is to take out a certain commander or to destroy a certain facility, then the military actions cannot be to nuke the entire country. That would be excessive in light of the military aims. And here it's difficult to see how proportionality is really being upheld, because in many ways, we don't even know what the ultimate military aim is. Is it to get the hostages back? Is it to destroy Hamas? Is it to decapitate the Iranian regime which funds Hamas? Is it to occupy southern Syria, which also has fought in this war? Is it? What is it? These are very serious questions. And it's one thing to kind of dismiss them when the only people who are raising them are actual antisemites and people who just in principle oppose the state of Israel, even from the standpoint of the modern Westphalian system. But for people who like the Jews and broadly support the state of Israel, when Donald Trump, who has a town named after him and who has Jewish grandkids, comes out and says, hey, this is kind of unacceptable, this has to cause real introspection. And there's nothing unjust or knee jerk about that. There's nothing really knee jerk that happens after two years. It should be a real cause. It feels as though things are turning and the war needs to wrap up now. Today is te Hee Tuesday. What a show. Murder, abuse, war. It was really at least a little Teehee Tuesday for a refresher. The show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Knowles Ken at WLES at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

Unknown Child (50:30)

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