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This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. President Trump secures the release of the Israeli hostages, the end of the Gaza war, and for now at least, peace in the Middle East. It is the most significant international achievement of a presidential administration in decades. All of President Trump's critics have to eat crow. He did the impossible. And Trump's enemies are so angry about it, they shaved off his hair. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. 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And then Trump ends it yesterday and he brings the hostages home. And it's just a completely unimpeachable, indisputable, astounding success. So the libs know that they have to acknowledge that he did this amazing thing. They already set the stage for it. There was no way to back out of it. They had to acknowledge it. And even as they acknowledge it, they have to try to just twist the knife a little bit. So Time magazine gives Trump this cover and it's Trump's face and it says his triumph by Eric Cordalesa. Then another article, the Leader is real needed by Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel. Then How Gaza Heals by Muhammad bin Abdul Karim Al Issa. Okay, and what's the picture? It's a picture from below of Trump looking up. So already we're at an angle that is not flattering ever. You never want the picture going up your nose, but already it's a bad angle. And it's this angle that puts almost exactly in the center of the photograph. Your eye is drawn because of the lines of his collar, of his necktie, of his neck, of the near centrality of this particular point of the image. It's President Trump's neck kind of being pulled in, a wrinkle in at his collar. So it's not a flattering image. And I say this without myself attempting to flatter Trump. He's a good looking guy. Trump is a good looking guy. And before he got into politics, most people would acknowledge that he's a good looking guy. He's tall, he's well built. I'm not saying he's Fabio. I'm just saying he's a good looking guy. He cuts a strong image on stage and on camera. That's why he was a number one TV star on network TV for 12 to 15 years. And this picture's not flattering. This image of where it looks like it's, I don't know, they're making his face look like Saran wrap being wrapped around a basketball or something. Then you look up at his head and it's a good, it's a good facial expression that he's making. It's optimistic, it's looking up, looking up toward heaven. We'll get to the significance of that. But there's something missing. Can you tell what's missing about this picture? Beyond. They make him look wrinkly and it's just an unflattering angle on anybody. The angle gets rid of his hair. You get a little wisp of hair on the right side of his head, the left side of his head. So the right side of the image, it basically looks like he's bald, light shining through it, a little bit of hair on the back, but it. Where'd his hair go? They got rid of his hair. So they take a picture of this man who is, for a man of a certain age, he's a good looking guy. They take the least flattering picture they can. But the key to it, and this is the part I don't think other people have really picked up on, they get rid of the hair intentionally. First of all, images in newspapers, in magazines are selected with great precision and specificity. There are people whose job it is, the photo editors, to pick the images. Every part of the images are intended to convey something. When you're talking about a legacy outlet like Time magazine, the stakes go much, much higher. When you talk about a cover image, it's much higher still. They picked this image intentionally and everyone's just focusing on, oh, they made it look like his neck is wrinkly. Oh, they made it look like his head is kind of oddly shaped. And the key to it is the hair. And Trump picked up on that. Trump is the only other person I've seen who's picked up on this. He posted on Truth Social. Time magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the worst of all time. They disappeared my hair and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird. I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles. This is funny. You know what's funny? I saw that he posted about this. This is my first time reading it, and he's picking up on all the points that I mentioned. I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture and deserved to be called what are they doing and why? Like, I skimmed it, but I actually hadn't paid much attention to what he actually said. He hones in on the key piece, the hair. Why did they get rid of the hair? Just to. Because they think it's funny if they make him look bald. No, they had to get rid of the hair because the hair is President Trump's Most distinctive physical feature. People have been making Trump hair jokes since the 90s, okay, for my entire life. And I grew up in New York, where Trump is a very well known figure. Now he's a globally well known figure, but especially in New York, people have been making Trump hair jokes since the 90s. For 30 years, more than 30 years, they had to get rid of Trump's hair because they had to diminish the distinctive nature of Trump's accomplishment. Trump did something that other presidents have failed to do. Trump has achieved the biggest foreign policy win since the end of the Cold War. And while they couldn't deny that he did that, it's manifest. It's obvious. The next best thing they could do was diminish the Trumpiness of the whole thing. So what they're going to try to do is say, well, this was a victory for America or this was a victory for the presidency or something, but they're gonna try to diminish the. The Trumpiness of it. They have to de Trumpify the moment. And so they're de Trumpifying the picture. They're taking away his distinguishing feature. And there is a deeply psychological reason behind this. For 10 years now, since Trump seriously entered into politics, the image of Trump has been presented as the face of evil. The next coming of Hitler. Time magazine actually made Trump kind of look like Hitler. Their photo editors previously had a picture, I wish I could call it up right now, that was reminiscent of Hitler in Time magazine, sitting on a chair, looking over his arm. And so they've made the typical picture. You think of Trump, head on, serious expression, hair in full view. They've made that into an image of evil. Because Trump has done something here that is undeniably good. They have two options. They can either try, implausibly, to say that it's actually bad just like everything else Trump does, or they have to try to convey that it's not really Trump. They chose the latter course. That's what this is about. It's not just that this is a particularly bad picture of Trump. It's that the image doesn't look like Trump. Go back to the image. Trump's head, when you look at it, is like, rectangular. He has a particularly rectangular head. Normally, this image is weirdly round. In the typical Trump picture, he has a ton of hair. In this image, he barely has any hair. In the typical Trump picture, Trump's hair is blonde. In this picture because of the lighting, and who knows, maybe because of the photo editing, his hair is white. It's not just that. It's a bad picture. It's that it doesn't look like Trump. Cuz they have to deny that Trump did this because Trump can't have done this because they said he was Hitler and he was gonna cause World War 3 and instead he has brough brought about a considerable degree of world peace and he received a standing ovation in Israel, something that Hitler probably would never do. That's what's going on here. That's what the photo editors were getting at. That is what the left is gonna have to grapple with here. If we have now reached Trump's done a lot of great things that they've tried to deny. Oh no, the immigration policy is bad. He's not actually deporting all those criminals and it's bad if he's deporting people anyway. And his tariffs are gonna cause the destruction of global trade. And actually shoot, the global trade's going all right. The tariffs aren't even implemented yet. And it's just they keep tripping over themselves. But with this one, it's just the hostages are back, the hostilities have ended. The major global conflict, regional conflict involving the entire world in the hottest area of the earth has been resolved. For now. Shoot. Okay, let's just pretend it wasn't Trump. Now, what does Trump think about all this? We'll get to that momentarily. First though, I want to tell you about Golden Age fats. Go to goldenagefats.com knowles unlike ultra processed vegetable oils that expose your family to industrial byproducts, golden age grass fed beef tallow offers a return to the natural cooking methods that nourished generations before us. Their tallow brings back that incredible McDonald's fries flavor from when we were kids. It's actually packed with vitamins, minerals and healthy fatty acids. 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Goldenagefats.com knowLes code knowles for 25% off your first order. President Trump on Air Force One speaking to reporters takes a 30,000 foot view. He's on Air Force One, so Maybe it's a 40,000 foot view of geopolitics. We're talking a lot about the Holy Land. He's considering religious matters. He previously had said that he wants to resolve these wars because he wants to please God so he can go to heaven. Peter Doocy followed up on this and said, can you expound upon where heaven fits into your political strategy? Here's what he had to say. You talked about how you hope to end the war in Ukraine because it might help you get into heaven. How does this help? Does this help? I mean, you know, I'm being a little cute. I don't think there's anything gonna get me in heaven. Okay. I really don't. I think I'm not. Maybe heaven bo be in heaven right now as we fly an Air Force One. I'm not sure, Abe, I'm gonna be able to make heaven. I love this answer. I love it. And there are. It's not just the left that's criticizing him for this. There are people who identify as Christian, who are baptized Christians, who are very angry at this answer. And they point to this answer and they say, this is evidence that Trump is not a true Christian and he's not really saved and we need to spread the gospel with him. I don't know about Trump's personal religious convictions. I see his public religious convictions and I'm very impressed by them. And I think he's obviously a great leader for Christians in America and throughout the world. But even on this answer as it pertains to Trump's personal life, I love it because this answer is humble. It expresses a kind of humility that is deeply Christian. He's making a self effacing joke about his own unworthiness of salvation. He says at the top, he goes, you know, look, I was being a little cute about the. I was being a little cute about the heaven thing. He's setting the stage for, look, I'm making a little joke again. He said, but me, I don't know. He said, hey, Mr. President, if you Fix the war in Ukraine. Is that gonna get you into heaven? He goes, me, I don't know. I don't think I'm heaven bound. Some pearl clutching Christians, they say, he's confessing that he's damned. He doesn't have the theological virtue of hope. He doesn't know that he is. He's making a joke about his unworthiness. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. Most politicians are the Pharisee who says, oh, Lord, I thank you that you have not made me like these wretched sinners, these tax collectors. Trump is in the person of the poor man who knows his unworthiness, who says, lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. I grant he's not saying, lord, have mercy on me here explicitly. I do think there is quite a bit of that implicit, though, when he says me, I don't know. I don't know if that could anything get me into heaven. Certainly nothing of my own will could get me into heaven. None of my own works could get me into heaven. Not even solving the war in Ukraine could get me into heaven. What is left unsaid here is I would require God's grace to get me into heaven. That's a deeply Christian expression, even if lots of it are being left implicit. And let's say, let's not even fill in the gaps. Let's say we don't know Trump's personal religious views. So it remains to be seen, and I'm sure he's had a lot of religious conversations. He's insinuated as much, certainly since his near assassination in Butler. But I'll go a step further. I know this is gonna be controversial. We're gonna stir the pot, kick the hornet's nest a little bit right now. Without weighing in on various debates between all of the different Protestant points of view, Calvinism and Lutheranism and Arminianism and antinomianism and this ism and that ism. Without weighing in on those particular debates, without weighing in on the merits of, say, Catholicism over the various Protestant views or Eastern Orthodoxy or whatever. I just wanna make a purely historical observation. President Trump's uncertainty about where he's going to end up is much more in line with the traditional Christian understanding of salvation than modern views of salvation, such as the one popularly described as once saved, always saved. In other words, Trump saying, look, I don't know, I want to go to heaven. I hope I can go to heaven, but I don't know. I definitely don't deserve heaven and I don't know where I'm going to end up. That is indisputably the much longer standing traditional Christian view of salvation than the notion that one can be saved as a one time event and then go and then not even possess the freedom to turn away from God's grace. I know that there are many people who hold to that view. There are very interesting conversations that can be had about Calvinism and eternal security and the distinction, as in the Johannine epistles, between mortal and venial sin and the. There are many interesting theological conversations. I'm making an historical point. What Trump is saying here would be clearly understood historically by Christians going back to antiquity. The notion that one does not possess the free will to reject God's grace is a little bit more modern. Okay, the too long, didn't read version of that. Lay off Trump. Okay? It's not just. Let's not talk about when Trump brings up religion. I really like when Trump brings up religion. This is refreshing to me. This is not pharisaical. This is not theologically innovative and cocky and prideful and presumptuous. This is an expression of humility in the leader of the free world, specifically pertaining to eternal things. I really like. I, for one, like that. Raise your hand if you like that. I do. Can we get a hands? I don't know. Some people won't like it. That's okay. Plenty of opportunities for interesting theological conversations. For me, I find it very, very refreshing. Now, one last note about Trump's affairs with world leaders. Trump was caught on a hot mic amid all of this great news and the resolution of the war in the Middle East. The new Prime Minister of Canada, not Trudeau, but the other guy, whatever, prime minister, maple leaf, he shows up. And apparently Trump had referred to him as president. So just offhand, you know, president is the head of state, prime minister is the head of government. In our country, it's both in the same office, but in parliamentary systems, they're divided up. So he just, he mixed it up. He called the prime minister president. The prime minister says to Trump, hey, thanks for the promotion. Here's Trump's response. You go, bash, I'm glad you upgraded me to president. I love. It's a little hard to make out because the microphone has trouble picking it up, but he goes, thanks for upgrading me from prime minister to president. Oh, did I say that? Oh, that's funny. He's laughing, he slaps him on the back and then he goes, least I didn't call you governor. I just, I love it. I love the, the ribbing, the Kind of vaguely threatening joke. We might invade you. We might, hey, watch out. But also the camaraderie. They kind of seem to get along. It's not this stodgy, clinical, sterile defensive posture with international leaders. It's an aggressive posture. This, too, I think, has Christian resonance because there's a line that we say about the church, and we say it because it's in the Gospel. And it's a line of our Lord, which is that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, which is often misunderstood as saying that evil forces will never overcome the Church. But that gets the direction totally wrong. We're not talking about the armies of hell. We're talking about the gates of Hell. Gates are themselves defensive mechanisms. So when they say the gates of Hell will never prevail against the Church, the image is not in the armies of hell attempting to vanquish the Church. The image is of the Church militant conquering hell, conquering death. In other words, the Church is on the move. And this is how we should be thinking. For far too long, Christians have put themselves in defensive posture, apologizing for everything. And not only the things that we should apologize for, but apologizing for just everything. For being Christian, for holding good and virtuous views. We're always on the defensive. You gotta go on the offensive. Politically speaking, the American right, which has a lot more to do with religion than the left does, the right has been on the defensive. Oh, we're not this, we're not that. We're not racist, we're not this, we're not that. No, we don't wanna do this, we don't wanna do that. We just wanna shrink the government. We don't wanna do anything. Actually, Trump flips that on a whole host of issues. He says, no, no, we are going to deport people. We are going to force a resolution to foreign conflicts. We're not just gonna allow wars to fester forever. We are going to change our trade policy. We are going to prosecute the bad actors, the corrupt people in government. We are. The left has been doing that for a long time. And then we get into office and we say, we're not gonna do that because of some principle about losing all the time. No, no, we are, we are, we are. We're doing stuff, baby. We're doing it. That is the right attitude. We gotta be on the move. All right. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Okay, the libs are up in arms. They're furious. They have to eat a lot of crow today. There might be a maga hat on the View. We'll get to that momentarily. First, I want to tell you about an organization near and dear to my heart, the St. Paul Center. Go to saintpaulcenter.com advent one of my absolute favorite organizations in the country is the St. Paul Center. On my desk I have two books. On my desk at home, I have Divine Mercy Devotional and I have the St. Ignatius Study Bible with commentary by Dr. Scott Hahn, the head of the St. Paul Center. It's just wonderful. If you are interested in Bible study at all, I don't care your particular flavor of Christianity. I don't care if you're agnostic or atheist for that matter. If you have any interest in Bible study at all, you've gotta check out the St. Paul Center. America, without question, has reached a cultural and spiritual crossroads. People are looking for the truth. In their search, more and more people are turning to the Bible for answers. Bible Across America is a nationwide Bible study, the biggest Bible study in the country, hosted by the St. Paul center for Biblical Theology and led by Dr. Shane Owens, assistant professor of Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Grow in your faith and learn to confidently share it with others. Together with leading Catholic voices from across the country. It is a seven week Bible study exploring the personal challenge of affirming Jesus as teacher and lord and premieres November 5th every Wednesday at 7:30pm Eastern Time. Go to stpaulcenter.com advent to join the nation's biggest Bible study. Alyssa Farah, the fake Republican on the View. She is at least the fake Republican. She's not an overt Democrat, but she's a lib. She's a lib like all the ladies on the View. She previously said something that she might have to make good on vis a vis the war in Israel. My point, when I say I'm not gonna be apocalyptic, it's not changing a tune. It's not making every single thing a five alarm fire. If he does good, if he gets the Israeli hostages out, I speak promise I will wear a MAGA hat for one day on the show and say thank you for doing it. And I know she'll knock it right off my head. But like, you have to be able to cheer for wins when they happen and then call out relentlessly the wrongdoing. Okay, great. Well, it happens. So are we gonna get it today? I don't know. I don't know what time the View airs. I assume it's after my show in the morning. I want to see that MAGA hat. I'll be curious to see if she makes good on this bet. Obviously, the clip is going around. She knows that she made this bet. I'll be curious to see if she can do it. Because on the one hand, it would be gracious, it'd be fun. You know, I remember Glenn Beck in 2016 really didn't like Trump. And then when he saw that Trump was doing great stuff, Glenn had the grace to say, oh, you know, I guess I underestimated him, or I got things a little bit wrong. And he wore the MAGA hat on his show and it was a great image. Ben, actually, Ben Shapiro didn't like Trump in 2016. I did like Trump a lot. I forget what the particular issue was. Trump did something that Ben really, really liked, and he said, all right, Knowles, I'll wear your MAGA hat. Give me the MAGA hat. I'm gonna wear it on. It was good. That's a very gracious thing to do. It's very self aware. So, okay, I got something wrong. All right, I'm gonna make good on that. Can Alyssa Farah do that? Who cares about Alyssa Farah and the View? Can the left do that broadly or do they have to get the nasty picture of Trump? Not just the nasty picture, but the picture that tries to de Trumpify Trump. Can they acknowledge what Trump just achieved? Because you got to sympathize with them a little bit. If they acknowledge that, they will simultaneously be acknowledging that they were completely wrong about him for 10 years. Completely wrong about him. They said he was going to bring us war, he brought us peace. They said that he was incompetent in politics. He's the best foreign policy president, at least since George H.W. bush. They said that. He turns the whole world against us. He's palling around even with the prime minister of the country that he's threatening to invade, and they're like, joking together. He achieved something other people couldn't achieve. He's not just okay at being president, which would be a major concession for the left. He's really, really good at it. He's better than any other president, probably in my lifetime. Yes, certainly in my lifetime, because George H.W. bush wasn't good enough to get reelected. George H.W. bush did a lot of great stuff, but he did not have the political skill of Trump. We need to see a lot of that. I wanna see that MAGA hat. Weirdly enough, the View is gonna be weather balloon today, or a weather vane, rather. The View is going to show us whether or not the left can actually come to grips with this cuz it would represent a sea change in American politics. Certain big figures on the left simply cannot. Barack Obama in recent days has taken the occasion of Trump's triumph to sit. And it's unbelievable. Even the way he's sitting is so beautiful. It's Obama. He's not wearing a suit, he's not presidential, he's not strong established. He's sitting on some cushy, weak looking modern chair with his legs crossed over his legs and his arms crossed. Always a terrible thing. Sometimes I see people do this at public events. It really drives me crazy. Sitting with their arms crossed in public, which just conveys to people that you don't like them, you don't want to be there, you're angry, you're upset. It's very, very off putting. People do it though at least top politicians should know better than that. Sitting arms crossed, wearing is like dark, it looks like a turtleneck. It would be very fitting if it were a turtleneck, but it's not. I think it's an oxford shirt. Any case, sitting there, me, me, me. I don't like what Trump is doing. Me, me, me, me, me. And listen to what specifically Obama objects to.