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The Supreme Court strikes down Democrats racially discriminatory gerrymandering in a conservative win that upends over 60 years of Democrat chicanery. Meanwhile, Florida passes a new redistricting map that adds four new Republican congressional seats and ABC is reportedly about to pull the plug on Jimmy Kimmel. All of which I know this is uncharacteristic for conservatives. I know we always have to be doomers and angry and despairing. But this all has me cautiously asking, are conservatives, despite our self conception, actually on a generational run of winning a Michael Knowles is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. Little bit to temper our expectations, President Trump has continued the Iran blockade. So he is promising that the Iran blockade will go on not just for weeks, potentially for years. We will get to what that means for oil prices, the stock market, Republicans, elections prospects, world peace. We'll get to all of that momentarily. This win from the Supreme Court absolutely massive the case. A lot of people haven't been following this. We follow the really titillating cases, obviously the abortion cases, some of the weird sex stuff cases we follow. This is a huge one. Louisiana versus Calais. This was a 63 win. So you had all the conservatives plus the kind of squishy conservatives against all of the liberals here. But what was at play was whether or not Louisiana's congressional map with its second black majority district created an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the 14th and 15th amendments. So why this matters? You hear the Democrats babbling all the time about the Voting Rights act, the Voting Rights act of 1965, which they say is the most sacred, important law ever passed in the history of the United States. As if people didn't vote before the Voting Rights act of 1965. And the Democrats have for 60 years now and more so in recent years, perverted the Voting Rights act to say that as a consequence of it, Democrats at the state level must be able to create minority, majority minority districts based on racial discrimination, such that if a state doesn't have a certain number of majority black districts, say that it's somehow in violation of the Voting Rights Act. But this of course creates a tension with the Constitution, cuz the Constitution says you shouldn't be discriminating on the basis of race. So the whole point of these gerrymandered districts that the Dems say they need to do as a result of the Voting Rights act is to say we're gonna racially discriminate in redistricting. And if we don't racially discriminate in redistricting, then we're running afoul of the Voting Rights Act. But that itself, the Voting Rights act, which exists to underscore, to double down upon, to buttress the 14th and 15th Amendments, that reading itself would undermine the 14th and 15th Amendments. So Justice Alito the Goat writes the majority opinion here and he says that Louisiana intentionally used race as the predominant factor in its redistricting. So it's not just a gerrymander. Gerrymandering is when political parties redraw the congressional districts in order to give them an advantage. And both sides do it and they always do it and they're always gonna do it. It's not just that it's a regular old gerrymander, it is a racially discriminatory gerrymander, which is unconstitutional. Alito points out that the plaintiffs here would have needed to show the people who want the racially discriminatory districts would have needed to show a racialized, racially polarized voting while accounting for partisanship. And that voter dilution that they're seeking to address comes from present day racial discrimination rather than just sort of vague historical discrimination, historical socioeconomic discrimination or whatever. And Alito points out that the plaintiffs didn't do that, so this is just unconstitutional. Justice Thomas agrees with Alito's majority opinion, but he, joined by Justice Gorsuch, go even further. So I know I said Alito's the goat, but obviously Clarence Thomas gives him a run for the money on that. I still give a slight edge to Alito cuz Alito seems to me a little bit more classically conservative and Thomas is a little bit more libertarian. But Thomas is the man we love Thomas, he's awesome. He goes even further than Alito and he says that Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, which is the thing that Democrats are harping on incessantly, that's the provision of this law that's in play here. He says Section 2 of the Voting Rights act doesn't regulate redistricting at all. Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, contrary to the Democrats claims, doesn't say anything about how the states can draw their congressional maps. He says Section 2 of the Voting Rights act pertains to violations of the voting rights of the citizens, Period, Full stop. So a poll tax, say, or an exam at the ballot box or I don't know, a grandfather clause or something that, that would violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights act, but it has absolutely nothing to say about the state's legitimate rights to draw their congressional maps. Indeed, he says that the court's previous interpretations of the Voting Rights act are disastrous and they violate the 14th and 15th Amendments. So we know what the 14th Amendment is. We hear about the 14th Amendment all the time. The Equal Protection Amendment. The 14th Amendment, which is so broad, unfortunately it has led to a lot of constitutional problems. The incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the states, undermining states rights greatly. Birthright, citizenship, people, because of a misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. It's so, so broad. Substantive due process, which is this way that the Libs use the 14th amendment to just rule from the bench in any way they want, effectively just legislating from the bench. You know, there's a lot of problems with it, but we hear it's a very important amendment, the 15th amendment people are less familiar with. The 15th amendment reads, the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. So another Civil War era amendment. And nowhere in that amendment does it suggest that the states no longer have a right to draw congressional districts. So this is a huge, huge win. The reason that it's so important for Louisiana right now, the reason the case surrounds Louisiana is because Louisiana has these two districts that are gonna give undue influence to Democrats on the basis of racial discrimination. And they've got a primary election coming up in weeks, just a couple of weeks. May 16th was the primary election. Governor Landry of Louisiana has just come out and said we're suspending the primary election in deference to the Supreme Court's decision, which means we're gonna have to redraw the congressional districts because we're not gonna let The Democrats rig the election. Now zoom out from Louisiana, from this one decision, from the primary election in the midterms, and even the next presidential. We are stacking wins at the Supreme Court. Probably the most notable win to come to mind is the overruling of Roe v. Wade. After almost 50 years, Roe v. Wade is overruled. One of the worst decisions ever to come out of the Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade, which created a national license to abortion, that took a long time, took almost half a century. It's been more than half a century since the Voting Rights act and the way in which Democrats have perverted that law, actually to undermine the Constitution, actually to undermine the protections against racial discrimination that the Constitution enshrines. It takes a long time. Had we not won in 2016, we wouldn't have gotten that. We wouldn't have gotten these Supreme Court justices. Had we not won this go round, we'll see if that results in any more Supreme Court seats. But this is a massive win. And this is something that conservatives are not very good at. It's kind of ironic because you'd think conservatives understand the importance of time, conservatives understand the importance of patience as a virtue, but we don't. And the Democrats do. It's weird that the radicals are more patient than the conservatives, but the radicals know you just have to keep winning and keep winning and just keep doubling down on your power and insisting upon your preferences in law again and again and again and again until eventually you build up, in the case of the left, this hideous, to quote Alito, disastrous, sorry, to quote Thomas, disastrous kind of jurisprudence. But they understand the importance, to quote Kamala Harris, the importance of the passage of time. They really get that conservatives don't. And so for conservatives, we elect Trump a second time, and we get a lot of wins out of it. We get a lot of wins out of it. We get a net decrease of 5 million illegal aliens in one year. The 3 million who didn't come in, who Biden was letting in, plus the 2 million that were deported, 700,000 formally, and then million and a half or so self deportations. We look at that and we say, that's not enough. We look at the end of transgenderism in public life entirely, which is effectively what we got out of the first year. We look at the DOJ going from partnering with the SPLC to persecute conservatives to the DOJ indicting the splc, the biggest left wing organization. We go from Joe Biden arresting Catholic grannies outside of pro life, sorry, outside of abortion mills, Praying with pro lifers to protest abortion. We go from those grannies being imprisoned to those grannies being freed. We go from ordinary, albeit eccentric, conservatives being imprisoned for daring to oppose Democrats to them being freed. We go from churches being spied on with the sanction of the DOJ to. To the DOJ bringing cases against religious discrimination. Massive shifts, okay? And we just have to keep our eyes on that. Cuz there are challenges, there are setbacks, there are all sorts of problems. We'll get into the war in Iran right now, which looks like it doesn't really have any end in sight. We'll get to some of those setbacks, but keep your eyes on the prize, guys. This is massive stuff. The libs are furious about it. We'll get to. Oh my goodness, the Democrats in the House are apoplectic. We'll get to that momentarily. We will also get to the way that Republicans are responding in their own redistrict down in Florida. Desantis absolutely killing it. First though, I want to tell you about cow guys, go to cowguys.com Big Pharma ruined your skin. Can you pronounce every ingredient on the lotion bottle? Does your moisturizer read like a lab report? What big pharma did to food, they are doing to skincare too. They've used slick marketing to convince us to rub industrial byproduct on our faces. Here's the problem. Skin issues are very common nowadays. Everyone knows someone struggling with bad skin, some kind of skin condition. And the truth is, tallow is what we used for generations before chemical companies took over. It is what your skin understands, it's biologically appropriate and most important, sweet little Elisa approves of it. Sweet little Elisa Tallow pilled me three years ago. Now even convincing me to use tallow as an underarm deodorant, which I didn't totally buy at the time and now I'm totally sold. I brought cow guys to sweet little Lisa. I said, hey girl, what do you think I want? Give me your honest opinion. She tries. She goes, this is great. I love it, I love it. And so it's great. Look, you've got the approval of an expert right now you go to cowguys shop, Michael. M I C H A E L that is cowguys shop, Michael. Get free tallow bomb with your order. So you remember there was this really, really annoying redistricting that just took place in Virginia. Virginia, which is basically a 5050 state. Virginia, which basically voted 5050 even on the referendum to redistrict Virginia which has now effectively disenfranchised every Republican in the Commonwealth. Well, I think Republicans now have 9% of the congressional districts, even though it's basically a 50, 50 state. So Virginia, I guess, has the right to do that. It's unfortunate. It's clearly contrary to the interests of Virginia voters. But As a result, Governor DeSantis down in Florida, in their own redistricting, has just made it through the legislature. Now it goes to the desk of the governor to add four more congressional districts for Republicans. So excellent, excellent stuff from Governor DeSantis down there. A great response from the Republicans to the gerrymandering in Virginia. Absolutely love it. Then on top of that, on top of that, we get the Democrats whining in the House of Representatives. Here is Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat leader there, just recounting all of the Republican wins. And now we're at a point where affirmative action is gone. Diversity is gone. Equity, gone. Inclusion, gone. Racial tolerance, gone. The Voting Rights act, largely gone. But guess what, extremists? We're still here, and we're not going anywhere. And we believe in this country. That's right. Not a perfect country. Okay, so he's using all these euphemisms, See, he's using all these euphemisms to try to make Republicans look like the bad guys, to make the Republicans look extreme. Don't forget the Republicans. Just one unified government with the popular vote across demographics. So he's being very dishonest in his rhetoric. But when you dig down past the euphemisms, he's reminding us of our wins. One that I forgot. The Supreme Court struck down affirmative action. Now, what is affirmative action? Affirmative action is a euphemism to mean racial discrimination against whites and to some degree, Asians, which is obviously unconstitutional. You're right. That was struck down. You're right. This racial discrimination in redistricting, that was just struck down. You're right. Don't forget Roe v. Wade. That was struck down. Don't forget dei. That was largely struck down. Don't forget all the trans nonsense. That was largely struck. You're right. You guys are getting absolutely pummeled. By whom? By the extremists? I don't think so. I think the median American, the median common sense, ordinary voter, not two partisan American, thinks that racial discrimination is wrong and we should generally avoid it. I think the ordinary median American thinks it's basically wrong to kill babies. I think the ordinary median American thinks the transgender stuff is totally nuts. I think the ordinary median American thinks we probably shouldn't be prosecuting pro life grannies and spying on churches and imprisoning peaceful protesters on the other side. And I think that's basically what the ordinary American thinks. And we on the right, we think that the Democrats are just hegemonic because they have been so patient, they have been so crafty. They have taken control of basically every major institution in the United States over the course of some 60 years. And so we think that's it, we can never win. It's over. Give up, retreat to a political quietism, bury our heads in the sand and hope that they come for us last. And what this Supreme Court, what this administration, what these Republican governors have shown is that that's not true. You actually can beat the libs. This was a point that I was making the other night. Matt and I were doing an event with TPUSA at the University of Idaho, which is a ton of fun. I think the whole event is up on TPUSA's website. Some of the clips have been going viral. But it was a great event. The kids were terrific. Erica, the leadership of TPOSA has done a tremendous job continuing Charlie's tour. And it was very encouraging to go out there. It was very, very encouraging. Sold out crowd, unfortunately, over a thousand people. We had to turn away because we can win. I was reminded of a quote from Cardinal Manning that there will come a day, there is a day to come that will reverse the confident judgments of men, which Cardinal Manning means in an eschatological, religious sort of way. And it applies to politics as well, because all human conflict ultimately, ultimately is theological. To quote the self same Cardinal Manning, we can win. You want to know another great win? This is really exciting, abc. According to a report from the Sun, ABC is ready to pull the plug on Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmel, who just days before the latest Democrat attempt to assassinate President Trump. This is number three after many other violent acts from the left which resulted in the successful assassination of Charlie Kirk, the most important conservative organizer in the activist side of the party. After all of this left wing violence, Jimmy Kimmel comes out and he does a fake state of the sorry, fake White House correspondent's dinner. And he says, oh, Melania, you have the glow of an expectant widow. Ha ha ha ha ha. And now, according to this report, after Melania Trump says Jimmy Kimmel needs to be fired, many conservatives say Jimmy Kimmel needs to be fired. I say, Jimmy Kimmel needs to be fired. According to this report, ABC has had enough and they might pull the plug on Kimmel that remains to be seen. There is no question though that Jimmy Kimmel should be fired. And some libs are taking issue with me, with me in particular, cuz I said Kimmel obviously should be fired. And the libs pulled up some tweet that I had posted years and years ago at the height of woke when some comedian or other was being canceled for saying that men can't become women or some totally innocuous thing. And I said, look, comedians shouldn't be fired for their jokes. But now I'm saying Jimmy Kimmel obviously should be fired. Which if we were to go back to basic logic, a basic syllogism, major premise, minor premise, conclusion I think makes my point very clear and coherent. Comedians should not lose their jobs for telling jokes. Jimmy Kimmel should lose his job. Therefore, Jimmy Kimmel's not a comedian, for starters, because comedians are supposed to make you laugh. And Jimmy Kimmel used to make people laugh, but he hasn't made people laugh in a long time. Now he goes out and he cries on his show and he tries to get claps rather than laughs. But even beyond that, to take the issue more seriously, even if we say that Jimmy Kimmel technically is a comedian, obviously there is some limit to the things that we say. I wrote an entire book about this called Speechless Controlling Words, Controlling Minds, which. Thank you. Which is a number one national bestseller describing the limits that all societies have for speech. And so the question becomes, what sort of limits are we going to enforce? I don't even think the most ardent defender of comedy. I love comedy, but I don't even think the most ardent defender of comedy would say that. There is nothing beyond the pale for a comedian. If a comedian, for instance, were to joke and make a direct threat, that would be a violation of the law. That would be illegal speech. If a comedian were to make a joke and slander someone or libel someone, that would not be permitted. Even obscenity. You know, there's a lot of obscene comedy, but even obscenity would be a gray area. And then here we're talking about maybe a threat, maybe the incitement of violence, maybe just the encouragement of the murder of the President of the United States. And in certain social contexts, maybe even that extreme could be tolerated. But I guess we have to ask ourselves here in the big two. Six, the year of our Lord 2026, after President Trump was very, very nearly murdered in Butler, Pennsylvania, just a couple years ago, a year and a half ago, had part of his ear blown off after President Trump was almost assassinated. Again at one of his golf courses after a liberal teacher from California, Kamala Harristoner, just tried to rush and murder President Trump with a shotgun and slaughter as much of his administration and guests as he possibly could. After all of that, if we do not believe that after the successful assassination of Charlie Kirk, which was celebrated by large swaths of the left in that context, if the encouragement of the murder of the President of the United States is not beyond the pale, if that doesn't violate the taboo, if that is not worthy of getting someone booted off of publicly regulated airwaves, what is? What is? If a triple assassination attempt on the president in a short period of time, cheered on by a lot of the left, which is busy trying to, and in some cases successfully murdering other conservatives, if that is not the time to at least slightly rejigger the standards of public speech, what is? What is? At that point we are saying there are to be no standards at all, which is not possible. No society has ever lived that way. And the left, which pretended to claim that 60 years ago, immediately took about resetting standards that were evil, that outlawed truth and demanded falsehood. You saw this very clearly in the case of transgenderism. That outlaw is good and demands wickedness. You see this in the rejiggering, especially of sexual mores, but a lot of mores that discourages beauty and encourages ugliness. You see this in what passes for modern art and entertainment. If this is not the moment to reset the standards, at least to a modest degree, I don't know what is. Kimmel's gotta be fired, and I hope ABC follows through with it. Okay, the shooter, the aforementioned shooter, is a little bit of a clown himself. New pictures are emerging of this shooter, and it is so. It shows you what a decadent and ridiculous age we're living in. This shooter is posting pictures of himself like he's a typical millennial on Reddit or Instagram. Goofy quirk Chungus millennial before he attempts to slaughter the head of the government, we will get to the meaning of the millennial. Smirk on this would be dope assassin. First, though, I want to tell you about Roe. Go to ronutrition.com, use code knowles. That's R-O-Nutrition.com, code knowles. You can get 20% off Ro's liposomal NAD at r h o-nutrition.com use code knowles. K N A W L e s for 20% off NAD is not some obscure compound. It is fundamental to how your body functions at the cellular level. 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If you want to try Roh's liposomal NAD or anything else on their site, go to rhonutrition.com, use code knowleskander w l e s for 20% off. That's r h o-nutrition.com, code knowles for 20% off. The picture that broke the political Internet yesterday. It is the would be assassin. I don't even wanna say his name. He's the guy. The last picture you saw of him probably was where he was wrapped up in tin foil like a baked potato after he failed to kill anybody. Thankfully, this guy takes a picture in his hotel room, perhaps moments before he attempts to slaughter the President of the United States. Dressed up like a complete dork, wearing a black shirt with black pants and a bright red tie tucked into his belt, with what appears to be a machete or a big knife in his pants. He's got guns all around him, taking a mirror selfie with that stupid millennial smirk that listen, we've all done it. All us millennials. Boy, isn't this weird? So that happened. Hey, I did a thing today. Just this millennial blase vocal fry, hipster cynicism. Gosh boy, how quirky is this? How did I find myself in the situation where I'm about to slaughter the president? Record scratch, freeze frame. Yeah, that's me you're looking at. It's so discordant. It's so. This is why it's funny is it's so incongruous to the severity of the action that he's about to undertake that he's obviously gonna fail at cuz he's a complete Loser, which is good. I'm glad he's a loser. Obviously, I'm glad he didn't succeed at killing the president, the whole government. But I guess what's so jarring about this picture is how unself aware it is, how surreal it seems, how even hyper real it seems. The writer Jean Baudrillard has become very popular, especially on the right to talk about. We've had wokel distance on the show who went for describing Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality, which really started to become mainstream in the early 90s when he made the claim that the Gulf War, the first Iraq War, didn't really happen in the sense that our experience of the war was so removed from the reality of it. It was just kind of glittering images on a tv. Very few Americans were actually involved in fighting it. American interests seemed fairly divorced from it. It just seemed hyper real. It seemed, I don't know, very removed and abstracted and vocal distances, description of this. It's kind of the difference between an actual strawberry and a strawberry Jolly Rancher slushie. You know, it's just there's actually. Even though one is derivative of the other, there's very little direct correlation between the two of them. And the reason I find the picture so jarring is it underscores the most jarring part of the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination, which is that the people cheering on weren't just antifa militants who were training to make Molotov cocktails in some anarchist bookstore. The people who were cheering on weren't just overt terrorists. It was the quirky lady who sits next to you at work. It was your aunt, it was your kid's teacher or the nurse at your hospital or the waiter at the restaurant you go to. They didn't understand the seriousness of this act. Their moral framework was so skewed. It seemed that very literally, that might be a consequence of our overstimulation and our living in a virtual world. People are calling this guy the Reddit assassin. He doesn't seem like a real assassin. He seems like the kind of assassin who just exists on Reddit or on social media, almost like an AI assassin. And because we live so much of our lives mediated by social media and by the virtual world, we become alienated from our own bodies. I think that explains a lot of the transgender ideology. We become alienated from our families. Even so, people break up with friends or disown their families increasingly over these more abstract political debates. We become alienated even from our own actions. This guy taking the mirror self that he's gonna upload when he's just. Aren't I just so weird and crazy? I'm just such a quirky guy. I'm such a silly quirky guy. I'm gonna go murder the president. That's me. That's so me. It's so jarring because one gets the impression this guy did not understand what he was about to do even as he went to do it with the knives and the guns, as he's charging the Secret Service. And then he doesn't end up really harming anybody. And he winds up naked, wrapped up in tinfoil like a baked potato, looking like the biggest loser on planet Earth, which he is. You just think, wow, this guy really misperceives the world. That lady next to you at work who was posting on Facebook celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk. You get the sense not only is she doing something evil and wrong, but she just really misunderstands the world. Charlie was a young husband and father of young kids who did not hold political office, who did not pass laws, who organized conservatives in a center right coalition that excluded the real toxic elements, and who was best known for going out and hearing out the other side and speaking graciously and charitably with the other side on college campuses. If that guy must be murdered, then the entire American right, everyone slightly to the right of Hillary Clinton, needs to be murdered. It just expresses such a misperception of reality, such an alienation from society and the libs. Ironically, you know, every lib accusation is a confession. The libs focus in. They concentrate on the threat from the so called incel far right guy living in his mother's basement, who never interacts with the world, who never gets a girlfriend, who doesn't have any friends, who's living. But yet, ironically, it is the mainstream left that is very much living in that way. It is the mainstream left that is dehumanizing its political opponents, including those as amiable and moderate and gracious as Charlie Kirk. It is the mainstream left that is divorced from reality. It's the mainstream left that thinks that a man could be a woman. It's the mainstream left that thinks that a baby isn't really a human being. They're the ones who are so alienated. And the solution to this, I've long advocated for a regulation of social media and the Internet. Americans of both parties agreed with this in the 1990s. That's why they passed the Communications Decency act and the Child Online Protection act, which was struck down by liberal judges, which underscores to our first point in the show, the importance of winning elections so that we can get conservative judges on the court so that our country doesn't spiral out of control. But Quirk Chungus Mirror selfie, millennial smirk guy should be a wake up call to everyone. Frankly, the pictures he's posting on the Internet are more jarring even than the attempt to murder the President of the United States because it shows you the pervasiveness of the problem. Okay, now, speaking of President Trump, unfortunate news, though, perhaps inevitable news coming out of the war in Iran, which to Trump's credit, did kind of end within the timeframe that he suggested. He said the war will go for four to six weeks. And right before the end of the sixth week, there was this ceasefire which is holding. It's a kind of a tenuous ceasefire, but it is holding. Responded to by Iran with a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. And then the United States responds to that with a blockade of the blockade. So we now have a double reverse uno blockade which might just continue forever. And this poses a major, major threat to the Trump coalition. Daily Wire members have a brand new original mini documentary waiting for them right now. The Race to Rescue. Over Easter weekend 20, an American fighter jet was shot down over Iran and a wounded officer vanished into one of the most dangerous mountain ranges on earth. Alone, injured, hunted by an enemy nation, he had one chance stay alive long enough for America to come get him. What followed over the next 48 hours was a mission built on deception, sacrifice, and impossible courage, as some of our bravest risked everything to keep one sacred promise. No one left behind. Watch the Race to Rescue, the story of one of the most daring rescue missions in modern history. Streaming now for Daily Wire members only on the Daily Wire. My favorite comment yesterday is from PNW Vibes, who says the little boy that told you and Matt this was at the TPOA event. The little boy that told you and Matt he wanted to be a priest was so adorable. It was unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. This kid comes up at the end. There were a lot of really, really good questions. A lot of religious questions, too, obviously. Cause you can't separate politics and religion. And people increasingly realize how religious politics is. But a boy comes up at the end, 10 years old, he says, hey, I want to be a priest. Do you have any advice for me? And I said, you know, you want to be a priest. And Matt, classic Walsh decides he's going to grill the little kid. I just said, this is great. News, a little boy wants to be a priest. What wonderful news for the culture. What a white pill. Walsh decides to grill him and says, yeah, why do you want to be a priest? Why do you think you're going to be a priest? And the kid gives the perfect answer. He says, I just think God's calling me to that. Not even this is my appetite, this is my desire, this is my self actualization 10 year old kid. He says, I think God is calling me to that which is the answer and should be the answer to why we all do whatever our vocation is in life or avocation. Absolutely beautiful. I loved it. You can go watch the whole event somewhere on YouTube. Okay. The war in Iran, the non war, the paused war, the stalemate, war in Iran continues. Obviously, President Trump is blockading the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian blockade which has cut off 20% of the flow of the world's oil, not to mention liquid natural gas, not to mention petrochemicals, not to mention fertilizer. Some reports that upwards of 70% of farmers are gonna have a shortfall in fertilizer coming up. So major, major fallout to the global economy and therefore to global politics from just the Iranian blockade. And President Trump responds to that with his own blockade, which you have to grant is probably the best case scenario. Cuz the only two other options, the only two options to conclusively end the war would be capitulation, where we say, okay Iran, you win whatever we give you, you can keep pursuing your nuclear weapons, we're gonna lay off, we're just gonna back out, reopen the strait and we're good. So surrender or a ground invasion of Iran aimed at regime change. Those were the two options other than, well, you know what, you're gonna blockade it, you're gonna freeze in place. Well, we're gonna freeze you in place too. And we're just gonna play a game of chicken. Now that could result in a global recession, but we're just gonna, we're gonna play this game of chicken now the ball is in your court. So according to the President, the blockade is somewhat more effective than the bombing. I agree. They are choking like a stuffed pig and it is going to be worse for them. They can't have a nuclear weapon. So this is Trump's line. Trump's line, which regardless of how the decision to enter into this war at this time was made, obviously the Prime Minister of Israel was very supportive of getting involved in this war. According to reports, so was the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. So were other people. Now a lot of people around the President were saying, look, even if Iran deserves it, this is maybe not the best idea because the reasonable probability of overthrowing the regime is just not there. And the proportionality, the goods to be achieved versus the losses that will likely be incurred are probably out of whack. That was and continues to be my argument. But nevertheless, Iran certainly deserves it. I think there is at least an argument that you could make that the war would be justified on those grounds. And Trump has wanted to bomb Iran for 50 years. And Iran has deserved it for 50 years. Cuz they've made an enemy of the United States since 1979, since they took our hostages, since they killed our Marine, hundreds of Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing, since they funded terrorism that has continued to kill Americans, since they've destabilized the region and giving a big advantage to our geopolitical adversaries. All of that is well and good, but what are we going to actually get out of this war? Is this going to end quickly and decisively and actually help the United States or not? That question is very much open, apparently. The president told CNN's Kaitlan Collins that the timeline for the war, at least for the blockade, which is the coda to the war, we hope it's the last part of the war, that that now could be similar to the timeline in Ukraine. Well, hold on. The Ukraine war hasn't gone on for weeks or months. The Ukraine war has gone on for years. But of course, the global economy cannot tolerate the closure of the Strait of Hormuz for years or for months or maybe even for weeks longer without causing massive disruption and probably a global recession. Now, the President knows that. But the bet here, at least according to the reporting, is that Iran is on the brink of collapse, even if the regime is not on the brink of collapse. The Iranian economy is some of the Iranian infrastructures. The President said this about unsold oil in Iran. He said what happens is the line, the line that's transporting the oil explodes from within, both mechanically and in the earth. Something happens where it just explodes. They say they only have about three days left before that happens. And when it explodes, you can never rebuild it the way that it was. So it's this real game of chicken here. Will the Iranian economy collapse and will Iranian infrastructure literally collapse before the global economy collapses? Because 20% of the world's oil supply is being held up in the Strait of Hormuz along with a bunch of other goods? That's the game of chicken here. This is very, very high stakes now, given where we are in the war, given the fact that we did lead the strikes and they didn't ask me to join the National Security Council. And a lot of people who were skeptical of the war were overruled. And so the die is cast and we are where we are. This is probably the best thing the President can do right now, is just hold out, say, look, just a few more days, guys, a few more weeks, and maybe the Iranian regime is gonna have to cry uncle. We have all the military cards and if we start bombing them again, then the Iranians are gonna start bombing our Gulf allies. That's gonna weaken our support in the region, that could escalate the war. So we don't wanna do that, but we also don't wanna capitulate, because the red line for President Trump is you cannot pursue a nuclear weapon. So now we're in this game of chicken. Are the Iranian oil pipelines gonna explode before the global economy explodes? All of which is to say the risk here for President Trump, Trump is that this action could overwhelm his legacy. I certainly hope it does not. I have a lot of trust in President Trump. He's got the best record on foreign policy in my lifetime. But I think he knew going in, as I said the day it happened, this is the riskiest thing the President has ever done in 10 years. And he's done a lot of risky things. He is not the most risk averse president. Okay? He's done a lot and he's succeeded basically every time. But as oil is now, the price of oil is starting to catch up with what a lot of people were fearing. As oil is hitting a four year high, as farmers are having shortfalls in their fertilizer, as the global economy is getting tense, the game of chicken is coming to a head. The President clearly wants out of this. He does not want to govern Iran, have ground troops there, managing the country for years on end a la Iraq or Afghanistan. He clearly doesn't want that, but I don't think he's going to surrender. So we're now in this extremely high stakes game of chicken where we're in a war that's not really a war, but it could break out once again into a war at any moment. And in any case, Trump once again gambling at all on Red 23, once again with this incredible record from the first term and the second term and all the cascading effects of his record, namely, including, I shouldn't just say namely, cuz there are a lot of other cascading effects, but including the judges that he's put on the court, which have cascading effects on redistricting, which have effects on the representation in Congress, which have effects on Democrats ability to hold political institutions, which has effects, let's not forget on the left wing nonprofits, because the DOJ is now prosecuting the fraudulent nonprofits like the splc. All of this stuff. He's kind of gambling at all on what could be the crowning achievement of US Foreign policy since the Cold War, namely flipping Iran to a more favorable regime. Or it could be the biggest political problem he's ever found himself in. Can't say the guy's not bold. You can't say he's not bold. That's where the situation stands. Okay? Now, speaking of less than ideal countries, we turn from Iran to Haiti and back to the Supreme Court. We'll end where we began today because the Supreme Court is also hearing a case on the temporary protective status of all sorts of people who are not really helping America. In this case, the Haitians. So you remember about a billion years ago, the United States gave temporary protective status to Haitians. They said, these Haitians, you know, they're in a bad situation right now. So we're gonna bring a ton of Haitians to the United States. We'll give them temporary protective status. The Trump administration comes out and says, okay, well, last I checked, the word temporary means not forever. You know, I know the libs love redefining words. We redefine American to mean foreign nationals. We redefine man to mean woman. But I'm pretty sure temporary means not forever. So we're done with the temporary protective status. And the libs are saying, no, no, no, no. We want temporary to mean forever. You can't remove the Haitians. So this court's going. This case is going up to the Supreme Court. Here is Sonia Sotomayor, one of the lib justices, who is a little less, I don't know, reasonable, little less precise than, say, Elena Kagan. Sonia Sotomayor arguing that we can't end temporary protective status for Haitians because Trump said that Haiti is an shit hole. Now we have a president saying at one point that Haiti is a, quote, filthy, dirty, and disgusting s whole country. I'm quoting him. And where he complained that the United States takes people from such countries instead of people from Norway, Sweden, or Denmark. Where he declared illegal. Where he declared illegal immigrants, which he associated with TPS as poisoning the blood of America. I don't see how that one statement is not a prime example of the Arlington example at work and showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision. Okay, so Trump says that Haiti is an shit hole. And we all know Haiti, of course, is a paradise. I mean, that's where. Isn't that where you went on your honeymoon? Everybody just is clamoring to go to Haiti this time of year. No, listen. Maybe not. You bigoted, awful conservatives, but surely the liberals and the leftists, many of whom listen to this show, obviously you all think Haiti is a paradise. Right? Right. Oh, no, hold on. If you're being honest, if we're just between us gals, are we gonna acknowledge Haiti, not the nicest place. It's a country that, since it declared independence in a voodoo ritual that led to the absolute slaughter of every white person on the. That Haiti hasn't fared all that well. That people eat cakes made of mud there because there's no food. It's just like the worst country in the world. Really awful place. Can we acknowledge that? It's a pretty awful place. Can we acknowledge that the Haitians want to leave and they don't want to leave because it's paradise. Okay, so if we can acknowledge that, just between us gals, then what Sonya Sotomayor is saying is because President Trump described reality in a way that we would all agree with if we were being honest, because he did that, he cannot end the temporary status of Haitians who are in this country. He cannot even follow the law if he acknowledges reality because she says it's discriminatory. Okay, put a pause here. Immigration involves discrimination. Can we acknowledge that immigration involves discrimination because we take in some people and we don't take in others? Right. Discrimination. There's just discrimination. There's unjust discrimination. When you let your grandma enter your home for dinner and you don't let a burglar enter your home, you're discriminating. You're discerning differences between two people and acting accordingly. So immigration necessarily involves discrimination. The Democrats know that in 1965, they rewrote the immigration law to discriminate. Ironically, given Sonia Sotomayor's example, we now discriminate against people from Europe. And we discriminate increasingly in recent decades on behalf of people from Latin America or the Caribbean, or even, to a lesser degree, the rest of the world. But we do discriminate. And so the question is, how are we going to discriminate? And a basic rule of American immigration, until recently and of just all immigration to all countries is, well, you want to take in the people who will help your country, and you want to keep out the people who will hurt your country. You want to take in the people who can assimilate. You want to leave out the people who won't assimilate. You want to take in the people who follow your laws and orders and procedures, not the people who undermine them. Sometimes you'll take in a small number of people for purely charitable reasons, and in those cases you don't want them to stay forever. That's exactly what we've done, and now it's time for them to go home. Because if we don't do that, then we're effectively saying we have no borders. Or even worse, we do have borders, but the people who are controlling them are only gonna take in the most dangerous elements and keep out the immigrants who might potentially benefit American society. Are we gonna tolerate that? I don't think so. That is an existential problem for the United States, and I'm happy that because people have shown up to elect Republicans to win elections, probably Sonia Sotomayor is not gonna win the day on the Supreme Court. But those stakes are very, very high and it involves all of us getting with the program and keeping our eyes on the prize and not being taken off into hyper real abstractions about politics and a bunch of nonsense focusing on the real wins. Okay, much, much more to get to, but today is Theology Thursday and the rest of the show continues. Now I have a very exciting guest coming on the show and a pal of mine who I've been trying to get on the show for a while. You do not want to miss it. Become a member Use code Knowles K wles at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. To Covis is the go to for premium handcrafted Western boots. Stop by any store location for a warm welcome, a cold drink in hand and a truly one of a kind shopping experience. Let our friendly staff help you find your new Go to boots, whether your first pair or your 50th. Finish things off with a complimentary boot brand to make them extra special. Come for the boots. Stay for the good times to Covis Forever West.