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The Michael Knowles Show
Ep. 1973 - Helen of Troy Is Black, & Achilles Is A Transvestite In Nolan’s Odyssey
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Lupita Nyong' O is the most beautiful woman in the world and a five foot female transvestite is the strongest warrior ever to live. That is Christopher Nolan's story in the Odyssey. And everyone expressing their shock and outrage seems to be missing two key facts about the Odyssey in Hollywood, which we will delve into. Then LA Mayor Karen Bass responds to the rise of common sense conservative candidate Spencer Pratt by promising free prosthetic teeth for homeless meth heads. That's an interesting electoral strategy. It might actually pay off in LA. And Gavin Newsom loses his top spot in the 2028 Democrat presidential primary to a bartenders from Westchester. Get ready for President AOC I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. Did the Vatican just give its highest honor to an Iranian diplomat? That is the propaganda floating around on social media and it's not quite true. We will get to that momentarily. First though, speaking of the church, I want to tell you about Ave Maria Mutual funds. Go to Ave Mariafunds.com Michael M I C H A E L A lot of people spend more time researching where to eat dinner than where their retirement money is going. Meanwhile, their investments are quietly funding companies and causes they fundamentally disagree with. At a certain point, you have to ask yourself a pretty obvious question. If you are trying to live according to certain principles, why? Why would you completely abandon those principles the moment money enters the conversation? That is one of many reasons that I am so honored and thrilled to be involved with Ave Maria Mutual Funds. I'm proud to serve on their board. Ave Maria Mutual Funds was founded back in 2001 by George Schwartz with a straightforward idea. 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The prospectus can be obtained by calling 1-866-283-6274 or it can be viewed at ave mariafunds.com, ave Maria Mutual funds are distributed by Ultimus Fund Distributors, llc. Let's start with Karen Bass. Let's start in Los Angeles. Spencer Pratt, the Pratt daddy leader, rising up like a phoenix out of the ashes, out of the literal ashes of the LA fires. And as a Republican shaking up the LA mayor race, he has come out throwing such haymakers that not only did the socialist candidate from the City Council drop out of the next debate, but so did the current mayor, Karen Bass. So now there won't be another debate for mayor cuz everyone's so afraid of Spencer Pratt. So the odds that Spencer Pratt actually becomes mayor of LA are still pretty slim. He's totally destroyed the socialist candidate on the City Council, but Karen Bass maintains a commanding lead in it is Gomorrah by the Sea after all. It's pretty hard for any Republican, no matter how common sense, to beat any Democrat, no matter how communist. However, Karen Bass doesn't seem to be helping herself. She doesn't really know how to respond. Spencer Pratt comes out, he says, all your experience has burned down the city. He comes out, he says, you call me the reality star candidate. Yeah, I'm the only candidate living in reality. He says, we're gonna clean up the criminals and the drug addicts, we're gonna stop blowing money on a bunch of stupid nonsense and we're gonna prevent our city from being burned to the ground. And in response, Louisiana Mayor Karen Bass promises artificial teeth to homeless meth heads. How many people who are unhoused that you meet have no teeth at all? They don't have teeth. Why? Because meth rots your teeth. You can't succeed without teeth. So there needs to be comprehensive health care provided to people. Perfect example of the left's totally wrong approach to political problems. This is a perfect example. Here's the problem. The problem is that there are schizophrenic criminals terrorizing people on the streets of Los Angeles who are addicted to drugs, killing themselves on the street, dying of exposure, and when they're not doing that, they're committing violent crimes against ordinary law abiding, taxpaying citizens. And what Karen Bass focuses on is the fact that the schizophrenic, drug addled criminals violating the law, living as vagrants on the street, have some cosmetic problems. They don't have teeth. Think about how far down the line of causation you've got. Mental illness, crime Lack of discipline, failing political order, drug addiction. Did I say drug addiction yet? Yes. Drug addiction leads to a whole host of problems. Heart problems, vascular problems, brain problems, skin problems, and also teeth problems. Therefore, the way to fix the problem is to give them fake teeth. Not to address the 50 things that caused the superficial cosmetic issue of missing some teeth. No, no, no. We're just gonna. This is putting lipstick on a pig. This is almost literally putting lipstick on a pig. And that's her solution. But no one out there is saying that the problem plaguing skid row in LA is that some of the guys are missing their molars. It's all of the other problems. And of course you're not gonna fix the problem. So even the way she uses word unhoused, even that is such a lie. Unhoused, which is the new politically correct euphemism for homeless. Homeless, which was the politically correct euphemism for bums, junkies, vagrants, tramps. Those words are so misleading. They subvert any attempt to fix the problem. Cuz they make it seem like the issue facing these people and the city is a lack of a house. But that's not the problem. Cuz you can give these people a house. The government does. Liberal politicians do give these people a house a lot. And when you give them a house, you can give them the nicest house in the world. Within approximately four and a half seconds, that house is gonna become a very not nice house. That neighborhood is going to become a very degraded place. You're going to have all of the problems there. There's going to be filth, there's gonna be crime, there's gonna be drugs, there's gonna be violence, there's gonna be all of that. Because the problem for these people is not that they don't have a house. It's all of the things that led them not to have a house in the first place. And so Karen Bass is taking that even further. She says, no, no, the problem isn't even that they don't have a house. The problem is that they're missing a tooth. Give them a tooth. And that's gonna fix all the problems in the back? I don't think so. Spencer Pratt could not have wished for a better campaign ad. His opponents keep making attack ads against him that actually help his campaign. And this one is perfect. Karen Bass. Vote for me and I'll give more of your money to get plastic surgery for meth heads who are terrorizing you on La Brea. Okay. All right. That's fine. No wonder the debate is off. So all Karen Bass is hoping for now is all right, I'm not going to engage with Spencer Pratt anymore. That other chick is gone. So I guess that's helpful to Karen Bass actually. Cuz the other left wing candidate's effectively out of the race. And so it's her versus Spencer Pratt. And Pratt's gonna keep campaigning, but he's only gonna campaign really on social media. Cuz the TV isn't really gonna give him the time of day and she's not gonna give him the opportunity to clobber her in a public debate. So she's just hoping that she can hold on to her, whatever, 55% of the vote, you know, as long as she's got 50% plus one by election day, she's fine. But there is there, she has concluded there is no way for her to campaign against him. So she's just gonna hold on and hope people ignore the race. Now, speaking of the future of the Democrat Party and future elections, there's a new front runner for the Democrats. That would be aoc. Yes, she is the front runner right now. New poll just came out, the Independent is reporting on it. Where is it? A bunch of people are reporting on it. AOC right now has 26% of the Democrat primary support, followed by Pete Buttigieg, 22.4, followed by the man that we were all told was the front runner in the race, Gavin Newsom at 21.2, followed by Kamala at 12.9. So AOC, that's it. It's AOC's race to lose, right? No, I don't think so. What this tells you is something that I have pointed out for six months now at least, which is that the Democrat Party is really in disarray because they have no clear front runner. Even I think it was six months ago I said this. You had never, you had not in, I think it was 20 years or more, had a situation where there was not at that point in the election cycle a candidate, a Democrat candidate with at least 25% of the vote. So the support was all totally diffused and Gavin Newsom was sort of the front runner for a while, but now I guess it's aoc. So does this mean that AOC is gonna be the nominee? I don't think so. And I'll give you an example. On the Republican side, according to reporting here, bad news for the Vice President. According to the reporting, bad news for the vice president because J.D. vance had been the clear, far and away frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 2028. Now, according to some new poll that came out, Atlas Intel, Marco Rubio has taken that spot as the leading candidate for the Republicans. According to Atlas Intel, 45 percent of GOP respondents would back Rubio. That's over Vance, who gets about 30%, followed by Ron DeSantis who gets about 11%, followed by Vivek which gets, he gets about 1.5% followed by Greg Abbott gets 0.7%. So this is really bad news, right for JD Vance, this is really bad news when we look at the Democrats for Gavin Newsom, right? I don't think so. I don't think it's that. I think that we are in silly season right now. So to explain what's going on on the Republican side is simple enough. Rubio's getting all the attention because the issues that Rubio is involved in are the issues that are front of news. The operation in Venezuela, obviously the war in Iran. Geopolitics is really dominating the headlines right now. What is J.D. vance focusing on? The Vice President's focusing on things like fraud. He's focusing on domestic issues. Indeed he has made domestic issues the central point of his political program. That's why he was selected to be Vice president. And crucial to remember domestic issues are what people vote on. People don't really vote on foreign policy and when they do it can often really harm the Republicans because a lot of Republicans have war fatigue and they have Middle east fatigue. So why is Rubio rising up right now? Well, he's rising up, he's doing very well because he's getting a lot of good plaudits in the press and cuz he's doing a very good job. There's no question that he's doing a very good job. But the problem for Rubio, one, I don't even think Rubio is necessarily going to run. I think Rubio and Vance really do seem to be quite close. They do seem to be working together very much in lockstep in the admin. And Rubio's already said that if Vance runs, he's not gonna run. And Trump just two days ago came out and said that he wants the ticket to be J.D. vance President, Marco Rubio Vice President. Elsewhere he said he hopes Rubio just sort of remains as Secretary of State forever because he's doing such a good job at it. But if Rubio did want to run, if AOC does want to run, as she obviously does, the problem for both of them right now is it's just too early. This is silly. Season. I remember early on in the 2016 race, Governor Scott Walker was the leading candidate. Not even close. He was attracting the donors. He had a good chunk of the base. I love Scott Walker. I think Scott Walker is great. I think he's one of the best governors in my lifetime. I think he's truly. He's one of my favorite Republican politicians. Problem for Governor Walker at that time was he peaked too early. And there is no. And this is much earlier even than that. We are in the middle, not even quite in the middle of 2026. We're talking about the 2028 presidential election. The candidates who are peaking now are peaking not because people are seriously considering the presidential election, not because of the real underlying factors that are gonna decide the nominee, but just because of the news cycles. Because in primaries, every candidate kind of pops and then falls and pops and falls, and you go through five or six of them. So if I were a Republican, I would just observe. The 2028 presidential nomination is almost certainly going to be decided by Donald Trump. If the Trump administration remains successful, if, for instance, the Iran war doesn't take the whole thing off the rails, then Trump is gonna pick the nominee. That's basically how it's gonna work. And that's usually how it works with Republican presidents who are coming to the end of their time in office. And it is especially how it works with Donald Trump, who took over the Republican Party and really refashioned it after his own image. So that's gonna come down to Trump. And right now, Trump is saying, I want it to be JD and Rubio as a ticket. Now, if the Trump administration does go off the rails, the only person it's gonna be is someone who's outside of the administration. So in that case, it's much more likely to be someone like Aron DeSantis, who's polling at 11%, than it is to be someone from within the administration. So those are the underlying structural factors for the gop. What about for the Dems? If I'm Gavin Newsom reading this poll, I'm happy. If I'm Gavin Newsom, I don't want to be leading in the polls right now. I wanna be leading in the polls a year from now. I want to be leading in the polls more than a year from now. Yeah, let AOC rise to the top right now. Then she gets all of the scrutiny, she gets all of the attacks, all of the dirt comes out, she drops down. If I'm Newsome, then I want it to be Buttigieg. Let buttigieg have it again for a little bit. Let him have a three or four month run and it's not going to be Harris. Harris is toast if I'm newsome. The person I'm afraid of is not AOC or Buttigieg, who are both ahead of him in the polls right now. The person I'm afraid of is Josh Shapiro, Whitmer, Pritzker, any of these people who haven't really yet declared, who haven't really yet come up to the fore. Same thing. If I'm the vice president. If I'm the vice president, I do not mind right now if Rubio is getting a lot of the attention, a lot of the presidential buzz. It doesn't really matter. It's too early to matter. And just structurally, the way the, the party is set up with the president being in office and being so powerful, that's not even gonna be the determining factor. It's kind of fun. Cause people like politics for a horse race and we love making jokes about AOC and you know, hey, look, maybe another Westchester person will make good, you know, a hometown girl from the place that we grew up. I mean, good for her. But really it is just horse race betting right now. It's not real yet. Okay, now, speaking of casting roles, something that is much more real is this Hollywood movie, Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, which has made some controversial casting choices. Lupita Nyong' o is Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, certainly in the Greek world, but in the whole world. And then Ellen Page, who now calls herself Elliot, who's a 5 foot 1 female transvestite, is apparently the strongest warrior in the world ever. We will examine the controversy because I think people are missing a big point here. First though, I want to tell you about Cardiff. Go to Cardiff co Knowles. Everyone says they support small business right up until a small business owner actually needs something. Then the paperwork starts, then the waiting starts, then the endless hoops start. A guy can run a successful business for years, employ people, pay taxes, keep the whole thing afloat through inflation and regulation and insanity, and still get treated like he's asking for a favor when he applies for funding. That is the problem Cardiff is trying to solve. I love a lot of local businesses. I love a lot of small businesses. In fact, I'm a small business owner myself. Small to medium sized business when it comes to my beloved Mayflower cigars. Cardiff helps small businesses access funding without getting buried in the delays in bureaucracy that usually come with big banks. If you've been in business for at least a year and are bringing in at least $20,000 a month in revenue. Cardiff can help you apply for up to $500,000 in same day funding. The process is built for normal human beings. The application takes less than five minutes. There is no impact on personal credit. Businesses can often get approved in minutes. That funding can go toward hiring, expansion, equipment, inventory, whatever helps the business grow. Cardiff has funded more than $12 billion for businesses since 2004. There's a reason they were voted America's favorite small business lender in both 2024 and 2025. Banks try to lock out small businesses. Cardiff has the key. Big banks may not want to approve your business loans, but Cardiff does. If you've been in business for at least a year and are pulling in 20,000amonth in revenue, apply now for up to $500,000 in same day business funding at Cardiff Co Knowles. That is Cardiff Co Knowles K W L E S Real growth Fast funding Cardiff borrow better. Has Christopher Nolan totally lost it? Is this crazy? Someone posted to Twitter. There are all these funny memes going around. If the Odyssey marketing were honest and it says the Odyssey and the three characters at the top are Ellen Page, Lupita Nyong' O and Travis Scott, the rapper who apparently plays like a Roman poet or something. Let's just focus in on the most controversial choices here. Ellen Page and Lupita Nyong'. O. People are saying this is crazy. Lupita Nyong' o is not the most beautiful woman in the world. Lupita Nyong'. O. Very nice looking lady, very good actress. She's not Helen of Troy, right? That's not. Close your eyes. Hey, quick test. Close your eyes. Think of Helen of Troy. Did you think of Lupita Nyong'? O? Probably not Ellen Page. Even more ridiculous. Ellen Page playing the greatest warrior ever to live. Achilles, the son of a God who is dipped in the river to make him effectively invincible. Except for the little part where he's being held at his heel and the greatest warrior ever to live is now this, like, tiny transvestite lady. Hold on, that doesn't make sense. Right? The part that there are two parts that people are missing. The first part that people are missing is they don't seem to remember what the Odyssey is. They hear Achilles, they hear Helen of Troy, and they rightly think of two of the most prominent characters in the entire Western imagination. But I think they're confusing the Odyssey with the Iliad. The Iliad, which is that first great poem from which Western art descends in which Achilles and Helen of Troy are major, major characters. But in the Odyssey, they're not major characters. In the Odyssey, they're very minor characters. Helen of Troy appears in book four when Telemachus goes to ask about where his father went. And then Achilles appears in book 11 as a ghost, as a shade, when Odysseus is speaking to him in the underworld. And he's this shade. Cause he's already dead. Cause he dies in the Iliad. So what is Christopher Nolan thinking here? Because Christopher Nolan, he made the Dark Knight, he made good movies and kind of conservative movies. What is he doing? Is this all dei? I have a little conspiracy theory. And it goes to the Academy Awards. The Academy Awards in 2024 implemented DEI rules for what can win Best Picture. And it instituted a mandatory diversity requirement. So the mandatory diversity requirement says there are four standards. Any movie that does not meet these standards, at least two of the four is not eligible to be Best Picture. One is on screen representation. At least one lead or significant supporting actor is from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group. Or at least 30% of all actors in minor roles are from underrepresented groups. Or the main story revolves around one of these groups. So the main story does not revolve around an underrepresented group. When we're talking about one of the two great works of Western civilization, what's interesting here is when we're talking about the supporting roles, not only is Lupita Nyong' o playing Helen of Troy, she's also playing Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon. So there you get two black characters for the price of one same actress playing both of them. Forget about these other sort of minor roles here. So it looks like for a relatively small concession in terms of actual screen time and significance to the story, you check off that DEI requirement. How about creative leadership and project team? The film has diverse representation among key creative roles. I don't know that that's true. Christopher Nolan obviously is not like a black pygmy Muslim transsexual. So industry access and opportunities. The film studio production company offers paid apprenticeships, internships, or training opportunities to underrepresented groups. Yeah, they probably could fulfill that. And then audience development. The studio has diverse teams in marketing, publicity, or distribution. So it does seem to me that if the Odyssey, if Christopher Nolan is making a play for Best Picture, which he obviously is, then there's just no way. Maybe there is by the letter of the rules, but by the spirit of the rules, there's no way that he's gonna do it if he has an all white cast, an all Greek cast. So if Ellen Page, or an all straight cast or an all not tranny cast or whatever. So look, if he had Ellen Page playing Odysseus, that would be pretty shocking. But if he's got Ellen Page playing the Shade of Achilles, that's different. Also worth pointing out, there might be a. I don't wanna stretch this too far, but there might be a kind of esoteric reading here of Ellen Page's the Shade of Achilles. Because in the ancient Greek world, death is an unadulterated bad. There's no caveat, there's no hope, there's no nothing. It just sucks to die. It's a degraded and lamentable place to be. The Christian understanding of death is that death is either really, really, really bad because you're being eternally tormented, or death is no problem at all. It has no sting because we can be with God forever. We promised eternal life, a life even fuller and more beautiful than the life we have in this world. That is not the ancient Greek understanding. In the ancient Greek understanding, there is Tartarus, the like, really, really, really bad part of Hades. But most of Hades, where you go and you die, is just like, kind of bad. And so it is interesting that having the greatest warrior ever to live be played by this person whose body has just been so degraded by chemicals by this living contrary to reality. This person is really short. This person doesn't look like a man, you know, doesn't look like the sex that she claims to be. It doesn't look physically strong at all. There actually is a reading of that which says, yes, it would be inappropriate for Achilles to be played by the big Gigachad in hell, because in Hades, everything just kind of sucks and you are degraded and you're not really even yourself. You're a shade of yourself. So anyway, that's my artistic read of why they might have made that choice. But my main read is probably he's just checking some DEI rules. Now, the big worry to me about the Odyssey is that Christopher Nolan's movie is using a bad translation. It's using a new translation of the Odyssey by Emily Wilson. Emily Wilson, who is this feminist who published a new translation of The Odyssey in 2017. The great translations of the Odyssey that we think of, maybe if you had a classics education, you would have read in school are the Fagles translation, maybe the Lattimore translation. But here I texted my expert on all things classics earlier and that would, of course, be the great Spencer Clavin. I said, hey, before I wade into the Nolan wars, how bad is Emily Wilson's Odyssey? Cause I haven't read her translation. I don't want to read her translation. But Spencer did, and he wrote a good review of it. Well, it was a bad review. It was a negative review, but it was a good review in the Claremont Review of Books, and he said, too long, didn't read. Is her translation is bad. Not as bad as the hysterics on X who have truly lost their minds, will tell you, but bad in all the ways and along all the lines they're screeching about. And ultimately, she is an evil influence upon the world. So this is a concern of mine. Now, again, maybe Nolan using that translation, checks another diversity box for the Oscars here, because it means that part of the creative leadership team comes from an underrepresented group. This kind of feminist, radical woman, lady, whatever. But in any case, I am much more concerned about the translation on which all of this is based, because Emily Wilson's translation, yeah, sure, it's kind of feminist, or she brings all her ideological priors. But the bigger issue with her translation, as I understand it from the little bit of it I've read, is that it just disenchants everything. It makes everything prosaic and flat. It denies that the Greeks were really kings and princes. They're just leaders. It denies that they have castles, they just have huts. It makes everything so prosaic and yucky and small and flat and clinical and not as evocative. It's disenchanted. That's a real problem. So, again, I'm not saying I have high hopes for Nolan's Odyssey. I'm just saying Nolan is a good filmmaker. He's made films that are not only good, but actually rather conservative. And so I'm willing to give him a little bit of the benefit of the doubt here that this is not gonna be as bad as everyone is pretending. And maybe he's just kind of playing the game. And if you have a problem with that, maybe the issue isn't Christopher Nolan. Maybe the issue is the entire apparatus of Hollywood. Okay, now, speaking of awards and honors, did the Vatican just give its highest honor to a member of the Iranian government? I'm seeing that news go all over the world today. And whenever I see shocking news about the church, 999 times out of a thousand, I say this is fake news from people with an axe to grind. And there are a lot of people with an axe to grind against virtually everyone, actually, all of the principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places that govern this world have an axe to grind against the church. So what really happened? We'll get to that momentarily. First, though, I want to tell you about Preborn. Go to preborn.com knowles k n a W L E S There are some moments in life that cut through all the noise and remind you what actually matters. One of those is when you see your kid's heartbeat for the first time. Now I have three and a half children, which is great. You know, three out in the world, one cooking on the way. And so I've seen this firsthand. And for a lot of women who are facing unplanned pregnancies, that moment is a lot scarier, involves a lot more trepidation. And that moment is really even more crucial, because when a woman sees her baby on ultrasound, when a woman hears that heartbeat for the first time, that can transform decision making. It more than doubles the likelihood that the mother will choose life. That is why preborn exists. Preborn helps provide ultrasounds to women who might otherwise never get the chance to see their child for the first time. And the support doesn't stop there. Sometimes the left says, well, you're not really pro life. You only care about the baby when it's in the womb. That's obviously not true. Preborn gives mothers help with counseling, maternity care, baby clothes, diapers, other critical resources so they can move forward with confidence and support. 28 bucks provides one ultrasound. 140 bucks helps reach five mothers. I personally love this organization. I support it myself. I encourage you to give whatever you can to get involved. Dial £250, say keyword baby £250 keyword baby. Go to preborn.comknowles preborn.com K N O W L E S Hossein Mohtari, the Iranian ambassador to the Holy See, has just received an honor, what some people are saying is the highest pontifical honor, which is the Order of Pius ix. This was given to him by the Pope. What is the Vatican doing here? Are they pro Iran? Are they Islamophilic? Are they fighting against Israel and America and the West? And no, no. First of all, they're calling this the highest honor that the Vatican can bestow. That's not even true. The highest honor that the Vatican can bestow is the Order of Christ. There are a number of papal orders. There are chivalric orders like the Knights of Malta or the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. There are other Orders, including the Order of Pius ix. There are a number of these orders, the Order of Christ, there are a number of orders that the Pope can bestow. One of them is the Order of Pius ix, which is just given to all the ambassadors after a couple years of service. That's all it is. This is a normal procedure. Iran is not being specially singled out for any particularly special honor. This is just something that the Pope gives to diplomats. It's a nice thing that the Pope gives to diplomats. And why does this matter? That's kind of interesting if you care about the church or if you care about geopolitics. But the reason that this really matters for people who pay attention to politics broadly is it's a reminder about the ubiquity and power of propaganda. Especially when we're talking about the Iran war, when we're talking about the Iran war, when we're talking about the Middle east generally. Issues that touch on religion interest. Christians, Jews, Muslims, major world powers, the American alliances, the Russian axis, the Iranian, the Chinese axis. It's all propaganda. This is something I have noticed personally whenever I weigh in on the Iran war, on an issue facing the Middle East, Israel, the Palestinians, the war in Gaza, we whenever I weigh in in any way, I see on all the social media platforms a deluge of propaganda of these accounts. Alternately calling me slavishly pro Israel or a neo Nazi, alternately calling me, I don't know, a Christian supremacist, fascist, or calling me a traitor to the church, alternately, all of these things. And I'll look at the accounts, whether especially you see this on X, but you can see this on YouTube, you can see this throughout social media. You look at the accounts and you realize these accounts were created three days ago, they're based in Pakistan or something. It's a propaganda and the propaganda is coming from everywhere. It's coming from, in this case, it's obviously coming from Iran. Iran is trying to make a big to do about this rote honor that the Pope bestows upon diplomats. Trying to make it seem as if the Iranian government has Vatican sanction. But it comes from Iran, it comes from Russia, it comes from China, it comes from Israel, it comes from the United States, it comes from the Gulf states, it comes from everywhere. And it's just an important thing to remember when you are trying to examine these issues. It's a little different for domestic issues cuz the only parties there, there's a lot of propaganda there too. But it's, you know, the sort of domestic left and the domestic right. And sometimes a little foreign influence trying to create divisions. But when we're talking about geopolitics, especially a place as hot as the Middle east, especially the Iran war, which involves every major power, 99.7% of what you're seeing is propaganda. And I'm in a very privileged position to observe this because my views on these issues are fairly moderate and down the middle. And I try to be as objective as possible. And so when you have that position, that's the least popular position with the propagandists. So then you get it from both sides, from all sides. But that's very helpful, actually, in a way, because you can see how the information warfare works. And we know for a fact these major governments. I think Netanyahu said this the other day on the 60 Minutes interview. He said, yes, we consider the propaganda war to be the eighth front in this war. But it's obviously not just Israel, it's every country involved in this. And this is the latest example of this. The Iranians are clearly making hay out of this rote procedure that the Vatican presented. But if you seriously believe that the Pope is a supporter of the Iranian regime or something like that, I don't know. You're not gonna make it. You know, I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. You gotta have a little more cleverness. We need to listen to the words of our Lord, who says we need to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Now, speaking of the Iran war, President Trump just got in real hot water because he was asked if the Iran war is distracting him from Americans financial situation, if he was concerned about American's financial situation and the big headline you're seeing go everywhere. President Trump says he is not concerned about Americans financial situation, only concerned about the war in Iran. Is that really what he said? We'll get to what he said, folks. Very excited to say I will be at the Zeal for America 250 rally this June 13th. I will be there with His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke for a powerful day of prayer and conversation as we mark America's 250th birthday. If you are within driving distance of La Crosse, Wisconsin, I strongly encourage you to be there in person if you can't make it. We will also be offering a live stream so you can still take part. Go to CatholicVote.org America250 to get your tickets or to sign up to watch. I did not pick my favorite comment from yesterday. I gave this privilege, I gave this honor as the Pope will Give to diplomats. I gave this honor to the producers, to Mr. Davies. Let's see what they picked from Jason Allen 5760, who says the sexual deviant being charged for sex crimes. Who would have thought? Yeah, okay, that's fine. That's fine. It's an observation I make a lot, which is it's always the ones you must expect. That's in reference to the first gay surrogate parent in the UK he became a gay surrogate parent in 1999. First one ever to do it. He just got charged with sex crimes. Yeah, yeah, okay, that's fine. I'd be curious what the other comments were, but we'll go examine. We'll give a score on how the producers did. First, though, President Trump on the Iran war. Did he really just say. Did the president really just say that he doesn't care about America's financial situation when you're negotiating with Iran, Mr. President, to what extent are American financial situations motivating you to make a deal?
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B
Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all.
- [36:06]
A
I don't think about American's financial situation. I think about one thing. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. So if you took that totally out of context, you'd say, wow, Trump's really lost it. He got elected to make this economy better, which he's done. He got elected to focus on American domestic issues. America first. What are you talking about now? He's saying all he cares about is the Iran war. Listen to the context of the clip. Play it again. Just play it again so you can hear it from the very beginning when you're negotiating with Iran, Mr. President, to what extent are American financial situations motivating you to make a deal?
- [36:39]
B
Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all.
- [36:56]
A
Did you hear the question? The question is the key. Here she goes. When you are negotiating with Iran, to what degree is the American financial situation pressuring you to make a deal? So Trump comes out and the question is essentially, hey, how weak are you right now? How much pressure are you feeling? How much heat do you feel how much leverage does Iran have over you in this negotiation? And his answer is none. Iran has no leverage over me. You want to talk about the pressure from the American financial situation? You want to see if that's going to pressure me into making some deal that I don't want to make? No. Ain't gonna happen. I'm crazy. I'll do anything. I'm unpredictable. Iran's got no pressure on me. I'll let every single American go broke. I'll give away my entire fortune. We will eat mud cakes before I give those jerks that I'm presently negotiating with what they want. That's just negotiation. The context of that comment is entirely with regard to negotiating with Iran. We know from Trump's negotiating style and just common sense negotiating style. You never want to admit that any adversary has any leverage over you at all. You never want to admit that you're feeling any pressure whatsoever. You never wanna let your adversary see you sweat. So, of course he's gonna answer this way. What did you want him to say? Did you want him to say, yeah, I'm actually pretty concerned. I actually think, Yeah. I mean, if Iran keeps blockading the Strait of Hormuz and that causes a global recession, then it's gonna wipe Republicans out in the midterms and I'm going to be impeached. I'm gonna be removed from office, and then my success, JD Vance or Marco Rubio, or in my preference, President Vance with Vice President Rubio won't be elected, and then Democrats will rule for a thousand years. So, yeah, I'm really scared. I'm really worried. I'm really sweating. Do you like my sweat? He's not gonna say that. He's gonna come out and say, oh, I don't care at all. You could put a gun to my head. You could rip the suit off my back. I'm not giving one inch to these people. Of course that's the position he's gonna be negotiating from. So there are plenty of criticisms of the Iran war. There are plenty of reasons to say that we shouldn't have gone in or we should have handled it differently or the other. Obviously, we've talked about that for weeks and weeks and weeks, but that is not the issue that we're talking about here. The issue we're talking about here is, given that Trump is negotiating with the Iranians, what would you have him say? And if you're being honest with yourself, if you are focused primarily on domestic issues, as I am, if you are skeptical of the war in Iran, As I am. If you are concerned about American's financial situation, as I am, and as the President obviously is too, even if you're all of those things, if you're being totally honest with yourself, you would have given exactly the same answer to that reporter. It's one thing to make criticisms of policies. It's one thing to say, well, we should have done this, we should do this now. But let's not be disingenuous here. The headlines that say Trump doesn't care about the American financial situation, just totally ridiculous. Nobody, no honest person really believes that. Okay? Now, speaking of the White House and domestic issues, beautiful post from the White House just this morning. It's an image of Trump. It has the phrase replacement migration crossed out, says remigration. That's it. That's the whole poster. Replacement migration, crossed out, re migration, bigger font in its place. Under President Trump, replacement migration will never be the standard. The United States objects to the Global Compact on Migration and UN efforts to facilitate replacement migration. Listen to that phrase. Not illegal immigration. Not mass migration. Replacement migration. And the State Department follows it up. Last week, the United States refused to participate in the UN's review of the Global Compact on Migration. The United States objects to the Global Compact on Migration and UN efforts to facilitate replacement migration. To the United States and our Western allies. Replacement, replacement, replacement. The reason this matters is some people are gonna say, well, I don't want all these tweets. I don't want all these posts from the State Department and the President. I want deportations. First of all, you've gotten a lot of deportations. The first year. We had over 700,000 formal deportations with well over a million informal deportations, self deportations, pressured deportations. So you did have a net loss of 2 million illegal aliens last year or thereabouts, plus the 3 million who did not cross the border illegally. So you did have a net reduction of what would have been 5 million illegal aliens. The problem is that the Democrats and the business Republicans let the problem get so bad for so many years that now we have something like 20 million illegals. So obviously there's a lot of work to do, a lot more. Sure, we want all of that. This matters, though. And the reason this matters is the last administration called the Great replacement, Capital G, capital R, a racist conspiracy theory. A racist Nazi bigoted conspiracy theory. The Great Replacement. The idea that political actors, the Democrats as the political party, want to radically change the demographics of the United States by bringing in lots and lots of new people such that they can have an electoral advantage forever. The last admin called that a racist, evil Nazi conspiracy theory. Wikipedia calls that a racist, evil Nazi conspiracy theory. The. The current administration recognizes that the Great Replacement is the official policy of the United nations, that the Great Replacement is the official policy of the Democrat Party. That the Great Replacement is a reality. We're getting that from the State Department now. We're getting that from the White House now. And it's obviously a fact. Michael Anton from the Claremont Institute and from the Trump White House, by the way, Michael Anton famously described this as the celebration parallax that when the left comes out and they say, hey, we're gonna bring in millions and millions of foreigners to radically change the demographics of this country, and you celebrate, then that's the truth. That's wonderful. That's a good thing that's happening. But when you angrily say, hey, the Democrats are bringing in millions of foreigners to radically change the demographics of this country, and that's a bad thing, when you lament that fact, then it's not happening. It's not true. It's a racist, terrible, Nazi conspiracy theory. But the Democrats have copped to this. They've explicitly owned up to this for many, many years, and they just tried to stigmatize the phrase great replacement. The Trump administration is now not only calling out that fact, calling out that lie, they're using the word. The Trump administration has just declared that the Great Replacement is no longer a racist Nazi conspiracy theory. It's the official policy of the global left. And that's very important because the first step in solving a problem is admitting that the problem is happening. Okay, Speaking of this White House versus previous administrations, President Trump just also posted a really telling juxtaposition of Vice President J.D. vance and Michelle Obama, describing what it's like to have kids in the White House.
- [43:55]
C
A lot of good things.
- [43:56]
D
It's expensive to live in the White House.
- [43:58]
C
What a blessing it is to be here.
- [43:59]
D
There were moments when I didn't feel like I got enough attention.
- [44:04]
C
We live in this beautiful, very protected mansion that the American people have gifted us.
- [44:09]
D
Many people don't know. I mean, much is not covered.
- [44:13]
C
Most of our meals are prepared for us, so we don't have to worry as much about cooking.
- [44:17]
D
You're paying for every food, every bit of food that you eat.
- [44:20]
C
There are a lot of things that in some ways make having a baby easier.
- [44:24]
D
How do you raise kids in the White House? It's dangerous.
- [44:28]
C
You don't have to worry about TSA lines when you're the vice president. Air Force two makes transportation pretty easy.
- [44:32]
D
We had to pay for their travel to be on the plane.
- [44:35]
C
My attitude towards kids, they're a hassle. What the hell have we gotten ourselves into? No more kids.
- [44:41]
D
They mess you up.
- [44:43]
C
Then we had a second, then we had a third, and now both of us are just like, what's one more?
- [44:46]
A
Whatever. Night and day, night and day. And what I love about this is the juxtaposition of Vance and Michelle Obama describing the same thing, which is raising kids in the White House. They're not talking about any policy or ideology or manifesto or whatever. You're just seeing the juxtaposition of two attitudes and these attitudes, man, it's so important. A point I've tried to make over the years, contrary to many of my friends on the right, is that conservatism, in my mind, is not really an ideology. It doesn't really boil down to ideology. Conservatives disagree on basically every issue. On tariffs versus free trade, on foreign policy intervention versus foreign policy restraint, on migration, the degree to which we should have migration, on the role of religion in government, on and on and on. Conservatives, all disagreements. So the left doesn't really disagree. The left is all progressive. They all agree on. They basically all agree on the economy, varying degrees of socialism, on migration. They all basically want more of it, on the restriction of rights and so forth. The difference is that leftism is an ideology. Conservatism is much more an attitude. It's a disposition, it's an inclination. It's a style of comportment. J.D. vance expresses it here because he looks at all these things. He's looking at the exact same thing Michelle Obama's looking at, and he's grateful. He says, oh, thank you. Hey, thanks, American taxpayer. We get to live in this nice house, and people prepare our meals for us. Michelle Obama comes in, she goes, yeah, we got to pay for those meals. We have to live in this house. Yeah. And, you know, it's the kids who are allowed to work and everything. We say, oh, what's one more? What's having a fourth kid? Love it, love it. That the vice President's having a fourth kid. That's awesome. That's actually politically important because people need to have more kids. Good for him personally, but it's good. People need to have more kids. Michelle Obama. Oh, kids are so hard. It's all so duh. And all the criticism and it's all terrible, and it's so. It's awful. It's all a burden. And this is. I mean, you know, people like this you know people. I remember one time I was on a beach, I was on a beach with some friends and I'm lying back, I'm in the Caribbean, I'm lying back in the sun. Someone turns to me, says, michael, something I like about you. You could be happy anywhere. So I could be happy anywhere. I'm in paradise. I'm not like in downtown Detroit right now. How could you not be happy here? But that's the thing. If you have a spirit of gratitude, if you have a spirit of humility, and if you, I don't know, if you recognize that our very life is a gift and we need to be happy for it and grateful for it, then even the worst of circumstances are bearable. Even suffering itself is a sanctifying thing. But if you have an attitude of pride, of entitlement, of contempt, then even the most glorious of circumstances, living in the freaking White House, flying around on your own 747, wherever you want, whenever you want, even that is a burden. That's it. To me, this is really crucial and it is one of the reasons, even beyond a lot of the policies, migration or whatever, this is one of the reasons that having a left wing government is so deleterious. It's one of the reasons. It's like an acid corroding the body politic is it just fills the society with pride, with contempt, ultimately with a kind of self hatred. You cannot have a happy society and in which every person who constitutes it and the people who are leading it are so deeply unhappy all the time. Okay, so much more to get to. But we don't have time because today is work from home Wednesday and I didn't even assign a work this week. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code knowlescanda wles at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
- [48:53]
E
Martin Luther King Jr. Is an American icon widely considered one of the greatest Americans who ever lived. A man who had a vision for a colorblind society, a post racial America. He had a dream. It's just not the dream you thought it was. Were his true aims a colorblind society? Or something far more radical? Who bankrolled him? What unfolded behind the scenes in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 was civil disobedience actually peaceful? We wanted to show you a clip of the I have a dream speech, but according to our lawyers, we can't. In fact, King's family has made a lot of money suing media outlets. They want to silence critics like us. What they're doing makes it very difficult to judge Martin Luther King, Jr. Not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. Is America today stronger, more unified and racially equal than before King's rise? These questions demand answers, and as Americans, we are entitled to a full accounting of the civil rights movement and its consequences. King's movement fundamentally transformed our country and our system of government.
- [49:58]
A
I speak as a citizen of the world. Each day the war goes on. The hatred increases, though the cause of evil prosper.
- [50:07]
E
The first part of our country two part special on the Civil Rights movement, A new Constitution, available now on Daily Wire.
- [50:13]
A
Plus.