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Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors, and learn about our Associate Degree in Nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now at Carrington Edu Events. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington.
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Edu Sci this episode's brought to you by Good Ranchers Support the American farmers and ranchers this grilling season by visiting goodranchers.com using code KNOWLES K N A W L E S to get free meat for life in every order and $100 off your first three orders when you start a subscription plan. The Supreme Court hands the infanticidal left a major abortion win. President Trump declares from Beijing that we need more Chinese students in American universities. Shock, horror, Betrayal. Or did he actually do that? Did he actually do that at all? And a CIA whistleblower reveals even more deception and even crime from our old pal Dirk DeVauci on the origin of COVID while Hantavirus displaces Woo flu as the pathogen du jour. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Kitchen knives now have firmware software. Your knife is a computer and if you don't pay the subscription, it's coming for you. We will get to the technological of everything. First, though, I want to tell you about Balance of nature. Go to balanceofnature.com use code knowles getting enough real Nutrition Every day is harder than it should be. You try to eat well and then life happens. You're traveling, you're working. You grab something quick at a drive through and suddenly your balanced diet is beef jerky and caffeine. That is where Balance of Nature comes in. Their whole health system makes it easy to get real fruits and vegetables into your routine without turning your kitchen into a health food science experiment. Now I for one, appreciate how simple it is. The capsules are easy to take every day, and the fiber and spice supplement actually mixes well into coffee or smoothies without tasting like you're chewing on long clipp. It's convenient, especially on busy days when eating perfectly just is not realistic. I travel a lot, you know, sweet little Lisa when I'm at home, I'm getting all my nutrition. When I'm on the road, though sometimes a little less, which is one of the great advantages of Balance of Nature. Unlike a lot of wellness products that feel artificial or over complicated, Balance of Nature uses real Whole food ingredients. Make sure you're getting everything you need. Go to balanceofnature.com today. Get an additional 10% off the whole health system supplement subscription when you use code. Knowles K N O W L E S let's start out with the bad news. Let's just get it out of the way cuz this is the biggest story of the day and the libs are gonna downplay it a little bit. It's pretty bad. The Supreme Court has just ruled that women can continue receiving the abortion drug in the mail. And this is a really big problem because most abortions now are done through the abortion pill. They're chemical abortions. So right on the heels, just a few years after the supreme court, after almost 50 years, overturns Roe v. Wade. Biggest win that the pro life movement has been fighting for for half a century. Just a few years after that you have the majority of abortions being conducted through a pill. A pill that is now being used to subvert the state bans on abortion. The state bans which were allowed to come into effect precisely because Roe v. Wade was overruled. This great victory for the pro life movement completely nullified not only by activists in various states but by the Supreme Court. So what did they say? Here's the CNN reporting. The court is allowing women to continue to receive by mail the abortion pill, not after going to see a doctor, but through telehealth visits. So this maintains the status quo. Specifically this is in Louisiana. Louisiana has a statewide abortion ban. So you have activists here suing, saying that they wanna be able to get the pill through the mail. The Supreme Court, which is 63 conservative last I checked, at least it's supposed to be decided that there would be a pause on the decision from earlier this month from the fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The fifth Circuit Court of Appeals which required women to obtain the abortion pill through in person visits. So it's a little bit complicated, but the Court of Appeals gives the right decision here, which is. No, no, no. This telehealth stuff to try to subvert the state ban on abortion. We're not gonna have that. The people have a right in their states through their representatives to pass the laws they want about abortion. That was the whole point of the Dobbs decision overruling roe v. Wade, R.A. roe v. Wade, which pretended that there was some constitutional right to kill your baby. The Supreme Court in Dobbs came out and did not say that abortion is illegal or unconstitutional. That would have been nice. But the Supreme Court had this very moderate, modest procedural decision which said, hey, the U.S. constitution doesn't address abortion, so the states can pass whatever laws they want. Already the infanticidal left has undermined that. The Court of Appeals comes in and says, no, no, no, you can't get around the Dobbs decision. You can't get around the state ban. And the U.S. supreme Court just says, well, no, hold on. Actually, we're gonna lift the Court of Appeals pause, and we're gonna send the case back to the Court of Appeals to decide it on the merits. So the Court did not explain its reasoning here. It didn't disclose the vote count. But we know that enough of the conservatives went over to the liberal side to undermine their own decision in Dobbs. We also know that Alito and Thomas, the two hardcore, reliable, great jurists, dissented. Alito says the Court's unreasoned order granting stays in this case is remarkable. And then he gets to the real heart of the matter. What is at stake is the perpetration of a scheme to undermine our decision overturning Roe v. Wade. That is what's at stake. That's what this case is really about. The Supreme Court says Roe v. Wade is overruled. And then the Supreme Court comes out and says, actually, well, never really mind. So that was Alito's point, and he gets right to the heart of the matter. Thomas goes further, though, as he often does. And Thomas said, wait a second. The abortion drug through the mail is already illegal, and it is already illegal from the perspective of federal law. If you just go to the 1873 Comstock Act. The Comstock act outlaws the mailing of abortion drugs all the way back in the 19th century. So obviously, this is a direct challenge to Dobbs, a direct challenge to the biggest success that the pro life movement's ever had. It's a direct challenge to states rights to the right of Louisiana to ban abortion. It's obviously a direct challenge to the rights of babies who have a right to life. But it gets to the heart of the way our political order has shifted and the way the conservative movement has shifted. We're in a time of great flux. We love to discuss in the conservative movement different factions vying for power. And some people say some of the changes in the conservative movement are bad. Some say they're good. One way, though, in which the conservative movement writ large has improved over the last 10 years. One clear way that it's improved is that previously the conservative movement, under the sway of libertarian ideology, focused overwhelmingly, almost exclusively on procedural questions. Think about the way the conservative movement used to talk about immigration. The conservative movement used to say that the problem with immigration as we currently have it is that it's being done illegally. So we don't want this illegal immigration. You need to get to the back of the line and, and come into our country legally. The real problem with mass migration is that you're not filling out the right form. We all want more migration, but you gotta do it legally. The conservative movement used to say, my view on immigration is simple, legal, good, illegal, bad. That was the view. It was a very procedural view. The new conservative view, the ascendant view in the conservative movement is no, it's actually all kind of bad. And it doesn't matter really. Look, it's worse if you don't fill out the right paperwork. But the problem is that we're flooding our country with foreign nationals and we have the highest foreign born percentage of the population that we've ever had. And we don't have assimilation and we have a collapse of social accord, of social harmony and a lot of these foreigners are abusing our welfare system. The problem is not the procedure, it's the substance. Same thing here on abortion. The conservative movement used to argue and look to great effect. In as much as it led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. They said, look, look, look, the problem with the Roe v. Wade decision is not that it led to 70 million babies being slaughtered and sacrificed to Moloch. The real problem with Roe v. Wade is that they didn't follow the right procedures of the Constitution. The real problem with slaughtering 70 million babies is that really that right belongs to the states. And you say, well, I don't know, I mean, okay, yeah, you're right. There's no right to an abortion, obviously in the US Constitution. I don't think James Madison wrote that one in there with invisible ink. But that's not the real problem. It's like the Norm MacDonald bit on Bill Cosby raping people. He's saying, oh, you know, people all say the worst part of it's the hypocrisy. I don't think it's the hypocrisy. I think the worst part is the raping. That's the same thing with abortion. Same thing with the mass migration. I think, you know, some people say the worst part about the mass migration is not filling out the right paperwork. I think it's the flooding our country with foreign nationals. You know, some people say the worst part of Roe v. Wade is that subverts states rights. I think it's all the murdering babies. That's the real issue. And so there's been a real shift here from procedural questions to the real substance of the matter. And obviously the problem with abortion is that you're killing babies. A mother is killing her own child, and doctors are totally undermining medical ethics, undermining their Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and they're killing babies. That's the problem. So Alito is totally right here in that this decision by the court is going to undermine the court's decision in Dobbs to overrule Roe v. Wade. But then the deeper problem here is abortion is not primarily a procedural question. Are we gonna kill babies or are we not gonna kill babies? And what the left is proving in there, and even what the supposedly conservative Supreme Court is proving in this stupid order about Louisiana is fighting on the procedure is not enough. The conservative movement previously fighting all these procedural issues, they thought they were being really clever. They said, look, we don't wanna Wade into the divisive substantive questions because that might lose us some voters, that might lose us some support. We don't wanna make those arguments which are go be controversial. What we're gonna do is fight on this low but solid ground of procedure where we can all agree whether you want more migration or less, we can all agree that certain procedures need to be upheld. We can all agree to uphold the basic, plain, original public meaning of the Constitution. And the problem is we can't agree on that. The left hates the Constitution. The left has absolutely no respect whatsoever for basic procedures of our country. They clearly have no respect for law and order. They don't have respect for the physical borders of our country. It's why these two issues are pretty analogous in the way that we fought them and the way that our victories are being subverted. So it seems to me the conclusion from all of this is we gotta get to the substance, guys. We can't keep hiding the ball. We have to get to the heart of the matter. If you don't wanna flood the country with foreign nationals, and to quote the U.S. state Department and the White House, if you don't want replacement migration, if you don't want to replace the American people with foreign people, then you have to make that argument. You have to make the substantive argument, and you have to wield power in accord with those premises. Same thing with abortion. We're not going to trick the left into giving up infanticide by pretending that it's about procedural matters, by pretending it's about the letter of The Constitution or something. They hate the Constitution. They don't care, and they'll continue to undermine it. They'll undermine their own court decisions. So if you're gonna win on that issue, you have to make clear what it's really about. It's really about babies and not killing babies. And you need to wield power in accordance with those premises. Okay? Now, speaking of migration, President Trump, huge controversy here. His critics, especially on the right, are saying this is yet another betrayal of MAGA and America first is. President Trump in Beijing is saying that we need more, not just more foreign students at American universities. We need specifically more Chinese students at American universities. Maybe half a million Chinese students at American universities is fine. So is this a betrayal of America First? Did Trump even really say that? We'll get to his comments. Precisely. And then the facts. Also, the CIA director is in Cuba right now. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. We're going back to Cuba, and we're in Cuba right now. We'll get to that momentarily. First, though, I want to tell you about ExpressVPN. Go to expressvpn.com knowles Here's a little tidbit. Did you know that up until the 90s, encryption technology was treated as military hardware? That's how strong it was considered. That's how important it was considered. And yet today, you have governments whose sole purpose is to get your information. We have the ability to encrypt, at least with certain great companies like ExpressVPN. And some people just don't do it. Don't do it. They don't want to use one of the greatest weapons at your disposal to protect your privacy. Well, right now you can use it. ExpressVPN.com encrypts your Internet connection and routes it through secure servers so your activity stays private. No snooping, no profiling, no manipulating and monetizing your personal data without your consent. People, sometimes they'll put tape over their camera and their laptop, but then they want to encrypt their Internet searches. So you think this is totally crazy. They want your emails, your financial information. I don't think the tape is gonna do a lot for you right now. You can use ExpressVPN. Even a Luddite like me can use it. Boom. One button. You're protected on your computer, on your phone, on your tablet. It's great. And it's got its lowest price ever. $3.49 a month. That is less than 12 cents a day. You get four extra months of Expressvpn just by clicking my special link expressvpn.com knowles exp r-e s s vpn.com knowles get four extra months. Start protecting yourself today. Has President Trump betrayed America first? Has President Trump said that we need more Chinese students in American universities?
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As far as the students, it's 500,000 students. They come good students. I could tell them I don't want any students. It's a very insulting thing to say to a country. They would then immediately go out and start building universities all over China. But if you don't have those students, good students, by the way, if you don'tand we do another thing, you know, if they're good and they want to stay in America, we won't give them a green card and things like that, you know, and that not only them but other countries. But if you want to see a university system die, take a half a million people out of it. And you know, the ones that won't be heard are the top schools. The top schools will do fine, but your lower schools, your lower, the ones that don't do quite as well, those two, they'll be dying all over the place. I frankly think that it's good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture and many of them want to stay here. I think it's good. Not everybody agrees with me and it doesn't sound like a very conservative position. And I'm his conservative. I'm a conservative guy. I'm really a common sense guy. I think more than a conservative guy. I think MAGA is common sense. You know, people understand we want strong borders, we want strong military, we want good education, we want low interest rates. You know, we want. But I think people would argue, they worry about do they have nefarious. I know, and we worry about that. And honestly, you know, they do things to us and we do things to them. And it's a very, very fine line, the whole thing with students. So they have 500,000 students and our university system does great. You know, it does great. You want to screw it up, take a half a million students out and you're going to see bankruptcies at the lower end of good colleges, but they're not known or whatever. You're going to have a lot of problems. So it's something I'm always looking at. But it's a very insulting thing to tell a country. We don't want your people in our schools. I mean, it really is. Now I'll have people say, oh, that's a terrible Thing, you know, it is a very insulting thing, and it's very interesting. It's. Something didn't come up today. Came up last time. Came up last time. But I will tell you that school systems don't want that to happen, because you won't have much of a school system.
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So what is Trump really saying here? Look, some people, I think, when I read, not just with Trump, but with any political figure or any religious figure when they say something and then it makes all sorts of headlines and everyone starts freaking out. And then I come in and I say, well, hold on, let's see what he's really saying here. I, I think some people think that I'm trying to read something into what that person is saying, that I'm trying to spin it, or I'm trying. I don't know. But that's really not what's going on here. A really basic fact of language is that language has to be interpreted. That sometimes the exoteric meaning of what someone says or of a text doesn't tell you the whole story. That's not controversial. That's not political spin. That's just reading. That's just interpretation. Obviously, words have to be interpreted. So the question is, what is this person really getting at? Here is the most basic question you have to ask when you encounter any text or any speech, especially a speech from a politician. Politicians who are always kind of explicitly trying to accomplish multiple things with their words, none of that is controversial. None of that is spin. That's just politics 101. That's not even politics. That's reading 101. So what is Trump saying here? Is Trump saying he wants way more Chinese students in our schools? I don't know. Is Trump saying the university system is perfect? I don't know about that. When Trump says, you know, if you took these Chinese students out of the schools, it would bankrupt the universities, say, don't threaten me with a good time. Hey, hold on.
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Wow.
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Hold on. What's the catch? But I think the key to getting at what Trump is really saying here, one is recognizing where he is. He is making these comments from Beijing at his first state visit to China of this term. He's negotiating with Xi Jinping, the two biggest powers in the world, The US the biggest power in China, a rising power. And I think the key to interpreting what he's really getting at here is the word that he uses most frequently. How does he open his comment? How does he close his comment? He says, look, to tell the Chinese we don't want him here. Is a very insulting thing to say. And if he just said it once, maybe you just write it off. But he opens up, he says, look, that would be a very insulting thing to say. And then at the end, there he goes, it's very insulting. I don't want to insult these people. That would be very insulting. He keeps going back to insulting multiple times. He is on a diplomatic trip here. He's trying to accomplish goals on trade, on war and peace, on preserving America's standing in the world. So he says, I'm not going to insult the Chinese by saying I don't want any of them in our country. First of all, he says there are 500,000 Chinese students in the country. That isn't true Chinese enrollment in American universities, last I checked. Someone can fact check me on this, but last I checked, it was around half of that. It's about a quarter million Chinese students in the universities now. Maybe Trump just got the number wrong. He's got a lot of things going on in his head, or maybe even that exaggeration of how many Chinese students are. Maybe that's part of the negotiation, because Trump is saying that he likes having all these Chinese students here. And yet I can't help but notice, during the first year of Trump's second term, Chinese enrollment in American universities did not grow. It did not even stay the same. It declined. And it declined pretty noticeably. It declined by 4% in Trump's first year. And don't forget, if it declines by 4% in Trump's first year, the Chinese students, all of the foreign students who are in American universities, are there, spread out over four years. So a 4% decline is gonna be much more pronounced. If you're looking at new students entering into the universities, just looking at the undergraduate level, you would say, well, that could be a 16% decline of new students entering. And actually, I think the number when you look at total foreign students who are entering American universities, it's a 20% decline. Now, on the substantive points, I don't think Trump is lying here exactly right. I don't think he's totally lying when he says it's important to have leaders, to have some students from other countries come to our universities. That is true. In the ideal Michael Knowles regime of how many students we take in from foreign countries, the answer would not be zero, and the answer would not be all of them or half a million or whatever. The answer would be some, a small number and particular students. What we really want, from the perspective of American interest abroad, is to bring the elite students from the other universities, the ones who come from political families, the ones who come from wealthy families and influential families, the ones, in other words, who we can bring to the American universities and then send them back out into the world to influence those other countries in America's interests. Now, the problem with the American university system is the university system is often explicitly anti American. So that's a problem for reforming the American university system, but that's actually distinct from how many people we're gonna bring from abroad to be indoctrinated into the American way of thinking. So the way I interpret this statement, first, basic rule of politics, look at what the politician does more than what the politician says. Politicians speak very loosely. It's not just Trump, it's all politicians. So you can't just take at face value what a politician says. You have to look at what he does. What Trump has done is shrink the number of Chinese students who come to American schools. And he's done that recently, and he's doing that consistently. And Trump is trying to negotiate and to avoid what we were discussing yesterday, China is proposing, which is a war. Trump lands in China, and Trump focuses on the personal friendship between Trump and Xi Jinping, China. When Xi Jinping gives his speech right after Trump, he doesn't focus on the personal. He doesn't focus on the individual. He doesn't focus on the great men of history. He focuses on the structural science of history that is impersonal, that is collectivist, that is apparently inevitable. The way that liberals and leftists often pass the buck on their moral decision making, on their agency, onto the supposed science of history, which we get from Marx. China's obviously a communist state. And Xi Jinping threatens war. When Trump gets there, he says, we're in the grips potentially of the Thucydides trap. The Thucydides trap, which is this modern liberal interpretation of the Peloponnesian War by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides, which holds that when a rising power is threatening to displace an established power, war is inevitable, or at the very least, very likely. And Trump is saying, that's not true. War is not inevitable. Great men of history have the opportunity to change things. We have freedom. We can make choices. War is not inevitable. China comes to the table, says war is probably inevitable. And so in the context of that, while Trump is sitting in Beijing, for him to say, look, we don't want to insult China and we like some Chinese and we want some of them to come in, even though, by the way, we are reducing pretty significantly the number of Chinese students who are coming. That's all very important context to interpret what Trump is saying. And this is why the thing that I love most about what Trump says here is he says, look, I'm a conservative guy. And then he caveats that a little bit. He says, well, you know, hold on. He modifies it. He says, I'm a common sense guy. I think we're real common sense. So he says, look, I am conservative, but I'm not an ideologue. And by the way, conservatism itself is not really ideological. We're common sense and we can work things out. We're gonna work things out here. By and large, if Trump were saying all this and massively increasing the number of students from China who are coming to our schools, I'd say this is bad stuff. Bad stuff. Wrong turn. Don't do that. I just think there's so much evidence in Trump's words and more importantly in his actions that that is not what he is doing. He is trying to convince China to behave in a way that is commonsensical, not ideological, that is individual, that is persuadable at the individual level, rather than structural and ideological and inevitable. I think this is all pretty good stuff, folks. And we need to focus on what the politicians, especially what our president is doing, much more than the worst interpretation possible of what he's saying. There's no spin in recognizing that words must be interpreted. Okay, speaking of foreign intervention, the CIA director's in Cuba right now. Sounds like we're about to get some new blends for Mayflower. We'll get to that momentarily. First, though, I want to tell you about Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com, use code KNOWLES K W L E S. You ever notice how grocery shopping somehow became exhausting? You walk into the store planning to grab a few basics, suddenly you're standing there staring at labels, trying to figure out where anything actually came from. Product of the USA means almost anything actually right now. It doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means. A huge percentage of the grass fed beef sold in America is imported from overseas, where you don't know what's going into it, you don't know the regulations. Good ranchers is where it's at, man. I'm such a magnanimous person that when I recently got a new shipment of good ranchers and we were going out of town and the freezer was a little full, so I treat good ranchers like gold, but I said, you know what? I'm gonna Offer a little bit of Good ranchers to some of my colleagues here. And they were like hyenas just jumping on top of it. Well, you don't need to just steal Good ranchers from me. The prices are unbelievable. It's the best meat you're gonna get. I was eating a delicious ribeye the other night. Good Ranchers ribeye. And then as a late night snack for sweet little Alisa, who's obviously well along in pregnancy. She didn't go for the chips or the chocolate. I just grilled her up a tasty Good ranchers New York strip. Start your plan today. You'll get free meat included with Every order, plus 100 bucks off your first three orders with my code KNOWLES goodranchers.com Use code KNOWLES at checkout. Free meat with every order. 100 bucks off your first three orders. When you start your subscription plan this month, only if you want to try it out. You get 40 bucks off your first order with code KNOWLES. CIA. CIA itself posts 2X last night. No commentary other than Havana, Cuba. Just the location. Havana, Cuba. There's a picture of John Ratcliffe, central casting CIA director, flanked by other CIA and US Officials whose faces are blurred out across the table from all of these Cuban officials in a hotel room that looks like it's from Miami in the 1980s, which is actually large. I've been to Havana, and that is kind of what Havana looks like. Cause nothing's been renovated since the 1980s. You see John Ratcliffe sitting there. You see him standing up, good, nice American posture, looking valiant, looking forward, thinking, looking like he's poised to get a big win here. The Cuban officials, what an image can tell you. Speak of interpretation. All the Cuban officials looking to the side, looking downcast, looking defeated, looking upset, looking under pressure. You know, this is true in media, but it's also true in government. The pictures that the editors select are designed to tell you a story that can, you know, pictures worth a thousand words. And what these images are conveying is, hey, we're coming back to Cuba. We are exerting control over Cuba. And some people. You see Radcliffe here looking happy on the streets of Havana. Here we go. This is good stuff. Some people are gonna say this is a bad idea. America only needs to focus in on at home. What happened to traditional American first policy? Why is it that we're involved in all these countries around the world? I would remind you America has been involved in Cuba for a very, very long time. America has exerted direct control over Cuba. The biggest Florida key as far as I'm concerned on at least three occasions there was the occasion. Right after the Spanish American War, 1898 to 1902, we had direct control over Cuba. Then again from 1906 to 1909, I think it was, we had direct control over Cuba and then again for another five year period, 1917 to 1922. But then we had soft control over Cuba all the way up until the Cuban Revolution, until, until Fidel Castro really ensconces himself in power at the end of the 1950s. So why do we do that? Well, because it's 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Two, because American soft control, at least over the Western hemisphere, has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy since the early 19th century, since the Monroe Doctrine. And in this case, why do it now? One, cuz Cuba is particularly weak. And two, because our rivals are intervening in Cuba. China is Cuba's largest trading partner and we cannot tolerate that. We cannot tolerate our greatest geopolitical rival which is threatening us with war. The second Trump lands in Beijing, we cannot tolerate them having a massive stronghold 90 miles off the coast of Florida. That is completely unacceptable. That isn't neoconservatism, that isn't some abandonment of the traditional American foreign policy. That is American foreign policy since the very beginning of our country, or almost the very beginning of our country since James Monroe. Pretty good, pretty early. So this is very likely going to happen. It should happen. It's a good thing to happen. My fear, speaking of American intervention, is that we'll be too distracted with the war in Iran, which is less likely to be successful. So we won't be able to focus all of our resources in Cuba. But nevertheless, what the White House is signaling here, what the CIA is signaling here, is no, no, we're doing it. We're going in. And the timing of this is not coincidental either, by the way, because while Trump is playing the good cop, and while Trump is being very conciliatory and charming to Xi Jinping, the fact that the US Is making moves on Cuba while Trump is negotiating with Beijing is clearly intended to send a message that's clearly intended to send a message to China. Just as Trump's intervention in Venezuela when we arrested Maduro occurred while Chinese diplomats were waiting to meet with Maduro, that was a message to China as well. So you got the nice guy, Trump. Oh, we don't want to insult you. We want to be nice. You and I, we could work it out. We've been buddies, Xi. We've been buddies for a long time, haven't we, you know, we've been buddies longer than any American president because I have a non consecutive second term. Yeah, we're good, right, bro? Meanwhile, the American government is going in and saying, hey, we're taking your stronghold out in Venezuela. We're taking your stronghold out in Cuba. And this is very much a part of American foreign policy. Nothing, nothing surprising about that. And on top of it. Well, actually, the other thing we're doing is we're threatening to arrest Raul Castro, brother of Fidel Castro, who was the leader of Cuba for a while. He's since retired. But we're just making clear, hey, guys, we're taking Cuba. This is especially crucial as Xi Jinping in China is saying, hey, we need to resolve the Taiwan question. Taiwan, which was the last redoubt of the Chinese Nationalists led by Chiang Kai Shek. When the United States was backing the Chinese Nationalists over the Chinese Communists 80 years ago, and the Nationalists went to Taiwan then. We didn't even recognize the communist government of China for many decades. We then softened our approach there. But then at this moment, Xi Jinping is coming in saying, we're going to take Taiwan, and you better not stop us. And the counter move by the United States there is to say, oh, yeah, you think we're talking about Taiwan? Okay, well, hey, look, Cuba's our Taiwan, and we're taking Cuba from you. Before we even talk about Taiwan, we're taking Cuba from you. Lot of choreography going here, a lot of dancing going around here. And there are gonna be people, the critics on the left, of course, but even the critics, especially the critics maybe on the right, who are saying that Trump is just being scattershot. He's being emotional, he's being impetuous. Give me a break. This has been US policy for 60 years, bro. I mean, we're maybe going to arrest the 95 or 96. How old is he? He's super old. Raul Castro. We're maybe gonna arrest him based on a crime that he committed 30 years ago. In 1996, the Cuban government, Raul Castro was the head of the military. They shot down an American plane, Brothers to the rescue, which was anti Cuban, it was anti regime, but they shot down that plane in 1996. That'll be the predicate for which we arrest Raul Castro. If we do a lot of choreography going on here. And it does make a lot of sense. It actually does. You have to interpret these things with historical context, looking at the whole picture, but it makes a lot of sense. Okay, Speaking of the CIA, a CIA whistleblower is now going after our old pal Dr. Fauci, but unfortunately, people are misinterpreting what he means, so we'll get to that in a second. First, though, my favorite comment is I didn't even look at the name, but it's always. I'm just gonna assume the drummer's workshop. Norman's music. Who says Thucydides was black? Aoc. Thucydides. But it's got like a bunch of apostrophes or something. It's kind of spelled weird. Yeah, I'm sure. Of course, we all know that he was black. I mean, the Greeks are a little dusky. Mostly cause of the Turks. But before we get. I know. Look, I wanna get to the mailbag before we get to that CIA whistleblower claiming in testimony on Capitol Hill that the Fauci cover up of Covid's origins was intentional.
- [35:43]
D
Public health policy would have been very different had the American public been made aware that a virus from a lab in China was going to serve as the foundation for an emergency use authorization MRNA products being mandated by the former administration. Dr. Fauci's role in the COVID up was intentional. Dr. Fauci influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials and scientists. This included some of the authors of the paper, the proximal origin of SARS CoV2, and other public health experts who have been in his orbit for the last 20 plus years.
- [36:39]
B
Okay, so he's saying Fauci committed crimes. Fauci, he lied. He deceived. He's a fraudster. Fauci knew that the virus came from the Wuhan lab. He knew it didn't come from a bad batch of pangolin soup, and he lied. So his coverup was intentional. It wasn't just that he got the facts wrong, it's that he did it intentionally. Yes, we knew that. I'm glad. Look, I'm glad the CIA whistleblower has come forward to give us even more evidence of that, but I knew that. Didn't you know that some people are misinterpreting this and saying that the CIA whistleblower is saying that the COVID lab leak itself was intentional, Which I've wondered. I don't know, maybe I'm not convinced that it was intentional, but I certainly don't write that off. China was getting destroyed in a trade war with the United States, and Trump was on the brink of winning reelection. And then Covid happened, and all of that flipped and it happened in China. I would not put it past the Chinese Communists to do that intentionally. To me, that's the big question. Was the lab leak intentional? Yes. Fauci's a liar. Fauci's perfidious. Fauci's the worst. He committed crimes. Fauci's awful. Yes. But I wanna know, especially listen to this, this testimony going viral while Trump is in China. I wanna know not just what did Fauci know and when did he know? What did the Chinese know and when did they know it? What did they do? Also, before we go, one last bit, one last bit from China. It seems trivial, but I think it actually is an important political lesson. Trump has a new name for Democrats. Trump has a new name for Democrats. He floated this a couple days ago in the Oval Office. Here's the name.
- [38:10]
C
I was hunted by some very bad people. Now I'm the hunter. It's much better when you're the hunter. But these are bad people and they'll give you no support at all, no matter how. How good it is. I mean, as an example, I don't know what the numbers are, but if we go to Congress to get something approved, which we get, but you can say that we're going to reduce drug prices by 80% and we won't get one Democrat vote, I don't know how they get away with it. That's why we call them the Dumb ocrats. We have a new name. They're Democrats because they're dumb. They're dumb people.
- [38:44]
B
Okay, so do you get it? He's calling them dumb. Do you get it? So you might say, okay, maybe that's just a one off from Trump in the Oval Office, but Trump's sitting down with Hannity in Beijing and he says no, Maybe you guys didn't hear my joke. I don't know if you guys got. Did you guys get. Do you get it?
- [39:02]
C
The Democrats are against farmers. Can you believe it? So anyway, they're defective. I came up with a new name. I don't know if I should. I know which one it is. Democrats. They're dumb. It's D, U, M. I got rid of the B. So you're only changing one letter, right? E goes. And the U comes. It's a number. You know, you take up more space in people's heads than any one person on the face of this earth. Right? You live rent free. I was talking about.
- [39:31]
B
Hold on, wait till you hear this one. Hold on. You're not going to believe it. You're not going to. I call him dumb. There are people who are rolling their eyes and they say what, that? No, you don't understand. I took the bee out. I call him dumb. Like, not smart. It's like Fredo and the Godfather. Michael, they call me dumb. I'm not dumb. Like, people say I'm smart. And so. Look, I know the reason I wanna focus on this is one. It's very funny. Trump plays it so well, totally straight faced with the clunkiest joke pun you could possibly imagine. And he plays it totally straight faced. He goes, you're not gonna believe this, Sean. Do you know what I call the Democrats? I call them dumb. And he totally doesn't. He doesn't give it up at all. And so people are gonna roll their eyes and they're gonna say, this is so stupid. This is such a lame, clunky pun. Come on. Are you kidding me? This is. Yeah. You didn't come up with that. What are you talking about? People have done that for. And I love it. And I love it. And you know why I love it? I love it because it irritates the sophisticates. I love it because it irritates the people who say, that's not even a clever pun. Why? It's so clunky. There are so many literary references that you could make. This is what Trump did with Elizabeth Warren. You remember Elizabeth Warren who pretended to be Indian, even though she's more lily white than the freshly driven snow. And for a long time, people had been referring to Elizabeth Warren as faux Kahontas. F A U X, Kahontas. Like fake Pocahontas. And then Trump comes into the scene and he says, I call her Pocahontas. And all the sophisticates said, no, you're not even getting the pun. The pun is really. We're not calling her Pocahontas. We're calling her Pocahontas. Cause she's the fake Pocahontas. And you don't even understand the pun. And Trump doesn't care. He goes, I call her Pocahontas. And that was actually the right rhetorical decision, because faux Kahontas doesn't. It's too complicated. You have to make too many connections. You have to know the word faux, which is a foreign word. And so it's just not gonna land politically. Even if it's funnier and more cle, it's not gonna land politically. And Trump knows what lands politically. So he says, no, I call her Pocahontas. That actually works the same Thing here with Democrats, you might say that's not clever, that's not sophisticated, that's not so clunky. It's so. Yeah, but it just kind of works. And when you explain the joke, it actually gets funnier cuz it's such a plain kind of lame joke. It's funny. No, but you don't understand. I took out the B, I call him Democrats and it sticks. That actually does stick. It's funny. If it were more complicated, it wouldn't stick as well. Which is, look, this is Trump's bread and butter. I mean he's been doing this since little Marco and Lyin Ted and Low energy Jeb and all these really evocative visual images.
- [42:17]
E
I love.
- [42:18]
B
I just get such a kick out of it. No you don't. Hold on, maybe you didn't get it. Hold on, stop. Hold on. Pull up your pencil, write it down. Figure. Oh, I'm calling him dumb. Oh, wow, you're right. Wow, I hadn't thought about that. Are they dumb? Okay, we have a little bit of time for the mailbag. Our mailbag is sponsored by PureTalk. Go to PureTalk.com knowlescanawles to claim unlimited high speed data for just 39.99. Take it away.
- [42:39]
F
Hello, Michael, my name is Amanda. I'm a regular listener of your show. I just have a question regarding segment on Monday about the Trump statue. Personally, I didn't feel that it was completely correct. What happened to not that it's wrong, but something just doesn't seem to fit right about it? And also I noticed that you mentioned probably about three times that there were no Catholics at the event. You seemed relieved about it. Do you also think that there was something not completely correct about it? Just wanted to know your views. Thank you for all you do.
- [43:19]
B
Wonderfully astute observation and question. You say, look, there's nothing wrong with this is the statue. There's this gold statue of Trump at the Trump Club in Doral. And you say okay, well whatever. There's a statue of the founder at the Trump Club. Okay. There's a statue of Barry Weiss at the University of Austin. People have statues of founders at places and busts and things. There's no big deal. I think it's a bust of Barry Weiss. Once she becomes president then she can get a statue. But there's nothing shocking about that. There's nothing particularly wrong about having a gold statue rather than a marble statue or a silver statue. So what's weird about it? Well, yes, there were these religious leaders blessing the statue once Again, there's nothing wrong in principle with that. I bless my food before a meal, but I think you're right to say there's something that felt just not perfectly correct about it. There's nothing wrong with it. Point by point by point, you look through it, you say, yeah, okay, it's all fine. It all checks out. But why does it seem like it's not totally correct? And you're right. Job, serve. I don't think there were any Catholic Catholics at the blessing, certainly no clerics that I saw. Why? Well, it's because. The reason that the statue is okay is because, to quote the evangelical pastor who was there, because honor is not worship and respect is not idolatry. That's all true. So, yeah, we venerate people. We hold our leaders with proper respect and honor. Yeah, that's all fine. We create images in this world because, getting back to our earlier point about interpretation, we're fleshy creatures, and the only way that we can understand things is through images and through symbols. The angels are directly infused with knowledge, but we're not. Cause we're body as well as soul. So why does it seem not totally correct? Well, the point, the whole reason I loved that statue story is I said if it's. If it's good, if honor is not worship and respect is not idolatry, good, then we recognize that there's nothing wrong with venerating the saints. There's nothing wrong with respecting people who have lived lives of particular sanctity to God. If we are to give respect to courageous political leaders, all the more so should we give respect to those who have lived lives of particular virtue and sanctity. That's the point, is that Catholics are accused of idolatry and all this for all these reasons. And so I found it delightful that an evangelical leader would knock down that iconoclastic argument. But. So why is it not totally correct? Well, because man is a liturgical creature. We're social creatures. We're creatures who naturally are inclined to give honor and respect. And so you look at the early Americans, the Pilgrims who came on the Mayflower, which is a great cigar company, and you say, look, they hated holidays. They got rid of Christmas. They didn't celebrate Easter. They didn't like holidays. And yet what are the Pilgrims most famous for? Creating a holiday. They're most famous for creating Thanksgiving. Because you can try to get rid of the liturgical calendar. You can try to get rid of feast days, but men are made for feast days. We are inclined to have feast days. And so you can get rid of all the Christian feast days. We're just gonna make up our own new one called Thanksgiving, which is now maybe the central liturgical feast in the American civil liturgical calendar. You can try to get us to not honor people and to not venerate, but that's just not what we're made. We are made to do those things. And so, you know, if some Americans might say, oh, we don't need a pope. We don't need cardinals, we don't need to have any respect for that. But in the nationalistic view of things, that replaced the old scheme in Western civilization, which held that there was at least a relationship between the church and the state, in the nationalistic view, which took over beginning in the 17th century and really culminating in the 19th century, which says that whose reign? His religion. And, you know, that it really imbues the state with a kind of religious power that you didn't really see even in the Middle Ages. In that kind of country, we kind of treat the president like the Pope. We think that he should have all the moral power. Get that pope out of politics. We need the president to have that moral power. We kind of treat the Supreme Court like cardinals. I don't know. We treat the founding Fathers like we would treat the church fathers. We treat certain men in American history, Abraham Lincoln or, I don't know, Frederick Douglass, as doctors of the church. It's not that we get rid of the veneration and the respect. We just transfer it to other objects. And so I'd say, yeah, it's good to honor our leaders, and it's good for Trump to have a statue of himself at his club. That's totally fine. But the reason that you might sense that it's not totally correct is that we have ceased to give honor and respect where they are especially due. That's, I think, why you're sensing that, Bits. It's not that what we're doing right now is wrong, really. It's that we should also be giving honor and respect to places that are perhaps even more deserving. That's the point. Okay, Much more to get to. I know I'm running late. Maybe we'll try to get to some more mailbag before fake headline Friday. But that will be in the memorum segmentum. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Noel's Kanawles at checkout for two months free on all annual play plans.
- [48:42]
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 in 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. 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.
- [49:47]
B
I speak as a citizen of the world. Each day the war goes on. The hatred increases, though the cause of evil prosper.
- [49:56]
E
The first part of our two part special on the civil rights movement, a new Constitution, available now on Daily Wire.
- [50:03]
B
Plus.