The Michael Knowles Show - Daily Wire Backstage： The Mask Is Off

00:00:00.000 Hey, Michael Knowles here. The latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage, The Mask is Off,

00:00:04.100 is around the corner. Seems like every time you check your newsfeed, it looks more and more like

00:00:08.600 science fiction. We will unpack all of it. Be sure to join me, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan,

00:00:14.020 Matt Walsh, and God King Jeremy Boring as we discuss everything from John Cena groveling to

00:00:18.260 the Chinese Communist Party to all the freaky alien videos the government keeps releasing.

00:00:22.700 Do not miss it. Nobody? Welcome to the Daily Wire Backstage. The mask is off. I'm Jeremy Boring,

00:00:31.580 known as the God King, lowercase g, lowercase k, and we are glad you've tuned in. Can Biden's daily

00:00:36.940 regimen of Gatorade, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and Flintstone vitamins really

00:00:40.680 keep him in the tip-top cognitive shape we've come to expect? Is there a certain number of

00:00:44.960 rockets fired by Hamas and Israeli citizens that would actually convince the left that they're on

00:00:48.760 the, quote, wrong side of history? Because clearly 3,500 isn't the number. And when the UFOs playing

00:00:55.100 peekaboo with our military do finally land, will John Cena apologize to our alien overlords for

00:01:00.180 Hollywood's shame that is The Last Jedi, Battlefield Earth, and Howard the Duck, let's hope he does

00:01:04.980 the right thing in whatever language we all end up speaking. Roll intro graphic.

00:01:18.760 Is there anything more shameful than that John Cena video apologizing in Mandarin for calling the

00:01:30.260 country of Taiwan a gun? Wait, wait, wait. I want to say something about this. It's an actual

00:01:34.300 Maoist struggle session. You know, I want to say something about this. Everybody, it's fun to blame

00:01:38.060 him, but it's universal. It's Universal Studios. No, I blame him. No, you blame Universal Studios. He's not

00:01:43.800 doing that on his own, and Universal Studios is insisting on that because they made more money

00:01:47.480 off this new Fast and Furious thing in China than they're going to make here. That's his fault for

00:01:52.800 going along with it, though. That's right. Universal can tell him to do that. He did it.

00:01:56.840 But he's just a big face, you know, and he's fun to make fun of. And I'm not saying he's not to

00:02:00.460 blame. I'm not saying we shouldn't make fun of him. I'm just saying that we should understand that

00:02:04.020 this is when those Hollywood people get up and they make speeches about how evil we are for voting

00:02:08.800 for Donald Trump when they do all this stuff. They cut scenes of gay love out of movies for different

00:02:15.000 countries. You heard it here. Andrew Klavan does not think John Cena did the wrong thing.

00:02:19.420 The Daily Wire Backstage is sponsored by ExpressVPN. For peace of mind, whenever you go online,

00:02:25.260 visit expressvpn.com slash backstage. Joining me with all the correct opinions, Andrew,

00:02:32.400 Ben Shapiro, Andy Klavan, Matt Walsh, and Michael Knowles. We are so glad that you're joining us

00:02:38.320 tonight, and we want to take just a quick moment to say, if you want to get your question in,

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00:03:18.840 still going. That's the entire promo. You heard it here first. Code VIP, and Andrew Klavan thinks

00:03:26.960 that John Cena did. That's basically the whole show. Does he have a deal with China, too?

00:03:31.940 Does he have a deal that we sell out? You know, this is Hollywood. It's the whole industry.

00:03:37.380 Of course. Wait, Hollywood are whores? What's that? Hollywood are whores.

00:03:41.280 Wow. You're talking about Hollywood who took the actual remake of Red Dawn,

00:03:46.840 and instead of it being the Chinese, a global superpower. Took the Taiwan patch off Tom Cruise.

00:03:52.060 I mean, come on. It's unbelievable. And it is unbelievable. It's unbelievable that they're

00:03:55.880 making speeches to us while supporting these communist jackbooted oppressors who are literally

00:04:01.580 putting people in concentration camp. I'll do one better. So it is the fault of Hollywood that

00:04:05.300 they've decided. There are two things. One is doing business with China. The second is overtly

00:04:09.480 kowtowing to China. They're not the same thing, right? Doing business with China, but saying that

00:04:13.460 China is an authoritarian garbage state, which it is, I really don't see a huge problem.

00:04:18.060 Well, we all do business with China because we live in a world. Like, a lot of people like to

00:04:21.640 complain sometimes that our leftist here stumblers are made in China. And I always think,

00:04:27.160 are you writing this hateful comment to me on your iPhone, which was made in China,

00:04:32.000 or on your laptop, which was made in China, or on your desktop computer, which was made in China?

00:04:35.460 So my broader point is that if you really want to get to the root of the problem here,

00:04:39.840 the root of the problem is that the West made the fundamental miscalculation that if it could get

00:04:47.280 China to engage in market transactions, this would moderate China. And instead,

00:04:51.020 it just made itself dependent on China via market transactions. And what should happen

00:04:54.640 right now, and what should have always happened, is that the West should be economically isolating

00:04:57.800 China. And that has to be an act of collective action, because you can't have American products

00:05:01.640 saying, okay, American manufacturers can't make in China, but we'll still import products from other

00:05:05.260 manufacturers who are making in China, and then undercutting them by 20% on the price.

00:05:08.560 That's not going to work. There has to be an actual move by the government to prevent people

00:05:12.520 from doing business in China, if you actually want to hamstring the Chinese government.

00:05:16.140 Absolutely. In fairness, I don't think that it was a bad experiment. I don't think it was a bad

00:05:20.400 notion that opening up China economically could have led to liberalization.

00:05:24.560 It just didn't work out.

00:05:25.480 It just didn't work out.

00:05:26.120 You know, Joe Biden, so we're probably not going to get much of this anytime soon,

00:05:30.280 because Joe Biden very famously, I think it was only about five years ago, said,

00:05:34.320 a rising China is good for everybody, and a rising China will lead to prosperity. And it just

00:05:40.400 didn't happen. That was the argument for letting...

00:05:42.000 How much money did his son make for his...

00:05:43.560 I know. He waited for the check to clear before that happened. But that was the argument for

00:05:47.160 letting China into the World Trade Organization. And what did China do? They start... Immediately,

00:05:51.040 they start cheating. They start undercutting us. And they obviously don't change the government.

00:05:54.880 But it's also the argument Obama used in Iran. It's always the wrong argument that if we let these

00:05:59.680 people into the community of nations, they will act as if they're part of the community of nations,

00:06:03.700 as if they're not grownups with a philosophy of their own. They have a philosophy. That philosophy is what

00:06:08.480 we're fighting. We're not fighting Chinese people. We're fighting the philosophy of the...

00:06:11.640 I guess what I would say, though, is that sometimes when I think about FDR, just for example,

00:06:15.200 and obviously I disagree with almost every piece of FDR's domestic, in particular,

00:06:19.380 domestic policy as president. But I have a little bit of sympathy. I have a little bit of sympathy for

00:06:24.320 very early 20th century communists as well.

00:06:29.020 Me too. Yeah, so do I.

00:06:29.960 And they didn't know.

00:06:31.120 That's right.

00:06:31.620 I have absolutely no sympathy for modern-day communists because you have 100 years of

00:06:36.740 oppression and mass murder that you can look immediately to. And so we know that a lot of

00:06:41.960 those ideas are bad. I'm not sure at the time that Nixon or Kissinger were opening up China.

00:06:45.260 There are also real politic concerns. I mean, part of the argument was that opening China would

00:06:49.920 make China more moderate. But the other part of it was take China off the table so they're not

00:06:52.880 an ally to Russia, right? That was really the real politic concern involved in the opening of China.

00:06:57.240 But the issue now is how do we shut down China? Because China is indeed an aggressive authoritarian

00:07:03.460 enemy of the United States that is pursuing global power, threatening Taiwan. They just

00:07:07.820 subjected the free state of Hong Kong and nobody cared to complete tyranny over the course of two

00:07:11.500 years. Unbelievable. So quickly.

00:07:12.920 They just took it right over. It's the first reversal, total reversal, for a free country since

00:07:16.580 the end of the Cold War. It's an amazing, amazing thing. The world just did not give any craps at all.

00:07:21.380 That's not fair. The NBA cared.

00:07:22.820 And so the real problem I see right now is now, what's amazing right now, is that now you have

00:07:29.960 a unique opportunity for the West to mobilize in opposition to China. Why? Well, because we now

00:07:34.220 have fairly good information that this Wuhan virus probably started in the lab in Wuhan, right?

00:07:40.160 Whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:07:40.740 I want to know, are we going to get a video of Ben Shapiro saying,

00:07:44.980 Hong sai, Hong kai kai, Hong kai, kai, kai, kai, kai.

00:07:47.820 Yeah, start speaking Mandarin to apologize for all of this. But the reality that, you know,

00:07:53.720 this story was cudgeled to death for a year, right? If you said this in social media, they

00:07:58.600 would literally take you off of Twitter and off of Facebook because it was a conspiracy

00:08:01.660 theory. It was fact-checked false by PolitiFact. And they just had to reverse the fact-check

00:08:05.240 because PolitiFact, of course, is a garbage partisan organization designed only to shut down

00:08:08.720 conservative outlets.

00:08:10.160 Like all fact-checkers.

00:08:11.220 Pretty much. But this is such an opportunity for the United States and for the rest of the

00:08:16.140 world to say, okay, so China did two things, both of which are unbelievably egregious and

00:08:20.000 led to the deaths of millions of people, right? Number one, this thing in all likelihood began

00:08:24.620 through a gain-of-function research failure at a Chinese laboratory. And it was allowed to escape

00:08:30.040 the lab in November, 2019, which brings you to the much bigger thing because mistakes get made.

00:08:34.240 The much bigger thing is that they then hid this all the way until the end of January, right?

00:08:38.920 So to be fair, once the DNA sequencing on COVID-19 was released, within one weekend,

00:08:46.200 the scientific community had created the vaccine. One weekend, by the end of the weekend,

00:08:50.080 the mRNA vaccine sequencing was done. Literally, they released it at the beginning of the weekend.

00:08:54.480 By the following Sunday, everybody had sequenced the mRNA vaccine. And then it took all the way

00:08:59.000 until November to get it ready for market. Okay. Although if you'd cut out all the middlemen

00:09:02.440 and you really accelerated, maybe you're ready by September, October.

00:09:05.520 And if there hadn't been a presidential election, for sure by October, 100%. But if this is started

00:09:10.080 in November, say you use the exact same timeline and they release the DNA sequencing on COVID-19

00:09:14.640 in November or December, and you push the entire timeline up by two months, how many lives get

00:09:20.140 saved? That last wave happened in September, October, November. It killed like 200,000 people.

00:09:24.420 I also have a question of this gain-of-function research that they claim makes it easier to study

00:09:29.480 these viruses, but it also essentially weaponizes the virus. I mean, do we know that the

00:09:35.440 Wuhan lab is not sitting around making viruses for germ warfare? I mean, I think we probably

00:09:40.420 can suspect that that's what they're doing. Right. We in the United States have known for

00:09:44.840 decades. Except for Anthony Fauci. But I had a mask on and I was facing the wall.

00:09:49.360 And now when Fauci is being caught, you know, Rand Paul is now accusing him of perjuring himself

00:09:53.420 because Anthony Fauci said the United States has not in any way funded gain-of-function research

00:09:57.700 that was done in Wuhan. And Anthony Fauci very cleverly denied. And he said,

00:10:01.580 we did not send any money to Wuhan for gain-of-function research, but we did fund gain-of-function

00:10:06.600 research that was done in cooperation with Wuhan. Exactly.

00:10:09.660 I'm just, one thing I'm wondering through all this is, first of all, what is gain-of-function

00:10:13.420 research? But secondly, when you look at the fact that for a year we weren't allowed to talk about

00:10:21.800 the lab in Wuhan and now all of a sudden we can, I think the assumption among a lot of conservatives

00:10:25.660 is that, well, it's the media was covering for China. I think that's part of it. But I also think

00:10:30.140 a bigger part of it is just that it was a common-sense conclusion that anyone could draw. Once you

00:10:37.380 realize this came from Wuhan, they have this lab there. Gee, that's a coincidence.

00:10:41.440 That coronavirus is.

00:10:42.920 And there are so many common-sense judgments that people have been making for a year that the media

00:10:47.720 said, no, no, no, wait, hold on a second, wait for us to tell you you're allowed to draw that

00:10:51.860 conclusion, and then you can. So now, yeah, you're allowed to talk about it, but just because they

00:10:55.920 don't want regular people to go off on their own thinking about things.

00:10:59.080 And the Washington Post, as much as said, we denied it because Trump said it.

00:11:02.920 Right. They said, basically.

00:11:04.200 Margaret Haberman, Maggie Haberman, she said that on national TV. She said, well, because Trump was

00:11:09.760 talking about it, obviously we couldn't take it seriously. And it's like, well, actually, that would

00:11:12.980 mean that you should take some of those New York Times reporters and maybe, you know, go research this

00:11:16.860 sort of thing.

00:11:17.620 You don't have to take the president at face value. You could go check it.

00:11:21.080 But the thing that's truly amazing is that why isn't the Biden administration taking this

00:11:25.500 opportunity? I mean, literally half a million people died in the United States of COVID-19.

00:11:30.260 Like, why isn't he taking the opportunity to say, OK, now is the time for us to crack down on China?

00:11:34.120 By the way, there's wide bipartisan approval for this. If you look in the polling on whether

00:11:37.340 Democrats and Republicans are kind of, there's like the only thing we agree on is that China is an

00:11:41.300 actual threat and that China screwed the pooch on COVID. And the fact that Biden instead is saying,

00:11:47.140 well, you know, let's let the WHO do their investigation and we don't need an independent

00:11:51.320 investigation. We don't need to put any pressure. Like this is the we were told if you remember

00:11:55.980 what Michael said, because Biden believes that a rising China is right. He still holds his view.

00:12:01.260 They're not bad people, folks. They're not bad people.

00:12:02.780 It's not even just that Biden's not taking this seriously. He's impeding the investigation.

00:12:07.680 Yes. There was a State Department investigation launched under the Trump administration.

00:12:11.020 And Blinken, the new secretary of state, shut it down when he got into office.

00:12:15.500 Well, this is a hallmark of their entire foreign policy, right, which is never let the facts get

00:12:18.580 in the way of your ideology. But it's also also the racial stuff just makes it impossible,

00:12:22.860 I think, for modern day Democrats. That's why we didn't we've heard some people in the media saying

00:12:27.460 they deleted some of the tweets, but saying that, of course, it's racist.

00:12:30.660 They were saying that for a year, but some are still saying it's racist.

00:12:33.220 Right. Just just today. So so the fact that Chinese people are not white is a big political

00:12:39.640 problem for for Joe Biden and the Democrats. I think in some ways it's as simple as that,

00:12:44.280 that, you know, this came from a place where these are not white people.

00:12:46.980 And so this is getting very offensive. I was in Washington's D.C.'s Chinatown the other day,

00:12:52.100 and there's a big lit poster, electric poster telling us not to hate Asian people.

00:12:57.340 I'm beginning to be offended by these signs telling me not to hate people.

00:13:01.220 You know, it's like, first of all, screw you. Who the hell are you to tell me?

00:13:04.480 I'll hate whoever I want. No, but I will hate whoever I want.

00:13:07.680 And why what makes them think this country that has been so welcoming to everybody has been so

00:13:13.680 welcoming to everybody needs a lecture from corporate toadies who are doing business with

00:13:17.740 the Chinese and doing business to the point where they won't criticize them. Why? Why are they

00:13:21.940 lecturing me? Anybody who can afford that sign shouldn't be lecturing me.

00:13:25.320 Put a sign about how we shouldn't hate Asian people up at the Harvard admittance.

00:13:28.840 Right, right. That's a question from a dailywire dot com subscriber for the group.

00:13:34.040 If the Wuhan virus was manmade, how should the U.S. respond? Not how will they,

00:13:38.620 which is not at all. How should they respond?

00:13:41.200 Well, I mean, the really the big question is whether it was manmade is whether the leak was

00:13:46.080 was the responsibility of the lab and whether they then covered that up for months. Right.

00:13:49.760 Because without without the cover up, you even there, you would understand, OK,

00:13:53.100 this is the stand. Right. Something escapes a military facility. It's not the first time

00:13:56.100 this sort of thing has happened before, actually. But once it starts getting covered up,

00:13:59.860 that's the real moral responsibility, because they knew for months, for sure, 100 percent that

00:14:04.200 this thing was transmitting human to human. They were lying about their casualty statistics.

00:14:09.020 They knew 30,000 people probably died in Wuhan. They said 3,000 people died in Wuhan.

00:14:12.960 What should the punishment be? The punishment should be

00:14:14.340 massive economic sanctions against any company that is based in China. I mean, that should be like

00:14:20.760 take on the entire economic regime of the Chinese. What's amazing to me is that the Biden

00:14:25.660 administration is willing to sacrifice the American economy so that we can blow out the dollar

00:14:29.820 by borrowing money from China, essentially. Right. But if you are actually going to make

00:14:33.520 economic sacrifices, you should do so for perhaps the higher purpose of getting rid of the

00:14:38.420 authoritarian regime in China, which is threatening all of its neighbors and threatening the freedom

00:14:42.960 of the United States eventually, because we can lose this thing by default. That's the part that I'm

00:14:47.020 afraid of. You know, this is this is why I don't think it's the worst idea in the world for

00:14:50.520 there to be a union of democracies. You know, instead of the United Nations, which I think we should

00:14:55.040 walk out of tomorrow, if not yesterday, I think this should be a union of actual free peoples that

00:15:00.240 they can stand together against threats like this. You know, one of the things I thought Trump did

00:15:05.540 that was was reckless was when he got rid of that Asian, you know, the United. Trans-Pacific

00:15:09.560 partnership. Because we do need to act together against this. TPP had problems with it, but this

00:15:14.060 was a big mistake. He should. Yeah. TPP was. No, he had legitimate problems, too. But I agree.

00:15:18.720 There are certainly problems with the TPP. It gave too much power to international institutions,

00:15:22.560 but it should have been corrected in the same way that Trump tried to correct NAFTA, right?

00:15:26.280 I do not think it would be a terrible thing to have an international union of democracies. I think

00:15:31.100 this is this is the thing. We keep talking about globalism as if it's somehow going to go away. It's

00:15:35.460 a global world. It's a global world. I can pick up my take the phone out of my pocket and call

00:15:39.460 Afghanistan and and get put directly through. It's a global world. We need to unite the people who

00:15:44.340 actually believe that the people should rule. But is the issue here that we want instant regime change

00:15:50.220 in China or is the issue we want to contain China and stop them from aggressing on Taiwan,

00:15:56.800 aggressing in Hong Kong, aggressing on our interests in the South China Sea, aggressing on us

00:16:00.300 economically? We have to cut off their leverage. Right now, they have way too much leverage over

00:16:04.720 America's ability to operate, whether it is through the number of American treasuries they hold or

00:16:10.120 whether it is over the number of American businesses who are doing serious business. The property they

00:16:13.880 steal. Yes, I do want a regime change in China. But if you're asking me if I want

00:16:17.820 some sort of military regime change or some sort of instantaneous regime change, no. But I think

00:16:23.520 that if you're a if you love the idea of human freedom, then your long term objective would be

00:16:28.800 to see China liberated from this mess that they've made or this. Yeah. As long as it's not going to

00:16:34.400 cost me five dollars more for my iPhone. Forget the whole thing. And the thing is that we have the

00:16:39.100 model of this, right? The United States did not engage in large scale trade with the Soviet Union in

00:16:43.940 the middle of the Cold War. The United States basically cut them off at the knees economically. And then we

00:16:47.600 outcompeted them because their system was not capable of functioning. I do want to push back

00:16:50.940 on that, though, because I think what you just said reinforces a bad idea out there that people

00:16:55.020 have, even on the right, about how economics work. Your iPhone is not five dollars cheaper because

00:17:00.140 it's manufactured in China. Your iPhone exists at all because it's manufactured in China. Yeah,

00:17:05.720 that's true, but that shouldn't be true. I agree that it shouldn't be true, but it is true because

00:17:09.880 it isn't just that it's cheaper in China. It's that in America, you can not manufacture at

00:17:17.300 the rate of innovation because of things like environmental regulations, because of all of

00:17:24.560 the just all of the rules that impede trade. The precious the precious minerals that they

00:17:29.580 use to make this stuff. We have those available and you can't get out of here. And this is but

00:17:33.880 this is something that needs to be addressed, that actually, when you're saving the environment,

00:17:37.760 which is not in any trouble, really, which is not a crisis at all, you are enslaving people

00:17:42.540 and you're making it easier to enslave people. We've outsourced all of our pollution at the

00:17:45.620 world countries. Right. Yeah, I was I my I was in the car recently with my son. He was peppering

00:17:50.940 me with all these questions about how different things are made. And of course, you know, as a

00:17:54.480 parent, you realize how stupid you are. I can't answer most of them. But at one point,

00:17:57.720 he asked me, how long did it take to build the Empire State Building, which was built 90 years ago or so.

00:18:02.880 Yeah. And so I thought, you know, OK, maybe 10 years or something like six days. Yeah, I looked

00:18:07.620 and I looked it up. And so I said, OK, let's look it up. And it was built in a year. Yeah. And of

00:18:13.320 course, you you try to build the Empire State Building today. I mean, look at the at the building

00:18:17.560 that replaced the World Trade Center. It took them it took them 15 years to even get even get started.

00:18:20.860 I've been doing the big dig in Boston since Ted Kennedy was wandering around leaving women in rivers.

00:18:25.460 Right. And that's that's back when you wanted to build a building. You just built the building. But now

00:18:29.140 it would take five years to even get the permits to even start. So right.

00:18:32.240 Yeah. What you need to do while you're trying to figure out, well, if everything is going terribly,

00:18:36.620 what what should I do? What can I do, Jeremy? You can go to Policy Genius and you need to go to

00:18:41.160 Policy Genius. We laugh. I like to have fun with the ad reads. But you have a responsibility to the

00:18:46.060 people in your life. What will happen if you are gone and unable to care for them? The answer is you

00:18:51.220 need a life insurance policy like all other kinds of insurance. You need to be a responsible adult

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00:19:19.760 Genius a five star rating across thousands of reviews on Trustpilot and on Google. And from me,

00:19:25.420 I've told you guys before, I've gotten three life insurance policies on PolicyGenius.com,

00:19:30.260 one for myself to provide for my wife and for my child in the event of my, I shouldn't say the

00:19:35.900 unlikely event, it's the very likely event of my untimely demise. One on my wife because, you know,

00:19:42.520 she also has responsibilities to our child. And the most important one is the one that I carry

00:19:46.240 on Ben Shapiro. Head to PolicyGenius.com, get started right now. Policy Genius, when it comes to

00:19:52.820 insurance, it's nice to get it right. It's even more nice to do the right thing. PolicyGenius.com.

00:19:58.300 Okay. You forgot the one you took out on Knowles because of the murder plot.

00:20:01.320 Wait, hold on a second. That can be evidence. The problem with getting a life insurance policy

00:20:07.660 that would give me the kind of confidence it would take to murder Knowles is that he would have to

00:20:12.380 have a medical exam first. And there's not even PolicyGenius.com. No, he'd be gone.

00:20:18.840 Could never deal with all of this. It's too healthy.

00:20:22.440 Deal with all of this. China bad. Another thing going on in the world that's been bad since the

00:20:26.840 last time we were together is this horrible conflict going on in the Middle East. Hamas

00:20:31.420 deciding to fire 3,500 rockets. 4,500. Yep. Indiscriminately into Israel and Israel responding

00:20:38.940 the way that any first world power would, which is with very expensive, very technological,

00:20:45.020 very directed, but very lethal force. And to see the reaction both in the news media and

00:20:54.140 in the left politics in this country has just been unbelievable. I want to talk about it for

00:20:58.860 a little bit. You know, someone this week, our very own Candace Owens made this great point.

00:21:05.000 She said, you know, there are people on the left who are sending me pictures of dead Palestinians,

00:21:10.200 children even saying, you know, if you don't speak out against this, then you don't deserve

00:21:13.800 to have your platform. And there are people on the right who are saying, you know, if you don't

00:21:16.680 stand up for Israel, you don't deserve to have a platform. And Candace rightly said,

00:21:20.220 we can't all be experts on everything all the time. She said, I'm reading books about this. I'm

00:21:25.280 trying to get educated. She has a history of doing this on other issues in the past where she doesn't

00:21:29.000 want to speak out until she really knows. And I appreciate that. At the same time, I don't think

00:21:34.220 that one has to be an expert to understand the immorality of firing rockets indiscriminately into

00:21:41.380 civilian areas. It seems to me that what the left has been saying during this conflict is essentially

00:21:47.920 because Israel is better at war than the Palestinians, Israel is evil, which A, makes me

00:21:56.020 understand why we do so badly in wars in this country if 50% of Americans actually think that

00:22:01.380 the purpose of war is equal destruction. Well, no, we need equity. It's equity in warfare is what we're

00:22:07.860 looking for. Equitable outcome. Equitable outcome in warfare. But essentially they're saying Israel

00:22:13.540 would be a lot better if more Jews died in these conflicts. Well, Israel is also the West and they

00:22:17.640 seriously hate the West. It is amazing to me. I read on the air Hamas's charter, which is just a

00:22:25.500 series of anti-Jewish filth. They blame them for the French Revolution. I'm not making this up. I wish I

00:22:33.100 were making this up. They blame Jews for the French Revolution. They blame Jews for World War I. They blame

00:22:37.080 Jews for World War II. Their clever plan to exterminate themselves in order to take over

00:22:41.600 the world. I don't know what that was about. But, you know, this is the kind of stuff.

00:22:44.820 They quote the hadiths about Jews hiding behind rocks and trees and Muslims being called to kill

00:22:48.820 them. It is everything, everything. But the blood libel is in it. But I'm sure they would believe in the

00:22:52.740 blood libel too. Surely, surely, if somebody tells you, you know, my philosophy is that I believe

00:22:58.960 Jews should be exterminated because of this. We should believe them. We should believe that this is a

00:23:03.460 a genocidal terrorist movement that was elected, was duly elected by the Palestinian people.

00:23:10.820 Somewhere along the line that has to be addressed and somewhere along the line has to be addressed

00:23:14.240 that the Jewish state is the freest, most multicultural, most successful state in the

00:23:20.420 Middle East and should be imitated. The thing that drives me about this, and it goes back to what you

00:23:24.460 were saying, it goes back to what you were saying about no policy result is going to change their

00:23:30.900 philosophy. The Iranian deal by Obama, one of the great disasters of his administration,

00:23:37.860 was overturned by Donald Trump, and he instituted the first actual advance in Middle East peace that

00:23:43.780 I have seen in my lifetime, which now goes back to 1776, right? So this is the first time I ever saw

00:23:48.620 anybody do anything, just a little bit of a change in the strategy of going into the Middle East.

00:23:53.040 They have gone directly back to the Iranian deal. I mean, when you bring this terrorist state,

00:23:59.220 Iran is a terrorist state, when you bring it back into the center of power in the Middle East,

00:24:04.080 you encourage all the bad actors to climb on board. They're the ones who are funding Hamas.

00:24:08.360 They're the ones who are sending them the missiles. It's just incredible to me that no fact can

00:24:13.360 penetrate their ideology. To give a two-minute synopsis for people who don't know the modern origins of

00:24:18.400 this particular conflict, first of all, what Drew said. Do not go back to the exodus.

00:24:20.860 I definitely do. I have a video coming out that's like a full hour going all the way back to the

00:24:25.280 exodus, but no joke. But what Drew says about Hamas is not only correct. The fact is that what

00:24:31.860 just happened over the past few months, what actually drove this, what started this, is that

00:24:35.760 in late April, Mahmoud Abbas is the head of the Palestinian Authority. He's currently in the 16th

00:24:39.480 year of a four-year elected term, because the last election in the Palestinian Authority was held in

00:24:44.260 2005. So he's now, you know, 85 years old. Kind of like our 15 days. Kind of like 15 days to slow

00:24:50.180 the spread. Exactly. Exactly. So he was elected. So he won in the West Bank in very contentious

00:24:55.980 circumstances. Then Hamas won the next year in the Gaza Strip. So he called another election because

00:25:00.360 the Biden administration said, we would love to see you guys do an election. So he called an election

00:25:03.740 and then he looked at the polling and he realized he was going to lose to Hamas because Hamas right now

00:25:07.380 rules the Gaza Strip. And they're at war, literal war, like people killing each other

00:25:10.320 with the Palestinian Authority and Islamic Jihad. So he called these elections and then he canceled

00:25:14.640 the elections in late April. He said, oh, you know what? Bad idea. No more elections. And so in order

00:25:18.920 to distract Palestinians from the fact that he had just canceled an election that would have allowed

00:25:22.500 him to be replaced in power, he decided to launch essentially a terror campaign against Israel. He

00:25:27.540 started posting videos on Fatah TV about how it was good to stab Jews. He started encouraging Fatah

00:25:32.480 members to go up to the Temple Mount and fling rocks and projectiles at Israeli police to start a

00:25:36.980 conflagration on the Temple Mount that could then be treated as though it was

00:25:40.120 a mutual conflict on the Temple Mount. And he started propagandizing about what was happening in

00:25:44.520 Shikshara, which is a suburb of Jerusalem. There's a 50 year, literally 50 year legal case that has been

00:25:49.660 winding its way through the courts about, I kid you not, four houses. These four houses were basically

00:25:54.400 owned by Jews before 1948. Jordan won this territory between 48 and 67. They handed deeds over to a bunch

00:26:00.060 of Arabs in that area. Israel respected the deeds that were handed over, but there were four houses

00:26:04.140 where Jordan hadn't handed over deeds. So the Jews came back in 67 after they won. And they said, okay,

00:26:09.500 well now these houses, we have the title, it's our house. The courts came up with the solution. You

00:26:13.180 guys pay rent and you get to stay. The Palestinians didn't pay rent for 50 years. And so finally the

00:26:17.440 Jews were like, well, you didn't pay rent, so we're evicting you. That was the eviction crisis.

00:26:21.120 Four houses in Shikshara. Okay. There are 1.9 million Israeli Arabs living in the state of

00:26:25.900 Israel. So when people talk about ethnic cleansing or moving people out, there are 1.9 million Arabs

00:26:30.500 living in Israel. There are zero Jews living in Gaza. There are zero Jews living under the Palestinian

00:26:34.320 authority. There's only one apartheid regime in this particular conflict. And it is

00:26:37.900 not Israel by any stretch of the imagination. Hamas had to get in on the business. Once Fatah

00:26:41.840 started the conflict in order to generate more publicity for themselves, Hamas couldn't be

00:26:45.300 left out. Now it's a party, right? So they start firing rockets at Israel in order to not be left

00:26:49.320 out and to outflank Fatah. And you can see, by the way, all of this play out after the ceasefire

00:26:53.340 was signed. There's this big, the riots on the Temple Mount have continued. In Al-Aqsa Mosque,

00:26:57.900 you have thousands of Muslims who have gathered. And they actually shouted out the Grand

00:27:01.860 Mufti of Jerusalem, who's a Fatah member, a member of Mahmoud Abbas's party. They shouted him out,

00:27:05.720 shouting, we are Mohammed Daif's men, meaning Mohammed Daif is the spiritual leader of Hamas.

00:27:10.260 We are with Hamas. So all of this is basically just an internal Palestinian conflict that was

00:27:14.880 then projected outward at the Israelis. And the Israelis were like, OK, listen, thank God for

00:27:18.740 Iron Dome. We can prevent 90 percent of these projectiles from hitting Israelis. But we're going

00:27:23.580 to have to take out like a bunch of your stuff. When we say that any state did what Israel would

00:27:27.840 have done, that's not true. Any state that was hit with 4,500 rockets in the middle of, for example,

00:27:32.860 its capital city or Tel Aviv or Washington, D.C. or New York, let me put this, of 1,000 rockets at

00:27:36.920 San Diego, which is not a top 10 American city in terms of population, the American flag would be

00:27:42.060 flying in Mexico City by tomorrow morning. And we all know this. I also wonder from just the

00:27:46.720 perspective of the American interest. I think there are plenty of good moral arguments to be made

00:27:50.760 about the problem itself in Israel and Palestinian Arabs. But just from the American interest,

00:27:56.380 I'm confused as to how it would serve the American interest to back Hamas or to back the

00:28:02.320 national pretensions of a people that would elect Hamas. When people say Hamas doesn't represent

00:28:06.720 the Palestinians, Hamas does, in fact, represent the Palestinians. Hamas won an election. They're

00:28:10.880 about to win another. Yeah. So I just don't understand. I suppose the argument would be

00:28:15.220 that Israel, you know, relatively young nation, that's the big problem. And so we've got to give

00:28:21.080 more power to the Palestinian Arabs who are calling for, by the way, from the river to the sea,

00:28:25.960 Palestine to be free. So they're calling for the eradication of Israel. Does anyone believe

00:28:29.460 that that is a tenable, taking the moral arguments aside, that that's a tenable thing,

00:28:34.000 you're going to wipe out a nuclear power, that the world would tolerate that? That doesn't seem

00:28:37.360 like such a good idea. So now we're going to back Hamas? You know what's heartbreaking about

00:28:40.500 this? When I was a kid, we were really not that far from the Holocaust. And I used to call us,

00:28:46.300 I actually wrote this, that we were holiday Jews. We were taking a holiday from a history,

00:28:51.620 a relentless history of anti-Semitism. I mean, the nonstop hatred of the Jewish people that has

00:28:57.120 really been going on before the year dot, as they say in England, it's been going on forever.

00:29:02.340 We have this holiday and the holiday's over and it's heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking to see

00:29:07.020 Jewish, ordinary Jewish people attacked on the street and no one said.

00:29:11.640 As with all racism in America, we all lived in this beautiful period where it wasn't happening and

00:29:17.000 now it's back. I do want to pick up though, briefly on what Michael is bringing up because

00:29:20.580 there are a lot of voices on the right today that call into question our relationship with Israel.

00:29:26.880 some very ugly voices. I think it's important to say that when we, I'm very critical of the

00:29:31.560 America First movement. There are two distinct America First movements.

00:29:35.900 Yeah, there's Lindbergh's.

00:29:36.980 Well, there's Trump who uses America First to mean that America must put America's interest

00:29:42.320 ahead of other interests. And then there's the America First movement, which is online jolly

00:29:49.240 right-wing trolls who actually are racist and actually do despise the state of Israel and actually do

00:29:55.840 want an American, a white ethno state in this country. It's unfortunate because they're

00:30:01.120 sophisticated online trolls that they've used the language of Donald Trump's, hey, wouldn't

00:30:05.380 it just be nice if we put America's interest ahead of other interests? But they have. And so when I'm

00:30:09.960 critical of America First, I'm not being critical of Donald Trump. I'm being critical of the people.

00:30:14.020 First of all, Donald Trump was the most pro-Israel president of America.

00:30:16.000 Pro-Israel is going to tell me that for Israel, right, yeah.

00:30:18.460 But you do have this America First movement, this Internet America First movement,

00:30:22.840 very, very hostile to Israel. And they say a lot of things. You know, they're angry about

00:30:28.840 the bombing of the USS Liberty in 1967.

00:30:33.080 I used to get this, people would ask me that question. They're like, really?

00:30:36.460 Yeah. They apparently haven't heard that, you know, England burned the actual White House

00:30:41.800 during the War of 1812. Why can't Israel be? Allies don't ever get mad at each other. Anyway.

00:30:47.640 But I sort of think, like, you're right. There's this distinction. As with all these terms,

00:30:52.400 they're used in lots of different ways. But let's take it totally seriously for a second.

00:30:56.120 Let's say this is just from the American interest point of view.

00:30:58.940 This is where I'm going.

00:30:59.680 Right. The claim, I guess, is that it is in the American interest to ditch Israel,

00:31:06.620 that we've got a sort of Israel First foreign policy. And, you know, like so many of these

00:31:11.660 online movements, first of all, you got to remember, a lot of these guys are very, very

00:31:15.260 young. A lot of them are pushed to the fringes. A lot of them are told you're evil because you're

00:31:19.740 a white person or you're a man or whatever. So, like, I was young once. I remember the sort of

00:31:24.340 crazy, extreme things 18-year-olds say. But what does that mean? I mean, just because you're

00:31:33.020 reacting, it's like, you know, when we're told that men are evil. Take Israel out of our present.

00:31:36.560 We're told men are evil. One way that men react when they're 18 years old and they're just so

00:31:41.480 sick and tired of this is they become sort of performatively sexist or chauvinist or misogynistic

00:31:46.440 or whatever. That's not the answer, right? That's just sort of the flip side of the coin. So I think,

00:31:50.340 sure, if these guys are saying, we've been told our whole lives that Israel is the greatest ally

00:31:57.060 of the United States ever in the history of the world. And now we found out it's only like a fine

00:32:00.960 ally, but it's not like the greatest one ever. I think, well, okay. So your answer is to back

00:32:05.340 Hamas? What are you talking about? I think just to take up a little bit for them, not really, but I

00:32:12.840 think obviously from a moral standpoint, morally, it's clear. And all you have to do is apply like just

00:32:17.800 war theory to this. And, uh, you know, one thing in waging a just war is first of all,

00:32:22.260 there has to be a chance of success. And when you have Hamas just firing rockets randomly at

00:32:26.140 the civilian centers, nothing's going to happen from that, except that you kill a bunch of civilians

00:32:30.720 maybe, and then get destroyed yourself. So, right. But at the same time, I think one thing,

00:32:36.140 the people that you're talking about, one thing that, uh, annoys them is when they see,

00:32:44.540 I think, I don't remember who tweeted, someone tweeted something like, if you're an American

00:32:47.400 patriot, it means you're pro Israel or something like that. Um, this, this idea that like it is

00:32:53.060 your patriotic duty to have this particular feeling about another country, no matter what

00:32:58.100 the other country is, I don't care what country it is. Um, so that, that goes too far on that side

00:33:02.260 of it. And I think they're kind of reacting. It's kind of what you're saying. Yep. They're reacting

00:33:05.440 to that. I do think, um, I do think that there is something patriotic about supporting our

00:33:10.960 allies because we form alliances because it's in our national interest to form alliances and having

00:33:16.480 formed those alliances. And, and if we're all operating in a kind of good faith where those

00:33:20.500 alliances are concerned, then there is a kind of pay. Yeah, but you don't have a, you don't have

00:33:25.040 a patriotic, you don't have a patriotic, you do not have a patriotic duty to support any country

00:33:29.780 that is not your own. Well, it's, so I will say that, that I think that what that statement is

00:33:34.580 missing is the phrase at the end right now. Okay. So I don't think that you have a patriotic

00:33:38.920 duty to eternally support any other country because circumstances change the country. I

00:33:43.140 mean, how many times we've seen alliances change and people end up on the other side of those

00:33:45.860 alliances. But the, the idea that in a conflict between a democratic ally and an actual terror

00:33:51.760 group, that it, that it doesn't connect to any sort of, we're not talking about nationalism now,

00:33:56.640 which is just attachment to country. We're talking about patriotism, which goes to underlying

00:33:59.300 principle that you have no duty at all to, to support a fellow democracy that is an ally in its own

00:34:06.280 battle for survival. That seems to me to, to raise some patriotism principles in the same way they

00:34:11.440 would raise patriotism principles to say that if Hitler were about to overrun Britain, people who

00:34:15.720 are saying, well, you know what, it doesn't implicate the United States at all or patriotism

00:34:19.840 at all to watch Hitler overrun Britain. And it seems like it kind of implicates patriotism to watch

00:34:23.620 Hitler overrun Britain. But you know, the other side of this is that no matter who does this,

00:34:27.180 it helps the left, whether the right does it or whether the left does it. It's the same,

00:34:30.680 it's the same thing with blacks. If, if the left so encourages black violence in cities that some

00:34:37.020 white people start to say, well, those blacks are being violent, that all helps the left. They want

00:34:40.860 us fighting with each other. They want us fighting with our fellow citizens. They want us to hate

00:34:44.580 people who are different than us. They want, and they don't care. They don't care if they inspire

00:34:49.500 blacks to have hostility against white people. But if that then inspires white people to have

00:34:53.920 hostilities against black, they don't care because we're fighting with each other instead of fighting

00:34:57.940 with the people who are usurping power from the people. And that's, that is all happening at the

00:35:03.160 top. That's always happening at the top. I sort of am even kind of of your opinion, Matt, to,

00:35:09.840 to give, give the critics here even more of, of the benefit of the doubt, just to make the

00:35:16.400 realpolitik argument, which is, you know, during Trump, we were told that we had to back the Kurds.

00:35:22.060 The Kurds are our greatest ally. The Kurds are the most wonderful people in the world.

00:35:24.820 And Turkey was aggressing against the Kurds, but this creates a problem is Turkey has been a NATO

00:35:30.060 ally for how many decades at this point? So now do we reflexively back our ally Turkey in this battle

00:35:35.080 with the Kurds? I don't know. That raised a lot of problems on the right. So I understand there

00:35:39.340 were nuances. But we, but we should have, we are no longer allies of Turkey. And the fact that we,

00:35:44.500 the fact that we are unprepared to move with haste to, to address the changing realities that Ben

00:35:50.780 refers to. And this, and this context is completely different in the sense that we were never,

00:35:54.760 we're allies of Hamas. There's no world in which we are allied with Hamas.

00:35:57.920 This is sort of my point is I just mean, you know, granting that, that people are just

00:36:02.520 rebelling in this very, I think, emotional and reactionary way against these sort of extreme

00:36:08.380 statements that we, you know, it's your patriotic duty to be an ally of Israel or something to just

00:36:12.220 say, look, in this case, we just should back Israel. Israel's the better.

00:36:17.720 I can understand the principle of argument. I'll give people this. I can even understand the

00:36:20.780 principle of argument that the United States should just be hands off completely in terms of

00:36:23.360 foreign policy. I think it's wrong, but I think that, but I can understand the complete isolationist

00:36:27.340 argument. Why are we involved anywhere in the world, right? I think that it's an ignorant argument

00:36:31.220 that's based on a failure to understand the realities of the world, which is that vacuums

00:36:34.400 exist and that bad States fill them. If we leave those vacuums open, which is the lesson of the

00:36:37.940 last century and a half. But if it, but I can at least understand that argument, what I cannot

00:36:42.340 understand is the situational application of that argument, right? Which is, okay, well, we should be

00:36:47.800 involved here and we should be involved there, but this particular one, we should definitely not be

00:36:52.000 involved in it. And I have real objections to these Jews firing, firing, you know, at Hamas

00:36:57.020 batteries that are located in civilian areas to protect themselves. I've, I've heard people this

00:37:01.440 week say, you know, if Israel, you know, Israel might be our ally, but why are we giving them

00:37:06.200 military aid? We, you know, England is our ally and we don't give them military aid. It's like, well,

00:37:11.100 no, the last time England was in a war, not only did we give them military aid, we gave them a

00:37:17.820 significant percentage of our GDP. And then when things got bad enough, we gave them hundreds of

00:37:22.400 thousands of our sons. And then when it was over, we gave them the Marshall plan and rebuilt their

00:37:26.520 entire country. It's important to, I think with a conversation like this to get really specific

00:37:31.660 because one of the, one of the issues here is that there are so many things caught up in it.

00:37:36.840 So we could talk about what's in America's interest to support Israel. What's, what's,

00:37:41.340 what's the morally, what the morality of it, but then also there are other things that caught up in

00:37:46.460 this. Like for example, evangelical, um, conservatives tend to also believe that it's

00:37:52.260 our religious duty. We're biblically called to support Israel. And that, and that brings in a

00:37:57.100 whole other aspect of the conversation. And then you have people that kind of react against that

00:38:00.820 and are saying, well, no, we don't, you know, I think it's a misinterpretation of Christian doctrine.

00:38:04.180 And, you know, so I think we have to, you have to be really specific in this conversation.

00:38:08.420 Here's one place where I think that we should all be able to agree. And frankly, I think that

00:38:12.020 people of any level of good heart should be able to agree in a conflict between a thriving,

00:38:17.440 diverse democracy that upholds humanitarian values and an actual honest to God, genocidal

00:38:21.860 terror group. That's not a moral choice. Whatever you think are the practical applications as to

00:38:26.600 whether the United States should be involved or should provide aid or any of that sort of stuff

00:38:30.520 on a moral level, the New York times is specifically saying that Israel is in the wrong,

00:38:34.360 that Israel should not be defending itself, right? You have them literally printing op-eds from people

00:38:38.400 who are activists for Hamas, downplaying the evils of Hamas. You have the entire Democratic Party

00:38:42.460 right now. By the way, that's how I know that it's morally right. Right. You have the entire

00:38:46.920 Democratic Party right now basically covering for the open anti-Semitism of Rashida Tlaib and

00:38:52.100 Nohan Omar, who spread blood libel. When they say that Israel is targeting Palestinian children,

00:38:55.580 that is just an abject lie. Israel has been participating in the most pinpointed attacks

00:38:59.660 of any military I have ever seen, including the United States military. They are dropping

00:39:02.900 knock bombs. Rashida Tlaib is saying this fight is not just in Israel. It is the fight

00:39:08.320 against for all minorities everywhere. Which, by the way, is why you're seeing Palestinian

00:39:12.200 activists go to Jewish areas in the United States and protest there. If you thought this was a

00:39:16.560 foreign policy problem, why are the protests not happening in Washington, D.C.? Why aren't they

00:39:20.100 happening next to the Congressional? They're not. They're going down to a restaurant a quarter

00:39:24.440 mile away. They're going down to Brooklyn and they're beating Jews in the streets. Or they're

00:39:27.980 going down to areas in Miami where there are lots of Jews who live there. They're driving through in

00:39:31.840 trucks with Palestinian flags on the back. Are those the policymakers? No, these are not. I'm sorry,

00:39:35.780 that's the Nazis marching through Skokie. But you know, Jeremy makes a great point here. I can't

00:39:39.360 believe I said that. I need to wash my mouth out with soap. Jeremy makes a great point, which is

00:39:43.400 if you are not an expert on the past, I don't know, what, 3,000, 4,000 years of this conflict

00:39:49.000 in the Middle East, there is a rule of thumb. I know we're not supposed to appeal to authority,

00:39:53.380 but when I see AOC and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and Bernie Sanders and the New York Times and CNN

00:39:59.980 and just all of them lined up on one side of the issue, I'm going to have to go in on the other side.

00:40:05.680 Maybe my opinion will change as I learn more, but I think it's a good rule of thumb.

00:40:08.940 That's a very reasonable judgment. Especially Rashida Tlaib, these people are really vile,

00:40:15.540 evil. I don't think we can emphasize that enough. It's not a political disagreement.

00:40:18.700 The New York Times is too, by the way. The New York Times supported Castro, which supported Che,

00:40:22.200 which supported Stalin. Yes, these are bad people, and when they're all uniformly agreeing,

00:40:29.420 don't wear your mask. The New York Times printed a graphic today that was such an

00:40:35.440 abject lie. It was a graphic depicting the state of Israel, but it said Palestine across,

00:40:39.640 and then it showed how Palestine was shrinking. This graphic is so bad. In 2015, when MSNBC ran it,

00:40:45.260 they had to issue an overt apology saying that this was an anti-factual map. The New York Times

00:40:49.660 ran it today. I mean, the media are so all in on us. It's insane.

00:40:52.800 But other than the moral and other than the political, I also do want to address this sort of

00:40:57.440 idea on the right that America first means that we're somehow completely disengaged in the world,

00:41:03.300 and it doesn't. We have alliances. We give aid because we believe, maybe sometimes inaccurately,

00:41:10.820 but because we believe it is in our interest to do so. We want to contain openly hostile powers like

00:41:19.400 Iran and North Korea. We want to constrain rival powers like Russia and China. We want to incent

00:41:27.080 economic activity around the globe, which is in America's interest. Those are the reasons. Now,

00:41:32.380 you may disagree with specific examples of us doing this. I disagree with specific examples

00:41:37.140 of us doing this, but the idea that we're just a piggy bank charity out there giving people money

00:41:41.680 because it's great. When you hear people say, we're not the world's policemen, they're usually

00:41:45.440 denying that there's any American interest that exists outside of our own borders. I think that

00:41:50.300 that's a complete mistake. That's never been true. We have interests, and you have to pursue your

00:41:55.500 national interest in a very messy world with shifting alliances, with shifting realities on the ground.

00:42:00.720 Again, I'm not saying that any individual conversation is out of line. Israel itself,

00:42:06.780 a nation that I am very fond of, has its own national interests, and Israel's national

00:42:12.600 interests will not always in every United States. Sometimes it's in conflict with America.

00:42:15.520 That's right. Align with America's interests. Being allies doesn't mean that we're in

00:42:18.540 some sort of perfectly symbiotic relationship.

00:42:21.100 Isn't there a problem with the foreign aid thing? I agree, situationally, we have allies,

00:42:27.440 and we should support them in situations. My issue with foreign aid as a concept, no matter what

00:42:32.160 country we're talking about, is that this is American taxpayer money you're taking from American

00:42:38.400 families, and you're giving it to a foreign government. And those American families have

00:42:42.080 absolutely no say over what happens with the money. They do not directly benefit from it anyway,

00:42:46.500 and they also don't know what happens. The American family sitting around their dinner table,

00:42:51.520 that money comes from them, it goes to the government.

00:42:52.620 First of all, this is true of almost all taxes, that you don't get a direct say of what happens

00:42:58.020 with the money, and you don't really know what happens with most of it. I don't agree that you

00:43:01.840 don't get a direct benefit from some foreign aid. You don't get a direct benefit from some domestic

00:43:07.860 spending. There's a lot of domestic spending that they take your tax money and you get no direct

00:43:11.580 benefit. Some of it's in contravention of your interest. But there is an interest in spreading

00:43:18.960 America's influence around the world. So one thing that has given us the wonders of America's 20th,

00:43:24.880 the American century, the 20th century, is that America essentially controls the waterways of the

00:43:29.620 entire earth. And that's a remarkable thing that exists and has allowed us to have huge advances in

00:43:35.920 technology, huge economic advances. You have that in part because of an expression of America's

00:43:42.320 military might, and in part an expression of America's economic might, and in part because

00:43:46.640 America has crowded out rivals who would break parts of that off and keep us from being able to

00:43:51.860 access it if they could. And a lot of Americans, listen, sometimes you just give charity, there's an

00:43:56.520 earthquake in some country and we decide we want to help them out. A lot of our aid, though, the majority

00:44:00.520 of our aid is about keeping influence in strategic places around the country, where if we don't,

00:44:06.660 China will. And of course, that's true. I mean, the notion in the United States seems to be that

00:44:10.380 foreign aid is a form of charity. That is certainly not the notion in China. That's right. China does

00:44:14.220 not give a crap about charity. This is not a charitable democracy. This is a country that has used its

00:44:18.840 Belt and Road program as a way to bootstrap itself into influence in a variety of countries around the

00:44:23.040 world. Russia is doing the same thing. So again, you can make the argument that you don't care,

00:44:26.560 right? That's okay. You can make that argument that you don't care if China expands its

00:44:29.320 sphere of influence, or you didn't care if the Russians do it, or you didn't care even back

00:44:32.500 when it was the USSR and the USSR was expanding its sphere of influence. But that begs a further

00:44:37.200 question, which is what do you think America's role in foreign policy ought to be? If you think

00:44:40.980 that America's role in foreign policy is that we stay within our own borders and only when somebody

00:44:45.220 knocks over a tower in New York, do we respond and militarize? Well, that is one view of foreign

00:44:50.220 policy. I think that it's a very short-sighted view of foreign policy, and I think that it leads to

00:44:53.860 a much more difficult world for the United States to navigate with a lot fewer allies available for us

00:44:59.280 to fight back against some of the worst people on earth. But what exactly do people think is the

00:45:04.560 fundamental role of American foreign policy? I guess with foreign aid, I would say,

00:45:08.940 I think, again, going back to American families that have to, this is, this isn't, you know,

00:45:13.080 this money is coming from people, from us. I think you should be able to give a really specific

00:45:19.480 answer. Like, we're going to take this money, we're going to give it to this government

00:45:22.100 for a specific reason. I think, I think the families are taking the money from, have a, have a right to

00:45:27.120 know specifically, what is this money going to? And I'm not saying there could never be a good

00:45:31.480 reason, but you should be able to give a specific reason. And I think when, when, when you are giving

00:45:35.320 billions and billions every single year to countries across the world, and the answer is

00:45:39.680 American influence, uh, that's just not quite specific enough. Um, but I would, I would only

00:45:46.340 argue that foreign aid is a very small part of the budget and that most of what we steal people's

00:45:51.560 money for and do in contravention of their interests actually happens domestically. And what bothers me

00:45:55.980 about this sort of America for sure is that quite often they say, we don't need to be giving our

00:45:59.840 money overseas. We need to be taking care of our own right here at home. And I go, no, for God's

00:46:03.760 sake, give all the money overseas rather than continuing to prop up huge socialist spending

00:46:08.880 programs at home that actually do take away my freedom far more than just not only take away my

00:46:14.440 money, but also constrain my freedom. We'll talk a little bit more about this. First, I want to talk

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00:47:38.980 right now to learn more. Expressvpn.com slash backstage. That's right. We got our own promo

00:47:44.600 code backstage. You know what strikes me about this at the heart of kind of this disagreement over

00:47:50.980 projecting American strength abroad. And I don't just mean a disagreement among us. I mean among

00:47:55.200 the American people and among the right too. I understand one argument, one sort of more novel

00:48:00.900 argument against projecting American strength abroad, which is some years ago there was broad

00:48:06.280 consensus on what it meant to project American strength abroad. The American, truth, justice,

00:48:11.040 and the American way, the American cultural exportation around the world, right? There was,

00:48:15.000 we were broadly in agreement and in support of that, but that largely Christian, you know,

00:48:20.620 unique, but American kind of version of that has fallen away into this broad global liberal empire.

00:48:27.480 And so I think there are a lot of people who say, why I'm all for projecting American influence

00:48:31.900 abroad, but I don't want to promote transgenderism in Namibia. That's not the, where I want my tax

00:48:37.480 dollars. But I also don't want to find Black Lives Matter flags at American embassies.

00:48:41.720 Exactly. Exactly. I think none of us think we shouldn't have embassies.

00:48:44.600 Right. But that is the influence that's being pushed. The fact that our government is out of

00:48:47.640 control, but it's unconstrained, that it is in no way limited, that it believes that what it needs

00:48:51.720 to be promulgating around the globe and at home is socialism and leftism and critical race theory and

00:48:57.820 this incredibly anti-Christian modernist worldview. I agree that all of that needs to be fought. And to

00:49:04.840 the extent that you say that we need more transparency and how the government spends our

00:49:07.800 money, I agree with that. But there's an attitude on the right. That's what I'm kind of pushing back

00:49:12.980 again. Well, the, the, the question is to, you know, you mentioned when we say that what we're

00:49:16.940 getting in return is American influence, that's been true of all American foreign interventions ever.

00:49:22.320 Yes. I mean, true of like, including wars, right? What were, what were the American interests that

00:49:26.800 were threatened when the Soviets threatened to take over Berlin and we participate in the Berlin

00:49:30.700 airlift, which was an act of foreign aid, right? I mean, we actually flew supplies into Berlin,

00:49:34.840 who maintained Berlin as a free city. Why exactly did we bother doing that? And Soviets could have

00:49:39.200 just taken Berlin. We didn't rule it. Didn't have anything to do with us. It was very far away across

00:49:43.120 the water. Right. And that's been true of literally all projections of American power ever. So the answer

00:49:48.060 was always that American influence is important because we understand that the, uh, the opposite

00:49:52.240 of American influence is not a vacuum. The opposite of American influence is very bad people increasing

00:49:56.960 their own sphere of influence and then using that sphere of influence in order to threaten true

00:50:00.620 American interests. So to take an example in the Middle East, for example, if Israel were to

00:50:03.800 disappear tomorrow, what that would mean is that authoritarian states would take probably, they'd

00:50:07.520 threaten control of the Suez Canal. We saw the Suez Canal blocked recently by a giant shipping

00:50:12.260 container. Right. And that giant ship basically cut off all world trade for a significant period of

00:50:17.460 time. Like the gas lines in the United States. Right. And if the, if the straits of Hormuz are cut

00:50:23.340 off, oil supplies falter. If the South China Sea falls to complete Chinese domination, then the

00:50:27.860 shipping of products. But these are specific, you're giving specific cases of this is what America needs to do

00:50:32.820 in this particular situation for this reason, which is great. Um, and you know, I'm sure I could pull

00:50:38.480 up on my phone a list of all the countries we're giving aid to, how much money we're giving. And I,

00:50:43.500 and I suspect that if I were to do that, I'm going to find dozens that equals billions of dollars

00:50:48.920 where there's not going to be necessarily that really specific answer. So that's my question is

00:50:54.020 whether you're in disagreement with the general concept. That's right. That's why I said what I'm

00:50:56.880 pushing, what I'm pushing back again is an attitude, not specifics. So if you're suggesting that

00:51:01.020 government should be more efficient, that we should be more strategic with what we do and don't do,

00:51:04.900 of course, I agree. I just, just the idea, the, the idea of the, of the government, of our government

00:51:08.740 sort of in perpetuity, having all these other, other governments on the dole. Um, that's what,

00:51:14.320 that's what I'm pushing. Well, I mean, Japan's been on the dole for what, some 80 years with

00:51:17.840 American military presence in Japan. And thank God for that. Yeah. I mean, some of them need to be on

00:51:21.840 the dole for a while. Hey, you know, I'm kind of amazed. I say something controversial

00:51:27.020 because I only come to the show to try and give Ben a heart attack before I have one,

00:51:31.460 but I'm kind of amazed we could have this entire conversation about Israel without really talking

00:51:37.480 about the Jews, without actually talking about the fact that the Jews are special. This is the

00:51:41.340 thing that anti-Semites get right. They get right. They think the Jews are special because they're evil.

00:51:45.620 That's crap. But, but the Jews are special. They're special in our history. They're special in our

00:51:49.820 religion. Matt was talking about the evangelicals. I think the evangelicals have a point. You know,

00:51:54.220 these are the people with, with the Athenian Greeks who basically inform everything we think and

00:52:00.120 believe. And there are no Athenian Greeks. There are, you know, the Athenian Greeks are gone,

00:52:04.100 but the Jews aren't. And that's a really important fact. When one of the things the left is really

00:52:08.620 objecting to is that this is a Jewish state and that offends them because it is racially specific,

00:52:13.580 but the world has proved that it can't tolerate Jews unless they have a state. If Jews don't have a

00:52:18.420 state, they will, they'll be killed and chased from pillar to post. And so it seems important to me

00:52:23.980 that someone stands up and says, you know, these, these people are important because they're us.

00:52:28.940 They're saying there's some way the source of who we are and we need to defend them and their

00:52:32.960 values. One of the amazing things that happens when you're in Israel, and you've been in Israel a lot

00:52:36.540 more than I have, but I've only been three times actually. Okay. Well, I was there and I opened the

00:52:41.060 newspaper and read the editorials and the, the fineness of the ethical and moral conversation that was

00:52:49.160 going on in their newspapers made me embarrassed for our newspapers. I mean, we have a good op-ed

00:52:54.100 section in the wall street journal, the James Toronto, Toronto should win the Pulitzer prize.

00:52:58.480 Yeah. There's nothing like the ordinary editorials that are going on in an Israeli newspaper because

00:53:04.020 they're Jews and they say it in the things, well, wait, you know, other countries could do that,

00:53:08.560 but we can't because we're Jews. I mean, what they did in this war is something that Israel has,

00:53:12.640 has long-term, right? Which means purity of arms. They literally write it into the military code. This,

00:53:17.540 this attempt to prevent civilian casualties. Again, I point out the fact that everybody's

00:53:22.060 saying, look at that wild disproportion between the number of people who died in Gaza and the

00:53:24.880 number of people who died in Israel. Yes. Israel fired massive ordinance into Gaza and only killed

00:53:29.320 200 odd people after experiencing 4,500 rockets fired at it. But there's something else there.

00:53:34.240 There is an underlying idea, and this has taken root mostly on the left, but a little bit on the

00:53:39.140 right. And that is the idea that the world would be a more peaceful place if Israel ceased to exist.

00:53:43.340 And you can see this in the way that so many people on the radical left actually talk about the

00:53:47.200 state of Israel, right? The idea is that, because first it was, Israel has to have a two-state

00:53:51.760 solution because if there's no two-state solution, we can't solve all the problems in the Middle East.

00:53:54.800 Now you're starting to see people openly say, well, maybe there shouldn't be a two-state solution.

00:53:57.920 Maybe there should be a one-state solution in which the Israeli Jewish demographic majority

00:54:02.140 just disappears. And it just becomes a complete one state, which of course means that the Jewish

00:54:06.840 state ends. Well, the notion that seems to be out there is that antisemitism, and this is being

00:54:11.960 really pushed by the media right now, antisemitism, right? And this, this headline right here is it,

00:54:16.040 right? From Michelle Goldberg, attacks on Jews over Israel are a gift to the right.

00:54:19.620 The basic idea here is that when, when it comes to antisemitism, that antisemitism is an outgrowth

00:54:29.300 of anti-Zionism, right? Or rather of Zionism. If it were not for the state of Israel, antisemitism

00:54:34.400 would just disappear, which ignores all of human history between 136 CE and 1948. There's a lot of

00:54:39.440 intervening history right there. The same people who are beating Jews on the streets with polls in

00:54:43.020 Brooklyn are shouting at them that they're only beating them because of Israel. And it's like a

00:54:46.600 random Jew in Brooklyn. Yeah. I have a feeling that's not true. I have a feeling that if Israel

00:54:50.820 didn't exist, there'd be a lot more Jews who are getting beat. When Jesus said, you are the salt of

00:54:55.440 the earth, you're the light of the world, he was talking to the Jews. He was talking specifically to

00:55:00.000 the Jews. God doesn't break those covenants, you know, that's still in place. And when we look at

00:55:04.240 these people, we're seeing where our ethics come from, where our ideas come from. One of the great

00:55:08.320 evidences, by the way, for the truth of the Bible, to me, for the truth of the New Testament. Sorry,

00:55:13.260 Ben. You're complimenting my folks, so continue. The New Testament posits that in the future,

00:55:21.360 there will be an Israel. And Christians believe that. They believe that the Bible is true.

00:55:27.180 It's very hard for, I'm fascinated by this notion that it's almost impossible for us to ever separate

00:55:31.640 ourselves from this moment. And that connection to this moment really blinds us to the experiences

00:55:38.320 of almost all humans across all time. And it's a fun thing. Maybe we'll talk about it on this or

00:55:42.420 a future episode more generally. But specific to the topic at hand, it's easy for us to imagine

00:55:48.140 being Christians and thinking that in the future, there's Israel. Because there's Israel. But for

00:55:54.120 almost 2,000 years, every single Christian who ever lived, like the vast majority of time that there

00:55:59.960 has been Christianity, Christians had to believe in that future. And there was no Israel. You talk

00:56:07.120 about the Athenian Greeks, the reemergence of Israel in the land that God gave to the Jews

00:56:14.700 is a quirk of human history that has absolutely no corollary. Almost 2,800 years later,

00:56:23.920 no people has ever been scattered from their home, continued to exist, and then come back into

00:56:28.980 possession of that home across 1,800 years. Odd, what? Yeah. Another strange thing about the

00:56:36.760 Jews, if I may, is one of the criticisms is... That they control the weather. That they control

00:56:42.140 the weather, for goodness sake. Top three weird things about the Jews. Space losers. Very peculiar.

00:56:48.340 But one of the arguments against the United States support of Israel is, I don't even think it's

00:56:54.720 particularly, I hate to call it an argument, but one of the impulses is to say, well, it's just Jews,

00:56:59.720 you know, who are in positions of power in the government. And there are plenty of Jews in

00:57:02.480 positions of power in the government. And they're really behind this whole thing. But then I couldn't

00:57:05.720 help but notice, Ben, when you were reading that headline, it was by, what was that name?

00:57:09.020 Michelle Goldberg. It's not an Italian name. It's not an Irish name. It's in the New York Times.

00:57:13.500 Bernie is wildly anti-Israelian. Bernie. So, you know, it's a bit strange, isn't it, that so many

00:57:17.800 American Jews seem very anti-Israel. I will say you bring up the evangelical support of Israel. And

00:57:22.960 I'm, Drew and I are the two potentially evangelical. I don't think either one of us is truly in the

00:57:29.380 category of evangelical, but the closest evangelicals on the panel. I don't support Israel because of a

00:57:35.840 belief that the Bible commands me to support Israel. That's not part of my, I do think that

00:57:42.640 I have a kinship with the people of the Bible, with the Jews. I think that we share common history,

00:57:51.800 we share common ethics, not the exact same ethics. The Judeo-Christian worldview, that term makes

00:57:57.580 people mad because Christians and Jews believe very different things in places. Yes, of course.

00:58:02.340 Saying Judeo-Christian doesn't mean I believe Jews and Christians believe the same things. It means I

00:58:06.180 believe that there's a foundational framework that we share. Book one, we share, that takes on distinct

00:58:14.540 characteristics. But all of that to say, the existence of the state of Israel today actually

00:58:21.280 convinces me that it's not up to my support. God doesn't need me to support Israel. If he decides

00:58:27.200 there's going to be an Israel, there's going to be an Israel. And as an American, what I'm more

00:58:31.200 concerned with is who should I support? With whom do I share values? God doesn't need much from me.

00:58:38.100 He's God. He's the uppercase GK. I am but a lowly lowercase GK. And so my support of Israel is

00:58:47.220 premised completely on that shared set of values, completely on a shared set of interests. I believe

00:58:52.280 national interests, and I believe ideological interests. That really is the limit of my...

00:58:58.200 So you don't feel biblically compelled? I do. I feel biblically compelled both through commands

00:59:07.640 from the Bible and through the values that I've derived from the Bible or the beliefs that I've

00:59:13.280 derived from the Bible to support in a broad sense the Jewish people. But that doesn't mean if the

00:59:21.500 Jewish people are wrong that God wants me to say that they're right. So as an example, if Israel had

00:59:27.920 gone into the Gaza Strip and started rounding up people like the Germans did in the 30s and putting

00:59:33.140 them into ghettos or rounding them up like they did in the 40s and putting them onto boxcars,

00:59:38.420 I would tell you that this was wrong. I wouldn't feel like, I don't know, yeah, they're killing,

00:59:42.920 they're indiscriminately killing Palestinians, but God does say be nice to the Jews. Of course I

00:59:46.800 wouldn't take that position. Right. But nobody, nobody ever said that Germany should cease to exist. I

00:59:51.580 mean, this is the thing. The only, the only country on earth, literally the only country on earth that

00:59:55.700 has to argue for its right to exist is the Jewish state. And that is biblical. It's also worth noting

01:00:01.460 here that when we talk about, you know, foreign aid to Israel, particularly in this context, a lot of

01:00:04.600 that foreign aid is going for the Iron Dome. Okay. If you are a believer that Palestinians should not be

01:00:10.200 mistreated, you should thank God every single day for the Iron Dome. Because if it were not for the Iron

01:00:14.400 Dome, Israel would have eviscerated the place. And everybody understands this. Yeah. Right. The fact that

01:00:18.020 that 90% of the rockets being shot from the Gaza Strip were shot down by this miraculous technology

01:00:22.440 that is located in all of the population centers of Israel, that you can fire for, I mean, the simple

01:00:26.620 statement that 4,500 rockets were fired at civilian areas and 12 people died is a demonstration of just

01:00:31.500 how effective the system is. If those rockets had all hit in civilian areas and killed hundreds or

01:00:35.300 thousands of Jews, Israel would not exist. And also the, the, the idea that, well, if you get rid of

01:00:40.800 Israel, then the Middle East is a peaceful place is of course absurd because first of all, these Islamic groups

01:00:46.180 are killing each other anyway. They're going to continue to do it. I think with the, with the

01:00:50.080 biblical thing, it doesn't bother me, you know, evangelicals that feel spiritually inclined to

01:00:55.600 take this position. It doesn't bother me at all. Um, I, I do think my theological difference with

01:01:00.680 them, which doesn't sound like this is your position, but the idea that our salvation is still

01:01:04.660 somehow tied to a particular geographic place or even worse to it, to a government. Um, you know,

01:01:11.820 that, that to me is a problem because we, yeah, we know that now it's, that that's the whole idea.

01:01:16.440 It's universal. Go preach to all nations. Salvation has existed from a Christian point of view

01:01:20.300 for the past 2,000 years. And for 1800 of those, there was no, uh, state of Israel and there was

01:01:25.860 no particular government. And so it just wouldn't, I almost reject any theological notion that requires

01:01:31.920 you to live in a specific time in a specific place in order for it to be true. And so tying

01:01:37.060 salvation to support of Israel, I would just see as another one of those. But you know, I, I do wonder

01:01:41.620 too, if some of the recent uptick against Israel or let's rephrase it in defense of say the Palestinian

01:01:49.120 Arabs is actually caused by radical leftism because for much of my young life, right? Certainly since

01:01:55.620 nine 11, there has been this sense on the right that the Muslims are out to get us. You know, they've

01:02:00.660 been, and there have been a Muslim incursions on Western Christendom for roughly, Oh, 14 centuries

01:02:05.760 now. So obviously there's historical precedent for this, but I think a lot of people are looking now

01:02:10.360 and they're saying, well, you know, I don't think I exactly want to live under Sharia, you know, look,

01:02:14.340 I don't want to live under Hamas or anything like that. But there is a sense among not these insane

01:02:19.620 radical extremist Muslims, but among Muslims more broadly that at least we're, we can talk about God,

01:02:27.060 right? We talk about how Judaism, you know, sort of writes the first book and then, uh, then

01:02:32.120 you get Christianity. And from that there is this derivation. Let's not forget Islam is the product

01:02:38.380 of an encounter between Muhammad and a, and a heretical Christian monk. And this is not even

01:02:41.900 disputed by Muslims. And so there is obviously a lot of commonality there. And when you look at the

01:02:46.560 radical left, which says God doesn't exist, boys can really become girls. We need to kill the babies.

01:02:51.100 We need to do this all for freedom or something. And then you look over at the Muslim world, which has

01:02:56.060 different answers than we do, but they still recognize that God exists, that there is a moral order,

01:03:00.040 these sorts of things. I think that might explain a little bit of the rapprochement you've seen in

01:03:04.260 the last four or five years. I completely agree with that. I think there's more connection between

01:03:07.880 the transgender mania and the hatred of Jews than anything else. Absolutely.

01:03:13.240 Yes. Yeah, really. Well, I mean, one of the things- Today. Yeah, today.

01:03:17.400 It's sort of like, you know, Jesus says, I've told you, I asked this before that Jesus says,

01:03:20.840 they'll hate you for my namesake. And anytime I meet some Christian and people are mad at them,

01:03:24.860 they always say, well, you know, the Bible told us that they'd hate us for his namesake. And I said,

01:03:28.260 no, no, no. They hate you because you're an asshole. They would hate you for his namesake

01:03:33.620 if it ever came down to you. And it's the same with the Jews today. But yes, today they hate the

01:03:40.980 Jews because of leftism. I agree with that. But they've always hated them for something.

01:03:45.440 I honestly think that the most important point was actually the one that Jeremy made at the very

01:03:48.640 beginning, which is that most of the conversation around this is not circulated around what Hamas

01:03:54.400 believes. Because if you had that conversation, then this moral conversation would be over,

01:03:57.200 Hamas is a terrorist group that believes in genocide. So end of story. What it has circulated

01:04:01.080 instead around is a particular leftist point of view, which is that power is inherently evil and

01:04:05.740 corrupt and that the powerless are inherently victimized. Yes. And so you see BLM tweeting out,

01:04:10.760 I mean, and they said this in the BLM manifesto, that they were in favor of Palestine. You thought

01:04:15.180 to yourself, what in the world do these two things have to do with each other? But you see Rashida Tlaib

01:04:19.580 saying it's the same conflict that black people are having with police in the United States

01:04:22.660 and Palestinians are having with Jews in the Middle East. And it's just a matter of power

01:04:27.140 imbalances. What this really is about for the left and the reason why they are covering for

01:04:30.900 anti-Semitism at this point is because they share a lot of the basic principles of anti-Semitism. A

01:04:34.780 lot of the left's point of view, the hard left's point of view, is a conspiracy theory about how

01:04:39.220 power works. The intersectional hierarchy, all the systems of power are geared toward the most

01:04:43.620 powerful. And so therefore, if you are powerful, it is because you sit at the top of the hierarchy

01:04:47.160 in order to achieve equity. These hierarchies must be torn down. Now you look to the Middle East and you

01:04:51.220 say, OK, look, here's this very powerful, small, tiny Jewish state. And then you see these Palestinians

01:04:55.700 and they're living in privation and horror. And you don't look to, OK, maybe they're doing that

01:04:59.180 because terrorist groups run them. Instead, it becomes, well, the people who are really doing

01:05:02.980 well over there, they must be the ones who are responsible for all of this. And then you obfuscate

01:05:07.140 in order to conceal basically what's going on. They'll say things like, well, it really is a color

01:05:12.420 thing. First of all, that demonstrates such unbelievable ignorance of what Jews are, that it's almost

01:05:16.700 beyond the pale. Number one, Jews are not white. Number two, the Jews in Israel are super not white.

01:05:21.220 Like if you've ever been to Israel, over 50 percent of the population is from Arabic countries.

01:05:25.460 Right. Like my wife's family, they're entirely from Morocco. Right. All of their ethnic

01:05:29.300 derivation. They participate in whiteness. Yeah, exactly. Whatever that means. That's what you're doing.

01:05:34.960 They participate in whiteness. And what the left means by they participate in whiteness is they are

01:05:38.720 successful under the current system and the current system needs to fall. And so when they and so this is

01:05:43.520 why you see. I don't know, Ben, I wish it was as rational as this. If all they were doing,

01:05:47.300 trying to do is attack power centers, I'd almost have some sympathy for them. But I think they have

01:05:51.520 overturned the moral order. Yeah. It's going, they're just going up the line to anybody who has

01:05:55.840 morals. Yeah. So we've talked about China. We've talked about Israel. You may be wondering,

01:06:02.200 when are we going to talk about America around here? We're not, but we're going to go even further

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01:08:18.240 Because where we're going to go, my friends, out there, somewhere.

01:08:27.280 Obviously, earth-shaking news coming out of the Pentagon on 60 Minutes this last week.

01:08:32.940 Matt's been covering the story since long before 60 Minutes got in on the action.

01:08:36.740 There are unidentified aerial phenomena being observed by United States military aircraft.

01:08:42.540 Apparently, it's happening with some frequency. Our former Senate Majority Leader, the Right

01:08:49.920 Honorable Harry Reid, and that's how you know it's true, the Right Honorable Harry Reid became

01:08:55.060 very concerned about this. And because of him and others in the government, a task force was

01:09:00.600 formed within the Pentagon to track these unidentified aerial phenomena, or as you may know them,

01:09:05.540 unidentified flying objects. And now we're starting to see a lot of gun cam footage, a lot of sensor

01:09:14.780 footage, a lot of radar footage coming from military aircraft, primarily F-18s, things that are flying

01:09:20.340 over the water. And the question I have for the panel is, are we alone or are geese just getting

01:09:28.580 fast? Can I, can I just, just to open this up? I believe I'm the only alien believing American on

01:09:37.680 the panel tonight. Okay. So you haven't committed yet, but I am the representative of our people and

01:09:42.920 culture. And I do feel marginalized and frankly unsafe sometimes in this workspace. But so just,

01:09:50.760 I think there are two things here. Okay. First of all, obviously we don't know exactly what that is

01:09:56.380 or what those things are. And in order to, to, to come up with any kind of like probability that

01:10:01.260 it's aliens, we need some background information that we don't have. Like for example, we need to

01:10:07.060 know, are there aliens in the universe and how many such civilizations are there and where are they

01:10:12.880 and what sort of technology do they have? We don't know any of that. But what that tells us,

01:10:17.560 first of all, is that you can't just rule out, you can't basically rule out as a possibility or even

01:10:21.480 as a plausible possibility that those are aliens. Because for all we know now, if, if we're the only

01:10:25.640 intelligent civilization, even just in the galaxy, then that's definitely not an alien.

01:10:29.740 But if there are, if there's intelligent civilizations and all of our surrounding

01:10:32.620 solar systems, let's just say, or in the, in some of the nearest ones, then the probability goes up.

01:10:37.400 So we don't know that at all. So, so we kind of have to put that to the side and then we just look

01:10:41.420 at that. And now we have to say to ourselves, what the hell is that? Yeah. But we've been hearing

01:10:46.840 these UFO reports for a long time, for decades really. And I think the objection that a lot of

01:10:51.780 people had, including myself, is that we said, well, if, if there were actual UFOs, like alien

01:10:56.900 spaceships in the sky, then we should get better evidence. Then why is it always a farmer in Kansas

01:11:02.180 that sees them? It's kind of like Bigfoot. You know, the only person that sees Bigfoot is someone

01:11:05.760 who has a camera from like the, the, the, the battlefield reporter at Antietam had, you know?

01:11:10.680 So why is that always the case with aliens? And that was always my objection until in the last few

01:11:15.320 years, we're getting trained observers up close. There were, there were four Navy pilots who observed one of

01:11:21.040 these things up close, four of them for five minutes. They watched it and corroborating their

01:11:26.840 testimony. We have radar data and video of that one thing, this tic-tac shaped thing that was flying

01:11:31.820 around, breaking the, you know, the, the speed of sound and doing things that seem physically

01:11:35.240 impossible. So that's exactly the kind of evidence that for decades we said, well, if alien, if they

01:11:40.040 were really UFOs, we should have that evidence. Now it's here. And so, um, I feel like that should at

01:11:45.400 least get us to reassess our original Mickey. I hate to pour water on this. Okay. I've got a couple

01:11:51.600 other theories beyond the Martians. One is that this is foreign technology. Now you say we've never

01:11:59.800 seen technology like this. Right. I said it's foreign technology. Now there's another possibility.

01:12:04.740 Maybe it's our own technology, but Michael, you say the government says that it's not. I know the

01:12:10.680 government would never lie to you. I know the government's always totally above board, but maybe

01:12:14.900 it is our technology. Maybe this whole PR campaign is a bit of a fake out to our adversaries, but

01:12:19.480 let's say it's not. Let's say we have no clue what that is up in the sky. Do the aliens exist on

01:12:26.780 other planets? Is there intelligent life? I'll go even further. Is there life at all on other planets?

01:12:32.400 The one argument that drives me the craziest is this one. They say, Michael, it's just, it's just

01:12:38.460 probable. It's just probability. The universe is a gazillion light years across. It's so big.

01:12:44.420 So it's just probable that there is life somewhere else. And I say, you know, to ascertain a

01:12:49.200 probability, you need to know literally anything about the subject that you're talking about. And

01:12:55.200 when it comes to the origins of life, we, there are a few, there are actually, I don't know, six or

01:12:59.080 seven main hypotheses. There was the Miller-Urey hypothesis of the primordial soup. This was in the

01:13:03.880 fifties, but the experiment didn't work out that well because they didn't have the right chemicals.

01:13:07.160 Then there was the clay hypothesis that there are actually these crystal structures within

01:13:10.800 clay that could form the basis of sort of organizing genetic information. But there's

01:13:15.060 really no way to describe how it goes from that to nucleotides, right? So that kind of

01:13:19.620 fell apart. Then there's the idea that it was actually formed in the sub, sub-oceanic vents.

01:13:24.700 Then there's an idea that it was actually the opposite. It was filmed, formed underneath frozen

01:13:29.300 oceans. Then there's this idea that it came here from Martians, you know, from outer space,

01:13:33.140 which only pushes the question off and says, well, how the hell did life form there?

01:13:37.600 My point is in modernity, we're told we're not, we're not special. We not look, there's

01:13:42.640 probably a zillion other of us. And my only point is maybe that's true, but we have no

01:13:47.260 evidence. We have no reason to believe that we're not special.

01:13:50.360 This is my whole, my whole approach to this is, you know, the philosopher Wittgenstein, who

01:13:54.560 may have been an alien, said of that which we cannot speak, we must remain silent. And the

01:13:58.660 philosopher Clavin says that which we don't know, we don't know. And this is the thing,

01:14:03.060 you know, the arguments against the aliens always take the form of, well, would aliens

01:14:08.100 do this? Would aliens do that? How the hell do we know? First of all, if anybody who has

01:14:12.580 the technology to send actual objects across the galaxy to us is, is in another sphere than

01:14:19.040 we are, the things that they do may seem illogical to us and may be logical, but even more so,

01:14:23.720 they may be stupid. They may be incredibly technological proficient and stupid. We, we

01:14:28.660 can build phones. We can, we can build, we can build phones where we can talk across the,

01:14:34.200 the, uh, the planet. And we still elected AOC to Congress. We, you know, you can do incredibly

01:14:40.040 stupid things. So they may be coming down here with these tic-tacs from outer space and building

01:14:44.440 little rock statues. And you say, well, would they do that? How the hell do we know? So all

01:14:49.800 I would say is we now have information, which I, this is where I agree with Walsh. We now

01:14:53.640 have information, which we said nobody had. And all the people who were conspiracy theories

01:14:59.520 and it was zone, whatever it was, 50, what is it? Two in Nevada? Zone, no, area 51. Area

01:15:04.560 51. You know, we now have these pictures of things that are really interesting, really

01:15:09.580 different, worth stopping for a minute and saying, gee, what is that? And the point you

01:15:15.540 make is actually really important. We don't know how life began. We don't know whether we

01:15:20.560 are in fact, the special thing that happened on this one planet, or if this is something

01:15:25.260 that would happen on any planet, uh, uh, near, you know, equally distant from a star.

01:15:29.920 I read your piece that you wrote, which I found incredibly offensive and hate that, uh, where

01:15:34.640 you said, there's no, there's no reason to believe that aliens exist, right? That was your,

01:15:38.740 yeah, that's the headline. But you could easily flip that around and say, there's absolutely

01:15:41.820 no reason to believe they don't exist. When you, when you live in a universe with trillions

01:15:45.480 trillions and trillions and trillions of planets. And we have seen, we have visited none of

01:15:51.620 them and we've sent, we've sent probes to a few, but we've, we've actually visited none

01:15:54.620 of them to sit here. And, and it seems to me the problem, it is a probability thing.

01:15:59.360 Well, this is my problem. It's like walking in to me, it's like walking into a, to a 50 bedroom

01:16:06.660 mansion and you get to the foyer and you don't see anybody there. And you say, well, I guess

01:16:11.080 the place is, it doesn't make any sense. Somebody had to build the mansion and that, that person

01:16:15.460 who built the mansion would be a person, right? But we, and we would, we have some idea of

01:16:19.680 how the person got like, you know, someone got there, he probably took a car. I don't

01:16:22.320 know how you look for the car. We have no clue how life, we don't have any idea. There

01:16:28.000 are going to be a lot of people in the comments.

01:16:29.180 But we do know.

01:16:30.060 How?

01:16:30.900 Well, we, you and I, we all know how, how life started. We don't know the exact

01:16:34.520 man formed Adam out of clay.

01:16:35.960 Right. We know God created it. I mean, that, that, that, that might seem like a shortcut,

01:16:39.100 but we all know that. So I actually think, so when you introduce God into the equation,

01:16:42.880 which of course you have, you can't take them out. Um, a lot of, uh, believers think

01:16:47.400 that this is a challenge to their faith and it just doesn't make any sense. How can you

01:16:50.100 have intelligent civilizations? Well, I, I actually think that, that when you, when you, when

01:16:54.240 you factor in God, which again, you must, it makes the probability higher because you,

01:16:58.580 then, then there's a purpose, there's a purpose element.

01:17:00.500 Like, are there aliens fallen?

01:17:02.860 Well, I don't know that, but there's a purpose.

01:17:05.780 Mustn't they not be fallen for Christianity?

01:17:08.240 I don't know why. I don't know the answer to that, but all I know is that there's a

01:17:10.620 purpose for all these billions of galaxies.

01:17:12.100 Well, here's why. Because the Christian idea is that there's a Godhead, it's Trinity,

01:17:16.280 Father, Son, and the bond of love between the Father and Son, which is the Holy Spirit.

01:17:20.140 The Son saves mankind by taking on human nature and dies on the cross and is resurrected three

01:17:25.360 days later, right? Ascends up into heaven, seated at the right hand of God, the Father

01:17:27.920 Almighty. Is he all, is he like, is he, so he's fully human and fully God and also fully

01:17:33.540 Martian? We don't even know, we don't even know whether Martians are exactly like us

01:17:36.760 or not. Are they human? I really want to, I want to, I'm trying to filibuster Ben because

01:17:41.840 I know he has a good argument. I don't want him to jump in.

01:17:44.200 It's not that great. I mean, go ahead.

01:17:46.140 Okay. So here's my not that great argument. So I agree with what you are saying, and it's

01:17:51.000 a burden of proof question, obviously. Is the burden of proof on the people who are

01:17:54.320 trying to provide the idea that aliens exist, or is the burden of proof on the people

01:17:58.040 who are saying that aliens don't exist? But that doesn't change the balance of the

01:18:01.060 evidence, which is that we have no idea, right? And so we were all saying the same

01:18:04.020 thing. We have no idea. Do aliens exist or do aliens not exist? What I think is that

01:18:08.380 the likelihood that aliens not only exist, but have been floating around the planet in

01:18:14.420 what seemed to be bizarrely bird-like shapes and also are behaving in ways that seem to

01:18:22.300 conflate with, and also seem to conflate with optical illusions that we have seen

01:18:28.240 before, suggests to me that, because human beings have a very long time of describing-

01:18:33.100 When have you ever seen a tic-tac bird? Tell me that.

01:18:35.900 And they're kind of far away.

01:18:37.540 Where did that come from, then, I asked.

01:18:40.720 I mean, it could be very far away. That doesn't look like amazing pixelation. It's not, like,

01:18:45.280 right up on it. Like, I don't know, but it doesn't seem to me that the most plausible

01:18:48.780 explanation for that-

01:18:49.680 But four people saw the tic-tac.

01:18:50.880 But this reminds me-

01:18:52.740 And from far away, it might look like a tic-tac. I mean, like, just because things refract off

01:18:58.240 surfaces of clouds differently. Like, David Blaine also isn't cutting coins out of his

01:19:02.060 arm. Like-

01:19:03.020 Whoa, whoa, whoa.

01:19:04.080 The skepticism on the scale.

01:19:05.520 It's illusion, Michael.

01:19:08.040 Here's my position on it. The burden of proof is on people who want to say that there are

01:19:12.060 aliens.

01:19:12.940 Yes.

01:19:13.020 Not on people who say that there aren't. You never- The burden of proof is never on a person

01:19:17.080 who is maintaining the status quo, or who is maintaining what we know.

01:19:21.360 Oh, I don't-

01:19:21.740 The idea-

01:19:22.340 I don't agree with that principle.

01:19:24.340 The idea of aliens is a novel concept rooted in fiction. The fact that this is even in our

01:19:31.560 minds is a possibility. When we see something moving across that screen, the only reason

01:19:35.140 we even ask ourselves, is that extraterrestrial life? 200 years ago, that would- no one would

01:19:40.180 have- you could have seen it in the sky, and your thought wouldn't have been, is that

01:19:42.880 extraterrestrial life? Because that idea had not been broadly introduced

01:19:47.000 into the American psyche. We have a frame of reference now, largely programmed in us

01:19:51.780 by fiction, that causes us to see certain things and judge them according to that frame

01:19:58.160 of reference. What is the tic-tac? I don't know. What I know is that our government is

01:20:03.580 testing technology decades before we know about that technology. The first time we ever

01:20:08.760 saw an F-117 stealth fighter, it was almost 20 years old before Americans even knew that

01:20:14.220 that existed. It had been not only in existence, it had been flying around our country nonstop.

01:20:19.260 There's a reason that the pilots you're referring to keep seeing these things in restricted airspace.

01:20:24.000 Why in restricted airspace? Why is that airspace restricted? Because that's where we test things.

01:20:28.240 That's where our government goes to test things.

01:20:29.400 Also, we keep trying to figure out what is the thing, but there are so many examples of- you can't paint

01:20:36.180 with a broad brush. Some of it may not even exist. You may be looking at something on one of these cameras,

01:20:40.720 and that something is nothing. It's not a goose. It's not a tic-tac bird that do exist.

01:20:46.260 It's not a weather balloon. It's literally a nothing because these airplanes,

01:20:51.620 their sensory mechanisms are programmatic. They're so software-driven now, and we're constantly

01:20:56.900 updating and refining that software. It could literally be tracking something that doesn't

01:21:01.440 even exist because of an update that happened to the firmware. It could be foreign governments

01:21:05.780 hacking our systems to show us things that aren't there. It could be foreign governments testing

01:21:09.240 technology. I think that's actually unlikely. I think it's far more likely there to be us testing

01:21:12.920 technology. It could be hackers in some basement in Tuscaloosa hacking our equipment.

01:21:18.520 But of all those theories, the least likely is that it is something from another planet.

01:21:22.980 The reason I don't agree with it-

01:21:24.280 Because we know all those other things exist that you just said.

01:21:26.520 This is like ghosts. Whenever I have more than 10 people in a room, I always ask anybody who's

01:21:31.020 seen a ghost. Always, always, never fails. Somebody has seen a ghost. Some sane, rational person

01:21:36.260 has had an experience that's inexplicable.

01:21:37.800 First of all, it's a weird dinner question.

01:21:39.880 It's not.

01:21:40.400 But you do get a yes answer.

01:21:42.180 Because it's been true through history. It's been true through history. The reason we don't

01:21:45.580 believe in ghosts is because we don't believe in ghosts. That doesn't mean that the burden of

01:21:50.240 proof is on somebody who does believe in ghosts. I mean, more people have seen ghosts through

01:21:54.860 history than have seen Brazil. I mean, there's plenty of reason to believe in ghosts. And I think

01:22:02.520 the same thing is true here. The fiction that you're talking about is extrapolative fiction. It's

01:22:07.160 people extrapolating from life on Earth to life on other planets. That's not illogical.

01:22:11.500 Do you believe in ghosts?

01:22:12.580 What? Do you believe in ghosts? I'm actually unsure what I believe.

01:22:17.080 But let's hold on.

01:22:17.820 I mean, all I can say, all I can say is-

01:22:18.920 As long as we're going here, we're going to go full our bell here.

01:22:20.680 But I don't want to get off on ghosts. You can't say that what I just said, which is

01:22:23.920 that the least likely of all of those options is that it's extraterrestrial life. You can't

01:22:28.440 say that I'm wrong about that. Of course, the least likely explanation is that it's extraterrestrial

01:22:32.400 life. No, I think-

01:22:33.180 Definitionally. Not just by a little. It's not 5% less likely that it's a software glitch than

01:22:38.600 extraterrestrial life. It's not even 100% less likely that it's a software glitch than

01:22:43.100 extraterrestrial life. Definitionally, what I'm saying is true.

01:22:45.960 Because what-

01:22:46.920 I'm saying the thing definitionally true.

01:22:48.480 No, what Knowles was saying about probability is only a half-truth, right? It's true.

01:22:53.520 I only-

01:22:54.160 You only deal with it.

01:22:55.220 Hold on.

01:22:56.300 Based on what you're saying right now, it could be a time machine.

01:23:01.040 And it could be.

01:23:02.080 It's at least equally, I would say it's even more likely that it's a time machine.

01:23:05.360 No, no. I don't agree with that.

01:23:06.480 But it's at least as likely that it's a time machine that it's alien.

01:23:09.840 It's far more likely that it's a fun spot.

01:23:10.880 But the thing that Knowles is saying about probability is right in the sense that we

01:23:15.280 have no idea. We have no idea how to calculate the probability.

01:23:18.180 And that's why we need to know. That's what I'm saying. You can't talk about probability.

01:23:20.420 No, this is not true.

01:23:22.620 But there's a theory.

01:23:23.580 But there's a theory under which it's probable that there's life-

01:23:26.620 This is not true. The probability of seeing something and not understanding what it is,

01:23:32.640 every human has that happen all the time.

01:23:35.140 The theory that a software glitch happens in military hardware that's being updated

01:23:39.480 happens all the time. It is far more likely. And I'm saying you can't paint with a broad

01:23:46.280 brush about this. I'm not even saying there aren't aliens. I'm not saying we didn't see

01:23:49.520 an alien. If we saw an alien, it's one single instance of these things. This is another thing

01:23:54.880 when we talk about, are they aliens? Every one of them is different. If we had 50 pilots all the

01:24:00.760 time and they were all seeing something that looked exactly the same-

01:24:03.280 Can I just say one thing? Can I just say one thing? I'm not saying the alien is the most

01:24:09.100 likely explanation. For example, there could be civilizations under the ocean.

01:24:13.300 And that-

01:24:14.420 You make a good point.

01:24:15.500 But hold on a second.

01:24:16.760 That is at least as likely or more likely.

01:24:18.480 That's actually more likely.

01:24:19.260 The alien is not the most likely. I also don't think it's the-

01:24:21.380 More likely.

01:24:21.480 It's not necessarily the least likely.

01:24:22.380 We know there's life here.

01:24:23.520 Like you said, we have to look at each individual case. So the Tic Tac, for example.

01:24:27.080 I would say that the alien is more likely than the seagull, okay? Because I have never seen

01:24:31.940 a seagull that can go to the speed of sound and that doesn't have wings.

01:24:35.460 I've never been to Atlantic City.

01:24:36.760 I've never been to Atlantic City.

01:24:38.460 So I would say that-

01:24:39.620 So, like, I would put it above some other options. I do think it's not the most likely,

01:24:44.480 but it is a- it's a plausible- here's what I would say. It's a plausible explanation,

01:24:48.440 and it's more plausible- it should be judged more plausible today than we would have 50 years ago,

01:24:54.080 given that the evidence has-

01:24:55.160 I don't believe there's any reason to say that it's a plausible explanation.

01:24:57.160 It is certainly, because definitionally it is true, that it is possible. It is a thing that

01:25:02.820 could be. But Occam's razor tells us that the vast majority, the most likely, it is far more

01:25:11.000 likely that it is something known than that it is something unknown.

01:25:14.080 But the thing about not knowing-

01:25:16.120 And it turns out that those are just things living in-

01:25:18.320 The thing about not knowing-

01:25:19.740 That's it.

01:25:20.120 No, but the thing about not knowing is that you really don't know. Just to go back to

01:25:23.380 Knowles' point about probability.

01:25:24.420 But not all things that you don't know are equal is probable.

01:25:25.620 Wait, just let's go back to Knowles' point about probability. It is genuinely true that

01:25:30.960 we don't know how life began, and we don't know how special it is on Earth. So we have

01:25:34.860 no way of calculating the probability. But if you start with a theory that things happen

01:25:40.080 physically basically the same way, then it's very probable that there's life on other planets.

01:25:45.180 It's also probable that some of it is more advanced than ours. And it could be. Because

01:25:49.340 we don't know, we literally don't know. We don't know how probable-

01:25:52.540 Well, hold on. But what is the probability-

01:25:53.800 We don't know how probable-

01:25:54.600 When you say it's not probable.

01:25:56.100 Here's how you could tell.

01:25:56.840 Yes, because we've all had software malfunctions, and we haven't all interacted with aliens.

01:26:01.620 Correct. What is the probability that birds exist? 100%.

01:26:05.140 It's 100%.

01:26:05.600 What is the probability that software exists?

01:26:06.940 I think they were all replaced by drones.

01:26:09.000 I mean, there's some people who don't believe that birds exist.

01:26:12.120 Right.

01:26:13.380 All I can say is that aliens are going to have great graphics.

01:26:15.300 Let's use a less controversial. What is the probability that chemtrails and lizard people exist?

01:26:19.160 That's 100%.

01:26:19.820 That's 100%.

01:26:20.120 That the frogs aren't making the frogs, yeah.

01:26:21.440 This is the thing. Is it possible that there are aliens? I doubt. I think it is possible. I think

01:26:29.140 it is incredibly unlikely. I base this on the fact that we've picked up no radio signals from

01:26:33.540 space. I base this on the possibility that we don't have anything, that the best thing that

01:26:38.020 anybody can come up with to tell me that aliens did, aliens with so much sophistication that they

01:26:42.680 were able to traverse interstellar spaces that they came here a long time ago and stacked rocks on

01:26:47.460 top of rocks in the Sahara. That's crazy. If we had opened Pharaoh's tomb and it had been air

01:26:51.880 conditioned, I would have gone, you know, there's a real possibility that somebody else built this

01:26:57.520 besides slaves in Egypt a thousand years ago. The very fact that we don't commonly encounter aliens

01:27:03.840 and we do commonly encounter myriad other things that this could be means that the most likely

01:27:08.700 answer to every one of these individual things is that it has a chance. So you're saying there's a

01:27:13.360 chance. That's my whole argument, really. I'm also saying, Drew, that it's far more likely that

01:27:19.880 you'll die of a heart attack than that you'll be killed by an alien. You can't say that's not true.

01:27:23.100 It's far more common that I will have a heart attack. But the thing is, if I'm killed by an

01:27:27.340 alien, then that's a thing, right? All I'm saying is we have no way of calculating the probability.

01:27:33.000 No, but you do. I mean, you do. It's the same question as ghosts. There's no hard evidence

01:27:37.000 that ghosts exist, right? Okay. So if suddenly you're a freak and a door shot in your house,

01:27:41.420 what does that even mean? What is the probability? Isn't the probability tied to the number of

01:27:44.480 alien civilizations in the universe? Don't you need to know that? No, you don't. Well,

01:27:48.500 because if there's zero, then... If it's zero, then that would be an answer. We'll never know if

01:27:52.680 it's zero. But if there are... Above zero, any number above zero actually doesn't factor into our

01:27:57.220 equation at all. I guess I don't see how that could be... It actually doesn't factor into our

01:28:00.200 equation. Because when you're in a 747 and you look out the window and you see a 737 going by,

01:28:07.680 is it an alien spacecraft? I mean, it damn well could be. I once thought it was. They could

01:28:11.700 have technology that makes them mimic the look of our technology. But of course, while that is

01:28:17.180 possible, it is the least likely of all the possible... It's more likely that you didn't see

01:28:23.000 anything than that the 737 that you probably saw is an alien spacecraft. But when you say there's

01:28:27.240 no hard evidence that ghosts exist, all those people, the sane, rational people who have had

01:28:31.920 really convincing experiences, why isn't that evidence? Yeah, I think... Because lots of people

01:28:36.680 have experiences of things that don't happen all the time. That's true, but... I don't think aliens and

01:28:40.160 ghosts are related. Let me introduce you to a discussion about systemic racism, my friend. I'm not talking

01:28:43.180 about aliens and ghosts being related. I'm talking about the probability of things being

01:28:46.600 true and what you need to calculate those probabilities. But you're not asking what the

01:28:50.580 probability that aliens exist is. You're asking me what the probability that things being observed

01:28:55.240 on gun cameras by American pilots are aliens. There's also ways... That's a different...

01:28:59.320 There is just on the... That requires you to answer a bunch of probabilistic questions, by the way.

01:29:02.380 No, it isn't because it's... Because even if there were to be alien civilizations, you then have to

01:29:07.100 multiply that by the probability that those alien civilizations are sophisticated enough to build

01:29:11.580 technological spacecraft. Multiply by the probability that millions of years ago, literally millions of

01:29:16.180 years ago, they launched these spacecraft to reach... Not necessarily. I mean, we don't know...

01:29:19.760 We don't know what... Well, if you believe that the laws of physics hold, they're not traveling

01:29:22.880 faster than the speed of light. They could have a wormhole. These are only the laws of physics we

01:29:25.820 know. They could have a wormhole. That's a thing. You know, that's... Have you guys never seen

01:29:29.660 ancient aliens? I also watched Interstellar, okay? It was cool. But like, the probability that things

01:29:33.320 are traveling through wormholes to the United States... Well, I know, but to Drew's point...

01:29:36.420 To Drew's point here, there is a far greater likelihood... Unbelievable.

01:29:40.180 That's how Trump got elected, guys. There is a far greater likelihood that the ghost of Donald Trump will run in 2024.

01:29:44.740 No, there's a far greater likelihood that ghosts exist because we know people exist. We know...

01:29:50.080 We're fairly certain that souls exist. We're fairly certain, at least I am, that angels and demons

01:29:54.520 exist. So we're like... We can sort of extrapolate from our own understanding of these things. But I

01:30:00.100 don't know that E.T. exists, goodness gracious. And that's why I think it's a lower problem.

01:30:03.800 And we're not talking about the probability of whether or not life exists. You are a little bit,

01:30:06.960 and I like your argument. But I'm not actually talking about the probability that aliens exist.

01:30:10.900 I'm talking about the probability that when we see something on radar in an F-18...

01:30:16.240 Yeah.

01:30:16.620 That it is more likely that it is...

01:30:19.120 Can I ask a question?

01:30:19.800 When a pilot says, I saw this thing happen and it moved up in a way that I've never seen

01:30:23.320 before, and he's obviously not crazy. Maybe he is crazy, but we don't know that. I mean,

01:30:27.820 and it came up in front of me and then it vanished. I don't know. Maybe he's seen an illusion,

01:30:34.120 but wouldn't...

01:30:35.240 The other day I played three-carbante with a guy and the dude totally made me believe.

01:30:38.180 Can I ask a serious question? Can I ask a serious question? So would you agree that

01:30:44.700 we would all agree, if we know that there's no aliens out there in the universe, then the

01:30:48.080 probability is zero for any of these encounters. If we knew that, let's say, there was one

01:30:52.580 intelligent civilization per galaxy, that still makes 100 billion civilizations, but the chances

01:30:57.320 of crossing a galaxy is very slow, very slim. But if we knew, for example, that there was an

01:31:02.800 intelligent civilization in 20 of the 30 nearest stars to us, would you say that that makes the

01:31:09.620 probability more likely that one of these unexplained situations is alien in order?

01:31:15.620 Yes, but by so fine a margin that it's like saying that buying two lottery tickets makes you more

01:31:20.840 likely to win the lottery than buying one. It is true as an absolute statement of fact that you have

01:31:26.260 twice as much of a chance of winning the lottery if you buy two tickets. But it is not true by any

01:31:31.040 statistical actual reckoning. You are still overwhelmingly not going to win the lottery.

01:31:38.480 Doesn't mean you won't. Overwhelmingly not going to win the lottery. Your odds have changed only by

01:31:43.500 the most minute of margin. If I knew for a fact that there were aliens, if we had even heard radio

01:31:49.900 transmissions from aliens, even Elon Musk says there's something wrong that the universe is so quiet.

01:31:55.100 He obviously believes in aliens. He says he thinks that there's something that happens

01:31:59.080 that actually destroys civilizations before they can become interstellar travelers or we would

01:32:06.340 have been aware of them long before we saw them on a gun cam because we're listening,

01:32:10.480 we're looking, we observe, we watch the sky. Obviously the things aren't invisible if our

01:32:13.800 pilots are seeing them. In fact, in a funny way, we're capable of making aircraft that can't be seen

01:32:21.340 by these same sensors that apparently the aliens who can travel interstellar space aren't capable.

01:32:25.600 But how do you explain? It's more likely that America, and I don't think this is what it is

01:32:29.580 either, but it's more likely that we're testing some sort of drone vehicle that can actually become

01:32:34.340 invisible, that can refract light and cloak itself. I know that's more possible because it's possible

01:32:39.220 and there are humans and we're making things all the time.

01:32:41.280 Yeah. Can we just use, I just want to go back to the tick tock, tick tock, not tick tock.

01:32:45.080 I want to go to the tick tock.

01:32:46.240 The aliens might be on tick tock for sure. Just let's use the tick tock example because we have

01:32:51.960 their four eyewitnesses up close. They, they, they observed it for five minutes. Plus we have radar

01:32:57.220 data. Plus we have video of all this same thing. That's really compelling evidence that at least,

01:33:00.780 so we know.

01:33:01.720 Something was observed.

01:33:02.740 Right. It was not a, it was not a glitch or anything. It was, there was a real thing that was

01:33:05.780 there that they saw. Um, so that is likely, although still not completely.

01:33:11.300 So what is, what is, uh, what, what, what are your theories on what that thing was?

01:33:16.640 Well, I wouldn't begin to know what it was. As I said, they could have seen, uh,

01:33:19.940 it's literally called an unidentified flying object. There are unidentified flying objects.

01:33:23.200 This is where we agree. I agree with you completely about this. I have no idea what it was.

01:33:26.500 But the, but there are far more likely scenarios than that it is extraterrestrial life,

01:33:30.780 which we don't even know exists. Far more likely that these pilots observe

01:33:35.120 some man-made, because we know there are men and they make things, craft operating in

01:33:39.580 restricted zones where we know we test those kinds of crafts. Hypersonic missiles that move

01:33:43.800 at speeds we've never seen. Drones that are capable of breaking, uh, Gs that would have

01:33:48.660 killed humans. Unpiloted vehicles can do things that piloted vehicles never could because piloted

01:33:53.440 vehicles kill people if they make certain hygiene maneuvers. Testing with speed, testing with

01:33:59.460 shapes, testing with, uh, automated control, maybe even testing with, um, uh, electronic hacking,

01:34:07.040 where once we are observed, we're able to send false data to, to the radar of our enemy to tell

01:34:12.600 them what we're observing. I'm saying that any of those things are possible and more likely than

01:34:19.000 what was observed was a flying tic-tac UFO, uh, flying tic-tac full of aliens. Um, although I will grant

01:34:24.980 you that like winning the lottery, it is, there is a numeric possibility that they observed.

01:34:30.480 But I will also say that it is no more likely that what they observed is an alien than that

01:34:36.400 one of us is an alien. It's no more likely that what they observed is an alien than that there

01:34:40.460 are invisible aliens standing over our shoulders, documenting this conversation to figure out how

01:34:44.500 much more, how much we know. Like whether they can subscribe or whether nothing was most

01:34:49.840 importantly, you know, it's also, we, we keep forgetting the, the communications element of

01:34:55.740 this. So we, we've been talking now for, for our entire lives about how messaging is not accidental.

01:35:02.640 Generally speaking, there are strategies to communication, especially when it's coming from

01:35:06.120 the government. Does no one think it's like a little bit weird that the government and the

01:35:11.300 mainstream media, which is in cahoots with the federal government is just like all pushing this

01:35:15.760 one story right now. Is that not, is that what you're saying? Like a distraction.

01:35:19.840 Attraction or it's a. Yeah. Possibly. Very possibly. That's more. I don't know if that's

01:35:24.780 true, but it's more likely than that. I find it very unlikely that the government would use all

01:35:28.500 this, all of a sudden decide to use UFOs as a side. You know what? The only reason I mention it

01:35:32.480 right now is because I realized we've come to, you know, almost the end of the show and I haven't

01:35:35.940 yet once plugged my book, which is about, it's called speechless, controlling words, controlling

01:35:39.600 minds. There we go. There's the bell. Okay. I just wanted to make sure we got at least one in

01:35:42.980 during the, you know, but I also think it's possibly true. I also think that, you know, we're just like

01:35:48.280 the government does this and they probably buy your book. Usually when there is very quickly

01:35:53.120 a bunch of confirmation that the thing has happened. So say for example, that you're a

01:35:57.300 native American living, you know, in America before the settlers arrive and suddenly you

01:36:03.120 see a boat on the water. You've never seen a boat on the water before, right? There's a crazy thing.

01:36:05.960 What is this thing? So you go and you tell all your friends and your friends are like, that's crazy.

01:36:09.640 That doesn't exist. Nobody's ever had anything like that. Okay. And then the next day the boat arrives

01:36:13.620 on the shore and a bunch of settlers get off and they're like, Hey, now you've had some more

01:36:17.320 confirmation. Okay. If the boat just went away, sure. It could have been a boat, but like, usually

01:36:24.080 that's not how things go. Usually within a fairly short period of time. And we've been talking about,

01:36:27.560 as you say, these UFOs for like what, 50 years, 60 years at this point. Yeah. They didn't go away.

01:36:32.080 They're here, Ben. Where's the, where's the cascade of information that confirms your belief that

01:36:36.400 they are here. Well, we're getting the cascade of information right now. You just ruined your own

01:36:40.320 argument. No, what is the, what is the cascade? All of these, you're like, you're like, you're

01:36:45.840 like, you're like, you're like the native Americans going, there's no ship out there.

01:36:49.920 What is it? Eventually the ships from other lands get off and then proceed to destroy the

01:36:55.900 worst thing to do. If in 10 minutes they get off the pill and get pregnant and 10 minutes they get

01:37:06.900 off the pill and they start lecturing to us about communal anarchism, then I will fully admit that

01:37:14.000 the, you guys are going to be in trouble when they come. Just solving this as anybody. I mean,

01:37:17.660 the Jews are in trouble with everyone. They may as well get early on the bandwagon. Everyone hates

01:37:21.720 us anyway. May as well get on board with other civilizations, you know. I for one welcome our new

01:37:25.880 Tic Tac. Thank you for tuning in. As always, we're very happy to have you join us and we'd like to

01:37:31.060 invite you to become a member to enjoy the full Daily Wire experience. Head over to

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The Michael Knowles Show - May 26, 2021

Daily Wire Backstage： The Mask Is Off

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