Ep. 1193 - After Destroying Chicago Lori Lightfoot Can Finally Rest
Episode Stats
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Summary
Lori Lightfoot lost her re-election bid for mayor of Chicago on Tuesday night, and now we have a new candidate in the race, Paul Vallis, who will face off against Brandon Johnson in a runoff election on April 4th.
Transcript
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2,997. That's how many people have been killed in Chicago since 2019, the year
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Lori Lightfoot took office as mayor. 15,436. That is how many people have been shot in Chicago
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since the year Lori Lightfoot took office. It's an American city. Those numbers seem pretty high,
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don't they? But to understand just how high, consider New York and LA. New York and LA are also
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both high crime cities, especially LA these days. And yet last year, Chicago's homicide rate
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was two and a half times higher than LA's. It was five times higher than New York's.
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Chicago's murder rate had been going down in 2016, 2017, 2018. Then Lori Lightfoot took over.
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In 2019, and it spiked. Chicago in the Lightfoot era has been a war zone. None of that is
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particularly surprising to people who pay attention to the news. What is surprising,
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what is delightfully surprising, is that Chicago residents are finally doing something about it.
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Because last night, Lori Lightfoot lost her re-election bid for Chicago mayor.
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She didn't even make the top two, which means that Paul Vallis and Brandon Johnson will head to the
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April 4th runoff in the race. Lori Lightfoot will ride off into the sunset. All of this should give
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at least some hope to dejected conservatives who think that there is no hope for the country.
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If even screwed up Chicago can muster the political vision and will to throw a bum out,
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what's stopping the rest of us from doing the same thing at the national level? I'm Michael Knowles.
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Welcome back to the show. Before we begin, make sure you smash that like and subscribe button.
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We want to make sure that everybody gets to see some real news, as opposed to all that fake news
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I don't know how you haven't been banned yet, Big Mike, but I'm here for it. Keep preaching the truth,
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But you know me. If you tell me that I can't say something that is true and just,
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But we are not going to just cut out portions of this show or my commentary. Not going to happen,
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bonus box. Go to GenuCell.com slash Knowles. These guys are bums. They are bums and we need
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to throw them out. One of the biggest bums in the government, maybe my least favorite member of the
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Biden administration, certainly the glibbest member of the Biden administration, the most just
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cloyingly liberal and saccharine and just drives me crazy, would be Pete Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg,
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who, while facing many serious challenges from his position as transportation secretary,
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a major train derailment that poisoned an entire Ohio town and threatened the air and water supply
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for about 10% of the country, a guy who is seeing all sorts of transportation problems from the airlines
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to the roads to infrastructure. Pete Buttigieg says that the thing he will most likely be remembered for
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the sun monster. Climate is not nonsense. Dealing with climate change is one of the biggest things
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that people like me and people like him will be remembered for after we're gone.
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That is not true. I was trying to think, well, maybe that's true in the sense that
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Pete Buttigieg is spending all of his time worried about the sun monster. He's not spending any of his
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time worried about the railroads and the bridges and the roads. So that's why that's what he'll be
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remembered for. No, I actually believe Pete Buttigieg will be one of the only transportation
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secretaries in history to be remembered at all. Very few people can name even one transportation
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secretary in history. I remember Elaine Chao had it during Trump's administration. I couldn't name
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you a transportation secretary earlier than that. But I think people will remember Pete Buttigieg
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because his tenure has been so catastrophic. There have been so many transportation catastrophes
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during Pete Buttigieg's reign. So why is he focused on climate change? When Buttigieg or any lib in
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government says, well, hey, listen, what I hope that I'm remembered for when my term is up,
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it's not what I did the day by day in my job. It's what we did for climate change.
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When he says something like that, he's making a pseudo-religious claim. It is just the bizarro
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world lib version of when a Christian politician says, listen, when all is said and done, once my
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political legacy is being written, the biographers are pulling out the notes, I hope they remember me
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as a good Christian man, a faithful servant of God who did what he was called to do, who kept the
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faith, who practiced virtue. We hear those kinds of statements all the time from Christians in public
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life. All the climate change piffle is the same sort of statement for libs in public life because
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libs, generally speaking, don't believe in God. They either say outright that they don't believe in God
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or they maybe pay lip service to believe in God, but they certainly don't behave in any way that would
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suggest that they do. They don't follow policies that would be in accordance with God's will and
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the church and traditional religion. And so their religion is climate change. That's their eschatology.
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That's their end times prophecy. That's their sanctification will be serving Mother Gaia and the
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climate. That's their atonement. That's the satisfaction that is demanded for the sin of pollution.
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That's their roughly weird, fake religious worldview. And so Pete Buttigieg says that it is just the
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cherry on top of this guy's confusion and incompetence Sunday. Now, with the Biden administration
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looking so weak, there are many, many people who are running for president. I have said it before,
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I think I might be the only Republican in the country right now who is not at least considering
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running for president. And it's only because I'm too young. The Constitution says I can't run yet.
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Pretty much every other Republican is considering a campaign. Republicans see blood in the water.
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That is why the race is on. We now have three declared candidates on the right.
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Donald Trump is obviously running for reelection. Nikki Haley is running. And Vivek Ramaswamy is running
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on the Republican side. Marianne Williamson, who is the new agey left-wing candidate who talked about
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dark psychic forces in 2020. She's running against Biden. The race is already on. We've now seen our
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first big super PAC ad. This ad would seem to be supporting a candidate who has not declared yet,
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but who is obviously going to run. That would be Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
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Ron DeSantis' super PAC is taking aim at Nikki Haley.
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A tale of two governors. Ron DeSantis, always putting freedom first.
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Undoing the Trump lockdowns. Taking on Fauci's vaccine passports. Taking on big corporations and
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unions defending parents' rights. Taking on big banks to stop woke lending. And taking a stand.
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Sending Biden's migrants to Martha's Vineyard. DeSantis cut taxes. Ban critical race theory.
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Defended the unborn and expanded gun rights. Ron DeSantis, always putting freedom first.
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Nikki Haley, a woke empty suit who looks good on TV. But that's about it. Haley did nothing as
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governor but demolish Confederate memorials. Then Haley quit on Trump at the UN to run for
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president on a platform of identity politics and more money for Ukraine. Two governors. Two
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different records. Nikki Haley, weak and woke. Ron DeSantis, always putting freedom first.
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So what does this tell you? For starters, this ad did not come from the DeSantis campaign because
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officially speaking, there is not right now an official DeSantis campaign. It's not like it came
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from his campaign committee. However, we have things in this country called super PACs. We have outside
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organizations that run ads on behalf of candidates. That's obviously what's behind this ad. And it
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shows you that DeSantis is obviously serious about running. Why is he taking aim against Nikki Haley?
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Nikki Haley right now is much lower in the polls than Ron DeSantis. It shows you that Ron DeSantis is
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aware of an important fact in politics, which is that no matter how much of a long shot a candidate would
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seem to be anything can happen. You want proof of that? Look no further than 2016. All the smart
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people said there's no way Donald Trump is ever going to get the Republican nomination. And what
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happens? He trounces everybody else in the field. They said there's no way he could ever be elected
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president. The Hillary campaign was hoping that Republicans would nominate Trump. They said Trump
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would be the easiest one to beat. What happens? Trump absolutely cleans Hillary's clock. So DeSantis,
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and more to it, Team DeSantis, is signaling right now they are very, very serious about getting this
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nomination. They know they're in a good spot, that they have a real shot at clinching it,
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and they are not going to tolerate any competition. They're going to take every competitor seriously.
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They're taking Nikki Haley very seriously. Though I think many people are going to be looking at this
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ad so early, already airing in New Hampshire, and I think Iowa as well, and saying, isn't this a
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little bit aggressive? Why is DeSantis, who's the number two guy with huge poll numbers right now,
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going so hard after another candidate? It's because Ron DeSantis intends to win the race,
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even if he's going to come off as a little bit aggressive to do it. The most interesting line
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about that ad, though, was not focused on Nikki Haley. Everyone's just focusing on DeSantis versus
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Haley in that ad. But the most interesting line was, the first part says, DeSantis put an end to
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the Trump lockdowns. So it looks like it's an ad against Nikki Haley, but really the biggest dig in
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there was a dig at Donald Trump, who is the only candidate beating Ron DeSantis right now.
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This is pretty much the first time that we have seen DeSantis or DeSantis World really swing back
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at the steady and increasing attacks from Donald Trump. But the candidate himself, Ron DeSantis
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himself, when asked about it, does not want to go after the former president. So DeSantis was just
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asked on air, hey, what's your reaction when the former president goes after you? Here's his response.
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I read the whole thing, not one disparaging word about President Trump. Are you guys speaking now?
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Do you plan on speaking to him? He seems to be taking some shots at you.
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No, I mean, look, I mean, it's silly season. I mean, you know how some of this stuff goes. And
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obviously he does his thing. And it's just that's kind of kind of kind of who he is. But what I
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wanted to do was was just give an honest appraisal of kind of how we got to this point,
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the failures of the D.C. Republican establishment, and how Donald Trump was speaking to things
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that some of the old guard refused to address. And that's just a fact. And, you know, he can say,
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you know, what he wants about me. I'll always give him credit for the things that he did
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that were positive. And I'm appreciative of a lot of the things that he did. Doesn't mean I,
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you know, agree with everything that he's doing lately or whatever. But ultimately,
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it's about delivering for the people you represent and delivering for the country.
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This is the right tack. This is the right tack. Ron DeSantis is never going to beat
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Donald Trump in a barb throwing match. It's not going to happen. Marco Rubio tried it. Do you
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remember when Rubio went out and did that whole routine about how Trump has small hands? And you
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know what that means? And it just didn't land. Donald Trump is one of the most famous, successful,
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entertaining showmen in the entire country. And DeSantis doesn't have to do it right now.
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Trump has a lot of incentive to attack DeSantis. But DeSantis has a lot of momentum. He's got a lot
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of incentive not to irritate Trump because DeSantis, in order to win, needs to take over
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Trump's voters. So he's saying, look, I'm going to give Trump a lot of credit for the things he did
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that were positive. He did some things that were negative, which we're going to criticize in the
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Super PAC ads. But I'm going to take the high road. I'm going to be, and this is the whole pitch
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for the DeSantis campaign. I'm Trump without the baggage. I'm Trumpism without Trump. I'm the
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bigger, better, faster, smarter Trumpism. That's why he's running to the right of Trump right now.
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He's saying, oh, Trump was too weak on the lockdowns. I was really strong on the lockdowns.
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That's going to be his pitch. So how is Trump going to counter that?
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I mentioned last week, two weeks ago, after Trump went to Ohio, I said, this is peak Trump.
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This is the kind of Trump that really resonates. The Trump that really resonates is not the Trump
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throwing insults at DeSantis. It's fine. That's part of his character, but that's not what's going
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to win him the nomination. The Trump that resonates is not the Trump complaining about the stolen election
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in 2020. I am one of the most sympathetic people to claims of voter fraud and rigging and all the
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rest of it in 2020. But it's just not going to resonate with voters in 2024. The most resonant
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Trump is the Trump who shows up to Ohio and brings people water and makes a joke about how some of the
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water is not Trump water, so you got to watch out. Maybe don't drink it. And goes to McDonald's
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and says, you did a great job cooking those egg McMuffins. I know this menu better than anybody.
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And he's passing out hats and he's zinging one-liners. He said, I'm forcing the federal
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government to come here. And he's hanging out with people to whom he uniquely appeals and with whom he
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uniquely has something in common. It's paradoxical because he's a billionaire from New York. And yet
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he really seems more than any other Republican politician in my lifetime to have something in
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common with the forgotten man, the deplorables, the irredeemables, the flyover country,
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the people that our elites do not like. And so the way that Trump is now pivoting,
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I think he heard loud and clear that that's what works. Focus more on that. But it's not
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just going to be talk. Another one of the big pitches for Trump is he's not one of these all
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talk, no action politicians. Again, I'm not assessing his presidency. I'm not assessing his
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effectiveness in this moment. I'm just telling you that's the pitch.
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And so now what he's doing is he's releasing policy that leans into that identity. And we
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have not seen this in Trump's entire political career. We've seen this no clearer than in the
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Joe Biden claims to support American manufacturing, but in reality, he's pushing the same pro-China
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globalist agenda that ripped the industrial heart out of our country. It ripped us apart.
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Biden and the globalists support raising taxes on American production. They support more crippling
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regulations, killing American jobs. They support skyrocketing domestic energy costs, and they
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support massive anti-American multinational agreements that send our wealth and factories overseas.
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Very simply, the Biden agenda taxes America to build up China. China is the big beneficiary.
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We cannot let that happen. To achieve this goal, we will phase in a system universal baseline
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tariffs on most foreign products. On top of this, higher tariffs will increase incrementally
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depending on how much individual foreign countries devalue their currency. We're not going to allow
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bad things to happen to our country anymore, and we will eliminate federal contracts for any company
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You should watch the entire policy video. It's about five minutes long. We don't have time to play the
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whole thing on the show. Trump is offering an actual alternative once again to all of the other
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Republican candidates. Trump is calling explicitly for a mercantilist trade policy. For the past 30,
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40 years, maybe even longer, the orthodoxy in the GOP has been for free trade. The freer the trade,
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the better. Trump ran in many ways against that. He had problems with NAFTA. He was supportive of
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certain tariffs. But previously, he said, I support tariffs so that we can get even freer trade.
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I support tariffs as a negotiating position. Maybe that's what he's doing here now, but he's
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taking a much stronger stance on it. He's saying, I support universal tariffs. I don't support free
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trade. I support mercantilism. I support making goods in America, encouraging people to buy American
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goods, strongly discouraging people from buying foreign goods, strongly discouraging companies
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from outsourcing jobs overseas, even if it'll bring down the price of products. What Donald Trump
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is proposing here is an end to globalism. Free trade equals globalism. Tariffs and mercantilism
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equals a focus on the nation, nationalism. Now, the problem, you might say, well, good,
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I hate globalism, so I'm with Trump. The risk to this kind of a bet is that people like a lot of
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the fruits of free trade. People like the fact that we can get cheap consumer goods from China.
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We don't like that it strengthens China. We don't like that it gives China a major national security
00:20:52.860
advantage in some ways over the United States. We don't like to be embarrassed by China to whom we
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are so beholden that they get to fly a spy balloon over our country, and we look completely weak. We
00:21:03.360
look like such cowards. We won't even shoot the thing down. We don't like that stuff, but we do
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like the cheap TVs. We like the cheap computers. We like that we get more disposable income, but we
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don't like that we lose our jobs. But we do like that we get a raise when it comes to saving money on
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products. So it's a more complicated issue than just, okay, free trade used to be good, now free trade
00:21:25.980
bad. But Trump is being quite clear here. One of the arguments about Trump back in 2016 was people
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said, everyone only likes his inflammatory rhetoric. They're voting for him for personality, not for
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policy. I don't think that's true. I'm with Ann Coulter, who wrote a whole book about this before
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she decided not to like Trump anymore. But back in 2016, she wrote a whole book about how no, everyone's
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getting that backwards. People were voting for Trump because he offered an actual alternative
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on policy. In many ways, people voted for Trump despite his personality, but for his policy,
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because he was offering something that is much more old school. The free traders in the audience
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are going to hear this, and they're going to say, oh my goodness, this Trump, he's not a real
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conservative. He doesn't support free trade. The Republican Party was founded on tariffs. That was
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one of the founding issues for the Republican Party, back in the days of Abraham Lincoln.
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The Republican Party only became the party of free trade in very recent decades.
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Protectionism, tariffs, that was the conservative position for a much longer time than free trade has
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been the conservative position. If you don't want globalism, this is how to stop globalism. Some people
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like globalism. They think globalism reduces the risk of war between nations. Maybe it does.
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But it comes with a lot of other problems, like you outsource your political power to international
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institutions. You lose your sovereignty. In some cases, you lose your way of life. There is a
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reaction, a natural and I think good political reaction against the liberal globalism we've seen
00:22:59.720
in recent decades. That's what Brexit was about. That's what Trump 2016 was about. And Trump is
00:23:04.040
staking his candidacy right now on the belief that that reaction against globalism has become only
00:23:09.960
more intense. It has not abated at all. And it puts DeSantis in a tough spot. Because what the Trump
00:23:16.260
campaign is seeing here, I think, is, okay, DeSantis is going to try to run to the right of us,
00:23:20.260
specifically on vaccines. Okay, let's see him run to the right of us on trade. And I don't know how
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DeSantis is going to react to that. He's a very shrewd politician. He's a very capable governor.
00:23:33.720
But we see here some real strategy, I think, or at the very least, some real skill from the Trump
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campaign. When you're running a campaign, you always want to put your opponent in a difficult,
00:23:43.680
if not impossible position. That is what they have done here on the issue of trade.
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The free traders are losing their minds over this. Paul Ryan was just interviewed. He's probably the
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most famous free trader Republican of the last 10, 20 years. Paul Ryan was asked,
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Come 2024, the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where will you be?
00:24:09.020
It depends on who the nominee is. I'll be here if it's somebody not named Trump.
00:24:15.720
Yeah, I'm not interested in participating in that, no.
00:24:20.940
I won't show up if it's Trump. That was true of the previous Republican nominees for president in
00:24:25.900
2016. The only living former Republican nominee for president who showed up to the RNC for Trump
00:24:31.660
was Bob Dole. Good old Bob Dole. I love Bob Dole. First candidate I ever voted for when I was six
00:24:37.160
years old and my mother let me come into the voting booth. She wanted to vote for Clinton. I begged her
00:24:40.660
to vote for Dole. She let me pull the lever for Dole. A young Republican even then. And why are the
00:24:49.040
other Republicans so opposed to Trump? I get it. Paul Ryan, he's been attacked by Trump. He doesn't
00:24:53.940
like Trump's personality. It goes deeper than that. A lot of the antipathy for Trump in the Republican
00:24:59.280
Party is because he is trying to take the party in a different direction. And what the Paul Ryan types
00:25:05.680
are arguing is that he's trying to take the Republican Party in a heretical direction,
00:25:12.340
not only unorthodox, totally heretical, violating the sacred belief in free trade and sacred belief
00:25:20.060
in mass migration and sacred belief in market capitalism above all things. And it's not merely
00:25:26.680
an instrument, but an end unto itself. And what Trump is saying is, yeah, I've got the actual
00:25:32.140
conservative position here. And there are a lot of people who support that. That's why.
00:25:38.100
Now, voters, including conservatives, might not like that alternative, but at least
00:25:41.820
we're getting one. And you're seeing this from DeSantis too. I don't want to say that Trump is the
00:25:45.840
only one leaning into this direction. The era of letting corporations do whatever the hell they want,
00:25:53.800
be it destroying our traditions, grooming our kids, upsetting our society, all in the name of making
00:25:59.480
another one of the almighty dollars. That era is over. Ron DeSantis showed it yesterday when he signed
00:26:06.380
a law depriving Disney, woke Disney of its previous benefit, its government provided benefit to govern
00:26:17.320
its own territory. Today, the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end.
00:26:25.040
There's a new sheriff in town and accountability will be the order of the day.
00:26:34.940
So what does this bill do? Under this bill, under this bill, Disney still gets some perks. Under this
00:26:47.840
bill, Disney still has exemptions from certain taxes on different construction materials,
00:26:54.300
on impact fees for using public services. It still gets certain benefits that other corporations
00:26:59.360
also in Florida get, though Disney perhaps gets them to a larger degree. But under the new bill,
00:27:05.000
DeSantis has authority to appoint every member of this special tax district's five-member governing body,
00:27:12.520
subject to approval by the state senate. So until now, until very, very recently,
00:27:19.180
anyone, the board of supervisors here has gotten to appoint a chief executive to manage day-to-day
00:27:28.040
operations. And this has been selected basically by Disney. Now it will be selected by DeSantis.
00:27:33.200
And additionally, anyone who has been employed by Disney in the past three years will be barred from
00:27:37.920
serving on this board. So it's really, really smart politics. Because DeSantis is getting a significant
00:27:46.840
policy win here, but he's getting a huge political win. The huge political win is Ron DeSantis is
00:27:54.080
sticking it to woke Disney. DeSantis didn't start this fight, but he's going to finish it. Disney started
00:27:58.780
the fight when they attacked DeSantis for his relatively modest bill on transing the kids.
00:28:05.340
The libs tried to call it, don't say gay. The conservatives called it, wait till eight.
00:28:12.100
The bill said, you can't trans kids until they're in the fourth grade in our schools. Really fairly
00:28:17.760
modest bill. The libs still went crazy about it. So they were lobbying hard against DeSantis and DeSantis
00:28:22.880
brought the hammer down as absolutely he should have. The squishes said, no, don't wield the
00:28:27.200
government against DeSantis. DeSantis said, no, it's okay. Guys, this is self-government. This is a
00:28:32.260
republic. I have been elected by the people to represent their interests. Disney is meddling in
00:28:37.080
our state way too much against the will of the people. I'm going to bring down the hammer.
00:28:41.740
It's a major, major political win. And it's a significant policy win, but it's pretty precise
00:28:46.820
because he's still giving Disney a lot of nice stuff. He's still coming to the table here.
00:28:52.140
He's further defining himself as the very precise Trump, as the very clever Trump, as the Trump is
00:29:06.220
a hammer, right? Trump is just this huge sledgehammer. DeSantis is, oh, he's getting the win here,
00:29:11.680
but he's still leaving a little bit for Disney. And he's still, he's, he's furthering his campaign
00:29:17.100
as the really hyper sophisticated, disciplined Trump. Will that persuade? We'll find out.
00:29:23.740
Disney though is reeling right now. Disney executives are now reflecting on why people
00:29:28.340
don't like their movies anymore. Specifically this movie, Lightyear. Remember Lightyear came
00:29:32.360
out? It was the new Toy Story movie. It completely flopped. And it was a movie that had a lesbian kiss
00:29:37.160
in it and where they replaced Tim Allen, one of the only conservative actors in Hollywood.
00:29:42.100
They replaced his voice and had some other guy, some lib guy voice, Buzz Lightyear. So here's what
00:29:46.840
Disney said. He said, we've done a lot of soul searching about that because we all love the
00:29:52.500
movie. We love the characters and the premise. I think probably what we've ended on in terms of
00:29:56.360
what went wrong is that we asked too much of the audience. That was Pixar's chief creative officer.
00:30:03.340
When they hear Buzz, they're like, great, where's Mr. Potato Head and Woody and Rex? And then we drop
00:30:08.660
them into this science fiction film that they're like, what? Even if they've read the material in the
00:30:13.580
press, it was just a little too distant, both in concept and I think in the way that characters
00:30:18.260
were drawn, that they were portrayed. It was much more of a science fiction.
00:30:25.260
Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I think the concept was pretty easy. The concept was Buzz Lightyear is a toy
00:30:30.320
and Buzz Lightyear is based on a movie character. So this is the movie. Okay. Yeah, maybe that won't
00:30:37.580
be quite as popular as Toy Story, one of the most popular cartoon franchises of all time.
00:30:43.700
But I get it. That's fine. I don't think it's fine. I don't think the audience is so stupid
00:30:47.180
that they couldn't get that concept. Sci-fi is a very popular genre. I don't think it's that the
00:30:53.500
audience just can't get into sci-fi. No, it was the wokeness, guys. It was the lesbian kiss and it was
00:30:58.900
the replacing the voice. Now, some people said, well, they had to replace the voice because it's a
00:31:01.860
different kind of character. It's Buzz Lightyear, the movie character, not Buzz Lightyear,
00:31:06.240
the toy. Yeah, it's a little too clever by half, if you ask me. Because toys, they just play
00:31:13.880
recordings of the movie characters. So if the joke is that the quality of the toy is so low that the
00:31:21.740
voice is totally different, it just doesn't play. I think they probably leaned into booting Tim Allen
00:31:26.820
because he's a conservative. And I think that the movie flopped because it was woke. And in the press,
00:31:31.400
it was being portrayed correctly as woke. And then the audience didn't show up. It's not that
00:31:35.520
complicated, guys. We talked yesterday about the El Salvadoran president who had that wonderful video
00:31:42.080
and this incredible policy where he's cut his murder rate by 58% in El Salvador by just locking
00:31:48.340
up all the criminals. Turns out it's really simple. You want to cut the murder rate, lock up the
00:31:52.200
murderers. It's really simple. You want audiences to go show up to your movies? Don't make them these
00:31:58.340
woke, tedious lectures. Give the audience what they want. They're going to show up to your movie.
00:32:03.700
Speaking of groomers like Disney, Randy Weingarten, head of the teacher union,
00:32:09.260
is out doing what she does best, which is whining and screaming and trying to get more money and power.
00:32:16.600
This time at the Supreme Court because there is a challenge to the Biden administration's ability
00:32:22.920
to forgive student loans with the stroke of a pen. Take a listen.
00:32:28.720
And this is what really pisses me off. During the pandemic, we understood that small businesses
00:32:37.060
were hurting and we helped them and it didn't go to the Supreme Court to challenge it. Big businesses
00:32:43.500
were hurting and we helped them and it didn't go to the Supreme Court to challenge it. All of a sudden,
00:32:49.300
when it's about our students, they challenge it. The corporations challenge it. The student loan
00:32:57.040
lenders challenge it. That is not right. That is not fair. And that is what we are fighting as well
00:33:04.360
when we say, cancel student debt. That was Randy Weingarten doing her Howard Dean impression.
00:33:11.360
We're going to get money from you and you're going to get more money from me. Woo! Woo! Not very
00:33:18.380
persuasive. And the rhetorical device she uses is not very persuasive because what does she say?
00:33:23.200
She says, when it's about forgiving money to businesses, that's fine. But when it's about
00:33:28.060
our students, I, Randy Weingarten, the woman who wouldn't let our students back into school for two
00:33:35.960
years, even though they faced statistically pretty much zero risk from the coronavirus,
00:33:40.400
but I didn't want to do it because I insisted that my union members get more time off and get paid for
00:33:46.200
it. Hi, Randy Weingarten, who care about our students. I want to make sure they get their
00:33:51.460
student loans forgiven. Randy Weingarten's students, of which she has none. She doesn't teach any. She
00:33:59.040
doesn't actually have any students. She's a union boss. Randy Weingarten's students, though,
00:34:03.860
the students that her members are teaching, don't have any student loans. They're public school
00:34:10.360
students. They're high school students, middle school students, elementary school students.
00:34:15.500
They don't have student loans. What is Randy Weingarten talking about? She's not at the Supreme
00:34:21.280
Court representing students. She's at the Supreme Court representing her members, the teacher union
00:34:30.080
members. They're the ones with the student loans. The student debt crisis rally in D.C. is to stop a
00:34:41.520
court challenge to Biden canceling $10,000 in federal student loans for individuals making less than $125,000
00:34:47.900
per year or households earning less than $250,000 per year annually as of 2020 and 2021.
00:34:55.420
That describes the teacher union members. As always, the teacher union is not about the
00:35:06.760
students. The teacher union harms students on pretty much every single front. The teacher union exists not
00:35:17.560
to help students, but to oppose students and to support the teacher union members. They're the ones that
00:35:24.540
they're there for. We're going to support our students by locking them out of school and
00:35:29.720
saddling them with even more debt. Not persuasive. You know, one of the great things about Jordan
00:35:36.840
Peterson is he dispenses his wisdom with tough love in equal measure, and you will find plenty of both
00:35:42.680
those things in his new five-part series out on Daily Wire Plus called Vision and Destiny. The series is
00:35:48.100
designed to help you find clarity and direction. This is badly needed. A lot of people have no idea who
00:35:52.620
they are, especially when it comes to sex and gender. Here's a clip from Vision and Destiny
00:36:00.960
What is gender? Well, it's what people feel they are. It's like, yeah, that's your theory, eh? That's a
00:36:06.660
stupid theory. It's not going anywhere, that theory. And so that's just a theory that enables you to claim
00:36:13.700
something like the primacy of your narcissistic whim. It has nothing to do with the careful
00:36:20.620
delineation of what actually constitutes identity. And so it's complex because there are, there is
00:36:26.980
variability in masculinity and femininity on top of the binary biological substructure. And so that
00:36:35.060
also means that you have to have a certain amount of tolerance for role variability. And you should
00:36:43.580
because there are masculine women and there are feminine men. And it's harder for them, in some real
00:36:50.040
sense, to adopt the role that would be easily commensurate with their biological identity because
00:36:57.560
they share many features, temperamental features that are characteristic of the opposite sex. But that
00:37:03.560
doesn't mean that they're born in the wrong body. The first two episodes are out right now. New episodes
00:37:08.860
are releasing every week. But it's all exclusive for Daily Wire Plus members. All the rest of you
00:37:15.940
hoi polloi out there who won't fork over your money, you don't get Dr. Jordan Peterson's very interesting
00:37:23.040
views on gender and sex and lobsters and all the rest of it. So head on over. I got to work on my, it's not
00:37:28.020
quite there yet. It's close. It's not quite there yet. Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe to watch
00:37:33.660
Vision and Destiny. Speaking of schools, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said something really true.
00:37:44.500
I, something wrong? Did I, hold on. Am I dreaming? Am I, did I, I'm gonna pinch myself to, oh, Mayor Eric Adams
00:37:55.120
in New York said something really true and important that we should all learn from. Something's going on in our
00:38:01.560
cities. Chicago threw out Lori Lightfoot. The New York City Mayor is saying something true and smart. Eric Adams
00:38:08.440
described how our schools, specifically schools in New York City, have plummeted to such depths of
00:38:15.960
degradation. If we are bringing our best fight in the ring, we would not have homeless in this city.
00:38:28.740
We would not have a crisis of domestic violence. We would not have children because when we took
00:38:37.180
prayers out of schools, guns came into schools. When we took prayer out of schools, guns came into
00:38:45.700
schools. Fact check, true. Yeah, that's right. He's not giving an historical study here. He's making a
00:38:57.380
philosophical and anthropological point. This is how human beings work. When you stop them from
00:39:05.220
worshiping God, it's not even just that you don't encourage it anymore. You're not allowed to have
00:39:11.020
prayer in schools now. So when you discourage them from worshiping God and turning their eyes up to
00:39:18.480
good things and to virtue and to truth, they're going to turn it somewhere else. They're going to
00:39:26.080
turn their attention to bad things. They're going to turn their attention to false idols. They're going
00:39:30.300
to turn their attention to falsehoods and vice. That is what's going to happen because we live in time
00:39:36.620
and space. We're human beings. We got to do something. There's no neutrality. There's no push-pause.
00:39:42.460
When you take prayers out of schools, that's when the guns are going to come into schools or when the
00:39:46.380
pornography is going to come into schools or when the whatever is going to come into schools.
00:39:50.980
Democrats love that we took prayer out of schools. They love that we took the Bible out of schools.
00:39:56.000
And yet here, even New York City Mayor Eric Adams, what he just said, it would be indistinguishable
00:40:01.560
from what some right-winger down in Texas politician would have said. Some Christian,
00:40:05.520
fundamentalist, theocratic guy. It's the same thing that Eric Adams just said. Eric Adams just said,
00:40:10.880
we need prayer in schools. Obviously, we do. If you had said 10 years ago,
00:40:15.980
if you had said, we need prayer in schools, you would have been considered a fringe right-wing
00:40:19.440
Republican. But this is where we're seeing a little bit of hope. Chicago throws out Lori Lightfoot.
00:40:25.300
Mayor Adams says things that are interesting. You're seeing a little, some rays of hope here
00:40:29.320
creeping in, which is that people are beginning to realize, oh, maybe that was a mistake.
00:40:34.800
Maybe when you create a national policy, turning your country away from God,
00:40:39.620
maybe that's not going to work out so great. And it has not worked out.
00:40:44.020
Period. It's really simple stuff. And I'm turning my attention back to
00:40:48.620
the El Salvador president. Actually, after we did the segment on him yesterday, I noticed
00:40:53.420
that President Bukele in El Salvador tweeted out the bit from this show and quoted the segment.
00:41:01.640
And then I went to the president's Twitter page. I said, oh, that's kind of cool. He tweeted out the
00:41:07.660
segment. And then I saw he had another video. And this is kind of the answer to the propaganda
00:41:12.720
video of the MS-13 gangsters that he put out. President Bukele has arrested thousands and
00:41:18.300
thousands of these gangsters. I think there's 65,000 of them now locked up. These guys look
00:41:21.820
like demon bugs. They've got weird green face tattoos. And he's humiliating them. And he's
00:41:26.900
sent the army out to deal with the crime problem and reduce the murder rate by 58%. Well, now,
00:41:33.320
here's the other side of that. Not just the doom and gloom and fire and brimstone and we're going to
00:41:37.340
get you bad guys. Here's the hopeful message for the rest of the country. I will translate by reading
00:41:43.900
the text on the screen because my Spanish is no good.
00:41:49.360
President Bukele standing out, talking to his troops in a field. For eight months,
00:41:55.260
we've been fighting this war against the gangs and thank God we're winning.
00:41:57.980
This is a very surprising victory that is nearly within our grasp. Let it be clear that the glory
00:42:04.900
is for God and it is God's glory. We humans are lucky to be instruments of God, all of us,
00:42:15.380
to bring peace, liberty, and happiness to the Salvadoran people. These values were probably
00:42:23.380
not strong in this land and were strong in other lands. And that's why those lands grew and became
00:42:29.600
great. But they are losing those values now. And on the other hand, in El Salvador, the values that
00:42:36.140
previously were degraded in our country are now the most important ones. Just take a look at yourselves,
00:42:41.920
young men and women who embody all these values. How could a nation not rise up with values such as
00:42:49.660
these? How could a nation not rise up when it puts God first and then puts in the hard work and effort
00:42:54.300
with these kinds of values? Beautiful. Political science students will be studying this speech.
00:43:05.480
History students will be studying this speech years from now. This is beautiful, simple, and true.
00:43:14.540
The president of El Salvador sounds like an American founding father in that speech. More so, he sounds
00:43:25.620
like Governor Bradford, Governor Winthrop, or some of the very earliest Americans who helped to build
00:43:32.440
our country. They kept it very simple. It's just like the policy. What's the policy? You want to fight
00:43:38.380
crime? Lock up the criminals. You want to build a great nation? Put God first. Everything else will
00:43:43.400
follow. Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven. All the other goods will follow after that.
00:43:49.200
President Bukele, he says, in our country, these values had been degraded. Other nations had those
00:43:56.540
values. That's why those other nations became great. And now those other nations are turning
00:44:01.120
away from those values. Who's he talking about? He's talking about us. And he's showing you something
00:44:07.060
beautiful that happens throughout history. And that you see, certainly in the history of salvation,
00:44:12.140
certainly you see this throughout the Bible, that very often it can be small, mighty groups, small
00:44:21.020
underdog groups who put on the armor of God, who can astound and frankly embarrass the supposedly far
00:44:31.520
greater nations, which have profited from God's grace and then turned their backs on him. Gone,
00:44:38.720
done something else. Doesn't turn out well for those countries. Doesn't turn out well for those
00:44:42.180
empires. He says that line, how could a nation with these values not rise up, not become great?
00:44:53.520
It's very, very simple. I'm not saying that it's easy, but it's simple. President Bukele's speech here
00:45:00.900
could have been given, not just by the founding fathers or the early colonial Americans,
00:45:05.880
could have been given by any great leader in our civilization going back to antiquity all the way
00:45:10.680
up until about 20 years ago. Now we don't hear these speeches very often. It's pretty simple
00:45:17.800
stuff, folks. These big political problems that our opponents want to pretend are so complicated.
00:45:24.840
Oh, well, you know, gender and sex, it's so complicated. It's not complicated. Men are men and
00:45:28.900
women are women. Well, you know, the issue of reproductive freedom. No, it's not. Don't kill babies.
00:45:33.500
It's really simple. Well, the issue of immigration is so complicated. Ronald Reagan said illegal
00:45:38.780
immigration is not complicated. It's illegal. Stop it. Crime is not complicated. Lock up the
00:45:44.400
criminals, build more prisons, lock them up, punish them harder. You'll get less crime.
00:45:49.120
How do we have a great country? Look toward God. Look to the source and summit of goodness himself,
00:45:56.380
being himself. You'll have a good country. You look away from God, you're going to have a bad country.
00:46:00.360
It's very, very simple. We have got the rest of the show coming up now. We have got some TikTok
00:46:08.560
haters, according to my producer. He tells me we've got some TikTok haters. I have got to.
00:46:13.840
Being a real, cool, hip TikTok influencer myself, I've got to react in real time to these haters.
00:46:22.320
So the rest of the show continues now. You don't want to miss it. Become a member. Use code
00:46:25.840
Knowles, KNWLAS at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.