The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1193 - After Destroying Chicago Lori Lightfoot Can Finally Rest

00:00:00.000 2,997. That's how many people have been killed in Chicago since 2019, the year

00:00:06.800 Lori Lightfoot took office as mayor. 15,436. That is how many people have been shot in Chicago

00:00:17.560 since the year Lori Lightfoot took office. It's an American city. Those numbers seem pretty high,

00:00:26.140 don't they? But to understand just how high, consider New York and LA. New York and LA are also

00:00:33.120 both high crime cities, especially LA these days. And yet last year, Chicago's homicide rate

00:00:40.060 was two and a half times higher than LA's. It was five times higher than New York's.

00:00:48.060 Chicago's murder rate had been going down in 2016, 2017, 2018. Then Lori Lightfoot took over. 0.76

00:00:55.280 In 2019, and it spiked. Chicago in the Lightfoot era has been a war zone. None of that is

00:01:04.200 particularly surprising to people who pay attention to the news. What is surprising,

00:01:09.640 what is delightfully surprising, is that Chicago residents are finally doing something about it.

00:01:15.440 Because last night, Lori Lightfoot lost her re-election bid for Chicago mayor. 0.99

00:01:22.020 She didn't even make the top two, which means that Paul Vallis and Brandon Johnson will head to the

00:01:29.340 April 4th runoff in the race. Lori Lightfoot will ride off into the sunset. All of this should give 0.99

00:01:36.000 at least some hope to dejected conservatives who think that there is no hope for the country.

00:01:41.940 If even screwed up Chicago can muster the political vision and will to throw a bum out, 1.00

00:01:48.800 what's stopping the rest of us from doing the same thing at the national level? I'm Michael Knowles.

00:01:54.960 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:03.560 Welcome back to the show. Before we begin, make sure you smash that like and subscribe button.

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00:02:20.520 that they usually see. My favorite comment yesterday is from Jaden Gerou, who says,

00:02:25.580 I don't know how you haven't been banned yet, Big Mike, but I'm here for it. Keep preaching the truth,

00:02:31.700 brother. Some people have noticed that I've had a lot of bleeps and things added into my show,

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00:03:03.140 But we are not going to just cut out portions of this show or my commentary. Not going to happen,

00:03:09.960 okay? We are feeling good. We're feeling energized. We're feeling confident. I think

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00:04:50.440 bonus box. Go to GenuCell.com slash Knowles. These guys are bums. They are bums and we need

00:04:57.360 to throw them out. One of the biggest bums in the government, maybe my least favorite member of the 1.00

00:05:02.460 Biden administration, certainly the glibbest member of the Biden administration, the most just 0.91

00:05:09.100 cloyingly liberal and saccharine and just drives me crazy, would be Pete Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg,

00:05:16.740 who, while facing many serious challenges from his position as transportation secretary,

00:05:25.280 a major train derailment that poisoned an entire Ohio town and threatened the air and water supply

00:05:31.000 for about 10% of the country, a guy who is seeing all sorts of transportation problems from the airlines

00:05:38.680 to the roads to infrastructure. Pete Buttigieg says that the thing he will most likely be remembered for

00:05:46.140 the sun monster. Climate is not nonsense. Dealing with climate change is one of the biggest things

00:05:54.040 that people like me and people like him will be remembered for after we're gone.

00:06:00.080 That is not true. I was trying to think, well, maybe that's true in the sense that

00:06:07.060 Pete Buttigieg is spending all of his time worried about the sun monster. He's not spending any of his

00:06:11.900 time worried about the railroads and the bridges and the roads. So that's why that's what he'll be

00:06:17.160 remembered for. No, I actually believe Pete Buttigieg will be one of the only transportation

00:06:22.040 secretaries in history to be remembered at all. Very few people can name even one transportation

00:06:27.760 secretary in history. I remember Elaine Chao had it during Trump's administration. I couldn't name

00:06:33.780 you a transportation secretary earlier than that. But I think people will remember Pete Buttigieg

00:06:39.300 because his tenure has been so catastrophic. There have been so many transportation catastrophes

00:06:44.900 during Pete Buttigieg's reign. So why is he focused on climate change? When Buttigieg or any lib in

00:06:54.240 government says, well, hey, listen, what I hope that I'm remembered for when my term is up,

00:07:00.880 it's not what I did the day by day in my job. It's what we did for climate change.

00:07:05.560 When he says something like that, he's making a pseudo-religious claim. It is just the bizarro

00:07:15.200 world lib version of when a Christian politician says, listen, when all is said and done, once my

00:07:20.460 political legacy is being written, the biographers are pulling out the notes, I hope they remember me

00:07:25.240 as a good Christian man, a faithful servant of God who did what he was called to do, who kept the

00:07:31.060 faith, who practiced virtue. We hear those kinds of statements all the time from Christians in public

00:07:37.500 life. All the climate change piffle is the same sort of statement for libs in public life because

00:07:44.600 libs, generally speaking, don't believe in God. They either say outright that they don't believe in God

00:07:49.840 or they maybe pay lip service to believe in God, but they certainly don't behave in any way that would

00:07:56.040 suggest that they do. They don't follow policies that would be in accordance with God's will and

00:08:00.440 the church and traditional religion. And so their religion is climate change. That's their eschatology.

00:08:06.660 That's their end times prophecy. That's their sanctification will be serving Mother Gaia and the

00:08:14.000 climate. That's their atonement. That's the satisfaction that is demanded for the sin of pollution.

00:08:19.740 That's their roughly weird, fake religious worldview. And so Pete Buttigieg says that it is just the

00:08:28.280 cherry on top of this guy's confusion and incompetence Sunday. Now, with the Biden administration

00:08:37.380 looking so weak, there are many, many people who are running for president. I have said it before,

00:08:44.200 I think I might be the only Republican in the country right now who is not at least considering

00:08:49.140 running for president. And it's only because I'm too young. The Constitution says I can't run yet.

00:08:54.100 Pretty much every other Republican is considering a campaign. Republicans see blood in the water.

00:08:59.460 That is why the race is on. We now have three declared candidates on the right.

00:09:06.660 Donald Trump is obviously running for reelection. Nikki Haley is running. And Vivek Ramaswamy is running

00:09:12.700 on the Republican side. Marianne Williamson, who is the new agey left-wing candidate who talked about

00:09:18.660 dark psychic forces in 2020. She's running against Biden. The race is already on. We've now seen our

00:09:25.860 first big super PAC ad. This ad would seem to be supporting a candidate who has not declared yet,

00:09:33.320 but who is obviously going to run. That would be Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

00:09:36.140 Ron DeSantis' super PAC is taking aim at Nikki Haley.

00:09:40.700 A tale of two governors. Ron DeSantis, always putting freedom first.

00:09:47.740 Undoing the Trump lockdowns. Taking on Fauci's vaccine passports. Taking on big corporations and

00:09:53.580 unions defending parents' rights. Taking on big banks to stop woke lending. And taking a stand.

00:10:00.080 Sending Biden's migrants to Martha's Vineyard. DeSantis cut taxes. Ban critical race theory.

00:10:05.100 Defended the unborn and expanded gun rights. Ron DeSantis, always putting freedom first.

00:10:11.360 Nikki Haley, a woke empty suit who looks good on TV. But that's about it. Haley did nothing as 1.00

00:10:17.720 governor but demolish Confederate memorials. Then Haley quit on Trump at the UN to run for

00:10:24.020 president on a platform of identity politics and more money for Ukraine. Two governors. Two

00:10:30.160 different records. Nikki Haley, weak and woke. Ron DeSantis, always putting freedom first.

00:10:39.280 So what does this tell you? For starters, this ad did not come from the DeSantis campaign because

00:10:45.120 officially speaking, there is not right now an official DeSantis campaign. It's not like it came

00:10:50.600 from his campaign committee. However, we have things in this country called super PACs. We have outside

00:10:57.460 organizations that run ads on behalf of candidates. That's obviously what's behind this ad. And it

00:11:03.500 shows you that DeSantis is obviously serious about running. Why is he taking aim against Nikki Haley?

00:11:11.580 Nikki Haley right now is much lower in the polls than Ron DeSantis. It shows you that Ron DeSantis is

00:11:17.000 aware of an important fact in politics, which is that no matter how much of a long shot a candidate would

00:11:22.480 seem to be anything can happen. You want proof of that? Look no further than 2016. All the smart

00:11:29.140 people said there's no way Donald Trump is ever going to get the Republican nomination. And what

00:11:34.900 happens? He trounces everybody else in the field. They said there's no way he could ever be elected

00:11:40.820 president. The Hillary campaign was hoping that Republicans would nominate Trump. They said Trump

00:11:45.280 would be the easiest one to beat. What happens? Trump absolutely cleans Hillary's clock. So DeSantis, 0.51

00:11:50.400 and more to it, Team DeSantis, is signaling right now they are very, very serious about getting this

00:11:57.340 nomination. They know they're in a good spot, that they have a real shot at clinching it,

00:12:00.920 and they are not going to tolerate any competition. They're going to take every competitor seriously.

00:12:05.840 They're taking Nikki Haley very seriously. Though I think many people are going to be looking at this

00:12:10.540 ad so early, already airing in New Hampshire, and I think Iowa as well, and saying, isn't this a

00:12:16.860 little bit aggressive? Why is DeSantis, who's the number two guy with huge poll numbers right now,

00:12:22.280 going so hard after another candidate? It's because Ron DeSantis intends to win the race,

00:12:30.160 even if he's going to come off as a little bit aggressive to do it. The most interesting line

00:12:34.780 about that ad, though, was not focused on Nikki Haley. Everyone's just focusing on DeSantis versus

00:12:40.580 Haley in that ad. But the most interesting line was, the first part says, DeSantis put an end to

00:12:47.980 the Trump lockdowns. So it looks like it's an ad against Nikki Haley, but really the biggest dig in

00:12:55.640 there was a dig at Donald Trump, who is the only candidate beating Ron DeSantis right now.

00:13:01.980 This is pretty much the first time that we have seen DeSantis or DeSantis World really swing back

00:13:08.380 at the steady and increasing attacks from Donald Trump. But the candidate himself, Ron DeSantis

00:13:15.240 himself, when asked about it, does not want to go after the former president. So DeSantis was just

00:13:22.340 asked on air, hey, what's your reaction when the former president goes after you? Here's his response.

00:13:31.020 I read the whole thing, not one disparaging word about President Trump. Are you guys speaking now?

00:13:36.580 Do you plan on speaking to him? He seems to be taking some shots at you.

00:13:40.980 No, I mean, look, I mean, it's silly season. I mean, you know how some of this stuff goes. And

00:13:46.040 obviously he does his thing. And it's just that's kind of kind of kind of who he is. But what I

00:13:50.620 wanted to do was was just give an honest appraisal of kind of how we got to this point,

00:13:57.440 the failures of the D.C. Republican establishment, and how Donald Trump was speaking to things

00:14:03.520 that some of the old guard refused to address. And that's just a fact. And, you know, he can say,

00:14:10.300 you know, what he wants about me. I'll always give him credit for the things that he did

00:14:14.100 that were positive. And I'm appreciative of a lot of the things that he did. Doesn't mean I,

00:14:20.120 you know, agree with everything that he's doing lately or whatever. But ultimately,

00:14:25.560 it's about delivering for the people you represent and delivering for the country.

00:14:29.780 This is the right tack. This is the right tack. Ron DeSantis is never going to beat

00:14:37.240 Donald Trump in a barb throwing match. It's not going to happen. Marco Rubio tried it. Do you

00:14:43.760 remember when Rubio went out and did that whole routine about how Trump has small hands? And you

00:14:47.940 know what that means? And it just didn't land. Donald Trump is one of the most famous, successful,

00:14:54.620 entertaining showmen in the entire country. And DeSantis doesn't have to do it right now.

00:14:59.780 Trump has a lot of incentive to attack DeSantis. But DeSantis has a lot of momentum. He's got a lot

00:15:06.080 of incentive not to irritate Trump because DeSantis, in order to win, needs to take over

00:15:10.340 Trump's voters. So he's saying, look, I'm going to give Trump a lot of credit for the things he did

00:15:14.760 that were positive. He did some things that were negative, which we're going to criticize in the

00:15:18.180 Super PAC ads. But I'm going to take the high road. I'm going to be, and this is the whole pitch

00:15:23.460 for the DeSantis campaign. I'm Trump without the baggage. I'm Trumpism without Trump. I'm the

00:15:30.060 bigger, better, faster, smarter Trumpism. That's why he's running to the right of Trump right now.

00:15:36.220 He's saying, oh, Trump was too weak on the lockdowns. I was really strong on the lockdowns.

00:15:41.480 That's going to be his pitch. So how is Trump going to counter that?

00:15:45.880 I mentioned last week, two weeks ago, after Trump went to Ohio, I said, this is peak Trump.

00:15:55.380 This is the kind of Trump that really resonates. The Trump that really resonates is not the Trump

00:16:00.780 throwing insults at DeSantis. It's fine. That's part of his character, but that's not what's going

00:16:06.000 to win him the nomination. The Trump that resonates is not the Trump complaining about the stolen election

00:16:10.740 in 2020. I am one of the most sympathetic people to claims of voter fraud and rigging and all the

00:16:17.740 rest of it in 2020. But it's just not going to resonate with voters in 2024. The most resonant

00:16:25.980 Trump is the Trump who shows up to Ohio and brings people water and makes a joke about how some of the

00:16:30.820 water is not Trump water, so you got to watch out. Maybe don't drink it. And goes to McDonald's

00:16:36.020 and says, you did a great job cooking those egg McMuffins. I know this menu better than anybody.

00:16:40.380 And he's passing out hats and he's zinging one-liners. He said, I'm forcing the federal

00:16:44.600 government to come here. And he's hanging out with people to whom he uniquely appeals and with whom he

00:16:51.480 uniquely has something in common. It's paradoxical because he's a billionaire from New York. And yet

00:16:57.400 he really seems more than any other Republican politician in my lifetime to have something in

00:17:02.500 common with the forgotten man, the deplorables, the irredeemables, the flyover country,

00:17:07.360 the people that our elites do not like. And so the way that Trump is now pivoting,

00:17:13.580 I think he heard loud and clear that that's what works. Focus more on that. But it's not

00:17:19.400 just going to be talk. Another one of the big pitches for Trump is he's not one of these all

00:17:23.380 talk, no action politicians. Again, I'm not assessing his presidency. I'm not assessing his

00:17:28.920 effectiveness in this moment. I'm just telling you that's the pitch.

00:17:32.460 And so now what he's doing is he's releasing policy that leans into that identity. And we

00:17:40.540 have not seen this in Trump's entire political career. We've seen this no clearer than in the

00:17:45.020 trade policy that Trump released yesterday.

00:17:49.100 Joe Biden claims to support American manufacturing, but in reality, he's pushing the same pro-China

00:17:56.340 globalist agenda that ripped the industrial heart out of our country. It ripped us apart.

00:18:03.200 Biden and the globalists support raising taxes on American production. They support more crippling 0.87

00:18:09.280 regulations, killing American jobs. They support skyrocketing domestic energy costs, and they

00:18:15.820 support massive anti-American multinational agreements that send our wealth and factories overseas.

00:18:22.480 Very simply, the Biden agenda taxes America to build up China. China is the big beneficiary.

00:18:31.020 We cannot let that happen. To achieve this goal, we will phase in a system universal baseline

00:18:37.380 tariffs on most foreign products. On top of this, higher tariffs will increase incrementally

00:18:44.020 depending on how much individual foreign countries devalue their currency. We're not going to allow

00:18:50.600 bad things to happen to our country anymore, and we will eliminate federal contracts for any company

00:18:57.120 that outsources to China.

00:19:00.900 You should watch the entire policy video. It's about five minutes long. We don't have time to play the

00:19:06.640 whole thing on the show. Trump is offering an actual alternative once again to all of the other

00:19:16.580 Republican candidates. Trump is calling explicitly for a mercantilist trade policy. For the past 30,

00:19:25.240 40 years, maybe even longer, the orthodoxy in the GOP has been for free trade. The freer the trade,

00:19:34.440 the better. Trump ran in many ways against that. He had problems with NAFTA. He was supportive of

00:19:42.760 certain tariffs. But previously, he said, I support tariffs so that we can get even freer trade.

00:19:47.400 I support tariffs as a negotiating position. Maybe that's what he's doing here now, but he's

00:19:52.620 taking a much stronger stance on it. He's saying, I support universal tariffs. I don't support free

00:19:59.500 trade. I support mercantilism. I support making goods in America, encouraging people to buy American

00:20:06.420 goods, strongly discouraging people from buying foreign goods, strongly discouraging companies

00:20:13.080 from outsourcing jobs overseas, even if it'll bring down the price of products. What Donald Trump

00:20:18.920 is proposing here is an end to globalism. Free trade equals globalism. Tariffs and mercantilism

00:20:29.240 equals a focus on the nation, nationalism. Now, the problem, you might say, well, good,

00:20:35.700 I hate globalism, so I'm with Trump. The risk to this kind of a bet is that people like a lot of

00:20:42.220 the fruits of free trade. People like the fact that we can get cheap consumer goods from China.

00:20:47.840 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

00:20:58.840 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 0.99

00:21:08.660 like the cheap TVs. We like the cheap computers. We like that we get more disposable income, but we

00:21:14.000 don't like that we lose our jobs. But we do like that we get a raise when it comes to saving money on

00:21:18.900 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

00:21:32.620 said, everyone only likes his inflammatory rhetoric. They're voting for him for personality, not for

00:21:39.560 policy. I don't think that's true. I'm with Ann Coulter, who wrote a whole book about this before

00:21:45.460 she decided not to like Trump anymore. But back in 2016, she wrote a whole book about how no, everyone's

00:21:51.020 getting that backwards. People were voting for Trump because he offered an actual alternative

00:21:55.260 on policy. In many ways, people voted for Trump despite his personality, but for his policy,

00:22:02.600 because he was offering something that is much more old school. The free traders in the audience

00:22:06.840 are going to hear this, and they're going to say, oh my goodness, this Trump, he's not a real

00:22:10.020 conservative. He doesn't support free trade. The Republican Party was founded on tariffs. That was

00:22:17.860 one of the founding issues for the Republican Party, back in the days of Abraham Lincoln.

00:22:24.060 The Republican Party only became the party of free trade in very recent decades.

00:22:30.860 Protectionism, tariffs, that was the conservative position for a much longer time than free trade has

00:22:36.900 been the conservative position. If you don't want globalism, this is how to stop globalism. Some people

00:22:42.360 like globalism. They think globalism reduces the risk of war between nations. Maybe it does.

00:22:47.860 But it comes with a lot of other problems, like you outsource your political power to international

00:22:51.000 institutions. You lose your sovereignty. In some cases, you lose your way of life. There is a

00:22:55.260 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

00:23:25.960 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

00:23:38.780 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.

00:23:50.320 The free traders are losing their minds over this. Paul Ryan was just interviewed. He's probably the

00:23:55.060 most famous free trader Republican of the last 10, 20 years. Paul Ryan was asked,

00:24:01.220 will he attend the RNC next year?

00:24:05.320 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.

00:24:14.420 You won't show up if it's not?

00:24:15.720 Yeah, I'm not interested in participating in that, no.

00:24:17.480 Even in Wisconsin?

00:24:18.940 Even in Wisconsin.

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 0.62

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.99

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. 1.00

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 0.99

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

00:35:57.480 explaining Jordan's view.

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 0.91

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 1.00

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 1.00

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. 0.95

00:39:50.980 Democrats love that we took prayer out of schools. They love that we took the Bible out of schools. 0.76

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 0.94

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. 1.00

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 1.00

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.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 01, 2023

Ep. 1193 - After Destroying Chicago Lori Lightfoot Can Finally Rest

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