Hunter Biden has been subpoenaed to testify about his father's political corruption. Will he show up? Will he testify in public or behind closed doors? Will he even show up at all? Find out if he shows up, and why he won't.
00:00:00.000Do you remember back in December when House Republicans tried to get Hunter Biden to testify
00:00:05.280about his family's extreme political corruption? And Hunter refused on the basis that that
00:00:12.040testimony was going to be behind closed doors. It wasn't going to be public.
00:00:16.540Here is what Hunter said at the time. These same committee chairmen have engaged in
00:00:22.400unprecedented political interference in what would have already been a five-year investigation of me.
00:00:30.000Yet, here I am, Mr. Chairman, taking up your offer when you said we can bring these people
00:00:39.200in for depositions or committee hearings, whichever they choose. Well, I've chosen. I am here
00:00:47.320to testify at a public hearing today to answer any of the committee's legitimate questions.
00:00:55.920Americans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their
00:01:04.540baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say. What are they afraid of? I'm here. I'm ready.
00:01:16.920He is ready. Okay. You hear him? He'll testify, but ain't going to be in private. Uh-uh. No closed
00:01:34.440door testimony. It had to be public until House Republicans invited him to testify in public,
00:01:40.880at which point he refused. Here's a letter. This is from Hunter Biden's lawyer. I probably pity Hunter
00:01:47.900Biden's lawyer more than I pity any other man in America. Can you imagine a worse job for a less
00:01:56.460reputable fellow? Dear Chairman Comer, I received your March 6th letter inviting Hunter Biden to join
00:02:03.480a panel of other witnesses at a hearing that you were attempting to arrange on March 20th. To begin,
00:02:10.300even if that hearing was a legitimate exercise of constitutional authority, neither Mr. Biden nor I
00:02:15.260can attend. Because of a court hearing the very next day in California. The scheduling conflict is
00:02:21.440the least of the issues, however. So I like, it opens up, it says, hey, you're only giving me two weeks
00:02:26.840to figure out if I can come testify at the public hearing that I asked for, that I said I would be more
00:02:31.440than happy to testify at, uh, yeah, two weeks. We can't arrange that. Uh, but then at least the lawyer
00:02:36.100acknowledges. He says, but look, the scheduling conflict is the least of the worries. Uh, we just
00:02:40.700don't want to testify because we're extremely corrupt and you called our bluff. Hunter can't
00:02:46.460testify. Can't testify in private. He can't testify in public. He can't testify in his own private
00:02:53.380journal because the Hunter Biden scandals are not really about Hunter Biden. We've already heard the
00:02:59.920testimony. We have the journal, we have his texts, we have his emails, we have his videos,
00:03:04.380we have everything on his laptop. None of us cares all that much about Hunter Biden's transgressions.
00:03:11.000We do care about his father's corruption, which we already know about. We know about it. We know
00:03:16.340about Biden's corruption and Biden knows that we know about Biden's corruption. And we know that Biden
00:03:20.940knows that we know about Biden's corruption. It's all kind of out there in the open already.
00:03:26.100These guys are gangsters. That's that. They go around the world shaking down rich oligarchs,
00:03:34.600selling American influence. They've done it for years, stonewalling, demanding hearings,
00:03:39.760then saying they're not going to show up to the hearings and they're going to shake their hand
00:03:43.660underneath their chin. If you tell them otherwise, these guys are gangsters. And when it comes to the
00:03:48.4602024 election, they're going to act like it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
00:03:56.100Welcome back to the show. The House of Representatives has passed a bill banning TikTok. I mentioned
00:04:17.560yesterday on the show that I aspire to be an influencer. I just have to become a chick and hot
00:04:24.040and younger. And then I, too, could be a TikTok influencer. Well, that dream is gone
00:04:29.340because the House seems dead set on banning the Chinese app from America. We will get to what
00:04:36.660that means. First, though, a platform where I still do have some influence. YouTube. Make sure you ring
00:04:42.200that bell. Subscribe to the Michael Knowles YouTube channel. Smash it. Click it. Ding it. Dong it. Whatever
00:04:49.000you got to do. Democrats are admitting that this election is going to be cynical. There's not going
00:04:59.780to be an uplifting, elevating sort of debate, civil discourse. There's not going to be good faith
00:05:07.940promises made and kept. It's going to be a cynical play. Chris Murphy, who is the Democrat senator from
00:05:14.700Connecticut, he just admitted on Twitter that Democrats pretty much can only win this election
00:05:22.680on envy. These are his words. I don't want to put words in his mouth. This is what Senator Murphy
00:05:27.660said. He said, quote, a new study showing that four out of five Democratic candidates don't talk about
00:05:33.140billionaire and corporate power. Democrats cannot win if we just talk about programs. We need to tell a
00:05:41.720story about how the concentration and wealth and power is ruining America. So Murphy is an old school
00:05:52.480dem. He wants to talk about the millionaires and the billionaires. He sounds like Bernie Sanders, but
00:05:59.660a little bit more urbane in New England, I guess. Same story, though. We're going to win by convincing
00:06:08.220the poor people to go eat the rich people. That's a little old school Democrat party. The more modern
00:06:15.680Democrats focus their envy more on identity politics. So, you know, getting black people to
00:06:22.860hate white people or getting women to hate men or getting sexual deviance to hate normal people or
00:06:29.120whatever it is. They're trying to make the envy a little bit more about cultural matters and identity
00:06:37.240matters. Murphy goes back to the tried and true strategy of getting the poor to hate the rich
00:06:42.680and convincing the poor that if they hate the rich, that's going to make the poor richer somehow.
00:06:47.680In any case, it's always about envy. And envy is a sin. It's one of the deadly sins, actually.
00:06:57.720But this is what the liberals always go to. I don't think I'm being hyperbolic or needlessly
00:07:02.800provocative to say that the Democrats appeal to sin. They have parades for the deadliest of the
00:07:11.100seven deadly sins, pride. But all of the other ones, too. Sloth. You shouldn't have to work. You
00:07:18.540should just be entitled to fruits of other people's labor. Or envy, obviously. Or lust. I mean, we see
00:07:26.800that everywhere. Or gluttony, even. You know, let's go body positivity, baby. Stuff your face. No limits.
00:07:33.220This is the kind of thing they appeal to. And I'm not saying Republicans are always paragons of virtue.
00:07:40.160But at least they talk like it some of the time. And hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to
00:07:46.400virtue. This is what this is coming down to. And I guess the Democrats have been here for a long time.
00:07:53.300But they have to appeal to the base passions when they've got nothing else. He says it's not enough
00:07:58.880to just talk about programs. Yeah, because your programs are terrible. No one likes them. They
00:08:04.000don't work. If your programs worked, then that would tell the story. This is the language he uses. He
00:08:08.660doesn't want to say, appeal to envy, soak the rich. So he says, we need to tell a story. Yeah,
00:08:13.260duh. Whenever you speak, you're telling a story. What story are you telling? You're telling a story
00:08:17.260that appeals to envy and low passions. Why? Because the story about your programs and the story about
00:08:23.060your accomplishments is not very impressive. It's impressive in as much as it's shocking what
00:08:28.620a terrible job you've done. So you can't tell a story on the border. You can't really tell a story
00:08:32.900on the economy. The Democrats try. But people know when they go to the grocery store that their
00:08:38.540carton of milk is now like $10 billion an ounce. I don't know the exact milk prices. My wife does the
00:08:43.860shopping. But everyone knows. If you even look at your household budget, basic stuff that you want to
00:08:49.480buy now, three years into the Biden administration, is much more expensive. People are experiencing
00:08:53.620hard times, no matter what the GDP numbers say, no matter what the liberal economists say on TV.
00:08:59.240They can't tell that story. They can't tell a story about global affairs. America's back. Maybe
00:09:04.080we're leading the world. No, we've got the outbreak of the first major war in Europe since
00:09:08.720World War II. You've got the outbreak of a serious war in the Middle East. And you've got a
00:09:13.480foreign invasion, which lumps back into immigration. So they don't have that kind of
00:09:17.920positive story. It's not enough for them to talk about programs true. They've got to appeal
00:09:22.060to envy and sin and other low passions if they even want to have a chance. Now, what is the
00:09:30.260alternative here? Could they possibly, even if they can't talk about Biden's policy achievements,
00:09:38.560of which there are none, could they at least talk about how Biden is a great inspirational leader?
00:09:44.360I mean, Barack Obama was terrible when it comes to policy. The country became much more miserable
00:09:49.180under his watch, but his personality still appealed to a lot of people. Didn't exactly appeal to me,
00:09:55.460probably didn't appeal to you, but it did appeal to a lot of Americans. He was taken, and especially
00:09:59.640because he's the first black president, he was taken to be a symbol of inspiration, even if he
00:10:05.260personally wasn't all that inspirational. What about Biden? Is Biden a symbol of inspiration? I don't
00:10:10.820think so. You recall there was that special counsel investigation into Biden because Biden,
00:10:20.640everything they accused Trump of doing, Biden has just done in a worse way. But the special counsel
00:10:26.160did not prosecute Joe Biden for doing a more egregious version of some of the crimes they're
00:10:31.960accusing Trump of doing. And the reason that the special counsel didn't prosecute him,
00:10:36.480it would seem, is that Joe Biden is really senile. And the special counsel came out and said it would
00:10:42.400be fruitless to prosecute this guy. He's going to seem like a doddering, somewhat sympathetic,
00:10:47.300declining old man. So now we have the transcript, thanks to the House Republicans.
00:10:55.260I now understand why Hunter Biden doesn't exactly want to testify before these people,
00:10:59.220because they're coming to get answers. And unfortunately, this is just absolutely brutal.
00:11:07.500This transcript of the interview totally buttresses the account of the special counsel.
00:11:16.540Here are just a few of the things that Joe Biden asked. He asked, when did I announce for president
00:11:22.840in 2019? When did I announce? He obviously doesn't remember when he announced for president. He said,
00:11:29.580if it was 2013, when did I stop being vice president? When did I stop? Joe Biden gets elected
00:11:36.320vice president in 2008. He's there until 2016. So we're talking about smack dab in the middle
00:11:41.980of this administration. It was 2013. When did I stop being vice president? In 2009, am I still vice
00:11:48.080president? Trump gets elected in November of 2017? Huh? No, it's 2016. Even that, it's not even that
00:11:55.860he's just mistaking one year for another, which would be bad enough. But we don't hold elections
00:12:01.680on odd-numbered years, generally, for the president, right? Four-year terms, we tend to hold them
00:12:06.8202008, 2012, 2016, 2020. Remember, that was when Biden got elected. Really, really brutal. On the same
00:12:13.820day, twice, Biden struggled to find the words for fax machine. You see where there's a printer? This
00:12:21.780is what he said. You see where there's a printer and there's a, what do they call it? The machine
00:12:26.920that, and then the White House counsel had to tell him the phrase fax machine. So bad. There's a lot
00:12:35.920more to this, but we've got, we've got this coming out. The specificity is what is so brutal. The fact
00:12:44.020that not only are we hearing abstract stories about Biden kind of losing it, we're seeing it. We're
00:12:50.660seeing it on camera. We're seeing it when the special counsel transcripts are being released.
00:12:53.840We will see it as the House continues to investigate Biden and his administration, which is why they've got
00:13:00.520the stonewall and they've got nothing to offer other than to point at the Republicans and say,
00:13:03.940look at how terrible they are. Trump is a fascist and the Republicans, uh, go eat them. The
00:13:10.800Republicans, they're, they're the cause of your problems. Republicans don't have political power
00:13:14.100right now, man. We don't, we're out other than the House where we try to hold investigations and
00:13:19.160the Democrats won't speak. Is your home's title still in your name? With one forged document,
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00:13:48.400dailywire to ensure your title is still in your name. Speaking of blaming Republicans, New York
00:13:55.360Democrat governor, Kathy Hochul has come to a, a novel perspective on the crisis at the Southern border.
00:14:02.640And that perspective is that despite the DHS department being run by Alejandro Mayorkas Democrat,
00:14:09.420despite the white house, which is ultimately in control of this being run by Joe Biden now for
00:14:14.120three years, despite many liberal activists and politicians, including the president, encouraging the
00:14:20.620invasion across the Southern border and grounding it in, in radical ideological statements, such as
00:14:26.820no person is illegal, such as this is not our land, such as these foreign nationals are future
00:14:35.540undocumented Americans. Despite all of that, Kathy Hochul says the crisis at the border
00:14:40.000is the Republicans fault. We are a nation of immigrants. I'm sitting here because
00:14:45.200my grandparents were teenagers in Ireland leaving great poverty. Grandpa started as a migrant farm
00:14:56.420worker himself in South Dakota in the wheat fields. The Republicans in Congress and in the Senate
00:15:02.280said no because Donald Trump called them up one night, the night before they should have voted on this
00:15:08.880to send 2000 more agents or border patrol people to the border. I need some on the northern border.
00:15:15.140By the way, we border Canada money for states like New York that would have helped us a lot
00:15:20.580and just have a different path to citizenship and look at the asylum and whether it's too loose right
00:15:26.140now, the way it's being used and probably abused. So I blame the Republicans. Now the mess was
00:15:32.460bipartisan before that Democrats and Republicans have not successfully found a way to have a path to
00:15:37.440legal citizenship because the employers want this. Does anyone really believe this? I don't think so.
00:15:43.320I don't think Kathy Hochul believes it. I don't think the ladies at The View even believe it. And I
00:15:48.180certainly don't think that the average American voter believes it. They have seen Joe Biden going and
00:15:55.920sending in federal agents to remove border wall. Some of the border wall that Trump built, some of the border wall
00:16:04.560that Texas built. Not only not helping to stop the invasion, but actually encouraging it.
00:16:12.520They've heard Joe Biden calling for these people to come to America. They've seen the reports of the flights,
00:16:19.140Joe Biden flying these people all around. And furthermore, they know that we don't need some new
00:16:25.540immigration law. It's not as though all of a sudden, six months ago, the Democrats said,
00:16:32.480oh my goodness, we have, for the first time ever, we have people trying to enter our country illegally.
00:16:36.920We ought to pass an immigration law. Oh, by golly, how do we make it this long? Centuries in this
00:16:42.860country without any immigration laws. Darn, we really need to pass one. Why won't you Republicans
00:16:46.660help us pass one? We have immigration laws. The Democrats won't enforce them.
00:16:54.080We got the laws. There's a lot of money. There's a lot of laws. The Democrats are intentionally not
00:17:00.060enforcing them. Alejandro Mayorkas is being impeached because he refuses to enforce the laws that are
00:17:06.040already on the books to do his job. What's one more law going to do? Nothing. There is no reason to
00:17:14.520believe that if the Republicans pass some new immigration law, magically, all of a sudden,
00:17:19.260that's the one the Democrats are going to enforce. That was a trap the whole time.
00:17:24.000And the Republicans didn't take the bait, I'm very pleased to say. Some of the squishes did want to
00:17:29.180take the bait, but Trump and other conservatives called the Republican members of Congress and said,
00:17:37.120hey, don't take the bait. This is a total loser. And then the Democrats, once you take the bait
00:17:41.140on this bogus immigration law, which one, would be terrible. It would actually increase the number
00:17:47.140of migrants of foreign nations surging to the border to update 8,500 a day before they really
00:17:51.900lift a finger to stop it. And it would provide all sorts of things that Kathy Hochul wants, a pathway
00:17:57.420to future citizenship for these poor beleaguered economic migrants who are violating our basic
00:18:04.760laws. The moment the Republicans took that bait, then the Republicans credibly, or the Democrats
00:18:09.500credibly could say, oh yeah, it's Republicans' fault too. That's what she's so desperate is. She's
00:18:14.900saying, well, it's both parties' fault, and now it's the Republicans' fault that we're not enforcing
00:18:19.620the laws that are already on the books. They're going to blame us anyway, but they would have had a lot
00:18:24.300more credibility to do so had Republicans followed the squishes and the libs, and had they not followed
00:18:32.320Trump and the conservatives and said, no thanks. So they're going to try to blame us for Biden's
00:18:40.420immigration crisis. They're also now apparently going to try to blame us for COVID and for the
00:18:47.000COVID lockdowns that they primarily pushed. Joy Reid, liberal talking head who makes it on all sorts of
00:18:55.240conservative shows because she's among the wackiest on cable TV. Joy Reid comes out, and she says,
00:19:00.180Donald Trump, during COVID, that guy was stacking dead bodies. Which era do you want to relive?
00:19:06.940The chaotic, frankly, insane four years of crazy tweets, migrant kids ripped from their parents' arms,
00:19:13.480random fights with our allies, and a million bodies in the ground due to COVID? The bodies stacked up in
00:19:19.360refrigerated trucks because the hospitals ran out of room, the states fighting over ventilators,
00:19:24.760the old people dying by themselves and saying their goodbyes on iPads, the economy literally
00:19:31.620collapsing and all of us stuck in our homes for a year, kids having to graduate from high school
00:19:37.300and college on Zoom, or the Biden era, where the president is old, yes, and set in his ways and
00:19:44.080some of his policies infuriating. Trump didn't want to deal with a public health catastrophe.
00:19:48.440He didn't want to take the blame or get bad press. So instead, he spent months pushing crack science,
00:19:55.280taking advice from snake oil salesmen instead of public health experts. He mainstreamed the
00:20:00.740anti-vax movement, which is going so strong today that we are facing measles outbreaks among
00:20:07.160unvaccinated children. This is the most scattershot, internally inconsistent attack on Donald Trump
00:20:15.820I have seen yet, which is really saying something. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to
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00:21:46.900slash Knowles. What exactly is Joy Reid accusing Trump of? Is she accusing him of creating the
00:21:56.460coronavirus? I don't think Trump, for all of his sins, I don't think Trump was over there in the lab
00:22:02.340in Wuhan, you know, stirring up Petri dishes. She's saying we shouldn't go back to Trump because if you
00:22:10.320go back to Trump, we'll get COVID again. I mean, in a way that's possibly true since the practical
00:22:15.260effect of COVID was changing all the election laws so that the Democrats could rig it in their own
00:22:19.220favor. So I don't know, maybe they will do a COVID again. But in any case, I don't think you can blame
00:22:22.720Trump for the virus. And then she accuses him of doing too much to address COVID. The whole economy
00:22:34.260collapsed. We shut down the whole economy. It's true. It is true. The government under Trump did
00:22:38.680shut down large parts of the economy. That's unfortunate. I mean, in some ways, it was largely,
00:22:45.440it was driven by the Democrats pressuring him to do that. And the libs and people like,
00:22:49.380yours truly, Dr. Fauci. But then in the next breath, she accuses him of not doing enough
00:22:57.220to address COVID. So which is it? He created COVID. Then he overreacted by taking the virus
00:23:05.260too seriously and making sure that people do too much to protect themselves, so much so that he
00:23:10.940locked down the whole country. But then he actually didn't do anything at all. And he didn't lock down
00:23:14.420the country and he didn't tell people to protect themselves. And he pushed quack science. Also, by the
00:23:18.600way, we're talking about something that happened over three years ago. Almost, I guess, almost exactly
00:23:27.940three years ago now. Yeah, almost middle of March was when we heard 15 days to slow the spread. And
00:23:34.680that kept going. This is the best they've got? A three-year-old story that is, even in their own
00:23:42.440attacks, totally inconsistent and contradictory. What do they argue? Do they want to say that Trump
00:23:48.520was too hard during COVID? Do they want to say he was too lenient? They don't know because
00:23:51.620their voters can't even agree on that. And people also don't really remember the details because it
00:23:57.340was so long ago. This was the DeSantis campaign. The DeSantis campaign was predicated on how good
00:24:03.880DeSantis was during COVID and how he was relatively better than Trump. And it went nowhere. And it went
00:24:09.700nowhere because people want to know what you've done for me lately. Because people in politics tend to
00:24:16.040have short attention spans. But in this case, the Biden campaign can't even say,
00:24:21.380we did such a great job during COVID. Because they were doing the same stuff Trump was doing
00:24:25.420in a lot of cases. The worst aspects of Trump's COVID policy were being pushed by the Democrats.
00:24:32.060And that actually helped to increase the popularity of Republican governors who said no to the Democrats,
00:24:38.080like Ron DeSantis. But even Ron DeSantis doesn't get helped by it too much because it was three years
00:24:42.540ago and no one cares anymore. This is the best they got. That is a terrifying fact for the Democrats.
00:24:51.000But then I think, I put myself in Joy Reid's shoes. I put myself in the Biden family's shoes. I put
00:24:54.820myself in the White House strategist's shoes. What else are they going to run on?
00:25:00.600Trump's a criminal? Oh, shoot, we're criminals.
00:25:02.340There's a border crisis? Well, the border was a lot better under Trump. Well, the economy? Well,
00:25:10.980the economy was a lot better under Trump too. Until COVID, which we said was a really big deal
00:25:15.820and we made you shut the country down over. What are we left with? Pretty soon, Joe Biden is going
00:25:22.440to be arguing about how things were so much better when he was in the Senate in 1973. They're going to
00:25:26.400just have to keep going back and back and back and back because everything they've done lately
00:25:30.460has been so disastrous. What's the theme of the Biden campaign? Tell me the theme. I don't think
00:25:38.200I'm being unnecessarily harsh here. I don't think I'm being, I'm just being a Republican hack or
00:25:44.840something. I can't point to the theme. That Biden's theme in 2020 was Trump's a racist. Remember the
00:25:51.520first campaign ad for Biden was Trump called Nazis good people in Charlottesville, which didn't happen
00:25:57.000obviously. But that was it. Trump's a racist. Is that, are they going to run on that again? I guess
00:26:03.180that's what Kara Swisher, the liberal journalist said should happen on CNN. Call Trump a racist and
00:26:08.100a fascist and a rapist. But none of that's really working, I don't think, because the poll numbers,
00:26:13.600which have been relatively reliable, at least in the Republican primary, show that the more they do
00:26:17.680that, the higher Trump's numbers go. So what do they got? Let me know. Actually, don't let me know.
00:26:22.800Let Joe Biden know. He's the one who's asking for it. Speaking of the Republican presidential nomination,
00:26:27.440Trump officially has clinched the nomination. I feel like I have said that some version of that
00:26:33.720statement about a dozen times on the show, but it's because there just continue to be more official
00:26:41.320markers that he's the, so one would be when the other candidates in the primary no longer have a
00:26:47.960mathematical path to victory. It's okay. Trump's the nominee. Then you'd say when they drop out of
00:26:53.160the race, you say, okay, Trump now doesn't have any challengers. So he's officially the nominee.
00:26:56.780Well, now he's not formally the nominee until they go to the party convention, but he has clinched
00:27:03.180the GOP nomination after winning four more primaries because he now has the requisite delegates
00:27:09.540to win. You need 1,215 delegates to win the nomination after the primaries in Georgia,
00:27:18.900Mississippi, Hawaii, and Washington. Trump has 1,241. He's the guy. Even if Marianne Williamson
00:27:26.900switches parties, runs in the Republican primary, even if any of the other candidates unsuspend their
00:27:31.280campaigns, it's over. The only way to stop Trump from being the nominee is for a lightning bolt to come
00:27:35.620out of the Democrats or out of the sky to kill him before the nomination. God forbid.
00:27:40.540Say what you will about Trump. He does not face the same problem Biden does.
00:27:45.760Biden has no campaign theme. Trump has one. Trump's campaign theme is American greatness.
00:27:53.020That's it. There are different kinds of Republican campaign themes over the years. One is shrink the
00:28:01.060government, get the government off my back. Another one is go bomb the Middle East. You know,
00:28:06.880let's spread democracy all around the world. Another one is we're going to be compassionate
00:28:12.220conservatives, a kinder, gentler conservatism. There have been a lot of different themes.
00:28:18.220Trump's is American greatness. We're going to make America great again. There's an irony here,
00:28:23.700which is that perhaps the most consistent and hysterical critic of Donald Trump from within
00:28:31.600formerly influential Republican circles is probably Bill Kristol, former chief of staff to Dan Quayle,
00:28:38.540the vice president for George Bush and former editor of the Weekly Standard and one of the leaders of
00:28:43.740the Never Trump movement. But Bill Kristol, not so long ago, called for this theme, American greatness.
00:28:51.240There have been a lot of Republicans who have recognized this is a strong theme.
00:28:54.800Get the government off my back might appeal to some people on certain issues in practical ways.
00:29:01.320It's not a winning campaign message. You don't win campaigns by saying you won't do things.
00:29:06.960That's not how it works. You don't win campaigns. You don't inspire people by saying,
00:29:12.600if you elect me, I won't do anything. I'll sit on my hands. He who governs least governs best.
00:29:20.000That might work for certain libertarian think tank policy wonks. It's not going to resonate for people.
00:29:28.880Bombing the Middle East, that's not going to resonate for people these days either, I don't think.
00:29:33.900Compassionate conservatism, we're going to be more like the squishes. I don't think that's going to resonate.
00:29:37.800But American greatness, make America great again, that appeals to a lot of people.
00:29:42.480And that has been Trump's theme. There have been other Republicans who have used that.
00:29:46.020Ronald Reagan would be one of them, make America great again.
00:29:48.260I think Nixon actually used that theme even before Reagan.
00:29:53.200That's a strong theme. Compared to what's Biden's slogan?
00:29:56.660Come on, Jack, we're going to have some ice cream, Jack.
00:30:02.540Or make America great again. Which one are you voting for?
00:30:05.360How are we going to make America great again?
00:30:08.000Well, one way the House Republicans are doing it is by banning TikTok.
00:30:12.000Obviously, this will have to go to the Senate, and then will have to be signed by the President.
00:30:16.100So a lot of hurdles left. But the House has approved this bill, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,
00:30:24.440which calls for China to divest TikTok, or for the app to just be banned in the United States.
00:30:31.760This bill has become very controversial, even among Republicans, even among conservative Republicans.
00:30:36.640So on the one hand, you've got Thomas Massey, who's very conservative and quite libertarian.
00:30:44.420But he's not one of the libertarians on the Internet.
00:30:47.000He's one of the guys who's so libertarian that he's actually kind of conservative again.
00:30:51.040Anyway, I like Massey, but he totally opposes it.
00:30:53.720Meanwhile, it was introduced by Mike Gallagher, and other Republicans obviously support it, from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
00:31:06.460What do I think about this? I mentioned yesterday on the show.
00:31:09.280I think the ban TikTok bill is really a battle between the libertarians and the nationalists.
00:31:16.240The libertarians say, don't regulate my Internet. Don't regulate anything.
00:31:19.120You know, you're just, if you regulate this application and this website, then you're probably going to use that to regulate other things.
00:31:25.240And you're going to go after X, and you're going to go after all the Republicans.
00:31:28.880Don't get your government hands out of my Internet.
00:32:40.440But why do we keep allowing, because of some idol that we've made out of choice, why do we keep allowing so many bad things to fester in America?
00:32:50.380Well, you know, look, heroin might not be good for you, but I'll defend to the death your right to shoot it up.
00:33:05.220The Republicans have to answer those two questions.
00:33:07.920Depending on the answers to those questions, you can make a reasonable argument for one or the other.
00:33:12.420Now, speaking of these tech platforms, very scary study out of UChicago.
00:33:18.460Meta, which is the parent company for Facebook, has these headsets where you get trapped in virtual reality.
00:33:25.680Meta has decided to push the product out into the public before it's totally clear that you won't get hacked and have your brain, you know, poked and prodded and deceived by all sorts of bad actors.
00:33:46.560So this study out of Chicago shows that inception attacks on meta VR headsets can trap users in a fake virtual reality environment.
00:33:57.260That is, like, the scariest thing I've ever heard.
00:34:13.020Researchers have exposed this potential security vulnerability.
00:34:16.240It's the inception attack, which allows an attacker to spy on and control a user's VR environment.
00:34:22.740And what's really scary is only a third of the study participants noticed the glitch when their session was hijacked.
00:34:29.640So they can hack in without the user knowing, control the user's VR environment, steal information, and manipulate interactions between users.
00:34:40.680They could trap the user inside a single malicious VR application that masquerades as the full system.
00:34:45.940So, I'm a Luddite, but from my limited understanding here, it would seem that you think that you're using the whole system.
00:34:53.120You think that you're seeing your environment and interacting with all of it.
00:34:55.540But actually, you're just being trapped in a rabbit hole that's totally being controlled by the hacker.
00:35:02.500However, I'm not at all surprised to read this.
00:35:07.580It makes me even less inclined to put on the goggles, but I never wanted to put the goggles on in the first place.
00:35:13.920Because, as my friend Spencer Clavin pointed out, the pitch of the virtual reality goggles is,
00:35:18.420Hey, would you rather live in the world that God gave you?
00:35:22.360You know, the big, beautiful world with birds and fish and sunshine and people and music.