The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1531 - Trump Picks His Vice President

00:00:00.000 President Trump has selected his running mate, and it is, drumroll please,

00:00:08.300 Senator J.D. Vance from Ohio. Many people have only heard of J.D. Vance recently.

00:00:13.720 Some people are probably only now hearing of him for the first time. I, however,

00:00:18.340 have been following Senator Vance's career for a long time. I'm a longtime admirer of him,

00:00:23.800 and I think he is absolutely the perfect VP pick, especially now. This pick tells us something

00:00:31.720 extremely important about Trump 2024, which is that this campaign is all about the future.

00:00:38.780 We will get into it along with further fallout from Saturday's assassination attempt

00:00:43.340 on President Trump. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:53.800 Welcome back to the show. The Mayflower Cigar Sampler is back in stock. I know that every time

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00:01:27.880 word to the wise, because I'm sure it'll sell out fast. Again, mayflowercigars.com. You have to be

00:01:31.960 21 years or older to order. Some exclusions apply. President Biden, after calling Trump Hitler for

00:01:38.100 eight years and saying that he represents an existential threat to democracy, Biden and the Democrats

00:01:43.440 call for unity in lowering the temperature, which I thought was disingenuous from the start,

00:01:49.640 well, it really appears to be disingenuous as libs, up to and including big Hollywood stars,

00:01:55.880 are now urging future assassins not to miss, like Saturday's assassin actually didn't. He actually

00:02:03.300 did hit President Trump, and he hit multiple other people. There's so much more to say. First,

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00:03:13.580 J.D. Vance, Trump Vance 2024. Trump doesn't even really need to change the yard signs. This might

00:03:21.660 have been a cost-saving move because you can just take the Trump-Pence yard sign. You can cut out the

00:03:26.300 first two letters, replace P-E with V-A, and then you've got it. Trump Vance 2024. I think this is a

00:03:34.620 really great pick. There were a number of people who were discussed as potential VP picks who they

00:03:41.520 ended up, you know, a lot of them didn't quite make the short list. But I've said for a long,

00:03:45.140 long time, I thought J.D. Vance would be an excellent choice. Here's what President Trump

00:03:48.840 said. After lengthy deliberation and thought and considering the tremendous talents of many

00:03:52.620 others, I've decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the

00:03:56.280 United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the great state of Ohio. J.D. honorably served our country in the

00:04:01.480 Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, summa cum laude, and is a Yale Law

00:04:06.240 School graduate where he was editor of the Yale Law Journal and president of the Yale Law Veterans

00:04:10.200 Association. J.D.'s book, Hillbilly Elegy, became a major bestseller and movie as it championed the

00:04:17.300 hardworking men and women of our country. J.D. has had a very successful business career in technology

00:04:21.300 and finance, and now during the campaign, we'll be strongly focused on the people he fought so

00:04:24.980 brilliantly for, the American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio,

00:04:29.200 Minnesota, and far beyond. As Vice President, J.D. will continue to fight for our Constitution,

00:04:34.620 stand with our troops, and will do everything he can to help me make America great again.

00:04:39.300 Congratulations to Senator J.D. Vance, his wife, Usha, who also graduated from Yale Law School,

00:04:44.840 and their three beautiful children, MAGA 2024. Others have noted that picking J.D. is in some ways an

00:04:51.700 insurance pick. Presidents, even after the horrific attack on Saturday, presidents often want to pick

00:04:59.080 at least what we would call impeachment insurance, now you might say assassination insurance,

00:05:04.040 someone that the liberals would really hate to have assume the role. I think J.D. Vance provides that.

00:05:09.620 J.D. is solidly conservative. He is extremely intelligent. He knows what he believes.

00:05:15.500 One knock on J.D. I've seen from critics is that, well, you know, he used to be more liberal or

00:05:21.160 something. He used to be more opposed to Trump or something like that. Yeah, that's true of a lot

00:05:25.200 of people, but J.D.'s evolution of his thought and his politics, I don't think is just a convenience.

00:05:34.980 I don't think it's something that is disingenuous or happened overnight, because I've followed it

00:05:38.900 somewhat closely. Of note, J.D. is a convert to Catholicism. He explored many of the themes that

00:05:46.620 have now come to dominate his political vision and agenda in his best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

00:05:53.060 And so, obviously, the seeds there were planted for a long time. When one does have a religious 0.96

00:05:56.720 conversion, which had begun, it would seem, around 2015, 2016, and then he was baptized and received

00:06:03.240 into the Catholic Church in 2019, when one has a religious conversion, you know, all politics

00:06:09.620 ultimately is religious, as Cardinal Manning reminds us. So, that is going to lead you to rethink or

00:06:14.780 clarify or deepen some of your political positions. So, I think that in as much as J.D. has developed

00:06:20.080 his views over the years, I think they've developed in a really beautiful direction, very solidly

00:06:24.900 conservative direction. There are all sorts of factions to the Republican Party, you know.

00:06:29.580 There is the squish faction. There's the pro-Chamber of Commerce faction. There is the

00:06:34.300 bomb every country on earth faction. Those are kind of the neocons. There is the libertarian faction,

00:06:39.700 which has great stuff to contribute, but sometimes founded on shaky principles and liberal principles

00:06:46.020 sometimes can move left on certain issues. And, you know, you get a hundred conservatives in a room,

00:06:50.240 you're going to see them all disagree on something. J.D. seems very much in line with the ways that

00:06:57.000 President Trump, I won't say has remade the Republican Party. I would say President Trump

00:07:00.460 has restored the Republican Party in many ways to its roots. Don't forget, the Republican Party was

00:07:05.080 founded on economic protection and say, you know, protecting American industry. Not to say we

00:07:11.380 shouldn't trade with the rest of the world, but we've got to protect our own industry. We've got to

00:07:14.660 recognize that the economy is here so we have a flourishing country, not the other way around.

00:07:18.160 The country isn't here for the economy. The people aren't here to serve the GDP number. It's the

00:07:22.580 other way around. A strong economy is good for us, but it's good for us. You know, it's good for our

00:07:26.800 political society. Good political societies have limits. Restricting what has become now just total

00:07:34.140 open borders and mass migration, that's important to protecting American workers, encouraging the 0.97

00:07:38.640 growth of American families, all of this kind of stuff, which a lot of the GOP neglects or undermines.

00:07:43.520 Well, President Trump has made that a big focus of his campaign going back to 2016. J.D. Vance has

00:07:49.260 focused on those issues tremendously. It was a big motivator behind his Ohio Senate run and his

00:07:56.480 whole political vision going back to that memoir, which then became a big Hollywood movie. I'm sure

00:08:00.900 Hollywood wouldn't make that movie now. The question about Trump's VP pick was, is he going to pick a

00:08:07.700 guy to balance out the ticket? You know, is he going to pick someone, I don't know, pick a black guy just

00:08:13.740 because he's black or pick a woman just because she's a woman? You know, a kind of identity politics

00:08:18.640 pick to balance out the ticket? Or was Trump going to pick just a kind of a wallflower, you know,

00:08:23.740 a really boring guy because Trump is so eccentric because Trump is such a showman. He takes up so

00:08:30.720 much attention. Is he going to pick someone who just, you know, blends in with the furniture to

00:08:34.560 balance that out? Or is he going to pick an old guy, you know, an old guy so that he's totally

00:08:40.360 innocuous? Or is he going to pick someone like J.D. Vance? J.D. Vance is young. He's brilliant. But not,

00:08:50.360 you know, it's not that he would ever upstage Trump. I don't think he would do that at all. But he's

00:08:53.740 clearly brilliant. He has a strong political vision that is very much in line and could continue on the

00:09:01.440 project that Trump is doing. And he's a candidate for 2028 or 2032 or whatever. He's young. He's

00:09:09.800 really at the beginning of his political career. He hasn't hit the peak yet. So it's a pick about

00:09:18.300 legacy. When the libs tell you Trump's second term is just going to be all about revenge and settling

00:09:25.520 old scores and, you know, just mollifying his ego or something. I think a pick like this is

00:09:31.760 exhibit A. No, that's not what Trump's doing. Trump is setting up a political vision that he intends

00:09:37.560 to extend far beyond 2024, maybe into 2028, 2032, to solidify the restoration that he has brought in

00:09:46.360 many ways to the GOP. Even if you don't like that language or you don't like Trump, you say, well,

00:09:50.840 he's changed the GOP from the party of George Bush or even the party of Milton Friedman,

00:09:55.260 Reagan or whatever. What you would have to conclude, I think, even if you hated Donald

00:10:01.160 Trump, is this is a guy who is oriented now toward the future and building a legacy. And I think that's

00:10:07.720 a good thing. Meanwhile, how is the White House reacting to everything? How is the White House

00:10:13.280 reacting to the assassination attempt on Saturday? You heard from Biden. He had that six sentence

00:10:19.520 statement written by some staffer. Then he came out, he made some brief remarks, said nothing. Then he

00:10:23.820 came out, said some more, nothing. But what he focused on was he said, we need to lower the

00:10:28.100 temperature and we need to unite America. Biden obviously hasn't done that. And Biden has a big

00:10:33.400 problem. Because Biden's entire campaign is premised on Trump's posing an existential threat

00:10:39.060 to democracy akin to Adolf Hitler, whom Biden accuses Trump of admiring and channeling. So

00:10:46.120 Karine Jean-Pierre, president's spokesman, was asked today, hey, is Biden going to keep,

00:10:50.600 in the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Trump has part of his ear blown

00:10:55.160 off and a Trump supporter was murdered in cold blood and two Trump supporters were critically

00:10:59.620 injured at a rally. Is Biden going to lead the way in lowering the temperature and uniting America?

00:11:05.660 Is he going to stop calling Trump an existential threat to the country?

00:11:09.820 Here's Karine Jean-Pierre's answer.

00:11:11.460 Are we going to continue to hear the president in official events around the campaign trail use the

00:11:16.620 phrase threat to democracy specifically?

00:11:20.180 I want to be very clear. The president's always going to denounce violence, forcefully denounce it.

00:11:28.020 He's always been against this throughout his career, throughout the last four years.

00:11:32.780 We do not want to politicize this. It's unacceptable to do that. That's what the president has said.

00:11:37.780 It is time to bring this country together, to bring American people together. That's what he wants to see.

00:11:42.820 And so that's where I'm going to leave it. He wants to unite this country. And that is something that

00:11:47.440 he's been saying since 2019.

00:11:49.520 That would be really hard to do, though, if you're trying to make a shift away from what has been the

00:11:54.420 platform of this administration, of his campaign, in that the view is that Trump and the MAGA

00:12:02.260 Republican agenda is a threat to democracy. So how do you get that message across while bringing the

00:12:08.380 temperature down? How is that phrasing going to be replaced? Is it going to be replaced?

00:12:12.100 Well, look, what I can say is this. We have our differences, and it's okay to have our differences.

00:12:19.280 But you're saying it's not okay to have our differences. This is the quandary for the Biden

00:12:24.320 campaign. And this reporter very astutely pointed it out. Biden's campaign is not Trump and I have

00:12:33.380 our differences. We both love America, but we have a very different vision for America. And I have a

00:12:37.060 different economic agenda and different immigration agenda, different foreign policy agenda.

00:12:40.860 We have our differences. We're going to hash it out in the democratic system.

00:12:44.340 Biden's campaign says Trump poses an existential threat to democracy itself. The election of Donald

00:12:50.580 Trump represents the end of America. Donald Trump is Hitler. 0.99

00:12:54.400 Hitler and I have our differences, but we respect each other. And my opponent wants to completely

00:13:02.740 destroy democracy, but we have our—that's not—that has not been the Biden campaign.

00:13:07.260 But now there's a quandary because Biden's rhetoric, Biden's campaign premise sets the stage

00:13:18.640 to justify assassination. But now that someone tried and very, very nearly was successful in

00:13:26.120 assassinating Donald Trump, the Biden campaign has to turn away from that kind of rhetoric. But

00:13:31.320 that's the whole campaign. So the question for Biden right now—Kareem Jampier can't answer it.

00:13:37.360 She's dancing around it. She's got no answer. Joe Biden would have no answer. No Democrat has an

00:13:41.140 answer. The option is admit that Donald Trump is not Hitler and admit that Donald Trump does not

00:13:47.380 pose a threat to democracy and therefore abandon your campaign or continue to justify the assassination of

00:13:54.960 Donald Trump. Those are the only two options. Stop campaigning. Effectively concede the 2024

00:14:00.940 presidential race because you got nothing else. Or continue to justify the assassination of Trump.

00:14:08.280 Those are the only options. And if you asked me, if I were a gambling man, which one is it going to be?

00:14:13.500 They're going to continue to justify the assassination of Trump. They have to because he's not going to

00:14:18.620 concede. But they don't have any other issue to run on. This is why it was so insane.

00:14:24.960 When you heard from Biden, you heard from AOC, you heard from all these top Democrats.

00:14:31.040 Oh, I'm so grateful that President Trump is okay. I thought he was Hitler. You're grateful that

00:14:36.620 Hitler's okay? You're glad? Oh, I hope nothing bad happens to Hitler. Listen, Hitler and I have our

00:14:43.160 differences. I thought Trump was an existential threat. I'm glad that the existential threat to our

00:14:48.520 whole country is doing well. That doesn't make any sense. So what they're saying is completely

00:14:58.980 senseless. They call this a senseless act of violence, the assassination attempt. It's a very

00:15:03.800 sensible act of violence if you believe the premises that they established. The premises that they can't

00:15:09.740 deny. So after, what's it been? 24 hours, 48 hours since the assassination attempt? Democrats are

00:15:16.480 already going back to Trump as an existential threat to democracy. If Karine Jean-Pierre cannot say with

00:15:22.720 100% certainty, we will stop calling him a threat to democracy, we'll stop calling him Hitler.

00:15:27.700 That means they're right back to justifying the assassination of President Trump,

00:15:33.660 which is what they've been doing for years. Awful. There's so much more to say. First, though,

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00:16:36.120 Balanceofnature.com, promo code Knowles. Did you try to tune into Morning Joe yesterday on MSNBC? You

00:16:44.600 probably did not because you're a reasonable person, but some people, I guess, did. Some people

00:16:48.100 watch that show, and they will not have found Morning Joe there. MSNBC made the decision to pull

00:16:53.800 Morning Joe from the air on the Monday after the execution attempt, successful in that it killed

00:17:01.180 people, not quite successful, and that it only pierced Donald Trump's ear and didn't succeed in

00:17:08.440 killing him. MSNBC, one of its biggest shows, longstanding morning show, doesn't air that day?

00:17:14.480 Why not? According to CNN, so it's not even a right-wing news source, a left-wing news source,

00:17:19.760 person familiar with the matter told CNN that the decision was made to avoid a scenario in which one

00:17:24.300 of the show's stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television

00:17:29.080 that could be used to assail the program and the network as a whole.

00:17:34.900 What does it say about Morning Joe that that's a concern, that the day after the biggest news

00:17:39.780 story since September 11th, 2001, or the Monday after that story, they couldn't even air the program

00:17:46.400 because the executives knew that one of the hosts or one of the guests was going to say something so

00:17:52.020 hideous, so vile, that it would imperil their whole network. What does that say about the show? What

00:17:58.360 does that say about the caliber of the guests and the hosts? What does that say about the rhetoric

00:18:03.920 from the left? This is one of the most mainstream news shows on the left, on one of the most mainstream

00:18:08.600 left-wing networks. And they were so afraid that one of their guests or hosts would say something

00:18:14.540 so vile and hideous that could destroy the whole network. I thought all the nasty political rhetoric

00:18:18.700 was coming from the right. It seems to be coming primarily, if not exclusively, from the left. And we

00:18:26.120 know this. We saw major left-wing figures justifying the assassination attempt, mocking it, laughing

00:18:35.160 about it. Keith Olbermann, former host on MSNBC for that matter, saying all sorts of vile things about

00:18:41.560 Trump. Still saying he's still Hitler. He's still Hitler. Still justifying him. Tenacious D. You remember

00:18:47.120 tenacious D. It's this rock band with Jack Black, the movie star, and some other guy, whoever the other

00:18:51.660 non-Jack Black guy is. They were just doing a show right as the news breaks of the assassination

00:18:56.680 attempt on Trump. Here's what they had to say on stage before a ton of people.

00:19:00.960 You see, you hear some people on the crowd saying, whoa, whoa, but a lot of people laughing, clapping,

00:19:24.840 applauding, and this is what they think. Jack Black is not some fringe figure. He's a big movie star. I mean,

00:19:31.460 he's not in much lately. But he just showed up to be a big fundraiser and surrogate for the Biden campaign

00:19:39.120 just weeks ago. Took a picture in a big Biden t-shirt and American flag overalls.

00:19:46.800 That's what they think. How is it? How do you come to that conclusion? Because you don't see the right

00:19:52.240 when our opponents are killed or nearly killed or even die of natural causes. Why not? The reason

00:20:00.340 that I don't celebrate when my political opponents die or are injured or are nearly assassinated

00:20:06.160 is not because I like them a lot. I feel some human solidarity with them. I think they're before

00:20:11.420 the grace of God go I. I am called to love my neighbors and to pray for my enemies. The reason

00:20:18.840 that I don't wish death upon them or celebrate when something bad happens to them is one, because

00:20:25.480 if I have hatred for my neighbor, I've committed murder in my heart, according to my Lord, and also

00:20:29.640 because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, and I don't want to offend God who is all

00:20:34.580 good and deserving of all my love. That's why. And so if you don't believe that stuff, if you don't

00:20:40.000 believe in God, as many if not most liberals don't, if you don't really believe in a moral order, not an

00:20:44.360 objective moral order, maybe you think, I don't know, morals are just something we all came up with.

00:20:47.660 We all, in the early evolution, we all just came up with it to kind of survive. If you don't believe

00:20:52.600 it's real, if you don't believe in an afterlife, if you don't believe in the immortality of the soul,

00:20:59.980 if you don't believe in the reality of things like justice, then why wouldn't you wish death on your

00:21:06.160 enemies? If all that really matters is just these, you know, meat puppets are walking around with the

00:21:13.520 illusion of love and truth and reason, and, you know, we're all going to just die. And the highest

00:21:18.120 things in the world are just the political order, you know, the contingent history, the principalities

00:21:25.100 and powers and spiritual wickedness that govern this world in its fallenness. If that's all there

00:21:31.800 is, then, you know, why wouldn't you? You should, you, of course you would celebrate the death of your

00:21:35.100 enemies. And they do. So it's very difficult for them to unite, very difficult for them to lower the

00:21:40.900 temperature. Because, because if they're saying we all need to lower the temperature, the right has

00:21:46.540 already done that. The right just generally does that. The right generally would like to unite and

00:21:51.020 the right generally recognize it as an objective moral order. The left doesn't, they don't want to

00:21:56.000 do it. So, so their, their platitudes about this to try to attract moderates months before a

00:22:00.880 presidential campaign, they just ring hollow. It's so obviously disingenuous. There's so much more to

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00:23:06.640 is puretalk.com slash Knowles today. President Biden couldn't even get out his Oval Office

00:23:14.260 address without a Freudian slip. The purpose of the Oval Office address after the assassination

00:23:20.480 attempt was to say, we need to lower the temperature, we need to unify, we need to resolve our differences

00:23:24.540 at the ballot box. Here's what he said.

00:23:26.500 In America, we resolve our differences at the battle box. You know, that's how we do it,

00:23:32.960 at the battle box, not with bullets. In America, we resolve our differences at the battle box.

00:23:39.920 And then he repeats it, at the battle box. That is, I believe, what the psychologists call

00:23:47.560 a Freudian slip, a Freudian slip where you say one thing but mean your mother, right? Is that what it

00:23:51.540 is? Biden doesn't really know how to speak anymore because he has dementia, which they denied, but then

00:23:58.220 it became clear at the presidential debate where Trump destroyed him. So then the Democrats were in

00:24:03.700 complete crisis and it looked like there was no way to beat Trump other than to kill him. And then 1.00

00:24:07.240 there was an attempt on Trump's life and he survived it. It would seem miraculously.

00:24:12.800 And so now they're trying to downplay everything and they say, no, we're good Democrats, lowercase d.

00:24:18.040 We just want to resolve our differences democratically, even though we're prosecuting

00:24:21.400 our opponents and we're trying to put a former president in jail for the first time,

00:24:25.160 top presidential candidate in jail for the first time. And hey, there might be an assassination

00:24:29.060 attempt. We might even celebrate it, some of us. But even when Biden's trying to say that,

00:24:35.220 he gets that slip in there, the battle box. Because that's what they think. They don't think

00:24:41.820 politics is a reasonable conversation where we persuade one another. They think it's all just

00:24:45.780 about the irrational will. Whose irrational will is going to win out? Who's got a bigger club that he

00:24:50.860 can bop the other guy in the head with? And so the address failed Biden. It failed Biden on a couple

00:24:58.660 of levels. It failed in that it didn't really even seriously convey the message he wanted to say. He

00:25:03.940 couldn't even get the words out right. And the words he got out actually were the opposite of the

00:25:09.700 message he was trying to express. But it failed at a deeper level. Biden did not reassure Americans of

00:25:16.620 anything. Biden got out there and he needed to convince people that he was the adult in the room.

00:25:22.220 He was going to restore order. He was in command of his faculties. He didn't achieve any of those

00:25:25.800 things. He wasn't even able to speak properly. So the Biden campaign is in complete disarray.

00:25:31.500 There's a report to Axios now that a senior House Democrat has told Axios that a lot of Democrats on the

00:25:38.780 Hill have just resigned themselves to a second Trump term. Now, there's a lot of time between now and

00:25:42.080 November. And there's nothing, there's nothing that these people won't do to stop Trump because

00:25:50.580 they say he's Hitler. They say he's an existential threat to the country. There's nothing they won't

00:25:53.880 do. And now, speaking today, there's nothing they haven't tried against him. So speaking of that

00:26:01.000 attack, who's the shooter? What information do we have? As I mentioned on the show yesterday,

00:26:04.080 we don't know very much about him. We know that he's 20, he is, he was 20 years old.

00:26:10.640 It would appear that he was a registered Republican. That's what all the left-wing

00:26:14.740 news networks are trying to point out. The thing that they don't want to say is that

00:26:17.840 the only political donation he ever made, the only political activism he seems to have taken part in

00:26:23.520 is donating to Democrats, a progressive Democrat group. So that's kind of weird. Why was he a

00:26:31.080 registered Republican? And why did he donate exclusively to Democrats and progressives?

00:26:35.200 I don't know. His dad apparently was a registered, is a registered Libertarian. The mother is a

00:26:40.240 registered Democrat. Who knows? Who knows? We now know that he had explosives in his home and in his

00:26:47.100 car. And this doesn't, doesn't make a lot of sense. If he's crawling up on the roof and shooting

00:26:52.600 at the president, he had to know that he was going to have his head blown off as soon as secretly, 0.99

00:26:57.180 but you would think he would, he would have understood that he would have his head blown 0.98

00:27:00.140 off the minute he started to get those rounds off. Some people are wondering why he didn't

00:27:03.420 have his head blown off sooner, why it took so long for the secret service or local police to respond.

00:27:09.720 But then why would he have explosives in his car if he, if he knew that he was going on a suicide

00:27:13.440 mission? Very strange. Something even stranger has just turned up. The shooter, the would-be assassin,

00:27:21.280 two years ago, appeared in a TV commercial for BlackRock, possibly the most powerful financial

00:27:29.820 institution in the world.

00:27:31.320 My name is Brian DeLallo. I teach AP and honors economics in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

00:27:37.480 Financial well-being to me is knowing that I can be free to do the things that I love to do.

00:27:42.220 I hope when I retire someday, they say, you know, that guy made this place a special place to come

00:27:50.680 to school and gave as much as he could to help the community. That was him.

00:27:56.760 This isn't some conspiracy theory. BlackRock acknowledges this. They've pulled the commercial

00:28:02.940 down. BlackRock has $9.1 trillion in assets under management. When you take actual nation states out

00:28:15.140 of the equation and when you take, I don't know, the Federal Reserve out of the equation, you're

00:28:18.760 talking about basically the largest financial institution in the world. What? So this is setting

00:28:24.780 people, you know, everyone's pulling out the tinfoil hat now. What does it mean? How on, what?

00:28:31.080 How is the would-be assassin who apparently doesn't have any social media? It's kind of

00:28:36.120 hard to believe that in 2024, people don't have a trail on the internet. They don't know social

00:28:42.620 media we can find. And then he's registered Republican, but he donates to Democrats. That's

00:28:46.880 really weird. That doesn't really satisfy. It doesn't answer any political narrative. We don't

00:28:50.160 need no manifesto, no, no nothing. What? And then he pops up in a glossy TV commercial two years ago for

00:28:59.480 one of the most powerful and, you know, kind of has a reputation as a really swampy,

00:29:05.200 politically involved financial institution with $9 trillion under management. What? Now,

00:29:12.240 I don't know. I don't know. No one really knows.

00:29:16.740 Any assassination, successful or unsuccessful of a president, I think legitimately should raise lots

00:29:23.240 of questions about a conspiracy. It's not saying there was some conspiracy. It could have been acting

00:29:28.120 alone, but you've got to investigate that, obviously. But I'm not convinced it had to be

00:29:34.200 a conspiracy. I'm not convinced that this BlackRock commercial has to have some particular meaning.

00:29:41.560 And here's why. Here's why. It gets to exactly what I was talking about on my show yesterday.

00:29:46.560 The entire introduction of my show yesterday. A 15 to 20 degree turn of Donald Trump's head

00:29:53.060 was the difference between him losing the top of his ear and him losing the back of his head.

00:30:00.580 A 15 to 20 degree turn of Donald Trump's head at the precise moment that it occurred just before

00:30:06.880 the round went off from the assassin's bullet or from the assassin's gun is the reason that Donald

00:30:12.880 Trump is alive today. So improbable that his head would have turned that way is to seem impossible to

00:30:21.320 recognize. Unless you recognize that the cosmos, this is what Christians would recognize, what 0.99

00:30:27.000 religious people would recognize, the cosmos is so finely tuned to God's providence that when

00:30:34.760 coincidences happen, a Christian would say, yes, of course. You know, as a priest friend of mine

00:30:40.900 points out, it's a wicked generation that seeks for signs and wonders, but it's a stupid generation 1.00

00:30:46.320 that ignores signs and wonders. The Christian vision of the world is a semiotic vision of the 1.00

00:30:52.540 world. It's rich in symbols. Things mean something. And when coincidences pop up, you don't always need

00:30:59.920 to find out their particular meaning. It's a sign, as far as I'm concerned, that just, yeah, God exists.

00:31:04.880 The universe is intelligible. There is a creator. Creation implies a creator. Just from reason,

00:31:11.200 just from nature, you can come to that conclusion. And that might just be what's happening here.

00:31:19.540 If you can chalk up Trump's turn of his head to the playing, the playing out of God's providence,

00:31:29.520 you could attribute this coincidence to that as well. I don't know. I just don't know.

00:31:33.660 We don't really know very much. We don't know how this guy was allowed to get his

00:31:37.380 rounds off. Get up on that roof. Right now, local police are blaming the Secret Service.

00:31:42.560 Secret Service are blaming the local police. There was an interview with a former Secret

00:31:47.120 Service agent who made the obvious point. Even if local police had been tasked with securing the area

00:31:54.400 outside of the security perimeter of the rally, even if local law enforcement did drop the ball,

00:32:01.660 it is the responsibility of Secret Service to ensure that everything is going according to plan.

00:32:07.060 Even if the Secret Service says, hey, local police, I want you to secure those buildings

00:32:11.680 over there. It nevertheless is the responsibility of Secret Service to make sure that happens.

00:32:17.380 The job of U.S. Secret Service is to protect the president. You show up to a small town of 12,000

00:32:22.500 people that has a handful of buildings of any size in it, and you're not going to go check those

00:32:28.900 buildings when, according to reports, Secret Service knew these were security threats. You're just

00:32:32.540 going to trust that to some almost certainly underfunded and understaffed local police

00:32:36.880 department out of your mind if you think that's acceptable. So ultimately, the buck stops with

00:32:43.640 Secret Service. When are we going to hear from the Secret Service director? When are we going to see

00:32:48.880 any accountability? As one source for these reports added, just because it's outside the perimeter

00:32:55.040 doesn't take it out of play for vulnerability. You've got to mitigate it in some fashion.

00:32:58.640 Anthony Congelosi, who is a former Secret Service agent, he's now a professor at John Jay College

00:33:04.120 in New York. He says, you don't surrender the discretion of what's supposed to be done to the

00:33:08.500 local police. In other words, you guys have the outer perimeter, but you want to say, we need an

00:33:12.940 officer on that roof. Not, that's your responsibility, do what you see fit. You don't entrust the safety of

00:33:18.820 the president, of the former president, or the future president in this case, to a local police

00:33:22.840 department. It's so bizarre. Jim Cavanaugh, also in this report, is a retired ATF agent,

00:33:30.420 points out, he says, the only way to stop that is you have a lot of people, you get there first,

00:33:34.380 you command the high ground. This is basic, and the Secret Service has done it for years

00:33:39.640 successfully. So I'm really surprised that they did not have that high ground from which the shooter

00:33:43.460 shot covered. That point is, the Secret Service has done this successfully for years.

00:33:49.120 We haven't seen one of these attempts since the last really conservative president, actually,

00:33:54.260 Ronald Reagan. Weird. Weird. How did that break down? Somebody is responsible. This is not,

00:34:04.920 you know, oh well, mistakes happen. Somebody, this is highly unusual. We have video of a crowd of people

00:34:12.960 saying, look, there's a guy on the roof. Look at him. What's that guy doing on the roof? That guy's

00:34:15.920 got a rifle. Why isn't someone doing, why isn't someone pulling Trump off stage? Doesn't get pulled

00:34:19.560 off stage from, ever, really, but for minutes this is going on. What happened? What broke down?

00:34:28.760 Now there's, in addition to this, there's an, this must be the biggest news week since September 11th,

00:34:33.360 2001. You have the attempted, nearly successful assassination of Donald Trump. You then have the

00:34:40.680 Republican convention kicking off two days later. You then have the announcement of Trump's running

00:34:47.560 mate, a major, very exciting announcement. Then you have news out of the judiciary that, that probably

00:34:54.900 the, the biggest case against Donald Trump and all of these four prosecutions, Joe Biden trying to

00:34:59.800 throw his, his political opponent in jail. That case gets dismissed. We'll get into that in just one

00:35:04.980 moment first though. At the Daily Wire, we are all about action. The ticket is officially set.

00:35:11.020 America's future is in our hands. Ultimately it's in God's hands, but we need to cooperate with God.

00:35:15.540 The Daily Wire is offering a 47% presidential discount in honor of the future 47th president

00:35:20.420 of the United States, Donald Trump. Equip yourself with the facts and perspectives you will not get from

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00:35:37.960 Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Join us in the fight and get 47% off your new annual membership

00:35:43.880 now. My favorite comment on, oh, yesterday was from Nashville Preds fan 2562. It says,

00:35:52.200 didn't Michael Knowles report last week that Joe Manchin wanted to wait for this weekend

00:35:55.220 to say whether he wanted to support Joe Biden? What a big coincidence. So this is a weird one. This

00:35:59.240 has been playing out in my head. I didn't mention it on the show, but I did play it.

00:36:02.660 I thought it was the strangest clip of last week where Manchin was asked, this is a somewhat

00:36:09.040 moderate Democrat senator from West Virginia and potential presidential candidate, was asked,

00:36:14.720 do you still support Joe Biden or should he drop out? Manchin said, he didn't want to answer the

00:36:18.440 question. He said, look, I like Joe, support Joe. I think things are going to be a lot clearer after

00:36:23.000 this weekend. So we're just going to wait and see for this weekend. And so in retrospect, in light of

00:36:28.020 the assassination attempt, this seems really ominous. This seems really eerie. And people

00:36:32.020 are asking, did Joe Manchin know about the assassination? And I want to be explicit about

00:36:37.100 this. I don't. I don't think Joe Manchin knew about the assassination attempt on Trump. I don't.

00:36:43.980 I don't think, you know, he was part of some plot. If anybody were to be part of a plot or a conspiracy,

00:36:50.000 I don't think it'd be Joe Manchin. He's one of the last guys in Washington I would expect to be part

00:36:53.880 of it. But it is odd in retrospect. In retrospect, it looks totally bizarre. We'll know more after

00:36:59.060 this weekend. That's why I point out there are sometimes little coincidences, little winks in

00:37:05.900 history in retrospect that can look very different from a different vantage. If you play back the clip

00:37:15.680 of when Trump is shot, he says, look at this. I think those are his exact words. Look at this

00:37:22.940 at the moment that we're all called to look. Then the head turns slightly and the bullet

00:37:29.360 grazes him instead of blowing his brains out. There are no miracle incidences in the Christian 1.00

00:37:37.060 view of the world. Doesn't mean everybody's up to some crazy conspiracy plot, but the whole world

00:37:43.000 is imbued with meaning. And we see that meaning played out in history, in retrospect.

00:37:49.440 If we have time, we'll get to the meaning of history. Actually, that's a story I want to get

00:37:52.320 to, but I don't know if we'll have time today. That might just be a tease. I do want to turn to a

00:37:55.960 major news story, which is that Trump has had his biggest case against him dismissed. Judge Aileen

00:38:04.060 Cannon, district judge, wrote a 93-page decision and said that the appointment of Jack Smith,

00:38:12.260 the special counsel who's prosecuting the case against Trump, was, quote, unlawful. It was

00:38:16.760 unlawful. It was unconditional. I'm sorry, rather unconstitutional. The clerk is directed to close

00:38:25.240 the case. Attorney General Merrick Garland had appointed Smith back in 2022, and Trump's lawyers

00:38:33.200 have been arguing that he did not have the right to do that. Said the appointments clause of the

00:38:38.100 Constitution, quote, does not permit the Attorney General to appoint, without Senate confirmation,

00:38:43.120 private citizen and like-minded political ally to wield the prosecutorial power of the United States.

00:38:47.980 As such, Jack Smith lacks the authority to prosecute this action. Now, this is different

00:38:52.120 than, say, the appointment of a special counsel in the, or a special prosecutor in the Hunter Biden

00:38:57.680 case. You know, Hunter Biden is being prosecuted for his lowest level crimes. This is rather different,

00:39:04.580 because in that case, you had someone who was already working with the DOJ. Weiss was already

00:39:14.580 a U.S. attorney, the prosecutor in the Biden case. Smith was a private citizen at the time that he was

00:39:19.780 appointed, and Trump's lawyers argued that this was an illegitimate appointment, and the judge now

00:39:25.880 agrees. So what's going to happen? Does that mean Trump's off the hook? No. It means that Jack Smith is

00:39:30.700 going to appeal. This is going to go to an appellate court. But even if the appellate court rules in

00:39:36.500 Smith's favor, even if it goes all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, it means that this case is now

00:39:41.360 pretty much for certain pushed until after the election. A major win for Trump. Really good move

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00:40:26.340 Speaking of Trump victories, Don Jr., the president's son, just gave a masterclass in

00:40:32.800 handling the hostile liberal establishment media from the Republican National Convention.

00:40:39.280 Here is Don Jr. talking to MSNBC.

00:40:41.060 What is that change going to look like, Don? Practically, your father as president,

00:40:45.120 I think you would even say, was a divisive figure. What's it going to look like in the second term?

00:40:48.980 I don't think he was a divisive figure at all. I think the media created divisiveness around him.

00:40:52.620 They lied about Russia, Russia collusion. They said he was a traitor. They went after him in

00:40:57.000 every which way as possible. If the media actually starts being an honest broker talking about the

00:41:01.780 things that he did, the prosperity he brought, the peace deals that he signed around the world,

00:41:05.640 rather than the disaster that we're living right now, I think you'd do everyone in the country a big favor.

00:41:09.580 I know immigration's important to him. I covered the family separation crisis closely.

00:41:13.260 Will we continue to see policies like separating 5,000 children deliberately from their parents?

00:41:17.860 You mean the Obama administration? You know they didn't do that, sir.

00:41:21.440 Sure. Will there be a second family separation policy?

00:41:24.880 It's MSNBC, so I expect nothing less from you clowns. Even today, even 48 hours later, 0.97

00:41:29.860 you couldn't wait. You couldn't wait with your lies and with your nonsense. So just get out of here. 0.99

00:41:35.680 Love it. Love it. It's a master class. You look at how he holds himself. He comports himself very well,

00:41:42.340 standing up straight. And first, what he does is politely and succinctly

00:41:48.120 rips apart the liberal reporter's nonsense. Does a very good job at that.

00:41:55.500 And then the liberal reporter, he doesn't want to hear it, so he pulls the microphone. He says,

00:41:59.140 are you talking about the Obama era policies? The Obama era policies of putting kids in cages or

00:42:04.280 whatever nonsense you're talking about? The reporter pulls the microphone away. He doesn't want Don Jr.

00:42:07.920 talking about that. Then the reporter just doubles down on his nonsense, and Don Jr. recognizes

00:42:12.780 this guy is immune to logic and reason. You're not really going to convince the liberal reporter.

00:42:19.420 What you want to do is embarrass the liberal reporter for having his facts wrong. You want

00:42:23.840 to persuade the public, maybe the people on the fence who are watching the liberal reporter's

00:42:27.740 newscast, but you say your piece. And then when the reporter just shoves his fingers in his ears and

00:42:35.680 says, la, la, la, la, la, la. You say, okay. Then you instruct the liberal reporter to go pound

00:42:41.680 sand, which is what Don Jr. did. He's asked a question. He gives a very good answer to the

00:42:45.680 question. The reporter keeps pushing him. He observes the hypocrisy in the reporter's rhetoric.

00:42:55.320 The reporter then keeps trying to dig in, and he says, okay, I've made my point. You're not going to

00:43:00.700 be persuaded. I got two words for you, and they're not happy birthday. Bye-bye. That's not

00:43:06.140 bye-bye either. And that's it. Beautiful, beautiful masterclass, something we all ought to

00:43:11.160 keep in mind for our debates. Now, speaking of the sons of presidents, there's a report. This is a

00:43:18.480 really worrying, a lot of worrying reports recently. There's a report out that, according to the Daily

00:43:23.620 Beast, Joe Biden's acting chief of staff right now, the guy who's actually controlling access to the

00:43:29.380 president and is directing the president's decisions, is Hunter Biden, a former crackhead, 0.89

00:43:37.960 a crook who's sold his father's influence in the government all over the world to some of the 0.99

00:43:42.640 worst people on earth. According to this report from the Daily Beast, this is a left-wing outlet, 0.58

00:43:47.460 Joe's family is standing with him, his wife, Jill, and sister, Valerie, who Democrats relied upon to

00:43:51.920 provide wise counsel, not just cheerleading. His son, Hunter, has been seen at the White House so much

00:43:55.600 lightly that one well-connected lawyer, lobbyist, Democrat dubbed him the acting chief of staff.

00:44:00.620 He's the gatekeeper. He's the one who's bucking up his dad, which would explain a lot. That would

00:44:07.440 explain a lot of Joe Biden's failures. But regardless, you see, the conclusion from this

00:44:15.400 story is he's keeping that tight circle around him. He's surrounding himself with family and the

00:44:20.600 very, very close allies. And so Obama wants him out. Joe doesn't give a damn.

00:44:27.180 The Clintons want him out. Nancy Pelosi, Schumer, they all want him out. 0.98

00:44:32.100 What does Joe Biden care? What does Joe Biden have to gain by getting out of the race? What does he

00:44:36.020 have to lose by staying in the race? Nothing. Nothing. And what's the campaign going to be?

00:44:42.060 All Joe Biden's campaign is, is Trump is Hitler and he's going to destroy our country. 1.00

00:44:45.500 And that's going to justify getting Trump killed. And they tried to kill Trump. Some guy in 1.00

00:44:51.760 Pennsylvania tried to kill Trump based on the premises established by the leading Democrats,

00:44:56.540 including Joe Biden. So now Joe Biden can't even campaign on that. He can try. He's going to

00:45:00.620 continue to try. It's going to rub a lot of people the wrong way. It's going to rub a lot of moderates

00:45:04.120 and independents the wrong way because they're going to see the consequences of that kind of rhetoric

00:45:07.920 of those premises. So he's got nothing. Okay. Speaking of ancient things, I'm glad I did get to this.

00:45:15.500 We're talking about history. You look back at history, your personal history, the history of

00:45:20.960 your community, of your country, and things start to make sense. They don't always make sense at the

00:45:25.500 time. Things happen. You pull your hair out. Why is this happening? But they start to make sense

00:45:30.380 looking back. And God's providence, the intelligibility, which Christians believe in,

00:45:37.000 liberals don't necessarily believe in it. They have their own progressive utopias actually,

00:45:40.740 that comes up with a kind of an anti-narrative, a very different kind of narrative. But Christians

00:45:47.620 believe, actually, things don't always seem to make sense in the short run. But in the arc of

00:45:52.520 history, the story that God wants to tell is unfolding as he wishes. There's a story, a news

00:46:00.220 report that's just come out from the Daily Mail. Archaeologists find more evidence of Bible story about

00:46:04.600 Moses leading his people to the promised land 3,200 years ago. So without getting too much into the

00:46:09.620 weeds of the story, there's more evidence coming out from the Israeli Antiques Authority or Antiquities

00:46:14.820 Authority that the story of the Exodus told in the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, really did

00:46:21.340 happen. It literally happened in history, which does not surprise me at all. There are four layers of

00:46:29.980 meaning. We want to really go back in time. The scholastics in the Middle Ages, the height of our 0.97

00:46:37.200 civilization, they understood that there are four layers of meaning to a text. There's the literal

00:46:42.300 meaning, there is the typological meaning, the allegorical meaning, there's the moral meaning,

00:46:49.040 and there's the anagogical meaning, meaning the meaning from the perspective of eternity, of the end

00:46:53.840 times. So how does this play out? Well, a great example of this, Dante actually lays this out in a

00:47:00.200 famous letter to his patron, Congrande de la Scala. He points to the book of Exodus, and he said, this is

00:47:05.620 a great example of the four layers of meaning. What's the literal story of the book of Exodus? Moses leads

00:47:11.060 the Israelites from Egypt into the promised land. What is the typological meaning, the figurative meaning

00:47:20.560 of this, is the redemption won for us by Christ? That's what that figures, prefigures. What's the

00:47:29.320 moral meaning? You know, like the moral of the story. The moral meaning is the struggle that each

00:47:35.320 of us undergoes from the misery of sin to the status of grace. And then what's the anagogical meaning?

00:47:44.760 It's the taking, and this is Dante's words, the taking of the blessed soul from the slavery of

00:47:52.620 this corruption to the freedom of eternal glory. And all of those meanings simultaneously are there

00:47:58.600 in Exodus. And none of them takes away from any of the others. Moses really did lead the Israelites

00:48:05.180 out of Egypt. And that really means all of these other things for us individually and for us

00:48:11.580 collectively, politically. A bullet really did, a bullet that was in line for President Trump's head

00:48:21.280 really did miss his head and only took off part of his ear because he turned just a little bit right

00:48:27.560 there at a rally in Pennsylvania. And what exactly that means, that literally happened. What exactly

00:48:36.120 that means will become clearer with the retrospection of history. But what I can promise you is it does

00:48:44.720 mean something. There's no member block today because I'm going to the RNC in Milwaukee. See

00:48:48.860 you over there from the RNC. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:49:06.120 You're fired. I don't want to know that. I'm like, you and Michael立 I wasn't going to go to the

00:49:18.140 Jo Info.

00:49:19.160 impervious to

00:49:22.800 every place you have where the task is or to turn it up.

The Michael Knowles Show - July 16, 2024

Ep. 1531 - Trump Picks His Vice President

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