Ep. 1616 - Elon and Vivek Get To Work on DOGE
Summary
In the wake of President Trump's landslide victory, the establishment press is crumbling. We're talking mass layoffs, major reporting errors, and a ratings collapse. All of which gives the Trump administration a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the White House press office to reset the relationship between the Republican Party and the media.
Transcript
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Am I Racist? Broke Records in Theaters is the decade's number one documentary. Now it's streaming
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on Daily Wire Plus with exclusive extras. You've got to go to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use
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code Trump. Get 47% off your new annual membership today. In the wake of President Trump's landslide
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victory, the establishment press is crumbling. We're talking mass layoffs. We are talking major
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reporting errors. We are talking a ratings collapse, all of which gives the Trump administration
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a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the White House press office to reset the relationship
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between the Republican Party and the media. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. The Massachusetts governor, the liberal Massachusetts governor,
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says that she will not assist the Trump administration with deportations. Just wait
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meat for life with code DAILYWIRE. Good Ranchers, American meat delivered. Okay, before we get into any
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of these broader news stories, we have to do a catch-up on the Trump nominees. Trump is moving
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really fast, picking his cabinet secretaries, picking senior staff. I think he is doing a
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phenomenal job at that. We covered a few of them yesterday, but there are some wild picks that came
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in last night as I was flying back in from Iowa into Nashville. Top one Secretary of State is Marco
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Rubio. I'd mentioned on the show yesterday that the three big options for Secretary of State were Bill
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Haggerty here, the senator from Tennessee, former ambassador to Japan under Trump. Rick Rennell,
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former acting DNI under Trump, former ambassador to Germany. And Marco Rubio, obviously senator from
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Florida. And I pointed out that you can't really go wrong with those choices. I think there were other
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names that were up for consideration that might have given conservatives more pause.
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But of those three guys, I thought they were all pretty solid. They had different strengths
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generally. Of the three, Rubio is probably the most, what would you call him, new right or common
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good conservative or all around kind of traditional conservative. So some people are going to have
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issue with Marco Rubio on various votes he's taken in the Senate. Let's just, one example that dogged
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him during the 2016 presidential run when he ran for president was that he had voted for a kind of
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amnesty package in his early days in the Senate. So people are going to say, I don't know if we
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trust Marco Rubio. But as I've pointed out with some of the other nominees, whatever weaknesses a
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candidate might have on this vote or that vote or this thing he said, if you look at the roles that
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these people are being put into, they don't really seem to matter. Okay, Marco Rubio some years ago took
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a vote that was a little weaker on immigration than conservatives would like. Okay, but how would that
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affect his position as secretary of state? He's not going to be having any say over the border.
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Trump already put the borders R in and the borders R is extremely hardcore and is exactly the kind of
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guy you'd want him in charge of deportations. For Marco Rubio, in secretary of state, I think he's
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actually a really good pick. Now down from there, we've got Mike Huckabee next came in. He's the pick
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for the ambassador to Israel. This is a great choice. There is basically no one in America who has a
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better relationship with the state of Israel than Mike Huckabee does. He's an all-around great guy,
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conservative, loyal to Trump. Obviously, his daughter was President Trump's press secretary.
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Then his daughter, Sarah, is now the governor of Arkansas. That was after Mike Huckabee was the
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governor of Arkansas. A very, very solid conservative who's been on the national scene
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since he ran for president in 2008. Obviously, good choice for ambassador to Israel.
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So then we have the big one, the big one that is making the Libs' heads completely explode.
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That would be Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense. Now, if you're not familiar with Pete,
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you probably are familiar with Pete, but if you're not, Pete is one of the hosts on the Fox News morning
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show, Fox and Friends. I've known Pete for years. He's got a really great background. He's got,
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I think, a couple of bronze stars. He's a combat veteran. He's a graduate of Princeton and Harvard.
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And he's been very successful on TV and in conservative media and in spreading conservative
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ideas. So this is making the Libs' heads explode because they're saying, well,
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this man, he's never even worked for a defense contractor. He's never worked as a lobbyist for
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the military industrial complex. This man can't be the secretary of state. What qualifications does
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Pete Hegseth have for secretary of defense, rather? What qualifications does he have? And I thought,
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well, I don't know. Combat vet, served in the military for many years, graduate of two prestigious
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universities. He ran a nonprofit for veterans, I believe. He's run for office before.
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What's the problem? I don't really see what the problem is. Is the problem that he's young? Well,
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we'll get to that in a moment. I think that's a strength. But then the problem, the reason that
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anyone is criticizing the Pete Hegseth nomination is because he's also good on TV. That's it. They're
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saying, what is this TV host doing in the cabinet? You guys remember Trump was a TV host, right? You
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remember that? You know, being a TV host, being able to communicate on camera, that's actually a
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strength in politics. Ronald Reagan was once asked if an actor could be the president. And he said,
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how could the president not be an actor? And he's absolutely right about that.
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A chief part of your job in politics is to communicate with people. The fact that you've
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got a guy with a serious military pedigree, with a serious base of political knowledge,
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who also happens to be a good communicator, that seems like an ideal pick for Secretary of Defense.
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So anyway, Pete's going to do great in the job. I think that's fabulous. I am elated to hear that
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news. Then you go to Department of Homeland Security. You've got Kristi Noem,
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Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota. I hear some people are wondering, does she have the
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tough enough stuff for DHS? Again, she was pretty tough during COVID. Let's not forget,
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she was one of the few governors that was skeptical of the mass lockdowns. If she treats the cartel
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criminals at the border the way that she wrote about that dog in her memoir, then we're going to
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be in a good position. But even furthermore, if you think, okay, I don't know, she's a little too
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moderate or something to be at the border. Again, I don't really see evidence of that.
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Don't forget, we already have a border czar. We have Homan at the border who's going to be in
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charge of the deportations. So for DHS, it's a broader department. And Kristi Noem is a good
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communicator. She's good on TV. She's been loyal to Trump. Seems like a fine pick to me. White House
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counsel, William McGinley is getting plaudits all around from conservative lawyers with credibility.
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John Ratcliffe for CIA director. He was former director of national intelligence.
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He's also a former Texas congressman. Seems fine to me. And then another favorite pick for people,
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that would be the new two leaders of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
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That would be Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Killer choice. Love it. It's awesome.
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We knew that Elon was going to be put in charge of some kind of cost-cutting program in the
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government. Elon came out and he said that the government is too bloated. There are way too
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many departments. They have overlapping responsibilities. It's completely ridiculous.
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Elon was going to come in and cut a big chunk out of the federal budget. Now, some people asked,
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does Elon Musk really have time to do this? He's running the biggest, most exciting car company in
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the world, and he's launching rocket ships and catching them with new technology, and he wants
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to colonize Mars. He's running X, one of the major social media platforms. The guy's got a lot on his
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plate. He's got a lot of kids. Does he have time to do this? And so he's sharing the role with
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one of the most exciting figures to appear in the Republican Party and the conservative movement
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in decades. Vivek Ramaswamy, extremely intelligent guy, like Elon, extremely intelligent, extremely
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successful, extremely ambitious. And furthermore, think about this brilliance. I go right back to
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the point I was making earlier about some of the nominees. Some people are going to say,
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oh, I don't know if I agree with this nominee on this issue. Bobby Kennedy, I don't know,
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he might be a little tough on energy and natural gas and oil. But what does Trump say when Trump
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goes out and he says, hey, we're going to unleash Bobby Kennedy on big pharma. We're going to unleash
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Bobby Kennedy on the FDA. He says, but we're not going to unleash him on the oil industry.
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Hey, I agree with Bobby on this stuff, but I don't agree with him on that stuff. And so we're going to
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focus on the stuff we agree on. And so many of Trump's picks, okay, they're a little wishy-washy on
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this issue or that issue. So Trump puts them into an area where they have responsibilities in the
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areas of agreement and the areas where they're really strong. So there's one disagreement between
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Vivek and some of the rest of Trump's team, which is that Vivek is more in favor of free trade.
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He's a little more skeptical of tariffs. He's a little bit more classically liberal.
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And a lot on Trump's team are pro-tariff. They're a little more pro-protectionist,
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more traditionally conservative. Okay. So what better place to put Vivek Ramaswamy than in the
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Department of Government Efficiency, where the job is to cut, to cut away at that fat and the
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bureaucracy that's not just blubber, that's not just inefficient, but it's actually corrosive and
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corrupting. Great. That's exactly the guy you want to unleash there. And who better to partner up with
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Elon Musk, who's one of the smartest, most impressive men in the world, than Vivek Ramaswamy,
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who's extremely smart, who's extremely successful, who comes from the world of business.
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I think the picks are just fantastic. And there's another point that a friend pointed out to me last
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night, and this number is going to change as new appointments come in. But my friend pointed out
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the average age of Trump's cabinet, if taken together with some of the other top picks,
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is 47. That's the average age. The average age of Joe Biden's cabinet, according to Brookings
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Institution, was 59. On average, a dozen years older than the Trump cabinet. This is shaping up to be
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a young administration, which I think is really, really smart. I visited Hungary twice last year.
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I was giving a speech in Estregom, and then I also visited Budapest again after that.
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And I got to tour around and speak with some members of the government. And something that impressed me was
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the Orban government, probably the most successful right-wing government in Europe,
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not just probably, it definitely is, and by a lot. It's a young government. They put young people
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in who were competent, who were educated, who were energetic, who were in tune with the present state
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of politics, who were not beholden and imprisoned by decrepit ideologies that no longer really apply.
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I think Trump is doing exactly the same thing here, which gives President Trump a massive opportunity
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to reset the relationship between citizens and the government, and to reset the relationship
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between conservatives and the press, the fourth branch of the government, which has become so
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corrupt in recent years. There's so much more to say. First, though, go to supremecoup.com slash
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Knowles. There's a looming threat to our constitutional republic that the mainstream media will not cover.
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The radical left is plotting a Supreme Court coup, and they're not even trying to hide it.
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These progressive ideologues want to eliminate the court's conservative majority by packing it with
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their own hand-picked justices. With a simple majority vote, a president's signature, their plan
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becomes reality. We've already seen their playbook, made-up ethical attacks on justices, illegal protests
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at their homes, and open threats from so-called representatives. It is Venezuela-style court packing.
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It would spell the end of judicial independence and the rule of law as we know it. But there is hope.
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Learn how you can help stop the left's takeover of the Supreme Court. The future of our country
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is in your hands. Check out supremecoup.com slash Knowles today. Before we get into the massive
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opportunity that Trump has here with the press, let's not brush over his opportunity with the
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government. Here is Elon sitting down with Tucker talking about his ambitions for how to trim back
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the federal government. I kind of like those. It's more fun. And we just take a look at all the
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federal agencies and say, do we really need whatever it is, 428 federal agencies? Because
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there's so many that people have never even heard of and that have overlapping areas of
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responsibility. We should, I don't know, probably we should get, I mean, there are more federal
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agencies than there are years since the establishment of the United States, which means that we've
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created more than one federal agency per year on average. That seems a lot.
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That's a lot. So we should, that seems crazy. I think we should be able to get away with 99
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agencies. I don't know. That seems a lot like a lot of agencies.
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Yeah, exactly. We should have fewer agencies. And they certainly shouldn't have overlapping
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responsibilities. And then we need some kind of, we just need a review of regulations to
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say which ones are sensible and which ones are not.
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I love the way Elon's talking about this. He's not talking about this like some nerdy
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ideologue at a think tank with some white paper. He's just saying, you know, we have more agencies
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than years the country's been around. We have 428. Seems like a lot. So I'd like to get
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it down to, I don't know, 99. Doesn't that seem like, he's not, why does he say 99? Because
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that seems like a lot, doesn't it? I don't, that seems just common sense. Just common sense.
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To me, this is the common sense administration. This was the common sense election. This election
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brought in people who had differing ideologies, if they had any ideology at all, but they did
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have one thing in common, which was some sense of the common sense. This was the subject of my
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speech at the University of Iowa, which is on YouTube. It's on the Young America's Foundation
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YouTube channel. To go from 428 to 99 by my calculation means that Elon wants to cut 329 federal
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agencies, which to me sounds like a good start. Seems like a really, really great idea. Now,
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I want to get back to the media. Trump is very clearly resetting the relationship between the
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citizen and the government, and he's doing it fast. What about the relationship between the citizen and
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the media, specifically conservative citizens, Republicans and the media? There was a story
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I told you about, I guess it was yesterday on the show. A FEMA supervisor told, according to documents
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that were obtained by the Daily Wire first, a FEMA supervisor told employees and volunteers not to
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provide disaster relief to Trump supporters after Hurricane Milton. So this was demonstrable. We have
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the documents said, if there is a Trump sign, do not go and provide disaster relief. This vindicated a claim
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that Trump had made just weeks earlier after Hurricane Helene, when President Trump said that FEMA, that
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disaster agencies were not providing support to Trump supporters, the New York Times followed that up with
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a fact check that said, Trump is lying here. There is no evidence whatsoever that FEMA is not providing
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relief and not helping out Trump supporters. Fake news, fact check, 300,000 Pinocchios. Then this document comes
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out and says, well, hold on, now we have proof that that was happening in Hurricane Milton. So the last little
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shred of credibility that the Libs could hold on to was they could say, well, Trump made the claim
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about Hurricane Helene. This incident that you have documents on that Daily Wire acquired, that was
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Hurricane Milton. That was separate. This is an isolated incident. This is not a systemic problem.
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This is being corrected. The employee in question has been fired. Okay, well, the employee in question
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has now given an interview and contradicted all of those liberal fake news reports because she says
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that avoiding the homes of Trump supporters was a policy. It was standard operating procedure.
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It had been going on not just in Florida during Hurricane Milton, but much more widely.
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I was notified after I demodeled. The next morning, they told me verbally I was fired, but they never
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provided me anything in writing stating that I was fired. They all alleged that these actions were made
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on my own recognizances and that it was for my own political advances. However, if you look at the record,
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there is what we call a community trend. And unfortunately, it just so happened that the
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political hostility that was encountered by my team, and I was on two different teams during this
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deployment, they just so happened to have the Trump campaign signage. FEMA always preaches avoidance
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first and then de-escalation. So this is not isolated. This is a colossal event of avoidance,
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not just in the state of Florida, but you will find avoidance in the Carolinas. Senior leadership
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will lie to you and tell you that they do not know. But if you ask the DSA crew leads and specialists
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what they are experiencing in the field, they will tell you. Demand for FEMA to give you those
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incident reports. They will substantiate what is happening to us in the field.
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Demand that FEMA give you those reports. This is not an isolated event. This is happening in the
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Carolinas. That means it's happening during Hurricane Helene. It's coming from higher-ups
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at FEMA. This means that President Trump is 100% vindicated yet again. He already was, in my view,
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vindicated in principle when what he claimed about Hurricane Helene was proven with Hurricane Milton,
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which followed just on the heels of Helene. But now, according to the fired FEMA supervisor in
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question, it was going on in Hurricane Helene too. And it's actually a broader policy from FEMA to
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discriminate in disaster relief against Trump supporters. The fake news completely, completely
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blown out of the water yet again. Totally proven wrong, all the way up to the New York Times.
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Which brings us to President Trump's opportunity here. Once in a generation opportunity. This is an
00:20:49.500
opportunity specifically for the White House Press Office to radically change the way that
00:20:55.820
conservatives and just normal people broadly interact with the media. It's not as though the
00:21:02.140
White House Press Office has been around since George Washington, okay? It's a relatively recent
00:21:05.820
creation. It really only took on prominence a little bit into the 20th century. The way that
00:21:13.540
it operates has changed over the decades as it necessarily must, as any institution must.
00:21:19.720
And the time for change in the White House Press Office is now. We'll get to that in one moment.
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tell you about my friend Kirk Cameron. If you don't know Kirk personally, as I do, you can get to know him.
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You can find out which of us knows the other better with our latest yes or no game.
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Kamala Harris is black. That's going to get me into trouble. I keep getting conflicting reports.
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The politically correct version of this episode that is permitted on social media platforms is
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available now on the Michael Knowles YouTube channel. However, you can see the full uncensored
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episode with three questions that were too spicy for certain big tech platforms exclusively
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CNN is planning massive layoffs. CNN already had massive layoffs over the summer. CNN is planning
00:23:04.520
another round of massive layoffs. This will affect not just behind the curtains employees,
00:23:10.220
but also employees in production, also potentially some of the big stars at CNN. Why is that?
00:23:16.420
Because CNN's ratings have collapsed. In 2016, CNN averaged 13.3 million viewers in primetime.
00:23:22.760
Today, it's just 800,000 viewers in primetime. Chris Wallace, big, big talent from Fox that left
00:23:29.680
Fox, goes over to CNN. Chris Wallace has just left CNN. He's leaving CNN saying that podcasting and
00:23:36.440
streaming is where it's at. That's where the conversations are happening now. That's where
00:23:41.140
influence is had in media now. Cable news is old and dying. So, Chris Wallace is leaving now that
00:23:48.900
his contract is up. Others might be leaving CNN willingly or unwillingly. There will be massive
00:23:54.580
layoffs. There is a media shift that is happening, and the Trump election is exacerbating that to some
00:24:00.680
degree because the establishment media have been so corrupt. They've lost so much credibility in the
00:24:05.800
lies that they've told specifically about President Trump, but more broadly about conservatives and
00:24:10.060
Republicans. That's all true. The fact that President Trump's interview on Joe Rogan is easily the most
00:24:17.760
significant media event of the last 10, 15 years, easily, no question about it, I think is proof of
00:24:26.080
this. But you take this even beyond the Trump election. The media were already heading in this
00:24:31.880
direction. Cable news was already dying. Cable news has been dying for 10 years, more than 10 years.
00:24:37.960
There's been a long way for cable news to fall. There's been a long way for print newspapers to
00:24:43.960
fall. There's been a long way even for terrestrial radio to fall. So they've been able to maintain some
00:24:51.880
money and power along the way, but it's been falling for a long time. The new media, podcasting,
00:24:58.720
streaming, live forms like the Daily Wire have been gaining traction steadily, sometimes exponentially
00:25:06.740
for many years now. That's just happening. That's not just a Trump thing. It's not just because the
00:25:13.080
media have squandered their credibility. It's also a technology thing. It's just how the media have
00:25:18.280
developed. The next White House press secretary should take these new circumstances into account.
00:25:25.480
This is a generational opportunity. The press has been one of the most persistent problems
00:25:32.420
for conservatives and Republicans and normal people for decades now, because the press have lied with
00:25:38.900
impunity. The press have defamed people. The press have spread hoaxes and told lies. And then after the
00:25:45.540
lies have their consequence, weeks and months later, they'll maybe issue a correction, but they'll run the
00:25:51.120
story above the fold on page one and they'll run the correction on page 2073 where nobody sees it.
00:25:56.620
And they get away with this time and time again. And it has taken down good people and it has impeded
00:26:02.220
good policy and it has stymied the desires of voters who are supposed to have some control over
00:26:07.540
our government. It's been a big problem. And we now have an opportunity, thanks to the development
00:26:12.620
of technology and thanks to the way that the press have declined themselves, specifically in the face of
00:26:17.180
Donald Trump. We have an opportunity right now to reset that relationship. Look at this chart.
00:26:23.780
Here's a chart. This is just the chart as of 2022 for the White House briefing room. I can't find a more
00:26:30.320
recent chart published online, but look at the names that are on this chart. You got front row, row, row A,
00:26:39.540
NBC, Fox, CBS, AP, ABC News, Reuters, CNN. Okay. Left and right, a number of these players are going to
00:26:49.100
stay, but CNN? CNN doesn't get any ratings. Why would CNN be in the front row? That doesn't make
00:26:54.400
any sense to me. Next row, you look at NPR. NPR consistently lies about Trump. NPR is subsidized
00:27:03.600
by taxpayers. How are NPR's ratings? I don't know. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Second
00:27:09.500
row. USA Today, New York Times, also Washington Post. The Washington Post and the New York Times
00:27:15.180
ran hit pieces within the last few weeks. Well, the New York Times ran a hit piece with my face as the
00:27:21.960
center of it, and the Washington Post ran a hit piece on Ben, both of which pointed out that podcasts
00:27:29.400
and streaming and the new media are totally eating the old establishment media's lunch.
00:27:33.400
So you got the Washington Post and the New York Times admitting that the people with influence
00:27:37.240
are the podcasters, the new media companies, the streamers. Okay, well then why are the Washington
00:27:42.800
Post and the New York Times sitting there in the second row? It doesn't make any sense to me.
00:27:47.080
Especially when you take into account that the Washington Post and the New York Times consistently
00:27:51.200
lie with impunity. I mean, just to use the example of that story, the New York Times runs this piece,
00:27:55.780
says election misinformation, election falsehoods flying around YouTube with no consequence.
00:28:01.620
My picture, my face is the center of that. And then I said, what falsehood are they calling me
00:28:06.540
out on? I've been precise in my language. What would they get me on? And the answer is nothing.
00:28:12.060
They don't quote me once in the article. They don't mention me in the article. They just put my face
00:28:17.500
front and center because they don't like my podcast and they view us as competition and they want to
00:28:21.920
kick us off YouTube. They want to pressure big tech to censor the conservatives. That is
00:28:25.740
egregious journalistic malpractice. The next White House press secretary, I think, should seriously
00:28:32.000
consider revoking the New York Times's pass, period, full stop, for the specific misdeeds that
00:28:39.360
the New York Times has committed. And as an example to the rest of the press, that we're not going to
00:28:44.080
tolerate this anymore. This monopoly over communication that the press has been able to amass in recent
00:28:49.560
years and the grave injustices that they have committed with that monopoly. USA Today? USA Today?
00:28:57.820
I don't know. USA Today still has relatively wide distribution. How's their track record on
00:29:03.820
accountability? I don't know. I'm not saying kick them out of the briefing room entirely. Should
00:29:07.000
they be in the second row, though? Next one, Politico, LA Times. Okay. Oh, then hold on. Row D here.
00:29:15.060
We've got MSNBC. MSNBC barely exists anymore. Within the next month, MSNBC might not even exist.
00:29:24.360
They're in row D. I mean, look, we could go on and on through all of the Huffington Post. When was
00:29:29.580
the last time anyone read the Huffington Post? Give me a break. This doesn't make sense.
00:29:37.560
Joe Rogan should be in the front row. Joe Rogan has other things to do. He's probably not going to be
00:29:41.280
sitting in a White House briefing all day. But you see my point. Maybe Joe Rogan sends a
00:29:47.160
representative, a reporter. Maybe Tim Kast has a seat in the front row. Maybe. My point is,
00:29:53.780
this chart doesn't make any sense. Both from the perspective of the credibility of the outlet
00:29:59.740
sitting there, but also from the perspective of influence. Even for the basic purpose of the
00:30:05.200
White House press office, which is to communicate what is happening within the government to the
00:30:11.420
people. That has not happened. We've had mission drift here, folks. That is not what occurs here.
00:30:16.920
Instead, what this briefing exists for now is for dishonest leftist reporters with waning influence,
00:30:22.960
if they have any influence at all, to try to spread lies about the government.
00:30:28.200
We can't have that. These kinds of technological changes, these kinds of media changes don't happen
00:30:35.340
all the time. Nothing like this has happened in our lifetime. And as President Trump's administration
00:30:40.960
is obviously dynamic, it's obviously energetic, it is young, President Trump is ready to go in there
00:30:48.360
and break things that need to be broken. I think this is a key area of responsibility and a key
00:30:55.520
opportunity. This is a real legacy move for President Trump, who's already cemented his legacy
00:31:02.200
as the second in American history, a president to be elected to a non-consecutive second term,
00:31:09.480
much more impressive than Cleveland in the fact that Trump was able to do that while being prosecuted,
00:31:14.740
while Democrats were trying to kick him off the ballot, while liberals were trying to assassinate him.
00:31:20.700
President Trump managed to do that. Okay, great. Well, let's do it, baby. Let's go all the way.
00:31:24.500
Let's go all the way. This could be truly one of the pivotal presidencies in American history.
00:31:31.740
Now, speaking of silly reporters, Mayor Adams in New York was just asked a question.
00:31:40.620
Mayor Adams, Eric Adams, is a Democrat, but he's a Democrat who breaks with the extreme liberals.
00:31:48.240
He's the mayor of New York, so he has to recognize issues like illegal immigration are really hurting him.
00:31:54.920
As Adams pointed out, he said illegal immigration could destroy New York City.
00:32:00.080
So now Trump is elected. He appoints this great border czar who is promising to carry out deportations.
00:32:07.440
Democrat mayors and governors are saying, we will not comply. We will not comply.
00:32:10.240
Eric Adams says, you know, I'm open to working with the federal government.
00:32:16.460
Will you express concern about mass deportations in the city?
00:32:21.560
My concern is one concern. We keep tinkering around the edges. We keep having this philosophical
00:32:28.080
conversation about it. The voters communicated loudly and clearly. We have a broken immigration
00:32:36.220
system. It needs to be fixed. That's the only conversation I want. New York City was devastated
00:32:41.400
by that broken system. 220,000 migrants and asylum seekers have made their way here.
00:32:47.280
How can migrant New Yorkers be sure that they won't happen here, given that ICE can make
00:32:52.760
arrests in New York City without police cooperation? Why should New Yorkers, including migrant New
00:32:58.200
Yorkers, trust that you will advocate for them with the new Trump administration?
00:33:02.840
But you said, how can I advocate for New Yorkers? So I should only advocate for one type of New
00:33:09.200
Yorker or all New Yorkers. Oh, listen, look, listen to this lexical prison that this reporter
00:33:15.440
is trying to trap Mayor Adams in and trying to trap us all in. What are you going to say to migrant
00:33:21.620
New Yorkers? Hold on, put a pause here. What's a migrant New Yorker? I'm a New Yorker by birth and by
00:33:29.000
upbringing. I have immigrants, legal immigrants in my family line. What do you mean by a migrant New
00:33:36.360
Yorker? You're not talking about someone who came here legally. You're talking about someone
00:33:41.400
who broke the law, crossed our border illegally, or overstayed a visa, and is now living in our
00:33:46.820
country against our laws. How's that person in New Yorker? How's a Venezuelan migrant who worked
00:33:54.600
with Trende Aragua or MS-13 to cross our border illegally, who's in debt to the cartel, who's a
00:34:00.640
gangster, who's committing all sorts of crimes, who doesn't speak English, who doesn't know the
00:34:05.860
Statue of Liberty from the Empire State Building? How is that person a New Yorker in any way?
00:34:11.360
It's not a New Yorker. He's a foreigner. He's a foreign national and a criminal who's here illegally
00:34:16.560
who needs to be deported. That's what he is. But what about the migrant New Yorkers?
00:34:22.680
It's the same. This is the new version of undocumented American. What's an undocumented
00:34:27.380
American? You mean not an American. That's what that means. But it's these lexical prisons.
00:34:32.740
This is something that I think Trump is really, really good at. And I think that the Trump
00:34:37.400
administration, specifically the people dealing with the press, need to be good at. They need to
00:34:41.380
recognize that language is not neutral. This is the subject of my book, Speechless, Controlling
00:34:47.660
Words, Controlling Minds, available now number one national bestseller. Thank you very much.
00:34:50.880
It's not neutral. These terms don't merely color the way we view the world. They actually constitute
00:34:57.080
the way that we view the world. An undocumented American or a migrant New Yorker has every right
00:35:03.000
to be in America and New York respectively because they're Americans and New Yorkers. But on the
00:35:07.200
contrary, an illegal alien has no right to be in America, has no right to be in New York.
00:35:14.620
They're foreigners who are here illegally. The words that we use are going to totally color,
00:35:21.740
not just color, they're going to constitute how we view the world.
00:35:23.880
And if the Trump administration really carries out these deportations, which I hope and trust will
00:35:30.540
occur, the press is going to go into overdrive. This, that little interview you heard there with
00:35:37.880
Mayor Adams, that is a little lamouse bouche of what you're going to see. The poor dreamer,
00:35:42.720
undocumented American, migrant American, New Yorker, wonderful dreamers are being deported by the
00:35:49.920
heartless, cruel. And everyone knows that this has to be done. The Democrat mayor of New York knows
00:35:55.820
this has to be done. But can we overcome the corrupt institutions that have prevented the
00:36:03.020
enforcement of our law for so many decades? Am I racist? The biggest documentary of the decade
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was in theaters. Now it is an Academy Award submitted movie. And it is streaming exclusively
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00:36:52.360
My favorite comment yesterday is from T. Rexness, who says, I wish Trump would have picked a more
00:36:58.660
libertarian and the UN type of person for UN ambassador. Our government shouldn't even be
00:37:03.540
involved with the UN. Well, it's funny you say that. We did, in recent memory, have that kind
00:37:09.480
of UN ambassador. And that was John Bolton. I remember once I was speaking to another former
00:37:14.760
UN ambassador. And one of us at this lunch asked, if you have to support the UN in order to be UN
00:37:21.540
ambassador. And this former official said, yes, I think so, unless you're John Bolton. You know,
00:37:27.200
John Bolton went out there. He said to the UN, I think you could destroy multiple floors of the
00:37:31.420
UN building in New York wouldn't change a thing. The UN is a joke and we will work with it when it
00:37:36.220
is in America's national interest, but we will ignore it when it's not in America's national
00:37:40.180
interest. So what's just a little ironic is that many people who don't like John Bolton
00:37:44.720
now would call for that kind of rhetoric. And Trump, however, is, you know, Trump did hire
00:37:52.600
John Bolton to be his national security advisor as a way, as he says, to kind of spook foreign
00:37:57.340
adversaries, to have a team that on the surface seemed incoherent, but it was really in furtherance
00:38:04.040
of an effective grand strategy. So in this case, President Trump wants to be maybe a little bit
00:38:09.500
more diplomatic, but still have a pretty tough, tough lady out there. So I trust his picks. I think
00:38:14.360
his picks broadly, certainly since the first round in 2016, 2017, I think his picks have been
00:38:22.960
really quite good. Okay. Some Democrats don't want to play ball. Eric Adams wants to deport the
00:38:29.500
illegals. Some do not. Maura Healy, governor of Massachusetts, says she will not comply.
00:38:35.220
If the Trump administration requests it, would the Massachusetts state police assist in mass deportations?
00:38:43.100
No, absolutely not. But, you know, let me say this. I do think it's important that we all recognize
00:38:52.700
that there's going to be a lot of pressure on states and state officials. And I can assure you,
00:38:57.380
we're going to work really hard to deliver. Some realities also need to be, you know, noted. And that
00:39:04.260
is in 2016, we had a very different situation in the courts. And while I'm sure there may be litigation
00:39:11.880
ahead, you know, there's a lot of other ways that people are going to act and need to act for the
00:39:17.920
sake of their states and their residents. There's regulatory authority and executive powers and the
00:39:23.560
like. There's legislation also within our states. So I think that the key here is that, you know,
00:39:29.400
every tool in the toolbox has got to be used to protect our citizens, to protect our residents,
00:39:34.220
and protect our states, and certainly to hold the line on democracy and the rule of law as a basic
00:39:40.620
principle, right? Yeah, yeah. So we're just not going to, we're going to, we're going to use our
00:39:45.980
power in the states. We are not going to go along with the federal government. Okay.
00:39:51.520
Send in the feds would be my take. You've got a governor of a state who is actively undermining
00:39:58.200
federal law, specifically federal law that was at the top of the priority list for voters who just
00:40:03.980
overwhelmingly voted in people who want to enforce federal law. Okay. Send in the feds. Happily,
00:40:10.840
that appears to be the position of the new border czar. Some of these democratic governors say they're
00:40:17.520
going to stand in the way. They're going, they're going to make it hard for us. Well, I, you know,
00:40:21.340
a suggestion. If you're not going to help us, get the hell out of the way, but we're going to do it.
00:40:25.040
So if we can't get assistance from New York city and I may have, you know, we may have to double
00:40:30.840
the number of agents we send in New York city, because we're going to do the job. We're going
00:40:35.100
to do the job without you or with you, but it's much easier to arrest the bad guy. Like I just said,
00:40:39.620
we're concentrating on public safety threats of human and national security threats. It's much
00:40:44.320
easier to arrest the bad guy in the jail. Give us that sister right to resign that we've been kicked out
00:40:48.940
of. Let us get the bad guy in the jail. They're safer for the alien is safer for the officer is safer for
00:40:54.340
the community. Get them out, get them out. That's what you got to do. I think this guy,
00:41:01.320
if you went to central casting and you said, Hey, uh, give me the perfect man to run the deportations.
00:41:09.160
I think this is probably the guy that you would, you would be dealing with. Of course you have to do
00:41:15.720
that. Of course it's the only way we can have a country. The only way we can have a country is if
00:41:22.160
we can enforce national laws, if it is not possible to enforce national laws, including
00:41:26.520
the most basic national laws, like the laws pertaining to our border, the very thing that
00:41:31.380
delineates our country. If you can't do that, then you effectively do not have a country. You have a
00:41:37.680
hodgepodge of States. And really what you have is a kind of blob-ish liberal, uh, establishment
00:41:47.280
that selectively enforces national laws, but, but selectively refuses to enforce them. You have
00:41:53.080
some, I don't know, you have some kind of mush, but you don't have a country. That guy, that guy
00:41:59.300
seems to me the man for the job. So you know what? This is going to cue. This is going to cue
00:42:07.140
the laments from the press about the destruction of norms, standards and norms that this Trump
00:42:16.680
administration is, is blindly refusing to acknowledge. Uh, okay. MSNBC, take it away.
00:42:26.620
The tension you described as the New York times reported on within the transition team was described
00:42:31.440
to us as a battle between the normies and the crazies. Although of course the people we're talking
00:42:36.080
about would disagree with that characterization. We focused on a couple of lawyers. One is one's
00:42:40.780
named Mike Davis. He's a very conservative, kind of a bomb throwing provocateur who used to clerk for
00:42:46.940
justice Neil Gorsuch. He's an advisor to the transition team. And he has been out there
00:42:51.300
publicly saying that Donald Trump should prosecute people like, uh, the attorney general Tish James
00:42:56.280
and Jack Smith, the special counsel that his justice department should do that. He's actually
00:43:00.880
articulating which crimes they should be prosecuted for. Uh, and he's making no bones about that
00:43:05.660
laying the legal groundwork. Now that the thing about that is that would violate five decades of
00:43:11.180
norms of post Watergate, which said that the justice department should be independent from
00:43:15.200
the president, that the president should never say, go investigate that person. Uh, these people are
00:43:20.140
suggesting that Donald Trump should be able to do that with his justice department. And as a legal
00:43:24.100
matter, they're right. Uh, we're talking about norms here. Okay. So legally, uh, Trump is totally
00:43:29.760
right, of course, but, uh, but as a matter of norms, it would be so wrong of the Trump administration
00:43:36.360
to maybe take a peek into the woman who was prosecuting the former president and current
00:43:45.020
leader of the opposition. Don't you think that defied norms a little bit more egregiously than Trump
00:43:52.640
having the DOJ maybe take a peek into massive corruption in New York and already very corrupt state
00:43:58.800
government. Don't you think trying to imprison the former president, like we're some banana Republic,
00:44:05.400
some tin pot dictatorship, trying to imprison the then current leader of the political opposition
00:44:11.180
who became the nominee and then who was elected president. Don't you think that might upend norms
00:44:16.700
in a, in a bit more of a dangerous way than having the DOJ look at, look into crooked New York figures,
00:44:22.640
Joe Biden's DOJ, Joe, the federal prosecutors were looking into Eric Adams because he was defying the
00:44:30.280
Trump administration on immigration. Give me a break. And I love to say ever since Watergate,
00:44:34.680
we've had these norms. Yeah. Okay. Ever since the last time the bureaucracy overthrew an extremely
00:44:39.340
popular Republican president based on mostly nonsense. Ever since then, we've had these norms
00:44:45.220
that so benefit the liberals that the liberals disregard whenever they like, including five minutes
00:44:50.080
ago, including currently when the Democrats are still trying to prosecute Trump. Yeah. Sorry.
00:44:54.800
Save me the, the sob tail. I'm not sure that, that I can really go along with that. You want to talk
00:45:00.480
about norms. You people have, have justified the assassination of this man, which almost occurred
00:45:05.680
twice and left him with a hole in his ear. You want to talk to me about norms, norms, you people parade
00:45:12.340
naked adults through the streets and you, you introduce pornography to little kids. And you want to tell me
00:45:17.840
about standards and norms. Give me a break, go pound sand. I can't wait for the Trump administration
00:45:23.320
to hold these people to account so that we can restore actual standards and norms in this country,
00:45:30.440
which we had for a long time until the libs tore them down, burn those standards to the ground.
00:45:36.680
Now, speaking of burning things to the ground, one, look, we don't have time. There's so, there is so
00:45:42.140
much going on in politics right now that we actually don't have time to get through everything. So I'll just
00:45:46.580
give you a little bit of a tease. President Trump, to begin the process that Elon and Vivek are, are tasked
00:45:53.200
with achieving of eliminating lots of federal agencies. President Trump is promising to do something
00:46:00.820
that every Republican candidate for president just about in my lifetime has, has promised to do, and none
00:46:07.420
of them have done it. He wants to begin this process of government efficiency by abolishing the
00:46:14.840
Department of Education, which we'll get to, I don't know, I guess we'll get to it tomorrow.
00:46:20.140
There's too much going on. Today is Woke Wednesday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want
00:46:24.060
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