The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1643 - Deadly Attack, Lightning Strikes, & An Explosion At Trump Hotel

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00:00:37.760 As midnight approached on New Year's Eve, lightning struck the U.S. Capitol,

00:00:41.420 the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center, and the Washington Monument.

00:00:45.000 It's a wicked generation that seeks signs and wonders, but as a great priest has observed, 0.89

00:00:49.100 it is a stupid generation that ignores signs and wonders.

00:00:52.680 Many were wondering if the strikes were an omen.

00:00:54.960 And then they were wondering, is it a good omen or a bad omen?

00:00:58.560 A few hours later, a terrorist carrying an ISIS flag murdered 15 people and wounded dozens

00:01:04.380 of others in New Orleans.

00:01:05.960 And a few hours after that, a Tesla Cybertruck blew up outside the Trump International Hotel

00:01:11.340 in Las Vegas.

00:01:13.060 Welcome to 2025.

00:01:14.420 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:01:15.080 This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:15.860 Welcome back to the show.

00:01:36.820 Rough start to the year.

00:01:38.260 There is a little good news, a little silver lining in a storm cloud, I guess, which is

00:01:42.360 that Mr. Beast has just gotten engaged.

00:01:44.800 The biggest YouTuber ever is getting engaged.

00:01:48.140 And that actually has political significance.

00:01:50.200 This episode is brought to you by Mayflower Cigars.

00:01:52.180 I mean that very literally.

00:01:53.760 I have been at home mandated by Daily Wire.

00:01:57.520 They closed the office.

00:01:58.340 I've been at home for two weeks.

00:02:00.120 And so what is powering this show right now is my Mayflower Cigars.

00:02:04.440 You can get yours at mayflowercigars.com.

00:02:06.680 You have to be 21 years old or older. 0.95

00:02:08.220 In order, some exclusions apply.

00:02:09.740 Let's get right into it.

00:02:12.120 Early hours of the morning as New Year's Eve became New Year's Day, about 3.30-ish in

00:02:16.780 the morning on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, there was a terrorist attack.

00:02:20.680 The terrorist attack was carried out by a guy.

00:02:23.540 I won't say his name, but he's a guy with an Arab name, 42 years old.

00:02:28.300 That identity has been confirmed by the FBI, the suspect.

00:02:32.240 The attack thus far, numbers are still coming in actually.

00:02:35.160 But initially it was reported that 10 people were killed.

00:02:38.780 Now that number has been raised to 15 people killed, at least 30 others injured.

00:02:43.960 The guy was carrying an ISIS flag.

00:02:48.340 The FBI is now saying that he did not act alone, or they believe that he did not act alone.

00:02:54.640 The New York Times is reporting that in a 2020 YouTube video, this guy, the suspect,

00:02:59.240 said that he was born and raised in Texas and served in the U.S. military.

00:03:06.120 So despite the Arab last name, despite the apparent allegiance to an Islamic terror organization,

00:03:12.980 you can't just say that he's a terrorist who snuck into the country.

00:03:16.580 He's a guy who was born and raised here, a guy who even served in the U.S. military.

00:03:21.980 The attack is horrific.

00:03:23.980 The first thing you should do is pray for the people who were killed and for the family of the people who were killed.

00:03:27.680 The second thing you should do, though, shortly after the first thing, is to ask yourself, what is wrong with the FBI?

00:03:37.820 In a way, the biggest story, of course, is the attack.

00:03:39.800 Only just below that, the story is the FBI.

00:03:44.460 The corruption, the incompetence, the idiocy, the blind ideology.

00:03:50.980 This is a problem.

00:03:51.660 We've had a big problem with the FBI in recent years.

00:03:55.500 The FBI focusing so much of its attention on undermining Donald Trump,

00:04:00.500 cooking up nonsense with the DNC to pretend that Trump's a KGB stooge,

00:04:04.760 to overrule his election in 2016, to undermine it when he was running.

00:04:08.780 Then spying on Catholics in their parishes, apparently around the country, though the FBI lied about that.

00:04:15.560 Going in and harassing pro-lifers for peacefully demonstrating outside of abortion mills.

00:04:21.400 Calling parents who don't want their kids to be transed in the classroom.

00:04:24.860 Domestic extremists akin to terrorists. 0.60

00:04:27.240 So they haven't had a whole lot of time to focus on actual terrorists.

00:04:29.740 And then, the first thing the FBI did after this horrific terror attack on New Year's Eve in a prominent American city,

00:04:39.580 the very first thing they did was assure everyone that it was not a terrorist attack.

00:04:45.260 My name's Aletha Duncan.

00:04:47.500 I'm the assistant special agent in charge for FBI New Orleans.

00:04:51.100 As Chief Kirkpatrick said, we'll be taking over the investigative lead for this event.

00:04:57.760 This is not a terrorist event.

00:05:00.260 What it is right now is their improvised explosive devices that was found.

00:05:05.600 And we are working on confirming if this is a viable device or not.

00:05:09.340 That's the first thing we heard.

00:05:11.520 The face of the FBI in New Orleans after this attack is this woman, not seemingly dressed for the job, shows up.

00:05:19.940 She's got a sparkly nose ring on.

00:05:21.760 She goes out.

00:05:22.320 She says, hey, I just want everyone to know, I just want you all to be assured, this is not a terrorist event.

00:05:28.620 Hours later, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, comes out and he says,

00:05:34.340 we are working closely with our law enforcement partners in response to the situation in New Orleans.

00:05:38.400 This abhorrent attack is being investigated by the FBI as an act of terrorism.

00:05:43.940 Okay, there you go.

00:05:45.900 Don't you feel confident?

00:05:46.980 Don't you feel safe and secure?

00:05:49.500 The very first thing they do is get the essence of this attack wrong.

00:05:57.140 And I'm trying to figure out what the most charitable take on this is.

00:06:00.220 Is the most charitable take that the FBI leadership is just so stupid, just so terrible at their jobs,

00:06:08.400 so dumb that they didn't know that this obvious terrorist attack was a terrorist attack?

00:06:16.860 Maybe that's the most charitable read.

00:06:18.640 It's not the most likely.

00:06:19.820 I don't think the FBI is that dumb.

00:06:22.280 There are plenty of mediocrities who work in the federal government.

00:06:25.660 But the FBI has shown something beyond mediocrity and incompetence and neglect in recent years.

00:06:32.560 The FBI has shown deceit, vindictiveness against ordinary good Americans who are just trying to live their lives and have a good way of life, a normal way of life.

00:06:42.020 The FBI has shown that it will regularly undermine what good normal people want for their country in service of radical ideologies.

00:06:50.660 Going so far as to collude with Democrats who colluded with Russians, ironically, in the Russia hoax going back to 2016.

00:06:59.600 So I don't think it's that they're just so stupid, so dumb.

00:07:01.860 I don't know.

00:07:02.080 Maybe people in the middle of the pack at the FBI.

00:07:05.100 I don't know.

00:07:05.760 In the offices, the paper pushers.

00:07:08.440 I know there are a lot of good agents on the ground doing good police work.

00:07:11.320 But I'm talking about the leadership of the FBI.

00:07:13.100 I think it's worse than incompetence.

00:07:17.600 I think it's deceit.

00:07:19.820 Or there's another option, which is that sure there's corruption, sure there's deceit.

00:07:25.020 But also the FBI is just so committed to the ideology of our ruling class, which is extremely liberal, leftist, crazy, absurd, contrary to everything that normal Americans consider to be good and true and virtuous.

00:07:40.560 This is so pathetic, though.

00:07:43.100 It took them five hours to totally, not even, to totally undermine their credibility, as if they had any credibility left.

00:07:53.480 And the FBI on top of this saying that the guy probably was not acting alone.

00:07:57.640 So that was New Orleans.

00:07:58.900 Horrible attack.

00:08:00.040 Hours later in Las Vegas, a cyber truck blows up outside of the Trump Hotel.

00:08:05.820 And the initial reports.

00:08:08.320 A Tesla has caught fire at a hotel, the Trump Hotel.

00:08:12.380 Well, okay, it's the Trump Hotel.

00:08:13.520 And it caught fire.

00:08:14.880 Maybe it was a bad battery.

00:08:16.660 We don't know.

00:08:17.780 Could have been user error.

00:08:18.920 You can see the videos.

00:08:20.900 The thing explodes.

00:08:22.020 And then, as the reports come in, okay, well, actually, it was intentional.

00:08:30.480 Actually, the cyber truck was packed with explosives.

00:08:34.740 It blew up.

00:08:35.560 Of course, anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see you've got the Trump Hotel already going to tell you 99% chance this is political, which would be an act of terrorism.

00:08:45.440 Because terrorism basically is the attack on civilians and civilian properties in the furtherance of a political goal.

00:08:54.660 That's the basic definition.

00:08:55.760 When two armed nations wearing uniforms go to war, that's not terrorism.

00:09:00.500 It's violence.

00:09:01.080 It's war.

00:09:01.540 It's ugly.

00:09:02.140 That's not terrorism.

00:09:03.000 Terrorism is when you use violence against civilians to achieve a political end.

00:09:06.720 Obviously, that's what's going on here.

00:09:08.420 You've got the symbol of Elon Musk, who is now probably the most prominent confidant and supporter of Donald Trump in the world.

00:09:16.760 You've got that symbol exploding just outside of a Trump property on New Year's Eve when Elon and Trump are spending New Year's Eve together.

00:09:25.600 Now, the officials on the ground actually had a great compliment to play to Elon Musk here because the fact that this guy blew up a cyber truck, the fact that this guy was trying to make a point about the symbolism of the American right and this relationship between Musk and Trump actually probably saved a lot of people's lives.

00:09:53.320 We'll get to how in one moment.

00:09:54.360 First, though, speaking of violence, speaking of subterfuge, speaking of espionage, I just sat down in my latest episode of Michael And, my long-form interview series, with Jack Barsky, who's a former Soviet spy, who's a KGB spy, illegal in the United States.

00:10:10.100 For years and years, we talk about espionage.

00:10:13.120 We talk about how he left it all behind.

00:10:14.980 We talk about how he eventually got caught, even after he left it all behind.

00:10:17.800 We talk about his conversion.

00:10:19.140 Check out this teaser.

00:10:20.460 All they knew was that, A, I was a hardcore communist, and I was pretty smart.

00:10:26.840 Being recruited by the mighty KGB, that's like, I'm, I must be.

00:10:30.620 You're like James Bond.

00:10:31.780 You know, I had loved this woman, and I could shake her off like this.

00:10:34.760 Do you have to be kind of a sociopath to be a spy?

00:10:38.060 That's a good question.

00:10:39.180 I've never been asked that question.

00:10:41.380 What is the mission that you were sent into America to do?

00:10:44.360 Open up a business, and the KGB knew how to launder money and come to the United States with $20 million.

00:10:52.780 With this kind of money, I would have made it into the upper echelons of society right next to the Pentagon.

00:10:59.720 Right.

00:11:00.080 I would have been a very dangerous spy.

00:11:01.920 I thought I had become untouchable, with one exception, though, eventually a betrayal by a KGB agent.

00:11:09.480 I became very depressed.

00:11:13.040 One day I went to the altar at that church, and I think it was my subconscious again forcing me to get up, go up there.

00:11:20.700 And the pastor asked me, can I do something for you?

00:11:22.860 And I said, I want to give my life to Jesus.

00:11:26.260 It makes me almost cry.

00:11:28.400 Sorry.

00:11:31.920 You can watch the full episode right now on the Michael Knowles YouTube channel.

00:11:39.200 Do not forget to subscribe to Daily Wire Plus for the ad-free version.

00:11:44.520 This is from an official on the ground.

00:11:46.120 The fact that this was a cyber truck really limited the damage at the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas that occurred inside of the valet

00:11:53.660 because it had most of the blast go up through the truck and out.

00:11:58.660 The front glass doors to the hotel were not broken during this explosion.

00:12:04.940 How is that possible?

00:12:05.620 You have this tank explode right in front of the hotel.

00:12:10.080 How is it possible?

00:12:11.260 People were injured.

00:12:12.200 How is it possible, though, that the only person who was killed, at least as of now, was the attacker?

00:12:18.580 It's because, as Elon Musk says, the evil knuckleheads picked the wrong vehicle for a terrorist attack.

00:12:26.180 Cyber truck actually contained the explosion, directed the blast upwards.

00:12:29.760 Not even the glass doors of the lobby were broken.

00:12:31.620 It's because it was a tank.

00:12:33.540 This is actually, and we can be a little light about it, I think, because no one was killed other than this animal.

00:12:40.720 It's because of how well engineered this truck was.

00:12:45.720 This is the greatest advertisement in the history of automobiles, this thwarted terror attack. 0.52

00:12:52.240 So the question on everybody's minds, are these attacks connected?

00:12:57.360 Seems like a hell of a coincidence, doesn't it?

00:12:59.340 And we know for a fact, because Joe Biden has left the border open for four years now, has actually invited foreigners in, totally unvetted. 0.73

00:13:09.980 We know that Muslim terrorists have entered that border. 1.00

00:13:13.340 Sean Ryan did a show, when was it, some weeks ago, an interview with someone who said,

00:13:18.100 oh yeah, we've got over a thousand ISIS terrorists or Al-Qaeda or other Islamic terrorists in the country.

00:13:25.900 Guaranteed, planning an attack.

00:13:29.780 I don't know, it seems coincidental.

00:13:32.320 It could just be a mere coincidence, but it seems real coincidental.

00:13:37.120 So the question then is, who's behind it?

00:13:40.180 Is this guy a Muslim terrorist?

00:13:43.720 Could be.

00:13:45.120 Is this guy like the guy in New Orleans?

00:13:49.180 Is this guy connected to, I don't know, the Iranians, the Chinese?

00:13:55.900 The, I don't know, the U.S. intelligence community?

00:14:00.100 I don't want to suggest something like that.

00:14:03.120 The only reason I suggest it is, I'm going through the list of Trump's enemies.

00:14:08.600 Okay?

00:14:09.180 I'm going through the list of people who have tried to undermine Trump.

00:14:14.120 And you have to include the U.S. intelligence community in that.

00:14:19.200 Because we now have it on record that they cooked up a fake dossier.

00:14:25.380 They went in, they trapped Trump administration officials in the first term, guys like Mike Flynn,

00:14:32.640 to undermine Trump's administration.

00:14:34.980 We know that.

00:14:35.740 We know about those bad actors.

00:14:37.080 We know about the Andy McCabes.

00:14:39.160 We know about the pages.

00:14:41.620 We know about the players in the American IC who have tried to undermine Trump.

00:14:48.020 The 51 former intelligence officials who come out swinging for the Democrats against Trump.

00:14:52.740 We know about all this.

00:14:55.420 And we know, I'm not suggesting that the intelligence community actively did this.

00:14:58.720 We do know that a lot of these attacks, after the fact, they say, well, they were known to law enforcement.

00:15:06.000 Okay.

00:15:07.060 Well, we have a surveillance state.

00:15:09.860 The American intelligence community knows where every pro-life granny in the country is. 1.00

00:15:15.400 They've got their eyes on all the traditionalist Catholic parishes.

00:15:18.760 Well, okay, if you've got your eyes on these people, how does this sort of thing happen?

00:15:23.560 Beyond the corruption in our own government, beyond the incompetence or deceit of the FBI.

00:15:29.300 Is it the Iranians? 1.00

00:15:30.180 Yeah, the Iranians have been trying to kill Trump for years. 1.00

00:15:32.200 Trump killed the top Iranian general.

00:15:34.760 They've had a fatwa on that guy for years.

00:15:37.320 Was it the Chinese? 0.96

00:15:38.240 The Chinese have a lot of money. 0.78

00:15:39.260 There are a lot of people who want Trump dead or otherwise incapacitated.

00:15:46.420 So the political takeaway for me, we don't really know much about the cyber truck attack.

00:15:50.480 The political takeaway for me, though, is, is this going to stop?

00:15:57.160 No.

00:15:57.600 Trump is not the president yet.

00:15:59.700 We are entering into a very dangerous 19 days, 18 days now.

00:16:07.780 Trump is sworn in on January 20th.

00:16:10.300 We're entering into a very dangerous time.

00:16:14.420 And by the way, it's not going to stop when he's inaugurated.

00:16:16.180 If there have been assassination attempts foreign, if there have been attempts to kick this guy off the ballot, to imprison him, raiding his home, the FBI raiding his home with deadly force authorized at Mar-a-Lago.

00:16:32.200 If they, if the liberal regime has justified the assassination of Trump time and time again, Joe Biden started his campaign in 2020 on that, calling him a Nazi sympathizer.

00:16:42.500 Total baseless lie.

00:16:44.500 Total baseless lie.

00:16:45.100 If they have been doing that for this long, they're going to keep it up.

00:16:50.420 This is not going to stop.

00:16:52.840 And it's a reminder that the apparently feckless policies of the Biden administration, which I don't think are feckless.

00:17:01.400 I think they're intentional.

00:17:02.780 Well, they're going to have real consequences.

00:17:03.940 I don't think the open border during Biden was just a whoopsie-daisy, you know, they just don't have their act together.

00:17:09.840 That was intentional.

00:17:11.660 But that intentional policy did allow terrorists to enter the country.

00:17:16.700 Is it because Joe Biden wanted terrorists to enter the country?

00:17:18.800 No, it's because Democrats wanted to flood the country with foreigners because they think that it will give them a permanent electoral majority.

00:17:24.300 And they're willing to take a few thousand terrorists if that's what it's going to take.

00:17:27.420 They're willing to take hundreds of thousands of kids being missing and probably in sexual slavery.

00:17:31.540 They're willing to take 60 to 80 percent of women and girls who cross the border illegally being raped or otherwise sexually assaulted along the way.

00:17:38.160 That's just the cracking of the eggs that is required to make an omelet for the Democrats.

00:17:42.940 Well, that has real effect.

00:17:45.120 And the real effect here is with all of this, not just the open border, but the corruption of the FBI, the failure of law, the undermining of law enforcement, DEI in American government.

00:17:57.520 The upshot of all of that is 2025 starts with two terrorist attacks.

00:18:02.320 There is a lot to recover.

00:18:05.660 There's a lot to work on.

00:18:08.380 Also worth pointing out, even with the New Orleans attack where we have more information than we do with the Cybertruck, we still don't know all that much about this guy.

00:18:16.340 We don't know all that much about this guy because he's got an Arab name.

00:18:19.340 But there are some reports that he has really no Arab connection, that he might just be a regular old black guy with an assumed name.

00:18:26.680 You know, during the black power movement in the 70s, a lot of just regular black guys took on Muslim names because of the Nation of Islam and strange black nationalist ideologies.

00:18:37.100 Again, we just don't know.

00:18:38.420 We don't know anything about this.

00:18:39.540 There's a chance he's not Arab. 0.99

00:18:41.140 He just pledged his support to ISIS out of some ideology.

00:18:44.860 We just don't know.

00:18:46.560 We just don't know.

00:18:48.280 But an inauspicious start to the new year.

00:18:51.440 Now, speaking of immigration and Elon, the big story that took place over the break was the H-1B controversy.

00:19:00.440 The H-1B controversy.

00:19:01.900 This didn't involve Arabs.

00:19:04.100 This didn't involve black nationalists.

00:19:05.940 This didn't involve Venezuelans or Guatemalans crossing the border.

00:19:09.600 This involved Indians. 0.95

00:19:12.140 A huge fight broke out over H-1B visas.

00:19:16.280 These are visas offered to foreigners to come work in the United States.

00:19:22.540 The most prominent example would be Indians being brought over to work in tech.

00:19:26.700 There aren't that many of these visas.

00:19:27.980 I think it's something like 85,000 per year.

00:19:30.640 Still, though, 85,000 is a big number if you're one of the 85,000 people that loses your job in America to a foreigner. 0.62

00:19:38.300 And it became a major controversy and it exposed a big split within the American right.

00:19:43.700 A big split even within the MAGA movement where you had immigration restrictionists, where you had traditionalists, cultural conservatives on one side saying we need to restrict immigration.

00:19:54.400 And you had the more libertarian, more classically liberal types on the other side saying, no, no, no.

00:20:00.860 We want to bring in all the best foreigners from overseas.

00:20:04.040 And some Americans might lose their jobs.

00:20:06.200 But the whole purpose of it is just to bring in all these super geniuses.

00:20:10.160 That will really help America.

00:20:11.520 America, this took over social media, I think in part because people were bored a little bit over Christmas.

00:20:16.560 But it's not a minor debate.

00:20:18.700 This issue is relatively minor, the H-1B visa issue.

00:20:21.440 But it signifies a much deeper divide on the right.

00:20:24.740 And it is a debate that we cannot escape.

00:20:26.520 The stakes are very, very high.

00:20:28.020 We'll get to that in one moment.

00:20:28.980 First, though, I hope at some point over Christmas, or maybe now, because people are getting back into the swing of things.

00:20:35.160 And also, Christmas is still going on, because Christmas is 12 days long.

00:20:38.920 I hope that you checked out my yes or no game with John Crist.

00:20:43.980 Great comedian.

00:20:45.440 Let's say it was a rollicking good time.

00:20:47.060 If you want to play yes or no, you go to dailywire.com slash shop.

00:20:50.120 You get the yes or no game.

00:20:51.260 You get the expansion packs.

00:20:54.180 Philosophy, politics, and religion.

00:20:55.840 The conspiracy theories.

00:20:57.200 Maybe some more coming out.

00:20:58.620 Go play it at home with your family.

00:21:00.360 Best way to figure out who knows whom best.

00:21:02.100 First, real conversation starter.

00:21:03.900 I'm sure after all of your holiday meals, you definitely want some more of those.

00:21:07.780 Go check that game out and go check out the show right now.

00:21:13.080 Oh, mention never take a paternity leave.

00:21:15.760 Not because there's anything wrong with taking care of the family, but because you don't want people to think you're a lesbian. 1.00

00:21:20.880 Okay, I didn't read the end of that.

00:21:23.460 Hold on.

00:21:24.180 Hold on.

00:21:32.100 You can get the full episode on the Michael Knowles YouTube channel, or you can subscribe to Daily Wire Plus, and you get it all exclusive, uncensored, ad-free, dailywireplus.com.

00:21:53.360 Should we take more Indians to fill our tech jobs? 1.00

00:21:56.660 That was the big debate that broke out on the American right over Christmas.

00:22:02.120 And Elon Musk, a man to whom we owe quite a lot, we conservatives.

00:22:08.360 The man who put his money where our mouth is and bought Twitter, gave conservatives at least a little bit of a space to talk in big tech, $44 billion worth.

00:22:16.340 The man who endorsed Donald Trump, I think, brought a lot of people over, who helped Republican candidates.

00:22:21.600 He came out, he said, this issue, H-1B, is a major issue for him.

00:22:27.340 He's willing to go to war over it.

00:22:28.400 He said, the reason I'm in America, along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong, is because of H-1B. 0.98

00:22:37.220 Take a big step back, and I'll clean this up for a family show, but it's all caps.

00:22:42.160 F-U-C-K yourself in the face. 0.97

00:22:44.200 I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.

00:22:49.160 Now, he got a lot of pushback from people in the MAGA base who said, hey, what we want to conserve here is not the profits of various companies.

00:23:00.460 What we want to conserve is the American way of life.

00:23:03.260 We want to protect the American workers.

00:23:05.100 So much of the realignment that took place over the last 10 years under Trump's leadership of the GOP is that the GOP is the working class party, the libs are the party of the elites.

00:23:13.540 That was not true when I was a kid.

00:23:15.000 That wasn't apparently true when I was a kid.

00:23:17.200 That is true now.

00:23:18.320 So he said, hold on.

00:23:18.800 You can't sell out American workers just because you want to get some people from India to work the tech jobs and pay them much lower wages than you would have to pay to Americans.

00:23:26.860 So on the pro-H-1B side, you have the corporations and the libertarians and the tech guys saying, no, no, it's not about lower wages.

00:23:37.320 It's about a dearth of talent in America.

00:23:40.280 We just don't have Americans who are smart enough, who are educated enough to fill these jobs. 0.99

00:23:45.460 These dummy Americans, they just can't figure it out. 1.00

00:23:47.580 But the anti-H-1B side said, no, you know, look, maybe Americans aren't great at these jobs yet, but that's because of failures of the schools.

00:23:56.800 And actually, you know what, forget about that.

00:23:58.360 Americans aren't good at these jobs and you guys are just trying to save some money. 0.95

00:24:00.900 And you're importing foreigners and you're totally disregarding the desires of cultural conservatives and people who want to maintain a cohesive culture. 0.83

00:24:09.180 Polity is not just about an economy.

00:24:11.440 We're not a society serving GDP.

00:24:14.120 We're not a society serving the market.

00:24:16.240 The market exists to serve us, to serve our political ends.

00:24:19.540 We don't want to let the tail wag the dog here.

00:24:22.020 That was the fight.

00:24:22.700 So one of the critics of the pro-H-1B side was D.C. Drano, who pointed out, hold on, even when you get down to the nitty-gritty on who's getting these H-1B visas, it's not just the 0.001% super geniuses who start major corporations.

00:24:38.560 It's not the Elon Musks of the world.

00:24:40.820 It's people who make $22,000 a year to be a cook.

00:24:45.380 One of the examples they pulled out, because you can look this stuff up, this federal information, you can figure out who gets the H-1B visas.

00:24:52.700 $22,000 for cook number three.

00:24:54.400 You're telling me we can't find cook number three in America?

00:24:57.000 You need some genius coder from India? 1.00

00:25:00.240 You need some Punjabi genius to come be cook number three? 1.00

00:25:04.200 I don't think so.

00:25:05.440 Maybe you need a Punjabi genius to make a delicious tikka masala, but you're not necessarily for any other cooking job. 0.59

00:25:13.140 Hold on.

00:25:13.700 This seems to be about a little bit more than super geniuses.

00:25:17.960 Now, what did Trump say?

00:25:19.060 How did he weigh in?

00:25:19.700 He weighed in on the pro-H-1B side.

00:25:23.300 He said, I have many H-1B visas on my properties.

00:25:25.820 I've been a believer in H-1B. 1.00

00:25:27.080 I've used it many times.

00:25:28.200 It's a great program.

00:25:29.480 Before we get into how we should think about this, as conservatives, as people who want to make America great again,

00:25:37.600 as people who have maybe a more robust and comprehensive right-wing view of things.

00:25:44.300 I want to defend President Trump for a second.

00:25:47.040 People are saying Trump is selling out his base.

00:25:49.360 He's breaking his campaign promises by embracing H-1B. 0.97

00:25:53.140 That is not true.

00:25:53.700 First of all, we have 3 million immigrants come here per year, more under Biden.

00:25:59.240 1 million illegal and then 2 million illegal or more illegal.

00:26:03.200 85,000 foreign workers getting temporary visas is a drop of a drop of a drop in the bucket.

00:26:08.740 So, in itself, it's not a huge issue, but it's significant of other issues.

00:26:13.580 But then even on the deeper point, this is what Trump campaigned on.

00:26:18.540 Trump did not campaign on restricting immigration.

00:26:22.640 I think we should restrict immigration. 1.00

00:26:24.480 I think we should drastically reduce the total number of immigrants that we take into America each year, legal and illegal. 1.00

00:26:31.680 That's my position.

00:26:33.340 That is the position of most Americans sometimes.

00:26:39.420 But that's not the position of most Americans other times.

00:26:42.240 What I mean by that is when you ask most Americans, you want more or less legal immigration.

00:26:48.440 What do you think about immigration?

00:26:50.340 What most Americans answer on public opinion polls is they want to stop illegal immigration

00:26:55.380 and they either want the same amount of legal immigration or they want even more legal immigration.

00:27:00.280 You know, we don't care who comes here just as long as they do it legally.

00:27:03.700 They go, well, all right, anybody's welcome to come to America.

00:27:06.580 America doesn't have any deeper cultural identity.

00:27:08.820 Anybody can come here if they're going to strive and make money, but they got to do it legally.

00:27:13.940 People answer that on public opinion polls.

00:27:15.860 However, when you ask people, not are you pro or anti-immigration, when you ask them,

00:27:21.840 hey, what do you think the ideal number of immigrants that we let in per year is?

00:27:27.780 The answer people give, the majority of people give, is significantly lower than the number of legal immigrants we allow in each year.

00:27:35.720 There was one poll, this was some years ago now from Harvard Harris, showed that the lion's share of Americans want immigration to be somewhere around 500,000 or less people per year.

00:27:46.860 500,000 or fewer people per year.

00:27:48.900 But we take in a million people legally each year.

00:27:52.460 That's a conservative number.

00:27:53.760 So that means that, practically speaking, the vast majority of Americans want to drastically reduce, cut it in half, the number of legal immigrants we take per year.

00:28:03.840 But they don't think that that's their position.

00:28:06.060 They think their position is illegal bad, legal good.

00:28:09.080 But their actual position, if they knew the numbers, is to drastically reduce all immigration.

00:28:13.660 It's just a case of our liberal establishment being so good at hiding how many people we brought into America that no one really knows.

00:28:23.420 No one has any idea how many foreigners we bring into our country every year. 1.00

00:28:26.900 And it's nothing against foreigners, especially Indians.

00:28:28.920 I love Indians.

00:28:29.800 I've been to India twice.

00:28:30.960 I played the sitar.

00:28:32.780 One of my best friends, I can say this sincerely, one of my very best friends is Indian from India.

00:28:37.700 I love the Indian culture, okay?

00:28:39.180 But an immigration policy is not just based on which foreign countries you like the most or what kinds of flavors of dinners you like the most.

00:28:51.980 We've just taken in so many foreigners.

00:28:54.440 We have the highest foreign-born percentage of the population that we've ever had in America.

00:28:59.620 It's at record highs, over 15%.

00:29:02.340 So, does that, just ask yourself, is there any limit to how many foreigners we can take in? 0.60

00:29:11.180 If you just, if you took in 300 million foreigners, if you took in 600 million foreigners, now two-thirds of the country is foreign.

00:29:17.760 If you took in, I don't know, more than that.

00:29:19.460 At a certain point, doesn't America cease to be America?

00:29:22.460 Well, some people would say, no, no, no.

00:29:25.700 America is just the Constitution.

00:29:27.300 America's just an idea. 0.94

00:29:28.640 It's just an idea floating in the ether.

00:29:31.320 And anyone who comes in and has this idea injected into their brains, then they're automatically American.

00:29:37.100 I don't think that's true.

00:29:38.640 I don't think that's how any nation works.

00:29:41.120 I think it's the people.

00:29:42.880 And I think it takes a little while to become an American.

00:29:46.000 I think it actually might take generations to pick up on all the subtle cultural complexities of what it means to be an American.

00:29:54.820 I'm not saying we can't take in foreigners.

00:29:56.180 We should take in some foreigners. 1.00

00:29:57.080 But it takes a while to assimilate.

00:30:00.400 We have manifestly not assimilated people.

00:30:04.120 And we have manifestly ignored cultural matters in service of radical ideology and money for decades.

00:30:14.100 The movement of people into the United States over the last 60, 70 years is the largest movement of people ever in recorded history.

00:30:20.520 It's just a little too much.

00:30:21.940 So where does that leave us?

00:30:25.260 Vivek, my friend Vivek Ramaswamy, he tweeted out, he waded into this debate.

00:30:30.040 He said, merit or group quotas, you can't have both.

00:30:32.260 I've said it for years.

00:30:32.860 It remains my view today.

00:30:33.720 So he's saying we need a pure meritocracy.

00:30:35.240 But the question is, what do we mean by merit?

00:30:38.180 So, again, people are like knocking Elon and Vivek.

00:30:42.060 I think their views are much more complex.

00:30:43.720 Vivek himself said, I've long said the current H-1B system is badly broken, needs to be gutted.

00:30:49.080 It shouldn't use a lottery.

00:30:50.060 It should be based on pure merit.

00:30:51.400 It shouldn't tether workers to just one corporation.

00:30:53.560 Same principles I favor today.

00:30:54.440 There's another reason the corporations love H-1B is because the workers lose their visas if they leave the corporation.

00:30:59.720 So it just gives them basically indentured servants, people that they can pay low wages to, who are totally beholden to them, or they get kicked out of the country.

00:31:06.800 Musk, for his side, also walked back his comments a little bit.

00:31:11.620 He said, no question that H-1B needs to be overhauled.

00:31:14.600 My question, though, is, what do we mean by merit?

00:31:18.320 The way this debate is being framed is it's merit versus entitlement.

00:31:22.020 What do we mean by merit, though?

00:31:25.220 Merit could mean a lot of things.

00:31:26.360 Merit could mean smart foreigners merit jobs in America because they're so smart and they're so good in engineering.

00:31:33.660 And you might say, yeah, okay, they merit it.

00:31:35.020 That's like the free market, libertarian, sort of libertarian view of merit.

00:31:41.920 There's another view of merit, though, the critical race theory view of merit.

00:31:44.740 The leftist view of merit is that non-white people merit special treatment and advantages at the expense of white people because of slavery or whatever, because of oppression. 0.70

00:31:57.980 There's another view.

00:31:58.900 This is maybe my own view and the social conservative view, which is I think Americans merit priority in their own country.

00:32:06.800 I think American citizens merit, they deserve being prioritized by their own government in their own country.

00:32:15.120 And they shouldn't have to compete with foreign workers all over the world.

00:32:19.180 Maybe we don't deny market dynamics, but maybe we give Americans a little bit of a special treatment, a treatment that they actually deserve and they merit.

00:32:27.660 Because this word merit, we use this word meritocracy, I don't use that word meritocracy, but some people do, especially libertarians and more classically liberal people.

00:32:38.160 But it's a euphemism that just conceals a conception of justice.

00:32:44.640 And so that's what we're really arguing over.

00:32:47.420 Is the conception of justice a total worship of the free market?

00:32:50.800 Yeah, it's, you know, the world is flat.

00:32:52.980 Everyone should compete with everyone.

00:32:54.240 Maybe all the Americans lose their jobs, but hey, GDP will tick up a little bit.

00:32:58.000 And don't you like Chinese food and Indian food?

00:33:01.200 That's one version.

00:33:02.060 There's the leftist version of justice, which is basically white people are bad and every other person is good. 0.85

00:33:06.500 Men are bad and women are good. 0.95

00:33:08.200 And, you know, so that's their version of justice.

00:33:10.340 I prefer a classical view of justice grounded in the natural law, grounded in our Christian tradition, grounded in just the American heritage and how we've always kind of done things.

00:33:21.540 So, to wrap it up a little bit, because I know what you're going to hear from the libs, I actually already heard this when I expressed this view, is they said, oh, Michael Knowles is embracing critical race theory.

00:33:32.820 He's questioning meritocracy.

00:33:34.180 No, no, no.

00:33:35.540 Believe it or not, there are critiques of liberalism from the right that are different than critiques from the left.

00:33:42.520 And so what's my solution to the whole H-1B thing?

00:33:46.560 My solution is not some ideology.

00:33:48.880 It's not some neat policy that you can write in five bullet points on a napkin that should be eternally true for all times.

00:33:56.160 My prescription is prudence, which Aristotle called the paramount political virtue, which is at the core of conservative politics.

00:34:05.740 Prudence.

00:34:07.260 Should we reduce the number of foreigners we let into our country through immigration or even through visa worker programs? 1.00

00:34:13.320 Yeah, probably we should.

00:34:15.040 So we shouldn't let people in anymore?

00:34:18.060 No, I didn't say we shouldn't let anyone in, but probably we should reduce it.

00:34:21.060 Why?

00:34:21.660 Why?

00:34:22.020 What's your ideology?

00:34:23.260 What's your highly rationalistic policy wonk white paper?

00:34:27.460 I don't know.

00:34:28.040 I guess just it seems like we got a cultural problem right now.

00:34:31.700 People aren't assimilating.

00:34:32.840 Americans don't like that.

00:34:33.920 They voted against this.

00:34:34.960 They regularly express their views on this.

00:34:36.740 And we should probably support them for right now.

00:34:40.740 Doesn't mean it won't change in the future.

00:34:43.280 We should probably just go on gut a little bit.

00:34:47.040 We should probably look to the wisdom of the ages.

00:34:49.720 And we should probably just say, you know, we're kind of losing the American identity.

00:34:52.420 We don't really know who we are anymore.

00:34:53.820 The country's kind of going to hell in a handbasket.

00:34:55.840 And I'm not willing to sell out the soul of my country for a slightly higher GDP.

00:34:59.600 So, you know, for right now, probably got to take fewer people in.

00:35:03.660 That's that.

00:35:04.540 The liberal mind cannot comprehend.

00:35:06.300 The classical liberal, the progressive liberal, they can't comprehend the basic element of politics, of political thinking, which is prudence.

00:35:17.840 How about we just be a little prudent, guys?

00:35:20.860 You know, 2024 ended on a high note.

00:35:24.100 2025 wasted no time reminding us of the challenges that we face.

00:35:28.680 Yesterday's terror attack in New Orleans and the cyber truck explosion outside of President Trump's hotel in Las Vegas showed that the fight for truth is more important than ever.

00:35:36.480 This is why we're here, to cut through the noise, bring you the facts, and ask the questions the establishment media refuse to.

00:35:41.740 If you are ready to stand with us on the front lines of this battle, now's the time.

00:35:45.140 Get live breaking news, uncensored daily shows, and the absolute best in investigative journalism from the most trusted and handsome voices in conservative media.

00:35:53.180 Join the fight today, dailywire.com slash subscribe.

00:35:56.720 My favorite comment yesterday, I don't know, it was probably over a week ago, from SlapMyBase3825 says,

00:36:03.940 Props to Michael for working the day before Christmas Eve.

00:36:06.320 Most people would just start their vacations early.

00:36:08.540 Thank you for that.

00:36:09.080 I actually, maybe I mentioned this on that show, I was Scrooge this Christmas because Jeremy, nice, generous Jeremy, tells people two weeks off, unless your supervisor says otherwise.

00:36:25.660 But nice, generous Jeremy says, hey, the employees, you've worked very hard this year, it's been a crazy election, two weeks off.

00:36:30.420 But I don't want to take two weeks off.

00:36:31.740 First of all, because staying home and, like, juggling children all day is actually much more exhausting.

00:36:37.960 Mr. Davies and I have discovered over the past two weeks.

00:36:41.020 But also because I love the show, and there's a lot of stuff happening, and I miss all of you.

00:36:45.180 So anyway, I'm glad that you support my Scrooginess and stealing Christmas away from the staff.

00:36:52.460 One final point on this meritocracy, justice, H-1B, this whole thing. 0.78

00:37:02.980 There's another little debate that's broken out on the internet right, and it's over the woke right.

00:37:08.980 You might have heard this term.

00:37:10.880 The woke right.

00:37:11.640 What is the woke right?

00:37:12.880 I looked into it a little bit.

00:37:16.660 The best I can tell is, when you ask libertarians, classical liberals, neocons, those types, what is the woke right?

00:37:27.700 They'll say it's right-wingers who are not true liberals.

00:37:32.520 They're not sufficiently liberal.

00:37:33.680 But then you ask other people on the right what the woke right is, and they'll say, you know, you ask the traditionalists, you ask the religious right, you ask the, I don't know, other non-liberal right-wingers.

00:37:45.640 And they'll say, the woke right is people on the right who are too conservative, or sorry, who are too liberal.

00:37:53.940 And so you say, hold on, the phrase means opposite.

00:37:56.700 I think it's a meaningless phrase.

00:38:00.760 But the reason this debate matters, the H-1B debate matters, the reason the woke right thing, which I think is ridiculous, matters, is because this is a battle that's been simmering for a long time.

00:38:12.180 The conservative movement, such as it is in America, the American right, has always been cobbled together of ideological factions that are incoherent together.

00:38:20.980 Libertarians, traditionalists, the religious right, populists, neocons, country club set, the chamber of commerce, war hawks, doves, people who don't want to go to war, you name it.

00:38:34.800 There are these incoherent factions on the right, and they come together to form a coalition to beat the libs sometimes, the left.

00:38:41.840 I should say the left, because we have liberals who are on the right also.

00:38:45.240 But the left has an advantage sometimes, which is they are ideologically totally unified.

00:38:52.800 They're all progressives.

00:38:54.540 There was Joe Manchin.

00:38:55.900 He's not a Democrat anymore.

00:38:57.460 They're all progressives.

00:38:58.640 But on the right, we're just fighting over what it means.

00:39:01.800 This is the same kind of debate that you saw in the 1950s, Frederick Hayek versus Russell Kirk.

00:39:07.920 This is the same debate you saw in the 2000s between Pat Buchanan and the Bushies.

00:39:13.700 In some ways, this is the same debate you saw in the 80s between Ronald Reagan and George Bush I.

00:39:20.080 There's just competing sides that want to claim the American right for themselves.

00:39:26.260 And I think this is the latest version of it.

00:39:27.920 But no, guys, we don't need to just open our borders.

00:39:31.160 We don't need to tell the American worker he's got to compete against the entire globe or he's going to lose his job.

00:39:35.900 We don't need to sacrifice our society and our cohesion on the altar of the free market.

00:39:43.900 We don't have to deny the reality of the family.

00:39:46.960 We don't need to sell little babies down the river to people who want to kill them because we want to cut taxes more and we think that that'll help us.

00:39:55.900 You don't have to do that.

00:39:59.120 There is a deep kind of conservatism.

00:40:01.480 There are things that matter more than corporations making slightly higher profits.

00:40:06.980 Corporations making profits is important too.

00:40:09.240 But there are deeper things to politics.

00:40:11.120 So there's a little bit of good news.

00:40:13.160 Mr. Beast is engaged.

00:40:16.220 This is the silver lining over a generally rough news cycle.

00:40:21.160 Why do I care that Mr. Beast is engaged?

00:40:25.700 I don't ever think I've seen a full Mr. Beast video.

00:40:28.660 No knock on him.

00:40:29.260 He's the most popular YouTuber ever.

00:40:30.560 I don't think I'm really the audience.

00:40:31.980 This guy has 340 million subscribers.

00:40:35.160 He has an estimated net worth of $1 billion.

00:40:39.080 He's obviously doing something effective.

00:40:42.260 But I love that he's getting married because he's 26 years old.

00:40:48.620 The median age of an American man getting married is 30.2 years old.

00:40:56.840 We have a big problem in this country that we don't have babies. 1.00

00:41:01.240 We're a dying country.

00:41:02.680 That's why the liberal establishment gets away with importing so many foreigners every year. 1.00

00:41:07.940 It's why they argue they have to import all the foreigners. 1.00

00:41:10.140 It's because we have a dying country and our country will collapse.

00:41:12.460 We'll lose our imperial hegemony.

00:41:13.760 Our economy will collapse if we don't keep the foreigners coming to boost the welfare state and grow our numbers. 1.00

00:41:21.500 Because Americans aren't having kids. 0.99

00:41:23.040 Now, the social conservatives will say, yeah, well, part of the reason Americans aren't having kids is because you can't raise a family on one income anymore.

00:41:28.660 Part of the reason you can't do that is because we're competing in this race to the bottom with low wages from peasants from Latin America 1.00

00:41:34.840 and tech workers from Asia and South Asia who are being paid cheap wages and basically indentured servants.

00:41:44.000 So it's kind of a chicken and the egg issue.

00:41:46.380 But it brings me back to Mr. Beast.

00:41:47.840 I love that Mr. Beast is engaged at the age of 26, especially because his channel had a problem where his sidekick decided to abandon his family,

00:41:55.200 his wife and his child, to engage in some ridiculous fetishism, the trans ideology, and it was so disgusting. 0.53

00:42:02.140 Finally, he got the axe on the Mr. Beast show.

00:42:03.880 So I thought, oh, no, this is a very left-wing show.

00:42:05.600 I don't know what it is.

00:42:06.280 But I just love to see that a guy who has 340 million followers, who's got a massive platform, the biggest platform in the history of YouTube,

00:42:15.360 YouTube, arguably the biggest media platform in the history of the world,

00:42:18.740 that that guy is getting married, or at least is engaged to be married, six years younger than the current median age to get married.

00:42:28.100 If you want, there are individual things we have to do.

00:42:31.740 You want to fix corruption in the FBI?

00:42:33.740 We need a new FBI director ASAP.

00:42:35.800 Kash Patel cannot take office soon enough.

00:42:39.100 You want to fix law enforcement?

00:42:41.540 Well, we need to figure out who carried out this attack, who he was working with in New Orleans or in Las Vegas.

00:42:47.780 They're individual things.

00:42:49.180 You've got to work out your immigration issues, seal up the border, find missing, hundreds of thousands of missing children,

00:42:54.340 as the new borders are.

00:42:55.260 Tom Homan mentioned, maybe we'll get to that tomorrow.

00:42:56.920 You have to do all these things.

00:42:59.300 But if you zoom out a little bit and you look at the big picture, the immigration crisis is happening because we don't have kids.

00:43:06.900 We don't have kids because we have adopted a contraceptive mentality that tells us that having big families is bad, 0.57

00:43:15.460 that there's no obligation, there's no purpose to marriage.

00:43:18.400 We don't even know what marriage is.

00:43:19.400 We redefine marriage.

00:43:20.480 We redefine marriage because we don't know what men and women are.

00:43:22.760 And that goes back much earlier than recent years.

00:43:25.260 That goes back all the way to the 1970s or even earlier than that.

00:43:29.720 It's because we don't live a conservative life.

00:43:34.920 And so if the people in our country are not encouraged to do the things at an individual and a familial level that make countries strong,

00:43:42.940 you're going to have a weak country.

00:43:44.000 And you're not going to be able to fix those political problems with just some guy getting elected to office.

00:43:52.080 That can help a little bit, but you're not going to fix that.

00:43:55.960 You need the people to live a good conservative life.

00:44:00.240 That's the only way you get a good conservative country.

00:44:03.340 Some politician can't do that for you. 1.00

00:44:05.620 And if I see any even glimmer of hope, some guy, the biggest guy on YouTube saying,

00:44:11.480 hey, marriage is cool.

00:44:12.560 I'm going to do it younger.

00:44:14.440 And I'm going to marry some pretty girl and I hope they have kids immediately. 0.62

00:44:17.320 That would be a very good sign for the culture.

00:44:19.940 2024 showed us that whatever the pendulum had been doing in recent years,

00:44:25.080 it stopped and it started swinging back.

00:44:26.980 I hope that this is just the latest bit of evidence that the swing back is going to go a lot further and correct some of those problems.

00:44:33.580 We have no member block because I'm trapped in my home and it's apparently difficult to do.

00:44:37.600 So anyway, we've got the show tomorrow and then we'll be back in the studio next week.

00:44:41.320 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:44:41.980 This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:44:42.840 See you then.

The Michael Knowles Show - January 02, 2025

Ep. 1643 - Deadly Attack, Lightning Strikes, & An Explosion At Trump Hotel

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