Ep. 165 - Boyz To Men： DeNiro, Trudeau, Trump
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
184.40715
Summary
I am back from my honeymoon in Hawaii, and I have so much to talk about! My bachelor party, my wedding, my now full week of experience as a married man has got me thinking about manliness. At a time when the culture encourages boys to become girls, we will discuss boys to men. From little boys like Robert De Niro and Justin Trudeau, all the way to Donald Trump, good old men. With a word also on Charles Krauthammer and his manliness to boot. Then, why IHOP s rebranding to the International House of Burgers is a brilliant marketing strategy directly influenced by the Trump phenomenon. Finally, it is pride all the time. Let s all celebrate.
Transcript
00:00:00.480
Aloha hoa. I am bronzed, bound, and back from my honeymoon in Hawaii after marrying sweet little Elisa last week.
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That's right, I'm sorry ladies, but I am now Mr. Sweet Little Elisa. Take a look at the ring.
00:00:13.600
My bachelor party, my wedding, my now full week of experience as a married man has got me thinking about manliness.
00:00:20.700
At a time when the culture encourages boys to become girls, we will discuss boys to men.
00:00:25.940
From little boys like Robert De Niro and Justin Trudeau, all the way to Donald Trump, good old men.
00:00:32.400
With a word also on Charles Krauthammer and his manliness to boot.
00:00:36.680
Then, why IHOP's rebranding to the International House of Burgers is a brilliant marketing strategy directly influenced by the Trump phenomenon.
00:00:45.140
Finally, it is pride all the time. Let's all celebrate. Let's celebrate pride all the time.
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During this all the time, it's the time to celebrate pride.
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We will celebrate superbia with an historical retrospective on pride from man's earliest days.
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I'm Michael Knowles and this is the Michael Knowles Show.
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I have so much to talk to you about. I have missed you so much.
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And I have so much, I can't believe. Did anything happen while I was gone?
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Before we get to that, gotta keep the lights on over here.
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I figured I'd come back to this place and it would just be rubble.
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This entire broom closet that I broadcast from would be pure rubble.
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And they'd be putting up, I don't know, the Ben Shapiro 2 show or something.
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And one of the people we have to thank for that is Blue Apron.
00:01:38.960
I have a way to really eat the Blue Apron properly.
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Which is having Mrs. Sweet Little Elisa cook it.
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But Blue Apron, it is basically all I eat at home.
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Blue Apron delivers farm-fresh ingredients and step-by-step recipes to your door.
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The mission is to make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone.
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Blue Apron achieves this by supporting a more sustainable food system,
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highest standards for ingredients, and building a community of home chefs.
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I got to tell you, the ingredients that come from Blue Apron are all top, top-notch.
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The meat and the produce, it is all really good.
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I've never had a recipe that I haven't thought, oh, that's really good.
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And then what's nice is once you finish the recipe,
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then you can go out and just recreate it yourself.
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Because Blue Apron is constantly changing the recipes.
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You're not just going to get a hamburger every night or something.
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The two-person meal plan, meals that serve two regular people or one gavon, such as myself.
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You can choose from eight new recipes per week with the choice to receive either two or three recipes any week.
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Family meal plan, that serves four people or one gavon, such as myself.
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You can choose four new recipes per week and choose to receive either two, three, or four recipes every week.
00:03:03.000
And the wine plan, six bottles of wine from renowned winemakers.
00:03:06.020
That can serve a family or one gavon, such as myself.
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Check out this week's menu and get your first three meals for free at blueapron.com slash covfefe.
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I know it's my wedding, but I'm giving you a wedding gift.
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I actually have, because I was sunning on beautiful Waikiki, and it was really nice.
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Met a great Daily Wire listener there, a very cool guy.
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I won't say his name because he'll lose his job.
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And so I'm floating around there in Waikiki, and I got to tell you something.
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But after a while, bobbing along on the ocean, it feels really nice.
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George Bernard Shaw said that hell is the place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.
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I could have used another few days, maybe, of just amusing myself.
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For those of you who are just listening, I'm a little bit crispy after my time there.
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We have finally solved the age-old question, are Sicilians white?
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The answer is not much of the time, and not after being on the beach.
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This is, by the way, after slathering myself in, like, 60 SPF constantly.
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I will give you my thoughts on marriage, what I've learned in my vast time as a married man,
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It turns out marriage is mostly people giving you a lot of presents and then eating dinner
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in tuxedos and then sunning yourself on a beach.
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I didn't know any of that before I got married.
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Marriage has me thinking a lot about manliness.
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Because, you know, look, I'm not exactly a hulking mass of masculinity.
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I'm not a great Adonis of a man or something like that.
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But in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, I've noticed.
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In the early 80s, there were a lot more people getting married.
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Two and a half million marriages happened in the United States every single year.
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Even though the population has grown tremendously over that time by 100 million people or something
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like that, now just over 2 million people, 2 million marriages happen every year.
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So there's a 40% increase in population and yet half a million fewer marriages happen every
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But a lot of people just don't get married at all.
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So the median might be 29, but a lot of people just aren't getting married.
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The Urban Institute reports that the marriage rate might drop among millennials to 70% or
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That is way, way down from previous generations.
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The late boomers who came in the late stage of the baby boom, 87%.
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That number drops precipitously for millennials if the present trends continue.
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I think it's about a crisis of manliness and all these attacks on the toxic masculinity and
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these bad images we have of what manliness really is.
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We've totally lost the sense of manliness in that Harvey Mansfield kind of way, the Aristotelian
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kind of way, being a gentleman, being a virtuous guy.
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And just to underscore the difference between boys and men, little boys becoming men, you know,
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I think he really sums up that little boy very well.
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You sit in a room of Hollywood and New York actors.
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This is what Stanislavski created his system for.
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What Robert De Niro is doing is actually what little boys do, but it's a caricature of
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This is the least courageous thing he could do, to get out there and say the thing that
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everybody wants to hear and be just as vulgar as everybody wants to be and not add anything
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If he had come out and supported Donald Trump, that would have required some courage, right?
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He could be blackballed from Hollywood, as a lot of our friends have been.
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He could have his show canceled, as some of our friends have had their shows canceled.
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I like to start on this one because it really shows that difference.
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Are you the real thing or are you just part of the show?
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Are you just going to try to pretend and be one on TV?
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One of my favorite news stories that came out while I was still on my honeymoon is this
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If Justin Trudeau did not exist, we would have to invent him, of course, the wonderful
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prime minister of Canada who runs around in little rainbow booty shorts waving flags
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and says that we have to call criminals and terrorists and things nice names and all of that.
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And the G7, this group of seven countries, basically went well.
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The G7 is this group of countries, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom
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And it was founded in the 70s to work on these big economic initiatives because in the 70s,
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you had the collapse of the exchange rate, the energy crisis, recession, stagflation, right?
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And so they decided to bring them, bring all the finance ministers together and they would
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And it's blown into this big Hollywood fest, basically.
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But now the heads of state go and they have a lot of warm and fuzzy virtue signaling.
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And it has really veered far away from its original purpose.
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And it's mostly just a show for the cameras and to get nice photo ops.
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Justin Trudeau, the first female prime minister of Canada, I think, hosted a...
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I think they probably have had female prime ministers.
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We'll have a producer Google that in the meantime.
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Justin Trudeau hosted a conference on feminism at the G7.
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I don't know what that conference on feminism is going to do for the global economy or whatever,
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So he hosts this women's empowerment feminism conference.
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And right out of Hollywood scripting, right out of central casting,
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Sits next to Christine Lagarde and Angela Merkel.
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Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund,
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and Angela Merkel, the woman who single-handedly destroyed Europe.
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And by the way, there was this picture that went around,
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and it's very funny because he comes in late, you know,
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and Merkel's all angry and Christine Lagarde is being pretty charming and talking to him.
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And I actually have personal experience of this
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because I've mentioned before that I was a sommelier at George Soros' wedding.
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As an actor, I was cast to be a sommelier at George Soros' wedding.
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I only found out it was Soros' wedding after the fact, after I was cast in it.
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And so I ended up pouring wine for Christine Lagarde.
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and she's just a wonderful politician and really good.
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So she sits down and she's charming with Trump and they seem to be getting along.
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And then you just see Angela Merkel in the corner, like, scowling at him and all angry.
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It's a silly thing. It's not really that important.
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And so at the end, they all agreed that they would sign on to this joint statement,
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And it was boilerplate. It was the sort of leftist, whatever.
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For their beady little eyes, a flapping head so warm will rise.
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It seems that everything's gone wrong since Canada came along.
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We will explain how Justin Trudeau blew this thing up.
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Hint, spoiler alert, it's because he's not a man.
00:13:23.220
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00:13:31.580
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00:15:27.520
So Justin Trudeau blew up this G7 summit, and he blew it up because he's not a man.
00:15:41.960
It's because Justin Trudeau is a little boy because he's a little girly man.
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Donald Trump has been trying to negotiate with tariffs that Canada is putting on the United States,
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and the United States could put on Canada for a long time now.
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Larry Kudlow, Trump economic advisor, negotiated with Trudeau personally.
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And then Justin Trudeau holds this press conference and makes this statement.
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I have made it very clear to the president that it is not something we relish doing,
00:16:12.660
but it is something that we absolutely will do because Canadians, we're polite, we're reasonable,
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Now, I kind of get if you see this, you'd say, oh, that's not so bad.
00:16:31.640
Because it's this catty, bratty, mean girl, backstabbing deception.
00:16:39.280
You know, people are saying about Donald Trump, they're saying, Trump is being mean to our allies.
00:16:45.320
Justin Trudeau is not how allies should behave.
00:16:50.920
They had negotiated about reducing certain tariffs that Canada is imposing on U.S. goods
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and in exchange for concessions from the United States on trade.
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And then they're going to go out and have this nice communique and everything's all hunky-dory.
00:17:05.140
And then he comes out and he says, but you're not going to push us around, Donald Trump.
00:17:10.320
I bet he didn't say that to Donald Trump's face.
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I bet he didn't say that to Larry Kudlow's face, did he?
00:17:14.980
No, I bet to his face he said, oh, hey, how about we all go out and sign this communique, eh?
00:17:20.800
And then he goes out because he's a little boy and stabs him in the back.
00:17:26.520
It really, this is not, some conservatives right now are saying, oh, come on.
00:17:36.920
Because, of course, the Trump aides came out and they said, Peter Navarro at Trump Aides said
00:17:42.280
that there's a special place in hell reserved for Justin Trudeau for stabbing him in the back,
00:17:48.120
you know, and Kudlow came out and attacked him.
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The United States should not be pushed around by Justin Trudeau.
00:18:06.100
Because, by the way, Donald Trump is in the right here, in the negotiation.
00:18:14.640
The left and the Trump critics on the right are trying to pretend like Donald Trump and
00:18:20.300
his supporters want massive tariffs on goods to hike everybody's taxes.
00:18:26.780
But right now, as the president pointed out, as Larry Kudlow pointed out, Canada has dairy
00:18:32.160
tariffs on United States dairy, upwards of 270 percent, possibly upwards of 295 percent.
00:18:43.560
And then the minute that we say that we're going to retaliate, they say you're starting
00:18:48.500
Or maybe there isn't a trade war, and maybe we're just negotiating on trade, as nations
00:18:56.160
But what Justin Trudeau does is he says, I'm going to get my last minute snipe in when
00:19:02.260
Yeah, I'm going to get the, you know, it's like when you're arguing with a child, and
00:19:12.340
You say, well, why'd you have to do that at the end?
00:19:16.560
The timing is really awful, because we're going into this Kim summit.
00:19:21.020
We're going into the Kim Jong-un North Korea summit, and he gets this last minute snipe
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And I'm really glad that Trump responded in the way he did.
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He said, okay, you want to get your little snipe in?
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I hope you enjoyed the G7, but we're not going to tolerate this.
00:19:39.720
It's an important point about manliness, because people think that we just need everyone
00:19:56.660
We've got Angela Merkel leaning over the chancellor of Germany, single-handed destroyer of Europe.
00:20:04.340
And then in that same photo, you've got Trump and Bolton and Abe of Japan, just arms crossed,
00:20:12.700
not budging, just not Trump staring her right back in her face.
00:20:17.600
Merkel, Angela Merkel flooded Europe with millions of lightly vetted or totally unvetted Muslim immigrants.
00:20:25.000
Meanwhile, crimes, rapes, terror attacks are surging all across Europe.
00:20:33.660
She's not going to tell us how to run our country, how to run global trade and globalization.
00:20:38.720
She's used globalization to help destroy her continent.
00:20:41.600
And I'm glad, thank goodness, that we have a president who's going to say, no, you've done
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And maybe my predecessor let you do it, but I'm not going to let you do it.
00:20:53.560
That photo alone is basically worth the Trump presidency.
00:20:58.620
But I love it, just staring Europe in the face, the face of mass migration, open borders,
00:21:11.980
How the left sees the world, how the right sees the world, and specifically how they see
00:21:18.040
Before we do that, I couldn't do that if I didn't have shiny teeth, could I?
00:21:22.460
I wouldn't be as convincing if I had just gummy, you know, rotten teeth or something like that.
00:21:28.160
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00:21:45.680
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00:22:19.080
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So, okay, we got to, I've got more to talk about, but I do want to wrap up this manliness
00:23:48.460
point, because it's really embodied here in Mr. Trudeau.
00:23:51.700
So, the left is looking at this G7 summit and President Trump's handling of Justin Trudeau
00:24:00.540
Oh no, because little boys are desperate for the affirmation of others.
00:24:05.820
They just do what needs to be done and they don't need to be affirmed constantly in whatever
00:24:11.920
Which isn't to say that we want to be despised.
00:24:14.100
Men don't want to like be hated or something like that.
00:24:17.420
But men, which is something we should aspire to be, men, don't care about affirmation
00:24:25.500
The left keeps saying that the U.S. is isolating itself from the world.
00:24:30.140
It's probably because they're watching CNN, so they only see that fantasy.
00:24:34.740
Right now, around the world, ISIS has been defeated militarily.
00:24:38.480
Israel is building train stations dedicated to the President and the United States.
00:24:42.440
Iran's path to nuclear weapons have been slowed down.
00:24:47.120
Even France, for goodness sake, the flag of the French army, Emmanuel Macron, likes Donald
00:24:52.600
Trump, likes our president, comes on over here and says nice things about us.
00:24:56.180
You know, little boys, they can't say no, but grown men have to say no sometimes.
00:25:00.060
And sometimes we have to say no to our partners.
00:25:02.640
Donald Trump ran on getting NATO allies to start paying anything for protection, you know,
00:25:13.180
Donald Trump is the only one who accomplished it.
00:25:24.940
And by the way, you know, I've been gone a long time, so maybe I missed this.
00:25:29.000
Has the mainstream media apologized for its coverage of the Kim summit?
00:25:32.640
And with the on-again, off-again summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un on the rocks,
00:25:38.200
at least for now, what happens to that commemorative coin minted in preparation here in the United States?
00:25:46.780
You see the president and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean flag, the U.S. flag.
00:25:51.060
That's the coin that was all ready for the summit.
00:25:55.640
When news broke today that President Trump had canceled the summit with Kim Jong-un,
00:26:00.980
there was a mad rush to a White House website, not for more information about Trump's decision,
00:26:05.280
but, of course, to the gift shop for the commemorative summit coins,
00:26:09.200
where, lo and behold, the coins had been designated the deal of the day,
00:26:16.180
And, thank goodness, the shop had posted a disclaimer to dispel any concerns about the fate of the coins.
00:26:21.580
In true Trump fashion, written with almost but not quite all the words unnecessarily capitalized
00:26:28.840
the coin will be made whether or not the summit occurs as scheduled
00:26:36.620
and celebrates the act of communication among countries.
00:26:39.740
If summit does not occur, you can request a refund.
00:26:43.080
But most supporters have said they want this heirloom of political history regardless of outcome.
00:26:53.900
the page couldn't handle the volume of visitors and crashed,
00:27:04.460
Isn't that, you know what's really funny about that whole segment is it's entirely fake news
00:27:08.580
because there is no such thing as a White House gift shop.
00:27:15.720
There is a company called the White House gift shop that has no connection to the current White House.
00:27:26.000
It's funny for two reasons, the mainstream media reaction to this.
00:27:30.640
oh, you know, the White House gift shop made this coin,
00:27:38.620
Isn't it so funny that we won't have a denuclearization summit now
00:27:43.160
and hopefully bring more stability and peace to the world?
00:27:49.040
So, and now it's funny because, you know, it's happening,
00:27:53.780
and they were so excited that we might not denuclearize North Korea.
00:27:57.600
They were praying that North Korea would still get to keep their nuclear weapons,
00:28:02.920
But two, the other reason why it's really funny is that the White House never issued a coin.
00:28:12.680
There is a company called the White House gift shop, which is located in Littitz, Pennsylvania.
00:28:26.120
There did used to be a gift shop associated with the White House,
00:28:32.040
there's just this private company with a website run out of Pennsylvania.
00:28:37.400
So little boys like Chris Hayes, little mean girls,
00:28:40.080
so desperate to attack Donald Trump that they'd make up a story, whole cloth.
00:28:44.260
They celebrate canceling this denuclearization summit, even though it's still on.
00:28:52.720
This is another big difference between the little boys and men, adults, grown-ups.
00:29:00.160
Little boys are motivated disproportionately by base impulses.
00:29:13.760
Something more long-lasting than that, which is accomplishment.
00:29:17.120
Something beyond just pleasing the senses for a little bit of time,
00:29:22.660
Donald Trump was asked, you know, are you going to get the Nobel Peace Prize if you denuclearize Korea?
00:29:28.240
He said, oh, you know, a lot of people are saying I should, but I don't care about that.
00:29:34.800
And part of the reason I think he meant that is that getting a Nobel Peace Prize is absolutely meaningless.
00:29:39.360
I mean, you know, Obama got one after being president for 50 seconds or something.
00:29:45.300
So, you know, I really am pleased that we have an administration that is focused on accomplishment.
00:29:53.460
And all these little boys who want to tee-hee-hee, tee-hee-hee and spread fake news, that's fine.
00:29:59.460
But in the meantime, the real men are going to go do work in the world and actually make America great again.
00:30:10.220
We have got to get to the International House of Breakfast.
00:30:16.320
Oh, that's too bad because the International House of Breakfast is one of the most brilliant marketing strategies in a long time.
00:30:22.740
And it actually is downstream of this exuberance on the right and this Trump phenomenon.
00:30:29.160
And I'll say a little bit on Charles Krauthammer, whom I admire immensely.
00:30:34.340
Before that, I've got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
00:30:36.340
Facebook and YouTube, go over to dailywire.com right now.
00:30:39.960
It's $10 a month or $100 for an annual membership.
00:30:48.220
By the way, we're going to be hosting a little Father's Day gathering tomorrow, Tuesday, June 12th at 7 p.m. Eastern.
00:30:56.660
The Daily Wire God King himself, Jeremy Boring, will host a roundtable discussion with me, Andrew Klavan,
00:31:02.000
Ben Shapiro, and special guests, Zoe Rachel and Nick Searcy, the international film and television star, Nick Searcy,
00:31:08.960
to discuss the role of the Father in our society.
00:31:12.240
We'll be live streaming on Facebook and YouTube.
00:31:14.560
If you're a Daily Wire subscriber, go to dailywire.com to submit live questions to us,
00:31:18.180
which will be moderated by the one and only, lovely Alicia Krauss.
00:31:23.040
Again, that is tomorrow, Tuesday, June 12th, 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 Pacific.
00:31:42.200
You know, I was sipping a lot of drinks out of coconuts and pineapples last week,
00:31:51.380
Oh, how I have missed you, Leftist Tears Tumbler.
00:31:54.080
That tastes a little bit like, who was that guy in Casino and Goodfellas?
00:32:03.660
Okay, we only have a little bit of time left, so I want to get to International House of Pancakes
00:32:11.980
This is a marketing reaction to the Trump phenomenon, and it is really great.
00:32:15.940
Even the reaction to it mirrors what's happening in politics.
00:32:18.680
The consensus view of this IHOP thing is that it's crazy and terrible, and it's so stupid and awful.
00:32:26.480
In reality, it's working quite well, because the consensus view is almost always wrong.
00:32:32.300
This is, you know, you can, this is how people make money in the stock market, right?
00:32:36.060
The consensus view is almost always wrong, and people who see how it's wrong can succeed.
00:32:44.480
Whenever companies and people stop doing the thing that made them successful, and they start
00:32:48.080
pretending to be something else, that never works out well.
00:32:50.720
You know, you've got New Coke and Crystal Pepsi, and do you remember Arby's tried to be a
00:32:56.340
healthy sandwich place for like five seconds, and that was just terrible, and then they went
00:33:00.220
back to, we have the meats, and now it's good again.
00:33:07.640
John Kerry pretended to be cool that time, you know, and also we're hearing now that reports
00:33:13.000
are coming out all the time that authenticity matters in marketing, and so what is IHOP doing?
00:33:23.860
So, the consensus view is that this is a terrible idea.
00:33:31.200
You probably can't remember the last time you had a burger at IHOP.
00:33:34.060
You also probably can't remember the last time you ate at IHOP, and you certainly can't
00:33:37.920
remember the last time you talked at IHOP, talked about IHOP, rather.
00:33:42.380
You probably can't remember the last time you talked at it either, because it's like
00:33:45.220
primo drunk end-of-night food, so things get a little blurry at that point.
00:33:54.360
People only know of it as a pancake place, and they want to let people know that they also
00:33:59.120
This is a fun, light, and apparently crazy marketing stunt.
00:34:11.460
It has been a top trend on Twitter for days at this point.
00:34:15.320
This is a shrewd marketing advisor watching our culture, and it's a big shift in how marketing
00:34:20.520
In the Obama days, marketing was all about virtue signaling, right?
00:34:24.020
You remember the famously Target changing its bathroom policies.
00:34:27.480
That was really about marketing, saying we're a progressive company.
00:34:32.340
Chipotle, the food, the restaurant Chipotle, would, they'd always say, oh, we use organic,
00:34:41.840
It's all sustainable, good for the world, social entrepreneurship.
00:34:46.200
Tom's Shoes, you know, they make cheap shoes, and they donate a pair of shoes to charity when
00:34:56.380
The Obama model of politics is so tedious, all that, mm, to be a good person, you have
00:35:04.140
And then the Trump model of politics is act wild, break things, and have fun, and that's
00:35:13.800
We're going to totally change our name, and we're going to make it this whimsical, bizarre,
00:35:20.200
It's really big, and it's really bold, but what could go wrong?
00:35:22.920
We've been talking about them for days, and people are probably going to go to IHOP now,
00:35:27.460
They'll say, I want you to be the pancake house again, so I'm going to order pancakes
00:35:31.440
And they'll say, oh, gosh, you're really showing us, counting the money, right, putting it in
00:35:36.600
Speaking of bad marketing, let's talk about Pride Month.
00:35:42.920
Now, I think June is technically Pride Month, but there are also major Pride Days and events
00:35:47.820
in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November,
00:35:59.360
There are major Pride events in the United States.
00:36:01.520
This began in 1968 when a gay activist created the slogan, Gay is Good.
00:36:07.080
And the idea here was it was mirroring Stokely Carmichael's black is beautiful, so gay is
00:36:13.280
And that strategy makes sense to me, is the argument gay is good is much more compelling
00:36:21.660
The argument gay is good basically says you have this moral structure from Judaism or Christianity
00:36:27.380
or Islam or the sort of traditions of the West, and you have this moral structure that
00:36:32.880
says that gay relationships broadly aren't good, gay sexual relationships, and we're
00:36:43.520
But the argument pride is good, I don't know that anyone actually makes that.
00:36:47.320
They're just saying it, but no one really believes that.
00:36:49.240
St. Thomas, following St. Gregory's lead, considered pride, pardon the pun, the queen of all sins.
00:36:56.780
So pride is the excessive love of one's own excellence.
00:37:11.900
Recently, a CrossFit employee, Russell Berger, was fired for criticizing celebrations of pride.
00:37:21.080
The CEO of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, he called Berger a zealot, and he said that he needs
00:37:31.780
That was what the CEO of CrossFit said about his fired employee.
00:37:35.300
Because his fired employee said, I don't support pride.
00:37:42.160
And I think that the pride agenda has become very intolerant of other people's views.
00:37:48.000
And the CEO of that company said, what, you think it's intolerant?
00:37:53.900
There's Jack Phillips, that Colorado baker who had his livelihood destroyed for not wanting
00:38:00.400
to participate in something that he considers a perversion of marriage and a sin.
00:38:05.520
A Baronelle Stutzman in Washington, a florist, same thing.
00:38:11.360
Jack, no conservative, by the way, pretty left-wing guy.
00:38:14.400
He went to Chick-fil-A and he ate a chicken sandwich.
00:38:17.000
And he tweeted out a picture and he said this was a good chicken sandwich.
00:38:23.580
Soledad O'Brien said, oh, this is a pretty weird thing to tweet out on Pride Month.
00:38:29.940
I didn't mean to say I like the chicken sandwich.
00:38:36.760
Because the gay pride movement began after gay people were having their bars raided and
00:38:43.060
were arrested for their sexual practices and all this.
00:38:57.940
If you don't toe the line, you're going to get fired.
00:39:00.980
And if people say, you know, my religion tells me that I shouldn't celebrate pride, the original
00:39:14.440
People don't usually know when it's affecting them.
00:39:16.640
So, you know, these people who are pushing this agenda, the CEO of CrossFit who fires his
00:39:22.280
employee, he probably thinks he's the good guy.
00:39:25.620
And so I never understood why pride became the title for the gay rights movement.
00:39:34.140
They had a much better idea of an argument 50 years ago.
00:39:37.960
And as long as it's pride, it's hard to celebrate pride because pride is always terrible.
00:39:43.200
The last before we go, I know we're running a little on the later side, but I've got to
00:39:49.440
You saw that this actually really bummed me out on my honeymoon.
00:39:56.380
Charles Krauthammer wrote an incredible, beautiful note in which he said, my doctors have told
00:40:12.440
Thank you to everyone who's given my life's work significance.
00:40:21.680
He obviously wrote it much better than I just paraphrased it because he's a brilliant writer
00:40:26.680
And it really bummed me out because I love Charles Krauthammer.
00:40:29.680
And Charles Krauthammer is not a conservative in a really ideological sense.
00:40:37.340
He's an incredibly important writer, conservative intellectual.
00:40:41.480
But, you know, I don't think he toes the party line in many ways.
00:40:50.660
And all of the memorials are coming out for Krauthammer now.
00:40:58.960
The thing I want to point out is one of his columns that really spoke to me and told me
00:41:06.720
And it really made me understand what a sophisticated thinker he is.
00:41:10.140
And it was when they were going to build that mosque at Ground Zero.
00:41:14.960
Then there was this movement to build an Islamic center, is what it was called by the supporters
00:41:20.280
of it, and a mosque is what it was called in reality, at Ground Zero in the financial
00:41:27.480
And this was seen as just a horrible affront to people who saw Muslims in the name of Islam
00:41:34.080
knock down those twin towers and kill thousands of American civilians.
00:41:38.740
And you had people like Mike Bloomberg coming out, who was sort of a Republican, sort of a Democrat.
00:41:43.700
And he said, they should build the mosque, free speech, freedom of religion.
00:41:47.480
They should build a mosque right on the grave sites, basically.
00:41:50.380
You know, it's they should build it wherever they want.
00:41:52.400
And there was a good argument there because we have no establishment of religion.
00:41:57.400
But then there was this gut feeling where you felt, gosh, that just seems awful.
00:42:04.160
And Charles Krauthammer was the guy who made me understand why it was not a good idea to
00:42:13.320
But he wrote in his column on that center, quote, America's a free country where you
00:42:19.780
That's why we have zoning laws, no liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they
00:42:26.520
And if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.
00:42:31.500
These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics.
00:42:34.320
Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred.
00:42:38.660
No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz, and no mosque at Ground Zero.
00:42:45.960
The governor of New York offered to help find land to build the mosque elsewhere.
00:42:52.820
Raouf's ostensible hope for the structure would accept the offer.
00:42:57.260
But of course it wasn't trying to build bridges at all.
00:42:59.280
It was trying to be divisive and make a political statement and a very awful political statement.
00:43:04.380
Krauthammer, in talking about common decency and respect for the sacred, he really spoke
00:43:11.560
to something that I think the ideological conservatives miss out on sometimes, where they just basically
00:43:16.840
recite the Constitution in their sleep and they kind of forget where that Constitution springs
00:43:21.720
But Charles Krauthammer is a man of deep learning and deep wisdom and thought.
00:43:29.240
He doesn't ascribe to any particular religion, but he also said that atheism is the least plausible
00:43:36.800
I think he once said, I don't believe in God, but I fear him.
00:43:39.920
And I had the privilege of meeting him on two occasions.
00:43:42.920
And he was always graceful and funny and profound and thoughtful in what he was saying.
00:43:51.960
I think he's basically without a peer in political commentary and political thought today.
00:44:03.240
And even as he prepares to meet his maker, and he does have a maker, and it's a good thing
00:44:12.340
But even as he prepares to do that, he does it in such a manly way to talk about our main
00:44:20.860
He looks fate right in the eye and he says, I'm ready for this life to come to an end.
00:44:30.760
I've formed it how I want it to be formed and to develop.
00:44:34.600
And if this is what's coming now, I have no regrets.
00:44:39.500
And we're going to miss Charles Krauthammer, so read him while he's still here and send
00:44:44.080
out all your nice tweets to him because he's a really, really great thinker.
00:44:48.420
Okay, on that note, Drew was talking about this on his show, too, a little bit.
00:44:57.000
It's not, you know, I'm a part of humanity and all deaths diminish me and all that.
00:45:02.260
But Krauthammer in particular, he's really going to be missed.
00:45:08.240
We have some amazing guests coming up this week.
00:45:13.000
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Semia Villareal.
00:45:37.660
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.