The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 I've finally found it. After years and decades even of searching, I have finally found

00:00:05.920 the most perfect mainstream media article ever written. It comes to us thanks to President Trump

00:00:13.700 by way of Reporters Without Borders headline. Trump's foreign aid freeze throws journalism

00:00:21.220 around the world into chaos. Now, that headline alone is pretty funny. Why would the president's

00:00:28.520 enacting a policy throw journalism into chaos? Shouldn't that be good for journalism? Isn't

00:00:35.920 the president doing things the sort of thing that journalists exist to cover? Why is that throwing

00:00:43.760 journalism into chaos? We learn the reason in the subheader right here in bold. President Donald

00:00:50.700 Trump has frozen billions of dollars around the world in aid projects, including over $268 million

00:00:56.640 allocated by Congress to support independent media and the free flow of information.

00:01:02.520 I want you to hold on. Pause. Did you catch that? $268 million allocated by Congress to support

00:01:12.920 independent media. That, I'm pretty sure, is a contradiction in terms. Because media outlets

00:01:20.480 that depend for their very existence on hundreds of millions of dollars from the government

00:01:25.860 are, by definition, not independent. Those outlets are extremely dependent. They are the dependent

00:01:34.280 media. Traditionally, we call them state media, actually. But Reporters Without Borders goes on

00:01:40.460 and doubles down. The paragraph concludes by calling, quote, on international public and private

00:01:46.640 support to commit to the sustainability of independent media. Public support, that's government support

00:01:54.540 for independent media. And the demands are increasingly desperate, like the Wizard of Oz when he is revealed

00:02:00.820 as a fraud. We are the great and powerful independent media. Pay no attention to those government hacks

00:02:08.660 behind the curtain. But the jig is up. The establishment media are cut off and in freefall. No wonder they lied

00:02:17.620 and deceived and fought so hard against the facts and the will of the people to keep Trump out of office.

00:02:24.500 Their very existence depended upon it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:38.660 Welcome back to the show. President Trump has just signed one of my favorite executive orders

00:02:54.080 yet. This touches on a very politically incorrect subject. And it's not transgenderism. Enough about

00:03:00.400 transgenderism. It's an even more important subject. There's so much more to say. First,

00:03:04.800 though, go to hillsdale.edu slash Knowles. As February

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00:04:14.980 While we're talking about stupid headlines, there's one that I cannot let go.

00:04:19.460 This is probably my favorite headline I've seen in the past week or two. The Reporters Without

00:04:25.220 Borders one, that's the most perfect headline that totally sums up the farce of the fourth estate of

00:04:31.880 the great intrepid journalists and media. But this one's my favorite headline from Vox.com,

00:04:37.680 explanatory journalism from a liberal perspective. Vox.com headline, J.D. Vance accidentally,

00:04:44.980 directed us to a crucial moral question. And this is in response to J.D. Vance on television

00:04:52.680 talking about the order of charity. And some people are calling it the hierarchy of love and

00:04:57.800 the ordo amoris in Latin. J.D. Vance getting into a big fight with all of these prominent lib

00:05:03.560 journalists and Yale professors and Yale-affiliated people over a deeply Christian concept, but a concept

00:05:12.580 that even just comes from our common sense, going back to Aristotle to some degree, St. Augustine,

00:05:19.280 St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, the ordo amoris.

00:05:24.000 The reason I love this headline so much is just this word accidentally. You know how happy I am

00:05:27.980 that we are now living under an administration in which the vice president will be giving lectures

00:05:34.160 on scholastic philosophy in Latin, on television, on Twitter, but this word accidentally.

00:05:41.460 Whatever you want to say about J.D. Vance. I really like J.D. Vance. Maybe you don't like J.D. Vance.

00:05:45.200 The libs hate J.D. Vance. Whatever you want to say about him. Does anyone seriously doubt that he is

00:05:51.400 intelligent? He seems like a pretty intelligent guy, right? He graduated Yale Law School, came from

00:05:56.820 nothing. Drug addicted mother, very difficult circumstances, came from nothing, rose up to graduate

00:06:02.820 the top law school in the country, top ranked, went on, wrote a book that was so powerful it became

00:06:09.940 a number one bestseller. Hollywood gobbled it up, made a big movie about it. He gets elected to the

00:06:14.680 Senate. He makes a boatload of money with Peter Thiel. He's an intelligent guy, right?

00:06:20.620 And whatever you want to say about him, the very fact that he is explicating scholastic philosophical

00:06:28.320 concepts in Latin on Twitter would seem to suggest he's fairly well-educated, even if you don't agree

00:06:33.560 with his conclusions. Generally speaking, when indisputably intelligent and well-educated men

00:06:41.440 explicate philosophical concepts in Latin, in public, they are not accidentally stumbling into moral

00:06:51.760 questions, okay? Whatever you want to say about J.D., that's not accidental, guys. Vox.com

00:06:58.200 is accidentally stumbling into a moral question because J.D. Vance raised it for them and they

00:07:03.480 could not ignore it because he's the vice president of the United States. And now we're having a

00:07:06.560 national debate on the Ordo Amoris, be still my beating heart. That's the accidental part. I think

00:07:12.980 Vox.com accidentally stumbled into the Dunning-Kruger effect. That's what I think just happened.

00:07:17.600 Beautiful, beautiful stuff. Now, speaking of immigration, AOC, we haven't heard from her a lot

00:07:23.500 lately. AOC just went on some random podcast to present her view of the reason we must have

00:07:33.200 illegal aliens in the country. And I'd never heard this claim before. AOC says we need illegal aliens

00:07:39.520 because Americans would not have survived COVID without illegal aliens.

00:07:47.200 Understand that America's immigration force and our community of immigrants, including and especially

00:07:54.740 the millions of undocumented people in this country, are why America has prospered, especially

00:08:02.000 why we survived the COVID-19 pandemic. And for all of the people who cast a vote based on grocery

00:08:10.880 prices and inflation, if you think your groceries are expensive now, wait until the farms are empty.

00:08:18.760 If you think houses are expensive now, wait until there's no one building them. Understand the

00:08:26.020 consequences of what this means. Because for America to not accept immigrants is the definition

00:08:35.460 of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Okay. Now, part of this argument, I have heard a lot

00:08:42.260 before. Part of this argument is the argument that the left consistently makes for illegal immigration.

00:08:49.020 Namely, if we don't allow criminal cartels to import a bunch of third world peasants into the country

00:08:56.340 so that we can pay them slave wages, who's going to pick our grapes? Who's going to clean our houses?

00:09:02.740 Who's going to fix our toilets?

00:09:04.200 I don't think a lot of illegal aliens are plumbers, actually. That's what it's more of a skilled

00:09:09.040 position. But in any case, that's their argument. Who's going to who's going to clean our floors and

00:09:13.900 pick our grapes and work as our indentured servants, afraid that we could deport them at any moment so

00:09:19.340 that we can continue to mistreat them? That's that's their argument. Seems like a really nasty

00:09:22.920 argument to me, but that is their open defense of illegal immigration right now. But what about this?

00:09:29.940 We would not have survived COVID without illegal aliens. Well, AOC is just pointing to a particular

00:09:36.520 moment of national crisis to say that our economy could not survive without illegal aliens. That's

00:09:41.480 the broader point that she's making. That we are economically dependent upon illegal aliens.

00:09:48.500 And she's right. She's totally right about that. Got to give credit where credit's due. She's right.

00:09:54.100 The United States is economically dependent upon mass migration, certainly, and practically speaking

00:10:01.680 upon illegal immigration. That's that's true. That's why we need to enforce the law.

00:10:09.880 That she thinks that's an argument for just keeping the borders open and allowing the cartels to

00:10:14.540 shove a bunch of people into the country and the Democrats will get an electoral benefit. But even

00:10:19.380 just from an economic standpoint, she thinks that's the argument for it. But no, this is this is the

00:10:24.360 point that Trump is making. This is one of the reasons that people elected Trump to another term is

00:10:30.080 it is very bad for America to be this dependent upon mass migration. It's not that's not sustainable.

00:10:40.500 That means that we're not having kids. We're not replacing ourselves. We're not a strong country.

00:10:43.920 It is a really bad for America to be this economically dependent upon people who are

00:10:51.240 subverting our law, who are who exist outside of our legal system. That is not sustainable in the long

00:10:56.040 run. It is really bad. Let's broaden it out. It's really bad. We learned this from COVID for the United

00:11:01.000 States to be this dependent upon China for our supply chain. It's really bad because if a virus comes

00:11:07.140 out of China and the world gets shut down, we're up the creek without a paddle. And that that was

00:11:13.760 ostensibly just a virus that popped out of nowhere. Imagine now if we go to war with the places that

00:11:20.320 produce all of our stuff that have stolen all of our intellectual property. Right. It's all bad.

00:11:24.480 The liberals on the left and the right are arguing, no, we need to keep the status quo, man, because,

00:11:29.640 you know, we're just so dependent upon it. But what we're saying is the status quo is totally

00:11:34.420 unacceptable. It's hollowed out our manufacturing base. It's been bad for American families. It subverts

00:11:39.160 our immigration laws. It leads to rape and murder and a ton of fentanyl poisoning our country in the

00:11:45.020 case of illegal immigration. It makes us totally dependent on China and slave labor in China. It's

00:11:49.880 it's just that's unacceptable. So, yeah, I would say you're right. Thank you for highlighting the

00:11:54.840 problem. You're right. All the more reason to hurry up with the Tom Homan deportations because we need to

00:12:01.040 fix our economy so that we're not dependent on crime. There's so much more to say. First,

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00:13:21.800 We're getting some breaking news right now. This is breaking news coming to us from CNN, a major update

00:13:28.800 from the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk's role in the Trump administration. CNN,

00:13:34.740 please take it away. Yes, so this is a 19-year-old high school graduate who has used the unfortunate

00:13:41.740 nickname Big Balls online, so that would be one way that we could refer to him. He is now working at

00:13:47.720 Musk's behest inside Doge, and we looked into his background. And so we found, you know, several

00:13:55.160 notable things, Aaron, one of which is that this individual has founded multiple companies, including

00:14:01.240 one with another unfortunate name, Tesla.Sexy LLC, which he established in 2021. He would have been

00:14:08.640 around 16 years old. Now, this LLC controls dozens of web domains. I love 2025 so much. I love it so,

00:14:16.780 I love it so, so much. It's already so great. The vice president lecturing on St. Thomas Aquinas,

00:14:23.700 CNN complaining that Elon Musk, who's now kind of in the government, has hired a teenager,

00:14:29.700 genius, engineer, entrepreneur named Big Balls to cut away all of the waste. And frankly,

00:14:37.500 those are probably a prerequisite if you want to take on the Leviathan federal government and the

00:14:44.420 liberal patronage systems that Elon and Trump and the whole Doge team are trying to root out.

00:14:51.140 Really, really beautiful stuff. Right before that lady started talking about, how do I clean this up?

00:14:57.020 I don't want to have to repeat that phrase on air. You know, this is not CNN, okay? We're an elevated,

00:15:01.720 sophisticated, wholesome show. Maybe Grandi Coglioni. Does that count? Okay. Big Cajones?

00:15:10.240 Let's call it Big Cajones. Right before she starts talking about him, CNN, Giddily was reporting on a

00:15:16.700 story of some guy who was working for Doge who just got fired because he had some racist social

00:15:22.700 media posts or something. And so he has to leave Doge. It's so troubling that this guy had racist

00:15:28.280 social media posts, to which I would say, look, I don't know, maybe that guy had racist social media

00:15:33.380 posts. Not Big Cajones, but some other guy who was a little bit older. Maybe he had some racist

00:15:38.480 social media posts. But here's what I know for sure. The people who worked for the Biden administration

00:15:43.080 in the government, the people who worked for the Obama administration, the people who work in

00:15:47.960 democratic politics broadly, they don't just have some racist social media posts. They have

00:15:54.100 a racist public philosophy and ideology. They don't just post about their racial preferences on

00:16:02.300 some message board on social media. They speak about it openly and they enshrine their racist views

00:16:07.720 into law. They say that we need to punish white people in college admissions and in hiring. They say

00:16:13.680 we need to promote our favored races in college admissions and in hiring. They say things often

00:16:19.820 openly like we need to abolish whiteness. Like white whiteness is a problem. Okay. So I don't know.

00:16:29.000 You're telling me, let's just take CNN at its word that some random guy who worked for Elon had some

00:16:34.360 racist social media posts. Okay. Pretty much everyone who works for the Democrats espouses open racism.

00:16:41.600 And they're not even good engineers. So I don't know, man, I'm not really going to sweat it. Okay.

00:16:47.080 If we got some guy who's a really good engineer, who is certainly no worse in his political ideology

00:16:53.120 than the mainstream American left, and he can actually like get things done in the government.

00:16:58.000 I don't know. I'm not, I'm not sweating that. I guess he's been fired. I guess he's out,

00:17:01.260 but I'm not sweating that. Wait, you know what, you know what we need in the government? We need

00:17:05.600 big cojones. That's what, that's what we need in the government right now to, to root out the deeply

00:17:12.060 entrenched patronage system that, that has apparently been creating a feedback loop. I mean,

00:17:17.980 all the way down to my favorite headline, the most perfect mainstream media headline I've ever read.

00:17:25.180 Namely, oh no, Trump is cutting off all this government funding. What will happen to the

00:17:29.620 independent media? I guess there just is no independent media. I guess sweet little Elisa told me that she's

00:17:35.260 been telling me this for months, maybe over a year at this point. She goes, Mag,

00:17:39.080 I don't think there are any actual liberals. She's been saying, I've told you this. And I said,

00:17:45.540 what do you mean? She goes, I just, everyone, every like real person I talk to is not a liberal.

00:17:49.660 Is it just all fake? And I said, I don't know. It's kind of interesting. And the more that we learn

00:17:54.380 about federal spending at USAID, the more that we learn about the federal government just subsidizing

00:18:01.500 all of these supposedly independent media outlets, the more, yeah, it might just all be fake.

00:18:06.720 It might all be a total psyop. Now, speaking of the economy and President Trump's tax and spending

00:18:12.320 priorities, Caroline Leavitt, White House press secretary, just answered questions,

00:18:16.560 not on the spending side, but on the tax side. Are we going to get, come on,

00:18:21.620 this is a Republican administration. When are we getting a tax cut?

00:18:25.140 The House Republicans are fooling the idea of a five-year extension of the Trump tax cut.

00:18:29.480 Trump, President Trump wants it permanent. Would he sign a bill that has just a five-year

00:18:33.600 extension? So I'm glad you brought up taxes. Do you mind holding this so I can bring my receipts?

00:18:38.620 I like to bring the receipts. So these are the tax priorities of the Trump administration

00:18:43.500 that the president has laid out for members in that meeting today. No tax on tips, which is

00:18:49.380 obviously a very public campaign promise that the president made. No tax on seniors' social security.

00:18:54.200 No tax on overtime pay. Renewing President Trump's 2017 middle-class tax cuts. Again,

00:19:01.580 these are the president's priorities. Adjusting the salt cap. Eliminate all the special tax breaks

00:19:06.860 for billionaire sports team owners. Close the carried interest tax deduction loophole. Tax cuts

00:19:12.620 for made-in-America products. This will be the largest tax cut in history for middle-class

00:19:17.360 working Americans. The president is committed to working with Congress to get this done.

00:19:21.040 Okay. Not surprising at all. This is not man by its dog. Republican administration plans to cut

00:19:27.860 taxes. Trump cut taxes the first time, and now he's going to cut taxes even more.

00:19:33.400 This is a notable political story because it undercuts what some in the ideological avant-garde

00:19:42.760 of the American right seem to have been promoting, namely that Trump is this revolutionary figure who's

00:19:50.000 going to totally upend the traditional conservative views on anything, on taxing, on foreign policy,

00:19:58.040 on this, on that. And I don't think that's what Trump is. I said, I don't think it's so much that

00:20:04.360 he's changing GOP orthodoxy. In practice, he is changing how the GOP operates, but it's not so much

00:20:10.500 that he's revolutionizing GOP orthodoxy as he's just doing what other Republican presidents promised to do.

00:20:16.940 Just a great example on Israel. Some of the right-wing, avant-garde, extreme fringe really

00:20:23.860 doesn't like Israel and wants to change America's relationship with Israel, and they think that

00:20:30.600 Trump is going to do that. Trump is not going to do that. I promise you, Trump is not going to do

00:20:33.820 that. How did Trump change the GOP in his first term? He supported Israel even more. That's what he

00:20:42.780 did. The official American policy for decades has been that they're going to move the embassy

00:20:47.260 in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He did that. That's what he did. It's not that he was

00:20:54.600 revolutionary. It's not that he was innovative. It's that he just followed through on promises.

00:20:59.620 If anything, he was extra traditional. Now, one can debate the matter of Israel and how America

00:21:05.360 should relate to Israel or whatever. I'm just pointing out, what a lot of people think they're

00:21:10.080 going to get from Trump is not really what they're going to get from Trump. He's not a revolutionary.

00:21:15.240 He's just traditional. He's playing the hits. Okay, he's the Rolling Stones,

00:21:22.020 but he's really playing the hits. He's really doing it. When it comes to taxes, there are many

00:21:26.900 in the right-wing, avant-garde, who I think don't want us to cut taxes a lot. I think some of them

00:21:32.340 want us to raise taxes. Some of them want us to become more economically left-wing. I traditionally

00:21:38.740 understood his left wing. That ain't Trump. You can debate that. There's plenty of room for

00:21:45.540 argumentation about that, but that ain't Trump. Trump is going to cut your taxes.

00:21:50.700 Now, how about on tariffs? You say, well, Trump is really upending the GOP on tariff policy.

00:21:55.260 Not really. The GOP was founded on tariffs. Abraham Lincoln said, give me a tariff. I'll give you the

00:21:59.700 greatest country in the world. He's just giving you a fuller version of the hits, of what the GOP is.

00:22:11.100 One can debate that all one wants, but I'm just saying, if you go into the Trump administration

00:22:16.800 thinking that he's some revolutionary who's going to upend everything, you are going to be

00:22:22.280 disappointed. That's not what he's doing. He's doing something even more complex, even more nuanced,

00:22:29.220 even in a sense, even more revolutionary. Namely, he's a Republican who keeps his promises.

00:22:33.440 He's a Republican who does what everyone else said they were going to do for decades.

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00:24:05.700 My favorite comment yesterday is from Jay Toro, who says,

00:24:08.260 Dude can't be saying the word dastardly while looking like a Hanna-Barbera villain. So true.

00:24:13.580 This is Al Green, the Democrat congressman. I will impeach Donald Trump for dastardly deeds done.

00:24:20.220 And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling kids and your dog too.

00:24:26.860 Okay. Speaking of Trump cutting things, and speaking of a really rough couple weeks for journalists,

00:24:34.880 Representative Brian Mast just went on CBS News, Face the Nation. It's that actually that same woman

00:24:42.340 who was interviewing J.D. Vance when he was lecturing her on two mystic philosophy.

00:24:47.540 She was pressing him on how Trump is cutting the government. Here's his beautiful response.

00:24:54.200 ...purging of State Department personnel. What does that mean exactly?

00:24:57.900 Well, if you want to take a look at the State Department, where DEI has been a priority over,

00:25:03.280 let's say, diplomacy in many accounts, I could give you hundreds of examples of where they were authorizing.

00:25:07.840 What proof do you have of that?

00:25:08.780 Sure. Let's list them off. Half a million dollars to expand atheism in Nepal.

00:25:13.220 $50,000 to do, let's see, a transgender opera in Colombia.

00:25:17.420 $47,000 to do an LGBTQ trans comic book in Peru. $20,000 a pop to do drag shows in Ecuador.

00:25:26.020 Shall I continue with more examples of where DEI was the priority?

00:25:28.300 It certainly seems like there could be a review of things. Foreign aid, as you know,

00:25:32.560 is less than 1% of the entire federal budget. So we're talking small amounts of money by comparison.

00:25:39.440 We're still talking about tens and tens of billions of dollars. And if you want to go to

00:25:43.760 somebody else on the other side of the aisle, Samantha Powers, she had a worthy goal, although

00:25:47.980 it was a stupid goal. She said she was hoping to get the amount of foreign aid, U.S. aid dollars

00:25:52.920 that go to actual aid, up to 30 cents on the dollar from 10 cents on the dollar.

00:25:58.720 Beautiful, beautiful. First of all, big lesson here, make sure you know your stuff. Make sure you've

00:26:03.220 got evocative examples whenever you are engaging in a political debate. It's not just about abstract

00:26:10.860 principles and upper level. You've got to paint a picture for people and whatever he's talking about

00:26:15.480 there, you know, transgender painting in Peru or something. It's just really evocative. Now,

00:26:19.960 her response when she's been defeated in this exchange, she says, well, whatever, it's not that

00:26:24.940 much money. It's not that much money. Which brings me back, I think it was Isaiah Berlin,

00:26:29.480 who I was recently reading, writing about this in Two Conceptions of Liberty,

00:26:35.480 where he discusses the distinction between the political and the technological.

00:26:43.140 And this is really important because this is a shift that we're living through right now.

00:26:46.240 For much of my life, the political debate between the Republicans and the Democrats

00:26:51.800 consisted of people saying, look, at least the Republicans would say, look,

00:26:57.360 we agree on the ends that we desire. We agree on where we want to go. We all want the same stuff.

00:27:05.240 We just disagree about how to get there. You know, so we all want all XYZ policy. I don't even want

00:27:12.460 to list them. We all want, you know, equality and fraternity and liberty and whatever. You know,

00:27:19.000 we all agree on the political ends, but we just disagree on the most efficient way to get there.

00:27:25.920 Okay. Well, that's not actually a political debate. That's why we refer to the politics of

00:27:32.460 the last 20 or so years as the uniparty. Because there wasn't really, that's why we don't really

00:27:39.140 even view the shifting of many of these administrations as being a transfer of power so

00:27:43.960 much as a changing of shifts, to quote Walter Kern. It was just a technological debate. What's most

00:27:51.400 efficient? A political debate involves debate over ends. What do we want? Is it good to have a more

00:28:01.500 egalitarian society? I don't know. Or do we actually want a little bit more order? And do we want to

00:28:08.100 preserve more natural distinctions? And do we want to give people a greater opportunity without

00:28:15.080 handicapping them? Do we really want a more open society? Or do we want a society that's actually a

00:28:20.100 little bit more closed off to certain peoples? You know, face tattooed gangsters from Mexico, for

00:28:25.860 instance. And that's more closed off to certain ideas like communism or Nazism. Do we want, I don't

00:28:30.540 know. I don't want a more open society. I want a more closed society in certain respects. What do we

00:28:35.880 want? Do we, do we, I don't actually don't know that we really want to go to the same. Do we really

00:28:39.420 want a society that doesn't recognize the distinction between men and women? That's what

00:28:42.900 the left wants. I don't want that. We have different political ends. That's a real political debate.

00:28:47.940 Okay. And so the rejoinder from the left, which is, oh, it's just 1% of the federal budget. First of all,

00:28:53.580 1% of the federal budget, as Brian Mass points out, is a huge amount of money. Federal budget of

00:28:57.520 trillions and trillions of dollars. But even beyond that, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if

00:29:01.900 it's 0.1% of the federal, it doesn't matter if it's 0.001% of the federal budget. If it's bad stuff

00:29:08.060 that is advancing a bad agenda and taking our country to a bad place, I don't want it.

00:29:14.680 Because we do differ in the political ends that we want. I want a society that is more,

00:29:21.780 better ordered toward the good, the true, and the beautiful, to take it up to the 30,000 foot view.

00:29:26.340 And the left seems to want a society that is ordered toward the bad or that denies the moral

00:29:33.100 order altogether, that is ugly, that doesn't pursue standards of beauty, and that doesn't

00:29:41.000 even acknowledge the reality of truth. It says, what truth? Your truth or my truth? Okay. Those are

00:29:46.300 totally different ends. So I don't want one red cent of my government's money. I can't even say my

00:29:54.200 taxpayer dollars because we're a debtor nation at this point. So I don't want any single penny

00:29:59.060 that the United States is spending to go toward that nonsense around the world. That's what Trump

00:30:04.100 is saying. That's why it feels like a sea change. We're finally saying, no, I think we want different

00:30:09.440 things. And we have the power now, and we're going to pursue the things that we want, which happen to

00:30:13.820 be good. One of which is killing the Department of Education. There was some confusion over this

00:30:21.140 because Trump campaigned on ending the Department of Education. Then he picked Linda McMahon to run

00:30:25.900 the Department of Education. It became unclear. Are we really going to end this thing? Are we just

00:30:30.880 going to reform it? Trump being a polarizing figure, again, not anymore. Now most Americans voted for him,

00:30:39.120 but it was unclear. Are even the squish Republicans going to go for this? Are there? Well, we've got some

00:30:45.440 really strong backing now for ending the Department of Education from one of the great leading lights of

00:30:51.940 education reform in America, Betsy DeVos. Okay, and Betsy DeVos is a really important figure in

00:30:57.280 education reform, one, because she's been very successful at it, but two, because she can speak

00:31:02.860 to the whole GOP. She was Trump's education secretary in the first term, but she also worked

00:31:09.600 with Jeb Bush when Jeb Bush was governor of Florida. Jeb Bush, who's definitely a representative

00:31:13.320 of the more established wing of the GOP. And Jeb Bush, whose greatest achievement in Florida was

00:31:18.360 in education, in large part thanks to Betsy DeVos. This woman has credibility on this issue,

00:31:24.440 on the substance of the issue, and with the whole GOP. And Betsy DeVos just came out,

00:31:30.440 great column in the Free Press, shut down the Department of Education. I served as the 11th

00:31:38.740 U.S. Secretary of Education. That's how I know it's beyond repair. Clear a sign yet. Department

00:31:44.120 of Education is over. This is happening. Now, one really great Trump executive action that's coming

00:31:50.960 out. This was announced at the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday. Trump is finally going to

00:31:57.060 take on anti-Christian bias in our government. To confront such weaponization and religious

00:32:05.220 persecution today, I'm signing an executive order to make our attorney general, who's a great person,

00:32:11.680 she's going to be a great attorney general, Pam Bondi, the head of a task force, brand new,

00:32:20.360 to eradicate anti-Christian bias. About time, right? Anti-Christian bias.

00:32:27.800 I love this. And we'll get into the details of this. The executive order, it says that in this

00:32:33.900 atmosphere of anti-Christian government, hostility, and vandalism against Christian churches and places

00:32:38.960 of worship surged, with the number of such identified acts in 2023, exceeding by more than

00:32:43.960 three times the number from 2018. Catholic churches and institutions have been aggressively targeted

00:32:48.500 with hundreds of acts of hostility, violence, and vandalism. So there are a lot of particulars here.

00:32:54.420 We'll see how it's all implemented by the DOJ. But just even from Trump's announcement,

00:33:00.200 I love that he's saying anti-Christian hostility, anti-Christian bias in the government. Because a lot

00:33:08.420 of squish Republicans would say, we want to just generally and universally speaking, protect all

00:33:14.220 religions of all. It's all kind of whatever, man. No, there aren't really threats against all general

00:33:20.220 religions kind of broadly, man. That's not the problem. America wasn't founded on the principles

00:33:25.240 of just kind of, oh, the religions generally universally, man. The specific problem that

00:33:30.420 we saw explode during the Biden administration was bias against Christians. The DOJ wasn't spying

00:33:39.760 on Zoroastrians, all right? The DOJ was spying on Catholics, on the Latin mass, actually, the mass of

00:33:46.620 the ages. The problems that we saw, the attacks, the overt hostility, the discrimination, was against

00:33:54.700 Christians, okay? So we need to be particular. When you want to enforce universal conceptions of

00:34:03.400 justice, you have to do it in the particular. Life exists within particulars, particular times,

00:34:09.100 particular places, particular people. And in this case, the problem to be addressed is anti-Christian

00:34:14.020 bias. And you're not allowed to talk about it. Just as you're allowed to talk about discrimination

00:34:20.080 against any race except for white people, so too, you're allowed to talk about discrimination against

00:34:24.780 any religion except for Christians. But Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world, and

00:34:29.180 it's not even close. And Christianity has been seriously persecuted in America recently by our

00:34:36.160 purportedly Catholic president, Joe Biden. And that's the problem that has to be addressed, and that's the

00:34:41.680 specific problem Trump is addressing, and I love it. You know, at The Daily Wire, we don't just watch

00:34:46.160 culture, we build it. Now we're building the future with AI. Yesterday, Jeremy Boring dropped the first

00:34:54.040 ever fully AI-produced Jeremy's Razors commercial. If you've not seen it yet, good news. We're showing it

00:34:59.360 to you now.

00:35:01.760 A tale is told of a star that fell in the days when men were hair-covered brutes roaming the earth.

00:35:08.620 This shard of celestial steel was unlike anything early man had ever encountered. And from those

00:35:14.100 five fortuitous stainless steel blades came the world's first smooth silky shave. And it was in

00:35:20.180 that moment manliness burst into existence. This blade charged forward through the ages of steel and

00:35:26.840 dragon fire. Great conquerors slew tyrants. Founding fathers revolted. And as men's manes were tamed, so they

00:35:34.840 tamed the wild frontier. Also, Steve used it to get a good shave. And he's a pretty solid guy. But as power

00:35:43.880 often breeds enemies, so a wild bearded philosopher despised the blade for its glorious manly freedom. This

00:35:51.800 enemy of clean shaves bore the razor to a fiery peak and cast it in. The blade was gone.

00:35:59.800 A dark age of unmanliness ensued. An age of men wearing buns, drinking vegan milkshakes, and wearing

00:36:07.640 really tight pants and acting like a bunch of crybaby commies. Until one day, the great archaeologist and

00:36:15.000 CEO Jeremy Boring went on a dangerous quest on which many before had perished. Through seas,

00:36:21.080 mountains, and deepest catacombs, he found the blade still sharp as starlight. His mission was

00:36:26.600 to restore the blade to mankind and thereby restore manliness. Will my razor make you as manly as the

00:36:33.240 actual greatest man in all of human history? I guarantee it will. In the most emphatic way that

00:36:39.000 isn't legally binding. Hey, at least you'll be as manly as Steve. Jeremy's Razors, carve out your legacy.

00:36:49.000 That is crazy. Oh, I kicked a little bear there. That is crazy. I know some people have gotten

00:36:55.280 accustomed to AI now. But I remember, it was probably five years ago, more at this point, I was at a

00:37:02.040 college reunion. I was talking to a buddy of mine who's working. He was working on AI, pretty sophisticated

00:37:06.340 stuff before anyone really knew about it. And he said, hey, AI can make a poem and make pictures

00:37:11.160 now. And I know we all know this now, but at the time it was completely mind-blowing. And it's still

00:37:17.200 pretty mind-blowing to me that that can happen. You know, the Daily Wire believes AI is not here to

00:37:25.560 replace us. It's here to create epic things like wrestling a bear, launching razors into a volcano,

00:37:30.040 and of course, riding a lion. But you still have to shave the old-fashioned way. So do it with

00:37:34.320 Jeremy's Razors. Go to jeremysrazors.com right now. Get the second-gen razor and embrace the future.

00:37:41.280 Finally, finally, I've arrived at my favorite time of the week when I get to hear from you

00:37:45.700 in the mailbag. Our mailbag is sponsored by Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles.

00:37:51.220 Claim your new iPhone or Galaxy phone with a qualifying purchase. Take it away.

00:37:56.700 Hi, Michael. First, I just wanted to say I love your show. My name is Kendra. I'm a 20-year-old.

00:38:03.080 I'm a senior in college. My question regards a class I'm taking, which is a requirement for part

00:38:08.940 of my degree. The professor is very liberal and makes sure her political stances are known in class.

00:38:17.000 In fact, on the first day of class, she said,

00:38:19.980 to the white Judeo-Christian cisgender straight males prepared to be made uncomfortable.

00:38:23.960 And that made me uncomfortable. The content in her class is highly affected by her views and

00:38:32.840 differs from the textbook. So my question is, do I drop the class? Do I report to her professor? Or do

00:38:39.700 I grin and bear it and try really hard not to tear my hair out? Anyways, thank you.

00:38:44.580 Well, good question. I would say if you can withdraw from the class right now without getting a W on

00:38:52.260 the transcript, it might still be early enough. I don't know. So if you can withdraw from the class

00:38:56.140 and not have it affect your graduation or show up with a W on the transcript, I would do it.

00:39:04.560 That would be my prudential advice. Because this woman sounds like a complete lunatic,

00:39:10.240 so you're not actually going to learn anything in her class. It's good to take classes that

00:39:14.080 challenge your thinking. I'm all for studying wacky stuff, you know, and taking Karl Marx

00:39:19.200 seriously and all the rest. But it sounds like this woman is just not, you're not going to learn

00:39:24.340 very much from her. So I would withdraw if you can do it in a way that won't affect your graduation

00:39:31.220 and your transcript. And then I would report her. I wouldn't report her before you withdraw,

00:39:37.880 because then you might get blowback. She sounds like a vindictive, crazy woman.

00:39:41.840 So that's what I would do. And if you can't withdraw without getting a dub on the transcript,

00:39:46.780 then I would probably grit your teeth and bear it and remember for next time not to put yourself in

00:39:51.380 that position. But you got no one to hold them, no one to fold them, no one to walk away,

00:39:57.780 no one to run. This would seem like a run situation. Next question.

00:40:02.940 Smokey Mike, I love your show. I really just wanted to weigh in on women in combat.

00:40:09.020 It seems clear to me that women already serve a sacrificial role in an ordered society,

00:40:14.240 biologically just existing as a woman. It seems they're forced to be made vulnerable just through

00:40:19.820 their biological processes once a month and especially so during pregnancy. From my experience,

00:40:25.760 service in the military is sacrifice. We don't ask troops with missing limbs that have already lost

00:40:31.400 them in war to serve again. They would be at the bottom of the list to be drafted. If ever,

00:40:36.640 it's disordered to ask women to serve on the battlefield. Even losing their war, the Japanese

00:40:41.640 during World War II didn't train their 18-year-old girls to be kamikaze pilots. I just can't imagine

00:40:47.600 storming the beaches of Normandy and seeing these women getting shredded by Nazi machine guns.

00:40:53.960 I was a medic in the army and I promise you, I couldn't have done my mission seeing that.

00:40:58.760 Thanks for your clarity and your cheer.

00:41:02.560 My pleasure and well said. I totally agree with you on that take. It's women already

00:41:09.420 are called to certain sacrifices. That's not to say that men aren't called to sacrifice. Men are

00:41:14.060 called to physical sacrifice too, like combat in some cases. But we're called to different things.

00:41:19.440 And so I suppose part of this debate hinges on what you think the military is about.

00:41:26.580 If you think the military is about you, the individual, pursuing your desires and your

00:41:34.520 ambitions and having every right to do what everyone else gets to do and you want to do it,

00:41:39.240 then you can see an argument for women in combat. Namely, well, why should the fellas get to have

00:41:45.900 all the fun? But if you view military service as what it ought to be understood as, namely a sacrifice,

00:41:52.680 then it's harder to see that. Because telling women who want to serve on the front lines and catch

00:42:00.500 bullets from jihadis, telling those women, hey, sorry, you don't get to. It's bad for military

00:42:05.960 fitness. You are not as physically strong as the men. It's disordered for a nation to send its women

00:42:12.220 out to catch bullets for it. And it's going to compromise men on the battlefield who are going to

00:42:17.920 have a natural and good and virtuous response to go try to save you in particular rather than the

00:42:23.640 other guys. So you have to make yet one more sacrifice. The whole thing is about sacrifice.

00:42:29.540 Well, here's one more sacrifice. You have to sacrifice that particular ambition of yours to

00:42:32.920 do something else. I think that really reveals the debate for what it is, which is premised on a

00:42:40.740 misunderstanding of what the military is even about. Okay? If it's about sacrifice, let it be about

00:42:46.140 sacrifice. Totally agree. Next question. Greetings, Michael. You recently spoke about

00:42:51.660 psychedelics, and I'd like to offer a perspective grounded in virtue ethics. In Aristotle's framework,

00:42:57.020 virtue lies in the mean between excess and deficiency. In excess, psychedelics are used

00:43:02.040 irresponsibly, say at parties or among pagan priests inside of yurts. In deficiency, they are entirely

00:43:08.220 prohibited, as you might suggest. But could the virtuous mean be careful, intentional use in a sacred and

00:43:14.120 prayerful setting? Research has shown that a single use of psilocybin in a controlled environment

00:43:19.160 has been remarkably effective in helping individuals overcome addiction to alcohol and smoking.

00:43:24.840 Could this not extend to those burdened by other vicens, like pornography, addiction, or self-hatred?

00:43:29.760 If used in the proper preparation, such as confession in the holy space or before the blessed sacrament.

00:43:36.440 That doesn't dismiss risks, but asks whether psychedelics,

00:43:39.960 used reverently, could become a tool for grace and transformation. Thank you for reflecting on this.

00:43:45.720 I hope you enjoy these thoughts from the Lyceum of Minnesota.

00:43:49.000 Yes, it's a very good question. I have considered that before, but you've articulated it very well.

00:43:55.680 I'm skeptical. Because Aristotle recognizing that we want means between excesses does not mean that we'll,

00:44:04.960 taken to its extreme, that kind of logic could justify anything if you exceed the reasonable bounds

00:44:14.400 placed upon it by Aristotle and by his followers. So the question is, all right, is using psilocybin

00:44:21.360 one or two times, is that the virtuous mean between the excess or deficiency, the excess of doing a bunch

00:44:27.660 of like bathtub acid with your college friends every week, or the deficiency of not doing acid at all?

00:44:33.920 Or is the virtuous mean among substances to, you know, maybe smoke a cigar every now and again,

00:44:43.100 but not go all the way to actually doing acid or psilocybin? I don't know. The question you have to ask

00:44:48.520 yourself is, how does psilocybin work? How does, even accepting your anecdote, how does psilocybin work

00:44:54.880 at stopping people from want to be booze hounds or from smoking or getting over PTSD or something?

00:45:01.260 Well, the layman explanation is it rewires your brain. Okay, is that a good thing? I mean, we can rewire

00:45:10.300 our brain all the time by practicing virtuous habits. Is it good to just take that shortcut? Can we really

00:45:16.240 control the way that psychedelics rewire our brain? Is there a possibility that the costs of rewiring

00:45:23.040 our brain in that way will outweigh the benefits? Is it possible that the costs of rewiring our brain

00:45:28.860 in that way are intrinsically bad to do? Just as it's not wrong to have a drink socially, but it is

00:45:37.180 wrong to get blackout drunk because you lose control of your rational will. Well, isn't that what happens

00:45:45.260 with psychedelics? I don't know. If your argument says, look, we need to research this a little bit

00:45:51.280 more. We need to give more attention to this issue. Okay, fine. Research it all you like.

00:45:56.500 But I would not take that argument as, or a few anecdotes of guys quitting booze because they

00:46:03.200 tripped on mushrooms a few times. I would not take that as a license to do it myself or even an

00:46:09.200 encouragement. I'm skeptical. It seems dubious to me. Next question.

00:46:15.100 Hello, Mr. Knowles. My name is Charles. I recently finished reading The Divine Comedy and found the last

00:46:20.140 half of the Paradiso Enlightening, particularly St. Peter's examination of Dante's faith in

00:46:25.200 Canto 17. During this episode, Dante provides what can be assumed as his best argument for believing

00:46:30.880 in the resurrection. That is, for Christianity to have spread throughout the world without the

00:46:35.940 assistance of the divine, a miracle far greater would have occurred. Do you believe this to be the

00:46:40.740 best argument for the resurrection? If not, what argument would seed even the most incredulous to

00:46:45.860 believe in the resurrection? And why did Dante not use it? Thank you, Mr. Knowles. Godspeed.

00:46:51.240 Okay, really good question. I'm glad you're reading Dante. Yeah, that's a good argument.

00:46:55.280 There are other good arguments, though, namely that you have 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection,

00:47:01.560 that all but one of the apostles went to their death to attest to the resurrection. So,

00:47:10.100 people generally don't take ships over to India to be ripped apart by tribals for a lie as St. Thomas

00:47:18.620 went over there. You could also point to contemporary historical accounts of people like Josephus or

00:47:28.100 Tacitus or Suetonius or so. I think those are all good arguments, too. So, why wouldn't Dante feature

00:47:35.940 that in the final cantos of the Paradiso? Well, because he's making a work of art. So, I think

00:47:40.900 that the arguments he makes, the pictures that he paints are fitting. I think it's the greatest work

00:47:47.640 of art basically ever made. But if Dante, instead of writing a big, beautiful epic poem, were instead

00:47:54.040 writing some rigorous logical syllogism or treatise, as he's done before, you know, that monarchy is a

00:48:01.360 logical syllogism. He might have relied on some of those other arguments, too. Okay. It's Friday,

00:48:07.140 which means it's Fake Headline Friday, which means I need your help to help me figure out what the

00:48:10.380 fake headline is. The rest of the show continues. Now, you do not want to miss it. Become a member.

00:48:13.720 Use code Knowles, Canada Be Really. That's a checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:48:31.360 That's a checkout for two months. Before, one or a

Ep. 1669 - Trump and Elon Prove the Media Really Are Fake

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Transcript