Ep. 1675 - JD Vance Threatens Europe for Censoring Christians
Summary
J.D. Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference sets the tone for the rest of the world on how they will be dealt with if they continue to censor conservative speech and target Christians. Also, Mayflower Cigars is now accepting applications to become an official Mayflower cigar retailer.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Vice President J.D. Vance lit up the Munich Security Conference on Friday and put all of
00:00:04.620
Europe on notice that if they continue to censor legitimate speech and target conservatives and
00:00:10.580
Christians, the U.S. will hold them accountable, leading Margaret Brennan of CBS News to blame
00:00:17.740
free speech for, wait for it, the Holocaust. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:30.000
Welcome back to the show. Tom Hanks just did a hilarious bit on Saturday Night Live. You're not
00:00:49.160
going to believe the premise. It was really, really funny. You see, he played a Trump supporter who was
00:00:55.300
racist. Oh, man, they're not paying those Hollywood writers enough, huh? Boy, oh, boy.
00:01:02.460
There's so much more to say. First, though, text Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S, to 989898. Everybody has
00:01:09.060
been thinking about the economy lately. Economic experts have been analyzing long-term trends,
00:01:13.320
and some are expressing concerns about potential serious economic challenges once we approach
00:01:17.900
2030. It is interesting when you look at the big picture. We got the baby boomer generation
00:01:22.980
entering retirement, putting pressure on Social Security and Medicare. At the same time, we're
00:01:27.280
dealing with a smaller workforce, national debt, and rising living costs. Hopefully, we will see
00:01:31.860
changes for the better in the near future. In the meantime, these are the kinds of things that should
00:01:35.900
make you think about financial security and how to protect your savings. I've looked into different
00:01:40.300
options. You just can't dismiss the tried-and-true traditional approach, investing in physical gold.
00:01:46.300
There is this company, Birch Gold, that is making it pretty straightforward to diversify your
00:01:50.140
portfolio. They can actually help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a gold IRA without any
00:01:56.440
out-of-pocket costs. Protect your future today. Text Knowles to 989898. Get your free info kit on gold
00:02:02.620
and a copy of The Ultimate Guide for Gold in the Trump Era with a forward by Donald Trump Jr. There
00:02:08.660
is no obligation, only information. Text Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S, to 989898 today. Also, speaking of value,
00:02:16.540
I know a lot of people have written in for the past year or year and a quarter asking for Mayflower
00:02:22.260
cigars in their brick-and-mortar cigar shops, their local shops. There were regulatory issues. The demand
00:02:28.200
for Mayflower's vastly outstripped the supply for a lot of the first year of operation. But we are
00:02:34.060
prepared now to go into retail. So if you want your local brick-and-mortar to carry Mayflower cigars,
00:02:38.800
go to mayflowercigars.com slash stores and have them apply there. We're going to work through these
00:02:45.880
applications as quickly as we can. But that is how to become an official Mayflower cigar retailer.
00:02:52.020
You must be 21 years or older. Some exclusions apply. What did J.D. Vance say in Munich? The
00:02:57.900
Munich Security Conference, big event over in Europe, the newly inaugurated vice president shows up there.
00:03:04.740
Usually, the speeches are about all of the external threats to Europe and the United States.
00:03:11.340
It's all the external threats to our civilization. J.D. rolls up, guns ablaze, and he says,
00:03:16.300
I don't want to talk about the external threats right now. There'll be plenty of time for that.
00:03:20.180
I want to talk about one of the biggest internal threats we face, namely that all of you,
00:03:27.300
you liberal elites that run Europe and until very recently the United States,
00:03:32.260
you, by censoring all of our citizens, by targeting conservatives and Christians and people who
00:03:40.120
want to protect our borders and protect the integrity of our civilization, you pose a far
00:03:45.680
more urgent threat than any of the bad guys outside of our civilization. J.D. did not hold back.
00:03:52.880
And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some
00:03:59.340
of the Cold War's winners. I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend
00:04:07.040
to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to
00:04:13.500
be, quote, hateful content. Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens
00:04:21.140
suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, combating misogyny on the internet,
00:04:28.460
a day of action. I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist
00:04:35.220
for participating in Koran burnings that resulted in his friend's murder. The British government charged
00:04:42.480
Adam Smith Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing
00:04:50.440
50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes.
00:04:57.940
These are shocking examples. These are egregious examples. And they're just a handful basically off
00:05:06.100
the top of J.D.'s speechwriter's head. Because there are many, many more such examples. These are not
00:05:11.920
aberrations. These are not fringe cases. This happens all the time in Europe and the UK.
00:05:18.320
People just praying inside their own heads, not even right next to an abortion mill, but a little
00:05:25.500
further away from them, will be arrested. Germany will launch midnight raids because people post things
00:05:31.680
they don't like on social media. Seems like a far more urgent threat to Western civilization than the
00:05:41.480
machinations and the Kremlin that Vladimir Putin is cooking up right now. The fact that if you object
00:05:47.820
to a Muslim invasion of Europe, a major, major social problem in Europe, that you will be the one punished
00:05:55.880
by your own government? If you criticize Islam, if you offend the sensibilities of Muslims, even if it leads to
00:06:04.840
your friend being murdered by aforementioned Muslims, that you will be the one who will get in trouble?
00:06:10.260
That seems like a real perversion of justice and of our governments in the West. Then J.D. honed down
00:06:17.420
even further on an issue that many Americans probably are not aware of. I know there are a lot of people
00:06:23.640
who listen to this show in Germany in particular, but throughout Europe, who will be aware of this issue.
00:06:28.900
A lot of Americans will not. And it is the issue of the so-called firewall in German and really,
00:06:34.600
therefore, all of European politics. And more and more all over Europe, they're voting for
00:06:40.200
political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration. Now, I happen to agree
00:06:46.560
with a lot of these concerns, but you don't have to agree with me. I just think that people care
00:06:51.040
about their homes. They care about their dreams. They care about their safety and their capacity to
00:06:57.300
provide for themselves and their children. And it is the business of democracy to adjudicate
00:07:03.000
these big questions at the ballot box. I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns,
00:07:09.820
or worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the
00:07:15.980
political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.
00:07:23.920
What no democracy, American, German, or European will survive is telling millions of voters that
00:07:30.600
their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of
00:07:37.540
even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people
00:07:44.560
matters. There's no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don't.
00:07:52.100
There's no room for firewalls. He says, what is the firewall? The German firewall is an agreement
00:07:59.140
that in many ways defines the German political order that political parties will not deal with
00:08:06.320
right-wing parties. It is a way of isolating right-wing parties, even when they're popular,
00:08:12.540
even when the people vote for them, even when the people are demanding that they come into power.
00:08:16.940
It is an agreement that constitutes the bedrock of the present German political order and therefore
00:08:25.300
of the present European political order because Germany leads Europe that says,
00:08:30.560
we will not work with the right-wingers. In this case, the right-wing party, Alternative for Deutschland,
00:08:37.120
which is frequently written about in the press as a far right-wing, Nazi, fascist, extremist party.
00:08:42.240
Really, it's just kind of a libertarian party. In fact, the leader of Alternative for Deutschland
00:08:48.420
is a libertarian lesbian who says that Hitler was a communist during a viral interview with Elon Musk
00:08:56.360
recently. So to suggest that this is some extremist beyond the pale party, totally crazy. But it's a way
00:09:03.120
for Europe, for the European elites who are laughing at J.D. Vance, who are mocking him while he's
00:09:07.700
speaking, while he's defending the voice of the European peoples, it's a way for them to lock out
00:09:14.660
any dissent. And I think after J.D. finished his speech and got off stage, there was a little less
00:09:21.500
laughing among the crowd. In fact, one of the leaders ended up crying, maybe for a different
00:09:26.500
reason, but maybe it was related. Because what they recognize is, one, Germany leads Europe, sure,
00:09:34.200
but America leads Germany. Because America is the global hegemon, certainly the leader of the West.
00:09:41.520
And so when J.D. Vance shows up and says, hey, there's a new sheriff in town, we're not going to
00:09:45.960
put up with this anymore. We're not going to put up with it in America, we're not going to put up with
00:09:49.340
it in Europe, we're certainly not going to underwrite it. We're the reason that Europe has security right
00:09:53.120
now, and we're not going to tolerate this anymore. What that represents is not just a change in policy
00:10:01.060
in Europe. That represents a fundamental shift in the political order. Ronald Reagan had teared down
00:10:08.840
this wall at the Brandenburg Gate. J.D. Vance had teared down this firewall in Germany, in Munich.
00:10:13.840
That is a fundamental reordering of European politics. And all those liberals in the room
00:10:19.000
who have been governing Europe during the post-World War II consensus, they all should be very,
00:10:23.900
very worried. Because this is a legitimate shift in power in the United States and therefore in
00:10:29.740
the West. So the liberals on both sides of the Atlantic are totally freaking out.
00:10:35.520
And what are they doing? They're going straight for the argument that they always go for,
00:10:39.220
which is, if the conservatives do anything, if we in any way change anything about this
00:10:44.600
desiccated, corrupt liberal order, why? We're going to get Hitler 2.0. If Europe is forced to begin to
00:10:52.180
pay for some of its own defense, if Europe's not allowed to censor its citizens, if we're not going
00:10:56.360
to bring the weight of the state to discriminate against Christians and conservatives, why then?
00:11:03.160
We're just moments away from another Holocaust. There's so much more to say. First, though,
00:11:07.740
go to expressvpn.com slash Knowles. It is often said that freedom isn't free. That's true. Freedom
00:11:14.540
has to be defended. But what is not said enough is that online freedom isn't free either,
00:11:19.140
though it's not too expensive if you go to expressvpn. You have to defend your online freedom,
00:11:25.980
not with a military force, but with encryption. Strong encryption can protect your right to privacy
00:11:30.100
online and defend you from hackers. How do you get the encryption? ExpressVPN. Internet providers
00:11:35.400
track and sell your data. Hackers prey on public Wi-Fi. Governments monitor your every move online.
00:11:40.780
With expressvpn, their powerful encryption reroutes 100% of your online activity through secure servers,
00:11:45.780
making your data invisible to prying eyes. I really recommend ExpressVPN, especially if you're
00:11:53.800
on the political side of the aisle that has a lot of powerful institutions coming after it.
00:11:58.980
Really smart idea to protect your privacy. Don't just take my word for it. They have invited the
00:12:03.980
world's top auditors, PWC and KPMG, to verify their revolutionary trusted server technology.
00:12:10.960
It's the only system that physically cannot store your data because it runs entirely on
00:12:15.720
volatile memory. So while other companies profit from invading your privacy, ExpressVPN goes the
00:12:21.220
extra mile to protect it. Right now, go to expressvpn.com slash Knowles. Get an extra four
00:12:27.660
months of ExpressVPN for free. E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
00:12:33.420
The liberal journalist of the year, Margaret Brennan from CBS News. Margaret Brennan is the one who first
00:12:39.700
went viral because she was interviewing J.D. Vance and she was henpecking him. And J.D. said,
00:12:43.600
you know, I really don't care, Margaret. I really don't care what you have to say.
00:12:47.940
I'm going to fulfill what the voters asked us to do in November. And she just keeps coming up with
00:12:52.900
all these strikeouts. You know, she was interviewing a conservative member of Congress about USAID got
00:12:59.580
totally demolished. And here she's interviewing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and making the
00:13:05.160
head-scratcher claim that free speech caused the Holocaust.
00:13:12.960
Well, he was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.
00:13:19.220
And he met with the head of a political party that has far-right views and some historic ties
00:13:27.900
to extreme groups. The context of that was changing the tone of it.
00:13:36.520
And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right.
00:13:40.640
No, I have to disagree with you. Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide
00:13:46.200
was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated
00:13:51.020
Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they had a list of people they hated,
00:13:54.880
but primarily the Jews. There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no
00:13:59.840
opposition in Nazi Germany. They were a sole and only party that governed that country. So that's not
00:14:04.460
an accurate reflection of history. Free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.
00:14:12.000
So claims Margaret Brennan of CBS. Now, I don't know if you guys are history buffs or anything like
00:14:16.840
that, but one of the very first things that the Nazis did when they came to power was to drastically
00:14:24.500
curtail free speech. Just 1933 alone, just focus on 1933. There was the editor's law, which said that
00:14:32.980
only Aryans could be journalists. There was the law, of course, against the formation of political
00:14:38.160
parties that turned Nazi Germany into a totalitarian state. There was the Reichstag fire decree,
00:14:45.400
1933, also severely curtailed civil liberties. What is she talking about? I mean, I think that
00:14:54.920
there are plenty of criticisms about the way that liberals talk about free speech, but this is an
00:14:59.080
extreme example because they clearly just, they don't even know what they are trying to mean by free
00:15:04.120
speech. What, if the Holocaust was caused by free speech, what, what definition of free speech could
00:15:12.360
you possibly give that would satisfy that claim? I don't think you could give one. Even more important
00:15:18.280
perhaps than this ridiculous nonsense about speech in Nazi Germany. Other things have happened in
00:15:25.280
history beyond the Holocaust in World War II. I know this will be shocking to many liberal journalists
00:15:30.600
and politicians, but there actually have been other events in history to which we can compare present
00:15:36.220
events. Well, maybe they can't compare present events to anything else because they don't know about
00:15:40.540
anything else that ever happened in history. But there is an irony here, which I have found.
00:15:45.400
The people who are most inclined to compare every single present political event to the Holocaust or
00:15:51.480
Hitler or World War II, ironically, don't even know anything about Holocaust, Hitler, or World War II.
00:15:58.020
Have you noticed that? Because there are other events. There are the Napoleonic Wars, for instance.
00:16:02.660
There was the Renaissance. There was the Battle of Vienna. I don't know. I'm just kind of off the top
00:16:11.120
of my head. There are other events that have happened in history. But the ones who constantly say,
00:16:15.600
well, you know, Donald Trump wore a necktie. And you know who else wore a necktie? Hitler.
00:16:22.080
You think, oh, you don't. Not only do you know nothing about history, you don't even know about
00:16:27.980
Hitler. You don't know anything about anything at all. I think this stuff just does not work anymore.
00:16:36.960
Oh, oh, the conservatives are fascists. Sure. We used to, 15 years ago, we used to say,
00:16:42.380
no, we're not. Marco Rubio still had a little bit of that reaction. No, we're not. We're actually
00:16:47.160
the opposite. The Democrats are the real fascists. They're the real Hitlers. Now I think people make
00:16:52.860
these stupid claims. And my reaction is just to say, oh, yeah, okay, whatever. We're going to keep
00:17:00.620
doing what we're doing, all right? You know the thing that the majority of Americans elected us to
00:17:04.120
do? We're going to keep doing that. And you can keep screaming your head off about Hitler and how free
00:17:10.180
speech caused the Holocaust or whatever. You can just, you can babble your gibberish. We don't really
00:17:15.580
care. We don't really care, Margaret. Okay. Now, speaking of Germany, the German president,
00:17:22.420
Frank Volta Steinmeier, he doubled down after J.D. Vance's audacious speech. He said that he will
00:17:30.740
not allow social media and the open exchange of ideas to threaten his democracy.
00:17:37.900
We Europeans demand that tech companies, just like everyone else, that these companies
00:17:47.100
comply with European law, whether their name be TikTok, X or something else. We cannot and
00:17:56.120
will not allow platforms to destroy our democratic societies or cause serious harm to our children.
00:18:03.540
Now, notice this guy didn't have a huge problem with social media back when it was just liberals
00:18:15.980
running social media uniformly censoring conservatives. The big problem with social media
00:18:22.640
in the eyes of liberals on both sides of the Atlantic occurred when Elon Musk bought the smallest
00:18:28.860
mainstream social media platform and allowed conservatives to speak. Then all of a sudden,
00:18:34.300
social media was a big threat. Social media have been around for, what, 15, 20 years at this point?
00:18:39.960
Now it's a problem. He says he will not allow the open exchange of ideas to threaten democracy.
00:18:50.420
What does he mean by democracy? What do any of these liberals mean by democracy when they can say
00:18:56.460
things like, you know, the popular election of Donald Trump is a threat to democracy?
00:19:02.320
Oh, you know, the popular election of Viktor Orban or of Georgia Maloney or of the Brexit,
00:19:09.320
that that is a threat to democracy. People speaking and sharing their ideas, that's a threat to democracy
00:19:14.860
without fear of the German police coming in the middle of the night and arresting you over Facebook posts.
00:19:20.180
What does democracy mean in that context? Certainly doesn't mean democracy. It means liberalism and
00:19:28.220
liberalism is on the ropes right now. And that's why they're freaking out. Now, speaking of democracy
00:19:34.000
and liberalism and Western identity and the other side of the Atlantic, there is a clip that's just gone
00:19:45.560
viral between Constantine Kislin and Fraser Nelson. Fraser Nelson is a columnist for the Times of
00:19:51.900
London. He was the editor of the Spectator for 15 years. And he just got into a debate with Constantine
00:19:57.820
Kislin over what an Englishman is. Walsh had what is a woman? I think maybe that the European version
00:20:07.000
of that documentary is going to be what is an Englishman? Because Constantine, who's not an Englishman,
00:20:11.660
he knows what an Englishman is. This British columnist and newspaper magazine editor,
00:20:20.660
This is something that no one wants to talk about, especially in these kind of places. But I,
00:20:25.680
as an immigrant, can say it. At what percentage of the native population does England cease to be
00:20:32.080
England? Is it 50 percent? Is it 40 percent? Is it 10 percent? When there are no English people left,
00:20:38.180
That's right. I mean, do we regard Rishi Sunak as English, for example?
00:20:42.220
I've always said, this is a very unpopular thing, that I'm not English, I will never be English.
00:20:47.140
I don't think Rishi Sunak is English. We're both British, but we're not English.
00:20:50.640
No, you're from, you weren't born here, you were an immigrant.
00:20:53.480
No, but my son was born here. I don't think my son is English.
00:20:57.180
He's born to a Russian and Ukrainian immigrant.
00:20:59.180
I would say that Rishi Sunak is as English as Tizer and Y-France, right? He is absolutely English. He was born and bred here.
00:21:07.880
And I wouldn't say that the colour of his skin makes him any less.
00:21:14.160
So, by being born here, you become English, in your opinion?
00:21:23.740
If your children had been born in Japan, would they be Japanese?
00:21:27.160
If they were born there? Look, you get white Caribbean people, for example.
00:21:31.420
Hold on, just the Japanese example. Would they be Japanese?
00:21:35.220
If they were born there and lived their life there, then yeah.
00:21:37.240
Yeah. It depends if you think English has got an ethnic undertone.
00:21:44.060
I disagree. What makes you think that English has anything to do with being English?
00:21:51.700
You can tell he's on the ropes because he wants to get off the Japanese example,
00:21:57.860
He says, hold on. You're telling me your kids, white as the freshly driven snow,
00:22:02.520
are born in Japan? They're just Japanese because they were born in Tokyo?
00:22:07.240
Yes, I think so. I think they'd be perfectly Japanese.
00:22:09.760
They're basically a reincarnation of Emperor Hirohito.
00:22:14.200
Well, you know who doesn't think that? The Japanese. They don't think that.
00:22:18.280
You're born in Nigeria. Let's say your kids are born in Nigeria.
00:22:26.120
Your kids are born in Nigeria. That means your kids are Nigerian?
00:22:30.280
Oh, absolutely. Of course. I'm going to name them all Malcolm X.
00:22:34.320
Well, that's not even a Nigerian name. But no, no one would think that your kids are Nigerian.
00:22:38.740
But this shows you one of the big political debates that is finally coming to the fore,
00:22:44.840
which is, how does one deal with racial problems, especially in the West,
00:22:50.440
which has had mass migration and therefore an exacerbation of racial problems?
00:22:53.620
How do you deal with the strife that comes throughout all of history,
00:22:59.500
Aristotle wrote about it, between different groups of peoples living together?
00:23:03.400
Which is inevitable. I'm not saying it's insurmountable, but it is inevitable.
00:23:06.220
It does happen. This has been an observation since classical antiquity.
00:23:09.540
How do you deal with it? And the liberal response is, we deny that race exists.
00:23:14.360
You know who doesn't deny that race exists? Everybody else. In fact, do you know who doesn't
00:23:20.760
deny that race exists? Even the liberals today, which is how we got wokeism and leftism and racial
00:23:26.560
identity politics. There is an English identity. The English, the word comes from the angles who are a
00:23:35.780
people. It's not just an idea floating in outer space. And it benefits precisely no one to pretend
00:23:44.100
that there's no such thing as racial difference. Of course there is. And so if you want to construct
00:23:49.860
a society that is harmonious, that protects the legitimate rights of everyone, you have to deal
00:23:54.560
with that reality. But the West, Europe especially, has just had its head in the sand on this for so
00:24:02.220
long. And to the point that British politicians will deny the existence of and legally protect
00:24:09.120
Muslim Pakistani grooming gangs that are raping British children because they're so afraid of
00:24:17.060
being called racist. They would rather sacrifice their daughters to Pakistani gangs than risk being
00:24:22.840
called racist. That is a horrifying position, a deeply immoral position, and one that is not going
00:24:32.560
to be sustainable in the long term. Just ask the voters. So then the Europeans and the British can
00:24:38.540
just suppress the will of the voters when it comes to Brexit, when it comes to anti-mass migration
00:24:44.420
political candidates throughout the European continent and throughout the UK. Or they can grapple
00:24:50.300
with the issue. And you can, it is going to be like pulling teeth to get them to grapple with that
00:24:54.720
issue. There's so much more to say. First though, go to stopboxusa.com. Use code Knowles. If you own
00:25:02.240
a handgun, you know the dilemma. You either keep it locked away somewhere secure but tough to access,
00:25:07.000
or you compromise on security for quick access. Neither option is ideal. That is why I love Stopbox Pro.
00:25:14.120
I've had my Stopbox Pro for a while. It solves that access versus security problem perfectly.
00:25:19.800
What makes it different is it uses this clever push-button mechanical system, which means there
00:25:25.400
are no keys to lose, no batteries to fail, which has kept me off of certain electronic systems.
00:25:29.880
Just reliable access when you need it. And what really sold me was testing it out. The build quality
00:25:35.880
is exceptional, and it should be since they make everything right here in the USA. I can access it
00:25:40.780
quickly in the dark. Gives me real peace of mind. I just, I love Stopbox. And you can get multiple
00:25:46.960
Stopboxes for multiple firearms. You know that it is secure. It's not going to fail you when you
00:25:52.860
need it. It is also TSA compliant when you travel. For a limited time only, our listeners are getting
00:25:58.760
a crazy deal. Not only do you get 10% off your entire order when you use code Knowles at
00:26:02.120
stopboxusa.com, they're also giving you buy one, get one free for their Stopbox Pro. 10% off and a free
00:26:08.620
Stopbox Pro. When you use code Knowles, K-N-A-W-L-E-S at stopboxusa.com, discover a better way to balance
00:26:14.960
security and readiness with Stopbox. You know, I just sat down with my most recent guest on Yes or No,
00:26:24.000
a wonderful game that you can get at home, dailywire.com slash shop. You can play it for
00:26:27.300
yourself. Check out my latest teaser with Ari Shafir.
00:26:42.720
Buddy, there's only one right answer. It's not straight. Wow. Now, I am fine with that being gay.
00:26:48.360
Yeah. Because gay means happy and delightful. No, it means lame and retarded. And that's what that was.
00:26:57.300
Watch full episode now on the Michael Knowles YouTube channel or subscribe for the uncensored
00:27:12.040
ad-free version exclusively on Daily Wire Plus. Speaking of racial politics, Tom Hanks just took
00:27:19.600
to Saturday Night Live for a hilarious, observant, profound sketch that none of us has ever seen.
00:27:27.300
seen before, in which he accuses right-wingers of being racists.
00:27:34.040
Thank you. Hey, speaking of church, can I say something? If more folks went to church,
00:27:39.840
we wouldn't be in this mess we're in now. You know what? I agree with you, Doug. I'd like to
00:27:44.420
shake your hand, sir. Here we go. Oh, no, no. Oh, no, no. It's just a handshake. Yeah, it's just a handshake.
00:27:50.540
Yeah, all right. You're welcome in Black Jeopardy anytime. Oh, well, all right. Well,
00:27:53.980
thank you, my brother. Now, maybe I'll start a show for you to come on, and we'll call it
00:27:59.960
Lot Jeopardy. No. We don't need it. We don't need it.
00:28:03.820
Ah, do you get it? The joke is that the Trump supporter is racist. He doesn't like Black people.
00:28:14.640
You get it? Except, this is the big problem with that joke. President Trump assembled the largest
00:28:23.640
coalition of Black voters and Hispanic voters, and just kind of racially diverse voters generally,
00:28:29.360
that any Republican has assembled in decades, certainly in my lifetime.
00:28:36.020
So that's the problem with the joke. It's not reflecting reality, and it's just so tired.
00:28:44.860
The thing I really like about this sketch is it shows that Hollywood has learned nothing. I know
00:28:50.200
that SNL is taped in New York, but the broader entertainment industry has learned absolutely
00:28:54.240
nothing. They think, wow, we just got our clocks cleaned. We lost an historic proportion
00:28:59.260
of Black voters, Black male voters that we relied on, and Hispanic voters. We thought we could run
00:29:04.680
really hard on the immigration issue, but it turns out almost half of Hispanics like Trump.
00:29:08.720
We even lost a lot of young women, young women under 30. Yikes. All right, let's just double down on
00:29:16.160
exactly what we were doing. Republicans are racists. Actually, first, we're going to make fun of
00:29:20.340
Republicans being religious. We're going to make fun of Christians. That'll work. And then we're going to
00:29:26.800
call our opponents racists, because apparently the majority of Americans, including a lot of Black
00:29:33.800
and Hispanic people, are racists. Yeah, that's a ticket. And we'll say that they're stupid, too.
00:29:39.240
That'll work. Okay, great, guys. Keep it up, man. Please keep it up. Let's blast those SNL sketches
00:29:45.760
all over the country. Now, speaking of our coalitions, speaking of the broader American
00:29:52.680
coalition, American citizenship, beautiful piece in the New York Times, just came out yesterday,
00:30:00.540
I think it was. No, two or three days ago. Trump might have a case on birthright citizenship.
00:30:09.660
Ooh, okay, here we go. Saturday Night Live refuses to be introspective, refuses to learn any lessons
00:30:14.260
from the election. But at least the New York Times editors, running a piece by Randy Barnett and Elon
00:30:20.960
Wurman. Mr. Barnett is a law professor at Georgetown. Wurman is a professor at University of Minnesota.
00:30:29.620
Both conservatives run this really good essay. You know that Trump, he might actually have a case,
00:30:34.820
because Trump ran on changing the interpretation of the 14th Amendment to stop the phenomenon of anchor
00:30:42.100
babies, illegal aliens who cross the border with the help of the cartels, and then immediately have
00:30:46.480
a kid here. And because of our current interpretation of the 14th Amendment, the kid
00:30:52.340
immediately becomes an American citizen. And for years and years, the left said Trump has no argument
00:30:58.100
here. Even the squish Republicans said Trump has no argument. Birthright citizenship is a sacred aspect
00:31:03.680
of our constitution. And I don't care if you're a face-tattooed gangster from MS-13 or
00:31:09.720
Trendy Aragua. If you spit out a kid the minute you get to America, that child is as American as
00:31:14.660
apple pie, entitled to all the rights of any American citizen. And people who have even a
00:31:21.260
passing familiarity with constitutional law in American history, they said, well, actually not so
00:31:25.860
fast. It's not totally clear that those kids really are entitled to American citizenship right away.
00:31:33.840
Just a little bit. I'll just read a few lines from the article. I encourage you to read the whole
00:31:38.340
thing. What this falls down to is four words in the 14th Amendment. Subject to the jurisdiction.
00:31:47.900
As it says, people born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
00:31:54.880
or citizens. Well, what does that mean? As Barnett and Worman write, it is widely agreed that subject to
00:32:01.720
the jurisdiction excluded the children of diplomats, Native Americans subject and with allegiance to
00:32:08.340
tribal authority, though this changed with the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, and members of
00:32:12.900
invading armies. So right off the bat from the passage of the ratification of the 14th Amendment,
00:32:20.200
right off the bat, children of diplomats who were born in the United States did not immediately become
00:32:23.980
U.S. citizens. Children of Native Americans who were born within the borders of the United States
00:32:27.720
did not immediately become U.S. citizens. Invading armies that happened to be in Louisiana or
00:32:33.140
something, and one of them gave birth, they would not immediately become citizens of the United States.
00:32:37.400
So there are exclusions to this notion of birthright citizenship. Furthermore, the very notion of
00:32:43.260
birthright citizenship comes from the common law. We inherit that from merry old England.
00:32:46.700
And the notion of use solely. There's use sanguinis, which is the right of blood, and use solely,
00:32:56.180
the notion that the right of the soil, that if you're born on certain soil, you're subject
00:33:00.820
to the responsibilities of citizens, but you all are subjects rather of the king of England in this
00:33:07.440
case, but you're also entitled to certain benefits. But they go on, they say, the common law principle
00:33:13.120
of use solely also excluded these groups. So even that common law principle that we get birthright
00:33:19.660
citizenship from included certain exceptions. And that's the question here. Do the kids of illegal
00:33:26.260
aliens count among the exceptions? Now, they go further. They say, you know, our present interpretation
00:33:33.160
of the 14th Amendment, which comes from the U.S. versus Wong Kim Ark, it's a Supreme Court case from 1898,
00:33:39.340
says it cannot explain the status of children born to foreigners on foreign public vessels in U.S.
00:33:46.160
waters who were not considered citizens. They don't get birthright citizenship. According to the
00:33:50.400
allegiance for protection theory articulated in the Bates opinion, none of the excluded groups was
00:33:55.780
subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because none of the members of these groups had
00:33:59.840
entered into the social compact with the people of the United States, and none gave allegiance to the
00:34:03.940
United States. So from the Bates opinion, you have this expression, this reinterpretation of the
00:34:11.400
right of the soil and a birthright citizenship from the English context to the American context. The
00:34:15.640
English context is, okay, you're born within the confines of merry old England. Okay, that's fine. You're a
00:34:21.060
subject of the king. So you pledge your allegiance to the king of England, and as a result, you get certain
00:34:25.520
benefits. Here, we don't have a king. So what are you pledging allegiance to? You're pledging
00:34:31.660
allegiance, I guess, to the people of the United States. You're pledging allegiance to the system of
00:34:35.340
laws in the United States, and you get allegiance. You get protection for allegiance. Okay. Well, the
00:34:41.440
question is, in the American context of, you know, joining the social compact or whatever, have these
00:34:47.720
people, the children of illegal aliens, people who their very first action coming into the U.S. is to
00:34:53.640
break our basic laws, have they really entered into the social compact? Have they really pledged
00:34:58.780
allegiance to the laws and the people of the United States? I don't think so. I don't think so. And so
00:35:03.840
this is an open question. And even with the Supreme Court precedent in 1898, as Barnett and Worman point
00:35:09.620
out, the Supreme Court has never ruled squarely on this question of illegal aliens. Now, if you zoom
00:35:15.380
out a little bit, because I don't want to get too lost in the details here, the 14th Amendment
00:35:19.700
obviously was not ratified to protect the birthright citizenship of the kids of illegal aliens.
00:35:24.380
The purpose of the 14th Amendment, as it was commonly understood, public meaning at the time
00:35:29.780
of ratification, was to bring black people into the American political project. That's what it was
00:35:34.000
about. Freed slaves can be citizens. That is the beginning and the end of the 14th Amendment.
00:35:40.960
So the question is, okay, what about this particular example that's been abused, that's created a major
00:35:44.720
social problem? What is it? The Supreme Court's going to have to rule on this. But there's a broader
00:35:50.720
political point, which is common sense tells us, obviously, these kids should not be entitled to
00:35:58.340
birthright citizenship. This is creating a major moral hazard, a huge perverse incentive for illegal
00:36:05.180
immigration that's threatening the very social fabric of the country, that's threatening the rule
00:36:10.480
of law, threatening the whole project. Obviously, common sense tells you this is not what the 14th
00:36:16.300
Amendment is about. If your ideology, this is just a broader 50,000-foot view, if your ideology
00:36:24.440
demands that you discard common sense, there's a problem with your ideology. What the liberals will
00:36:32.280
tell us, what the liberal, utopian, pie-in-the-sky theorists whose views are totally disconnected from
00:36:38.760
human nature, what they want to tell you is that when there is a conflict between your ideology
00:36:42.880
and human nature and common sense, choose the ideology. Forget about the common sense.
00:36:49.220
All the way down to a baby's not a baby and a man can become a woman. But I think we all know
00:36:54.460
when there is a conflict between your ideology and common sense, something's going a little wrong with
00:37:02.280
the ideology because human nature doesn't change. Common sense doesn't really change. So you got to
00:37:07.280
tweak the ideology, okay? And that is exactly what the Supreme Court should do. Now, if you're with us
00:37:12.600
for election night or the inauguration, you already know, Daily Wire doesn't just show up. We take over,
00:37:17.380
baby. And now we're headed back to D.C. to do just that at CPAC. Join me along with Ben Shapiro,
00:37:23.680
Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boring, all on stage live Thursday night, February 20th.
00:37:28.420
No scripted talking points, no corporate-approved narratives, just real conversations that matter.
00:37:32.940
streaming live on Daily Wire Plus. We are taking your questions. Do not just watch CPAC.
00:37:38.240
Be a part of it. Live Thursday night, February 20th, Daily Wire Plus. My favorite comment on Friday
00:37:44.020
is from Jush Mumma, who says, these people who are not Christian try to tell us what Christians
00:37:51.280
act like. Yes, I know there's actually a meme about this, which is some smug lib saying, you know,
00:37:57.220
listen, I don't believe your backwards, stupid, ridiculous views, but if I try to articulate them,
00:38:05.600
maybe I can trick you into doing what I want. So you hear this all the time. You know, these people
00:38:10.500
who really have no familiarity with the Christian tradition, theological, political, philosophical,
00:38:19.460
or anything in between, they say, you know, that J.D. Vance, he has no idea what he's talking about
00:38:23.520
when he brings up the Ordo Amoris, the hierarchy of loves, the order of charity. This is completely
00:38:27.920
ridiculous. You know, because actually, I one time heard someone talking about the Bible. No,
00:38:34.540
I've never read it myself, but I heard someone talking about it, and I was told that Christianity
00:38:38.760
just says you should vaguely be nice. So like that J.D., it's like, man, how about, have like a tiny
00:38:45.320
little bit of humility? You have no clue. When your intellectual better, J.D. Vance, is lecturing
00:38:54.620
on scholastic and really ancient philosophy in Latin, like maybe take a beat, you know, consider
00:39:03.580
that maybe he knows more about what he's talking about than you do and entertain those ideas, you
00:39:08.660
know, contemplate them, consider them and see if they do anything. No, no, no. That's not what
00:39:13.340
Christianity. Forget about Thomas Aquinas. I one time listened to a podcast. So let me tell you about
00:39:20.360
Christian theology and philosophy. Yeah, okay. All right, fine. Speaking of President Trump flexing his
00:39:29.300
muscles, I am very pleased to report to everyone that President Trump is posting Napoleon quotes.
00:39:38.020
I really like this. Many have compared President Trump to Caesar, to Cyrus, to many great strong
00:39:46.680
leaders throughout history. But now President Trump himself is drawing a connection between his
00:39:53.580
administration and Emperor Napoleon. And how did he do this? He did this with a quote that is attributed
00:40:01.660
to Napoleon. He who saves his country does not violate any law. Now, I'm especially happy because
00:40:09.980
this is a principle that I described years ago on this show. And I actually caught a lot of flack for it
00:40:15.740
because I pointed out that in the extreme, when the whole of the law is threatened, when the whole of
00:40:21.200
the polity is threatened, then the political rulers are not just tolerated to exceed the technical
00:40:30.280
boundaries of the law. But actually, they must exceed the technical boundaries of the law to preserve the
00:40:36.120
whole law. I articulated this very principle, and I caught a bunch of flack from squishes. But it's totally
00:40:41.900
right. It was right when Napoleon pointed it out. It was right when earlier political thinkers pointed it out.
00:40:48.260
And it's right when Trump points it out right now. Now, I say the quote is attributed to Napoleon because we
00:40:53.880
don't have a direct citation from Napoleon's writings. I think it comes from a collection put together by
00:40:59.820
Honoré de Balzac, not to be confused with big balls from Elon's Doge, but Balzac. And anyway,
00:41:08.020
it seems like the sort of thing that Napoleon would say, there's decent provenance to it. And as Gladden
00:41:14.240
Papin, a wonderful conservative writer and intellectual and even politician now, has pointed out, this comes
00:41:22.680
from antiquity. Salus rei publique suprema lex. The good or the health or the welfare of the people
00:41:32.460
should be the supreme law. And I love how ancient this political wisdom is because the libs are losing
00:41:42.360
their minds. I think we have some headline here. Oh yeah, here it is. Trump suggests he's above the law
00:41:47.780
with ominous Napoleon quote. This is from the independent UK, but a lot of establishment
00:41:53.900
media quotes about that. But hold on, that's not really what he's suggesting. He's just describing
00:41:58.880
what the law is. He's not saying he's above the law. He's describing what the law is in words
00:42:04.400
attributed to Napoleon, but which go back to Cicero on the laws. That phrase, salus rei publique
00:42:12.700
suprema lex, go to the people should be the supreme law, is actually quoted from Cicero by John Locke
00:42:20.640
as an epigraph in the second treatise of government, as the basic rule of government. In other words,
00:42:28.920
what Trump is posting here comes from an insight that our founding fathers and framers would have
00:42:37.020
been well aware of. Cicero and John Locke, pretty important figures in the American founding. Once
00:42:44.040
again, once again, and there are many such cases, President Trump is articulating truths that come
00:42:52.480
from the very heart of the American political tradition. And the modern libs, who until very
00:42:57.640
recently ran our political order, they're arguing that it is a betrayal of the American political
00:43:04.040
tradition. Because it's a betrayal of the things that they believe. Because what the liberal elites,
00:43:10.880
who until very recently have been running our country, what they have been doing is in itself
00:43:16.480
a betrayal of the American political tradition and the broader Western political tradition.
00:43:20.400
That's what this is about. Once again, Trump exposing his opponents with a bunch of egg on their face.
00:43:28.400
Once again, Trump showing that all of the things that we're told are crazy and kooky and
00:43:33.800
a threat to our constitutional republic that he is proposing actually have far sturdier grounding
00:43:40.560
in the American and more broadly Western tradition than anything that these modern libs are suggesting.
00:43:45.640
I love it. And I love the comparison of Trump to Napoleon. Because Trump in many ways is our Napoleon.
00:43:53.740
In as much as Trump, like Napoleon, is simultaneously a child of the revolution and the undoing of the
00:44:03.580
revolution. That's the comparison. Trump is a product of the modern liberal revolution. The way he behaves,
00:44:12.880
all the business mogul stuff, the playboy lifestyle, the brash big gold letters. He's not some stodgy,
00:44:20.580
stuffy figure wearing a tweed suit with his glass of port talking about the good old days or the middle
00:44:27.920
ages or anything. He's not that guy. He is a pop culture figure. He is a product of the revolution
00:44:35.760
and he's also the undoing of the revolution because he rides this wave of the revolution into power like
00:44:42.520
Napoleon. And then he becomes the enemy of all of these excesses. In some ways, he's really the
00:44:50.360
restorer of tradition. Beautiful comparison. All the more beautiful when Trump himself is making it,
00:44:58.380
when it's a self-conscious comparison. Now, speaking of Trump initiatives,
00:45:02.980
Trump's doge is now poking around in the IRS. Libs are furious about this.
00:45:09.440
ABC News, Elon Musk's doge asks for access to IRS taxpayer data, sources say. If granted,
00:45:19.440
doge would have personal financial details on millions of Americans. Here's what doge's
00:45:24.960
potential access to IRS databases means for you. I'll tell you, too long didn't read. I'll tell you
00:45:30.340
what it actually means for you. It means that your government might become more efficient. It means
00:45:34.380
that your government might stop wasting money or not even just wasting money, but actually using
00:45:40.460
money for malicious purposes to undermine your interests. As we saw in the case of USAID. It's
00:45:46.400
not just that these feckless bureaucrats are wasting your hard-earned taxpayer dollars. No, no, no. It's
00:45:52.680
much worse than that. They are not feckless. They're actually somewhat clever. And they're taking your
00:45:59.960
taxpayer dollars and laundering them through a system of left-wing NGOs to directly undermine
00:46:06.420
your interests. In one case, I'll give you just one example. USAID taking money, paying the Tide
00:46:11.440
Center, a left-wing organization. Tide Center paying off BLM. BLM then going out with your taxpayer
00:46:17.380
dollars and burning down your neighborhoods and maybe killing you and robbing the stores in your
00:46:21.820
neighborhood and extorting corporations to further advance radical leftism that you hate,
00:46:26.940
that undermines your interests. That's what we're talking about here. So that's what's going to
00:46:31.620
happen. But what about, let's take on the real worry head on. The worry is that Elon Musk and Doge
00:46:38.200
are going to be kicking around taxpayer files. They're going to get access to your financial information.
00:46:43.380
Just a reminder, and Elon Musk reminded people of this on X, Elon owned PayPal. Okay, the guy who's in
00:46:51.820
charge of Doge owned PayPal. In 2023, more than 70% of American adults used PayPal at some point.
00:47:04.780
If Elon wanted your financial information, he would have it. First of all, it is perfectly legitimate
00:47:12.460
for the president of the United States, the head of the executive branch,
00:47:15.960
to deputize people, to go in and clean up the executive branch. That is completely legitimate.
00:47:22.520
There is nothing really unusual about that at all. But furthermore, if the guy he deputizes to do it
00:47:29.180
already has or has had access to the financial information of the vast majority of Americans,
00:47:35.520
this is a non-troversy. Okay, what the establishment media, what the liberals broadly are concerned about
00:47:41.520
is not that Elon's going to get access to your social security number or something,
00:47:45.600
or he's going to figure out how much you paid in taxes. What they're worried about is that he's
00:47:49.440
going to take away their power from them, which is exactly why we're all cheering it on.
00:47:55.620
Okay, it is Tee Hee Hee Tuesday. The producers have assembled a collection of bits from a comedian,
00:48:05.580
Christina Mariani. I don't know anything about her, though I do love the idea of an old drink,
00:48:11.340
a drink from about 100, 150 years ago called Van Mariani, which was wine mixed with cocaine.
00:48:16.240
So I don't know if she's anything like that. I'm sure she's great. The rest of the show continues now.
00:48:20.780
You do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S,
00:48:23.740
at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.