Ep. 1677 - Ukraine WAR Over？ Trump Threatens Elections For Zelensky
Summary
The war in Ukraine may finally be coming to an end, but as the Trump administration prepares for negotiations with Russia, the self-styled defenders of Ukrainian democracy are terrified and furious because not only does Trump plan to bring peace to Ukraine, he even wants them to hold elections again. And how could democracy survive that?
Transcript
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The war in Ukraine may finally be coming to an end, but as the Trump administration prepares
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for negotiations with Russia, the self-styled defenders of Ukrainian democracy are terrified
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and furious because not only does Trump plan to bring peace to Ukraine, he even wants them
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to hold elections again. And how could democracy survive that? I'm Michael Knowles. This is the
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Welcome back to the show. Do children belong at weddings? The debate that has taken over social
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media. Really important. I mean, everything going on in the world, a really important question. And
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I'm sorry to say many of my fellow conservatives are getting this question wrong. Can you imagine
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that the horror? Ukraine might have to hold elections again, which is of course a grave
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threat to democracy. We're defending democracy over there, don't you know? We're sending hundreds of
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billions of dollars to Ukraine, which previously the media told me was one of the most corrupt
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countries in the world and infested with Nazis. But then after the libs got all on board with the
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Ukraine war, then Ukraine was a sparkling example of Madisonian democracy, totally above board,
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basically the 51st state. And if we allow democracy to die in Ukraine, why? There's no hope for it
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anywhere else in the world. And that's why it's so important that Ukraine not hold elections.
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You know, Ukraine was supposed to hold elections a year ago, last spring, and they didn't do it.
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And President Trump is not pulling any punches here. So Newsweek reports, there are concerns that
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the Ukrainian president could be voted out of office if the country holds an election. Yeah, right.
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That might happen because that's what democracy does. And of course, I don't even want to rehash it.
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It's become trite and cliche at this point to observe that the libs don't really care about
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democracy. They care about liberalism and leftism and progressivism. So when the people vote against
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liberalism and leftism and progressivism, they say it's a threat to democracy, even though that's an
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incoherent statement. Now, Zelensky is not doing himself any favors. Zelensky just came out. He said,
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no, unfortunately, President Trump, I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have
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great respect for the American people who always support us, unfortunately lives in this disinformation
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space. So there, I'll take out that parenthetical winding nonsense. He says, unfortunately, President
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Trump unfortunately lives in this disinformation space. Translation from the Ukrainian, he's calling
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Trump a dummy. He's saying Trump doesn't understand the reality. He's a stooge for propaganda from the
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Russians. Trump is a stooge. He doesn't know the real facts on the ground in Ukraine. He's just,
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he's ignorant. He believes a lot of things that are not so. Trump, as you might imagine, punched back.
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We have a situation where we haven't had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially
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martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at 4%
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approval rating. You have leadership, and I like him personally. He's fine. But I don't care about
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personally. I care about getting the job done. You have leadership now that's allowed a war to go on
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that should have never even happened. That's right. But part of the problem here has been
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leadership. And I don't want to throw all the blame on Zelensky. He doesn't deserve all the blame.
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In fact, I'm much more inclined to blame Joe Biden because the war broke out on his watch. And
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frankly, Joe Biden invited the war. He literally invited the war. People forget this. He said,
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if it's only a minor incursion by Russia into Ukraine, it's no big deal.
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So, but we have a leadership problem, okay? And it is not irrational for the Ukrainians to want
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to pick a new leader. At the very least, they should have that right, shouldn't they?
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Isn't that what this fight over democracy is all about? Now, Trump went a little further on
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truth social. He said, a dictator without elections, Zelensky better move faster. He's not going to have
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a country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia,
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something all admit only Trump and the Trump administration can do. So, the left is going
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to twist this. But what is he saying here? He says, if Zelensky doesn't move fast, he's not
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going to have a country left. That's not a threat from Trump. Trump isn't saying, I'm going to give
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your country away. That's an observation of what this war is doing to Ukraine. If Zelensky does not
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resolve this war, there is not going to be much of Ukraine left to defend. Because the U.S. grand
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strategy here, pushed by the liberal elites all the way up to Joe Biden, has been to keep the
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Ukraine war going as long as possible in order to degrade the Russian military. Degrade the Russian
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military is a euphemism for killing as many Russians as possible. And, in fairness, from the foreign policy
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grand strategy standpoint, the way that all the elite geniuses in Washington, D.C. are looking at it,
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is they're saying, look, we can kill a lot, hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers. Russia has
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military weapons pointed at us, has ICBMs pointed at us. So, you know, they're an adversary for many
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decades now. We can kill a ton of Russians and we don't even need to risk our lives for it because the
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Ukrainians are going to do it for us. So, the cost of degrading the Russian military, slaughtering all
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the Russians, is going to be an entire generation of Ukrainians. But a small price for us to pay, we don't
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really care that much. So, we're going to keep this war going as long as possible. It's not going to
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help Ukraine, really, in the long run. But at the very least, it's going to hurt Russia. And indirectly,
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that's going to help the United States. That is the grand strategy. That is the philosophy on the
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war in Ukraine. Some people are going to say, yeah, heck yeah, that's right, let's go for it.
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Some people are going to say, that's kind of ghastly. And that might not actually fulfill
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the criteria requisite for a just war. And actually, maybe blessed are the peacemakers. And actually,
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maybe President Trump should wind this thing down now. But the one thing I can tell you,
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whatever you want to say about elections during wartime, whatever you want to say about this
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potential peace deal as it's shaping up, Zelensky, in my view, has just proven that he deserves to be
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voted out of office. Because he just did one of the stupidest things a leader of Ukraine could do.
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Namely, pick a fight with Donald Trump in public. The only reason that this war is still going on is
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because the U.S. has been bankrolling it. This war would have been over in about two weeks if the
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U.S. not backed Ukraine. And this guy is going to now turn to the leader of the free world,
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to the guy leading the country that is the whole reason that Zelensky is still in power.
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And he's going to call him a dummy? Donald Trump, who has been known to hold a grudge or two?
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For that political incompetence alone, Zelensky probably should not be running Ukraine anymore.
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Last bit on Zelensky. This is crazy to me. Zelensky comes out and he says
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that he will not accept a peace proposal that is negotiated between the United States and Russia.
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The thing that President Trump said this week, he did not say yes when he was asked if he sees
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Ukraine as an equal member in the peace process. He did say later that Ukraine would have a seat at
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the table. Have you been given any assurances that Ukraine will have an equal seat at the negotiating
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table? So, I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine.
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Never. And our people, never. And our adults and children and everybody. It can't be so. This is the
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war in Ukraine against us. And it is our human losses. We are thankful for all the support,
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unity between USA, in USA, around Ukraine support, bipartisan unity, bipartisan support. We are
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thankful for all of this. But there is no, any leader in the world who can really make a deal with
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Putin without us, about us. That isn't true. I have sympathy for the Ukrainians. I don't have any
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soft spot for Putin invading another country. But this peace will be negotiated by the United States.
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In fact, I go further. The United States is the only country that can negotiate this peace.
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Ukraine has very little to do with it at the level of diplomacy and peace. Because the war in
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Ukraine is a proxy war between the United States and Russia. Full stop. He who pays the piper calls
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the tune. That's that. That's politics. Okay? Now, this doesn't mean the U.S. is going to roll over
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here. You saw just last week, J.D. Vance came out and he said, you know what? We might send U.S. troops
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to Ukraine. Setting up the stage for a negotiation with Putin. Yeah, maybe Ukraine will join NATO.
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Okay? So we've got competent people in charge. But this is a decision that is going to be made
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between the United States and Russia. It's just realpolitik. There is no President Zelensky.
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There is no sovereign Ukraine nation without the United States right now. So, sorry, buddy.
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We're calling the shots. Okay? That's just how it goes. Now, speaking of foreign affairs and death,
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by the way, we talked about South Africa. President Trump has called attention to the
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hideous, degrading situation in South Africa, where you have major South African political leaders
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singing along, leading thousands of people in chants to kill the whites, kill the farmers,
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kill the boar. And now you've got a black South African podcaster going viral, claiming that white
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people are not human. The problem that South Africans have right now is that we don't understand
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white people. White people are inferior species to us. We are homo sapiens. They've got Neanderthal
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blood in them. This is the science. And this is not science that was done by black people. It was
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done by them. You understand? Abutlive W. Lewis, they were eugenicists. They studied this and they
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realized that they're inferior to blacks. The white population is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking
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For us, it makes no sense to descend into the savagery that they have. Whatever land that
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they're holding onto, either way, their numbers are dwindling. Whatever leadership that they had
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is dying out as well. And you know about wealth disappearing after the third generation that
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is passed down to, you know? So we are there on the last generation. We're dealing with the weakest
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whites that the world has ever seen. So we expect to have Ubuntu, humanity. Unfortunately, by the
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strictest definition of what a human being is, white people are just below human beings. You are
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negotiating with an animal, a wild dog that you're trying to train to be tamed, to be upo,
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who guards your house. You can never do that. Okay, so he's got some antipathy toward white people,
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I'm sensing. He does say one thing that is true. He points out that the genome of white people
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does include DNA, apparently, from Neanderthals. And this is different from sub-Saharan blacks.
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So there are pretty marked genetic differences between sub-Saharan black people and all sorts
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of other people, specifically with regard to the Neanderthals. Now, he says this means that white
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people are subhuman. I don't know. I mean, white people have done a good job throughout history.
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I'm pretty impressed with the kind of civilization that white people have built. So I think we should
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not be so quick to knock the Neanderthals. If there really is Neanderthal DNA in white people,
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then I don't know. The Neanderthals might have had something to go for them, if there's some kind of
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genetic basis for that civilization. But all of that is beside the point. He says that the basic
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definition of what it means to human being, to be a human being, is genetics. And he goes further.
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He says not only is it genetics, but it's actually in the absence of any remnant of Neanderthal DNA.
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And that, to me, seems without basis. Though that is the claim of many racial biological essentialists
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these days. What actually makes us human, the fundamental aspect of what it means to be a human
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person, is that we have a rational nature. That's what it is. And this is a difficult point for
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people on the left and the right and all sorts of people these days to understand. Because while we
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flatter ourselves in thinking that we're scientifically very advanced, we've become
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philosophically and theologically and anthropologically stupid. We've just, we've lost our ability
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to think in ways that people would have taken to be second nature in classical antiquity, in the
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Middle Ages, and even in the early modern era. But that's what makes us human.
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This guy has different genetics than I do. Take his word for it. He's got different genetics. I got
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some Neanderthal around there. Maybe it's in my brow ridges. I don't know. But we are both
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recognizably human. And that is because we both have a rational nature. I can speak to him.
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We could, well, we can't get married because he's a fella. But I could marry his sister. It would be
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possible. We could have children. We could have a human life. It doesn't just boil down to genetics.
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boils down to a rational nature. Now, you might say that guy doesn't sound very rational. But he is
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rational in the sense that he can have conversations about abstract topics. He can
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contemplate abstract concepts such as justice, such as human nature, such as freedom and equality and
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politics. He does actually check those boxes. But he's undermining his own point, I think.
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Because white people are obviously human beings. Asian people are human beings. We know what a
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human being is, okay? So there has to be something deeper than hair or skin or genetics. I'm not even
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denying that race is a serious part of human life. It is. Of course it is. Those distinctions are real.
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But there is something deeper. There is something that unites us. There is something called human
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nature. And what that is, what separates us from monkeys and the delta smelt and rocks and trees,
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is our rational nature. You don't put a pit bull on trial for biting someone. The pit bull can't help
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himself. He doesn't have a rational nature. Unintentionally, perhaps, this South African anti-white
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activist in a collapsing country might actually be telling us, reminding us of something about human
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nature that even we in the West are forgetting. Now, speaking of what makes a human, big breaking
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news that porn gal who says that she slept with a thousand guys is reportedly pregnant. I'm not going
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to say her, I don't even know what her real name is, but I'm not even going to say her stage name
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because she's probably just doing all of this for attention anyway and I don't want to promote her
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platform. But she says that she's pregnant. You know, a thousand guys, statistically, I guess that
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makes sense. I don't, you know, even contraception is not a hundred percent effective. So at a certain
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point of the numbers game, I guess you're going to get pregnant. But then, no sooner does the thousand
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guys in a day porn gal say that she's pregnant than the other one, the gal who says she slept with a
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hundred guys in a day. She is now also saying that she's pregnant. And I don't know if I believe
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either of them because they are prostitutes who are selling fantasies to men. That's their whole
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career. So I don't know. I am not convinced that they're totally above board here. But in any case,
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one of them, the one named Lily says it's official. The secret is out. And it's a little unclear
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because she showed she's got this big baby bump, but then the test she showed suggests she's just
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one to two weeks pregnant. So that might be fake news. And then the other gal, this is what her
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evidence was that she's having cravings for weird food. So she wants to take another pregnancy test.
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So tomorrow I'm going to take another pregnancy test because, well, I want to know how far along.
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Okay. So who knows? Maybe they're pregnant. Maybe they're lying. Who knows? If it is true
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that these two are pregnant and you might be able to hear outside of my home studio right now,
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that there are babies and toddlers crying. Because I've got, I got three of them for age four and
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under. And the Daily Wire decided to shut down the studio today because there are three snowflakes
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on the ground and they're afraid of their employees driving. And actually knowing how Professor Jacob
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drives, they probably should be afraid of them driving even on a perfectly sunny day in the summer.
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And regardless, I digress. Let's say that soon these two porn gals will have little kids crying
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around their homes as well. It is possible to celebrate children without affirming all means
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of producing children. Children are always a good. I was talking about this yesterday when we were
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bringing up IVF and the in vitro fertilization executive order. Children are always good. But
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that doesn't mean that all ways of producing children are good. IVF is not morally defensible. Rape,
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you can produce a child through rape. No one's going to be defending rape. Going further, producing
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a child out of wedlock, that's not good. That's not good for the child. You should not endeavor to do
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that. It is better to have a child out of wedlock than to murder the child through abortion. But that
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doesn't mean that it's good to have a child out of wedlock. Doesn't mean that it's good to sleep with
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a thousand people in a day or a hundred people in a day or really anyone outside of marriage. And we can be
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very clear about that, okay? Kids are good, but not all the means of procuring children are good.
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Going to the IVF store, if you're a single person, and creating a child intentionally to deprive that
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child of a mother or father, not good. A homosexual couple going and channeling their natural desire
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for a child into this deeply immoral practice of intentionally creating a child to deprive him of
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his mother or father. Not good. Not good. And we need to speak very, very clearly about that.
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Because we have this tendency in modern life to just be really nice to everyone and affirm
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anyone's choices, no matter how deviant or disordered. But that ain't good. Who knows? These
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two gals might be lying anyway. But if they are pregnant, good. Don't kill the babies. Do what you
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can. Make the best of a bad situation. But let's not kid ourselves here, okay? There is a better way,
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and we need to affirm that for everyone else. There's so much more to say. First, though,
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puretalk.com slash Knowles for details. Not to belabor the point on IVF, but remember yesterday
00:21:35.620
I said, you know, look, this Trump executive order, in many ways it doesn't really matter
00:21:41.460
because while the order is being promoted as this great expansion of IVF, if you actually
00:21:47.780
read the executive order, Trump had a press conference. He called on a staff member to come
00:21:53.820
up and mention this executive order. Trump didn't even do it himself. He mentioned it in a series
00:21:59.040
of two other executive orders. And all it really does is task the policy council, the domestic policy
00:22:08.860
council of the White House with writing up a paper, figuring out ways that you might be able to lower
00:22:13.360
the cost of IVF or expand access. But it's not just like, hey, do a homework assignment. You know,
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there's not necessarily teeth to it. So I'm hoping that this is just pushed to the side and
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slow walked to the point of being irrelevant. You know, it checks a box for PR, but that's it. Because
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this is, it's a relatively novel technology, but growing public opinion is turning against it as
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people come to understand what this really is. One of the downsides of IVF that keeps popping up,
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and this news story just popped up yesterday, is that people, people keep giving birth to the wrong
00:22:50.240
babies. The scientists in the lab coats at the IVF shops keep cooking up the wrong baby in the
00:22:55.560
Petri dishes and giving it to the wrong mothers. It was an error that Christina Murray calls
00:23:00.860
unimaginable in every IVF patient's worst nightmare. This was never, ever a thought in my mind until it
00:23:08.000
happened. Murray is suing low country-based coastal fertility specialists, claiming the clinic
00:23:13.460
transferred her the wrong embryo. The 41-page lawsuit says when she gave birth in December
00:23:19.020
2023 after undergoing IVF at Coastal Fertility, the child was African-American, while Murray and the
00:23:26.700
sperm donor she picked were both white. I would have strangers approach us in public and ask whose child
00:23:34.240
I had. I kept his life as concealed as I could out of protection for him. After a five-month custody
00:23:40.600
battle, Murray says she was forced to give the baby to his biological parents. At a news conference,
00:23:45.820
her lawyer says they're still trying to figure out how this happened and pointed to what he calls a
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lack of regulation. Until IVF clinics are subject to real regulations, reporting requirements, and
00:23:57.900
mandatory certification programs for lab staff, these types of errors will continue to occur.
00:24:04.260
I'll tell you how it happened. Okay, I don't have a ton of sympathy for this woman because
00:24:09.460
she engaged in acts that are pretty clearly immoral. You know, going and purchasing sperm or even
00:24:17.200
just acquiring sperm with a donated sperm from someone who is willing to sell or otherwise donate his
00:24:24.420
future children in order to deprive that child of a father. To fulfill the selfish desire to have a child
00:24:31.120
as one has a handbag or a purse is not as bad. You know, I understand the natural longing for a kid, but you
00:24:38.700
have to respect the legitimate rights of children and you can't prioritize your own
00:24:43.320
disordered and selfish desires over the legitimate rights of children because children are not just objects
00:24:48.500
to be bought and sold, commodities to be traded. They're subjects. They're human persons with rights for
00:24:54.600
themselves. That's the first part. And the second part, I don't know, maybe she just got the wrong sperm.
00:25:00.180
That can happen. When you industrialize procreation, that can happen. And, you know, when you're talking
00:25:07.960
about industrial products like automobiles or briefcases or computers or something, when a product
00:25:14.640
comes out defective or contrary to the way that it was designed, you say, okay, no big deal. I'm going
00:25:20.260
to throw it out and get a new one. But when you treat the human person as one of those commodities,
00:25:24.320
you don't just throw out the human. Well, actually you do. In the IVF industry, unfortunately,
00:25:27.720
most of the people who are created as products are just thrown out. They're killed and then thrown
00:25:32.340
in the trash. But it's not what you're supposed to do. That's deeply, deeply wrong. And then now
00:25:37.780
you have this situation where this woman's been raising this kid for months and has to give the
00:25:43.740
kid up. It's very hard on her. It's very, very hard on the kid. Just absolutely horrifying to do to the
00:25:48.220
kid. For what? This is a lot more common than people think. This story just broke yesterday.
00:25:53.660
There have been many other such cases that are currently being litigated.
00:25:58.100
No bueno. No good. Okay. Speaking of children, I have to wade in on a hot cultural debate. Do
00:26:05.500
children belong at weddings? Every conservative I've seen, especially including my friend,
00:26:11.960
Mr. Walsh, who is wading into this debate all the way in. He's got his boots pulled up. He is going
00:26:19.740
into the deep end of this debate. He says, it is insane to think that women, that the children
00:26:24.760
rather, should not be present at weddings. This all started because a woman went viral
00:26:30.280
for giving the side eye to a little kid who was crying during her wedding ceremony at a ceremony
00:26:39.300
Times over the last few weeks, but I'm the only one that knows them. And one of the questions I asked
00:26:45.060
was, when did you know you were in love and wanted to spend the rest of your life together
00:26:51.760
as husband and wife? Okay. Now this was during the wedding ceremony. So this is, it's even more
00:26:59.260
nuanced. Okay. One, do children belong at wedding ceremonies? Two, do children belong at wedding
00:27:05.200
receptions, which usually follow the ceremonies? Three, is it ever acceptable to exclude children
00:27:12.100
children from weddings? The answer is yes. It is perfectly acceptable to exclude children from
00:27:20.000
weddings. You shouldn't be a jerk about it. You know, you shouldn't give the side eye. You shouldn't
00:27:24.300
shame people for having children. I'm not saying you can't invite children to weddings. I've been to
00:27:29.520
plenty of weddings that had little kids invited and it was a ton of fun. I've had a great time. You can do
00:27:34.860
that. It can be a blast, but it is perfectly acceptable to exclude children from wedding
00:27:42.000
receptions. It's fine. Okay. How dare, how could you, here, I'll prove it to you. Here's how I'll prove
00:27:47.100
it. Do you think it's okay to have black tie weddings? Do you think it is okay? I'm not saying you have to
00:27:53.800
do it, but is it all right for a wedding to be black tie? Expect the guests to come in tuxedos and
00:27:58.780
ball gowns? We would probably say yes. It's pretty common. Okay. Do children wear black tie? No, they
00:28:06.520
don't. Little kids should not be wearing tuxedos. That's crazy. Should little, should a little toddler
00:28:10.060
girl wear a ball gown? No, that'd be ridiculous. So there you go. Just there alone. One simple little
00:28:15.660
syllogism. It is okay to have a black tie wedding, but it would be inappropriate for children to wear
00:28:23.480
black tie. Therefore, we can conclude that certain wedding receptions can exclude children. It's okay.
00:28:31.600
And it can be nice, actually. It's all right to do. What this debate is really about is what it means
00:28:38.160
to be conservative, what it means to be traditional. It's not really about the wedding. It's not really
00:28:42.200
about the kids. We love kids. They're welcome in many circumstances. You can have a good time with
00:28:46.920
them at weddings, but I don't think you need to because there are two kinds of traditional that we're
00:28:50.980
talking about here. There's the Walton's traditional and the Windsor traditional. This is it. And I think
00:28:57.460
both sides of this debate are just talking past each other here. Walton's traditional, that's, you
00:29:03.860
know, the homestead with the overalls and the flannel and the cows and the whole family comes around to
00:29:09.900
dinner. That's good old, you know, salt of the earth kind of traditionalism. And that's great. I love
00:29:16.280
that. I don't look good in overalls, but I like that culture a lot. It's fun. Got a lot of friends in that
00:29:20.840
culture. It's cool, man. It's great. But there is another kind of tradition. There's the Windsor
00:29:26.280
traditionalism. The traditionalism of the tuxedo and the brandy snifter and the library built with
00:29:33.200
rich mahogany. And that's okay too. It's all right to have order and hierarchy. And it's okay to insist
00:29:46.280
upon differing levels of sophistication even. You wouldn't bring a three-year-old to a state dinner
00:29:53.560
at the White House. It's okay to exclude children in certain cases. But it's the clash of those kinds
00:30:01.020
of tradition. I think they're both good. I think there's a role for both of those. But that's really
00:30:04.860
what this is about. Okay. It's the Walton's traditionalism versus the Windsor traditionalism.
00:30:09.340
That's okay. If you want to have a fancy wedding, have your fancy wedding. It's all right. You'll see the
00:30:13.440
kids tomorrow. Take them to brunch the next day. It's all right. That's very traditional too, actually.
00:30:20.240
I know this is going to be very unpopular. But it's the truth. I got to tell you the truth. I got
00:30:24.840
to tell you what I'm seeing, folks. Now, speaking of upending tradition, the Libs just can't give it
00:30:31.520
a rest. There's a new star of a revival of Jesus Christ Superstar. Do you know who's playing the role
00:30:37.060
of our Lord? We'll get to it in a moment. If you are with us for election night or for the
00:30:43.480
inauguration, you know that the Daily Wire doesn't just show up. We take over. And now we're headed
00:30:48.420
back to D.C. today to do just that at CPAC. Join me along with Ben, Matt, Drew, Jeremy, live
00:30:55.800
tonight, February 20th. No scripted talking points, no corporate-approved narratives, just real
00:31:01.140
conversations that actually matter, streaming live on Daily Wire+. We are taking your questions. Do not
00:31:06.740
just watch CPAC. Be a part of it live Thursday night, tonight, February 20th on Daily Wire+.
00:31:13.800
My favorite comment yesterday is from Henry Bierman, 8431, who says, the fact that Michael
00:31:20.020
didn't use his Fauci voice in this video is the real tragedy here. That is a tragedy. I should
00:31:24.100
have. My deepest apologies. I also would like to apologize to all of you for poisoning you
00:31:30.420
with that clutch at that Fauci-ouchie. And also, sorry, for spending $241 million of your
00:31:36.180
texts pay your money to ranzing monkeys. Oopsie-daisy, please forgive your benevolent leader, Dr. Fauci.
00:31:42.460
Jesus Christ Superstar, a Broadway musical from the 70s, has a new lead, going to play the title
00:31:52.520
role of our Lord at the Hollywood Bowl. Who is it? Is it Jim Caviezel? No. Is it Jonathan Rumi? No.
00:31:59.360
No. It is Cynthia Erivo. A black lady is going to play our Lord. And I know they're going to,
00:32:10.880
I'm already hearing it from the liberal Christians. They're going to say, well, it doesn't matter,
00:32:15.140
actually, the appearance of the person. It doesn't have been the sex of the person. You know,
00:32:20.740
our Lord is everything. No, actually, hold on. God, of course, is not bound by all of our little
00:32:28.200
human categories. But our Lord, who is God, but who has both a divine nature and a human nature,
00:32:36.340
actually enters into history in time and space with a body and a sex and a skin color and real
00:32:47.580
physical, he's a real person in time and space. So it does matter. I'm waiting. I think there's
00:32:57.680
going to be a revival of Spike Lee's Malcolm X and they're going to star Jim Gaffigan. Can you wait
00:33:01.860
for that? That's going to be so great, don't you think? Audiences are going to line up. I don't
00:33:05.680
think, they wouldn't do that. In fact, the libs in Hollywood in recent years have increasingly
00:33:12.380
insisted that you cannot play any character that you do not personally identify with,
00:33:21.780
that does not check off all of the criteria on your personal identity. You know, in my youth,
00:33:29.240
I was an actor. I've played all sorts of roles, all sorts of roles that are totally foreign to me.
00:33:35.160
I played, I played the devil once. I played, I played football players. That's, I've played
00:33:40.800
U.S. soldiers, played guys who are a little light in the loafers. I've played Hispanics. I've
00:33:48.040
played all sorts of things. It's not, it's not me. I haven't just played Italian, half Italian,
00:33:54.120
half Wasp, Irish from New York, millennial. That would be crazy. But the libs say now, these days,
00:33:59.440
if you want to play a gay guy in a movie, you have to be a gay guy. What happened to pretending? What
00:34:03.240
happened to acting? No, out the window. If you want to play a trans identifying person, you need to
00:34:08.620
identify as trans. But if you want to play our Lord, you can be a black lady. It's totally fine.
00:34:15.780
Hmm. Doesn't make a lot of sense. So there's no consistent principle here for the left. It's
00:34:22.760
just anything that would upend tradition, that would irritate normal people. They're for that.
00:34:29.540
But otherwise, no rules. No rules. We play by whatever capricious rules they come up with that
00:34:36.020
day. This does, though, speak to a deeper debate within the theater that's going on for a long time.
00:34:40.040
It was Bruce Dean who formerly ran the Yale Repertory Theater. Then he went up to the
00:34:46.180
art, the American Repertory Theater up by Harvard. And he got into a big fight with
00:34:52.240
the guy who wrote Fences. What is his name? He's probably the founder of the modern black theater
00:34:59.940
in America. Oh, anyway, his name escapes me. But he was a black playwright from St. Paul,
00:35:05.720
Minnesota area. And they had this big debate over colorblind casting. Should you cast
00:35:11.640
acknowledging race or not? August Wilson was the black playwright. And Bruce Dean,
00:35:18.540
this white liberal guy, said, yeah, colorblind casting is great. You can have colorblind casting.
00:35:23.020
And, you know, you could have black people play white characters and white people play black
00:35:26.900
characters. And that's all great. And it was the black guy. It was August Wilson who said, no,
00:35:30.240
you can't. You know, it's ridiculous. But some, I guess some, maybe sometimes there can be exceptions.
00:35:36.840
Denzel Washington did a great Macbeth. But, you know, no, generally, you can't have a black lady
00:35:43.420
playing our Lord. And you can't have Jim Gaffigan playing Malcolm X. And it doesn't make sense. You
00:35:48.500
know, we have to, there have to be certain limits here within the theater. But for the left, they don't
00:35:54.740
care. They're really just poking buttons. That's all this is about. This is not because Cynthia Erivo went in
00:35:59.420
and did a great version of an Andrew Lloyd Webber song. It's because they knew this would grab
00:36:04.400
headlines and get people like me to complain about it. And I guess they succeeded. Now,
00:36:07.620
speaking of Hollywood entertainers, this was really fitting. This was great. Mark Hamill,
00:36:14.120
whose only notable film role ever began in the 1970s. And he hasn't shut up about it since.
00:36:20.620
Mark Hamill was just presenting at the BAFTA Awards, the British Theater Awards. And as he was
00:36:28.920
presenting, his pants fell down. Hat tip to Colin Rugg for this little clip.
00:36:35.580
So what makes us love cinema so much that we're all gathered here to celebrate tonight?
00:36:40.180
For me, it's that films create worlds so vivid and stories so powerful that we lose ourselves
00:36:46.140
in them completely. They create immersive cinematic landscapes that feel alive, whether they're set
00:36:52.300
here in London or anywhere. This is like a Saturday Night Live sketch. If you're just listening to it right
00:36:57.160
now, halfway through, you can hear his voice start to crack. His pants just fall down. And you can't
00:37:01.220
really see on camera, though according to reports, as according to The Sun, Mark started speaking,
00:37:07.660
then his suit trousers just dropped to his knees. It was like they were too big for him. All the big
00:37:11.360
stars such as Timothee Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Adrian Brody would have seen it from their angle.
00:37:16.500
Most guests looked horrified but said nothing. They were turning to each other wide-eyed as if to say,
00:37:21.480
did that just happen? So his pants dropped to the ground. He says, oh, and then he starts trying
00:37:26.140
to pull them up and his jacket gets all discombobulated. And it's really symbolic,
00:37:31.740
really fitting. Because Hollywood, the liberal entertainment, they've been caught with their
00:37:37.940
pants down. And their ratings have collapsed and their cultural influences collapsed and they all
00:37:42.980
hated Trump and yet Trump won the popular vote. And I just, it's really fitting. I don't have much
00:37:47.240
more to say about it. It is very funny to see this guy who really comes off as one of the biggest
00:37:52.780
left-wing jerks in all of Hollywood actually be pantsed on international television. Now,
00:38:01.020
speaking of the libs being caught with their pants down, LA Mayor Karen Bass was just interviewed about
00:38:06.660
what happened. You know, on her watch, her city burned to the ground. And technically it wasn't even
00:38:12.940
on her watch because she wasn't looking. She was negligent. She wasn't in town. She wasn't in the
00:38:16.900
country. She wasn't on the continent. She was in Africa on some kind of public-funded vacation
00:38:22.700
while her city was burning to the ground. And Alex Michelson, an excellent interviewer in LA,
00:38:28.540
asked her, he said, hey, you had warning that this kind of thing could happen. What happened?
00:38:34.060
We know that there was warnings about the weather before you went and you still went. What was the
00:38:39.900
thought process behind going to Ghana? So let me just tell you a couple of things. First of all,
00:38:44.200
when the White House called and asked me if I would represent the president, I said, yes,
00:38:49.500
it was going to be a very, very short trip over a weekend and two business days. We need to look at
00:38:57.440
everything about the preparation and all of that for the fires, because I think when we evaluate that,
00:39:06.120
we will find that although there were warnings that I frankly wasn't aware of, although there were
00:39:12.460
warnings, I think our preparation wasn't what it typically is, meaning that before there's a
00:39:18.880
major weather event, for example, last week when we knew we were going to get into the rains,
00:39:23.560
you saw us come together and us talk about, you know, get your sandbags, bring the K-rails out.
00:39:30.380
That type of preparation didn't happen. If that had, I will tell you, Alex, I wouldn't have even gone
00:39:36.420
to San Diego, let alone leave the country. But what do you mean there were warnings you weren't aware of?
00:39:40.840
Because I know we were talking about it on the news. A lot of people were talking about the problems.
00:39:46.380
Devastating. Devastating follow-up from Alex Michelson. He goes, hold on, what do you mean
00:39:50.460
that you weren't aware of? Like we were aware of it. We in the news, in the local news,
00:39:57.560
were aware of it. You're the mayor of LA. What do you mean you're not aware? Watch the news. I guess
00:40:01.620
you should watch the news. And then you'd find out about it. Everybody knew about this.
00:40:05.160
After LA burned to the ground, the Libs tried to blame climate change or just some total fluke of
00:40:12.800
nature, unexpected. These Santa Ana winds come in every year. This is not unprecedented in any way.
00:40:19.240
I lived in LA for six, seven years. I could have easily predicted this or something like this.
00:40:23.840
There was no preparation. That reservoir of water in the Palisades, that was empty right before these
00:40:30.580
really dangerous winds were coming in. They had not cleared the brush. There was no serious forest
00:40:34.880
management going on. They were redirecting 95% of rainwater into the Pacific Ocean to protect some
00:40:40.800
stupid delta smelt. I mean, crazy stuff. President Trump was warning about this in 2018.
00:40:46.580
Not good. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I wasn't aware is never a good excuse for a politician,
00:40:54.580
but totally insane in this case. And you've even got liberals turning on Karen Best. Does that mean
00:40:59.740
that even LA, Gamora by the Sea, might see a rightward lurch in the next election? We'll find
00:41:05.340
out. Now, here's a little teaser to leave you on. Transgender vegan cult members have just been
00:41:12.380
arrested and charged with murder in Maryland. It's always the ones you most expect.
00:41:18.040
They won't eat fish, but they will murder people. We will get to that story. I guess we got to get to
00:41:23.780
that tomorrow because I need to catch a flight. There won't be any member block today. I'm sorry.
00:41:26.800
Not just because I'm stuck here with three snowflakes, but even if the Daily Wire studios are
00:41:31.920
closed, I need to go get to my flight because I'm going to CPAC. And I'm giving my speech at CPAC.
00:41:37.100
We will see what kinds of bad ideas we eradicate this year. And then all of us together are doing
00:41:42.480
a backstage live from CPAC. So see you there. I'll see you tomorrow. I'm Michael Knowles.