The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1682 - Leaked Pro-Russia Audio of Donald Trump Jr. Is FAKE

00:00:00.000 Did you hear the shocking audio of Don Jr. calling for the United States to ditch Ukraine

00:00:07.540 and start sending weapons to Russia? If you follow the Democrat National Committee's

00:00:12.340 Rapid Response Account Fact Post or any of the other outlets that repeat the DNC's talking points,

00:00:17.700 you probably heard it with your own ears. And the only problem with it

00:00:22.280 is that it's completely made up. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to the show. Elon Musk has now presented the first wave of Doge at President

00:00:52.360 Trump's cabinet meeting. It was explosive. It was just a great cabinet meeting overall. We'll get

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00:02:29.720 right now at jeremysrazors.com. You probably heard the fake Don Jr. clip if you are plugged in to any

00:02:38.200 kind of social media, political media. But this comes from FactPost. FactPost posting all the

00:02:47.200 Democrat committee national rapid response. And here's how it sounds.

00:02:52.880 I can't imagine anyone in their right mind picking Ukraine as an ally when Russia is the other option.

00:03:01.120 I mean, just think about it. Massive nuclear power loaded with natural resources everyone

00:03:04.520 needs. Literally the biggest country on the planet. And ha ha, there's Ukraine, which has Chernobyl and

00:03:10.960 some radiation proof dogs. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is like, oh yeah, this is definitely

00:03:16.160 the ally we need. Let's dump all our money into them. Honestly, if anything, the US should have

00:03:21.820 been sending weapons to Russia. Okay. So since you know it's a fake clip, you can probably hear,

00:03:28.100 all right, the audio is not perfect. His voice isn't modulating perfectly, but you really got to

00:03:32.580 listen closely. If you did not know that that were a fake clip, and this is important, if you were not

00:03:37.620 listening to the words he was saying, if you're just listening to the tone of his voice, you might

00:03:40.880 think, yeah, okay, it sounds like Don Jr. Okay, what am I listening to from Don Jr.? However,

00:03:45.920 if you have any discernment, if you have any judgment, if you understand political reality

00:03:53.220 at all, you would know immediately that's fake. Don Jr., I don't care what you think about Ukraine

00:04:00.160 and the wisdom of giving Ukraine a blank check or what, nobody would ever seriously believe that

00:04:06.240 Donald Trump Jr. would advocate arming Russia against Ukraine. No, no American is advocating

00:04:15.040 arming Russia against Ukraine. The American left defended Russia for the entire history of the

00:04:18.960 Soviet Union, but the Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago, and it's totally unthinkable. Anyone with judgment

00:04:26.540 and discernment would know that's a ridiculous, it's obviously AI, which is why the big Democrat 0.97

00:04:34.740 accounts were posting that out there because they lack discernment, they lack judgment. I'm even going 0.79

00:04:39.640 to be charitable here and say they weren't intentionally trying to deceive people. I'm

00:04:45.340 willing to say that they were deceived themselves because they are so disconnected from political

00:04:51.480 reality. They are so high on their own supply. They really believe the propaganda that they made up

00:04:57.600 eight years ago, that Trump is a Russian spy, he's a KGB sleeper cell colluding with the Russians to 0.56

00:05:03.880 steal the election. They just made that up. The Democrats cooked that up with Christopher Steele

00:05:08.800 and Russian intelligence, ironically enough, and they believe it. They've told themselves this lie so 0.52

00:05:14.540 many times. They really believe that conservatives have no principles whatsoever other than the

00:05:20.440 naked worship of power and the avarice, the desire for money and stuff. They believe that.

00:05:27.940 That's disconnected from reality. It's part of why they lost the election in November.

00:05:33.740 But because they're willing to believe their own press releases, they're easily duped. They're so

00:05:39.940 gullible. This is going to be really important beyond just the Democrats lacking discernment,

00:05:46.220 beyond this particular hit job on Don Jr., which didn't make it very far.

00:05:51.080 This is going to be an increasingly prominent problem. It's deep fakes in the social media era.

00:06:01.600 This also reverses the conventional wisdom regarding social media. The conventional wisdom regarding

00:06:09.400 social media is that you just put all the information out there, and the people will be

00:06:16.740 journalists themselves, and they can sift through everything. And no, actually, increasingly, what

00:06:23.480 you are going to need in the social media era is to cultivate wisdom and discernment. You're going to

00:06:31.120 need to know how to separate truth from falsehood, separate the wheat from the chaff. And that's very

00:06:37.040 difficult when we live in an era that alternately denies the existence of objective truth,

00:06:43.640 or even just an era that doesn't know what a baby is, doesn't know what a woman is, doesn't know what

00:06:50.800 a country is, that's confused about really basic things. They're going to be duped. And in this case,

00:06:56.860 the social media are going to make it harder. Because while the establishment media are dishonest,

00:07:02.740 with the social media, you just put information out there. It's then repeated by the gullible

00:07:06.340 establishment media and the political parties. And people look pretty stupid when they fall for that 1.00

00:07:12.080 stuff. Now, speaking of the fake news media, Don Lemon, the former CNN host, has just come out 1.00

00:07:20.860 swinging against Megyn Kelly. Why? Because Megyn Kelly made fun of Joy Reid. Megyn Kelly said, 1.00

00:07:32.860 Joy Reid has viciously mocked the tears of every white person she's helped cancel over the years for 1.00

00:07:36.800 some imaginary racial slight. Fact check, true. She's had zero empathy for anyone. True. Now she

00:07:44.820 wants us to feel sorry for her. True. All caps, we don't. Megyn just comes out swinging. So how do you

00:07:53.340 think Don Lemon attacked Megyn Kelly? Don Lemon, also not having learned anything over the past 10 years,

00:08:02.540 decided that the best way to attack Megyn Kelly for his attack on this lib journalist who just lost

00:08:07.860 her show is to call her a racist. Megyn Kelly, in my 30 some years as a journalist and my 50 some years

00:08:17.500 as a person of color, go yourself. Okay.

00:08:21.200 Let's move on. Thanks, everyone, for watching. Your support means the world.

00:08:34.120 It goes, go F yourself, Megyn, as a person of color. And that's only a, that's the punchline 0.81

00:08:40.080 of the segment. He goes on and on about the racism and the this-ism and the that-ism. First of all,

00:08:46.500 who talks that way to a woman? Who, now Don Lemon's a little bit confused about male roles and female

00:08:55.340 roles, of course, but who speaks that way to a, even a woman in media? Go F yourself. That's not 0.98

00:09:01.380 how a man talks to a woman. That's very degrading behavior for a man to engage in. Though Don Lemon,

00:09:08.260 you know, I don't think I'm revealing any private sins here. You know, some of the,

00:09:12.880 some of the salacious headlines, it seems like he occasionally engages in that kind of behavior.

00:09:17.220 And Don Lemon doubles down on the typical Democrat attack. If you disagree with me, you're a racist. 0.97

00:09:24.020 As a person of color, I'm so terribly offended. F you, Megyn Kelly. I think it's really weak. It 0.99

00:09:31.780 just shows you the problem that Joy Reid is having right now, that Don Lemon has been having for a

00:09:42.880 They have not kept up with the times. They haven't changed their strategy.

00:09:49.640 So they think, they think it's 2012 and you can just call everyone a racist and that's

00:09:55.540 absolutely fatal to their credibility. And it's just, that's not true anymore.

00:10:00.580 They think that you can just go out there and say that, you know, Trump is a nasty, evil, 1.00

00:10:06.620 bigoted person. And that, that, that will work. I don't think that really works anymore. 1.00

00:10:11.960 So now Don Lemon is relegated to the fringes here. Joy Reid is booted off the network and they can keep

00:10:16.960 screaming at the sky about the racist Republicans and we can win more and more of the racial minority

00:10:22.000 vote. There's so much more to say first though, go to policygenius.com slash Knowles. Securing your

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00:11:49.540 I, speaking of firing people, want to get to Elon Trump at Elon Musk at President Trump's first

00:11:59.100 cabinet meeting. Absolutely beautiful stuff. Now, obviously, Elon is not a member of the cabinet,

00:12:05.240 but he's such an important role in the second Trump administration that he comes out there,

00:12:10.480 President Trump introduces him. He says, you've all heard a lot about Doge. Okay, Doge,

00:12:14.200 what are you doing? Elon Musk, please say a few words. Thank you, Elon. Thank you, Mr. President.

00:12:22.080 Well, I actually just call myself a humble tech support here because this is actually

00:12:27.620 as crazy as it sounds. That is almost a literal description of the work that the Doge team is

00:12:35.980 doing, is helping fix the government computer systems. Many of these systems are extremely old.

00:12:41.120 they don't communicate. There are a lot of mistakes in the systems. The software doesn't work.

00:12:47.760 So, we are actually tech support. It's ironic, but it's true. The overall goal here with the Doge team

00:12:56.520 is to help address the enormous deficit. We simply cannot sustain, as a country, a $2 trillion deficit.

00:13:03.640 Also, we will make mistakes. We won't be perfect. But when we make a mistake, we'll fix it very quickly.

00:13:10.040 So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola,

00:13:16.940 Ebola prevention. I think we all want Ebola prevention. So, we restored the Ebola prevention

00:13:22.040 immediately, and there was no interruption. But we do need to move quickly if we are to achieve a

00:13:30.140 $1 trillion deficit reduction in financial year 2026. It requires saving $4 billion per day every day

00:13:39.980 from now through the end of September. But we can do it, and we will do it.

00:13:45.020 Both of these points he just made are really, really important. The first one, he says,

00:13:48.640 hello, I'm here to give you your update on your tech support. And everyone kind of laughs. He says,

00:13:52.100 but, you know, we are doing that. And this undercuts the lib narrative that Elon's Doge is

00:13:59.840 unprecedented or has no place in the federal government or whatever. Doge is the new name

00:14:05.180 of the U.S. Digital Service. That's where Doge comes from. Trump took this department,

00:14:14.160 U.S. Digital Service, which is tasked with updating computer software, updating the technology,

00:14:20.380 keeping the electronics going. He reformulated that as Doge. And Doge is doing that. As Elon says,

00:14:31.160 you know, the computers don't really talk to each other. He's like, you know, I build electric cars

00:14:36.100 and rocket ships, and I plug electronics into people's brains. So, I know a little bit about

00:14:41.780 it. You know, I have developed one of the most impressive AI systems in the world. And so,

00:14:46.260 I know a little bit about that. And we are doing that. And as we do that, we are also updating the

00:14:52.260 government. We're updating how the human networks are working as well. Then he gets to the second

00:14:58.060 part. He says, look, we are going to make mistakes. We are moving really, really quickly. And we are

00:15:03.780 going to make mistakes. But just to use one example that the libs wanted to make a big deal out of,

00:15:09.800 we accidentally canceled Ebola prevention. And then we caught it very quickly, put it back online.

00:15:17.020 There was no interruption to service. Good. This is really important, because I think some of the

00:15:23.520 more libertarian ideologues would say, you know, we don't even care about Ebola prevention.

00:15:29.420 What is the United States spending hard-earned taxpayer dollars on Ebola prevention for?

00:15:34.440 And most Americans would say, you know, whatever, I'm not that ideological. The U.S. government's going

00:15:39.040 to spend some money on overseas programs. Ebola prevention seems pretty important. You know,

00:15:43.720 teaching Afghan peasants about Marcel Duchamp and urinal modern art is probably not that important.

00:15:49.140 But Ebola prevention is probably a good idea. So Elon's coming in much like Trump and saying,

00:15:54.300 I'm really not an ideologue about this. It's just, we have to save trillions of dollars.

00:15:58.840 And it's going to be difficult. And we have to move quickly. And when some really good program

00:16:04.280 accidentally gets caught up in the mix, like a dolphin and a tuna net, you know, okay,

00:16:07.900 we'll, we'll fix it. And we have demonstrated that we can fix it quickly. Really, really good.

00:16:15.760 Now, turning, turning to all of these other departments, President Trump made a really,

00:16:24.720 really good point, which is he opens up the cabinet meeting with a prayer. And this was kind of shocking,

00:16:33.920 I think, to a lot of people. It's always shocking because Trump has this reputation as the billionaire

00:16:38.920 playboy. He never seemed to be particularly pious. I think he got some serious religion in that field

00:16:44.520 in Butler, Pennsylvania. But it was so refreshing, just as an American citizen, to see the top tier of

00:16:52.780 the executive branch beginning the meeting with a prayer.

00:16:55.420 Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this awesome privilege, Father, to be in your presence.

00:17:03.900 God, thank you that you've allowed us to see this day. The Bible says that your mercies are new every

00:17:08.900 morning. And Father God, we give you the glory and the honor. Thank you, God, for President Trump,

00:17:14.420 Father, for appointing us. Father God, thank you for anointing us to do this job. Father, we pray you

00:17:21.260 will give the president, the vice president, wisdom. Father God, as they lead. Father, I pray for all of

00:17:26.580 my colleagues that are here around the table and in this room. Lord God, we pray that we would lead

00:17:32.040 with a righteous clarity. Father God, that as we serve the people of this country in every prospective

00:17:38.000 agency, every job that we have, Father, we would humble ourselves before you. And we would lead in a

00:17:44.000 manner that you've called us to lead and to serve. Father, the Bible says that blessed is the nation

00:17:47.740 whose God is the Lord. Well, Father, we today honor you. And in your rightful place, Father,

00:17:53.960 thank you for giving us this opportunity to restore faith in this country and be a blessing to the

00:17:59.720 people of America. And Lord God, today in our meeting, we pray that you will be glorified in

00:18:04.300 our conversation. In Jesus' name, amen.

00:18:09.060 Scott, that was a very good job you did.

00:18:11.080 I love it. You have to keep the button there at the end.

00:18:16.240 Who is Trump? Wow, boy, that was a really good prayer. I really like that.

00:18:20.600 It's so endearing and really a beautiful thing to see.

00:18:26.260 All of the cabinet secretaries and the president of the United States,

00:18:29.720 heads bowed, eyes closed in prayer. Why is that important?

00:18:34.420 Because, well, I think it's important because God exists and we need to invoke his blessings because

00:18:39.260 he is constantly sustaining everything that is. Okay, so that's the basic reason why it's good

00:18:45.120 to pray. Second reason is it makes you holier and you are called to be holy. And if you want to be

00:18:51.100 holy, you have to pray. But the third reason, even if you're an agnostic or an atheist, the reason that

00:18:57.920 it's good to see your political leaders with their heads bowed and their eyes closed in prayer

00:19:02.540 is it demonstrates that they recognize that they have obligations, that they're not the boss,

00:19:13.140 that they're not the master of the universe, that there will be consequences if they behave in an

00:19:19.640 unjust way. That's what that demonstrates. Even if you're some redditeer, atheist, agnostic,

00:19:25.440 like 2008 style, silly person. Even if you, you know, tip the fedora and whatever, don't believe in God 0.99

00:19:36.520 and ignore the kind of classical tradition. Even if you're that guy, you want your leaders to behave

00:19:42.640 like this. Even, this goes back even to divine right monarchs, okay, some centuries ago. What is

00:19:51.860 misunderstood about even that absolutely magnificent, elaborate kind of role is that the notion of a

00:20:00.020 divine right monarch is that the monarch has obligations to God, that even he, even the glorious

00:20:07.660 sun king is not the boss ultimately. That's really, really important. So you get this prayer, and it's not

00:20:14.900 just a tiny little prayer. It's a kind of long, elaborate prayer, really beautiful. I hope we see a lot

00:20:20.040 more of that. Then Trump hands it off to Musk. And part of the other important reason that Musk is

00:20:27.000 presenting here is that his work is cutting across all of the departments in the executive branch.

00:20:33.400 So this is something else that's really refreshing about the second Trump admin,

00:20:37.180 is you're seeing everyone work together. Even just the Elon Musk's role alone shows you that there

00:20:43.660 is some consistency. There's a through line between the departments. They're talking to each other.

00:20:47.440 There is a clear vision. It is an organization that is moving with integrity. In the first Trump

00:20:55.040 administration, you saw departments kind of undercutting each other. You saw a lot of inconsistency.

00:21:01.120 Here, I think you're seeing a far greater unity of vision, probably because Trump was in the

00:21:06.380 wilderness for four years. It gives you a lot of time to reset, recalibrate, figure out what you are

00:21:12.700 going to do. Now, one of the roles that brings together a lot of departments is the director

00:21:17.280 of national intelligence, that is Tulsi Gabbard. And we have some great, great news coming out of

00:21:22.360 the DNI. After Chris Ruffo's report yesterday, that NSA chat logs showed all sorts of American spies

00:21:30.060 engaging in pervy, weird sex talk, promoting transgenderism and the like. There's so much more 0.99

00:21:35.400 to say. First, though, go to puretalk.com slash Knowles. This country was founded on freedom,

00:21:40.520 I'm told. Freedom from a country that forced us to buy overpriced tea, then tried blockading us when

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00:22:24.420 I love this service. I know you heard me say, oh, it's good service or it's quite good coverage or

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00:22:42.040 slash Knowles for details. In case you missed it, I had a lovely conversation with multiple

00:22:49.080 men of the cloth, at least self-identifying men of the cloth, some a little probably more

00:22:55.340 validly ordained than others. However, all gave a really important perspective on whether or not

00:23:02.620 the Trump administration is violating the principles of Christianity as we are constantly

00:23:08.620 told by the media. Check out this teaser. It seems to me, Reverend Alexander, you're kind of moving the

00:23:14.700 goalposts as we hone in on these various features of illegal immigration.

00:23:18.780 It's a very complex issue that is being simplified and reduced to dehumanizing immigrants.

00:23:25.980 You're trying to delegitimize your opponents by saying they do dehumanize the people that they're

00:23:31.100 speaking about. It's so antithetical to everything that Jesus preached and lived by. It is a myth.

00:23:39.020 This is the wealthiest country in the world.

00:23:42.140 $37 trillion in debt. Why are we not taking care of ours first? At some point, we have so much

00:23:48.740 because we truly somehow ran out of FEMA money. I live in New York City. There are people with

00:23:53.300 mental illness and substance abuse problems sleeping on the street by their own decision. And the police

00:23:58.540 can't arrest them and put them in shelters. So they're left out there. That's cruel, but that's

00:24:03.300 what the law allows.

00:24:09.900 Go check it out now. Go check it out now, right on YouTube. I really like that. You're hearing all

00:24:14.260 these people say, oh, such and such policy. It's not Christian. This is contrary to Christian values.

00:24:19.900 All right. So a lot of, we've got three people from varying perspectives on Christianity, a priest,

00:24:25.580 a Protestant pastor, and a progressive pastor. Let them duke it out. Now, speaking of morality,

00:24:32.500 there's a lot of immoral stuff going on in our spy agencies. Not just the killing and the

00:24:38.460 undermining and the deceit and all this, some of which actually is morally justifiable. But there's

00:24:45.760 a lot that's not justifiable, like all the weird sex talk on the government servers going on between

00:24:49.880 our spies. We covered this yesterday. Chris Rufo has a really, really good piece on it at City

00:24:53.600 Journal. You have a bunch of spies talking about how much they love transing themselves and talking 0.98

00:24:58.800 about all the weird behaviors they engaged in after they trans themselves and pushing this radical 1.00

00:25:03.520 leftist, sexual, obscene agenda on government servers. Not very good spies, not sending their

00:25:10.500 best. So Tulsi Gabbard, the top spy in America, just came out and fired more than 100 of them

00:25:16.220 for the sexually explicit chats. Agents involved were from the NSA, the National Security Agency,

00:25:25.060 also known as No Such Agency, the CIA, the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. This all according

00:25:32.020 to a follow-up by Chris Rufo. I guess my big takeaway from this, look, it's good. Thank you,

00:25:38.060 Tulsi. Good stuff. Clear leadership. Great job to Chris for breaking this story. All great. I'm glad

00:25:44.140 these people have been run out of government and they need to seek psychological and spiritual help.

00:25:49.080 But I guess even my bigger problem, just looking with cold clinical clarity at the quality of our

00:25:59.260 government, is that the spies ain't what they used to be, man. This ain't James Bond, huh?

00:26:07.680 Even beyond the substance of the weird sex stuff that they're talking about,

00:26:13.080 you know, Jane Bond, I guess, I don't know, the transgender James Bond, even beyond the substance 1.00

00:26:19.720 of it. How thick do you have to be to post your weird sexual fetishes on the NSA chat board? 0.97

00:26:31.660 How darkened must your intellect have become through sin that you think that's a good idea, 0.79

00:26:38.400 that that's not going to be a political liability down the road? These guys are supposed to be some of

00:26:42.740 the most subtle, crafty, devious, clever operators in world politics. And then they're sitting at

00:26:50.960 their keywords, I'm going to talk about my weird sexual fantasies on the government chat board.

00:26:56.040 That probably won't ever come back to bite me. Oh yeah, they want to hear something else really

00:27:00.580 weird that I did last night. Good grief. If this is the caliber of our spies, no wonder that we're

00:27:06.860 losing ground to China. This is, this is a bigger problem even than the culture war. You know, the 0.96

00:27:14.160 left is the aggressor in the culture war. The right comes in and is, is in a defensive posture in the

00:27:19.120 culture war, but this is beyond the culture war. This is just basic incompetence from our spies.

00:27:27.140 Ain't what they used to be. Tulsi Gabbard has her work cut out for her. 1.00

00:27:31.720 Now, getting back to Doge a little bit here. Vivek Ramaswamy is running for office in Ohio. He was

00:27:44.540 initially running for president. Then he endorsed president Trump and he was picked to run Doge with

00:27:50.640 Elon Musk. But I don't know, there was some disagreement or something. I think they're all

00:27:54.900 still friends, but they, it wasn't working. So then the vague went over and he is now running for

00:28:01.480 governor of Ohio. I am honored to announce my candidacy to serve as the next governor of the

00:28:09.320 state of Ohio. President Trump is reviving our conviction in America. We require a leader here at

00:28:20.280 home who will revive our conviction in Ohio. And that is why today I am honored to announce

00:28:27.560 that I am running to be the next governor of a great state at the heart of the greatest nation

00:28:34.460 known to mankind. The state where I was born and raised. The state where Apoorva and I raise our two

00:28:41.800 sons today. A state whose best days are still ahead. I am honored to announce my candidacy to serve as

00:28:50.200 the next governor of the state of Ohio.

00:28:53.140 Great stuff. It's Vivek's race to lose at this point. I think he could walk right into the

00:29:12.300 governor's mansion for a number of reasons. One, he's very intelligent. Two, he's very articulate

00:29:18.540 and persuasive. Three, he's very wealthy. He's done very well in business and he can fund a campaign

00:29:24.940 that will be formidable. Obviously he showed that when he ran for president. But four, he is the

00:29:33.120 MAGA spinoff for the Ohio governor's race. There are all sorts of MAGA spinoffs in races all around

00:29:41.500 the country. And he has support from President Trump. He was just endorsed in this race by Elon Musk.

00:29:47.960 He has the MAGA stamp of approval here. And Trump has reshaped the GOP.

00:29:56.320 There are always little factions in the GOP and they're all fighting. Oh, is it going to be the

00:30:00.440 Chamber of Commerce wing? Is it going to be the populist wing? Is it going to be the paleocon, 0.91

00:30:06.060 the neocon, the this, the that, the whatever? Trump owns the GOP. Even if there were some people

00:30:15.420 after 2016 who were in denial, even if there were people after 2020 who were in denial. And there

00:30:21.300 were many of those. Oh, good. Trump was a flash in the pan, one term. Now we can get back to the old

00:30:25.520 party of the Romneys and the Bushes. That's good. Thank goodness. Trump winning re-election means that

00:30:33.960 Trump will have personally dominated the GOP for a dozen years, at least. That reshapes the party.

00:30:41.380 And so if Vivek comes out there and he's even got the red tie, you know, he's, he's really, he's,

00:30:49.640 he is clearly taken this MAGA lane and he comes out there and he runs for governor of Ohio.

00:30:55.160 So that's it. That's, that's the next iteration of that. Expect to see a lot more of this.

00:31:00.740 Trump won. Trump won the civil war within the GOP. And now the Trump candidates are going to have all

00:31:07.420 that much more of an advantage when they run. Now, speaking of gubernatorial candidates,

00:31:13.380 President Trump has just endorsed a gubernatorial candidate down in Florida. That would be

00:31:18.400 Byron Donalds. Byron Donalds, a very popular member of Congress. Saw him not too long ago,

00:31:25.260 is swinging through Nashville. He is now running for governor of Florida. The reason this story is

00:31:30.940 interesting is, well, not just that he's, he also is a spinoff of MAGA and has the support of Trump,

00:31:39.100 but also because there were news reports that Ron DeSantis' wife wanted to run for governor. Ron DeSantis, 0.87

00:31:46.060 very, very popular, very successful governor in Florida, is term limited out. So there were some

00:31:51.660 reports, Palm Beach Post, headline, who is Casey DeSantis? Florida governor's wife could be the 0.98

00:31:56.920 state's next governor. There were some reports that Governor DeSantis was going to go meet with Trump

00:32:01.460 to try to get him either to stay out of the race or to endorse his wife. Again, I don't know if any of

00:32:05.820 this is true. This is all just the political rumor mill. But before that meeting could take place,

00:32:11.660 Trump came out and endorsed Byron Donalds. This is a sign that the personal rift here between Trump

00:32:21.400 and some of his former opponents is still pretty wide. I think DeSantis has been an amazing governor

00:32:28.540 in Florida. I think he did a really great job. You know I've supported President Trump since 2016.

00:32:33.720 Quite a fan of the president. To me, this signals, Trump's early endorsement of Byron Donalds here

00:32:42.240 signals that he is still in personal control of the party. And he is going to still hold people

00:32:49.800 personally accountable if they cross him or in any way undermine him. Ron DeSantis, it was totally his

00:32:55.800 right to run in the 2024 primary. But he made Trump spend some money and go out there on the

00:33:02.360 campaign trail and fight. Obviously, the primary campaign didn't last very long. But to me, that

00:33:09.000 signals Trump is still holding a little bit of a grudge here. Okay, and it's not just ideological

00:33:15.020 affinity that's going to matter. It's also personal loyalty. And you're going to hear a lot of political

00:33:22.260 pundits and prognosticators and political scientists say, that's bad. That's not how we

00:33:26.880 should run. That's so tribal. We hate Trump. Guys, politics is a team sport. Okay? And teams have

00:33:32.820 captains. And teams are about personal loyalty to a large degree. And this is still like that.

00:33:40.440 Okay? Trump is signaling, listen guys, you want to succeed in the GOP anywhere at the federal level,

00:33:48.620 at the state level, at the local level. You better make sure you're on good terms with the team

00:33:55.360 captain here. That's a sign. Like it or not, that is what is being signaled. Now folks, on Tuesday,

00:34:02.520 March 4th, President Trump is addressing Congress at 9 p.m. 9 p.m. Eastern. He's going to lay out his

00:34:08.120 America First vision, tackling immigration reform, economic revival, national security. You know we

00:34:13.520 are not going to sit this one out. Join us for Backstage Live, 8.30 p.m. Eastern, our pre-show

00:34:17.720 breakdown with the full crew at the Daily Wire. Then we will watch the entire speech together live

00:34:22.500 on Daily Wire Plus. And when Trump is done, we're going to be back with unfiltered, no BS reactions

00:34:28.320 you will not get anywhere else. This is the event shaping America's future. So be there. Watch it

00:34:33.260 all live on Daily Wire Plus this Tuesday night. Subscribe now at dailywire.com. My favorite comment

00:34:40.340 yesterday is from Stroke Survivor 50, who says, those fired from the government can pick the crops.

00:34:45.720 That's a great solution. The libs are complaining, no, no, if we deport the criminal aliens, 1.00

00:34:51.000 then who will pick our grapes and clean our toilets? Well, the answer is the no-show bureaucrats 0.94

00:34:56.360 who are getting fat on the public doll, who can't even answer an email about what they did last week,

00:35:00.780 they can go pick the grapes. That's not, that's what a great idea. They can go scrub the wealthy 0.61

00:35:07.460 liberal people's homes. That's a, what a great idea. Problem, solution. They'll help the unemployment rate.

00:35:13.480 Good stuff. Good, good stuff. Now, turning to the private sector,

00:35:20.620 Apple has just announced a major investment for the United States. Apple announced this week that

00:35:26.960 it will invest half a billion dollars in the U.S. and hire 20,000 people in the U.S. over the next

00:35:31.760 four years with expansion and construction projects planned all across the country. The company says

00:35:38.500 this is the largest ever spend commitment that it has made. And according to Tim Cook,

00:35:45.700 from doubling our advanced manufacturing fund from $5 billion to $10 billion to building advanced

00:35:51.780 technology in Texas, we're talking about red state here, we are thrilled to expand our support for

00:35:56.740 American manufacturing. And we'll keep working with people and companies across the country

00:36:01.080 to help write an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation.

00:36:08.720 This tells you what the tariffs are really about. And the media are totally missing this.

00:36:14.380 The media believe, and Trump plays into this a little bit, that the tariffs are about punishing

00:36:19.960 other countries. You know, we're getting ripped off by Canada and Mexico and China and this country 1.00

00:36:25.680 and that country. We're going to punish them for ripping us off. That's not primarily what the 0.92

00:36:30.260 tariffs are about. The tariffs are primarily about rebuilding America. That's the purpose.

00:36:38.820 And you might disagree with tariff theory and you might think that it's economically misguided or

00:36:44.280 what, but that's the idea. You do have to punish other countries, but you're not doing it out of

00:36:52.240 vindictiveness. It's not because you hate them or something. You're doing it because you need to set up

00:36:57.100 high barriers to doing business overseas so that you can convince one of the biggest companies in

00:37:03.300 the world, Apple, to reassure American jobs so that you can convince companies like Apple to invest

00:37:10.920 half a trillion dollars in the U.S., hire tens of thousands of people in the U.S. The reason that

00:37:18.500 Apple right now makes everything in China is one, because it's cheap, and two, because everyone else is

00:37:24.440 going to do it. If there's no barrier to using cheap quasi-slave labor or sometimes literally

00:37:32.020 slave labor in China, then American companies almost have to do it because they know that their

00:37:39.640 competitors are going to do it and their competitors are going to have much lower prices and their own

00:37:44.200 companies are going to be beaten out in the market. So when President Trump comes out and he says,

00:37:49.240 we're going to slap a 10% tariff on China to start, though it could be much higher. When he says,

00:37:54.240 hey, within two or three years, you better get your manufacturing back in the United States because

00:37:58.260 we're going to really hit you with the tariffs in two to three years. What he is saying is in a way

00:38:05.520 a punishment, but in a way it's giving permission to corporations to say, oh, okay, we can build an

00:38:11.440 America now because there's going to be a level playing field, at least among the corporations.

00:38:15.980 We're not going to be punished for helping our fellow American citizens. And the American people

00:38:21.340 voting in November have determined that it is in their national security interest and in their

00:38:25.720 economic interest to actually build things here and to not just rely on slave labor from adversarial

00:38:33.240 powers that can choke off our supply chains the minute that a bad batch of bat soup escapes from 1.00

00:38:38.620 Wuhan. This is good stuff. This is what it's about. And this is the first big sign to me

00:38:44.540 that the tariffs really might be working. Now, speaking of corporate changes, got to give a

00:38:50.760 hat tip to Robbie Starbuck on this one. Pepsi is eliminating its DEI officer. So Pepsi has over

00:38:59.760 318,000 employees. Pepsi has a market cap of $200 billion. And they are now saying we're going to

00:39:09.580 eliminate our DEI officer. It's a little bit unclear what this means. Because on the one hand,

00:39:16.680 Pepsi is saying, look, we heard you. You hate the DEI stuff. A lot of corporations are saying this now.

00:39:20.660 So whatever, we're going to get rid of it. But Pepsi doesn't want to irritate the libs and cause some 1.00

00:39:25.260 lib boycott. So they're saying, no, we're just kind of restructuring. And don't worry, we still

00:39:30.040 believe in, you know, inclusion or whatever. So the director of corporate integrity project for the

00:39:37.880 National Legal and Policy Center, Paul Chesser, has come out and said, you know, if you check their

00:39:41.800 website, it still has DEI crap all over it. They're just pushing it below the surface. And that's the

00:39:46.780 question right now. The corporations are ditching DEI. Some universities are ditching DEI. The government

00:39:52.920 is certainly ditching DEI. Is it really going away? Or are they just hiding it? You know, when Trump

00:40:03.080 instructed the government to get rid of DEI, he said, hey, look, we're getting rid of the DEI stuff.

00:40:09.900 But a lot of agencies are going to want to just rename it or kind of hide it. And so if you are caught

00:40:15.520 doing that, you're going to be fired. We're going to punish you. And we're going to punish anyone who

00:40:19.800 knows about it. Okay, so don't try that. That's the question for corporate America. Now, I suspect

00:40:27.320 a lot of the DEI stuff really is going to go away because the majority of American voters

00:40:32.400 voted against DEI in November. But there's a long institutional lag here. So it's the old

00:40:39.020 Ronald Reagan quote. Doveriae, no proveriae. Trust but verify. You've got to verify this stuff.

00:40:44.660 It's all really good signs coming out of corporate America, the cancellation of these radical

00:40:49.720 left, disgusting shows on TV news. These are all really good signs. The government firing

00:40:55.040 feckless bureaucrats who are getting fat on the dole, not doing any work. That's all good signs. 1.00

00:41:00.840 Just got to make sure it's not just for show, you know, that they're real teeth to this kind of

00:41:05.580 stuff. Now, speaking of DEI, speaking of the racial and sexual identity politics, there's a scary 0.66

00:41:13.980 little story in the Washington Post. Comes out, says, the trans Americans turning to guns for

00:41:21.680 protection. Increasingly, people who identify as trans are embracing guns. And that is not good. 0.97

00:41:29.160 I know I'm a strong defender of the Second Amendment and of the natural right to defend yourself.

00:41:35.080 However, call me crazy. I don't think men who don't know what sex they are, who are so mentally ill 0.99

00:41:44.280 that they don't understand their own sex, I don't think they should own guns. I don't think they have 1.00

00:41:49.540 a right to that. And I think the federal law backs me up. In principle, the Gun Control Act of 1968,

00:41:54.980 say what you will about it, can prevent mentally ill people from owning guns. 0.57

00:41:59.500 And if you think you're the opposite sex, that is about as obvious an example of mental illness as 0.97

00:42:07.140 I can see. I know we're not allowed to say that anymore, and we're supposed to pretend that it's 0.89

00:42:11.160 true because of this Gnostic false religion of the two-spiritedness, or I don't know, whatever 1.00

00:42:17.100 nonsense they talk about. But it is a deep mental and spiritual illness, and they shouldn't own guns. 0.99

00:42:23.600 And this is going to be another interesting little political shift. When I was a kid,

00:42:29.060 coming up in politics, the Republicans were the total free traders. It was the left that wanted

00:42:35.960 to implement all sorts of economic regulations. Now it's almost the opposite. You know, it's the

00:42:42.040 Republicans who are talking about the beauty of tariffs, who are lamenting free trade, going back

00:42:47.600 to NAFTA, all the way up to other free trade agreements. It's the Democrats who are lamenting

00:42:53.960 the tariffs, who are calling for greater trade, and who want more access to China. That kind of

00:42:59.400 flipped. Same thing, when I was a kid coming up, you could not get a Republican, a conservative

00:43:05.320 Republican, to come out and embrace any kind of regulation on gun ownership. But when I was coming

00:43:12.480 up, we didn't have a lot of fellows who thought they were chicks. You know, we didn't have the public

00:43:16.420 celebration of severe mental illness. There is nothing conservative about trans-identifying people 1.00

00:43:23.740 owning firearms. They should not own firearms. That is extremely dangerous. This ideology is really

00:43:29.920 dangerous. I don't know if even many conservatives appreciate that. I have been in political media

00:43:35.560 for some time now, better part of a decade, and I've worked around politics for, I don't know, 15

00:43:40.920 years or more. I have been physically attacked twice. One time at the University of Missouri-Kansas

00:43:49.040 City, one time at the University of Pitt. I'm actually going back to Pitt this spring. It should

00:43:53.520 be fun. Both times, I've talked about every kind of issue. Religion, culture, politics. I've talked

00:44:00.460 about economics, immigration, global warming. I've talked about all sorts of stuff. 100% of the times

00:44:06.300 that I've been physically attacked. It's because I dared to question the ideology of transgenderism. 0.98

00:44:12.100 This is a very, very dangerous ideology because the people who embrace it in their own persons 0.99

00:44:17.360 are really sick. They are deeply sick, and one can feel some kind of pity for them. But in any case,

00:44:23.600 they should not have access to guns. No chance. Before we go, one little story out of

00:44:28.840 out of the government, out of that NSA, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, weird spies doing stuff that I have to

00:44:37.460 get to. The NSA and the DIA and the Navy intelligence officials, they attacked the Italians.

00:44:48.320 So they attacked, this is according to AF Post, they attacked Jews, and someone said, any Jew who says

00:44:55.460 Judeo-Christian without any irony as much as Ben Shapiro should be expelled from the tribe. So these 0.76

00:45:01.240 are the spies. We're going after Ben, going after Jews who use the phrase Judeo-Christian. Then it goes

00:45:08.060 on that some of the users say they're embarrassed that Libs of TikTok is a Jew, and they expressed

00:45:14.140 their contempt for the Irish and for the Italians. Now, forget about Shapiro, whatever, you know,

00:45:19.800 forget about the Jews. I love the Jews, but, you know, forget about even the Irish. I'm part Irish,

00:45:24.340 but the Italians, you're going to go after, excuse me. The NSA is going, they're expressing

00:45:35.060 anti-Italian discrimination. I'm glad Tulsi fired them. They go to Guantanamo.

00:45:43.940 I want, I want these people, I want you to go where they live. I want you to go. I want you to go

00:45:51.320 burn down the house and urinate on the ashes. I'm not, that's not true. I'm quoting, I'm quoting 0.99

00:45:55.860 Robert De Niro as Al Capone. I'm not actually calling. Don't, I am actually calling for them

00:46:00.420 to be deported to Guantanamo, but I'm not, we will not tolerate that. Okay. We talk about all

00:46:04.920 kinds of discrimination, anti-black, anti-Jew, anti this, but anti-Italian discrimination. 0.95

00:46:11.980 Deport them at least to Bukeles El Salvador, maybe Guantanamo. 0.99

00:46:15.960 Today is Theology Thursday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it.

00:46:19.800 Become a member. Use code KnowlesKinnaWLAS at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Michael Knowles Show - February 27, 2025

Ep. 1682 - Leaked Pro-Russia Audio of Donald Trump Jr. Is FAKE

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