The Michael Knowles Show


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


Summary

Did you hear the shocking audio of Donald Trump Jr. calling for the United States to ditch Ukraine and start sending weapons to Russia? If you follow the Democratic National Committee's Rapid Response Account, FactPost, or any of the other outlets that repeat the DNC's talking points, you probably heard it with your own ears. And the only problem is that it's completely made up.


Transcript

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
00:00:56.260 to that in a moment. First, though, I'm going to take my Mayflower Xikar Single Flame lighter.
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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
00:04:34.740 accounts were posting that out there because they lack discernment, they lack judgment. I'm even going
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
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
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
00:07:12.080 stuff. Now, speaking of the fake news media, Don Lemon, the former CNN host, has just come out
00:07:20.860 swinging against Megyn Kelly. Why? Because Megyn Kelly made fun of Joy Reid. Megyn Kelly said,
00:07:32.860 Joy Reid has viciously mocked the tears of every white person she's helped cancel over the years for
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
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
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.
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
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,
00:10:06.620 bigoted person. And that, that, that will work. I don't think that really works anymore.
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
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
00:21:35.400 to say. First, though, go to puretalk.com slash Knowles. This country was founded on freedom,
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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
00:24:58.800 about all the weird behaviors they engaged in after they trans themselves and pushing this radical
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
00:26:19.720 of it. How thick do you have to be to post your weird sexual fetishes on the NSA chat board?
00:26:31.660 How darkened must your intellect have become through sin that you think that's a good idea,
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
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.
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,
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,
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
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,
00:34:51.000 then who will pick our grapes and clean our toilets? Well, the answer is the no-show bureaucrats
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
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
00:36:25.680 and that country. We're going to punish them for ripping us off. That's not primarily what the
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
00:41:59.500 And if you think you're the opposite sex, that is about as obvious an example of mental illness as
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
00:42:11.160 true because of this Gnostic false religion of the two-spiritedness, or I don't know, whatever
00:42:17.100 nonsense they talk about. But it is a deep mental and spiritual illness, and they shouldn't own guns.
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
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.
00:44:12.100 This is a very, very dangerous ideology because the people who embrace it in their own persons
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
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
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.
00:46:11.980 Deport them at least to Bukeles El Salvador, maybe Guantanamo.
00:46:15.960 Today is Theology Thursday. The rest of the show continues now. You do not want to miss it.
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