The Michael Knowles Show - March 06, 2025


Ep. 1687 - BREAKING： China Threatens WAR on the USA

Topics
tariffs on China language debate happiness Tate brothers criminal probe
Hosted by
Michael Knowles
Mentioned
Trump Dylan Mulvaney Tristan Tate Vladimir Zelensky Jasmine Crockett David Axelrod Al Green Henry Kissinger Vladimir Putin Johnny Cochran Good Ranchers Aristotle Grover Cleveland Kendrick Lamar James Madison Pete Hegseth Barack Obama S.E. Johnson O.J. Simpson Hillary Clinton and 13 more
Ep. 1686 - Trump's Address To Congress EXPLAINED in 5 Minutes Ep. 1688 - DeSantis Picks a Fight with Andrew Tate

Episode Stats


Length

46 minutes

Words per minute

176.98

Word count

8,210

Sentence count

743

Harmful content

Misogyny

14

sentences flagged

Toxicity

41

sentences flagged

Hate speech

22

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

There is an apocryphal ancient Chinese curse that says, "There is no such thing as a Chinese curse unless it's actually written by a Chinese man." President Trump has doubled the tariffs he s imposing on China, and China says it s ready for a trade war.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:37.740 There is an apocryphal ancient Chinese curse.
00:00:40.920 May you live in interesting times.
00:00:44.320 Most everyone, regardless of political persuasion, would agree that we do.
00:00:48.600 Especially since the inauguration of the popularly elected,
00:00:52.940 non-consecutively serving billionaire TV star president
00:00:56.120 who conquered a major American political party, refashioned our political order,
00:00:59.980 and was almost murdered twice over the summer
00:01:02.460 after the sitting president raided his home and tried to imprison him.
00:01:06.640 Well, just when you think that you have reached peak interesting times,
00:01:12.260 China goes ahead and threatens war with the United States.
00:01:16.640 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:01:17.280 This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:37.140 Welcome back to the show.
00:01:38.340 Dylan Mulvaney has a book.
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00:03:06.860 Are we going to war with China?
00:03:09.880 China.
00:03:10.780 Well, if you ask the Chinese foreign ministry, the answer is maybe.
00:03:16.360 President Trump, when he campaigned on tariffs for not just Canada and Mexico and European countries,
00:03:23.500 but also for China in particular.
00:03:25.080 You'll recall before COVID shut down the world, before COVID leaked out of a laboratory in China,
00:03:31.180 President Trump was waging and winning a trade war with China.
00:03:35.400 So it was kind of, to me, that's where the Trump administration kind of left off and then the whole world shut down.
00:03:39.960 So now we're back in it.
00:03:41.560 President Trump has levied tariffs on China.
00:03:44.300 There are 10% tariffs on Chinese imports.
00:03:46.920 Trump has doubled those tariffs to 20%.
00:03:51.460 Worth pointing out, that's still lower than the tariffs that Trump is putting on Canada and Mexico, which are 25% tariffs.
00:03:59.980 So the Chinese foreign ministry was asked about this.
00:04:02.280 The spokesman said, if war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war, or any other type of war, we are ready to fight till the end.
00:04:15.480 We urge the United States to stop being domineering and return to the right track of dialogue and cooperation at an early date.
00:04:22.840 Whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:04:24.980 That's quite provocative.
00:04:27.900 Because the foreign minister spokesman didn't just say, you know, look, we're going to war.
00:04:34.340 We're going to be tough.
00:04:34.840 This is going to be a battle.
00:04:35.600 He's not just using that kind of language in a vague or euphemistic way.
00:04:39.380 He's saying, if the U.S. wants a war, let me clarify, tariff war, trade war, or any other type of war, we're ready to fight until the end.
00:04:49.260 So this is raised alarm bells.
00:04:50.940 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had this to say.
00:04:52.840 We're prepared.
00:04:55.480 Those who long for peace must prepare for war.
00:04:59.480 That's why we're rebuilding our military.
00:05:01.480 That's why we're reestablishing deterrence in the warrior ethos is because we live in a dangerous world with powerful ascendant countries with very different ideologies.
00:05:09.420 You mentioned defense spending.
00:05:10.960 They're rapidly increasing their defense spending.
00:05:13.780 Modern technology.
00:05:14.840 They want to supplant the United States. 0.93
00:05:16.700 If we want to deter war with the Chinese or others, we have to be strong.
00:05:21.500 And that president understands peace comes through strength.
00:05:24.380 Those who long for peace prepare for war.
00:05:26.780 We're ready.
00:05:27.960 That's his answer.
00:05:29.140 You're going to threaten us?
00:05:30.240 Well, I wouldn't be so comfortable about that.
00:05:33.220 You don't want to threaten the global hegemon, okay?
00:05:35.400 What is this all about?
00:05:37.940 Hostile regimes, even friendly regimes, always test new presidents.
00:05:43.400 And Trump is kind of a new president.
00:05:44.860 I know he was already president once, but he's an historical anomaly.
00:05:49.920 Him and Grover Cleveland, those are the only two non-consecutively serving presidents, non-consecutively elected presidents.
00:05:56.680 So it's kind of a new administration, and there are some new people around him.
00:06:00.060 And there does seem to be a new focus.
00:06:01.760 Many people have lauded Trump in the last six weeks because his administration this time around seems more focused, more effective even than it was the first time.
00:06:10.320 So I think this is a test of Trump.
00:06:12.780 But the thing you got to remember is these tariffs on China are also a test from Trump, a test by the president of his foe that he was previously engaging in a little bit of a trade war in the first time around.
00:06:29.100 How worried will China be about a 10% to 20% tariff?
00:06:34.880 So they levy the tariffs, then they double the tariffs.
00:06:39.120 So now we're talking about a 20% tariff on Chinese goods, which have flooded the American market over the last 30 years. 1.00
00:06:44.520 It seems like everything we buy practically comes from China, usually from labor that is underpaid or even slave labor.
00:06:52.140 That's how they get away with it.
00:06:53.660 And so Trump says, okay, we're going to try some tariffs.
00:06:55.580 All right, you're not reacting to it.
00:06:56.820 What if we double those tariffs?
00:06:58.460 China is very, very reliant on the United States.
00:07:01.980 It's 15% of China's exports go to the United States.
00:07:05.240 And China is a big country that we're talking about half a trillion dollars a year.
00:07:10.200 Okay, only 7.5% of U.S. exports go to China.
00:07:15.200 So half the proportion of exports that China sends to the U.S. is what we send to China.
00:07:21.820 And that's only worth about $154 billion.
00:07:26.240 So we're talking about a major imbalance here.
00:07:28.940 China is very, very reliant on access to the U.S. market.
00:07:33.700 China was able to grow its trade because 20, 25 years ago now, the United States decided to play nice with China and decided to welcome China into the World Trade Organization.
00:07:45.840 And then as China was cheating on its World Trade Organization responsibilities and obligations, the U.S. would just kind of look the other way.
00:07:53.340 And so when China was illegally subsidizing steel and aluminum, when China was devaluing its currency, when China was dumping certain products and commodities, the U.S. would just kind of look the other way and not hold them accountable.
00:08:05.400 And that had severe economic consequences in the United States.
00:08:09.620 And one of the big issues that President Trump was elected on was reshoring American manufacturing, was rebuilding America's industrial base, was making sure in the wake of COVID, which cut off our supply chains, that the U.S. could take care of itself if another global conflict or even just a global flu broke out.
00:08:28.200 All makes sense.
00:08:29.200 But that's what you're seeing here.
00:08:30.360 I would not be expecting the missiles to start flying anytime soon.
00:08:33.180 This is a test.
00:08:35.400 And Trump is testing China, and China is testing Trump.
00:08:39.340 And I don't envy Chairman Xi because Trump is inscrutable.
00:08:43.940 To this day, I cannot tell you what Trump truly believes about tariffs.
00:08:48.200 Does he want tariffs instrumentally to increase trade?
00:08:51.400 Does he believe in tariffs as a revenue-raising mechanism?
00:08:55.600 And is he hardcore on tariffs?
00:08:57.480 I couldn't tell you.
00:08:58.960 The man is inscrutable.
00:08:59.880 Just like we were talking about this yesterday on the show, just like Vladimir Putin.
00:09:02.880 When Trump says, if you invade Ukraine, I'll bomb Moscow. 0.94
00:09:06.700 I'll hit the Kremlin.
00:09:08.180 Even if you only think there's a 5% to 10% chance he's telling the truth here, how can you take the risk?
00:09:14.180 That's what's going on.
00:09:15.100 Now, speaking of wars, this ties directly into the main war that people have been talking about.
00:09:19.800 You know, Vladimir Zelensky has come around.
00:09:24.120 Horrible, tragic, chaotic meeting in the Oval Office just on last Friday.
00:09:31.220 Zelensky gets tossed out of the Oval Office.
00:09:33.240 The White House staff eats the lunch prepared for the Ukrainian delegation.
00:09:36.860 The Democrats are licking their chops.
00:09:40.420 There were some reports that top Democrat officials and operatives were actually meeting with Zelensky and coaching him on how to handle that Oval Office meeting.
00:09:47.560 But Zelensky gets tossed out.
00:09:49.860 Trump blew it up.
00:09:51.000 Oh, no, this is the end of the American empire.
00:09:53.320 Oh, no, this is Trump siding with Putin.
00:09:55.780 Oh, no, Ukraine is totally lost.
00:09:58.740 And then what happens?
00:10:00.760 Hours later, Zelensky says, oh, yikes, okay, that wasn't good.
00:10:06.420 Actually, we really want the minerals deal.
00:10:08.120 And then, as President Trump announced during the joint session, Zelensky came out.
00:10:14.260 He said, our meeting in Washington at the White House on Friday did not go the way it was supposed to be.
00:10:18.220 It is regrettable that it happened this way.
00:10:19.740 It is time to make things right.
00:10:20.800 We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive regarding the agreement on minerals and security.
00:10:26.840 Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format.
00:10:32.200 It's a nice old change in tune, isn't it?
00:10:34.940 In the White House, you say, we need security guarantee.
00:10:37.860 We don't.
00:10:38.640 I don't.
00:10:39.020 Why you talk to me?
00:10:39.800 Why you ask me to wear a suit?
00:10:41.220 JD, you're raising your voice.
00:10:42.480 Why you're raising your voice, JD?
00:10:43.960 Why would I ever say thank you to the United States?
00:10:48.480 And he thought that strategy was going to work.
00:10:50.320 And it did curry him some support in Europe.
00:10:52.720 But it's not enough.
00:10:53.380 So then Zelensky says, we really do value how I'll cut the Eastern European accent just for a moment.
00:11:01.200 We really do value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence.
00:11:05.900 And we remember the moment when things changed when President Trump provided Ukraine with javelins.
00:11:09.800 We are grateful for this.
00:11:11.660 My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump's strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.
00:11:17.140 Okay, this is another reason that we might want to wrap up what's going on in Ukraine.
00:11:22.020 This is another reason, beyond the moral reasoning, this is another reason that we might want the war in Ukraine to wind down.
00:11:30.000 It's been three years.
00:11:30.860 Really, it's been over 10 years now because the war really kicked off in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea with the Maidan Revolution, the change in regime in Ukraine, which the United States has admitted to being involved in.
00:11:43.040 It might just – I'm not going to relitigate the last 11 years.
00:11:45.900 I'm just saying we might want to wrap it all up in Ukraine because we have bigger fish to fry. 1.00
00:11:52.360 I'm reminded of Henry Kissinger during the Cold War.
00:11:55.000 Remember when Nixon goes to China and they're all playing ping pong and Kissinger is working on diplomacy with China?
00:12:04.180 Why?
00:12:04.420 To counter Russia, to counter the Soviet Union. 0.83
00:12:09.420 You have two communist powers right there.
00:12:11.240 The United States recognizes we're going to be in a much better position if we can split them apart, make friends with one of them, and use that against the other one.
00:12:18.840 Well, here, where does the threat come from?
00:12:20.260 Where does the actual threat to our security come from?
00:12:23.780 Russia or China?
00:12:24.900 Who's the bigger player?
00:12:27.920 Who's the ascendant power?
00:12:29.640 Who owns our debt?
00:12:31.700 Who makes our technology?
00:12:34.840 Who has stolen our information?
00:12:36.740 Who's the big threat?
00:12:38.400 Probably you would say China.
00:12:40.880 Good time as any, as far as I'm concerned, when China is saber-rattling and literally threatening war with the United States. 0.93
00:12:47.900 Good a time as any to maybe refocus our military resources.
00:12:51.600 There's so much more to say.
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00:14:44.300 But the one thing that the Democrats stood up for at the State of the Union, what was it?
00:14:52.180 Was it that sweet little kid, DJ, who has been fighting brain cancer, who became an honorary Secret Service?
00:14:59.380 No.
00:15:00.840 Was it that American who got freed from Russia?
00:15:05.380 No, not even that.
00:15:07.080 Was it their own policy?
00:15:09.320 No tax on tips.
00:15:10.280 Well, not their own policy.
00:15:11.100 It's a policy that Trump floated, that they then stole and campaigned on, and that Trump said he was going to implement, and the Democrats wouldn't even applaud their own policy.
00:15:20.160 The one thing they stood up for and clapped for was Ukraine.
00:15:23.980 It was a foreign country, of course. 0.95
00:15:27.140 A bad look.
00:15:28.080 There were a lot of bad looks at that joint session, and the fallout continues.
00:15:31.980 I mean, the fallout's going to continue for days and days after this.
00:15:34.760 And you don't just have to take my word for it.
00:15:36.600 You don't just have to take The Daily Wire's word for it.
00:15:39.180 You can go to CNN, which is a left-wing network.
00:15:41.520 You can turn to David Axelrod, who is one of the most important left-wing political operatives in the country.
00:15:49.560 The genius behind Barack Obama's ascendancy to the presidency.
00:15:53.460 Here is what David Axelrod had to say about the Democrats' performance during that joint session.
00:15:57.680 So, it's one thing to mine our differences.
00:16:02.540 It's another thing to try and heal our differences.
00:16:05.140 And that is, you know, that's the difference between real leadership and political expedience.
00:16:12.160 Would it have been healing to stand for Mark Fogel?
00:16:14.520 Might have been.
00:16:15.080 No, I agree.
00:16:16.180 You know, you are absolutely right.
00:16:18.300 D.J. Johnson.
00:16:18.920 Well, I will do what you will not.
00:16:20.120 I will say, I thought Democrats, I thought that was just, I think there were times when they should have risen.
00:16:25.000 I think what Al Green did was despicable. 0.67
00:16:26.900 Al Green was that wacko congressman who stood up there with his cane. 0.85
00:16:31.140 He was, he actually engaged in a greater insurrection.
00:16:36.380 Democrat Congressman Al Green engaged in a greater insurrection than the Horn Hat guy ever did in the Capitol.
00:16:42.220 Because Al Green was brandishing a weapon.
00:16:44.360 He had that cane.
00:16:45.060 You know, there was the caning of Sumner.
00:16:46.080 There was actually a major historical incident involving a member of Congress caning somebody.
00:16:52.380 Okay.
00:16:53.040 Al Green acts that out again.
00:16:54.940 And has to be escorted out of the chamber by the sergeant at arms.
00:16:58.120 David Axelrod is totally right here.
00:17:00.740 And the reasonable people on CNN agree.
00:17:02.820 That was a bad display from the congressional Democrats.
00:17:05.820 It was immoral, I think.
00:17:08.160 And it was nasty.
00:17:08.860 And it was ugly. 1.00
00:17:09.380 But it just was politically so stupid. 1.00
00:17:12.460 It didn't win them any votes. 1.00
00:17:13.560 I think it probably lost them votes.
00:17:15.960 But it's a lot deeper than just one joint session address.
00:17:19.400 Okay.
00:17:19.620 The Democrats, especially in Congress, don't seem to have learned anything from the presidential election.
00:17:26.300 Here is, just before the joint session, here is Democrat Representative Jasmine Crockett doing a little TikTok dance for her constituents.
00:17:34.740 It's a cultural divide.
00:17:38.340 I'm going to get it on the floor.
00:17:40.540 You really about to do it?
00:17:41.820 40 acres in the mule.
00:17:43.060 This is bigger than the music.
00:17:45.320 You really about to do it?
00:17:46.480 Yeah, they tried to rig the game, but you can't fake influence.
00:17:50.080 They get on it like that.
00:17:51.240 Hey, I'm tripping.
00:17:52.020 I'm sliding.
00:17:52.620 I'm riding through the back like buck.
00:17:55.140 Mustard on a beat, bro.
00:17:56.400 Beat, bar.
00:17:57.020 In the rap.
00:17:57.660 He a free throw.
00:17:58.760 Man down.
00:17:59.400 Call the ember lambs.
00:18:00.280 Tell them breathe.
00:18:01.200 Let them boys get across. 0.96
00:18:02.180 They walk around like thieves. 0.61
00:18:03.200 Can you hear?
00:18:05.700 It's very subtle, but can you hear right now that kind of creaking?
00:18:10.140 That is James Madison rolling over in his grave is what you're hearing.
00:18:14.300 I don't really know what that song is about.
00:18:16.680 I've been told it's by Kendrick Lamar, whose lyrics I rarely can understand.
00:18:21.140 Something about 40 acres and a mule, which is fitting because this woman, Jasmine Crockett, 0.56
00:18:26.280 now a member of the U.S. Congress, is a frequent racial hustler.
00:18:31.040 So I don't mean to put Congress up on a pedestal.
00:18:34.840 I know some great members of Congress.
00:18:36.840 Okay, look, some of my best friends are members of Congress.
00:18:39.200 But Congress often engages in degraded behavior.
00:18:42.680 This kind of thing, this jiggling around for the camera to some hip-hop song,
00:18:48.080 this is degraded and degenerate behavior, even by congressional standards, which is really
00:18:53.200 saying something.
00:18:53.980 But it's of a piece with this woman's political career.
00:18:58.480 Congress lady Jasmine Crockett also went a little bit viral for describing the country
00:19:06.380 that she is supposedly serving as one that her ancestors built.
00:19:12.460 Her exact words actually are her ancestors built this mother effer. 0.66
00:19:17.320 That while we may not have the numbers just yet, that doesn't mean that we don't have fight
00:19:24.780 left in our bodies.
00:19:26.500 And so I am going to fight him every step of the way until we get what we deserve,
00:19:32.440 because it was my ancestors that built this mother effer.
00:19:36.040 Okay, I'm done now.
00:19:37.120 I'm done.
00:19:37.380 Okay, so generally, I would advise members of Congress and anyone who wants to speak in
00:19:44.180 a respectful way about our country, not to describe it as a mother effer.
00:19:48.960 Though I suppose we did rebel against the motherland.
00:19:51.260 So in a way, well, in any case, I wouldn't use that language.
00:19:54.460 Naughty language.
00:19:55.400 Don't go blue.
00:19:56.200 Okay.
00:19:56.820 But she says it was her ancestors, my ancestors, it was my ancestors who built this country.
00:20:01.340 And I think, okay, if we're going to play that game, I'm pretty sure my ancestors were
00:20:06.480 here first.
00:20:07.080 I'm not talking about the ones who came on the sardine boat, but the ones who came on
00:20:10.300 the Mayflower, which by the way, is an excellent cigar.
00:20:15.200 Some of my ancestors came over on the Mayflower.
00:20:17.020 It was 1620.
00:20:18.920 So unless, I don't know, unless the point Jasmine Crockett is making is that her ancestors who
00:20:23.580 came here as slaves, unless they were on like the very first slave ship that came to America, 0.76
00:20:28.860 which seems statistically rather improbable, then no, I guess I would say my ancestors built
00:20:34.400 this country.
00:20:34.820 They've been building it longer than hers have, haven't they? 1.00
00:20:37.580 That's kind of a stupid game to play, of course. 1.00
00:20:39.620 We all have lots of ancestors. 1.00
00:20:41.040 And what does that even mean?
00:20:42.660 Well, what it means for her is her whole political career is based on racial grievance and maybe 0.99
00:20:51.720 based on a hoax.
00:20:52.660 People don't know where this woman came from. 1.00
00:20:54.520 She did not just fall out of a coconut tree doing weird TikTok dances and making offensive 1.00
00:20:59.160 comments.
00:20:59.580 This woman says that she went to law school.
00:21:04.140 She went on this path of becoming a politician because she was the subject of racial hate 0.99
00:21:11.060 crimes.
00:21:12.080 Hmm.
00:21:13.220 She claimed in a 2020 interview that she and other black students were victims to a number
00:21:19.800 of hate crimes in 2002 at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.
00:21:24.000 She said, in my junior year, I became the victim of a series of hate crimes, myself along with
00:21:29.980 a handful of other black students.
00:21:31.840 My school didn't know what to do, and they brought in the Cochran firm.
00:21:34.360 It's Johnny Cochran.
00:21:35.180 You know, if the glove don't fit, you must acquit O.J. Simpson.
00:21:37.740 And the lawyer that helped me became my instant shero.
00:21:41.960 And she said to ABC 7 News, or ABC 7 News rather, reported, she recalled needing an advocate
00:21:48.280 when someone left racist hate mail in her campus mailbox.
00:21:52.860 Hmm.
00:21:53.360 I've heard this one before.
00:21:55.600 So this is apparently the hate crime.
00:21:57.480 She says there were multiple racial hate crimes, but this is the one that she's pointing to
00:22:00.500 is racist hate mail in her campus mailbox. 0.79
00:22:04.520 And then she says her black friends had their cars keyed on campus.
00:22:09.500 What's a little weird, though, is Jasmine Crockett has never been able to produce any evidence
00:22:15.360 that any of that actually happened.
00:22:18.380 The Tennessee Star did an investigation.
00:22:22.120 They could not locate contemporary reports, even, of the alleged hate crimes.
00:22:28.060 So you got to remember, she's saying 20 years after the fact that she was the victim of these
00:22:31.860 hate crimes, and that's why she engaged in this legal career and then political career. 1.00
00:22:37.500 But not only is there no contemporary evidence that the crimes occurred, there aren't even
00:22:44.640 contemporary news reports that anyone even claimed that the crimes occurred.
00:22:49.960 The Tennessee Star contacted Crockett's office.
00:22:53.120 Crockett's office declined to comment.
00:22:54.580 If you look at a timeline of the school's history, it was listed in 2002 as Mother Jones's,
00:23:02.740 one of Mother Jones's top 10 activist colleges in the United States.
00:23:06.900 There have been many racial hate hoaxes on college campuses.
00:23:10.800 I detail a ton of them in my book, Speechless, Controlling Words, Controlling Minds.
00:23:15.240 Thank you.
00:23:15.640 A great book that you can get.
00:23:16.740 Number one national bestseller.
00:23:17.640 However, this case would seem, I don't know, there's no evidence that any of this actually
00:23:25.280 happened, so I have to wonder if this is one of those hoaxes.
00:23:28.460 That would mean that this woman doing the little jiggle on the TikTok dances, that her 0.99
00:23:33.080 whole political career is just a fictional performance, which would seem to be in keeping
00:23:38.500 with what she's arguing.
00:23:40.120 Because her whole career comes down to racial grievance, and this is part and parcel of
00:23:46.140 the problem that David Axelrod is describing.
00:23:48.780 The Democrats' performance during the joint session, during Trump's sort of State of the
00:23:55.420 Union speech, was unpersuasive to people.
00:23:59.700 It didn't work.
00:24:00.420 And why?
00:24:01.320 Because they're just going back to the well of the same stuff that they always have. 0.99
00:24:05.080 Racial grievance, killing babies, castrating little kids. 0.85
00:24:09.720 I think that one's really on the way out. 0.96
00:24:11.760 What have they got?
00:24:15.040 What's new?
00:24:17.500 Nothing.
00:24:19.020 And so I think David Axelrod is saying, look, I want some.
00:24:22.140 I was just speaking to Piers Morgan yesterday on his show.
00:24:25.720 He said, you know, I'm waiting for some new candidate to come.
00:24:28.580 Where are they?
00:24:30.300 Where is the new candidate?
00:24:33.140 I think it's the same.
00:24:34.060 They're just stuck in a rut.
00:24:34.920 They don't know how to react to President Trump, who has reordered our politics.
00:24:38.700 So their old games, even if they did work a year or two ago, well, now at this point,
00:24:42.500 five or ten years ago, they don't really work anymore.
00:24:46.040 So what do they do now?
00:24:47.760 That's a question for them.
00:24:49.680 I don't have the answer.
00:24:50.700 I don't think they do either.
00:24:52.020 There's so much more to say first, though.
00:24:53.760 Go to helixsleep.com slash Knowles.
00:24:57.900 I love Helix mattress. 0.90
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00:25:07.680 I really try to make my sleep count.
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00:25:11.120 And Helix has this amazing personalized approach.
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00:25:18.200 I love my Helix mattress so much.
00:25:21.400 I love this company.
00:25:22.440 I so believe in this company.
00:25:24.140 I got the Helix mattress for my son when he transitioned out of a crib.
00:25:29.140 And my middle son is now approaching that age.
00:25:32.740 And I'm thinking, should I treat him?
00:25:34.640 Should I?
00:25:34.940 I don't want him to have a complex.
00:25:36.440 If his older brother has the greatest mattress around, and then I put him on a bale of hay or
00:25:40.960 something, nobody wants that.
00:25:41.900 Go get your Helix mattress.
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00:26:02.080 Speaking of language, President Trump has signed an executive order making English the official
00:26:06.240 language of the United States.
00:26:07.220 I remember this debate going on for over 25 years now.
00:26:14.740 This debate has been going on for a really, really long time.
00:26:18.380 Further, I remember in high school, this would have been the mid-2000s, I remember this was
00:26:24.340 a really lively debate.
00:26:25.640 Are we going to make English the official language?
00:26:27.800 Sure, you could say it's the national language, but America doesn't have an official language.
00:26:31.560 This was kind of peak diversity is our strength.
00:26:34.440 America is an idea of liberalism.
00:26:35.840 We don't have an official language in this country.
00:26:39.460 Well, now we do, because Trump has declared it so.
00:26:43.740 This revokes an executive order issued by Bill Clinton in 2000, about 25 years ago,
00:26:51.940 improving access services for persons with limited English proficiency that required federal agencies
00:26:58.780 and recipients of federal funding to provide language assistance to non-English speakers.
00:27:03.240 What did Trump say in the order?
00:27:04.200 He said, quote, a nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society,
00:27:09.700 and the United States is strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in
00:27:14.020 one shared language.
00:27:15.260 So true.
00:27:16.720 No nation can survive if its citizens don't speak the same language.
00:27:21.600 You're going to hear people say that this is racist or something.
00:27:25.240 You know you're going to hear that from the libs. 0.99
00:27:29.680 But this gets to one of their major misunderstandings of human nature.
00:27:34.300 They have a lot of misunderstandings of human nature, like they think that men can be women.
00:27:37.260 But one of their other misunderstandings of human nature, even, say, for instance, with their racial grievance politics,
00:27:43.100 is that the races are all kind of different species or something.
00:27:48.400 Another problem with their understanding of human nature is they don't recognize that babies are babies.
00:27:52.980 So they'll say, you know, a human being only becomes a human being at 10 months old, but not at 8 months old or something like that.
00:27:58.920 But that then raises the question, well, what is a human being?
00:28:03.400 What makes us human?
00:28:05.600 And maybe that'll be the next Matt Walsh documentary.
00:28:07.920 What's a human?
00:28:09.920 It's that we are creatures with a—we're incarnate creatures with a rational nature.
00:28:15.960 So you could say there are animals, lower animals, you know, salamanders and chipmunks and things.
00:28:21.940 They don't have a rational nature.
00:28:24.880 Meaning we don't put them on trial for committing crimes.
00:28:27.960 Meaning they don't reason abstractly.
00:28:30.580 They don't understand what justice is.
00:28:32.100 That's all that means.
00:28:33.140 And that's indisputable.
00:28:33.960 I don't know that any—if you disagree with me, then you probably think we—then you necessarily actually would think that we need to put, you know, squirrels on trial for ripping up my courtyard chair as they did last year, two years ago.
00:28:48.720 I'd like to do that.
00:28:49.680 But I won't do that because the squirrels don't have a rational nature.
00:28:52.040 So that would be an incarnate creature with that irrational nature.
00:28:55.180 Or, conversely, if you're of a religious bent and you take theology seriously, you could point to the angels who have a rational nature, but they're not incarnate creatures.
00:29:03.600 A human being is distinguished in his humanity by the fact that he is an incarnate creature with a rational nature.
00:29:09.780 Meaning, I can learn English, as I did as a boy.
00:29:15.940 You can learn English.
00:29:17.120 A white person can learn English. 0.59
00:29:18.440 A black person can learn English.
00:29:19.980 A Hispanic person, any human being, can, in principle, learn English.
00:29:24.540 So you can't call it racist or anything like that.
00:29:28.940 It just gets to a basic point that no nation can survive if citizens don't speak the same language.
00:29:33.800 In fact, what dismantled the Tower of Babel?
00:29:38.000 It was good to dismantle the Tower of Babel because they were trying to build a tower to heaven, but what dismantled it was when God confused their language. 0.93
00:29:44.760 You can't have a polity if you don't speak the same language. 0.81
00:29:47.560 We don't want to become the Tower of Babel, but we do want to have a functioning polity.
00:29:51.180 180 out of 195 countries in the world have an official language.
00:29:56.120 Are they all, they're all just wrong?
00:29:58.580 America's unique.
00:29:59.660 We're just an idea.
00:30:00.620 We're not a, we're not a place.
00:30:01.880 We're not a people.
00:30:02.900 We're just an idea.
00:30:04.280 Unlike every other country throughout history, diversity is our strength and we don't have a language and we don't need to speak the same language.
00:30:09.800 We'll be confused about everything.
00:30:11.040 I don't think so.
00:30:11.740 Trump, totally right here, drawing on great wellsprings of classical philosophy, classical politics, and common sense in America until about 25 years ago.
00:30:22.760 Now, speaking of the English language and not speaking the same language, Dylan Mulvaney, the second most prominent trans-identifying person in the country.
00:30:32.880 First, I think you got to give to Bruce Jenner.
00:30:34.540 Second, Dylan Mulvaney.
00:30:36.400 He was an actor, a kind of minor actor, Broadway actor, who decided he was going to pretend to be a woman one day and then he made a big nuisance of himself and a lot of women were offended by it.
00:30:47.520 And he rolled on that outrage for a little while.
00:30:50.380 He actually put yours truly in his Rockefeller Center musical.
00:30:54.300 I made my Rockefeller Center debut because of Dylan Mulvaney.
00:30:57.940 But he's got a new book out.
00:31:01.500 People haven't been paying attention to him lately.
00:31:04.600 The bizarre act that he was putting on had kind of lost some of its charm.
00:31:11.280 And so he's fallen into obscurity.
00:31:15.360 So now he's got a new book, Paper Doll Notes from a Late Bloomer by Dylan Mulvaney.
00:31:20.640 And I have got the papers here.
00:31:24.260 So you can get the first five pages.
00:31:26.380 It's not out yet.
00:31:27.440 Coming out soon enough.
00:31:29.540 Cover is pretty gross.
00:31:31.280 So I'm going to skip over that.
00:31:33.160 What's the book?
00:31:33.900 It's just his Days of Being a Girl.
00:31:36.360 He had this series on TikTok, Day One of Being a Girl, Day Five of Being a Girl.
00:31:40.040 And he would engage in frequently offensive caricatures of what a man would think a woman is and does.
00:31:48.620 And it was gross and weird and offensive.
00:31:50.980 But, you know, obviously the guy's got problems.
00:31:53.500 And he's talking about how when he was four years old, he told his mother that he was a girl.
00:32:00.320 And I don't know, I'm a little skeptical about that.
00:32:02.160 But okay.
00:32:02.640 Then you skip to the next page, Day Three of Being a Girl.
00:32:10.580 Some women hate him. 0.89
00:32:11.880 Talks about the TERFs. 0.99
00:32:12.920 All these women who he accuses, these are feminists, he says, who hate all trans people. 0.96
00:32:18.740 Just because they want to have their own bathrooms, they don't want to be put at risk by men in women's spaces. 1.00
00:32:24.180 They don't want men to crack women's skulls in sports. 1.00
00:32:27.280 They don't want men raping women in women's prisons. 1.00
00:32:29.960 That, according to Dylan Mulvaney, is examples of women hating all trans people. 0.99
00:32:34.800 But then you keep scrolling. 0.96
00:32:37.200 Talk about it being on the red carpet.
00:32:40.380 And he talks about how his father.
00:32:44.580 And he describes how his parents were divorced.
00:32:47.480 This is the last page that you can access.
00:32:49.620 When my parents divorced when I was nine, I emotionally sided with Dana.
00:32:53.860 I saw mom as the gatekeeper. 0.83
00:32:55.820 And my dad is the one I asked for permission from.
00:32:58.320 Only when mom said no and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
00:33:00.060 He goes on about this divorce.
00:33:01.320 I actually feel for the guy.
00:33:03.580 Because if you asked 100 people, I said, hey, do you think Dylan Mulvaney grew up in, like, a stable married household?
00:33:13.220 Or do you think maybe his parents were divorced or had something?
00:33:15.540 100 out of 100 people would say probably his parents were divorced or there's some problem there.
00:33:21.920 And, of course, that is the case.
00:33:22.880 So I really feel for the guy.
00:33:24.860 I think that's the case for a lot of people who are confused about their identity.
00:33:29.740 And I think that's actually borne out pretty well in the literature.
00:33:33.060 But that doesn't excuse this, okay?
00:33:35.080 He's a grown man, and I'm sorry that he had problems as a kid, and I'm sorry that some of the consequences of those problems were predictable.
00:33:42.020 But he's a grown man, and he has no right to go into women's spaces, and he has no right to pretend to be a woman. 0.54
00:33:47.080 And he just needs to grow up a little bit, okay?
00:33:49.700 And he needs to get right with reality.
00:33:53.900 Most people agree with that now.
00:33:56.400 This book, I think, is evidence of it.
00:33:58.080 And the fact that very few people are talking about it is evidence of it.
00:34:00.660 I think this act is getting stale.
00:34:03.120 I think that this guy is an actor who's in need of a new act, of a new character, because this one's getting stale.
00:34:09.160 I am so sick of talking about transgenderism, and I don't think I really have to anymore. 1.00
00:34:12.980 When I, at CPAC, a couple years ago, called for the eradication of transgenderism in public life entirely, 1.00
00:34:19.740 including for the good of the people who've fallen prey to that confusion.
00:34:25.500 I think we basically got that.
00:34:27.160 But President Trump is doing that now.
00:34:29.540 That is happening right now.
00:34:31.520 I think trans is kind of over. 1.00
00:34:34.140 People rejected it pretty soundly at the ballot box.
00:34:38.420 Dylan Mulvaney needs a new character.
00:34:40.720 The proof of that is people aren't really tuning in anymore.
00:34:44.800 I'm mentioning it because I played a little role in this, I guess.
00:34:49.200 But I think this is done.
00:34:52.000 That's just, the transgender error is just yet another error about human nature that the left has made. 0.72
00:34:58.420 And I think that error has run its course.
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00:35:23.680 My favorite comment yesterday is from Joni Maroney, 7475, says,
00:35:27.600 would have been awesome if Trump had said clap if you love our country at the joint session.
00:35:33.960 Well, he kind of did, didn't he?
00:35:36.500 He said, hey, you people, you won't clap for me.
00:35:39.780 You won't.
00:35:40.740 He dared him.
00:35:41.400 He said, you won't.
00:35:42.060 You won't clap at anything I say.
00:35:43.580 No, we won't.
00:35:44.340 We're not going to clap.
00:35:45.820 Cool.
00:35:46.680 I freed an American hostage.
00:35:49.580 He looks, we're not going to clap.
00:35:53.800 Okay.
00:35:55.040 Look at that cute little kid with a really heartwarming story.
00:36:00.700 We're still not clapping, right?
00:36:02.120 We're not.
00:36:02.820 Okay.
00:36:03.420 Hey, here's one of the Democrats' policies.
00:36:05.680 We're still not.
00:36:06.540 He did.
00:36:06.900 He basically did that. 1.00
00:36:08.860 It's like, hey, don't clap if you're a big, ugly, stupid idiot. 1.00
00:36:15.180 I don't, kind of in a lose-lose here. 1.00
00:36:18.020 You're like, ah, darn you, Trump, you wizard. 1.00
00:36:21.320 You magician. 1.00
00:36:22.140 How did you hypnotize me so?
00:36:24.240 Speaking of human flourishing, there's a new study out.
00:36:27.340 I love these studies.
00:36:28.780 These studies come out and they affirm common sense, but everyone's really relieved. 0.81
00:36:34.780 Because in our decayed and shallow modern intellectual life, we need some stupid study from some guy with a PhD to tell us things that statistically everyone is known for all of human history.
00:36:48.000 And so anyway, here's a study. 0.87
00:36:49.240 It's an important one because a lot of people actually don't understand it these days.
00:36:52.020 How the pursuit of happiness ends up sending people on a path to misery.
00:36:57.960 This is a study published in Applied Psychology, Health, and Well-Being.
00:37:03.520 And it points out that the pursuit of happiness is like a snowball effect.
00:37:09.980 This is from Sam Malio, marketing professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough in the Rotman School of Management.
00:37:15.640 Pursuit of happiness is a bit like a snowball effect.
00:37:18.020 You decide to try making yourself feel happier, but then that effort depletes your ability to do the kinds of things that make you happier.
00:37:24.940 So you end up having a worse day.
00:37:30.760 Anyone who has ever taken their wife out for a special Valentine's Day knows this.
00:37:36.260 Anyone who has ever said, you know, this year we're going to have a good, happy Christmas.
00:37:40.800 We're all going to be happy all the time.
00:37:42.500 You understand?
00:37:43.180 We're all going to, I'm going to be happy.
00:37:44.660 Or even not just on special occasions.
00:37:46.980 But just people who are generally a little bit down.
00:37:49.680 And they're experiencing kind of ennui that is characteristic of our liberal modern age.
00:37:55.540 They'll say, I am going to determine to be happy.
00:37:59.540 And to do that, I'm going to think all the time about how I want to be happy.
00:38:04.920 Which means, of course, that I'm going to be thinking about how I am unhappy.
00:38:08.920 And it means if I'm thinking about how I'm unhappy, I will be making myself even less happy.
00:38:13.840 And I'm going to read a bunch of books that are, at best, useless about how to be happy.
00:38:20.940 And I'm just going to focus on my own unhappiness all the time.
00:38:23.720 Why am I not happy?
00:38:26.780 I remember I had friends who were really into the self-help thing.
00:38:31.340 I had friends who were writing self-help books 10, 15 years ago.
00:38:34.520 This was around the time that I was reverting to the church.
00:38:37.420 I was so naive in this way.
00:38:39.760 I remember I was reading the Bible seriously for the first time.
00:38:42.460 Certainly for the first time in a long time.
00:38:44.500 And I said, gosh, you're not going to believe it.
00:38:47.420 You got all these self-help books.
00:38:49.040 But there's this really good self-help book that's way better than all the other ones.
00:38:53.180 You guys ever heard of this book called the Bible?
00:38:55.940 They roll their eyes at me. 1.00
00:38:58.440 Alternately, they think, Michael, are you an idiot? 1.00
00:39:00.240 And then on the other side, they'd say, are you crazy? 1.00
00:39:02.920 We don't read the Bible. 0.99
00:39:03.660 That's nuts.
00:39:04.880 But you don't even, look, ultimately, if you want to live a life that is conducive to your eternal happiness,
00:39:10.660 you really have to be religious.
00:39:12.320 And it is helpful for your natural happiness, too.
00:39:15.100 But even just taking things on the order of nature, even putting theology aside for a second and just taking things philosophically,
00:39:21.980 we also have good books on that. 0.98
00:39:24.880 You know, I do happiness, and you can, too, kind of all these modern stupid books, how to be happy, how to, you know, 10 rules for staying positive or whatever. 0.73
00:39:36.820 There's a great one called the Nicomachean Ethics that goes back to Aristotle, who comes up on this show every so often because he was right about basically everything. 0.95
00:39:44.340 And he defined happiness.
00:39:46.440 He said happiness is the goal.
00:39:47.980 That's what people want.
00:39:49.500 It's not just you.
00:39:50.460 Everyone wants to be happy.
00:39:51.880 But we all go wrong sometimes, and some of us more than others.
00:39:56.560 And so if we want happiness, we've got to know what happiness is.
00:39:59.340 And Aristotle said happiness is excellent rational activity in accord with virtue.
00:40:04.200 That's it.
00:40:04.640 Activity.
00:40:05.180 So it's not passive.
00:40:06.460 It's not just like trying to meditate yourself into a state of happiness.
00:40:10.480 So prayer and meditation might play a role in it.
00:40:14.000 There's motion to it.
00:40:17.120 And it is activity done in accord with virtue.
00:40:20.800 So we have to know something about the virtues that we can deduce using our reason.
00:40:23.760 And it's activity that's done with excellence.
00:40:25.760 When you do things poorly, you're not going to be as happy as when you do things really, really well.
00:40:29.760 And, crucial, it's rational activity.
00:40:33.520 It's activity that has a relationship to the truth.
00:40:38.180 Sometimes we want to do things that are irrational, but that's not going to make us happy.
00:40:42.260 Not in the long run. 0.99
00:40:43.840 Stuffing your face and cheating on your wife and committing crimes. 0.96
00:40:48.220 And that's not – it might make you feel a certain kind of titillation in the short run, 0.95
00:40:51.740 but it's not going to make you happy in the long run.
00:40:53.520 It's got to be rational activity, which means it's got to be in accord with reality.
00:40:58.700 Which is why people like Dylan Mulvaney are unhappy.
00:41:03.500 It's why the libs are unhappy.
00:41:07.300 I'm not saying that the libs have to be actively killing their children or castrating their children 0.98
00:41:12.800 or, you know, hanging around with face-tattooed Mexican gangsters to be unhappy. 0.96
00:41:17.340 The very fact that their political ideology is grounded on a false understanding of human nature and how society works
00:41:26.240 is part of why libs consistently rank less happy in social scientific surveys than conservatives.
00:41:35.860 It's the rational part.
00:41:37.900 It's not that they're lazy.
00:41:39.380 It's not that they're not talented or skilled at doing anything.
00:41:42.040 It is in part that they don't quite understand virtue or that they pull away from virtue,
00:41:47.020 but they even exhibit certain virtues.
00:41:48.440 I think it's the rational activity part.
00:41:50.580 They refuse to accept reality as it is.
00:41:54.740 And so they live in the world of John Milton describing Satan, you know,
00:41:58.640 who rebels and falls down to hell. 0.64
00:42:00.920 And he says, well, whatever.
00:42:01.860 I don't want to go back to heaven.
00:42:03.220 The mind is its own place.
00:42:04.420 It can make a hell of heaven or heaven to hell.
00:42:05.900 Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
00:42:09.080 That's where they're at.
00:42:10.600 And it's why they're unhappy.
00:42:11.540 And if you want to remain unhappy, then keep doing that.
00:42:14.060 Keep living in your fantasy world where you're God and you make the rules and you don't have
00:42:17.900 to respect reality, biological, social, anthropological, or anything else, moral.
00:42:23.080 But if you want to be happy, that rational part is really important.
00:42:26.900 It's not just that you got to lift the weights and whatever, diet and read self-help books and
00:42:31.820 wake up at 6 a.m. and take a cold plunge.
00:42:33.460 Like, fine, maybe some of that helps you.
00:42:35.000 Maybe some of it doesn't.
00:42:35.880 But reality is really great, okay?
00:42:39.620 And if Mr. Mulvaney is looking for his next act, reality would probably be a good one.
00:42:45.120 Makes you a better actor, too.
00:42:46.700 Now, speaking of flourishing and the moral order, big news story.
00:42:51.840 I think I might have to tease this news story, though.
00:42:54.140 I don't know that we have.
00:42:54.840 Do we have time to get to it?
00:42:55.920 We'll try.
00:42:57.260 The Florida Attorney General has just opened a criminal probe into the Tate brothers, Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate.
00:43:04.680 Who are the Tate brothers, some of you might be asking.
00:43:07.000 They're very well-known.
00:43:08.380 It's probably most of you know who they are.
00:43:09.860 They're these guys who are best known for stating their opinions on the internet, like so many people do.
00:43:17.080 Like, some of my best friends state their opinions on the internet.
00:43:19.280 And they are generally more right-wing, though in a kind of odd way.
00:43:25.320 You know, they say things that are not merely offensive to certain women because they're true, but demeaning to certain women because they're not true.
00:43:35.720 You know, they don't promote traditional conservative values like getting married or, you know, having children in wedlock or, you know, curtailing their base passions or, you know, living in accord with virtue or these kinds of certain virtues, but a lot of them not.
00:43:55.280 They're a little bit more – they're not the classical or Christian right.
00:43:59.100 They're a little bit more the Nietzschean right or the individualist right or the, you know, I don't know, this other kind of right.
00:44:06.060 But they're not libs, that's for sure.
00:44:08.320 They wouldn't be called on the left at least.
00:44:10.060 Anyway, they're charged with crimes, pretty serious crimes in Romania.
00:44:15.140 They've spent time in the UK and they've admitted variously to pulling girls, seducing girls, including at pretty young ages, into doing pornography and that they made a lot of pornography on it.
00:44:29.240 They've gotten women to put their names, you know, on their bodies and tattoos as a kind of harem or a symbol of property. 1.00
00:44:36.900 One of the Tates was – I think he videotaped himself on camera, like beating a woman, and his argument was it's consensual.
00:44:44.220 Most conservatives wouldn't care if it's consensual, and I think at least one of the Tates is a Muslim, says he's a Muslim.
00:44:49.520 So anyway, I don't know, but all of that is just background to the story here that the Florida attorney general has opened a criminal probe into the Tate brothers.
00:44:58.740 And the Tate brothers have said, hold on, we haven't been accused really of committing any crimes in the United States.
00:45:04.740 This is a political witch hunt because we're on the political right.
00:45:07.360 And now there's all this argument over the rights of American citizens and innocent until proven guilty, and I think it's all kind of missing the point.
00:45:15.880 The people, certainly the people who are rabidly defending the Tate brothers, I think are missing the point.
00:45:21.200 But even the people who are attacking the Tate brothers and really going to the wall, there's one question that they're not asking.
00:45:31.440 And I think to me, this is the crucial question of the whole Tate saga, and I'm going to save it until tomorrow.
00:45:37.800 How do you like that?
00:45:38.380 How good is that for a tease?
00:45:40.360 Because, speaking of morality, well, speaking of theology, speaking of Christianity, we have a theologian coming on to clear up some questions that I have personally, and I think many people have, about the canon of the Bible.
00:45:54.220 This is Theology Thursday.
00:45:55.300 The rest of the show continues now.
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