The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1707 - NO ONE EXPECTED THIS! Trump Tariffs BREAKDOWN

00:00:00.000 President Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs yesterday, and no one, I mean no one,

00:00:08.500 expected the magnitude of tariffs that we saw. You are going to hear a lot of puffed-up financial

00:00:14.960 analysts and political pundits tell you that they know exactly what the tariffs mean today.

00:00:20.340 And they are full of it. And the way you know they're full of it is that none of them predicted

00:00:25.260 this, and the stock market tanked when President Trump announced it. In fact, the only prediction

00:00:30.940 that came true, and you know how much I hate to say I told you so, the only prediction that came

00:00:36.240 true, as far as I could tell, was my prediction that the tariffs would be totally unpredictable,

00:00:42.280 which is not a proper prediction in itself, so I get it, but I think that gets me half credit.

00:00:47.980 Now that we have more information, now we can start to try at least to read some of the tea leaves

00:00:55.040 to figure out if we are headed for a new golden age or another Great Depression.

00:01:01.160 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:02.660 Welcome back to the show. With President Trump defunding Planned Parenthood, there are the

00:01:27.740 usual suspects coming out arguing that actually the Bible is pro-abortion. So we will have on this

00:01:35.180 Theology Thursday a pulpit in politics debate coming up at the end of the show. There's so much more

00:01:39.420 to say. First, though, go to shopbeam.com slash Knowles. If you want great sleep, you got to check

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00:03:05.060 great night's sleep. These tariffs were wild, man. I don't know who else to put it. I know I'm

00:03:11.220 supposed to sit here and say, well, I knew this is exactly what would happen. And this is, but first of all,

00:03:15.820 and I did, I did, in that I said, the only thing that we know about the tariffs is that President

00:03:24.200 Trump is using them as part of his kind of madman, unpredictable strategy in office and that the

00:03:32.420 strategy has served him very well. But that even senior administration officials, I'm talking like

00:03:37.100 the very upper crust of the cabinet, did not really know what the tariffs were going to look like,

00:03:44.380 which countries were going to have tariffs on them, how intense the tariffs were going to be,

00:03:48.660 and what primary purpose the tariffs were going to serve. To put this in historical perspective,

00:03:54.080 the effective tariff on imports has now hit a 131-year high in the United States.

00:04:02.920 So the economists over at Capital Economics, because what do I don't know anything about

00:04:07.280 these calculations, but these actual economists come out, they say that we now have an import-weighted

00:04:12.140 average tariff of 19.1%. But when you put that on top of the earlier tariffs that President Trump

00:04:22.280 already installed, and product-specific tariffs, so not just Trump saying, you know, weeks ago,

00:04:27.820 okay, we're going to put tariffs on China, or not just saying, all right, we're going to put tariffs

00:04:30.920 on steel and aluminum and autos more recently. The effective tariff rate on all imports would rise

00:04:37.820 to about 26%, which is the 131-year high. That is up from 2.3% last year. So we're talking about a

00:04:47.500 massive tariff hike. Here is President Trump announcing Liberation Day.

00:04:54.060 From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation, and the United States was proportionately the

00:05:03.380 wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission

00:05:09.920 to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting. We were

00:05:14.980 collecting so much money so fast, we didn't know what to do with it. Isn't that a nice problem to

00:05:19.980 have? What do you think, Marco? Good problem? Marco would love that problem. But we don't have that

00:05:26.600 problem anymore, but we're not going to have it very much longer, I will tell you. But they collected

00:05:31.240 so much money, they actually formed a commission to determine what they were going to do with the

00:05:35.940 money, who they were going to give it to, and how much. Then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind,

00:05:42.800 they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying

00:05:47.880 the money necessary to run our government. Then in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the

00:05:55.020 Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy. It would

00:06:00.640 have been a much different story. They tried to bring back tariffs to save our country, but it was

00:06:07.100 gone. It was gone. It was too late. Okay, so there you have it. President Trump not merely announcing

00:06:12.800 these massive tariffs, and he had a big board of the tariffs that other countries are levying on

00:06:19.540 our goods compared to what Trump was presenting as the much more lenient and generous tariff rate that

00:06:27.400 we were levying on the other countries. And the numbers were a little bit confusing because we

00:06:33.900 couldn't quite tell, all right, how did the White House arrive at this effective tariff rate from the

00:06:40.320 other countries? It's not like you just Google it and there's a number. We're talking about multiple

00:06:45.500 tariffs on lots of different products and with lots of different volume. And so how did they arrive at

00:06:51.900 that? And President Trump made clear that he was including not only the tariffs, but other non-tariff

00:06:57.620 trade barriers, currency manipulation, subsidies of industries, and so forth. People couldn't quite

00:07:06.000 figure out where exactly these numbers came from. How did the White House arrive at some of the

00:07:11.240 extraordinarily high tariff rates that we were levying on some countries? An ex-account named

00:07:17.900 ortho-normalist seems to have struck on it, which is he said the number was arrived at by taking the U.S.

00:07:25.560 trade deficit with any given nation and dividing it by that nation's exports to us with a baseline 10%

00:07:35.960 tariff for all countries. So even countries that run a trade deficit with us, we're just going to start

00:07:41.360 out with a baseline 10% tariff, and then that's how you arrive at the number. And the White House, some staff

00:07:46.820 members at the White House tried to push back on this a little bit and point out that, no, there was a

00:07:50.900 really sophisticated economic calculation here. And that may well be the case, but even when you

00:07:56.380 factor in the White House's explanation, I think ortho-normalists' simple description of it seems to

00:08:02.740 hold pretty well. It seems pretty accurate. It's the U.S. trade deficit with that nation divided by the

00:08:09.560 nation's exports to us with a baseline of 10% tariffs. So that means that there were 10% tariffs

00:08:14.400 against places that not only don't export goods to us, but don't even have people in them.

00:08:18.740 And this is something that the libs were having a lot of fun with. I actually, I was having fun

00:08:22.260 with it too. I don't, I know the libs are like pulling their hair out over this. I don't, I just

00:08:25.900 find it quite entertaining. Wow. Something is actually changing in politics. Wow. President Trump

00:08:30.680 is making good on his promise. You know, Trump has made good on a lot of his promises, but most

00:08:35.780 politicians don't make good on their promises. So one of the, one of the funny aspects of this policy

00:08:41.120 is there's apparently a 10% tariff against the herd in McDonald Islands, which are inhabited only

00:08:46.160 by penguins. So that's right. You take that, you penguins. I don't know. I don't know what penguins

00:08:52.480 export. In fact, I don't even know enough about penguins to make a joke about what they could

00:08:56.900 export. But anyway, whatever it is they export, it's, they're going to have to pay a 10% tariff

00:09:00.820 on that. Big question that everyone has right now. What does Trump want with these tariffs?

00:09:08.840 You got the libs freaking out. Of course you have many on the right freaking out. Of course,

00:09:15.240 is they're saying that these tariffs are so extreme. No one was predicting this. The market

00:09:19.280 is tanking. What surely he doesn't want to keep these in permanently and we'll get, there's some

00:09:26.680 sign that maybe he doesn't want these to be permanent. But the question is, does he want revenue

00:09:31.740 jobs or concessions from other countries when it comes to trade? When you, when you see a 10%

00:09:39.080 tariff levied on a nation inhabited only by penguins, you think, well, it can't just be the

00:09:42.640 concessions. When you see, to use a less kind of funny example, when you see a 10% tariff slapped

00:09:49.080 on countries that run a trade deficit with us, then that makes you think, well, it can't be that he's

00:09:54.300 just trying to get concessions. What concessions do those places have to give? Is it jobs? Is he

00:09:59.560 trying to reshore American manufacturing? Maybe that was one of the big arguments during the

00:10:05.800 campaign is we need to reshore American manufacturing. Globalist liberal free trade

00:10:09.940 has gutted the American middle class. It's destroyed a lot of towns in middle America

00:10:14.060 where now the people who are unemployed are just killing themselves with fentanyl and

00:10:18.080 dying deaths of despair. Okay. Could be that. But from the way president Trump is talking about it

00:10:22.780 in, in his announcement of liberation day, it probably isn't the jobs because Trump is talking

00:10:26.820 about it from the perspective of revenue. Meaning we're going to continue to import a lot of these

00:10:31.120 goods. We're just going to collect a lot of revenue at the ports when the goods come in.

00:10:35.680 If the tariff policy were primarily about creating jobs, American manufacturing jobs,

00:10:40.780 then you wouldn't get the revenue because people would just be buying the goods here in America.

00:10:45.000 Now there is a middle ground, of course, which is that the tariffs are levied. People are more

00:10:51.600 inclined to buy American and maybe Trump does exact trade concessions so that American industries are

00:11:01.720 able to export more overseas. Obviously, it's not only one or the other or the other, but these three

00:11:07.980 things are in conflict with each other. Jobs, revenue, concessions. So which one does he want?

00:11:15.840 I think we, I think there's a little bit of a clue. There's so much more to say. First though,

00:11:21.780 go to goodranchers.com slash Knowles. We spend so much time searching for the truth in headlines and

00:11:28.660 in conversations. How often do we stop and ask about what's on our plate? Once you start digging,

00:11:33.560 you're going to find out most store-bought meat is shipped in from overseas, even if it says product

00:11:38.000 of USA. That is one of the reasons I made the switch to Good Ranchers. You want to know the top

00:11:42.700 reason that I made the switch to Good Ranchers though? Obviously, I was introduced to them

00:11:46.320 through my show. I said, oh, this is interesting. Let me try out the product. You know, I take my

00:11:50.320 meat very seriously. And the quality, just the taste is so outrageously good. Then on top of that,

00:11:59.480 you know me, I'm a little bit of a cheapskate. The prices cannot be beat. And then I'm also an

00:12:05.860 American patriot and I love that it's American meat, but it's so good. The other night I came home,

00:12:09.640 the boys and Elisa had already eaten their food. And then sweet little Elisa made me a nice New

00:12:13.680 York strip steak. And I'm sitting there and I'm about to, and I dig in and it's so good. I won't

00:12:18.140 put any sauce or anything on it. It's just, I just want the meat as it is. And then my little toddler

00:12:22.420 comes up and goes, hey, Dada, I want your steak. Give me your steak. And of course, I understand it.

00:12:25.980 I don't begrudge him. It's part of their spring into action special right now. When you subscribe to

00:12:31.500 any Good Ranchers box, you get free bacon, ground beef, chicken nuggets, or salmon in every box for a year,

00:12:35.980 plus $40 off with code Knowles, goodranchers.com slash Knowles, good ranchers, American meat delivered.

00:12:43.580 Here's the little bit of clue about what Trump wants. The tariffs did not go into effect immediately.

00:12:51.260 However, they are going into effect pretty soon. Senior White House officials told reporters that

00:12:55.700 the new baseline tariff of 10% will go into effect Saturday at 12.01 a.m. Friday night,

00:13:05.200 you're going to get the baseline 10% tariff on everyone. Then the reciprocal levies will go into

00:13:12.420 effect in a week, April 9th at 12.01 a.m. Notice here, this is the other little clue. Trump is presenting

00:13:23.040 these tariffs as reciprocal tariffs. He's not saying that these aren't just revenue-raising

00:13:31.380 tariffs. These aren't just reshore American manufacturing tariffs. These are reciprocal

00:13:36.500 tariffs. You tariff us, we're going to tariff you. Even if you don't have tariffs on us,

00:13:41.120 you have bad trade practices that harm Americans. All right, we're going to put tariffs on you.

00:13:47.300 So by last night, the Dow futures was down 900 points. NASDAQ futures was down about 800 points.

00:13:53.880 S&P 500 futures was down 180 points. This was a massive, massive shockwave.

00:14:01.120 If I were a gambling man, and I don't really make predictions, especially on this issue when it

00:14:07.360 comes to Trump, because he could be totally bluffing, as he sometimes does, or he could be dead serious and

00:14:15.680 he wants to bring us back to the McKinley era, and he wants to abolish the income tax.

00:14:19.840 And it could be either of those, because if he's bluffing, then he needs to behave as though he

00:14:25.640 wants to take us back to the McKinley era. And if he wants to take us back to the McKinley era,

00:14:31.320 he's going to talk like he wants to take us back to the McKinley era, and he's really good. He's just

00:14:35.360 really good at negotiating, and he's a good showbiz guy. So you can't actually tell.

00:14:39.420 My gut tells me this is still a negotiating tactic, because it's presented as reciprocal,

00:14:49.760 and because he's delaying the implementation. He's not delaying it very much. I mean,

00:14:54.120 it's hard to imagine some kind of deal gets struck with any of these countries by Saturday,

00:14:59.120 or even a week from now, six days from now. How are you going to strike a deal with hundreds of

00:15:06.860 countries? I mean, I don't know. Maybe the penguins don't really care. They're going to

00:15:10.180 have an internal economy, and they don't care about U.S. trade. But these other countries,

00:15:15.860 how are you going to strike a deal with all of them in a week? I don't know. That's the mark

00:15:20.220 against my theory. But I still, it is a negotiating tactic, right? Right? I don't know.

00:15:26.940 But we can judge a little bit the international response. Ontario Premier from America's Evil Top Hat,

00:15:31.560 Doug Ford, he came out the minute these tariffs were announced, and everyone picked their

00:15:36.640 jaws up off the floor. He said, hey, hey, hey, all right, we'll give up all of our tariffs. Just

00:15:42.080 cut it out. What are you doing? Let's sit down and discuss this, because it's just going to

00:15:48.660 hurt American jobs. I can't stress it enough. And again, he believes he's supporting Americans.

00:15:58.060 He said he was going to create jobs, create wealth, reduce inflation. It's worked the total

00:16:04.100 opposite. Inflation is out. But do you think it's fair that you have tariffs on a whole number of

00:16:07.740 products? That's right. And we'd be willing to take those off tomorrow if he took all the tariffs

00:16:12.840 off. We are not the problem. Andrew, do you know what the problem is? China's the problem.

00:16:18.620 Okay. Oh, there we go. Look, we'd be willing to take all those tariffs off.

00:16:22.340 Because, you know, in defense of the tariff policy, all these other countries have tariffs

00:16:26.680 on us. So he says, look, we'd be willing to lose every tariff we have on the United States

00:16:31.300 if you please just lighten up on these tariffs. So that makes it seem like, all right, this is

00:16:38.560 just a negotiating tactic. We are going to reduce trade barriers all around the world. We're going

00:16:43.020 to get even more free trade. However, when you look at all the countries that have tariffs levied on

00:16:49.980 them, you begin to wonder. Because it's not just China. It's not just Canada. It's not just Mexico.

00:16:55.420 It's not just, it's Senegal. What trade concessions does the White House want to get

00:17:02.720 from Senegal? I don't, what trade concessions do we want to get from the Herd and McDonald Islands?

00:17:11.560 What, that makes it look like the fact that these are so broad and there's a 10% baseline tariff

00:17:17.060 makes it seem like it's not a negotiating tactic, but rather a revenue thing. We just want to

00:17:23.980 collect the revenue, which is how President Trump presented it. We're just going to make so much

00:17:29.860 money, we're not going to know what to do with the money. But also it's reciprocal tariff. So also

00:17:33.160 it's kind of a negotiating tactic. So I'm going to tell you the only totally honest thing that you

00:17:41.320 are going to hear from any financial analyst or political pundit today about these world order

00:17:46.620 shaking tariffs. I don't know. I don't know. That's, and I know that that doesn't play and

00:17:53.960 you're supposed to hear, well, this is exactly what it is. No one, nobody knows what this means.

00:18:01.320 The proof is the market tanked. So even all the super duper geniuses on Wall Street

00:18:06.780 who are paid to know what fiscal policy is and who are paid to know what the White House is going to

00:18:13.800 do when it comes to trade and who are paid to know all these things. And they're all the greatest

00:18:17.300 super geniuses in the world who dedicate their lives to this. They had no idea, no clue.

00:18:23.100 Now there is a super genius from Wall Street who is now sitting in the Trump administration. He's

00:18:27.860 the secretary of the treasury. That is Scott Besson. Scott Besson was asked about the market reaction

00:18:34.340 to the tariffs. And this guy stayed cool as a cucumber.

00:18:39.840 This kind of market downdraft so far this year is not concerning you.

00:18:44.680 Well, look, in my old business, I was very concerned about market movements and I'm trying

00:18:50.080 to be a secretary of treasury, not a market commentator. What I would point out is that

00:18:55.180 especially the NASDAQ peaked on deep seek day. So that's a MAG-7 problem, not a MAGA problem.

00:19:03.200 Okay. This is a great line. This is a killer line. That's probably going to go over the heads of a

00:19:08.080 lot of people. What he says, MAG-7, he's referring to the magnificent seven companies, tech companies,

00:19:13.200 Amazon, NVIDIA, all these companies that have just vastly outperformed the market.

00:19:18.620 And he says, yeah, the market downturn, that's a MAG-7 problem. That's not a MAGA problem.

00:19:25.080 I'm not a market commentator. I'm not a hedge fund manager anymore. I'm the secretary of the

00:19:28.860 treasury. Don't worry about it. So what's my takeaway? All of that to say, it was a very long

00:19:34.460 survey of these world shaking tariffs. I'm not freaking out. I'm not freaking out, man. Okay.

00:19:45.480 Scott Besson's not freaking out. I'm not freaking out. The market's freaking out,

00:19:49.180 but I'm not freaking out because I've been through this before. It seems to me I've heard this song

00:19:53.400 before where Trump says something and everyone loses their minds. And then three days later,

00:19:58.740 it's not what everyone feared it would be. And then a week later, it actually worked very well.

00:20:03.840 So I'm willing to take the 24 hour President Trump deep breath here. Okay. However, I want to,

00:20:12.660 I want to caution people, including people on the right, especially people on the right.

00:20:16.660 The stakes are very, very high here. This is not just some random executive order

00:20:24.660 that angers people, but two weeks later, no one really cares. The stakes are very, very high.

00:20:33.720 President Trump plays for keeps. He wants to be an historic president. He is a world historic figure.

00:20:38.660 He just is that. He is one of the most significant figures we've ever had, certainly in American history.

00:20:42.940 And he will go down. He will be remembered for centuries to come. And he knows that he plays

00:20:47.960 high stakes and he plays for keeps. If this tariff policy doesn't work, we will get obliterated in

00:20:57.580 the midterms. There will not be a Republican who can show his face in Washington DC or at any town hall.

00:21:04.600 We will get destroyed. And J.D. Vance and whoever else runs for president in 2828 will get destroyed.

00:21:14.200 The GOP will be on its gasping last breath if this doesn't work out. And on the flip side,

00:21:22.840 if this does work out, Trump truly will be the transformative president that he promised himself

00:21:28.620 to be, he will have ended the era of globalization, free trade, the kind of liberal post-Cold War

00:21:37.580 consensus, following the liberal World War II consensus, certainly the liberal post-Cold War consensus

00:21:42.680 that says the world is flat and we're just going to erase our borders and we're going to start out

00:21:46.900 erasing our economic borders. But when you erase the economic borders, pretty soon you're going to have

00:21:51.400 to erase the political borders too because you're going to have to have your government done

00:21:54.780 by international institutions that are going to take more and more power away from sovereign

00:21:59.720 nations. And you're going to have mass migration and the world is flat and history is over. And Trump

00:22:05.020 will have ended that basically with one declaration, with two and some would argue three presidential

00:22:12.560 election wins. But this is a major, major move. So I'm going to keep my heart rate down. We're going

00:22:19.200 to see how it works out. But we, you know, the old Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times.

00:22:26.920 It is upon us. The first Chinese curse of recent years was Wuhan, was COVID. This is the second one.

00:22:32.980 And probably it is more significant. There's so much more to say. First though, go to preborn.com

00:22:37.760 slash Knowles. Did you hear about the recent studies showing that about 20% of women who have medical

00:22:42.620 abortions experience complications? There have even been some tragic deaths. What is concerning

00:22:47.980 is that the Biden administration relaxed the reporting requirements. So the NIH doesn't have

00:22:53.420 to track injuries related to those medications anymore. These pills now account for the majority

00:22:57.480 of abortions, over 60%. Many women do not fully understand the risks. At preborn's clinics, they see

00:23:03.180 women every day who are struggling after taking abortion pills. And some even come in not knowing what

00:23:08.060 to do with their pregnancy remains. At preborn, they welcome these women with compassion and support.

00:23:13.760 They can even offer abortion pill reversal treatment if they come to them early enough. By sponsoring

00:23:17.760 an ultrasound for a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy, you're helping provide real choices

00:23:21.740 and important information. Just $28 covers one ultrasound. $140 helps five women see their

00:23:27.620 children. Right now, if you want to support this group, I personally support this organization. I

00:23:31.820 encourage you to as well. Dial pound 250, say keyword baby, or go to preborn.com slash Knowles.

00:23:36.260 Give what you can. Preborn.com slash Knowles. I will be going to University of Pittsburgh. You might

00:23:44.240 remember a year, what was it, a year or two years ago? I visited the University of Pittsburgh. I was

00:23:48.920 invited by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute to give a talk. It ended up being a debate actually on

00:23:53.960 transgenderism. And when I got there, the libs lit the street on fire, burned me in effigy. And then as I

00:24:00.760 was walking on stage, threw an explosive at the building. So we had to turn around, go back into

00:24:04.840 the wings. A female police officer was very seriously injured. The people who threw the

00:24:10.300 explosives were not just a couple of kids who got out of control. They were hardcore anarchist

00:24:15.580 terrorists. Happily, they were prosecuted, though they were really only given a slap on the wrist.

00:24:21.200 But one of those guys is in federal prison right now. His wife should be in prison, but she's not.

00:24:25.960 She got off with probation or something like that. In any case, I'm going back on the anniversary,

00:24:31.000 near the anniversary. And my welcome committee is apparently preparing. I was alerted of this by my

00:24:37.800 team yesterday. Steel City Anti-Fascist League has posted that the infamous far-right loser, Michael

00:24:46.100 Knowles, returns to Pitt's campus on Monday, April 7th. Now, hold on, just a point here. Can one really be an

00:24:54.360 infamous loser? I guess so. But doesn't fame or even infamy imply that one has won at least

00:25:05.280 something? Has won attention? Has won applause? I'm confused by that. I think Antifa is pretty

00:25:11.740 confused, too. I guess one can be an infamous loser. We plan to make sure he knows he's not

00:25:17.980 welcome, doubly so. We plan to make sure anyone who supports him knows they're not welcome.

00:25:22.000 Transphobia will not be tolerated. Transphobes will not be tolerated. Michael Knowles will not

00:25:25.160 be tolerated. Okay. And then here's the picture, and it's an anarchist symbol with a rifle that looks

00:25:30.280 like an AR-15 here. Or is that an AK-47? And then it's hard to tell if the mag is bent. Anyway,

00:25:37.780 then it's me with three arrows going through my head. So they're not the subtlest, Antifa,

00:25:44.100 the left-wing terrorists. And so they're threatening to kill me. And apparently,

00:25:49.160 anyone who comes out to support me. So anyway, I'm going to go anyway. And I encourage you to go

00:25:57.300 anyway. Obviously, take precautions. Make sure everyone stays safe. We're going to have a robust

00:26:01.760 security presence. But my welcoming committee is back. Should be a fun event. If you're in the

00:26:06.980 Pittsburgh area, I'll see you April 7th. Speaking of transgenderism, a female fencer has gone viral

00:26:15.400 because she was expelled from USA fencing after refusing to fence with a man who says that he's a

00:26:25.540 woman. You can see a lady is getting ready to fence. There's a big, big fella there. And eventually,

00:26:34.540 eventually she just takes a knee. And okay, takes a knee because you can't fence a dude if you're a

00:26:43.020 lady. I know Disney movies have confused us. I know Snow White has probably confused us and Star

00:26:48.140 Wars and all the rest of it. But women can't actually win sword fights with men. It's not

00:26:53.900 possible ever. It's never once happened ever in the history of swords. So this is going viral among

00:27:00.700 the conservatives. And the conservatives are saying, this is outrageous. We need to defend women's

00:27:04.740 fencing. And we need to defend, I don't know, we need to defend the WNBA basically. And that's all

00:27:10.420 good. It's a winning issue, the trans sports thing. It's a major winning issue for conservatives.

00:27:15.040 I encourage Republicans to run on it. It's an issue that clues people in as to the absurdity

00:27:21.680 of the sexual ideology of the left and can help, hopefully, I think, lead them to reconsider things

00:27:28.620 like same-sex marriage, certainly transing the kids, transing the adults, radical feminism,

00:27:34.960 all the rest of it. But just among us gals, we need to be honest with ourselves.

00:27:42.180 We don't really care about women's fencing. Can we just among us, we're all, you know,

00:27:48.520 this is a private safe space. Is it private? I guess it's public. I'll speak for myself. I don't

00:27:54.740 care. I don't care about women's fencing. I don't care about women's basketball. I don't care about

00:28:00.440 women's soccer. I don't care about soccer at all. It's not that we conservatives care about women's

00:28:10.040 sports per se. We care about justice. The reason that it bothers us when some husky dude plays

00:28:19.880 women's volleyball is because he's going to give a woman a concussion. He's going to give her permanent

00:28:24.800 brain injuries, as has happened. Or at the very least, he's going to take away trophies and

00:28:30.580 university scholarships and all sorts of things that women are entitled to in these sports leagues.

00:28:35.780 The issue is the justice. But sometimes we get carried away, high on our own supply. We believe

00:28:41.220 our own press releases. And so before you know it, we look up and conservatives are the party of the

00:28:46.240 WNBA. No, we're not. I am not the party of the WNBA. I do wish to be the party of justice.

00:28:53.280 That is, of giving to people that which they deserve. And it is unjust for a fella to come in

00:29:01.960 and invade the women's sports leagues. But that's the issue, okay? You can run with it in all sorts of

00:29:09.320 innovative ways in political campaigns, but let's not lose sight of it. We don't actually care about

00:29:15.060 the WNBA. It is justice that we care about. Now, speaking of justice and transitioning,

00:29:21.580 Elon Musk has just declared, and gone viral for it, that humanity is but a biological bootloader

00:29:29.900 for digital superintelligence. What did he say exactly? This post has 50 million views last I

00:29:36.840 looked at it. As I mentioned several years ago, it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological

00:29:43.260 bootloader for digital superintelligence. A bootloader, for those of you who are not as tech savvy as I am,

00:29:49.980 I had to Google it too, is a program that loads an operating system. It's saying humanity,

00:29:54.580 all of history, all of our loves, our dreams, our desires, our rational thoughts, all of our

00:30:00.880 developments, all of our achievements, really, all of that was nothing but a bootloader

00:30:05.860 for a digital superintelligence so that we could create Grok or ChatGPT. That's what it was all

00:30:11.860 leading to. All of our paintings, all of our cathedrals, all of our nations, all of the wars,

00:30:19.060 all of the romances, all of the everything. It was to create Grok.

00:30:25.300 I don't love that. I don't believe that. But I don't love it either. This is, to me,

00:30:34.880 liberal eschatology. Liberal even meaning classical liberal. The modern liberal age which

00:30:41.460 views all of humanity with skepticism, all of the things that we once knew to be true with a lot of

00:30:50.480 skepticism that focuses merely, in the final count, on the satisfaction of individual desires.

00:30:59.980 The maximization of individual pleasure, the minimization of individual suffering,

00:31:03.900 all our old high-minded ideas about God and justice and morality and telos and all that,

00:31:09.000 that kind of goes by the wayside. And in this disenchanted world, in the world where man is no

00:31:16.720 longer made in the image and likeness of God, the one true God, we just become gods. And we

00:31:25.000 understand God as being nothing but a figment of our imaginations made in the image and likeness of us.

00:31:30.680 And so this is the end of the world theory for the liberals. It's not that there will be four

00:31:37.440 horsemen and chariots and trumpets. No, no, no. It's not that. It's just that we will.

00:31:43.140 We're going to create a digital supercomputer that's going to make mankind obsolete.

00:31:49.220 Or we're going to abolish homo sapiens to create homo deus, man truly as God. That's the view of

00:31:55.520 Yuval Harari, left-wing writer on this subject. I'm not knocking Elon here. Elon might think at least

00:32:04.040 he's speaking in a merely descriptive way, not a prescriptive way, but a descriptive way to say,

00:32:08.120 look, I'm not saying it's a good thing that humanity is becoming a bootloader for a digital

00:32:13.140 superintelligence, but that's just what's happening. You look around, people do seem to be

00:32:18.000 worshiping the dumb idols of Grok and ChatGPT. I'm tempted to do it myself. So I'm not even knocking

00:32:24.700 Elon. This might be the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. However, this is a nightmare

00:32:31.360 view of the future. And it is a nightmare view of the future, not because Grok isn't impressive,

00:32:37.220 not because the little Ghibli images aren't funny. They are. But because it diminishes human beings to

00:32:44.420 be mere instruments of robots, the robots who now become the stars of the show. So in the classical

00:32:51.640 Christian true understanding of the world, God is the star of the show, and we are made in the

00:32:58.400 image and likeness of God. And we screw everything up. And God, since his only begotten son, God

00:33:03.940 himself becomes incarnate to redeem us. He is the star of the show. And we are redeemed by him, which

00:33:10.960 makes us feel real good about ourselves. I don't want to diminish humanity. The fact that God would

00:33:15.960 send his only begotten son to save us, that God would take on flesh, take on a human nature,

00:33:20.140 tells us that being human is a really special thing. And we human beings, in turn, make artifacts.

00:33:25.960 We have our own little art of our paintings, our computers, our leftist years tumblers, our cigars.

00:33:31.520 We make those things. And this view, this liberal eschatological view, the view articulated by Elon

00:33:37.480 here, totally flips that. So that the most important thing, the telos that we've all been aiming toward,

00:33:47.920 that, in the service of which we are but mere instruments, is the artifact. It's the computer.

00:33:52.920 It's the program. It's the grok. And we serve that intelligence. And God doesn't really factor

00:34:01.620 into the picture at all. Not only at that point have we made ourselves gods, we've actually made

00:34:06.880 our own gods, our own dumb idols that we're worshiping, which is not a very new idea. That's

00:34:11.380 actually a very old idea. And it's amazing how the ancient false gods rear their ugly heads again.

00:34:17.200 Many people who agree with Elon's take here. And his take as mere description might be totally right.

00:34:26.600 Now, speaking of religion, we have a religious panel coming up on this show. That will be the

00:34:36.400 politics and pulpit panel on abortion. But before we get to that, one last big issue that has really

00:34:45.820 dominated a lot of the discourse, especially since President Trump picked Bobby Kennedy to be his

00:34:50.660 Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Jubilee Show, which I was on a few months ago,

00:34:56.520 got zillions of views worth checking out. It was me versus LGBT LMNOP activists. This after Charlie

00:35:03.340 Kirk, I think, was the inaugural episode of that show, where one conservative surrounded by a ton of

00:35:07.240 libs. And that is the first episode during the height of the campaign. That got, I think it was

00:35:12.260 like 25 million views or something totally crazy. Ben went on the show. Lila went on the show.

00:35:17.560 It's often one conservative versus a ton of libs. Jubilee flipped the format a little bit. Just had

00:35:22.080 one. Well, now it's even hard to say where conservatives and libs fall on this issue because

00:35:27.560 the political ground has shaken so much. But it was one seemingly kind of liberal pro-vaccine voice

00:35:34.960 against a bunch of vaccine skeptics. Here's how it went.

00:35:40.540 We are trying to do our best to make sure that we help children and adults when they are due for a

00:35:46.700 vaccine. Okay. So you just, at the end, you said it pretty much sounds like you have to have a good

00:35:50.800 intention. For example, we're not in the labs actually seeing the vaccine process or the clinical

00:35:55.560 trials. So we have to just take the expert's word. Well, when you fly in a plane, you're not in the

00:36:01.540 cockpit. Right. So we put our faith in that. So you would say that we just have to put our faith

00:36:05.960 in the experts, correct? Correct. Okay. So this would require, number one, a good intention. So

00:36:10.460 they have a good intention to help people to make their lives better. And also they have to be

00:36:14.260 ethical. Is that correct? Those are reasonable things. Yeah. Okay. So if they fall outside of

00:36:18.720 the privy of those two criteria, would you say it is reasonable for us to be skeptical? I think it's

00:36:23.520 reasonable to be skeptical at any moment. But taking those two things, if they violate either of those two,

00:36:28.540 would it give someone else more justification to be against it? Sure. Okay. So when we look at the

00:36:33.860 biggest developers and distributors and sellers of the vaccines, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, all these

00:36:39.720 big pharmaceutical companies, when we look at their track record, we see they have been deceptive.

00:36:44.300 They've had big settlements, billions and billions of dollars, fraud, misleading the public, concealing

00:36:49.600 clinical trials that were against their favor. When we have to put our whole faith and trust in these

00:36:53.840 people that have been through huge billions of dollars of settlements, and they have proven that they

00:36:57.840 have been unethical, they have made more profit through the COVID times than ever before as well,

00:37:02.260 why should we trust them so lightly? It's not a blind trust. Who you're trusting is the independent

00:37:07.180 reviewers that review the data that they put forward. Okay. So I think that response was very,

00:37:13.780 very weak. You know, no, no, no, you're not trusting the experts. You're not trusting the COVID

00:37:18.820 or the vaccine experts. You're trusting the expert experts. You're trusting the experts who review the

00:37:25.660 experts. Yeah, but those guys seem kind of bogus too. Because all those independent fact checkers

00:37:35.420 totally betrayed us during COVID. Where were they? Where were they when the scientists and the public

00:37:40.940 health officials told us that the COVID vaccine was totally safe and totally effective, and then a

00:37:46.820 bunch of people died from it? No, he's admitting, yes, sometimes the scientists and the public health

00:37:53.120 officials get things wrong. But that's why we have the independent reviewers. Yeah, but where were

00:37:57.700 they? Where were they during COVID? Where were they when we were told during COVID that the vaccine

00:38:05.680 would stop you from catching the virus? And then when that turned out to be false, when they told us

00:38:10.320 that they would stop you from transmitting the virus. And then when that turned out to be false,

00:38:15.940 they told us, well, the virus would have been a lot worse if you didn't have the vaccine,

00:38:18.700 which is unfalsifiable, really. Where were they? So I totally sympathize with the questioning of the

00:38:27.040 vaccines and the vaccine experts and of everything. Our elites have lied to us. And they have been

00:38:33.200 corrupt, not just on a vaccine thing, but on every score in politics in recent years and decades.

00:38:39.620 They have lied to us. They've been corrupt. They have been stupid. They have been incompetent.

00:38:43.560 And that's why people question them. And that's why we elected President Trump.

00:38:47.900 Because the ossified liberal elite failed. However, there is still truth. So this is the issue. You

00:38:58.980 say, okay, I don't believe the experts anymore. But then you turn to some of the real anti-vax voices,

00:39:04.480 and some of them are kind of persuasive sometimes. And some of them are obviously kooks who say things

00:39:09.640 that are demonstrably false. Like when they tell you, you know, there have never been

00:39:14.280 studies that have, you know, pursued the link between vaccines and certain injuries or vaccines

00:39:21.080 and autism or whatever. And they've never, and you can look, and there are some studies. And they do

00:39:25.320 show generally that vaccines are generally safe. And they do. So you could say, well, I don't believe

00:39:30.840 those studies anymore. Okay. But I just, the problem is people used to blindly believe the public

00:39:37.460 health experts and write off all of the anti-vaxxers as kooks and cranks. Now it's totally

00:39:44.640 flipped because the public health experts have beclowned themselves. Now they totally disregard

00:39:48.940 the public health experts. And they exalt the anti-vaxxers as this great voice of truth that's

00:39:56.320 unfalsifiable. But those guys are often wrong too. I guess I just have a lower view of all of it.

00:40:01.720 Which is, I know that some of those guys are kooks and cranks and weirdos.

00:40:04.640 And now I know that some of the other guys are kooks and cranks and weirdos and corrupt on top

00:40:08.960 of it. So where are we left? I don't know. I don't know. And I know that those are the three

00:40:17.200 words you're never supposed to say in public life. Certainly not as a commentator, an analyst,

00:40:23.500 a pundit. Certainly not as a politician. You're never supposed to say, I don't know. But that's the

00:40:28.360 honest answer here. That is the honest answer. And the people are retelling you with such confidence,

00:40:35.820 total confidence and often blithe ignorance. They're going to tell you, no, I know exactly.

00:40:40.520 They don't. That is what makes this moment so politically interesting. We have not,

00:40:47.920 forget about from the vaccines to the makeup of the government, to even the massive deregulation and

00:40:55.160 pruning of the federal government, which has some precedent, but is now being done at an

00:40:59.580 extraordinary scale in an extraordinary way, all the way to the tariffs and the shakeup of global

00:41:02.700 trade. We don't know. We're not exactly able to predict the future. That is what's leaving people

00:41:10.320 unmoored. It is why you've got massive libs who have come over to support Trump, a complete rewriting

00:41:17.520 of the political coalitions. It's chaos that people can't totally predict out because our stores of

00:41:23.280 reason are just not sufficient for it. And chaos breeds opportunity. But how that's going to play

00:41:28.000 out in the midterms, in the next election for the whole future of maybe America's golden age,

00:41:32.780 totally unknown. Those sweltering summer nights that leave you tossing and turning,

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00:41:55.200 That's bowlandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D branch.com slash dailywire to save 20% off and unlock free

00:42:02.100 shipping. Limited time only, exclusions do apply. The media want you to believe that the Trump

00:42:06.520 administration is faltering. They want you to believe that Elon Musk is a crook. They want

00:42:10.140 you to believe that the world is spiraling into absolute chaos with no end remediable at all.

00:42:15.980 But we are winning, you know? The libs' lies have unraveled. Their narrative is crumbling. Their

00:42:21.940 power is totally gone at the moment. That's why the Daily Wire is here, to cut through the noise and

00:42:26.120 bring you the facts that others won't. Uncensored, ad-free daily shows, investigative journalism,

00:42:30.160 live chats with our producers, breaking news first, no filter, no nonsense. The Daily Wire is where the

00:42:36.200 real story lives. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join the fight today. My favorite comment

00:42:41.740 yesterday is from the Drummer's Workshop, Norm's Music. He says, it's amazing how many times I

00:42:47.600 picked the Drummer's Workshop, Norm's Music. I'm not even looking at his name. Says, today on the

00:42:53.260 Michael Knowles show, Cory Booker's speech explained in 25 hours. Oh yeah, that would have been a good

00:42:57.940 one, huh? Oh man, I totally should have. Okay, so we were supposed to have a very full panel today.

00:43:05.940 A panel where I was going to be joined by a Protestant, Pastor Darren Tyler, where I was

00:43:14.400 going to be joined by a fellow mackerel snapping papist, Father Gerald Murray, and where I was

00:43:19.740 going to be joined, once again, by a progressive pastor, Brandon Robertson, pastor of Sunnyside

00:43:26.700 Reform Church in New York City. And the conservative Protestant, his tech didn't work. And my fellow

00:43:35.820 Catholic, Father Murray, his tech didn't work. And I don't know if this is a machination of the devil

00:43:42.620 or if this is all proper within providence or, well, you know, all things work ultimately towards

00:43:48.440 God's end, at least passive, if not active will. I am joined, and I'm very happy to be joined by

00:43:54.920 Pastor Brandon Robertson, pastor of Sunnyside Reform Church in New York City, to discuss the

00:44:00.440 question that we were going to talk about off the top, because President Trump is defunding Planned

00:44:04.960 Parenthood. The pro-lifers are on the move. Is abortion biblical? Can Christians support

00:44:14.100 abortion? Pastor Robertson, Brandon, thank you so much for coming on the show again.

00:44:20.240 It's so good to be here, and I'm grateful in God's sovereignty that it's me and you having a

00:44:23.540 good conversation.

00:44:24.260 It's wonderful to have you. We're going to, just for those who are watching now, we're going to

00:44:29.600 chat for a few minutes and then, you know, for the hoi polloi who don't subscribe to the Daily Wire,

00:44:34.260 they're going to have to go over to dailywire.com to finish the conversation. Defunding Planned

00:44:38.820 Parenthood is nothing new. Republicans have tried to do this a number of times. President Trump,

00:44:43.700 despite his sometimes ambiguous statements on abortion, has been the most pro-life president we've

00:44:48.940 ever had. He appointed the justices who overruled Roe v. Wade. He's the first sitting president to

00:44:53.320 show up to the March for Life. He is going to defund Planned Parenthood. So I think his pro-life

00:44:57.700 bona fides are pretty good. Many Christians, most Christians, it seems to me, are celebrating that.

00:45:02.740 You are not, because you think that a Christian can support abortion.

00:45:07.400 I do think Christians can support abortion, but I do want to say also that it is just concerning the

00:45:11.880 way Trump is going about defunding Planned Parenthood. This broad use of executive power, I think,

00:45:17.660 should be concerning to anybody who cares about democracy. Because, especially for your side,

00:45:21.840 what happens when liberals get in and use the same executive powers to go after Planned Parenthood?

00:45:27.400 No, Brandon, on that point, were you concerned when Mr. Obama said, forget about the legislature,

00:45:33.440 I've got a pen and a phone. Look, I didn't like that at the time. But your point on the hypothetical

00:45:39.020 future use of power by liberals, sure, that's bad. But I don't need to worry about the hypothetical,

00:45:43.300 because they're already doing it. So from my perspective, at least, I think, look,

00:45:45.920 would I like this stuff codified in law? Yes. But I'll take it. However, Trump can do it. I'm in.

00:45:50.700 I'm all for executive defunding of Planned Parenthood.

00:45:54.080 But the way he's doing it is so interesting. He's defunding nine Planned Parenthoods from a

00:45:58.340 55-year-old program because they support DEI and supposedly stand for immigration. It's a very

00:46:04.500 backwards way to try to defund some Planned Parenthoods and not all of them. And it's just bizarre

00:46:10.620 from where I sit from a political standpoint. Well, sometimes I think, you know, President

00:46:16.060 Trump is wise as a serpent, innocent as a dove. He certainly aspires to that. And I think he achieves

00:46:21.780 it quite frequently. And so anyway, anyway, if you could defund Planned Parenthood because the

00:46:28.720 Planned Parenthood lunch kitchen failed the health inspection because they had one mouse in there,

00:46:34.200 I'm all for it. You know, obviously the real reason to defund it is because they're killing

00:46:38.660 babies. But beyond that, however you got to do it, if it's because there's a crack in their roof and,

00:46:44.360 you know, it's not safe to inhabit, fine by me. What is the argument? I mean, what is the basic

00:46:50.040 argument? You know, I'm a macro-snapping papist, as I've mentioned once or twice, even in this very

00:46:54.240 segment. And the Catholic Church has been consistent for 2,000 years that abortion is not to be

00:47:01.420 permitted, going back to the didache, going back to the earliest catechism that we have.

00:47:07.060 Well, to that point, I actually, I mean, my position, I would say, actually leans on a lot

00:47:11.560 of some of the early Catholic saints and theologians. You know this argument. There has been a large

00:47:17.600 degree of diversity in Christian theology about when exactly life begins. You have Augustine and

00:47:23.760 Thomas Aquinas having this belief that sometime after conception, and there's varying degrees of dates

00:47:30.680 and times when that happens, that they believe life actually begins. And I do think, to be very

00:47:35.620 honest, that that is a question that's beyond all of our pay grade, including the magisterium of the

00:47:39.680 Catholic Church's pay grade, to actually know the precise moment of when life begins. But it does seem

00:47:46.000 to me, from where I sit, understanding the science and with my theological perspective, that life does not

00:47:52.280 begin at conception. Conception is a potential life, and that there are a number of reasons that a woman

00:48:00.140 might need to have an abortion, and I don't think that should be outlawed or illegal. And I think most

00:48:04.840 Christians in the modern era have agreed with that. In fact, you'll know, Christianity Today, back in the

00:48:10.040 1960s, published a whole entire article that was pro-choice and advocating for abortion. So, it's a

00:48:16.600 relatively recent move that we've seen conservative Christianity really hamper down and say that

00:48:22.600 abortion is this mortal sin that we must all avoid. Well, it's certainly true on the Protestant side.

00:48:27.840 And so, you know, worth pointing out here for the, you know, we have our own liberals in the Catholic

00:48:33.060 Church too, and we call them Jesuits. But, you know, even they, even the liberals in the Catholic

00:48:37.240 Church tend to be ardently pro-life. I mean, some of the most, I think of one Jesuit in particular,

00:48:41.920 Father James Martin, who's- My good friend. Exactly. I'm not surprised to hear that. But

00:48:47.060 even he is ardently pro-life. Christianity Today is a Protestant magazine. And, you know, I like that

00:48:53.760 the evangelicals kind of came over on the pro-life side. To your point on Thomas Aquinas, for instance,

00:48:58.360 because this is a great observation that St. Thomas Aquinas, it's a little unclear, especially if

00:49:03.800 you're not totally immersed in his thought, does Thomas Aquinas endorse abortion? Because he says that at a

00:49:10.640 certain point, you have the ensoulment of the baby, you know, maybe around quickening or something.

00:49:16.520 The reason for that, however, is based on a faulty understanding of how gestation works. And it's

00:49:24.200 no knock on St. Thomas Aquinas. He didn't have sonograms at the time. But the belief, coming from

00:49:28.220 Aristotle's understanding of biology, was that the only active principle in conception was the sperm,

00:49:36.880 sperm, and that the sperm acted on the blood of the woman. So there was no conception really of an egg,

00:49:42.760 that the sperm was acting on the blood, and it was in a vegetative soul for some period of time until

00:49:49.020 quickening, say, until you could feel the baby. And now, not because of any theological developments,

00:49:54.460 but because we have sonograms and things like that, and because we have modern genetics, and because

00:49:59.940 we have microscopes and things, we can actually see that that's not when life begins. That the new human

00:50:05.620 person, with the full independent genome, and the principles of life, you know, growth, and metabolism,

00:50:14.100 and all the rest of it, they all begin at conception. Conception meaning the very beginning. So,

00:50:20.580 vanquishing the St. Thomas Aquinas part, you say that there are moments that women might need

00:50:26.020 an abortion, and that, you know, in Christian charity, we have to accept that. I want you to explain that to

00:50:33.240 me. But I want you to do it in the Membrum Segmentum, and get all the hoi polloi out of here.

00:50:36.860 Thank you for watching The Michael Knowles Show. Join Daily Wire if you want to watch the rest of it.

00:50:39.820 We'll be right back.

00:50:40.360 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:50:47.880 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:51:01.780 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:51:02.220 The Michael Knowles Show.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 03, 2025

Ep. 1707 - NO ONE EXPECTED THIS! Trump Tariffs BREAKDOWN

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