Ep. 1712 - Let Him Cook! Stop Pretending You Understand Tariffs
Summary
Just when the free traders thought that President Trump was about to unleash a global depression, and just when the protectionists were convinced that Trump was going to hold firm on all the tariffs, just when all of the pundits and prognosticators were dead certain that they knew exactly what Trump was doing and why he was doing it, President Trump confounded them by pausing his plan for 90 days on every country but China.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Just when the free traders thought that President Trump really was going to hurl us into a global
00:00:05.200
depression, and just when the protectionists were convinced that Trump was going to hold
00:00:10.920
firm on all the tariffs, just when the pundits and prognosticators and all manner of bloviators
00:00:17.160
were dead certain that they knew exactly what Trump was going to do and why he was going to do
00:00:21.320
it, President Trump confounded all of them by pausing his tariff plan for 90 days on every
00:00:27.220
country but China. And of course, as is always the case with pundits and prognosticators, both sides
00:00:34.540
are claiming victory. The free traders, the panic hands, as Trump dubbed them, insist that they
00:00:41.020
prevailed in convincing Trump to abandon the policy. The protectionists, on the other hand, insist that
00:00:46.340
this was really the plan all along, to bluff with all the other countries only to zero in on China,
00:00:52.560
5D chess. And both of those theories have big holes in them, which we'll get to in one second.
00:00:56.620
But amid all those voices of total confidence, among all the people who are frequently wrong but
00:01:03.440
never in doubt, there was one man who offered an alternative view. You know how much it pains me
00:01:10.500
to say I told you so. But there was one man who said that both sides of the debate were talking out
00:01:17.120
of their derrieres. There was one man who admitted the unspeakable obvious, namely, that no one,
00:01:24.440
including senior administration officials, really had any idea what the rationale was behind the
00:01:31.460
tariffs. That Trump's distinct political gift is unpredictability. A man who offered this advice
00:01:38.000
on how to handle the situation. In case you forget, here is a little clip from just a couple of days
00:01:43.840
ago to jog your memory. We'll see how this goes. It is entirely possible that this doesn't work out.
00:01:51.380
It sends us hurtling into a global recession. Republicans get completely destroyed in the
00:01:57.260
midterms. A Republican never wins election again. It's all possible. Okay. But Trump's gut has been
00:02:05.520
pretty good so far. He won re-election with a mandate to do something different, something much like this.
00:02:11.980
I would just say, channeling my inner spiritual Zoomer, let him cook. Okay? Let him cook a little
00:02:18.520
bit. See what he whips up in the kitchen. Trump has a good gut. He's got a good track record.
00:02:24.840
No one knows what he's thinking. But he won a big election, and we should just let him cook for a
00:02:29.740
little bit. Then yesterday, while everyone was trying to explain why his own definitive theory was
00:02:37.140
always correct, the White House published this three-word statement on the matter.
00:02:43.880
Let him cook! Exclamation point. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
00:02:49.860
Welcome back to the show. Also, just when you think all the silly pronoun nonsense is over after the
00:03:14.740
2024 election. The Dems make a big point to double down on it during the CNN town hall. And the White
00:03:21.340
House responds with its own policy on they-them pronouns. We will get to all of that in one
00:03:27.380
moment. First, though, go to vandycrisps.com slash Knowles. Get 25% off. Spring is when we throw open
00:03:33.540
the windows and freshen up. That includes refreshing our kitchens. It's time to ditch seed oils and process
00:03:38.960
snacks. Vandycrisps are made the old-fashioned way. Real potato chips. They taste better than any chip
00:03:46.460
you've ever tried. So authentic that everything else feels like a cheap imitation. You're not
00:03:51.120
understanding what I'm telling you, I'm afraid. Because I wouldn't have unless I had tried vandycrisps.
00:03:57.560
It's not just that vandycrisps tastes like the greatest potato chip you've ever had.
00:04:01.740
It tastes almost like something totally different. It's almost categorically different. It is rather
00:04:09.240
what a potato chip is supposed to be. It is accessing some atrophied part of your memory
00:04:17.840
from long, long ago when you have this knowledge of what the ideal potato chip is supposed to be.
00:04:24.800
That is vandycrisps. Okay? I'm not even joking. I'm kind of saying it in a funny way,
00:04:29.960
but I'm not even joking. It is the greatest chip you will ever have in your entire life.
00:04:33.860
Vandycrisps.com slash Knowles today. Get 25% off your order. Vandycrisps.com slash Knowles today.
00:04:41.900
Get these very luxurious, delicious potato chips for 25% off. The one thing that you are not allowed to
00:04:49.560
do in political commentary, in politics generally, is to admit uncertainty in anything. But sometimes,
00:04:58.560
admitting uncertainty is the most precise take. All of these people, they were so smart. They knew
00:05:07.560
exactly what Trump was going to do. They knew exactly why Trump was going to do it. And they
00:05:11.440
all look foolish today. And look, it takes a big man, it takes a very big, handsome man with a great
00:05:18.540
cigar company to admit when he doesn't know exactly what Trump is doing. But if you admit that fact,
00:05:27.140
then when Trump reverses course and zags when everyone's zigging and confounds everybody else,
00:05:34.540
at least you were honest. You actually give the correct take on things. So what are the alternative
00:05:41.580
views? You're going to have the pundits and prognosticators declaring victory today
00:05:46.260
for their perfect predictions. They're going to say, no, no, this was always the plan.
00:05:52.620
This was always the plan. We just threw global markets into turmoil and obliterated a lot of
00:05:58.500
wealth on paper and irritated all of our allies because we were actually always trying to arrive
00:06:05.480
at this exact position where we take away most of the tariffs on basically everyone except for China.
00:06:11.960
And there is some good evidence for that position. Some good evidence is that the Treasury Secretary,
00:06:17.920
Scott Bessent, a very intelligent, very capable man, obviously senior administration official,
00:06:26.700
This was driven by the president's strategy. He and I had a long talk on Sunday,
00:06:31.620
and this was his strategy all along. And that, you know, you might even say that he goaded China
00:06:38.760
into a bad position. They responded. They have shown themselves to the world to be the bad actors.
00:06:47.160
And we are willing to cooperate with our allies and with our trading partners who did not retaliate.
00:06:55.400
It wasn't a hard message. Don't retaliate. Things will turn out well.
00:06:59.220
So you might say Trump has goaded China into a bad position. And what is the bad position? The bad
00:07:04.340
position is they've revealed themselves to be bad actors. And so anyway, we were just kind of fooling
00:07:10.080
around with our allies. But China looks really bad. Okay. The one side can point to them. The
00:07:16.980
side of the argument that says actually Trump just got spooked and this wasn't the plan all along and he
00:07:22.540
was just reacting to markets can point to this somewhat off the cuff statement that Trump himself
00:07:31.400
Is it the bond markets that persuaded you to reverse course?
00:07:36.440
No, I was watching the bond market. The bond market is very tricky. I was watching it. But if
00:07:40.560
you look at it now, it's beautiful. The bond market right now is beautiful.
00:07:46.040
But yeah, I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy. I think everything had
00:07:52.320
well, the big move wasn't what I did today. The big move was what I did on Liberation Day. We had
00:07:59.500
Liberation Day in America. We're liberated from all of the horrible deals that were made, all of the
00:08:04.500
horrible trade deals that were made. And I was helped by people just like this, senator, congressman
00:08:11.120
and friends, right? And we had great help in the Senate. Republican senators have been amazing.
00:08:21.820
Okay. So there you got it. Right from Trump. He says, yeah, I was watching the bond market.
00:08:26.820
People were getting a little bit queasy. So anyway, but that's not the big deal. The big deal is what
00:08:30.320
I did when I implemented the tariffs. So both sides of this are going to declare victory and that they
00:08:35.680
were right all along. And the fact is, even today, we don't really know. We don't really know. To this
00:08:43.260
day, I could not tell you exactly what Trump was after on April 2nd with the tariffs. I can't tell
00:08:49.900
you exactly what he's after right now. And neither can you. And neither can any of these pundits who
00:08:54.500
are pretending like they got a crystal ball. They don't know anything. You think you can predict
00:08:58.860
Trump? Okay, cool, man. Good luck. I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. We still don't know.
00:09:04.120
So there's a 90-day pause on the tariffs. That means that the Dow Jones shot up, what,
00:09:09.560
3,000 points yesterday. Trump here is talking about the bond market. The U.S. bond market
00:09:16.080
cratered yesterday. Some people were wondering, well, hold on. Did the bond market crater because
00:09:21.400
China started dumping U.S. bonds? Don't forget, China owns a lot of U.S. debt. China owns something
00:09:29.540
like, on paper, $800 billion worth of U.S. Treasury securities. And in reality, probably
00:09:36.640
it's closer to a trillion dollars or even more than a trillion dollars. So there was this thought,
00:09:41.440
okay, we're in a trade war with China. China's really playing tough. They're going to stick
00:09:44.260
it out to the end. Maybe they started dumping U.S. bonds to destroy the U.S. bond market,
00:09:49.500
which obviously did spook a lot of people. President Trump is admitting there. He says,
00:09:52.780
yeah, people are getting a little queasy about that. Regardless of what this means for the
00:09:58.700
strategy on the tariffs, which I don't really care about. Trump's got a good gut. He's got a
00:10:02.900
good track record. It's a fool's errand to try to predict what he's going to do. And I think we're
00:10:06.320
just going to let him cook for a little bit. I'm not saying forever. I'm not saying give him a total
00:10:09.300
blank check to do whatever he wants. But the guy won a big election. He's got a good track record.
00:10:14.080
Just whatever, man. Don't sweat it. Don't be a panicking. I'm all for that.
00:10:17.180
But this does reveal, I think, the vindication of the Trump protection strategy writ large.
00:10:28.580
By which I mean this. I don't think that China was dumping U.S. bonds yesterday. I was talking
00:10:32.720
to an investor friend of mine who said, no, I don't think it was China. I think it was actually
00:10:37.080
some other firm. And it was other market forces beyond the Chinese government trying to really
00:10:42.800
get us. However, what that revealed was a major strategic weakness for the United States.
00:10:50.840
We are really susceptible to fluctuations in the bond market because we're a country that has an
00:10:56.260
insane amount of debt. And a ton of our debt, what, two to three percent of our debt is owned by
00:11:01.120
our biggest geopolitical adversary. And that's a problem. That's not Trump's problem. It's not even,
00:11:07.600
it is Trump's problem, but it's not a problem created by Trump. It's not a problem created by Joe Biden.
00:11:11.900
It's a problem that goes back decades at this point, but it's a major problem. It highlights
00:11:18.520
the absolute urgency of reordering our relationship with China, which went off the rails during the
00:11:26.960
Clinton administration because we stupidly allowed China into the World Trade Organization.
00:11:32.320
And we said that bringing China into global trade in a robust way was going to lead to democracy,
00:11:39.160
and China was going to westernize even more and liberalize, and we were all going to hold hands
00:11:43.660
and sing kumbaya as citizens of the world. And that didn't happen. And now we're extremely vulnerable
00:11:49.140
to China. It's unclear who would win a trade war, US or China. And it's clear that we have a lot of weak
00:11:58.320
points that China in particular can exploit. Now, on top of all of that, the market rallied like
00:12:07.180
crazy yesterday. When Trump said we're going to put a pause on most of the tariffs for 90 days,
00:12:11.080
the market went nuts. 3,000 points up on the Dow. The investors loved it. However, we should not draw
00:12:18.440
the wrong political conclusion from that because while the markets love freer trade and the markets
00:12:23.940
seem to hate protectionism and certainly seem to hate the volatility, public opinion polls are
00:12:29.160
revealing that the American people are on exactly the opposite side of that issue. We'll get to that in
00:12:35.600
one second. First, though, go to balanceofnature.com. Get 35% off when you use code Knowles. You've heard
00:12:41.520
me talk about balance of nature many, many times. That's because balance of nature fruits and veggies
00:12:45.100
is the most convenient way to get whole fruits and vegetables daily, especially if you're focused
00:12:49.600
on creating a healthier, happier lifestyle. Nature is pretty good at giving us the nutrients that we
00:12:55.480
need through our fruits and vegetables. So balance of nature takes fruits and vegetables,
00:12:59.420
freeze dries them, turns them into a powder, and puts them into a capsule. You take your fruit and
00:13:03.480
veggie capsules every day. Then your body knows what to do with them. Balance of nature is just
00:13:07.420
one ingredient of a balanced lifestyle, has no intention to replace a healthy diet, exercise,
00:13:11.600
sleep, or any other healthy habits. It is intended to be used in concert with other healthy habits.
00:13:17.860
I really love balance of nature, especially because, you know, I'm on the road constantly,
00:13:23.400
not always eating well, certainly not exercising. So it's good to know you can always get your balance
00:13:27.780
of nature. And the rest of the team here loves it. Balanceofnature.com. Use promo code Knowles,
00:13:32.540
K-N-W-L-E-S. 35% off your first order as a preferred customer. Plus, get a free bottle of
00:13:37.140
fiber and spice. Balanceofnature.com. Promo code Knowles. Also, go get that Smells and Bells candle,
00:13:42.680
baby. Look at that. It's a beautiful candle. Make your home smell like a 12th century monastery
00:13:45.840
as we approach Holy Week and Easter. Now's the time to do it.
00:13:49.740
Before the announcement yesterday that Trump was going to pause the tariffs for 90 days,
00:13:58.740
before the big market jump, Trump's approval rating was still up. Not on Wall Street. I don't
00:14:06.140
think his approval rating was up on Wall Street. Not with big investors, but with the American people.
00:14:13.180
45% according to Rasmussen of likely U.S. voters said the government does not do enough to protect
00:14:22.320
U.S. manufacturers and businesses from foreign competition. In other words, 45% saying we love
00:14:28.980
the tariffs. Only 17% said that the government protects American business too much. So when you
00:14:36.800
hear all of the pundits and all of the prognosticators and all of the fancy people at the think tanks and
00:14:41.660
on TV with the bow ties saying, actually, the real problem is that the government is doing too much
00:14:47.280
to intervene in the economy. And actually, they're picking winners and losers. And actually, here's
00:14:51.300
my economic analysis of why that's really bad. Just know that is a view held by 17% of American
00:14:56.200
voters. 45% of voters, almost three times that group of people, say that the government needs to
00:15:04.920
do more to protect U.S. manufacturing. 25% think that the current level of protection against foreign
00:15:11.820
competition is about right. 14% are not sure. 25% saying the current level of protection against
00:15:16.380
foreign competition is right is a little confusing. Because that poll came out after Trump announced
00:15:22.300
his Liberation Day tariffs. Now, it's before the effects of those tariffs were really felt.
00:15:29.060
But that might mean a quarter of people saying, yeah, Liberation Day tariffs, that's good.
00:15:32.420
That's the right amount of protection. On top of that, 45% of voters said the country was on the
00:15:36.900
right track, up from 44% before the Liberation Day tariffs were announced.
00:15:44.620
So you've got this amazing scenario where the market is saying one thing and the American people
00:15:50.800
are saying the polar opposite. The market's saying, we hate these tariffs. This is horrible.
00:15:56.000
We've lost confidence in Trump. Everything's good. The Dow Jones is going to tank, the NASDAQ,
00:16:00.420
the S&P, the bond market. Everything's going to go into the gutter. And yet, after the tariffs,
00:16:05.960
the American people say, oh, we actually approve of Trump even more now. Before the tariffs,
00:16:13.120
before that increase in his approval rating, Trump had a 44% approval. That was 98th percentile over
00:16:19.100
the last 19 years of polling when it comes to presidential approval. That's pretty good.
00:16:23.660
And it went up with the tariffs. Most people are not panic ends, to use that great phrase. And
00:16:31.820
most people, or the plurality of American voters at least, are not ideological free traders.
00:16:42.960
Virtually everyone in the chattering class and the political class and the elite class and the investor
00:16:47.220
class are ideological free traders. The lion's share of Americans are not. So what does this
00:16:54.600
tell you? This tells you that there's a showdown between Wall Street and Main Street, which is
00:16:58.900
exactly what the Treasury Secretary, Mr. Besant, pointed out yesterday when he was speaking to the
00:17:04.480
American Bankers Association. For the last four decades, basically since I began my career in Wall
00:17:10.600
Street, Wall Street has grown wealthier than ever before. And it can continue to grow and do well.
00:17:17.220
But for the next four years, the Trump agenda is focused on Main Street. It's Main Street's turn.
00:17:24.060
It's Main Street's turn to hire workers. It's Main Street's turn to drive investment.
00:17:29.880
And it's Main Street's turn to restore the American dream.
00:17:33.680
The ideological free traders and the libertarians and the ideologues are not going to like that
00:17:41.440
statement. Because they're going to say, actually, a rising tide lifts all ships. And actually,
00:17:45.960
when Wall Street does well, that is good for Main Street. And actually, it doesn't matter if American
00:17:50.340
manufacturing exists at all, because Americans are going to save so much money on cheap Chinese goods
00:17:55.520
that they're going to get an extra five or six thousand dollars a year effectively in their
00:17:58.680
pocket. And so who cares if they have a job? Who cares if they have skills? Who cares if they're
00:18:02.760
rooted in their community? Who cares? They're going to get a bunch of cheap stuff. And in the abstract,
00:18:08.300
that's really, really good. And yeah, they might not have families and they might overdose on
00:18:12.040
fentanyl and they might just kill themselves. But we don't need it. Let middle America die.
00:18:17.900
There were people who wrote and said such things the first time Trump was talking about this in 2016.
00:18:24.520
But Besant and Trump understand a really important political point,
00:18:29.840
which is that politics is not just about some ideology that you can write in a university
00:18:40.340
ticking up GDP a little bit because there are going to be downstream effects that are really
00:18:44.740
good. And everyone's a consumer as well as a producer. And if we're saving money on our
00:18:48.460
consumption, that's really actually good when you really think about it.
00:18:51.140
There were decisions that were made at the level of the federal government over the past 30, 40 years
00:19:00.180
that allowed, as Besant points out, Wall Street to flourish a lot of the time and Main Street to
00:19:07.180
suffer. There were trade deals that were signed. There was an intentional move in policy to do this.
00:19:17.380
And it was because the men at that time, going back at least to the Clinton administration,
00:19:22.000
weighed the costs and benefits and said, OK, at this moment, this is what's going to benefit
00:19:25.520
our society. But politics is applying eternal principles to changing circumstances.
00:19:30.060
And when you've got the average American life expectancy declining because of deaths of despair,
00:19:35.300
driven in particular by middle aged white guys, when you've got American towns being hollowed out,
00:19:41.100
when you've got America strategically really, really vulnerable, because if there's an epidemic
00:19:45.880
and the supply chains get messed up, we're not going to get our food or our medicine.
00:19:50.060
Even if there's not an epidemic, if China just decides that it's going to dump American debt,
00:19:54.220
we're going to be up the creek without a paddle. OK, that means that you need to reorient your policy.
00:20:00.460
It's not when Besant says we're going to privilege Main Street, we're going to stop focusing so much
00:20:04.860
on Wall Street. He's not engaging in leftist class warfare. He's not saying we hate the Wall
00:20:08.920
Streeter. Scott Besant is a very famous and very successful Wall Streeter.
00:20:12.380
What he is saying is, in order to advance the common good and in order to have a functioning
00:20:18.600
polity, we need to refocus a little bit. We need to rebalance. We have neglected one group for too
00:20:28.140
long. And so it's not we're not going to punish the other group. But for the good of everyone,
00:20:32.960
we are going to refocus our priorities. This is good stuff. This is a very serious conversation
00:20:39.240
taking place on the right. Meanwhile, on the left, there were no serious conversations taking
00:20:43.040
place. CNN held a town hall last night for some reason with Bernie Sanders. And as they're attempting
00:20:49.660
to find the Democrat answer to the real debates on the right, to the real policies that are being
00:20:57.120
enacted, Democrats don't seem to know what they believe about anything. While they're trying to
00:21:02.040
work through these issues, some woman asking a question focuses on the real issue and corrects
00:21:08.940
Anderson Cooper because he referred to her as she. We're back with Senator Bernie Sanders.
00:21:15.180
I want to introduce Grace Thomas. She's a local civil rights attorney. She's a Democrat, Grace.
00:21:19.580
Say them pronouns, actually. Thank you. Good evening, Senator Sanders. Polling and turnout data
00:21:26.160
indicate that men of all racial demographics are turning away from the Democratic Party.
00:21:29.980
Okay. I want to translate that exchange. Jake Tapper sitting there saying, okay, we're doing
00:21:35.760
this show because we really want Democrats to have a chance at even possibly winning elections.
00:21:39.960
Okay. So we're going to turn to you, lady in the audience. And then the lady takes the mic. She
00:21:43.880
goes, yeah, I actually don't care. I don't want to win elections. I don't want to. I don't care at
00:21:48.140
all. I want to make myself as repulsive as possible to the American people. I want to identify myself in
00:21:54.440
this party with an issue that is so deeply unpopular that we're going to get blown out of elections for
00:22:02.180
the next millennium. And you see Tapper, there's, or not Tapper, sorry, Anderson Cooper, tomato,
00:22:07.440
tomato, Anderson Cooper. They're just saying, okay, we're still doing this. We were still doing they,
00:22:16.380
thems. Okay. Hey, you know what? Let's just wrap it up. Good night, everybody. We're going to,
00:22:20.580
we'll try this again in two or four years. And maybe then the Democrats will have any interest
00:22:26.160
in even attempting to win votes from people, but good night to you and they and them and those
00:22:34.680
maniacs. So Anderson Cooper talking to Bernie Sanders here finally gets Bernie to try to give
00:22:42.740
some sort of vision for America. And Bernie decides he's going to, he's going to articulate the
00:22:50.340
new Democrat vision by trying and failing to quote Ronald Reagan. So the idea that this station,
00:22:59.600
which all of us want to see as a, what did Ronald Reagan call it? The city on the mountain.
00:23:06.020
Sitting on a hill. Close. Sorry. I don't quote Reagan all that often.
00:23:11.700
But you know, we want to be a model to the world. We want people to look at us and say,
00:23:15.720
we want to be like the United States, not, oh God, United States, what are they doing?
00:23:20.340
A nation with this degree of a biblical illiteracy cannot long endure. That nation is doomed.
00:23:30.860
I don't, what did Ronald Reagan say? America's like a big fat shiny mountain or something like
00:23:35.400
that? I think he called it a shining city on a hill. Yeah, whatever. I don't really,
00:23:41.160
I don't quote Reagan that much. Where'd he put that? Was that in win one for the Gipper?
00:23:44.980
Was that the movie with the monkey? No, actually it was a, Reagan got it from Governor John Winthrop.
00:23:52.900
Model of Christian charity. One of the most important speeches ever given in the United States.
00:23:58.600
Oh yeah. Winthrop. I like him. Yeah. Where's that? Where's he from? He was from somewhere in
00:24:04.260
Massachusetts. It was a Massachusetts Bay colony. Yeah. Anyway, he was a smart guy. Actually,
00:24:08.980
he didn't, he got it from the Bible. He got it from our Lord. You don't know where the phrase
00:24:15.740
is shining city on a hill is from. It's like, it would be like saying, yeah, what's that phrase?
00:24:22.680
A man had seven daughters. No, I'm, you're thinking of a man had two sons. Yeah. Yeah. Man had two sons.
00:24:27.620
I don't quote veggie tales very often. No, it's not. There was a time, there was a time in this
00:24:36.120
country, not so long ago, where if you uttered the phrase, a shining city on a hill, everyone would
00:24:42.960
immediately know not only where that comes from, that that is a statement from the Bible, from our
00:24:50.440
Lord, but also would have known the rhetorical and intellectual history of that phrase in America.
00:24:56.540
They would have known that it comes from Governor Winthrop. They would have known that Ronald Reagan
00:25:00.240
liked to articulate it. There was a time where if you said there was a man who had two sons,
00:25:07.180
people would immediately know, their mind would immediately go to the parable of the prodigal son.
00:25:14.920
There was a time when we had a common cultural language and common cultural idiom and vision
00:25:23.460
that happened also to be Christian, the religion that has animated not only our country going back
00:25:30.260
to the Mayflower, which is a great cigar company, and also goes back to the religious zealots who
00:25:36.580
founded our country, but also that animated our whole civilization. Okay. And we don't have that
00:25:42.860
anymore. A US Senator who is super old. Can't tell you the phrase, a shiny city on a hill. I don't
00:25:52.660
mean to make a mountain out of a molehill as it were, but this is pathetic. We are becoming
00:26:01.160
just babbling baboons in this country. Okay. And our country is going to get uglier and stupider and
00:26:08.560
much less coherent and much less powerful as a result of that. We are truly becoming Philistines.
00:26:14.580
This is completely unacceptable. And I don't mean to just single out Bernie Sanders. I remember,
00:26:20.260
I think it was Leon Kass made this point, the great bioethicist at the University of Chicago
00:26:23.460
made this point years ago, maybe decades ago at this point. He said he was teaching some of the
00:26:29.400
creme de la creme students at the University of Chicago, one of the elite institutions of higher
00:26:34.580
learning in this country. And he said every year, he would just ask out of the blue, he would say,
00:26:40.000
Hey, who's Noah? Who's Noah? One of the most important figures in the Bible. And he said every
00:26:46.240
year, fewer and fewer students knew who Noah is. You can't understand Western art. You can't understand
00:26:56.100
the development of Western thought. You can't understand Western society without knowing who Noah is.
00:27:04.580
Without knowing what the shining city on a hill is. Without knowing the basics. Good grief.
00:27:12.240
Now, speaking of a religious foundation, really, really important piece in the New York Times.
00:27:17.940
And I'm almost willing to say it's a really good piece. It's a pretty good piece.
00:27:23.840
It's called, Are Embryos Property? Human Life? Neither. Here it is. It's an opinion piece.
00:27:34.320
I say it's almost a really good piece because it's taking the issue of IVF and surrogacy and the baby
00:27:45.460
industry. Seriously. So that's why it's quite good. It doesn't go deep enough on an extraordinarily
00:27:55.720
important question, but it's quite good. I don't mean to counter-signal it. I give a lot of credit
00:28:01.700
here to Anna Louise Sussman and the New York Times for even running this. I'm going to read just a
00:28:06.620
little bit from this piece. Are embryos property? Human life? Neither. Before fertility patients,
00:28:14.360
this is right at the top of the piece. Before fertility patients begin the long journey through
00:28:17.320
hormone treatments, egg retrieval, fertilization, hopefully if everything goes well a baby,
00:28:20.980
there's the paperwork. As a first order of business, would-be parents are typically presented
00:28:24.260
with a form that requires them to choose the fate of embryos they do not use in the course of building
00:28:29.300
their families. And it goes on to talk about three couples who filled out such contracts.
00:28:33.700
The clinic later said that one family chose to donate any remaining embryos to scientific research.
00:28:41.220
Another decided to destroy any embryos that were frozen after five years. And a third said any
00:28:47.460
embryos deemed not suitable for reproductive purposes, whatever that means, could be used for
00:28:52.920
research and eventually disposed of. It was not clear, in other words, that these families intended
00:28:58.700
for all of their embryos to be born. So you're saying you create a child. You create multiple
00:29:03.680
children from sperm and egg. These are your little kids. And then you have to fill out a form.
00:29:08.820
You can donate them to unethical scientists who can experiment on your children, eventually kill
00:29:14.900
them. Or you can just kill them straight away or after a period of five years after you've frozen
00:29:20.860
them for five years. Or you can take the ones that you don't think are good enough that might,
00:29:25.240
maybe they have some defect, maybe they're not going to be tall enough. They're not suitable for
00:29:28.820
reproductive purposes. And they can be both experimented on and destroyed.
00:29:34.420
However, this is where the piece gets really interesting. Ultimately, their preferences were
00:29:39.460
moot. In December 2020, a hospital patient wandered into an unsecured room where the couple's embryos
00:29:44.640
sat in cryogenic storage, picked up the frozen embryos, and stung by the cold, dropped them on the floor.
00:29:50.620
So he just, oopsie-daisy, you know, instead of carrying out your cocktails and dropping them
00:29:55.520
at a restaurant, he's carrying out cryogenically frozen children of yours, drops them on the ground,
00:30:01.220
and kills all of them. Now, you might think that the parents wouldn't care that much because they've
00:30:06.100
already signed these forms. They say, whatever, we're going to, you can destroy them, you can
00:30:09.400
experiment on them, you can do whatever you want, but we don't really care. However, in February 2024,
00:30:14.420
the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that these lost embryos were extra uterine children, which allowed
00:30:18.840
the three families to proceed with lawsuits against the fertility clinic under the state's 1872 wrongful
00:30:25.640
death of a minor act. So here, don't just try to pin this on those crazy socially conservative
00:30:30.700
Republicans who are ruling that little embryos are actually children, which they obviously are by any
00:30:36.580
serious definition. It's the three families too. The three families who had signed away their kids
00:30:43.240
to be experimented on and destroyed, they now could sue. Between the creation of these embryos
00:30:49.780
and their destruction, and as the cases wound their way through years through Alabama courts,
00:30:54.160
their meaning shifted. No longer potentially destined for research or disposal, each embryo
00:30:58.940
had taken on the status in the court's interpretation of a minor child. Then a friend of mine,
00:31:04.040
Leila Bresco Sargent, wrote, as the New York Times quotes, as the New York Times writes rather,
00:31:11.100
the case turned embryos into, quote, Schrodinger's persons, resulting in one parent bizarrely needing
00:31:18.180
the embryos to be considered persons in order to prevent them from being born, and the other parent
00:31:23.980
needing to argue that the children were property in order to let them be born. Eventually, Judge Richard
00:31:31.060
Gardner reasoned that, quote, as there is no prohibition on the sale of human embryos, they may
00:31:36.800
be valued and sold, and thus may be considered goods or chattels. In other words, the only way to rule
00:31:47.160
on this issue of IVF and surrogacy in the baby market in a way that satisfies the liberal pro-IVF
00:31:55.080
side is to use the language and legal reasoning of chattel slavery, antebellum southern chattel
00:32:06.260
slavery. Then in March, another judge rejected Judge Gardner's rationale, calling his reasoning
00:32:13.080
that human embryos could be valued and sold as enslaved people once were in Virginia, a strained
00:32:17.720
construction. How is this a strained construction? This is the only construction that makes sense if we
00:32:23.820
were to tolerate IVF and surrogacy and the baby industry. How else do you do it? In order to defend
00:32:32.160
IVF and surrogacy, you have to argue both that the babies are babies and people, and property rather.
00:32:41.700
You have to argue both of them at the same time. You have to argue that they're babies in order to
00:32:47.380
protect your babies so that when some clinic worker drops them, you get to sue.
00:32:51.640
You have to argue that they're babies if you're to have any kind of coherent conversation about what
00:33:00.200
you're even doing. Why do you go to the baby store in the first place? It's to get a baby.
00:33:04.320
But you have to argue that their property, in order to buy them, in order to sell them, or to sell
00:33:14.740
your eggs or rent your womb out, you need to argue that their property, in order to order them destroyed,
00:33:21.780
you have to argue that their property, in order to donate them for scientific experiments.
00:33:26.920
It has to be both. And so, if you support IVF and surrogacy in the baby industry,
00:33:32.560
you must adopt the precise reasoning that was used to defend slavery in the antebellum South.
00:33:42.620
And that is going to make a lot of libs super uncomfortable. And I want to give props to the
00:33:46.820
New York Times here, because even if they get the issue a little bit wrong, the New York Times
00:33:50.480
is more willing to discuss this issue than even some conservatives, than even some pro-lifers.
00:33:57.360
Because there are some conservatives and pro-lifers, and I understand it, who will say,
00:34:01.780
well, I got my kid through IVF, and I hadn't really thought through the bioethical implications,
00:34:05.540
and I love my kid, and my kid is obviously good in himself, and anything that would prevent me from
00:34:12.000
having my kid, I oppose. And so, I'm just going to turn my reason off for a second, and I'm just
00:34:17.180
going to say I support this thing blindly, without ever dealing with the bioethical implications of it.
00:34:23.880
New York Times is saying, no, we'll deal with it. Good on him.
00:34:26.840
This debate will occur. And one final point on it, I don't want to hear in the debate that,
00:34:33.820
you know, this is really just a scientific question. This is not even a religious question.
00:34:37.000
This is a scientific question. You hear this sometimes from pro-lifers, from social conservatives,
00:34:44.340
who are trying their best to appeal to a liberal, atheistic culture. So, you say, no, no, we're not
00:34:51.280
talking about religion. No religion, no, no, we'll keep religion out of this. We're just going to talk
00:34:54.300
about science. Well, yeah, science is only going to take you so far. If you're having a debate over
00:35:00.180
policy and ethics, you need to have recourse to religion, because you need to come to certain
00:35:07.060
conclusions about morality. You can't talk about ethics without morality. You need to come to certain
00:35:13.860
conclusions about human nature, what a human is. Politics is how human beings live together.
00:35:17.940
So, you got to know what a human being is. You got to define it. And that's going to partake of
00:35:23.660
religious reasoning. Okay? It is a religious question. All politics ultimately comes down
00:35:31.840
to religious questions. The slavery debate in the 19th century came down to religious questions.
00:35:38.760
Can't avoid that. Which side are you on? Which side are you on, son? The stock market is surging.
00:35:46.140
As you know, global tariffs are shifting, major headlines with major consequences. But
00:35:50.140
the establishment media won't tell you what's really happening. That's why we exist. At Daily
00:35:55.240
Wire Plus, we lead with facts. We deliver the truth from the most trusted and handsome voices in
00:35:59.900
conservative media. People who say what you're not supposed to say, who fight where you're not
00:36:05.360
supposed to fight, who never back down. Members get this show ad-free, unfiltered, with live chat
00:36:09.520
investigative journalism that takes you inside the story premium entertainment that actually
00:36:12.940
reflects your values. Now is the time to become a member. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
00:36:19.940
My favorite comment yesterday is from SandyK067, who says, I'd rather admit that I don't understand
00:36:25.080
how tariffs work than pretend that I do and look foolish. Yeah. Well, that makes you smarter than
00:36:30.340
99.9% of pundits and economists going on TV right now. No one knows how these tariffs work.
00:36:37.420
Even if you understand in principle how tariffs work, and there are some people who do,
00:36:41.880
recognize we haven't had a tariff regime like this, or like what could have been before the
00:36:46.160
announcement yesterday, the 90-day pause, since like 1930. Okay? It's been about 95 years since
00:36:53.840
we've seen something like this. And actually, the Trump Liberation Day tariffs are more expansive
00:36:59.800
than the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. Okay? So that's best case scenario. But then you add on to that
00:37:06.300
Trump's unpredictability. Yeah, no one knows. No one knows. And if you admit you don't know,
00:37:10.860
at least you're being honest. These are the other people. They are not being honest. And their
00:37:14.860
predictions don't come true. Now, speaking of honesty and truth in the media, the White House press
00:37:22.660
secretary has just made a really important policy decision when it comes to how the White House is
00:37:28.820
going to communicate. Caroline Levitt has told the New York Times, quote, as a matter of policy,
00:37:35.460
we do not respond to reporters who have pronouns in bios. There were some reports coming out that
00:37:42.380
journalists were writing to the White House, and they were having their emails ignored. They were
00:37:47.000
told they wouldn't get an answer because the journalists listed pronouns in their bios.
00:37:51.900
Any kind of pronouns. Even if you're a man, it says he, him. Or a woman, she, her. But even the crazy
00:37:58.600
ones where you're a man, but it says she, her. Or you're an individual person, but your pronouns are
00:38:03.180
they, them, or something. Regardless, Caroline Levitt says, quote, any reporter who chooses to put their
00:38:10.660
preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore
00:38:14.720
cannot be trusted to write an honest story. So true. And this gets back to the point, I think the
00:38:22.100
Trump administration, I think Caroline Levitt, the whole communications team has done such a great
00:38:26.700
job. I said during the transition, I said this is a great opportunity, not only for Trump to reset the
00:38:33.420
relationship between the citizen and the government, but also the relationship between the citizen and
00:38:37.880
the press and the government. And in order to reset that, in order to boot some hack establishment
00:38:46.360
reporters out of the White House briefing room, in order to give new voices a seat at the table,
00:38:50.640
in order to reset all of this, you have to first ask yourself, what is the press briefing room for?
00:38:58.460
What is the White House press pool for? Why does the government talk to reporters in the first place?
00:39:03.100
There's two reasons. One, so that the White House can communicate with the people,
00:39:08.960
typically done through a medium. There was a medium of communication. Media is the plural of medium.
00:39:16.140
And the other reason is to have the people's questions asked of the government. That was also
00:39:22.100
done through this medium or multiple media. Today, in the age of social media, those reporters are much
00:39:30.780
less important, just off the bat. But assuming we're still going to keep some reporters in the room,
00:39:36.640
if the purpose is to truthfully communicate what the government's doing to the people and truthfully
00:39:41.180
communicate what the people want to know to the government, then if you have reporters who are
00:39:45.240
dishonest, whose views and priorities are totally out of sync with those of the American people,
00:39:51.860
who bear an irrational hatred of the government and will lie about the government to the people,
00:39:57.600
then what's the point of having them there? The first thing you have to look for in a reporter,
00:40:05.260
especially one who is going to be given the privilege of access to the White House, is
00:40:09.860
their trustworthiness. Are they going to tell the truth? Are they capable of telling the truth?
00:40:17.800
Are they willing to tell the truth? Can they be trusted to do their job with integrity? If a reporter
00:40:24.200
feels the need to write his pronouns in his email bio, that tells you right off the bat that person
00:40:33.220
has a tenuous at best relationship with the truth. Even if they're the correct pronouns,
00:40:39.100
the fact that he even thinks it's necessary, if a guy named Johnny feels it's necessary to write his
00:40:43.460
pronouns, or if a big husky dude walks up to someone and says, oh, my pronouns are he, him,
00:40:47.800
or what, even if they're the correct pronouns, you say, oh, you don't have a strong relationship
00:40:53.240
with reality, so we're not going to talk to you. That is a good policy. That is not only a
00:41:01.440
justifiable policy, and it's certainly not punishing the White House's enemies needlessly.
00:41:06.100
That's just doing what the White House communications team was built to do. Excellent
00:41:13.960
stuff from the White House. Now, speaking of the administration, I've been meaning to get to this
00:41:18.540
for a little while now, a couple of days, but the news just keeps coming in so fast.
00:41:26.040
Are we going to World War III? We have just seen, and this is barely being reported,
00:41:29.980
the largest deployment of stealth bombers in U.S. history. Six B-2 aircraft sent to Diego Garcia in
00:41:38.060
the Indian Ocean. B-2 aircraft that are designed to evade Iranian radar and air defenses. Aircraft
00:41:45.180
that are not being held in hangars. They're being put out for all the world to see, all the spies of
00:41:49.220
the world, all the satellites can take pictures of them. Trump, meanwhile, telling Iran that hell will
00:41:54.820
rain down on them, that's a quote, and bombing the likes of which they have not seen could result
00:42:00.500
if Iran proceeds with its nuclear program and doesn't come to the table. Are we headed to World
00:42:06.280
War III? Are we in World War III? What is this about? Very clear what Trump is doing here.
00:42:12.740
Sometimes it's a little dicier to interpret what Trump is doing, as we've discussed today.
00:42:17.040
This one, to me, seems pretty clear. Trump is speaking in blunt terms to Iran to bully Iran into
00:42:22.980
toning down the nuclear program. Trump is sending a message to Iran by sending the largest deployment
00:42:29.240
of stealth bombers in history out right in the open for all to see. But he's not posting pictures
00:42:37.160
of those bombers on Truth Social or Twitter. Why? Because he needs to convince Iran that he will
00:42:42.640
strike them. He needs to convince Iran that he will do it, that he will blow up Tehran if they pursue
00:42:48.680
the nuclear weapon. But simultaneously, he needs to assure Americans that he won't really do it.
00:42:55.900
Because Americans don't want war with Iran. But the United States needs to prevent Iran from getting
00:43:01.960
a nuclear weapon for our long-term strategy. So Trump has this very difficult balancing act.
00:43:09.940
Are we, and are we in World War III? I heard there are Chinese troops fighting in Ukraine right now
00:43:14.180
with Russia. That's what Zelensky said. We were talking about Schrodinger's baby earlier. This is
00:43:19.000
sort of Schrodinger's war. Got massive tariffs, massive trade hostilities, massive buildup of arms,
00:43:26.780
direct threats of war. Are we? Lots of uncertainty. All right, that's where we've been. Embrace the
00:43:33.620
uncertainty. Don't imunitize the eschaton. Don't imagine that we need to, we don't know. We don't know
00:43:41.760
what is going to happen even tomorrow. But what I do know that's about to happen right now is that
00:43:47.140
Congressman Mark Harris is going to come on the show to discuss a really, really important
00:43:51.520
legislative priority, which we'll get to in one moment. The rest of the show continues now. You
00:43:56.140
do not want to miss it. Become a member. Use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, at checkout for two months free