In this episode of the Michael Knowles Show: Conspiracy Theories, Marlon Wayans explains why he doesn t think Michelle Obama is a man named Big Mike, and why he thinks she s a woman named Michelle. Plus, a new piece of evidence points to the possibility that the former first lady could have been the second woman to become President.
00:13:34.980And now these aging rockers, I think, are victims of their own success.
00:13:39.180Because that kind of art, such as it is, can only do what it's designed to do, which is to tear things down.
00:13:48.180It can't really build up anything new.
00:13:50.320So when it attempts to now defend Ford and GM and the liberal political order and the Democrats, who have had power for decades and decades in most areas of our public life, it just seems weird and discordant.
00:15:05.000And I think that's going to leave a lot of right-wingers vaguely happy, but a little bit confused as to how we're supposed to feel about it.
00:15:20.560Well, here's the deal in the Treasury Secretary's own words.
00:15:23.380Thanks to President Trump's tireless efforts to secure a lasting peace, I am glad to announce the signing of today's historic economic partnership agreement between the United States and Ukraine, establishing the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund.
00:15:41.840This partnership allows the United States to invest alongside Ukraine to unlock Ukraine's growth assets, mobilize American talent, capital, and governance standards that will improve Ukraine's investment climate and accelerate Ukraine's economic recovery.
00:16:00.540The Development Finance Corporation will participate and help to establish this fund in collaboration with the government of Ukraine.
00:16:08.600Today's agreement signals clearly to Russian leadership that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term.
00:16:22.680It's time for this cruel and senseless war to end.
00:16:27.360I agree with every word that the Treasury Secretary just said.
00:16:32.600And he's showing here the Trump administration's smart alternative to the stupid false dichotomy that we've been presented with over the past five years.
00:17:11.620On the other hand, why would I be pro-Russia?
00:17:14.820They have a lot of intercontinental ballistic missiles pointed right at our heads.
00:17:18.960We fought a war with them for 50 years.
00:17:21.600We have had longstanding hostilities with Russia, predating the Cold War.
00:17:26.620And the Russians don't really view themselves as part of the West.
00:17:31.200And the West doesn't really view Russia as part of the West either.
00:17:34.640And in fact, in Tolstoy, in War and Peace, there's a famous line from Anna Pavlovna speaking in French because the Russians would speak French.
00:17:44.180And there's always been this tension of whether or not Russia's in the West.
00:17:46.820But she has this great line, l'Europe ne sera jamais notre alliée sans serre.
00:17:57.520It says, Europe will never be our sincere ally.
00:18:01.380The whole book is about Russia fighting Europe and making alliances with parts of Europe like the Austrians and the Germans,
00:18:08.240but then not really having a good relationship with the Austrians and the Germans and being sold out and then going back and forth and always occupying this liminal space when it comes to Western civilization.
00:18:21.400And there are some idealists now who I guess will think that we can have a longstanding great alliance with Russia.
00:18:26.860But Russia's never really viewed it that way, and that's never been borne out in history.
00:19:15.040We're not going to do it because of the sincerity of the Ukrainian political leaders who are extremely crooked.
00:19:24.040We're going to do it in our own interest.
00:19:26.720And so the Treasury Secretary comes out and he says, yeah, we just signed a deal, an economic deal that is going to benefit us.
00:19:33.540It's going to give us some incentive to stay involved in protecting Ukraine.
00:19:38.180It's going to acknowledge the reality that we're never going to be bosom buddies with Russia
00:19:41.940because certain geopolitical realities are pre-ideological.
00:19:48.400And there are just certain hard interests, and there is a reason that the West and Russia have had a fraught relationship forever.
00:19:57.720So we're going to acknowledge that reality, but we're not going to become bellicose war hawks,
00:20:01.760and we're not going to become liberal ideologues talking about the spread of Madisonian democracy all over the earth like occurred during our fever dream of the 2000s.
00:20:11.400We're just going to, we're going to have a return to normal realpolitik, hard interest politics.
00:20:19.480And that, that is refreshing because it means you don't have to be pro-Ukraine, you don't have to be pro-Russia.
00:20:24.960You can just be pro-America, which is the space that I think a lot of us and all normal people have wanted to occupy the whole time.
00:20:32.080Trump's actions stand in stark contrast to what has passed for elite conservatism over the past 15, 20 years.
00:20:44.140There was an article that I saw yesterday, probably not a lot of people saw, because it was published in this outlet called The Dispatch, which is, it's kind of conservative.
00:20:54.980The Dispatch was founded as an outlet for disaffected conservatives who hate Donald Trump.
00:21:02.080Kind of like The Bulwark, The Bulwark went so far, it became a radical left-wing outlet.
00:21:59.040And of course, no one will vote for it.
00:22:00.320But this was a popular view around the Tea Party era among a certain species of libertarian-affected beltway elite conservative.
00:22:13.660It was a popular, it was never a popular view with the people broadly, but it was a kind of a popular view with the right-wing commentariat.
00:22:45.460What happens when you behave that way, when you say, vote for me and I'll do nothing with the power, is then you get voted out of office and your enemies take power and your enemies transform the political order and you're pushed to the sidelines.
00:22:58.360And you become a court jester in the kingdom of liberalism rather than a serious political actor.
00:23:38.740The aide said that guys like me, me, liberal journalists, were in what we call the reality-based community, which he defined as people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.
00:23:50.600And Rove, probably it was Rove, says, that's not the way the world really works anymore.
00:24:22.820The other extreme is, we're not going to do anything.
00:24:25.720We're just going to allow the Constitution, this dead piece of parchment, to act.
00:24:30.100And then everything will work out just fine.
00:24:31.860If only we stopped doing things as human beings and just allowed our beautiful systems to act of their own logic and apparently of a will of their own, then society would be great.
00:24:42.180A total political quietism, on the one hand, and a total transcendent will voluntarism, quasi-Islamic, kind of funny that it comes out of the Bush era, on the other hand.
00:24:53.940But Trump has found the via media between these two views, between the Tea Party and the Bushy neocons.
00:25:02.360He's found the via media, which is, we need to base our political actions on reality.
00:25:37.080Reality is not made through a sheer force of our will.
00:25:41.020But we have a lot of power in the world, and we can shape events.
00:25:46.000And so long as we don't totally divorce ourselves from reality, we can change political circumstances and make other people react to what we do.
00:25:54.840Because we are history's actors, because we're the greatest country on earth, and we're going to become greater.
00:25:58.920And that's going to give us even more power.
00:26:01.360But in order to become great, we have to respect the eternal realities that undergird our whole politics.