Ep. 1754 - BREAKING： Israel Strikes Iran
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Summary
Israel's attack on Iran leaves the rest of us thinking, are we once again in a regime change war in the Middle East? Michael Knowles explains what happened, and why it happened. Plus, a porn site is accused of being disrespectful to women, and more.
Transcript
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I conducted a highly scientific Twitter survey yesterday afternoon, as we could all feel
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tensions in the Middle East about to bubble over. We've all known that some kind of war with Iran
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is going to happen shortly. I asked two questions. First question, should the U.S. go to war with
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Iran? 11% said yes, overwhelming majority of people said no. 89%, no war with Iran.
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Second question, should President Trump allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon?
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Exactly the same numbers. 11% said yes, 89% said no. Can you see the dilemma that President Trump was
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facing? Those two things, especially as Steve Wyckoff says that the diplomatic talks were not
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working, and they probably couldn't ever work, those two things were going to collide. So last
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night, the state of Israel took matters into its own hands, sort of, by launching a massive attack
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on Tehran, leaving all the rest of us thinking, are we once again in a regime change war in the
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Middle East? I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.
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Nothing says thank you, Dad, like a year of common sense, unless you're Israeli, in which case the
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thing that Mo says, thank you, Dad, is bombing Tehran. So either way, I guess your dad is going
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to have a good Father's Day. This is your last chance to get 40% off new Daily Wire Plus annual
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vary. What happened when I wanted to find out all the details of this Israeli attack on the Middle
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East? Who did I ask? You know, Professor Jacob, my Jewish associate producer. So here are the facts
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so far. I mean, this is all happening in real time right now. Israel attacked Iran last night. This was
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after President Trump evacuated the embassies in the Middle East of American personnel. So the U.S.
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was telegraphing, something's going to happen in the Middle East. And we all knew that there's
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zero appetite for the U.S. to get involved directly in a war with Iran. So it was obviously going to be
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the state of Israel. And that happened last night. Now, up until it happened, a lot of people thought,
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okay, Israel's not going to do anything until Sunday. Israel's not going to do anything until Monday.
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I had very, very plugged in people, very pro-Israel people telling me, nah, nothing's
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going to happen anytime soon. And then it happened last night. And it wasn't just a usual kind of,
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you know, tickle from the state of Israel to their old pals, the Iranians. No, this was
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a very serious attack. They hit the capital of Iran, Tehran. They had a bunch of military sites in
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the area. They hit Natanz, which is one of the main locations of the nuclear program.
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They hit Tabriz, apparently another nuclear site. They hit Isfahan, south of Tehran. They hit Iraq,
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not Iraq, Arak. They hit Kermanshah. I'm sure I'm mispronouncing all of these names.
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And this was all confirmed by Israeli and Iranian media. They took out top Iranian military leaders,
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Hassan Salami, who was the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is kind
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of the main Iranian military group. They took out Mohammed Bagheri, the chief of staff of the
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Iranian military. They also took out the commander of the Iranian military central headquarters.
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That'd be Major General Gholamali Rashid. They killed six nuclear scientists. I mean, this is,
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man, say what you will about the Israelis, man. They get results. Okay. So they took out six
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nuclear scientists. The Iranian Fars News Agency is reporting that more than 70 people have been
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killed. More than 320 were injured. And what's interesting, actually, is when you think about
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the scope of this attack, you'd probably expect more people to be killed, except this was obviously
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all highly, highly targeted to take out top people to cripple Iran's military, because this is clearly
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a regime change war. This is not merely about going after the Iranian nuclear program or slowing down
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the malas in their pursuit of a nuclear bomb. This is about regime change. And you can kind of tell by
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the name of the operation. They're calling this Operation Rising Lion. Now, lion might refer to Judah,
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you know, in the state of Israel. The lion is also the symbol of the Shah of Iran, who was deposed in
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the 1979 Islamic Revolution. So, rising lion, okay, you've got actually two symbols of the Shah of Iran,
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the lion and the sun. So, right, the rising lion, what is that? That would seem to signify regime change.
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Kicking out the malas, bringing back in the Shah of Iran, which, of course, in principle,
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everyone is fine with. The 1979 Islamic Revolution was horrible for America. It was because of Jimmy
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Carter's fecklessness that we allowed that to happen. We allowed our old ally, the Shah, to be
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deposed. That said, I think most Americans, rightly, are very skeptical of even more regime change in the
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Middle East, because it really hasn't worked out very well for us. And even we recently had regime
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change in Syria. I was one of the few voices on the right saying that actually Bashar al-Assad,
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for all his sins, was probably better than a lot of the people who could replace him.
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Nevertheless, clearly the Israelis are aiming at regime change here. So, what does Trump think?
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What does America think? Trump is supportive of it for now. We will get to what Trump has to say
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about it. Trump has very interesting comments. They seem to be a little bit
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contrary to what Secretary of State Marco Rubio is saying. We'll get to all of that in one second.
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Just first, though, before we get into any of this, were the attacks justified? Was the state
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of Israel justified in hitting Iran? Because what Israel is engaging in seems to be a preemptive war,
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which on its face is not justified by just war theory or by international law, really.
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However, I think you got to go through the criteria here. To be a just war, the belligerent
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nation has to have just cause, legitimate authority, right intention. It has to be the
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last resort. Diplomacy has to have failed. It has to be proportional. There has to be good
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probability of success. And there are some other aspects that you can sometimes bring into just war
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theory, which comes all the way from antiquity. So, let's ask, was there a just cause? That's the
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first question. Was there a just cause? Well, what Israel would say is Iran was days or weeks away
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from getting a nuclear weapon. And everyone has to take this with a grain of salt because we've
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been hearing since the 1980s that Iran is weeks or months away from getting a nuclear weapon.
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And that hasn't happened yet. Now, in part, that hasn't happened yet, perhaps because
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the State of Israel and the United States have undermined the Iranian nuclear program. But still,
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I don't know, to me, you got to take that with a big grain of salt. And by the way,
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even Netanyahu was saying Israel is really more like months to a year away from getting
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a working nuclear weapon. So, that's even coming from Netanyahu. Okay, that part,
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maybe yes, maybe no. At the very least, though, you would say Iran vowing to destroy the State of
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Israel, Iran funding terrorism all around the world, but certainly against the State of Israel,
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Iran clearly, I think, at least desiring to make a nuclear weapon, means that the Israeli attack is
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not so much preemptive as it is self-defense. Kind of like a guy, if a guy reaches for a gun in his
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pocket, you have the right to shoot that guy. It's not really even preemptive of you to shoot
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that guy. It's really more in self-defense. If a guy has a gun out and he's about to pull the trigger
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on you, you have the right to shoot him. If a guy's down there reaching for his gun,
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you have the right to shoot him. So, just cause, I think, basically, the State of Israel is in a
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decent position there. Legitimate authority. Some people, including Iran, deny that the State of
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Israel is a legitimate authority. But I think, look, they won a war in 1948. They've won a lot
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of wars since. The UN says that they're a state. The British Empire, the group we used to know is
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the British Empire, which had authority over mandatory Palestine. They said Israel had some kind
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of right to exist there. So, I don't know. I think it's a legitimate authority. Right intention.
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I think the intention is to stop Iran's nuclear program. I guess that's right intention.
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Now, that might be used slightly as an excuse for the broader goal of regime change, which makes
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that slightly dubious. But I still think they're basically in the clear of their last resort.
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Look, they have tried diplomacy, or at least the United States has tried diplomacy. And Steve
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Witkoff, the Trump intermediary on Iran, seems to be suggesting, yeah, look, the Iranians are not
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going for a deal. And by the way, of course, they're not going for a deal. Because if the
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United States is saying, look, give up your nuclear program and we won't depose you, then if I'm the
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mullahs in Iran, I got to go look at Libya and say, hold on, isn't that what you said to Gaddafi?
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You said, give up your nuclear program and we won't depose you. And then what happened? Things
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didn't work out very well for you, Gaddafi. So, I can't trust that promise. I get it. But the upshot of
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all of it is you're probably not going to get a deal. So, okay, it might very well be last resort.
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Was it proportional? Yeah, I would say the goods to be achieved were probably proportional to the
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ends used. Doesn't seem like civilians exactly were targeted. It depends on how you classify
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nuclear scientists, I guess. But I wouldn't say that's exactly a civilian target. Probability of
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success, as I mentioned earlier, say what you will about the Israelis, they get the job done. So,
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I think there's good probability of success. All of that to say, preemptive war is almost certainly
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not justified, depending on how you define preemptive. I hate to sound like Bill Clinton
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and prevaric. Well, it depends on what the meaning of is, is. But in this case, if you're saying,
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look, this group has vowed to destroy me as a nation and they are, at the very least, pursuing
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a weapon that poses an existential threat to my country, I think you have just cause. I think that's
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pretty clear. Now, what about the US? My chief concern as an American is, I don't want to get
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dragged into this regime change war. Because some of the propaganda that's going to surround this
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program, or this attack, is that actually Israel is just standing up for all of civilization. And
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this isn't really just about an existential threat to Israel. It's about the whole world. And I don't
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totally buy that. There are bad countries that have nuclear weapons. Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
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Pakistan harbored Osama bin Laden for 10 years. North Korea has nuclear weapons.
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Okay, the reason that Israel carried out this attack is not primarily to defend the whole world
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against the Iranians. It's because the state of Iran poses an existential threat to the state of
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Israel. I get that. So that means that my view as an American is, I would like to prevent Iran from
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having a nuclear weapon. But I really, really don't want the United States to be involved in a regime
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change war in the Middle East. Because it doesn't work out well for us. It could derail the Trump
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agenda. So where do we stand on this? Rubio and Trump both weigh in. Hold on. Hold on. We're
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purchase. Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this show. The United States First has denied involvement.
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So we have Marco Rubio here, Secretary of State, and this has been posted on the White House social
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media too. Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against
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Iran. And our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they
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believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the administration
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have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our
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regional partners. Let me be clear. Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel. Okay.
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Okay. Okay. Fine. Fair enough. Practically speaking, that statement won't matter to Iran because
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practically in the eyes of Iran, there's no difference between Israel and the United States.
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In the eyes of Iran, Israel is a client state of the United States in the Middle East. And fair
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enough. I mention a lot. We're the global hegemon. We're an empire. And that's true. The state of
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Israel probably would not exist without the protection of the United States. So Iran's not
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going to care about that statement. I see why the Secretary of State is trying to distance us saying,
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look, we're not involved. We're trying to pursue diplomacy. We're not, don't hit our sights.
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But when push comes to shove, basically all Iran's going to have to do is hit American sights,
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which would probably be existential for the Iranian regime, no matter what public opinion
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says in the United States. But it's a thorny situation. Rubio clearly trying to create big
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distance between the U.S. and Israel. Trump, not so much. Trump comes out and he says,
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first of all, before these strikes even happen, he was asked about, he said, look,
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we're going to see what's going to happen. Look, we're going to see what's going to happen is going
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to happen. We're going to see. He said, but Iran's not going to get a weapon. Then after the White
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or the State Department's statement last night, this morning, Trump came out and bridged a little
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bit of that distance with Israel. He said, I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them
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in the strongest of words to just do it. But no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they
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got, they just couldn't get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know,
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anticipated, or were told that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment
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anywhere in the world by far, and that Israel has a lot of it with much more to come. So not just
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we make the weapons, Israel's going to use the weapons, but also we're going to keep giving Israel
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weapons. So he is basically backing up the view that is certainly held by the Iranian regime.
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Namely, Israel is our client state in the Middle East, and they're going to, we back them in this
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action. That's a very different statement than you saw out of the State Department.
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Much more to come, and they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely,
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but they didn't know what was about to happen. They are all dead now.
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Talk about ratcheting up the rhetoric. Iranian hardliners spoke bravely. So he's actually
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showing them some respect. He goes, look, the Iranians tried to get it done. I'm granting
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them the respect that they tried to get it done, but they couldn't quite bring themselves to do it.
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And there were hardliners who spoke bravely. I'm admitting they had courage. This is kind of the
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way crusaders talked about Saladin, okay, in the Middle Ages. He's saying, look, Iran, I respect you.
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And I know you're trying to get something done here. And I respect how tough you were talking to us.
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Okay, I respect that. But you don't have the cards. And the guys who talk the toughest are all dead
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right now because of Israel using American weapons with American backing. So he says they're all dead
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now, and it will only get worse. There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still
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time to make this slaughter with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal come to an
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end. Iran must make a deal before there's nothing left. Now you're talking about glassing the country
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or something. I mean, that is an escalation of rhetoric you wouldn't hear from Netanyahu
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and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. I think he's hearkening back to Persia,
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ancient Persia, even before Islam existed, certainly long before the Islamic Revolution.
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You know, Iran, it's not just Islam. Islam is relatively, you know, by historical standards,
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a novel thing in Persia. There is a history in Persia, these great Eastern empires before Islam,
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before Muhammad. No more death, no more destruction. Just do it before it's too late. God bless you all.
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So here you're seeing an interplay, a little good cop, bad cop between the United States and Israel.
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Israel is saying, hey, Mullahs, hey, Ayatollah, we're not just after the nuclear sites. They're
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not saying this explicitly, but they might as well be. They're saying, we're going to topple your whole
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regime just like we did in Syria. We're going to topple your whole regime. You're going to be out of
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power for the first time since 1979. And then Trump is coming in and he's saying, maybe not.
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Hey, don't worry. I'll talk to, I'll talk to my Jewish friends over there. Maybe we can work out
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a deal, but you got to come to the table and give us a nuclear deal right now if you want to stay in
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power. So he's, this is not really a statement for the Iranian people. This is, this is a statement
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specifically to the clerics who are in charge in Iran, who are apparently not that good at running
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the country because they let the Israelis really run roughshod over them last night. And it's already a
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fairly weak regime because of the sanctions. So I see a little good cop, bad cop here,
00:20:18.400
but very interesting how the American strategy has shifted. Last night, hey, that's Israel. We
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have nothing to do with it. Don't hit us. Stop it. We don't want anything to do with this.
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Then Trump comes in. Yeah, we're, hey, look, we're on board, man. And we're going to,
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we're going to be on board even more. And frankly, we're even on board for regime change if you don't
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come to the table. Big, big shift. Now, speaking of big shifts out of the Trump administration,
00:20:43.900
beyond the Iran news, there's a big shift in the immigration policy. Trump comes out yesterday.
00:20:49.640
I go away for one day. I was on the PVD show yesterday. If you want to check that out,
00:20:52.400
great, great time on the PVD show. You can go check it out at the Patrick David YouTube channel.
00:20:57.380
As I'm over there, Trump comes out and seems to do a 180 on the mass deportation policy. Remember,
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before yesterday afternoon, the policy was we're going in, we're rounding up everybody. It started
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out, we're just going to go for criminals. Then it came into, we're going to round up everybody.
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Now Trump pulling that back, he sent out this statement first. Then he doubled down on it.
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He said, our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business
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have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good long-time
00:21:33.060
workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases,
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the criminals allowed into our country by the very stupid Biden open borders policy are applying for
00:21:41.580
those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our farmers, but get the criminals out of the USA.
00:21:47.320
Changes are coming. Okay, so this statement, this is a confounding statement for a lot of people.
00:21:53.460
He says, look, we're arresting a lot of illegals. There's what, 11 to 16 million illegals in the
00:21:59.760
country. Some of them, a minority, are violent criminals. Basically, all of them have worked with
00:22:05.060
violent criminals to get into the country because the violent criminals control the border.
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They're all criminals to some degree because they broke our laws and came into the country.
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But he said, we're arresting people who are illegal aliens who shouldn't be here.
00:22:16.260
And it's taken away good workers from people. And the people who are taking those jobs are
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violent criminals. Even though the violent criminals are the first group that we're supposed
00:22:25.180
to be rounding up. But now we're going to, we're not going to focus on the supposedly more innocent
00:22:31.240
illegal aliens. We're only going to focus on the violent criminals. Okay. It caused a lot of people
00:22:36.080
to scratch their heads. Trump was asked about this at a press conference. Here's what he had to say.
00:22:39.500
What made you change your mind about targeting in California farmers and people in the hotel
00:22:48.220
and leisure business? Well, we're not targeting. In fact, if you look today, I put out a statement
00:22:53.420
today about farmers. Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers.
00:22:59.180
They've worked for them for 20 years. They're not citizens, but they've turned out to be, you know,
00:23:04.220
great. And we're going to have to do something about that. We can't take farmers and take all
00:23:09.480
their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have,
00:23:14.020
maybe not. And you know what's going to happen and what is happening? They get rid of some of
00:23:18.260
the people because, you know, you go into a farm and you look and people don't, they've been there
00:23:23.020
for 20, 25 years and they've worked great. And the owner of the farm loves them and everything else.
00:23:28.180
And then you're supposed to throw them out. And you know what happens? They end up hiring the people,
00:23:32.560
the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else. So we're going
00:23:37.240
to have an order on that pretty soon. I think we can't do that to our farmers and leisure to
00:23:42.140
hotels. We're going to have to use a lot of common sense on that. Okay. So he's doubling down on it.
00:23:51.060
He says, look, we're not basically, we're not doing mass deportations. I mean, we're only going
00:23:54.060
to focus on the violent criminals and the peaceful, illegal aliens who are hardworking, whatever.
00:23:59.440
We're going to, we're going to keep them there. But then he sent out this truth social post.
00:24:03.700
Biden let 21 million unvetted illegal aliens flood into the country from some of the most
00:24:06.920
dangerous dysfunctional nations on earth. Many of them rapists, murderers, and terrorists.
00:24:10.760
This tsunami of illegals has destroyed public schools, hospitals, parks, community resources,
00:24:14.660
and living conditions. They've stolen American jobs. Now, hold on, hold on. And you could understand
00:24:20.620
they're rapists, they're murderers. Okay. Then he's just talking about the violent criminals
00:24:23.560
because they've stolen American jobs. Hold on. I thought, but the ones who have taken American
00:24:30.020
jobs, it seemed like Trump just said during the press conference, those guys get to keep their
00:24:35.120
jobs because the employers want them to have those jobs. And we're not going to deport them because
00:24:38.820
we want them to keep their jobs. But here he's inveighing against those very same people for taking
00:24:43.300
American jobs, not the violent criminals, but the peaceful ones who nevertheless broke the law and
00:24:47.540
took American jobs. Now we got to really scratch our heads. Consumed billions of dollars in free
00:24:51.280
welfare turned once idyllic communities like Springfield, Ohio, into third world nightmares.
00:24:55.720
I campaigned on and received a historic mandate for the largest mass deportation program in American
00:25:01.960
history. Polling shows overwhelming public support for getting the illegals out. That's exactly what
00:25:06.160
we will do. As commander in chief, I'll always protect and defend the heroes of ICE and Border Patrol,
00:25:11.660
whose work has already resulted in the most secure border in American history. Anyone who assaults
00:25:16.000
these people will do hard time in jail. Those who are here illegally should either self-deport,
00:25:20.260
using CBP home app, or ICE will find you and remove you. Saving America is not negotiable.
00:25:24.640
Okay. Okay. Seems like these are contradictory things, which is why I think the most important
00:25:32.200
takeaway line is the line that Trump said in that press conference, we're going to have to use a lot
00:25:36.260
of common sense. The Trump deportation policy is not going to be purely ideological. It's not going
00:25:43.500
to fit on the back of a napkin. It is going to be grounded on the paramount political virtue,
00:25:47.500
which is prudence. I think Trump is trying to signal to a lot of different groups that he gets
00:25:52.380
their concerns and he's going to have to come to some kind of conciliatory prudential solution.
00:25:57.700
But at the very least, he is signaling an important fact for his administration.
00:26:02.400
He was elected on mass deportations. He won the popular vote on mass deportations. He won 46% of
00:26:13.880
Hispanics on mass deportations. And mass deportations means you're not only focusing on the guys with face
00:26:22.480
tattoos. Mass deportations means mass deportations. I think Trump is signaling that. And so you're going
00:26:29.220
to have all, you're going to have all the Trump haters today trying to nitpick him from every
00:26:32.360
single side. My view is Trump is at least telling us he knows why he was elected. He knows the meaning
00:26:39.180
of the phrase mass deportations. Let him cook a little bit. I think that if he, if he were signaling
00:26:45.700
that he did not understand that fact, then I think you'd need a lot more pushback. You need to clarify
00:26:50.080
things. He gets it, man. He's, he's a very shrewd politician. It's, he's like a generational
00:26:57.380
political genius. Okay. He gets it, but it's important for all of us to keep that in mind too.
00:27:03.880
Everyone wants to deport all the illegals except the ones they know. Everyone wants to deport all
00:27:08.000
the illegals except their gardener. And that makes sense. If, if an illegal alien came to my door and
00:27:14.040
said, Hey, Tom Holman is on the way. Can you, can I hide in your attic? I guess I'd say, sure. As a matter
00:27:20.040
of personal charity, I would also then vote for Trump a thousand times and I might donate money to,
00:27:25.160
to help Tom Holman get all the illegals. Those things are not necessarily, uh, mutually exclusive.
00:27:32.220
Okay. Trump is dealing with the tension between those things as president. I think he still gets
00:27:38.400
it. Mass deportations are a majority popular mainstream political issue. And the Trump
00:27:46.880
administration has a mandate to carry them out. Hold on much more, much more to come,
00:27:52.040
much more insight, wisdom, joy, levity. First go to old glory bank.com slash Knowles.
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It takes just a few minutes to open an account and join the right side of banking. Father's Day is
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and ad-free. Go to dailywire.com slash gift before the deal disappears. My favorite comment yesterday is
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from Bushral Kubal from Pakistan, who says, that is a beautiful tie. Thank you. Thank you. And look,
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the Pakistanis and the Indians know about very nice fabric. They do. They have nice,
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very nice garments over there. Thank you. I agree. That Mayflower tie is, it's great. And I
00:29:48.540
worked very hard on it. Shepard's Men's War, which is our sartorial partner. They worked very hard on it.
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We went back and forth a billion times. I was obsessive about what that tie looked like,
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and I think it came out great. So get yours now. You got to go to dailywire.com slash shop
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to get your Mayflower tie while supplies lasts. Okay. Now, speaking of the Trump administration
00:30:10.740
apparently flipping policies, Trump also came out, and he said, is it right after saying,
00:30:17.880
we're going to kick all the Chinese students out of the country, we're going to revoke their visas,
00:30:21.100
they're spies, they're bringing biohazards in, we don't want them. Trump said this.
00:30:26.460
I've always been in favor of students coming in from other countries. That includes China.
00:30:33.160
And we have 500,000 Chinese students coming in. I've always been in favor of it. Does it mean you,
00:30:41.320
that you have to watch people? Yeah. You have to watch students, but you have to watch other people
00:30:46.640
also. I've always been strongly in favor of it. I think it's a great thing. It's also,
00:30:50.920
it's good for our schools. It's good for, I think it's good for our country. I'm also in favor of
00:30:55.840
having them stay. I've been in favor of letting them stay. If you get educated for four years,
00:31:01.240
you're willing to get educated for four years. I like people being able to stay. You know,
00:31:06.380
they have some great students. Okay. So people, they're going to be in whiplash. Their heads are
00:31:12.020
going to be spinning once again. This will not be the final word on the matter. Trump will say
00:31:17.640
something that will apparently contradict this probably next week or the week after, because
00:31:20.860
he's trying to get a trade deal with China. That's what this is about. So he's even acknowledging
00:31:24.980
here. He says, I'm all in favor of all these Chinese students here. It doesn't mean you don't
00:31:28.740
have to watch them. So he's admitting, he's saying, no, no, there's a risk. There is a risk to bringing
00:31:33.260
these Chinese students. And maybe we'll let them in and maybe we'll kick them out. China, what kind of
00:31:39.960
deal are you going to get us? That's what's going on. That's what's going on with the Chinese
00:31:46.420
students issue. That's what's going on with some of what he's saying about mass deportations.
00:31:51.240
That's what's going on in Iran. Trump's chief political skill in these negotiations is
00:31:59.460
unpredictability. And it's worked out pretty well for him. But it's like what he talked about on
00:32:03.480
Joe Rogan. The guy likes to weave. He weaves. Okay. He weaves back and forth. So what's my view on the
00:32:09.820
Chinese students? My personal view on the Chinese students is it is a massive security concern because
00:32:15.320
as Jack Barsky, former Soviet spy, told me, China doesn't need illegal spies these days. They can
00:32:20.700
just get them in through foreign student visas. So we do need to watch that. We got to watch the
00:32:24.520
Confucius Institute stuff. We also need to make sure that the Chinese Communist Party doesn't
00:32:28.700
prop up the universities, many of which need to be pummeled by the federal government. All of that
00:32:34.220
remains true. And also we need to figure out some kind of trade deal with China because China is one
00:32:39.100
of our chief creditors. And we need to make sure that the economy doesn't tank before the midterms and
00:32:44.280
before the next presidential election. So all of those things are true. Trump's just trying to
00:32:49.500
work out a deal. That's really what's happening. You got to take a lot of these statements
00:32:55.160
as the tactical matters that they are. When Trump speaks on these issues, I don't care if you're
00:33:04.120
talking about tariffs. I don't care if you're talking about bombs. I don't care if you're talking
00:33:06.780
about anything in the middle. He's always moving for leverage. That's what this is about. Where this
00:33:12.160
lands, wherever the policy lands, the one thing I'm almost certain of, it will be different than
00:33:16.360
what he said last week and it will be different from what he said this week. Speaking of threats,
00:33:20.280
got to give a shout out to the Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey, who's warning rioters that if
00:33:26.300
they encircle vehicles in the street, if they try to shut down traffic, they're going to get run over.
00:33:33.480
So I'm going to break it down for you, all right? And if somebody wants to know what I mean by turn
00:33:40.620
violent, all right? This is what I mean. If you resist lawful orders, you're going to jail. Let me
00:33:47.340
be very clear about that. If you block an intersection or a roadway in Brevard County, you are going to
00:33:53.480
jail. If you flee arrest, you're going to go to jail tired because we are going to run you down and put
00:33:59.700
you in jail. If you try to mob rule a car in Brevard County, gathering around it, refusing to let the
00:34:06.240
driver leave. In our county, you're most likely going to get run over and dragged across the street.
00:34:13.340
If you spit on us, you're going to the hospital and in jail. If you hit one of us, you're going to
00:34:20.180
the hospital and jail and most likely get bitten by one of our big, beautiful dogs that we have here.
00:34:26.060
If you throw a brick, a firebomb or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your
00:34:32.740
family where to collect your remains at because we will kill you graveyard dead. We're not going to
00:34:38.780
play. This has got to stop. This has got to stop. So this is the sheriff saying, look, if you mess
00:34:47.960
around in these riots, if you get out of hand, we're going to hurt you. We're going to arrest you
00:34:53.800
and we might kill you. That's we law enforcement. Ron DeSantis goes further. Ron DeSantis, governor of
00:35:00.320
Florida, comes out. He says, hey, if you if you're a rider and you really get out of hand here,
00:35:04.920
not only might law enforcement kill you with immunity, ordinary citizens might do it, too.
00:35:12.140
And we also have a policy that if you're driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds
00:35:18.720
your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety. And so if you drive off
00:35:25.000
and you hit one of these people, that's their fault for impinging on you. You don't have to sit
00:35:31.400
there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the
00:35:36.640
streets. You have a right to defend yourself in Florida. Totally right. And this is look, some people
00:35:41.320
are going to feel really rah-rah about this policy just out of their base passions. They're going to
00:35:46.860
say, yeah, that's right. Go get those protesters. But Ron DeSantis is a reasonable guy. He's a very
00:35:53.160
grounded, reasonable guy. And I think this policy is grounded and reasonable, even though it sounds
00:35:58.740
so provocative. Wait, hold on. You get to run over protesters if they're surrounding your car in the
00:36:02.540
street? Yes, that's reasonable. That doesn't come from wrath. That doesn't come from a knee-jerk
00:36:06.880
reaction. That's reasonable. Put yourself in the position of a parent. He's driving his car. He's
00:36:12.780
got his little kids in the back seat. And these violent leftists surround your car. We know many
00:36:19.460
times in the past they drag people out of their cars when they surround you. There's no good reason
00:36:22.940
for people on their feet to be surrounding your car. What do you do? You have a responsibility to
00:36:29.560
protect your kids. The reasonable thing to do is try not to run these people over. But if
00:36:36.800
it's between be stalled out with your kids in the back of the car, sitting ducks with
00:36:40.620
violent leftists around you and running some of them over, they have the chance to get out of the
00:36:45.620
way. The reasonable thing to do is to run them over. It's the Thomistic principle of double effect.
00:36:49.760
You're not trying to run these people over. You're trying to get your own kids out of danger. And you
00:36:53.880
have a responsibility to do that. And the double effect of that might be that you got to run some
00:36:58.060
of them over. This is absolutely right. Imagine you got a kid in the back of the car. Your kid is in need
00:37:03.520
of medical care. You're driving to the hospital and these lunatics shut down the freeway.
00:37:07.480
The responsible right thing to do is to drive your car. And if the protesters won't get out of the
00:37:13.560
way, if the lunatic leftists won't get out of the way, well, you're going to put them out of the way.
00:37:18.860
That's the responsible right thing to do. I want to see legislation like this in, at the very least,
00:37:23.420
every red state around the country. It's beautiful stuff. I can't believe we didn't have time to get to
00:37:28.680
the most important news story. Namely, some random OnlyFans lady is attacking another
00:37:33.380
OnlyFans lady for saying that OnlyFans, a pornography website, is no longer about women's
00:37:39.200
empowerment. How did we get, we missed the thing that everyone's talking about. We need to, all right,
00:37:46.640
look, Monday, you know I'm a tease. That'll be Monday. Because right now, we get to my favorite
00:37:51.240
time of the week. The mailbag, our mailbag is sponsored by PureTalk at puretalk.com slash
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Knowles Canada WLES to switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes. Take it away.
00:37:59.840
Hello, Mr. Knowles. I love the show and love the cigars. I do have one of those,
00:38:04.860
am I the bad guy questions. For Father's Day, my wife decided to surprise me a little bit early
00:38:10.260
with a humidor. Now, on this humidor is a silhouette of Che Guevara, which, as we all know,
00:38:17.380
was not the greatest person. Am I the bad guy for asking her to send the gift back because I do
00:38:25.440
not want a portrait or symbol or silhouette of Che Guevara in my household? Let me know what
00:38:31.720
you think. Thank you. No, no, I don't think you are. I think you could play it straight with your
00:38:37.020
wife. You should tell her, you say, oh man, this was a very thoughtful present. Thank you so much.
00:38:41.520
I really wanted a humidor and this is a great humidor. You know, one thing about it though,
00:38:45.100
I'm going to have to swap out the humidor. Don't say you're just going to return and get the money
00:38:48.440
back. I'm going to have to swap it out. Same company, maybe, you know, I got to swap it out
00:38:53.140
because you probably didn't notice this. There's a communist animal who's the face on there. That's
00:39:00.240
not just a random guy. That's actually this like crazy communist. So I got to swap it out. But
00:39:03.860
this is a great gift. Thank you. I love it. It's fabulous. We'll swap it out. That's it. That's
00:39:07.860
all you got to say. But you don't need to, you don't need to be like afraid of your wife or be so
00:39:11.860
protective of your wife's feelings that you're not, you're not willing to tell her the truth.
00:39:15.980
It's okay. That's cool. I've done that with sweet littleies. You should keep gifts, but I say,
00:39:19.720
oh, you know, this is great, but you know, the pants are too tight. Sorry. I got to swap them
00:39:23.140
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delivered. Next question. Hi, Michael. My name is Sinead. I freaking love the Daily Wire. There is just
00:40:08.880
not enough time in the day to consume all of the content from podcast hosts, writers, all of it.
00:40:15.520
My question is about what you said about the Pope being a person who Catholics can look to for
00:40:23.480
answers when you can't interpret something in the Bible in agreement. And my question, well,
00:40:31.160
first of all, thank you. I, for the first time in my life, understand what the Pope is for. I'm a
00:40:37.120
Protestant. And secondly, my real question is where do Catholics come down on working out your own
00:40:44.680
salvation with fear and trembling and the idea of going to God yourself for that reason because the
00:40:51.800
ability of, of, to do that because when Jesus was crucified, the veil was, of the temple was rent
00:40:57.660
from top to bottom, making that, symbolizing that that's possible. Thank you so much. Looking forward
00:41:03.660
to your answer. Bye-bye. Excellent, excellent questions. So how do we work out our salvation with
00:41:08.960
fear and trembling? Well, you know, we obviously do that because that's scriptural. And so, you know,
00:41:16.960
we pray, we worship God, we follow what God has told us to do. We avail ourselves of the sacraments.
00:41:24.520
We don't presume our own salvation, though we have hope. We, you know, we have to have a lot of
00:41:30.880
humility and awe and wonder, which is the beginning of wisdom, holy fear. So that's what we do. Then,
00:41:37.460
how do we go directly to God? Well, I'll give you a good example of this. I, at least once a week,
00:41:44.060
go see God in physical matter in the Holy Eucharist. I go directly to our Lord,
00:41:53.500
who's, who, who is present for us on the altar of the mass, the highest sacrifice.
00:42:00.420
So that would be one way that I go directly to God. Now, I know it's a little bit of a cheeky
00:42:04.220
answer in the sense that you're, you might be asking, well, hold on. No, I'm asking, how do
00:42:08.480
you go to God without priests and without sacraments and without churches and without, how do you go? But,
00:42:13.660
but I think actually your question is more profound than that. We obviously want to go directly to God.
00:42:20.700
How do we go to God? Well, God gives us some ways. I mean, our Lord says to us, hey,
00:42:24.900
this bread, this is my body, which is given up for you. This wine, this is my blood.
00:42:30.240
Do this in memory of me. And then he explains what that means in John chapter six, when he says,
00:42:36.320
those who do not eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood have no life in him.
00:42:41.940
Truly, I say to you, the flesh of the son of man is true food and his blood is true drink.
00:42:48.280
And you have to eat his flesh and drink his blood. And this confounded the Jews and some of the
00:42:54.180
disciples and they went away. And then Peter says, he doesn't go away. And our Lord says,
00:42:59.040
why haven't you gone away? This is a hard saying. And all these other people went away. Why didn't
00:43:02.080
you go away? And he says, well, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life. And our Lord
00:43:07.740
says, that's right. This was revealed to you by my father. And you, Peter, I give you the keys to the
00:43:12.100
kingdom of heaven. You are now not so no longer Simon, you're Peter. And on this rock,
00:43:16.060
I'll build my church. So going directly to God might look a little different than we think it
00:43:21.460
does in abstract liberal modernity. To me, going directly to God, if I have to choose between a
00:43:27.700
kind of merely mental action and a tangible sacramental fact, to me, one of those seems
00:43:34.480
much more direct than the other. And then in terms of like confessing my sins directly to God, I do that.
00:43:40.580
I also do that. And I pray to God, acts of contrition. But our Lord also says to the
00:43:48.740
apostles, he says, hey, you have the power to forgive sins, whose sins you forgive are forgiven,
00:43:51.720
whose sins you retain are retained. So in that case, our Lord is asking us or is empowering his
00:43:57.140
apostles and they choose to have successors. And we've had that since the apostolic age.
00:44:03.880
He says, hey, go out there and act as my representative to forgive sins and to retain
00:44:10.420
sins. So it gets back to your first question about fear and trembling. How do we work out
00:44:14.860
our salvation with fear and trembling? We worship God, not merely in the way we want to, but in the
00:44:22.260
way he wants us to. Because God wants to be worshiped in certain ways. This is the purpose of
00:44:28.080
the book of Leviticus. This is the point of the book of Leviticus and the book of Numbers. He shows us
00:44:31.700
this figuratively in the Old Testament. And he shows us this in the New Testament, which is
00:44:36.000
journalism. And the Acts of the Apostles is a history. It tells you how this is done in the
00:44:41.060
physical, tangible world. And I think it's good to have humility to say, all right, well, God,
00:44:48.060
how do you want me to worship you? How would you like me to come to you? Because however God wants
00:44:53.580
us to come to him is going to be best for us. It's going to be better than our own answers.
00:44:56.680
So anyway, that's my long-winded answer to your simple question. Next question.
00:45:00.100
Hello, Michael. My sister-in-law is currently pregnant as a surrogate. I have two kids myself,
00:45:07.700
ages two and three. The way I see it is I have kind of two options. I guess my first question,
00:45:16.980
my first option would be if I should try to have a conversation with my kids and explain to them
00:45:21.860
what's going on. Or if I'm afraid that that's even just going to confuse them more. Option two being
00:45:29.080
would it be appropriate to just simply avoid interactions with that whole side of the family
00:45:33.980
for the next seven months? As tough as that would be, that would mean missing niece's birthday parties,
00:45:39.920
maybe Thanksgiving, stuff like that. So I don't know if that's a good idea either. But pretty soon,
00:45:45.240
she's going to start showing my kids are going to see their aunt pregnant. They're going to know what
00:45:49.780
that means. And they're going to ask all the right questions. I just don't know if I'm going to have
00:45:53.300
all the right answers. So any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
00:45:58.200
Yeah, maybe you should. You know, if you said, Michael, should I cut out my sister entirely?
00:46:02.520
I'd say, no, probably not. But I think you might want to be prudent here. I don't know if you live
00:46:08.340
near your family. You know, I don't live near my, neither my wife nor I are near our families,
00:46:14.600
our respective families. So it wouldn't be that hard. We go seven months without seeing members of
00:46:18.760
our family all the time. That wouldn't be hard at all. For you, if you live down the street,
00:46:22.140
it might be a little trickier and that might involve a different calculation. But you might
00:46:27.040
explain to your sister, look, there's a real risk of scandal here. I know that you are doing the
00:46:31.200
surrogate thing for the best of intentions, but I think it's really morally dubious. And I don't want
00:46:39.700
to scandalize my kids. Our Lord tells us those who scandalize the little ones should have a
00:46:46.260
millstone tied around their neck. So, you know, it's scandalizing, especially scandalizing innocent
00:46:50.320
little ones is a big, big deal. Our Lord speaks bluntly and directly about not all that many things
00:46:56.420
in the Bible. And that's one of them. So you might say, look, no knock on you. I know you did it with
00:47:01.000
the best of intentions. We can have a long conversation at some point, if you like, about
00:47:04.200
the ethics of surrogacy, but we might need to chill out. We might need to miss a couple of holidays,
00:47:08.920
but we'll see you next year. We can talk about it then if you want, you know, and maybe that's what I
00:47:12.700
would do. Okay. Do we have one more voicemail back question? Hey, Michael, first time, long time.
00:47:18.520
So I'm 17, right? And in class, we're working on our college essays. So I was wondering if you had
00:47:25.200
any knowledge, any tips, right? I know you're extremely smart about these things on how to do
00:47:31.160
effective self-reflection and really write the most deep and impactful college essay that I can.
00:47:38.540
And I mean, you know, how else am I going to get into your alma mater, right? Thank you so much,
00:47:43.660
Nick. Great question. And I do mean to be pedantic and condescending in here. Never use the word
00:47:50.960
impactful. Do not use it. Everyone uses it. Don't use it. It's a silly word. It's full of impact.
00:47:58.000
How is a thing full of impact? It's a bad word. It's one of my least favorite words. I much prefer
00:48:05.460
many racial slurs to the I word. Impact. Don't use it. And don't seek to write
00:48:14.700
the most deep, profound, heartbreaking work of staggering essay, personal statement,
00:48:21.460
when you're doing your application. You should write an appropriate essay.
00:48:26.580
You're not writing Anna Karenina here, okay? That's what a lot of, that's the mistake a lot
00:48:32.400
of students make. They want to bring their reader to tears. Subtlety is good. Less is more often in
00:48:40.580
prose. I wrote my college admissions essay about how much I love cigars. Why? Because it seems like
00:48:46.340
the last thing you should write about. Because it's something I was passionate about. It said something
00:48:52.820
about my personality. It allowed me to have a little levity. It allowed me to have a little
00:48:56.420
seriousness because I wrote about the Cubans and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And it allowed me to
00:49:02.480
show a little bit of an artistic side. It had all of these things. But it was appropriate. It's the
00:49:09.920
kind of essay that an 18-year-old or a 17-year-old could reasonably write. I think it was by the standards
00:49:16.200
of a 17 or 18-year-old. It was a really good essay, relatively. But it wasn't, it wasn't the
00:49:22.660
memoir of a 45-year-old. It wasn't trying to be that. Don't, don't make it try to be that.
00:49:28.820
Don't be grandiose. Don't be pretentious about it. Don't be, just give a simple, what do you like?
00:49:34.840
You like playing ukulele? I don't know. What do you like? You like playing pinochle? What are you,
00:49:38.940
are you interested in your great-grandpa's war medals? I don't know. What do you, you know,
00:49:44.700
just have it be something offbeat? Put yourself, it's true in any job, it's true.
00:49:51.840
Put yourself in the shoes of the person who's reading this essay. Think about all the essays
00:49:57.040
they're reading, all the grandiose, pretentious, overly written nonsense, you know, ugh. And say,
00:50:03.900
what would be refreshing? What would be exciting for that person to read? Okay, what can I write about
00:50:10.500
that could be good and passionate? Then the other thing is, use an economy of words.
00:50:15.640
Keep it tight. Close up space. Read Strunk and White, if you haven't already. It's like a 50-page book
00:50:21.440
on how to write well. And if you just read that book, you will write better than 99.9999%
00:50:28.740
of the people you're competing with to get a job, to get a spot at the university. Okay, how's that?
00:50:33.720
I did not use an economy of words in my answer.
00:50:36.460
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