Trump vetoes a plan to kill Iran's supreme leader. Two Minnesota lawmakers are shot and killed. What does that have to do with Iran? And why does it matter to the rest of the world? Today on the Knowles Show, Michael talks about it.
00:00:39.640According to President Trump, we are not yet, but soon could be, if Iran does not agree to a nuclear deal.
00:00:45.840But of course, the U.S. is involved in basically every event around the world.
00:00:49.620So President Trump's statement to me sounds less like a disinterested analysis and more like a threat.
00:00:56.080More like a negotiation from the man who wrote the art of the deal.
00:00:59.920There's a news story out from Reuters reporting that President Trump has been restraining the Israelis by vetoing a plan to assassinate Iran's supreme leader.
00:01:08.640Which, likewise, strikes me less like a news report and more like a negotiation and a threat.
00:01:15.180As if Trump is saying, hey, mullahs, I told the Israelis not to kill you, but don't test my patience.
00:01:25.040Pundits and activists on both sides of the aisle are fuming over this war.
00:01:30.380On the one side, you've got the hawks screaming that Iran is five minutes away from building a nuclear bomb.
00:01:36.780And the fate of the world rests on our glassing Iran right now.
00:01:40.060On the other side, you've got the doves screaming that this war is nothing more than a fight between two dusty countries in the Middle East,
00:01:47.860one of which is dragging us against our will into war.
00:01:51.300And as usual, the people in politics who are screaming their heads off don't know what they're talking about.
00:05:25.500On the other hand, you have these isolationists.
00:05:27.720And in some cases, you have isolationists, critics of the state of Israel, and in some cases, actual anti-Semites who just don't like the Jews on an ethnic basis.
00:05:38.440You've got all of them accusing Israel of dragging us, kicking and screaming into a war that we want no part of, but they're just dog walking us into this war.
00:06:18.140Iran definitely wants a nuclear weapon.
00:06:19.860Iran definitely has a nuclear program.
00:06:22.860The Israelis are arguing that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, has a new report that came out in June to show that Iran is five seconds away from a bomb, and that's why they had to go in.
00:06:34.700But the IAEA actually kind of denies that justification.
00:12:16.200That's why I'm not screaming my head off.
00:12:17.640I'm not surprised by the outbreak of this war, just like I wasn't surprised by the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, just like I won't be surprised if there's an outbreak of war around Taiwan.
00:12:26.400There are great power battles around empires.
00:12:30.840And what it is incumbent on Trump to do now is to try to maintain the peace.
00:12:36.400Because I guess this is what would separate my view from the view of, say, the neocons or the liberal imperialists or whatever, is they want to just light up every country in the world.
00:13:27.660There's an account on Twitter called the Pentagon Pizza Index.
00:13:30.820And when the business, when the wait times at the pizza stores around the Pentagon are extending late at night, you know, uh-oh, they're working on something.
00:13:41.340What we hope occurs is that the aims of this kind of war, which obviously are regime change, that they remain restrained, circumscribed, relatively modest, and are aimed not towards some radical liberal revolution, not toward establishing Madisonian democracy in Iran or whatever, but just toward maintaining the peace, advancing America's interests, keeping our allies in all their ducks in a row, keeping them in their proper place.
00:14:12.080Now, speaking of oil, I want to tell you about Chevron.
00:14:16.180America is built on hard work and powered by American energy.
00:14:20.560Chevron has spent $44 billion with local businesses across all 50 states since 2022, fueling infrastructure and communities, all while strengthening local economies.
00:14:30.880Last year, Chevron increased U.S. production nearly 20%, powering communities and businesses from the heartlands to the coast.
00:14:37.820We're helping to fuel America's energy advantage, building a brighter future right here at home.
00:14:43.020Visit chevron.com slash America to discover more.
00:14:48.520A guy shot two Minnesota lawmakers along with their spouses.
00:14:53.240A female lawmaker and her husband were killed, and then a male lawmaker and his wife were wounded.
00:14:58.820The one who was killed is Melissa Hortman, former Speaker of the Minnesota House.
00:15:04.600She and her husband were shot and killed at their home early Saturday.
00:15:11.580The notable aspect of her political career is she's a Democrat.
00:15:16.480So instantly you say, okay, well, it's got to be a right-wing Republican who shot her.
00:15:21.980She's a Democrat, but she was the only Democrat in the Minnesota House to oppose funding health care for illegal aliens.
00:15:29.860So she's a Democrat, but she voted with the Republicans.
00:15:34.880She was the only lawmaker who was actually killed.
00:15:37.600A second state lawmaker, Senator John Hoffman and his wife, were shot multiple times and appear to have survived.
00:15:43.520Then, we don't know who this guy is, but the police take a photograph of his car, and there are no Kings flyers on his seat.
00:15:53.900So no Kings, we'll get to that in just a moment.
00:15:56.780No Kings was this kind of weak, astroturfed, completely cringe protest of Trump over the weekend.
00:16:02.700So he's got flyers protesting Trump all over his car.
00:16:08.320He goes out and shoots, allegedly, the only Democrat lawmaker who voted against funding health care for illegal aliens.
00:16:21.160But then there's some evidence that he's a Republican.
00:16:23.720So all of the evidence that we've seen so far makes you think this would be a Democrat, a far leftist, who's upset at a moderate leftist and who's upset at Trump.
00:16:30.440But then we find out the suspect is a 57-year-old guy, and even though it looked like his car was law enforcement, it seems he was just posing as law enforcement.
00:16:43.420We then find out he's got a LinkedIn or other kind of resume that said that he owned a security company.
00:16:52.320So you say, okay, that sounds more like a right-winger.
00:16:54.400It says he did security work overseas.
00:16:56.020But then actually there's no evidence that he ever did any of that.
00:16:58.400It might have been just totally made up.
00:16:59.760It might have just been quite just as fictional as the fictional police car that he drove to commit the crimes.
00:17:06.200Then we find out, on top of all of this, that he was appointed to a state board, the Workforce Development Board, by the super-lib Democrat Governor Tim Walz back in 2019.
00:17:16.960So then you think, okay, I guess he's a lib.
00:17:18.780But the board was nonpartisan, and I guess he had been appointed to another board by a Republican, maybe.
00:24:17.320And, in fact, the people I know, I know, you know, I'm friends with a bunch of libs, and I have libs in my family and, you know, friend groups.
00:25:21.120Because when the libs had popular protests of Trump in the first term, they could at least gin up some media attention and gin up some excitement around it because, they say, well, Trump lost the popular vote.
00:25:31.120You know, Trump, there were all these, Russia hacked the election.
00:27:58.460I think the libs picked no kings because they want their followers to seem less anti-American for the TV cameras because the LA riots were a complete flop.
00:28:07.260The LA riots were organized by the left, and they were a flop.
00:28:28.680Alexander Hamilton was advocating for a kind of a monarchy in America.
00:28:33.420America was founded on principles that demanded political independence, but it wasn't anti-monarchy.
00:28:40.040The French Revolution that followed was anti-monarchy.
00:28:42.640But as Edmund Burke, for instance, pointed out, the American Revolution was much more conservative.
00:28:47.780The American Revolution was undertaken in a much more orderly way, from the top down, partaking of principles of subsidiarity.
00:28:56.720The French Revolution was a bunch of ravel chopping heads off, opposed to throne and altar, wanted to overthrow not only the monarchy but Christianity, the whole ancien regime.
00:29:05.920In fact, I think it was Adrian Vermeule pointed this out on Twitter.
00:29:09.600There has been an argument that the American presidency is in many ways the last monarchy that survived from the old regime.
00:29:15.140Even though we're not a monarchy, technically, but we still have an executive that has a lot of power.
00:29:21.860Trump, man, you know, Trump's kind of the king, man.
00:29:23.760He really is kind of the king, in a way.
00:29:27.940The American presidency has much more in the way of monarchical power than the king of England does, than King Charles does, than any of the kind of sidelined kings, the king of Spain.
00:29:39.880So the no kings thing was never going to work.
00:29:43.120And my friend Nate Fisher pointed out, the no kings protest, if the libs are really going to make this the new focal point, Trump's a king and we don't want kings here, whatever, it might actually encourage a healthy reexamination of political regimes, including monarchy on the right.
00:30:00.580Because America, we've been told in recent years, America's a democracy, not really a democracy.
00:30:17.860The founding fathers were explicit about this.
00:30:20.460Yes, Benjamin Franklin says, we've given you a republic if you can keep it.
00:30:23.800But more than that, it is a mixed regime.
00:30:25.840Because the American framers and founders wanted to escape the cycle of regimes that causes monarchies to collapse, the three forms of government, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy into their kind of negative forms, which is tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule.
00:30:42.600And so the cycle goes on through revolutions.
00:30:45.400And the American framers wanted to escape that.
00:30:47.580And so the way to escape that, as St. Thomas Aquinas points out in the Summa Theologiae, is you have a mixed regime that has a monarchical element, in our case, the presidency, with an aristocratic element.
00:30:56.660At the founding would have been the Senate.
00:31:00.200And maybe some of – now we have direct election of senators.
00:31:13.820Now, probably the Libs, when they started their No Kings protest, didn't want Americans to be reflecting on regimes and political philosophy and what America really means.
00:31:22.440But they didn't get what they really wanted, which was a popular uprising in the street.
00:31:26.640And the fact that they had to change their tune, I think, shows you they just don't know what they're about right now.
00:31:35.680Fundamentally, the Democrats don't know what they're about right now.
00:31:38.560Are they for open borders or are they for border security?
00:31:57.720Trump looking more and more like a king every day.
00:31:59.500Speaking of the Libs acting up, a Democrat senator, U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, has just been taken down by the FBI in the United States Secret Service.
00:32:37.840I think here he was protesting Kristi Noem.
00:32:42.780He was trying to rush the stage with Kristi Noem, this female cabinet secretary.
00:32:48.940And so Trump comes in, or rather law enforcement of the Trump administration comes in and they say, you're not allowed to do that, Senator.
00:32:57.020We're going to get you out of the room.
00:32:58.140This was probably a stunt to set the stage also for the No Kings protest and that Ed Flop too.
00:33:05.640Because when I watch that, when I watch Democrat, even elected politicians, go up and physically start to threaten female members of the Trump administration,
00:33:16.600it reminds me of Maxine Waters, sitting Democrat Congress lady, who said in the first Trump term,
00:33:20.860when you see Republicans in public, you push back on them, you tell them they're not welcome here, you go to their house, are you insane lady?
00:33:28.780When I see Hillary Clinton say, you can't be civil with Republicans.