Ep. 1756 - Did Trump Betray MAGA Over Iran？
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Summary
Right wing influencers were up in arms last night over the prospect of President Trump going to war with Iran because of the Iranian nuclear program. This, they said, would constitute a betrayal of the MAGA movement and everything President Trump was elected to do.
Transcript
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Right wing influencers were up in arms last night over the prospect of President Trump going to war
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with Iran because of the Iranian nuclear program. Now it's worth mentioning, since this fact seems
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to be lost on some people, that the United States is not in fact at war with Iran. But these
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influencers and pundits were furious that Trump might go to war with Iran. This, they said,
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would constitute a betrayal of the MAGA movement, a betrayal of everything President Trump
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campaigned on and was elected to do. Trump, they pointed out, was elected on getting us out of
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wars in the Middle East. You cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. When did Trump suggest that Iran
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was even on his mind? Everybody, no nuclear weapons. You can't give nuclear weapons.
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It'd be one thing if Trump had campaigned on stopping Iran's nuclear program.
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Don't let Iran have nuclear weapons. That's my only thing I have to tell you today.
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But for Trump to just voice this policy on us, completely out of the blue.
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Including Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. That's all. They can't have nuclear weapons. It's
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too destructive, too powerful. They can't have it. Without any warning.
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I just don't want him to have a nuclear weapon. Well, it's a betrayal, wouldn't you say? What else
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do you call it when you say one thing on the campaign trail? They cannot have a nuclear weapon.
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That was the only thing. The one thing I said you cannot have. And another thing when you get into
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office. You can't let Iran have nuclear weapons.
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Now, I don't want the US to get bogged down in another war in the Middle East. I think many of
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the arguments regarding Iran are bogus, as I've said repeatedly on the show. But it also seems strange
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to blame President Trump for betraying promises he never made to keep us out of a war he didn't launch.
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You would think that after 10 years of fake crises regarding Trump, people would have learned by now
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to take a few deep breaths when the latest panic drops. But no, panicans abound. I'm Michael Knowles.
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Welcome back to the show. Justin Bieber might be placed in a conservatorship. This could be
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Britney Spears all over again. Hold on. I have a lot more pearls of wisdom. First,
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Promo code K-N-O-W-L-E-S. The war in Iran is heating up. There was a clip, this was a pretty
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wild one, of Iran state television yesterday. So they got the lady in the, not quite a burqa,
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what is that called? Is that a niqab? Whatever. It's not full burqa, but it's, you know, it's
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a lot of, it's a lot of cloth. She's on Iran state TV. And as she's broadcasting live,
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Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!
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It just cuts to commercial. You couldn't have scripted that. I mean, that was straight out of
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Hollywood. So this war, if you hadn't noticed already, is not, this is not like previous
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Israeli or American actions against Iran. This is not just taking out a top Iranian general,
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even like we saw from Trump in the first term. This is not just Israel, you know,
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blown up some pagers or something. This war is clearly aimed at regime change. This is a full
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scale war. And so right now I think you've got good cop, bad cop. The good cop is president Trump
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saying, please mullah, mullahs, please Ayatollah, please make a deal to give up your nuclear program
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and we'll let you live. And the Israeli bad cop is saying, nope, we're taking you all out. This is
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not, we're going all the way now. You know, you got Trump on the one hand saying, I gave you 60 days
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to make a deal. Day 61, we're letting the Israelis go in there. Please come. It's not too late. Please
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make a deal. And then the bad cop is really saying, yeah, we're going to blow up your TV stations while
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they're broadcasting. We are not joking. This is not merely saber rattling. And you've got people
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scratching their heads because Trump having established this amazing coalition of people
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who have disparate political views. Trump has every side scratching their heads because the hardest
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war hawks in the country support Trump. Also, the most fervent doves and isolationists also support
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Trump. It's this weird coalition. He's managed to do it. Just as on other issues, you've got the most
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pro-tariff people in the country. You've got the biggest free traders, both supporting Trump.
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You've got Jews supporting Trump. You've got Muslims supporting Trump. You have all sorts of
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people. He's done a great job assembling a coalition that previous Republicans had not been able to
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assemble. And now they're scratching their heads. Is Trump a dove? Is Trump a hawk? Is Trump an
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isolationist? Is Trump a neocon? Is Trump a this? Is Trump? Trump is none of those things. Trump
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is not particularly ideological, which I think is a good thing. As a conservative,
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I try to eschew ideology. I think ideology is modern and lib and bad.
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So when Trump is looking at the Iran issue, I don't think he's considering regime change and the
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end of history and a community of liberal democracies spanning the entire globe. I don't
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think he's saying that. I think he's thinking, as he said on the campaign trail forever,
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we're not going to let Iran get a bomb. That's all he's thinking. He's thinking in a very practical,
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prudential way. And ideologues who are today conveniently forgetting when Trump said for
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many, many years, I think all of those clips I just played were only from the most recent
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presidential campaign, but he's been saying it for a decade. He says, we're not going to let
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Iran get a bomb. We're not going to let Iran get a bomb. We're not going to let Iran get a bomb.
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So is it any surprise that Trump is going in using the military? That said, I don't think he has
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the ideological vision of the neocons of the Bush II administration to say, we're going to remake
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the entire Middle East. We're going to establish liberal democracy there. Because the question,
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just as I've defended Trump on being open to being a little more aggressive in foreign policy,
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if you want to be able to cut deals and negotiate, you need to have a credible threat of violence
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there. That's speak softly and carry a big stick from Teddy Roosevelt, one of President Trump's
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favorite Republicans. While I'm totally defending that as a tactic, we then have to ask for the
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people who are clamoring for regime change. Well, okay, what comes next? What comes next? If you want
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to go all the way, you want to throw out the Ayatollah. I don't like the Ayatollah. That guy's crazy.
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You want to throw out the Mullahs. I don't care for the Mullahs. That's fine.
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What comes next? This is always the question in these regime change wars in the Middle East.
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Do you have a plan for what comes next? Because I don't want the United States occupying Iran for
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the next 20 years. I certainly don't want that. What's the, is the plan we're going to bring back
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the crown prince, Riza Pahlavi? Okay. Is that really going to work? Is that, okay, that's fine. We had a
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good relationship with his dad, with the Shah. So, okay, I guess that's fine. I have no problem with
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that. Is that going to work? Is that, is that really going to work? This is what I thought
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when Bashar Assad was ousted. I said, look, you guys, everyone talks about how terrible Assad was.
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I don't know that we got this like ISIS lunatic who just came in and took over Syria. Is that better?
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What can, I'm open-minded. Just tell me what's the plan. That I think is what's on a lot of
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Americans' minds. It's not that Americans have some love for, I think most Americans at least don't
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have some love for the Ayatollah. It's not that most Americans are reflexively anti-Israel. Most
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Americans are actually, are supportive of the state of Israel. But Americans have a totally
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legitimate trepidation about interfering in the Middle East because of the experience of being
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bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan for, for years and decades. So what's the plan? That's the
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question for the, for the hardcore regime change hawks. What is the plan? Because there's a lot of war
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propaganda. There's a lot of propaganda coming out of the Iranian side, which is backed up by Russia
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and China and other people that we don't generally get along with. And there's, there's propaganda
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coming out of our side and certainly out of the state of Israel. Bibi Netanyahu went on ABC News
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yesterday and I, I felt overplayed his hand a little bit. It's Tel Aviv tomorrow. It's New York.
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I look, I understand America first. I don't understand America dead. That's what these people want.
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They chant death to America. So we're doing something that is in the service of mankind,
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of humanity, and it's a battle of good against evil. America does, should, and does stand with
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the good. That's what President Trump, Trump is doing. And I deeply appreciate his support.
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Okay. All right. Laying it on a little thick, Bibi. Okay. I understand America first. I don't
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understand America dead. America dead. America, that's it. If we don't go in now
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and go all in on your regime change war in Iran, America is going to be dead.
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What's your evidence for that? Well, Iran doesn't like America and is going to get a nuclear bomb.
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First of all, we've been hearing Iran is on the cusp of a nuclear bomb for 45 years now.
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And second of all, Iran is pursuing a nuclear bomb. There's no question about that. But even
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Netanyahu himself has said it. Iran is not days or weeks away from a nuclear bomb. Iran is probably
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a year away for a nuclear bomb or maybe more. But even beyond that, there are plenty of countries
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who hate us who have nuclear bombs. Pakistan. Pakistan harbored Osama bin Laden for 10 years.
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North Korea. Definitely saber rattles with the United States. North Korea is a nuclear bomb.
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So I don't want a nuclear Iran. I want to take practical, prudent steps to stop Iran from having
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a nuclear weapon, basically entirely with Trump on that part of the issue. But don't tell me,
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come on, don't try to fool me, okay? Don't treat me like I'm a dummy. Iran poses an existential threat
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to the state of Israel. I get why the state of Israel is going in. Iran does not pose an immediate
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existential threat to the United States. It just doesn't. Iran wants regional dominance.
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So there are plenty of strategic reasons why the US doesn't want that to happen or why Saudi Arabia
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doesn't want that to happen or why even Qatar doesn't want that to happen or why Bahrain doesn't
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want that to happen or why Turkey doesn't want that to happen. I get all that. Certainly why Israel
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doesn't want that to happen. But in times of war, the propaganda comes on real, real thick.
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And you're getting it from both sides in this war. So you're getting it certainly from the regime
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change side. If we don't go in right now, the whole world is going to end because Iran has a
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nuclear weapon. It's going to blow up the whole United States. Not quite. And then on the flip
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side, if the United States, the global hegemon in any way flexes its muscle or in any way helps to
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guide the affairs of the Middle East, then we're going to get bogged down in a forever war that goes
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on for five centuries. Also not quite there. Also not quite there. And this is why it's not just
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carrying water for the admin. This is why I have consistently supported President Trump since
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2016. While many people were Johnny come lately or they supported him, they didn't support him,
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then they did support him, then they didn't support him. You've seen a lot of that on the
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American right. But one of my absolute favorite things about Trump as a political figure is that
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he is not particularly ideological. And I think there's a deep philosophical basis for not being
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all that ideological. Michael Oakeshaw, one of my favorite, more recent political philosophers,
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has this line. He says, ideology is the formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational
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truth contained in the tradition. What a wordy, highfalutin academic definition of ideology,
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but it's really good. It's the formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational
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truth contained in the tradition. You can't possibly sum up society in that kind of way. But that's how
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the modern people all want to do. They want to have five bullet points on the back of a napkin. No.
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Now, Trump is a little more based on his gut. Trump is a little more based on history than
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ideology. Trump is very simple. We don't want to go remake the entire world. That way lies madness.
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But we don't want our enemies to get nuclear weapons. So we're going to have a negotiated
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approach. And I think that's what it is. There are ideologues who want full-on regime change
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and want to sprout up Madisonian democracy in Persia. Probably not going to happen.
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And there are some who want a good deal that protects the interests of the United States and
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allows for stability in the region. That's different. Some people want revolution there.
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Some people want stability. America is the global hegemon, the global empire. I think
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it is in our interest to establish stability. And however we're going to get that done,
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that I think is what Trump is going to pursue. Hold on. Just one second, please. Hold on.
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the greatest threat to the US dollar's dominance in over 80 years. On July 6th, BRICS nations,
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Russia, China, India, Iran, and many more are expected to announce the launch of a new
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international super currency fully backed by gold or other commodities. This is part of their
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long-term plan to supplant the US and the dollar as cornerstones of the global financial system.
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We'll see how the Iran part of that works out. I'm a little skeptical that they're going to be
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Claim your free info kit from Birch Gold. So what kind of negotiation are we going to get?
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Have you heard any signals or seen any messages from intermediaries that Iran wishes to de-escalate
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the conflict? Yeah. What have you heard? What have you heard from the Iranians?
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They'd like to talk, but they should have done that before. I had 60 days and they had 60 days and
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on the 61st day, I said, we don't have a deal. They have to make a deal. And it's painful for both
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parties, but I'd say Iran is not winning this war and they should talk and they should talk
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immediately before it's too late. This, for people who doubt Trump's dexterity when it comes
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to negotiating, some people say, oh, it's all just a TV show. It was all based on that show,
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The Apprentice. He's now really a great deal maker. I don't know. I think the past four or five
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days would suggest otherwise. Trump is willing to carry through on threats to bring people to
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the negotiating table. For some, for the real hardcore war hawks, the negotiations were always
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just a pretext for regime change. That was always a facade covering up the true aims, which was
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regime change. I don't think that's true of Trump. I think Trump really wants a deal.
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And Trump is willing to kill people who are threatening security and America's interests
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if they're not going to make a deal. This is what Trump said yesterday or two days ago.
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He said, I want a deal. Iran couldn't get to a deal. Now all the people I was negotiating with
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are dead. Is anyone else going to come make a deal with me? Because I'd like to make a deal.
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I don't want more people to die, but I'm quite serious. As he was so consistent about for 10 years
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now, I'm not going to let Iran get a bomb. Iran needs to prove to me that they're not going to
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develop a bomb. They at least need to agree to it in principle. And if they're not going to,
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I'm going to kill all of you. Because this is a priority for me, Donald Trump, and I'm the guy
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who just got elected with the popular buff. So deal with it. Now, one last point on ideology and the
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Iran conflict before we move on to the really important issues like Pride Night at Dodger Stadium.
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I think ideologues on both sides of the Iran conflict are vastly overestimating the effect
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of America's potential, even minor involvement in the conflict on Trump's approval ratings.
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I know this is the least popular position among the political nerds and fanatics on Twitter,
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but I'm right. Which is, there are people saying, if Donald Trump doesn't send in the entire US
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military right now, this will destroy his legacy because he won't have stopped Iran's weapon and
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whatever. He had the chance to overthrow the Mullahs. Yeah, okay, that's one side.
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Then the other side says, if Donald Trump in any way is commander in chief, directs the US military
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against America's enemies in the Middle East, if Donald Trump does that, he'll have destroyed the
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whole MAGA coalition, he'll have betrayed every promise, every promise he ever made. Give me a
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break. He can't get us involved in the Middle East. You know, this is the guy who dropped the
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Moab in his first term, right? You know, this is the guy who took out Iran's top general in his first
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term, right? You know, this is the guy that destroyed ISIS in his first term. You remember him?
00:19:16.600
This is the guy who campaigned on, I don't want to get us bogged down in the Middle East, but I'm not
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going to let Iran have a bomb. And the Mullahs can keep ruling, but they can't cross America's red lines.
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It's that guy. These ideologues on both sides continue to misunderstand Trump and MAGA because
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they think that Trump and his movement, and it's his movement. It's not anyone else's movement.
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It's not the movement of his strategists. It's not the movement of his staff. It's not the movement
00:19:43.560
of his pundits and activists and supporters. It's his movement. He did it. And everyone wants to claim
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credit for it, but he did it. No one else. Trump is not some egghead political theorist. He's just
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not that, which is a good thing. Now you're going to have ideologues on both sides say,
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well, he needs to be more ideologically pure. No, he doesn't. Nerds, shut up. He doesn't.
00:20:10.740
The brilliance of the coalition, the only way he could assemble that coalition is by not being
00:20:16.580
ideologically pure. By being more practical and prudential, by recognizing that politics is the
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art of inclusion, the art of the possible, the art of the second best, all the things that we've heard
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from American politicians in recent years going all the way back to Clausewitz, okay?
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He's able to assemble this coalition of people who have some practical interests in common through
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appeals to important issues and through the magnetism of his own charisma.
00:20:47.180
He was able to do that. And that's what he's doing now. If you want to understand Trump's agenda,
00:20:52.580
focus less on nerdy political ideologies and theories and focus more on what he said on the
00:20:58.420
Joe Rogan show, which is that the guy weaves. He just kind of weaves. One day you think he's the
00:21:03.000
biggest hawk in the world. One day you think he's the biggest isolationist in the world. That's how he
00:21:06.700
operates, okay? If that's too much for you, go pick a cookie-cutter ideological candidate and lose
00:21:11.840
elections because that's not what Trump does. I have many more pearls of wisdom to pass along to
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K-N-O-W-L-E-S, good ranchers, American meat delivered. Moving on to really, really important
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issues. L.A. Dodgers just had pride night. Now, I'm not a huge Dodger fan. You know, I'm
00:22:44.080
a Yankee fan. And the Dodgers and the Yankees have had something of a rivalry going back many
00:22:48.620
decades now. In fact, my grandfather was at the World Series game where Don Larson pitched
00:22:52.400
the perfect game against the Dodgers, the only perfect game ever in World Series history.
00:22:55.560
Anyway, I wasn't surprised that the L.A. Dodgers had a pride night and they put the rainbow flag
00:23:02.140
on their hat. It's the L.A. symbol, but L.A. was in rainbow colors, not just the regular blue
00:23:09.860
and white. So, you know, not surprised. However, got to give credit to a Dodger here, Clayton
00:23:16.640
Kershaw. Kershaw wore the hat. Look, he's a member of the team. He's got to wear the hat.
00:23:24.340
If you're on a team, sometimes you've got to go along with the team and you've got to
00:23:29.280
follow the leader, even if that contradicts your own individual will. I know we're all
00:23:33.860
radical individualists these days and we're fair weather fans and we only go along with
00:23:37.820
the team so long as they agree with us on every single thing. But then the minute that
00:23:41.620
they in any way disagree, we all become radical individuals. Well, Kershaw, look, he's going
00:23:47.460
to go along with his team. But he had a little twist. He put on the gay hat, but then right
00:23:53.520
next to the rainbow, he wrote Genesis 9, 12 through 16. I love it. I love it so much.
00:24:02.780
That is, he said, I'll wear the rainbow, but I'm going to wear the rainbow to symbolize
00:24:08.020
its original meaning. The meaning that we have understood it to have for our whole civilization,
00:24:13.320
the meaning that it ought to reflect and that at a deep level, it does reflect. Namely,
00:24:19.280
that God will never again destroy the world in a flood. That's what in the book of Genesis,
00:24:23.220
that's what when God shows the rainbow, he said, that's what it's supposed to symbolize.
00:24:27.500
That God will never again destroy the world in a flood because the imagination of man's heart
00:24:30.640
is evil from his youth. Now, in modern days, the rainbow is supposed to symbolize
00:24:36.260
vice and self-indulgence. But Kershaw says, no, I'll wear the symbol, but I'm going to wear it to
00:24:52.100
mean what it really symbolizes. It's a great way to handle Pride Night. This is a time to really focus
00:24:59.160
in all of our political issues on how to balance competing goods. The goods of security on the one
00:25:09.500
hand, the goods of freedom and independence on the other. That's what we're dealing with in some
00:25:17.020
of these global conflicts, not just Iran, but also Ukraine and elsewhere. With Pride Night,
00:25:23.120
Kershaw has got to deal with the good of being part of the team, the strength of the team,
00:25:27.340
but also the good of the moral order, not violating the moral order, just to go along
00:25:33.800
with the mob, which would be lunacy. How do you do that? He found a way to do it. I love it. That's
00:25:38.220
very practical, very prudential. Probably the Dodgers, the LGBT gay stopo running the LA Dodgers,
00:25:45.940
they probably wish he hadn't worn the hat at all because it calls more attention to the inanity
00:25:50.820
and viciousness of the pride symbols. Can you just not? No, sorry. You asked me to wear the rainbow,
00:25:56.060
I'm wearing the rainbow. You know what it means? Goes back to the book of Genesis. Now let me tell
00:26:01.300
you about the book of Leviticus. No, no, don't tell us about the book of Leviticus, please. Oh yeah,
00:26:04.520
it's about chapter 18, you know that one. No, no, no, please. Speaking of June festivals,
00:26:10.440
the New York Times, I meant to get to this yesterday, but I have to get to it before we
00:26:14.660
moved too far past Father's Day. The New York Times celebrated Father's Day in the most
00:26:19.980
typical way, by running a column from some angry liberal woman attacking her father. I'm not going
00:26:28.420
to read you the whole thing, though it's a short little essay and it's worth reading because of
00:26:33.360
how awful it is. Here's just a little bit. This is how it opens. What my dad gave me,
00:26:39.820
my father gave me his freckly skin and I like him. I had melanoma and oh, and like him, not I like him,
00:26:50.280
she doesn't like him, and like him, I had melanoma. He gave me asthma and protruding elbows that are
00:26:54.600
identical to his. He gave me reddish hair that's kindly reluctant to go gray. He gave me an aversion
00:26:59.340
to drinking by not having one himself. I hate you, dad. You're such an alcoholic. I hate you. You're
00:27:05.400
drunk. He did not give me the seat next to him at the San Diego Chargers game. He had season tickets
00:27:10.500
when I was a kid, but I only found out about it years later. He didn't even take me to that game
00:27:13.300
that I didn't want to go to. He gave me the ability to talk to anyone because I couldn't stand the
00:27:17.280
awkward silences he provided. He gave me really nice houses to grow up in, but we moved a lot for
00:27:23.700
his work and things never seemed to be going well, so he gave me financial anxiety too. Yeah, I mean,
00:27:28.180
he provided me all the material things I needed and he worked really hard, but he's still a loser and he
00:27:33.680
wasn't that good at his job. Even though, I mean, he did well in his career, but he's a loser. He's
00:27:38.120
a complete loser. I hate him. And I had financial anxiety because we were rich, but not as rich as I
00:27:44.180
wanted to be. He gave me tools to withstand a sexist world. He would say, Hillary looks ugly in
00:27:49.320
her pantsuits and her voice. Women don't belong on the golf course. Just pause here. All true.
00:27:55.200
All true. Find me the lie in any of those statements. This was my exposure therapy. He gave it generously.
00:27:59.580
He didn't give me a response when I was little and watching a baseball game on TV with him.
00:28:05.340
Couldn't be bothered to explain my petulant, incessant questions.
00:28:09.820
That's what I took. These are the things I took from him. His Fox News when I set up his cable. Yeah,
00:28:14.820
my dad asked me to help him and I took away his favorite TV channel.
00:28:19.120
Goes on and on and on. And then you find out, this is a real killer, but halfway through the column,
00:28:24.940
you find out, her dad is still alive. It's not even like he's dead and she's attacking him. He's
00:28:31.540
still alive. And apparently really likes her and she goes on to it. She stuck him in a nursing home
00:28:37.680
and then she goes to visit him. And she says, she admits, like, he's always so grateful when I visit
00:28:42.020
him and it's so sweet and he really likes me, you know, but I hate him. And you look through
00:28:48.940
everything this guy supposedly did. And his great crime was being a hardworking
00:28:54.860
father who supported his family, but was like kind of conservative. I don't even mean like
00:29:01.020
conservative, conservative. Okay. I'm not, I'm not talking like radical, right? I don't,
00:29:05.220
the guy wasn't reading Giovanni Gentile essays. He watched Fox News and read the Wall Street Journal.
00:29:09.540
That's his great sin. And he didn't take his daughter to sports games that she almost certainly
00:29:16.180
did not want to go to. She admits later, she doesn't even have any love of sports. She was
00:29:20.060
just complaining that he didn't take her to a game she didn't want to go to. And he, what?
00:29:26.300
And he made a lot of money, but not as much as she wanted. And then she stuck him in a home.
00:29:35.320
But, and the whole point is that she's a good daughter for forgiving him for the crimes that
00:29:39.480
he didn't commit against her. All of liberalism, and I say this without exaggeration and probably
00:29:48.360
without exception, all of liberalism comes down to hating your dad. That's really what it's about.
00:29:55.660
It comes down to hating your dad at, at a physical, temporal level, like your literal dad,
00:30:02.760
like your, you know, your immediate biological dad, or at the extreme, but to hating God.
00:30:09.560
Your father. Because liberalism ultimately is a turn away from classical philosophy,
00:30:19.040
which says we're going to understand the world. And modern philosophy, as Marx says in the thesis
00:30:23.380
on Feuerbach, you know, modern philosophy is about changing the world, not about understanding the
00:30:27.760
world. It turns you away from obedience, recognizing hierarchies, and following, you know, being obedient
00:30:35.840
to hierarchy and order toward a radical leveling so that we can all do what we want. Turning away from
00:30:42.500
the family is the basic building block of society toward the individual is the building block of
00:30:46.480
society. And ultimately turning away from worshiping God and trying to serve him in this world and
00:30:52.500
trying to unite your will to the will of God so that there's no difference between what you want for
00:30:58.500
yourself and what God wants for you. Turning away from that, which is the basis of ethics and morality,
00:31:05.660
turning away from that toward a self-deification. It says that you are God. There's no gods,
00:31:11.020
there's no kings, there's no only men, and we can do whatever we want.
00:31:13.720
All of liberalism comes down to hating your dad. And that's true in the loftiest ways, you know,
00:31:19.980
the most abstract philosophical ways. And it's also true that people who write for the New York
00:31:24.260
Times hate their dads. Okay. And that's really sad. You really feel bad for this father who clearly
00:31:30.380
gave a lot to this ungrateful woman, this just witchy little woman. And then she decides to try to
00:31:37.880
humiliate him in the pages of the New York Times. The only good thing you can say for her father here
00:31:42.820
is at least no one reads the New York Times. At least he doesn't have to suffer that indignity.
00:31:48.920
And another great thing you can say about the father is he ostensibly doesn't read it either,
00:31:53.460
though he might because he clearly loves his daughter, even though she doesn't like him.
00:31:57.360
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00:32:23.880
My favorite comment yesterday is from the Drummer's Workshop, Norm's Music. It says,
00:32:27.540
most people don't get it. It's Jimmy Carter's fault. Yes. It's the thing. They think these issues
00:32:32.640
just come out of nowhere, especially these geopolitical issues, Ukraine, Russia war,
00:32:37.680
Taiwan, which they'll see, or the Iran issue. This Iran issue has been festering since 1979
00:32:44.160
when Jimmy Carter stupidly let our ally the Shaw fall. Same with the Panama Canal issue.
00:32:51.020
President Trump wants us to get back to Panama Canal. That was also Jimmy Carter's fault.
00:32:54.160
A lot of these issues, decades in the making because of the fecklessness of mostly liberal
00:32:59.740
politicians. All right. Speaking of paternal care, Justin Bieber might be placed in a conservatorship.
00:33:09.360
So do we have, yeah, here we go. This is according to The Sun, so you know it's true,
00:33:14.440
the entertainment editor there. Justin Bieber could be placed in a conservatorship by Haley
00:33:18.920
if she can prove three points to court amid his bizarre behavior. Okay, so I don't know. I haven't
00:33:27.380
followed this that closely because I don't follow celebrity gossip all that closely, but apparently
00:33:32.020
Justin Bieber has been looking a little rough lately and behaving in erratic ways, and so there's some
00:33:36.660
rumor that he might be placed in a conservatorship, like happened to Britney Spears, like happens to
00:33:41.560
many people who are in pop music and who become super rich and famous and they go off the rails.
00:33:47.760
At the time that Britney's conservatorship was dominating the news, there were people
00:33:52.500
who said, we need to free Britney. She's being controlled by her dad, who's the conservator,
00:33:58.860
and he's controlling her finances and even her freedom of movement, and we need to free Britney,
00:34:03.740
and that reflected a misunderstanding of what freedom is. But ultimately, Britney was freed,
00:34:09.620
and now she seems to be trapped in a prison of her own madness, and she posts videos dancing with
00:34:14.200
knives and behaving in an erratic way. Maybe the same thing will happen to Bieber here. This is totally
00:34:20.180
reflective of our politics right now. When you are sane, when you are sane and disciplined, freedom
00:34:28.960
is in your hands. When you are insane and self-indulgent, freedom needs to be in someone else's hands.
00:34:37.220
That's just how it works. And our founding fathers wrote about this in the framers of our constitution,
00:34:42.480
and they wrote about the nature of freedom, that when you are a disciplined person, when you subject
00:34:47.260
your appetites to your rational will, when you have practiced good habits, when you can be trusted
00:34:54.400
on your own. You know, character is what you do when you think no one's watching. When you are that
00:35:00.860
kind of person, then freedom is really in your hands, and you don't need a heavy government to enforce it,
00:35:08.860
and you don't even need particularly heavy civic institutions. However, when you're undisciplined,
00:35:17.640
when you're ignorant, when you're undisciplined, when you're given to vice, when you're addicted to
00:35:21.620
things, when you're self-indulgent, the way to make you free is actually not to place freedom in
00:35:29.780
your hands. The way to make you free is to place control of you in someone else's hands,
00:35:35.820
someone else who can encourage you to get your act together, and can teach you things, and can help
00:35:42.760
you to practice the habits of discipline that can perhaps one day allow you to have freedom in your
00:35:47.120
own hands again. But that's it. Because freedom, as we've mentioned on the show a lot before,
00:35:52.820
is not just neutrality and choosing. It is willing. It's how we will, and how we will stuff, you know,
00:36:00.540
I will that I'll drink this leftist-year's tumbler. I will that I'll light this delicious Michael
00:36:05.340
Knowles candle. I don't, you know, the willing is predicated on knowledge. So that's what freedom is.
00:36:12.320
In the pithy phrase of Lord Acton, it's to do what we ought, the right to do what we ought,
00:36:17.080
not the ability to choose, you know, what we wish. So you, Justin Bieber can be free in a sort of way,
00:36:25.680
if he's in a conservatorship, maybe. Britney Spears, when she was in a conservatorship,
00:36:28.820
was more free than she is today when she's out of the conservatorship. Because today she's
00:36:33.920
enslaved by all these vices and madness. That's it. It's not, there's no, there's no shortcut out
00:36:40.400
of that. Liberalism tries to find a shortcut to that. Liberalism tries to have its cake and eat it
00:36:43.860
too. Liberalism says, well, hold on, I don't want any external constraints, and I don't want any
00:36:47.560
internal constraints. And I'm just going to be totally self-indulgent. I'm going to make myself
00:36:51.180
a god, and I'm going to remake the whole world. And I'm going to go insane, ultimately. And I'm not
00:36:57.420
going to be free because I'm going to become a slave to all of these passions and vices that
00:37:00.280
are totally irrational. Sorry, no shortcut, man. Now, speaking of show business, Katy Perry
00:37:06.840
is attacking Trump on another issue that he's catching flag for, the deportations.
00:37:14.880
Because she says that illegal aliens are being hunted like criminals
00:37:25.680
Los Angeles has lived under three flags, Spain, Mexico, and the United States. That land has seen
00:37:31.600
borders shift, power change hands, and yet the people, especially the brown and indigenous people,
00:37:35.520
have always been there. Eh, I don't know about that. You know, we did deport, what, like a million
00:37:41.820
people or something during Operation Wetback in the 1950s. The people have moved around a little bit.
00:37:48.300
And then when the Spanish came and met the indigenous, that created, that actually created
00:37:52.460
a new kind of race of people, the Hispanics, Latinos. Just not, not fully indigenous, not fully
00:37:58.680
European, not, you know, you can't, you can't just take the one and not the other. Anyway, she goes on.
00:38:04.540
Indigenous people have always been there, planting roots, building lives, raising families. And now in
00:38:09.180
2025, the descendants of those same communities are being hunted like criminals in their own ancestral
00:38:14.240
home. Wow. Wow, man. This presumes a lot about ancestral homes. First of all, it means that
00:38:22.900
someone who is part indigenous and part white is truly indigenous and not at all white. And the
00:38:28.320
good guys are the indigenous and the bad guys are the white guys from Spain, which doesn't, but you're,
00:38:32.760
the people are actually both. Second, she acknowledges that borders of sovereignty, territory has changed
00:38:40.320
hands. But then she refuses to accept the political consequences of that. Third, she's playing a little
00:38:47.520
loose with the phrase ancestral home. You know what my ancestral home is? You might be tempted to say
00:38:53.600
merry old England. You might be tempted to say the Mezzogiorno, Sicily or Calabria. But no,
00:38:59.140
my ancestral home really is probably Iraq. Isn't it? Isn't that true of all of us? All of us
00:39:06.220
white people? Because it doesn't, don't we come from Mesopotamia, from the Levant? So what if I just
00:39:13.900
roll up to Iraq and I start demanding stuff? I say, hey, this is my ancestral home. Hey, get out of the
00:39:19.840
way, you guys wearing towels and stuff. Get out of here. This is my place. Plant the American flag there,
00:39:26.020
start lighting a Mayflower cigar. Maybe, maybe pour a nice glass of scotch. Hey, I know you modern
00:39:31.760
inhabitants don't believe in drinking scotch, but listen, this is my ancestral home. How would that
00:39:37.080
go? I don't think that would go very well. None of these arguments really mean much of anything
00:39:43.780
that you're hearing from the left, other than America always has to be bad. At the national level,
00:39:51.900
America always has to be bad. At the racial level, white people always have to be bad.
00:39:57.360
At the, I don't know, political, philosophical level, the native, truly native populations always
00:40:04.160
have to be bad. And the migrants and those always have to be good. That's just all it is. So it's,
00:40:09.640
what the left is advancing here is conclusions in search of arguments. And they'll change the
00:40:15.960
arguments depending on the day. Just like, I mean, you think about LGBT. The conclusion is we need
00:40:23.200
to upend traditional sexual morality. The argument used to be there are men and there are women and
00:40:28.820
some men like men and some women like women. And it's how you're born. You're born that way.
00:40:33.980
And that's just how it is. And your sexual orientation is immutable. And that's why we need
00:40:37.320
to upend traditional sexual morality. And then five seconds later, they said, also sexual orientation
00:40:43.440
is not immutable. Sex is not even immutable. There aren't really men and there aren't really women.
00:40:48.820
And some men might like men, but they also might like women or women might like men or the women
00:40:54.720
might become men and the men might become women. And anyway, none of the previous principles about
00:40:59.080
sex we told you were true, but the conclusion is we need to upend traditional sexual morality.
00:41:02.620
That's it. That's all the left plays with. Because for the left, politics is not a matter of
00:41:08.660
reasoned debate or progression from first principles in an orderly way. It's just people
00:41:14.560
clubbing each over the head with sticks. And so you're going to, they've come to their conclusion.
00:41:21.620
They made up their mind and they're going to find out any way to try to defend it. Okay.
00:41:27.240
Which brings us back, since we're talking about Iraq and unreasonable politics, this brings us back
00:41:31.320
to the Middle East. Trump seems quite offended by some of the debate going on on the right.
00:41:39.840
In fact, he's even going after Tucker, who's been a strong Trump defender. Actually,
00:41:46.980
like a lot of people on the right, Tucker has been very pro-Trump and he's spoken at Trump rallies.
00:41:51.820
He's also expressed a lot of skepticism of Trump or hostility, but that's true of a lot of people on
00:41:57.180
the right. That's not just Tucker. But now they seem to be at a tough point in their relationship.
00:42:00.840
Trump tweets out, somebody please explain to Kuki Tucker Carlson that, that Iran cannot have a
00:42:06.040
nuclear weapon. America first means many great things, including the fact that Iran cannot have
00:42:10.780
a nuclear weapon, make America great again. Trump wants to emphasize this point, which in his defense,
00:42:18.480
he made on the campaign trail all the time. And a lot of people just didn't want to hear it.
00:42:23.260
And I, I, I love Tucker and I like a lot of the figures, many of whom are skeptical of Trump right
00:42:28.900
now. And, uh, you know, I, I even recognize that as we're talking about prudence and practicality
00:42:34.260
in foreign policy, we need to be a little circumspect and we need to temper expectations
00:42:39.200
and we need to make sure that we know exactly what we're doing when we get involved in places
00:42:42.900
around the world. But all of that said, this is Trump's movement. He assembled the coalition.
00:42:50.140
He got elected. He won the popular vote. Doesn't mean we don't ask questions. Doesn't mean we don't
00:42:56.120
advocate certain sides, but I think it does mean that we should not be turning on Trump at the drop
00:43:01.160
of a hat as some people have been inclined to do for 10 years. All the walls are closing in. Now I'm
00:43:07.240
done with Trump. Now I regret all my support now, now, now. And the reason is not that we blindly
00:43:12.080
follow anyone. We don't put our trust in princes. It's just that I think Trump has a lot of credibility,
00:43:17.580
especially on foreign policy. Trump is probably the best foreign policy president of my lifetime.
00:43:23.320
George H.W. Bush, I was very little when George H.W. Bush was president. He was pretty good,
00:43:27.540
but Trump, Trump might be better. He's certainly better than Clinton and Bush too and Obama and
00:43:32.600
Biden. And so he's done very, very well on foreign policy. He's done very well on domestic policy for
00:43:38.480
that matter too. And I just think he's kind of earned the right to have, have his supporters at least
00:43:44.700
take a few breaths for a few days and just like let him cook a little bit and see how things shake
00:43:49.300
out. Because the things they're accusing him of right now have not actually come to pass.
00:43:54.360
So maybe we don't, let's not be like, you know, Wile E. Coyote here with the Roadrunner and constantly
00:43:59.560
falling into all of these traps, which many ideologues around the country are trying to lay
00:44:05.860
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