The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1802 - I'm Officially The First Podcaster To Attend A Cabinet Meeting

00:00:00.000 Back to school is chaos. The schedule's packed, the fridge is empty, and dinner sneaks up fast.

00:00:04.860 That's why Good Ranchers is making it simple. For a limited time, get six free bags of their

00:00:08.780 seed oil-free chicken nuggets when you subscribe with Code Wire. No more mystery meat nuggets.

00:00:13.260 These are whole cuts of American chicken, gluten-free, no added sugar, and raised with

00:00:17.220 values you can trust. Head over to goodranchers.com now and use Code Wire. This deal won't last long.

00:00:22.740 These are questions that take cultures thousands of years to answer. During Answer the Call,

00:00:28.400 I take questions from people just like you about their problems, opportunities, challenges,

00:00:33.600 or when they simply need advice. How do I balance all of this grief, responsibility?

00:00:38.460 How do you repair this kind of damage? My daughter, Michaela, guides the conversations

00:00:43.220 as we hopefully help people navigate their lives. Everyone has their own destiny. Everyone.

00:00:49.120 I am at the White House, and it has been an historic day. It's been historic on two levels. One,

00:01:02.580 I have learned, and I am deeply honored to learn, that I am the first podcaster ever invited to attend

00:01:08.240 a cabinet meeting. So we'll get into that because of the second historic fact of the day, namely,

00:01:14.080 that it was the longest cabinet meeting in the history of the presidency. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the

00:01:20.960 Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:21.640 Welcome back to the show. I have so much to tell you. I'm here at the White House. Now, I can sort of

00:01:49.320 say I'm in the Oval Office right now. I'm not in the real Oval Office, but I'm in the fake Oval Office

00:01:54.440 that they built for Joe Biden. They've taken down some of the... That's a different background now.

00:01:58.700 But this is it. This was the fake Joe Biden Oval Office. So I'm at least as much the president of

00:02:03.560 the United States as Joe Biden was, which I suppose is sort of damning with faint praise. We will get

00:02:08.300 to everything the president talked to. He talked about everything from war to Taylor Swift and Travis

00:02:13.680 Kelsey. That's probably the biggest news, frankly. First, though, I want to tell you about Armra.

00:02:20.160 Go to armra.com slash Knowles. We are living in a world that our bodies were not exactly built for.

00:02:26.840 EMFs, artificial light, endocrine disruptors, chronic stress, fake Oval Offices built by Joe Biden.

00:02:33.720 These modern threats are disrupting our cellular, signaling damaging our gut health and accelerating

00:02:38.860 aging from the inside out. What if there were a way to revive your body's natural defenses?

00:02:45.040 Armra colostrum is nature's first whole food packed with over 400 bioactive nutrients that

00:02:49.200 work at the cellular level to reactivate your body's innate capacity to regenerate and thrive.

00:02:54.140 Unlike probiotics that only address one part of your gut wall, Armra colostrum fortifies your

00:02:58.040 entire gut wall system. It strengthens immune barriers throughout your mouth, sinuses, lungs,

00:03:02.220 gut, and reproductive tract while optimizing your microbiome and combating bloating. What more

00:03:06.820 could you ask for? Plus, it ignites your metabolism by guarding against toxins that

00:03:10.800 drive inflammation and slow you down. Are you ready to claim your health back? Well, we've

00:03:16.720 worked out a special offer for my audience. Receive 30% off your first subscription order.

00:03:20.840 Go to armra.com slash Knowles. That is armra.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, or enter Knowles

00:03:27.340 to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A dot com slash K-N-O-W-L-E-S.

00:03:34.180 Do it, N-O-W. Where to begin? Where to begin? All anyone wants to talk about is Taylor Swift

00:03:40.560 and Travis Kelsey. And the president weighed in on that as well. But we should get to slightly

00:03:46.340 weightier matters first. Because as I was flying out to D.C., the president was making a lot of waves

00:03:53.020 in part over his decision now to accept 600,000 students from China. So do you remember back in

00:04:02.500 May, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who I was going to interview, but then this cabinet

00:04:06.980 meeting went on for about four hours and he had other things that he had to do. Back in May, the

00:04:11.460 Secretary of State came out and he said that the United States was going to start revoking visas

00:04:16.440 for Chinese students. We just take too many Chinese students in. We're going to get rid of it. This is 1.00

00:04:21.740 going to be part of a broader immigration restriction policy and also not a decoupling from China, but

00:04:27.920 getting a little bit more intentional about our relationship with China. Anyway, fast forward to

00:04:31.920 two days ago and the president comes out and sends Howard Lutnick out, his Commerce Secretary, onto

00:04:38.460 cable news to say that the U.S. is going to take 600,000 Chinese students. When asked about the flip

00:04:45.800 at the cabinet meeting, here's what the president had to say.

00:04:48.680 Yesterday, you said you want to allow 600,000 Chinese students to study in the United States.

00:04:54.440 Could you and the Secretary clarify what is the policy on Chinese students in the United States?

00:05:00.240 Well, we think we're, you know, look, we're getting along very well with China and I'm getting

00:05:05.800 along very well with President Xi. I think it's very insulting to say your students can't come here

00:05:11.440 because they'll go out and they'll start building schools and they'll be able to survive it. But I

00:05:17.020 like that their students come here. I like that other country students come here. And you know what

00:05:22.000 would happen? If they didn't, our college system would go to hell very quickly. You'd have, and it

00:05:27.040 wouldn't be the top colleges. It would be colleges that struggle on the bottom. And you take out 300,000

00:05:34.600 or 600,000 students out of the system. I like having, and I told this to President Xi, that we're honored

00:05:41.840 to have their students here. Now, with that, we check and we're careful and we see who's there. And Marco

00:05:47.700 wants that. We spoke, we're in the same position, but we have a tremendous college system, the best

00:05:53.100 in the world. Nobody even close. That's why China sends them here. From the beginning, I have assumed 0.54

00:06:00.660 that most everything Trump says is part of a negotiation. Obviously, what the Chinese students

00:06:10.540 issue is about is about a trade deal with China. That's, it's the whole thing. That's what a lot

00:06:17.780 of the tariffs are about. That's what a lot of America now starting to kickstart some manufacturing

00:06:23.500 again is about. That's what the student issue is about. That's what the Confucius Institutes are about.

00:06:30.680 That's, it's all kind of a negotiation. This is why when President Trump says things, you know,

00:06:38.000 he'll say, I'm going to end the war on day one or something. I don't take that literally. He

00:06:41.880 obviously doesn't mean that literally. He's speaking like a New Yorker and he's speaking

00:06:45.500 like a wheeler and dealer and everything's a negotiation. And this really is difficult for

00:06:50.160 ideologues to understand because for ideologues and for people who view politics in a strictly

00:06:55.480 academic abstract way, they just think it's all about five bullet points on the back of a napkin

00:07:01.000 when everything is this act of negotiation. This is why, and actually this is another topic

00:07:06.200 Trump touched on, that when it comes to the war in Ukraine, the libs and the squishes in

00:07:10.780 the Republican Party are constantly going off about how Trump is too nice to Putin.

00:07:16.400 Trump is too, and Trump actually at the cabinet meeting, he said, look, I have a very good

00:07:19.820 relationship with President Putin. In fact, here he is describing just that.

00:07:24.200 I had a very good relationship with President Putin. Very, very good. That's a positive thing again.

00:07:30.600 And I think I'm probably the only, Steve Witkoff would tell you I'm the only one that can solve it.

00:07:34.760 I don't know. You've told me that a few times, unless he was saying that just to build up my

00:07:38.580 ego, but it's not really. I have no ego when it comes to this stuff. I just want to see yourself.

00:07:43.580 Thousands of young people, mostly young people are dying every single week. If I can save that

00:07:49.820 by doing sanctions or by just being me or by using a very strong tariff system that's very costly to

00:07:59.680 Russia or Ukraine or whoever we have, you know, but I stopped seven wars.

00:08:05.440 George W. Bush tried to have a good relationship with Putin. It didn't work. Then he gets really,

00:08:10.580 really tough. And where did really, really tough, harsh rhetoric get us?

00:08:15.200 Putin invaded Georgia. Then Barack Obama, he was really, well, he tried to be nice. He tried to do

00:08:20.900 this stupid Russian reset where Hillary Clinton shows up to the foreign minister of Russia, 0.99

00:08:25.420 and it misspells the word reset in Russian. They couldn't fact check or spell check one word, 1.00

00:08:30.560 and that didn't work. So then you have Barack Obama talking real tough. He's a real tough talker. And

00:08:36.740 where did that get us? That got us an invasion of Crimea. And then Trump comes in being accused of

00:08:41.800 being a KJB Russian stooge because of a completely fictitious narrative cooked up between the Democrats

00:08:46.920 and Obama's DOJ. And what does Trump do? He speaks a little softer. He does what Teddy Roosevelt says.

00:08:54.640 He speaks a little more softly and carries a big stick. And he tries to have a good relationship

00:09:01.660 with Putin. And you know what happens? Putin does not further invade a country. Then Biden comes in,

00:09:05.500 Biden's a tough talker, and Putin goes all the way into Ukraine. So on the Ukraine-Russia war,

00:09:11.820 he says, look, I have a pretty good relationship with Putin. And then he threatens him. He says,

00:09:15.960 if Putin doesn't give us a deal, then it's going to be really, really tough. And here is

00:09:23.120 President Trump clarifying what toughness means. I'm talking about economic, because we're not going

00:09:29.280 to get into a world war. I'll tell you what, in my opinion, if I didn't win this race, Ukraine could 0.99

00:09:37.380 have ended up in a world war. We're not going to end up in a world war anymore. But it would have ended

00:09:42.780 up possibly in a world war. That would have been a deal. They were ready to trot. 0.98

00:09:49.440 That was in response to a question, which was a tough question. And maybe a question that

00:09:57.600 misunderstood the situation. He said, you told us that we were going to get a ceasefire as a

00:10:04.220 precondition of further meetings. And we didn't get the ceasefire. We haven't had this. So where does it

00:10:07.560 all stand? When Trump says, I demand a ceasefire? Well, actually, sorry, Trump himself says this

00:10:12.780 when he explains what everybody's doing right now, in this case, specifically Vladimir Putin,

00:10:18.280 when he says we're not going to get a deal.

00:10:21.220 Everybody's posturing. It's all bulls**t. Okay. Everybody's posturing. 0.98

00:10:25.320 I love this. Because I'll wrap up the point on war here. All the abstract ideologues,

00:10:34.240 all the neocons, the liberal imperialists, the radical progressives, all these ideologues, 0.99

00:10:42.140 they, I don't know, they're like automatons. They're like robots. They think that you live like 0.98

00:10:48.120 a white paper coming out of a think tank. Trump realizes that in geopolitics and statecraft and

00:10:54.080 foreign policy, you have an end that you're trying to get to. And if you have an end that

00:10:59.080 you're trying to get to, and you're not transgressing the moral order, then everything

00:11:03.800 else is a negotiation. Everything else is up, not to ideology, but to prudence. Everything else,

00:11:08.500 you're just trying to get to the end. And so for Trump, the end is peace. He says he wants peace.

00:11:13.580 He talked extensively in what felt quite sincere, quite sincere way about the 7,000 guys who are dying

00:11:20.560 every day. And he says, you know, you go out, you say, mom and dad, say goodbye to their son. You

00:11:25.440 know, son goes off to war one week later. He's zapped by a drone, totally new form of warfare.

00:11:28.960 We can't let that go on. That's not, that's not good. He didn't quite say blessed are the peacemakers,

00:11:33.820 but that's what he was getting at. This, this is how Trump approaches all of the issues.

00:11:40.200 It's how he approaches Chinese students and Chinese trade and European trade and the war in Ukraine

00:11:46.120 and the war in Gaza. He says, we're trying to wrap it up really soon. This is another one,

00:11:49.380 a reporter tried to get him on. You said you were going to wrap it up immediately. He said,

00:11:53.040 there's no immediately, there's no totally final conclusion to this conflict. It's been going on

00:11:57.940 for thousands of years, but we're just going to try to get the best solution for now that we possibly

00:12:04.620 can. And then President Trump was asked about what really matters. You know, the question that was

00:12:10.700 actually on everybody's mind. And that of course is the engagement between Taylor Swift and Travis

00:12:15.760 Kelsey. We'll get to that in one moment. First, I want to tell you about Shopify. Go to

00:12:20.440 shopify.com slash Knowles. You know, I am sitting right here at the pinnacle of the public sector,

00:12:26.880 but I have worked my career in the private sector. And if you're in the private sector,

00:12:30.820 do you know what you need? Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses

00:12:37.080 around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. We even use it for our own daily wire shop

00:12:42.200 to make sure things are running smoothly and efficiently. So you get all the goods.

00:12:47.080 Now you might be asking, what if I can't design a website? What if I'm worried people haven't heard

00:12:51.700 of my brand? No problem. Shopify has got you covered from the start with beautiful ready to go templates

00:12:56.160 that match your brand style and help you find your customers through easy to run email and social

00:13:01.480 media campaigns. And if you need a hand with everyday tasks, their AI tools created specifically for

00:13:06.200 commerce can help enhance product images, write descriptions and more. Plus,

00:13:09.660 your award-winning customer support is available 24 seven to share advice. If you ever get stuck,

00:13:14.060 turn your business idea into with Shopify on your side, shine up for your $1 per month trial

00:13:20.780 and start selling today at shopify.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S. That is shopify.com

00:13:25.780 slash Knowles, shopify.com slash Knowles. Most important news broke even more pop culture than the

00:13:36.960 question that I was trying to ask. I was a little, I was a little miffed. I had a good question.

00:13:42.060 I, but I don't, I'm not one of these scrum reporters. I'm not, I'm a chivalrous guy. I don't,

00:13:46.180 if a lady is speaking, I don't want to, you know, shout over her. But anyway, my question I was going 0.98

00:13:50.660 to ask President Trump was, and who knows, maybe the White House can answer this separately.

00:13:55.360 I was going to say, look, Mr. President, you've invested in Intel to build a sovereign wealth fund.

00:14:01.280 And you said you're going to invest in more companies. When are you going to acquire Cracker

00:14:05.660 Barrel? That was what I want to know. We need to federalize Cracker Barrel, as I said on the show

00:14:10.260 last week. But there was actually a more meme-y pop culture development while we were in this

00:14:16.080 cabinet meeting. And it was finally, at long last, the engagement of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey.

00:14:23.400 Here is what President Trump had to say.

00:14:25.420 Well, I wish him a lot of luck. No, I think it's, I think he's a great player. I think he's a great

00:14:34.640 guy. And I think that she's a terrific person. So I wish them a lot of luck.

00:14:39.960 Never let it be said that the man is not disciplined. Trump is, how much, as he said,

00:14:47.800 Taylor's no longer hot. She's a Democrat. She voted for Biden. She's dead to me. I'm hot. She's not. 0.93

00:14:54.040 But he said, no, we want to make peace. We want to bring people together.

00:14:57.940 We want to build these nice, strong coalitions. But he's up on it. You know, this reminds me of,

00:15:03.820 I think it was Chris Rock, who was talking about Joan Rivers before Joan Rivers was murdered by the

00:15:08.660 Obamas for revealing the truth about Michelle. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. It was a joke.

00:15:13.540 But she did, she was making jokes about Michelle and Beyonce and whatever. And Chris Rock said,

00:15:18.640 he said, man, you know, Joan Rivers, the woman's like 80 years old, and she's so

00:15:21.720 hip that she can make Beyonce jokes. She's so with it. That's what you see with Trump, 0.99

00:15:28.300 because he's a showbiz icon. He already made the Cracker Barrel. I think he posted on Truth

00:15:34.320 Social or something. He said, you know, Cracker Barrel must change the logo back. Bring back Uncle

00:15:38.960 Herschel. Same thing with Taylor and Travis. Well, Cracker Barrel, which is all I really want to talk

00:15:44.640 about today anyway. They finally responded. They finally responded. And I, in my official capacity,

00:15:53.140 this feels very official given where I am right now, but this is in my official capacity as the

00:15:57.840 host of the Michael Knowles show, I am now calling for a full fatwa on Cracker Barrel. I was previously,

00:16:05.820 I said, maybe we can forgive them. They fire the glasses lady and they'll go back to Uncle Herschel 1.00

00:16:10.060 and they'll bring back the Cracker Barrel and the barrel and it'll be nice and we can go have our

00:16:13.220 chicken and dumplings and play the good old peg game. No, Cracker Barrel has not learned its lesson.

00:16:20.020 Cracker Barrel has doubled down. This is their promise to you.

00:16:25.980 In the, oh, this, oh, I don't even want to read it. This reads just like the 40-something glasses

00:16:33.500 wearing saccharine liberal, probably cold as ice HR lady. Okay. This is, if the last few days have

00:16:43.180 shown us anything, it's how deeply people care about Cracker Barrel. We're truly grateful for

00:16:49.500 your heartfelt voices. Can you just hear the sarcasm dripping off the sheer contempt for the

00:16:56.980 customer base for all of us? I, this is a little tangential. I was in the airport. I was in Nashville

00:17:04.060 Airport two days ago, flying out to DC and a nice couple of a certain age stopped me and said, well,

00:17:09.840 hello, you know, in the Southern from Tennessee and Alabama. We're just at Cracker Barrel. Really? Yeah.

00:17:15.200 They changed, they changed the menu. They're changing. Sheer contempt for these people.

00:17:21.400 Yeah. Oh, wow. You really care. Thanks. Thanks for showing how much you care. Yeah. Now, shut up.

00:17:32.040 Shut up. We're going to turn this into a Panera. We're going to take your beloved cultural institution 1.00

00:17:36.780 and make it a hospital cafeteria. We are. But thank you. Thanks for, thanks. They go on. I'm never going

00:17:44.400 to get through this at this rate. They go on. You've also shown us that we, sorry. You've also shown us

00:17:49.800 that we could have done a better job sharing who we are and who we'll always be. What has not

00:17:57.120 changed and what will never change are the values this company was built when Cracker Barrel first

00:18:02.600 opened in 1969. Blah, blah, blah. The things people love about our stores aren't going anywhere.

00:18:08.160 Rocking chairs, a warm foot, blah, blah, blah. We love seeing how much you care about our old timer.

00:18:13.660 That's the cracker, the cracker in the barrel. And we love them too. Uncle Herschel will still be on

00:18:18.620 the menu. Welcome back, Uncle Herschel's favorite breakfast platter. And on our road signs. And he's

00:18:25.180 not going anywhere. He's family. We've heard you. Shut up now. While our logo and remodels

00:18:32.540 may be making headlines, our bigger focus is still right where it belongs in the kitchen

00:18:36.680 and on your plate. Serving generous portions of food you like. Okay, again, first of all,

00:18:40.640 I made this point yesterday and I'm not the only one. You don't go to Cracker Barrel for the food.

00:18:45.900 I like the food. I think the food is pretty good at Cracker Barrel. But it's not, you know,

00:18:49.660 it's not going to get a Michelin star. Okay, it's not. There are better places, mom and pop places,

00:18:54.820 delis, diners. It's not for the food. You're going there because it hasn't changed.

00:19:03.780 It went. Look, they say it right there. When was Cracker Barrel founded? 1969. 1969, after the

00:19:10.240 summer of love, radical cultural revolution going on, Cracker Barrel is quite intentionally

00:19:16.280 and overtly founded to say no to that, to be countercultural, to say you're in this period

00:19:21.440 that fetishizes change. We're going to remain frozen in time. You want to take a trip back in

00:19:26.280 time to the old country store where you can buy your kids a Tootsie Roll Pop and play the peg game?

00:19:30.180 You come down to us and we're going to have the wood tables and the rocking chairs. And then this

00:19:35.440 clueless woman comes in and says, yeah, well, you know what? You know what this is missing? 1.00

00:19:40.860 Sterility. You know what this thing where your only product is not changing? Your only valuable

00:19:46.220 product is not changing. You say, we're just going to change now. Totally misses the point.

00:19:51.240 They go on. We want to be sure that Cracker Barrel's here for the next generation of families. At the end

00:19:57.320 of the day, our promise is simple. You always find comfort here. Thank you for caring so much and

00:20:01.980 come see for yourself. The country hospitality love Cracker Barrel. No. No. The values this country

00:20:11.200 was built on will never change. They did. You don't, you don't, Cracker Barrel lady, you don't 1.00

00:20:18.260 understand what this country was built on. So I'm confusing it because the reason I care so much

00:20:24.920 about Cracker Barrel is because what is happening with this private company is being mirrored in the

00:20:29.580 political space. I think you see this a lot with President Trump's flag burning, anti-flag burning

00:20:35.440 executive order. A big reason that people voted for President Trump is because there have been a

00:20:44.140 lot of changes recently and we don't like them. That's it. And then we are mocked and derided by

00:20:50.640 the so-called progressives because we don't like their changes. We don't like that they've castrated

00:20:55.160 our children. We don't like that they've diminished the strength of our military. We don't like that

00:21:00.800 they've abolished our police departments. We don't like that they've opened our borders. We don't like

00:21:05.220 that stuff. We don't like that they've degraded our curricula. We don't like that they've made our

00:21:09.720 kids dumb. We don't like that they're flooding our country with poison that's killing people. 1.00

00:21:14.520 Yeah. Yeah. There are a lot of changes and we don't like it. And we want a guy to come back

00:21:19.960 and undo those changes and make our country great again. That's what it's about.

00:21:26.340 And the kind of person that that requires is not an ideologue. It's not a radical. It's not a

00:21:34.380 revolutionary. It's someone like Trump. Who was I talking to? I was talking to a reporter earlier

00:21:38.520 today over coffee. And I said, you know, people call Trump a populist or a thisist or a thatist.

00:21:46.260 He really is in many ways a traditionalist in the vein of Edmund Burke. He doesn't wear a tweed.

00:21:53.160 He doesn't wear bow ties. He doesn't put on a kind of foppish accent. But he has a gut level

00:21:59.060 traditionalism. He operates on prejudice. And that's going to be clipped and taken out of context.

00:22:05.640 But whatever. Who cares? That's fine. Prejudice in the good sense of the word. Not unjust prejudice.

00:22:10.360 Not prejudice that expresses some irrational animosity toward groups of people. The prejudice

00:22:16.200 that is just the prejudgments that we all operate on all day long. That you can't get out of bed

00:22:20.100 without. I can't pour a cup of coffee without prejudice. It's not like I'm chemically testing

00:22:28.000 every pot of coffee I have. It's not like I'm measuring out every little bean. I just kind of

00:22:33.480 go with it. I kind of go with it. I do things because they've worked well before. That's what

00:22:41.200 Russell Kirk means. That's what Edmund Burke means. That's what a kind of conservatism is.

00:22:45.900 The opposite of that is rationalism in politics, where you try to scrutinize and subject every

00:22:50.520 single aspect of politics to the most abstract examination. You don't want that.

00:22:57.360 We love the flag. You shouldn't burn the flag. It should be okay if people want to ban burning

00:23:05.020 the flag. This doesn't violate the First Amendment. We had the opportunity to ban flag burning for all

00:23:12.640 of our nation's history until 1989. And we did ban burning the flag at various times in 48 out

00:23:19.340 of 50 states and with two federal laws for over 100 years. It's not a problem. There's nothing

00:23:28.200 wrong with that. And we went in yesterday unto all of the reasons why it's perfectly fine to burn a

00:23:32.260 flag. But that's the kind of conservatism that we're getting back to. Kind of conservatism where

00:23:38.000 we say, yeah, we do stuff because it's worked really well in the past. And it's not dispositive

00:23:43.260 that if you've done something for 5,000 years that it's going to work into the future, but it's a pretty

00:23:46.920 good guess. And innovation for innovation's sake isn't any good. And you couple that paradoxically

00:23:52.340 with wanting to pursue innovation in a circumscribed way, in a way that is intentional and likely to

00:23:58.820 benefit us, which is why President Trump for much of the cabinet meeting yesterday focused on

00:24:03.120 investments in AI, which is why when I sat down with the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, he focused

00:24:08.460 on investments in AI. This is why the Intel acquisition was obviously geared toward technology,

00:24:15.280 because these are ways that America can come to dominate. Now, there's much, much more I have

00:24:22.000 to tell you. Because while we're all celebrating Travis and Taylor finally tying the knot, I think

00:24:28.520 she's 35. A lady never tells. But these days, 35, you're like a child bride. By historic standards, 0.99

00:24:37.280 it's not that young. But by today's standards, I don't know. It's like one of these Middle Eastern 1.00

00:24:42.080 countries where you get married off at 12. She's a child. So congratulations to them. But here's the

00:24:46.160 wrinkle. New study has come out. Men with high status jobs are more likely to cheat.

00:24:55.740 How do you avoid it? How do you avoid, how does sweet little Elisa avoid it? Is being a cigar 0.99

00:25:00.920 salesman a high status job? I don't know. We'll get to all of that momentarily first. I want to tell

00:25:04.940 you about Stopbox USA. Go to stopboxusa.com. Use code Michael. You know, I have a number of children.

00:25:12.900 I've mentioned that. You probably have a lot of children, too. And if you're a gun owner, you really,

00:25:17.880 really want to be responsible. You don't want to keep your gun locked away so tight that you need a few

00:25:23.000 hours to get it in an emergency. Also, you don't want it sitting somewhere that kids, God forbid,

00:25:28.160 could find it. So real parenting requires you to figure out a solution. That is why I love

00:25:34.260 Stopbox Pro. You can open it with one hand, no keys, no batteries that die at the worst possible

00:25:39.240 moment. You know, I'm half a Luddite myself, so I don't like all the digital crazy stuff. I don't

00:25:42.860 want to be doing retina scans or something. Stopbox USA is just great. It's analog. It's

00:25:48.620 simultaneously analog and high-tech. It's terrific. I'm getting a new pistol soon. Can't wait. I've

00:25:54.180 already got the Stopbox USA ready to go for it. While everyone's worried about tariffs and supply

00:25:59.020 chain, Stopbox is just cranking these out in their own facility, creating real jobs for American

00:26:03.000 workers. For a limited time, our listeners are getting a crazy deal on Stopbox. Get 15% off your

00:26:09.960 entire order when you use code Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L, for even better savings. Shop their bundles for the

00:26:15.240 best deals on their best-selling products. Check out their bundles and save an exclusive 15% off site-wide

00:26:19.920 when you use code Michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L, at stopboxusa.com. Discover a better way to balance

00:26:25.520 security and readiness with Stopbox. Men with high-status jobs are more likely to cheat. Here

00:26:33.200 are the three takeaways from this study. I can link to it if you want to read more. In the 1990s and

00:26:40.120 2000s, about one in five ever-married men, so it includes divorcees, reported engaging in extramarital

00:26:48.100 sex. Now, I think this also, I think that excludes premarital sex. I mean, you have to have been married 0.92

00:26:54.320 for this to count. So, one in five guys who've gotten married have cheated on their wives.

00:26:59.360 That share fell to 17% and has continued to drop in recent years. So, that's good.

00:27:06.400 Still a pretty high number, though. One in five, 20% and then 17% and then it's fallen a little bit,

00:27:11.640 but that's bad. Second part, men in high-prestige occupations, CEOs, physicians, and surgeons,

00:27:18.800 for example, are more likely than others to have cheated on their spouse. This is the part

00:27:23.880 that might surprise some people because they say, well, no, cheating on your spouse, that's like,

00:27:29.220 that's low-class behavior. That's not what the really fancy guys would do. Or some people might

00:27:34.920 say, well, the really fancy guys, you know, the CEOs and the surgeons and stuff, they, they have

00:27:40.760 so much to lose. They have so much to lose. Why would they risk it all? Subject themselves to

00:27:46.720 compromise, potentially lose their whole family, just to have a fling. Why would they do it? I see a guy

00:27:53.020 who doesn't have anything to lose, but why a guy who has a lot to lose? Finally, among ever-married,

00:27:58.680 ever, even if you're divorced now, prime-age adults who have cheated on a spouse, about half are

00:28:05.280 currently divorced or separated. That's really scary. That's really, really scary because now

00:28:14.220 what that puts together is a warning. If you are married, if you're planning to get married

00:28:17.400 and you haven't cheated on your spouse yet, you probably shouldn't because if you, if you cheat

00:28:22.980 on your spouse, you have a 50-50 shot of divorcing. And if you divorce, especially if you have kids,

00:28:28.680 you're going to seriously damage your life. No one's ever passed redemption, but you're going to

00:28:33.740 seriously, seriously damage your life. And having that little fling is, is going to greatly increase

00:28:41.380 the odds that you get divorced and have a terrible life. One in five men ever and the guys in the high

00:28:46.480 prestige positions are more likely to do it. This really doesn't surprise me at all. And it doesn't

00:28:55.540 surprise me because, because the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. That's one

00:29:00.240 reason why it doesn't surprise me. And two, because as you start to enjoy more luxury, as you start to

00:29:09.260 feel a little more power, as you start to, uh, actually, if you, as you start to feel stresses in

00:29:14.720 your jobs, but as you start to rise in prominence and as you're able to make demands, you, you begin

00:29:23.540 to put yourself in the position of God. That's really what you do. You, you begin to say, well,

00:29:29.120 look, I no longer have to wait online for the customer service line because I'm, I'm a fancy

00:29:34.860 person. I have the really high status at the company so I can get right through. I never have to, I don't

00:29:38.580 have to inconvenience myself for that. I don't have to make appointments anymore. I have secretaries

00:29:42.740 and assistants to do that for me. I don't have to drive myself. I get driven around in a limo or an

00:29:48.160 SUV. I don't have to do that. I don't, why should I have to respect the limits that are imposed by my

00:29:55.240 marriage? It's very, uh, dangerous, very, very tempting. It's, it's, it's Icarus. It's just the

00:30:04.100 closer you get to the sun, the more likely you are that your, your wings are going to melt and you're

00:30:08.220 going to fall to the ground. It's, it's a, and, and I, you know, final point on this, it's, it's

00:30:15.720 Drew Klavan's favorite joke. It's the orange for a head joke. The short version of it is guy walks

00:30:19.980 into a bar as an orange for a head, says, how did it happen? He said, well, I found a genie's lamp.

00:30:23.780 I rubbed it. I said, I get three wishes. I said, no way. Okay. I want a million dollars. Knock on my

00:30:28.380 door. Guy shows up, check for a million dollars. Second wish. I want, I want every playboy playmate of the 0.94

00:30:33.360 year. Knock, knock, knock. 12 half-naked women walk into my room. Wow. Okay. What happened next? 1.00

00:30:39.280 Well, this is the part that, uh, you know, it's hard to explain. I asked to have an orange for a

00:30:42.800 head. The, the appetite that people have for self-destruction, the, the, uh, ability to resist

00:30:50.520 that requires an abundance of grace and more and more grace, actually, the further along you get.

00:30:55.420 Uh, don't let it happen to you. A little bit of a warning sign, but it's a liberalism. If you're,

00:31:01.860 if you are a political liberal or an anthropological liberal, this study doesn't make any sense to you

00:31:07.160 because you think that the more advanced you become, the more a master of yourself you become

00:31:12.500 and the harder it is to sin and the easier it is to do good. If you're a Christian, if you understand

00:31:17.880 that human nature has fallen, you, you recognize that actually the further along you get, uh, in

00:31:25.440 certain ways you're more in control of yourself, but sin is crouching in the corner waiting to devour

00:31:29.960 you. You recognize that actually the temptations only get worse. Speaking of men seeking status,

00:31:37.560 this brings me to a story I've wanted to cover for a week. And this is a really rough one.

00:31:43.080 It's being reported in the guardian that men are surgically lengthening their legs.

00:31:49.920 Have you, has any, have you heard about this? Have you seen this on TikTokers? I think I saw it on

00:31:53.480 Instagram or something like that. Men are flying to other countries with fewer medical regulations

00:32:00.100 and they are having doctors break their legs and then pull their bones apart and then insert

00:32:07.140 metal into their legs to, and then hope that the bone will grow back so that they can go from being

00:32:14.640 five, five to five, seven or something like that. Well, it's actually, it's worse. It's also so that

00:32:21.620 they can go from being six, three to six, four. That's the key to this whole story. So,

00:32:26.300 cause you figure it's just these short guys and it's tough out there for the short Kings sometimes.

00:32:29.800 I mean, listen, if I'm not like the tallest guy in the world either, I'm a fairly moderately sized

00:32:33.800 person, not quite a Napoleon, but I'm not a LeBron James either. And if you're, if you're below

00:32:41.540 average height, if you're significantly below average height, it probably is tough for you. I'm not,

00:32:44.900 I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I'm not going to deny it. It's probably, it is a little tricky

00:32:48.300 to go dating. Is it worth, um, permanently disabling yourself and having both of your

00:32:54.900 legs broken? And no, I wouldn't say it is. And the, the evidence that this is disordered is it's

00:33:01.320 not just the shorties that are doing it. It's guys who are over six feet. So just a little touch

00:33:05.180 from this, this article, Frank, Frank is determined to become taller than Amelia. Amelia is five foot five 1.00

00:33:13.300 by gaining nine centimeters. Just, I don't know. It's a British thing. So they do centimeters.

00:33:17.820 So try to convert just above the, so he wants to gain nine centimeters, just above the eight

00:33:22.640 and a half centimeters. Doctor told him it's the maximum his muscles and tendons can safely handle.

00:33:28.280 That would make him five, nine, five, nine, not like the biggest guy in the world,

00:33:32.460 but that's probably about average height, a little, little below his dream is simple. Yeah. Okay.

00:33:39.500 It is average height being average height. Speak with any patient at the wannabe taller clinic

00:33:44.640 in Istanbul, where Frank chose to undergo leg lengthening. And it becomes clear that shortness

00:33:48.420 is relative. Men over six feet have had the procedure. One tells me he needed surgery to

00:33:54.520 correct his bow legs and decided to add some height at the same time. Over six feet, he's going to break

00:34:02.400 his legs to become six two or something like that. This is just anorexia for men. Well, men can be 0.96

00:34:09.860 anorexic too, but, but this is a particularly anorexia for men. And it reminds us of maybe the most

00:34:18.280 forgotten of the virtues. And that is to cultivate a spirit of resignation. This modern modernity and

00:34:28.040 liberalism hate, a spirit of resignation, the spirit that says, you know,

00:34:34.500 I strive for things. I have ambition. I want to achieve. I want, but if it doesn't work out,

00:34:43.320 so be it. If it doesn't work out, I accept my lot in life. I'm not going to be the tallest guy.

00:34:50.840 I'm not going to be the basketball player. I'm not. That kind of a spirit is very important. And it,

00:34:56.240 it actually gets to something that the president mentioned in the cabinet meeting,

00:35:00.780 which is he had this great line. He had, these lines, they just kind of come out sometimes. He

00:35:05.300 says, everybody has his place. Everybody has his place. Not everyone is going to be what it might

00:35:14.180 have been related to. He was talking about Bobby Kennedy and Pete Hegseth's challenge where they do a

00:35:21.080 bunch of pushups and they do a bunch of pull-ups or more exercise than I've ever done in my entire life. 0.90

00:35:26.240 And I think Scott Turner, the HUD secretary is currently winning it. He's a former professional

00:35:29.780 athlete. So it kind of makes sense, but he was going off. Oh no. You know, now I remember what

00:35:37.020 it was about. It was when he was talking about war, Ukraine and Russia. And he said, you know,

00:35:42.780 Ukraine, they got to come to the table too, because you're not going to win a war against a 0.99

00:35:48.800 country, 15 times your size. It's not going to happen. It's no knock on you, but you're Ukraine 1.00

00:35:54.020 and Russia's 15 times your size. And you're not going to, if I walked up to Mike Tyson,

00:36:01.220 even today, Mike Tyson's like a hundred years old. If I walked up to Mike Tyson today and I poked him,

00:36:05.280 he could kill me. He could rip my head off and eat it. Like he ate a Vanderhoofyfield's ear. He could do 1.00

00:36:10.040 that. He's bigger and stronger than me, even today. And he said, you gotta, he goes, look,

00:36:18.020 I have limits too. I can't do everything either. This is Trump. You know, it's that kind of humility

00:36:22.120 where he said, I want to end this war because I want to go to heaven. You know, I feel right now,

00:36:26.220 I don't think I'm that high on the list. I think I'm low on the totem pole. I want to,

00:36:29.540 I want to go to heaven. Expresses a deep humility. Humility is the beginning of wisdom. You know,

00:36:35.380 fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You have to accept limits. Limits are the one thing

00:36:40.020 that liberalism will not tolerate. But people are transforming out of liberalism toward more

00:36:47.600 traditional and religious points of view, which we'll get to in one second because a major actor

00:36:51.480 is converting. Here's a not so fun fact. Disney Plus, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount Plus, they're all

00:36:57.640 raising prices again. I'm sure you've noticed. Then there's Daily Wire Plus doing what we love to do,

00:37:02.620 which is the exact opposite. We're not raising prices. We're dropping them right now. You can

00:37:06.980 grab an annual Daily Wire Plus membership for 40% off with code SUMMER. That unlocks everything

00:37:11.840 we've got, including the new episode of The Pope and the Fuhrer, The Secret Vatican Files of World

00:37:16.780 War II. Everyone's talking about it. Also on September 8th, you'll be the first to watch the

00:37:20.780 Isabel Brown show. Have you heard that's coming to Daily Wire? Plus, you will get exclusive first

00:37:25.140 looks at our brand new flagship show, Friendly Fire, where the entire Daily Wire crew goes head to

00:37:29.500 head, live, uncensored, unfiltered, naughty. I don't know if it'll be. I hope it won't be naughty.

00:37:37.060 Go to dailywireplus.com now and lock in 40% off your annual membership before this deal is gone.

00:37:44.620 My favorite comment yesterday is from Ross Niemer 3142. It says, Michael's Snoop Dogg impression

00:37:50.080 sounds like his Ronald Reagan impression. Wow.

00:37:52.460 You and I, you and Dizzle, have a rendezvous with Dizzle. You dig? Hey, hey, hey. Smoke weed every,

00:38:03.800 eat jelly beans every day. Yeah, I didn't notice that before. That's shocking. Wow. Those are both

00:38:10.200 great showmen. Both had a lot to say about politics. Okay. Well, speaking of show business,

00:38:14.840 an actor is becoming Catholic. Everybody's becoming Catholic. Have you noticed everybody's

00:38:22.860 becoming Catholic? I did it slightly before it was cool. I feel that I was, I mean, I was cradle

00:38:28.900 Catholic, but I was an atheist for 10 years and I reverted about a dozen years ago. I was kind of in

00:38:34.360 this first wave. Now everybody, everybody and their grandma's converting to Catholicism, including this

00:38:39.220 guy. Michael Iskander is in the Amazon show House of David. He plays King David. It's a prime series.

00:38:49.100 And I saw it reported that one of the lines that jarred this was the line from 2 Samuel 6, 9.

00:38:59.940 It's a lovely parallel. And David was afraid of the Lord that day. And he said, how can the Ark of the

00:39:04.780 Lord come to me? And this is sometimes non-Catholics. They don't like that Catholics really like Mary, 0.84

00:39:11.040 you know, and I don't know why. I mean, you're nice to your friend's mother, aren't like Beth?

00:39:17.520 You go to like Johnny's house and Beth is there and you're not mean to her. You don't hit Beth. You

00:39:22.540 don't disrespect Beth. You're nice to her. How much more so should you be nice to the mother of our Lord

00:39:27.720 and venerate her and honor her? Anyway, it's a tangent. This is one of these parallels in scripture,

00:39:33.580 because the Old Testament, you know, is figurative. It's a figure of the New Testament. So there's a

00:39:38.080 carnal reality to it, but it's also figurative and it's fulfilled in Christ. So in 2 Samuel, you read,

00:39:43.980 and David was afraid of the Lord that day. And he said, how can the Ark of the Lord come to me?

00:39:48.200 This is paid off in Luke 1, 43, where Elizabeth says, and Mary, during the visitation, Mary goes to

00:39:55.460 visit and, you know, John the Baptist dances in the womb when the Lord in the womb, you know, comes to

00:40:00.840 him. And Elizabeth says, and why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

00:40:05.660 Because Mary is the new Ark. She's the true Ark of the new covenant of Christ himself.

00:40:12.400 So I don't know. I haven't spoken to this actor. I don't know if that line in particular got him or

00:40:17.120 if it was just a broader trend, but it's happening. The conversions keep on coming.

00:40:22.420 You know, I'm in Washington, D.C. right now, and the conservative movement always kind of punched

00:40:29.560 a little above its weight with Catholics and Orthodox Jews, conservative Jews. Relative to 0.78

00:40:34.980 the country, it always, there are a lot of Protestants in it too, but the Protestants were

00:40:39.260 proportionally smaller in the conservative movement, you know, the think tanks and the

00:40:44.400 government. Anyway, now they're all Catholic. The Protestants are becoming Catholic. The Jews are 0.99

00:40:50.860 becoming Catholic. There aren't that many Muslims to begin with, but maybe they would become Catholic.

00:40:55.500 Hollywood's becoming, it's, but this was predicted. I, you know, I'm not to beat a dead horse, but this

00:41:00.920 was predicted by Tocqueville because of a paradox of democracy. Democracy inclines people to make

00:41:08.140 themselves into gods. Liberalism inclines people especially to make themselves into gods. And so to

00:41:14.080 throw off all authority. In democracy, we say, we're the people, we rule. Vox populi, Vox Dei. The voice of the

00:41:20.520 people is the voice of God. It's not really true. There's a kind of a truth to it, but it's not

00:41:26.540 literally the voice. The voice of God is the voice of God. So on the one hand, they're inclined to

00:41:32.220 throw off the shackles of authority. On the other hand, if they don't throw off all religion, if they 0.58

00:41:36.760 don't become atheists, Tocqueville says, they're going to become Catholic. And they're going to become

00:41:41.280 Catholic because it's the most democratic of religions. Because if they don't throw off all 1.00

00:41:45.400 authority, they're going to want to all be under the same religious system. They're going to want

00:41:49.860 unity. They're going to want a single kind of religion. And that's what Rome offers that the

00:41:55.480 others don't. Expect more. Tocqueville was right about many things. He's right about this.

00:42:02.300 Okay. Speaking of big transformations, before we go, it's kind of a sad story.

00:42:08.920 Denmark is ending letter deliveries. Post-Nord, if you want to get your letters to Denmark, send them

00:42:16.240 now. Post-Nord announced that it will cease letter services at the end of this year.

00:42:21.400 That will end 400 years of letter deliveries by this state-owned operation. A third of its workforce

00:42:27.060 is going to be fired. That's losing 2,200 positions. Though this Danish parcel service is now going to

00:42:34.260 focus just on packages. So no more letters, just packages. Since the year 2000, the volume of letters

00:42:40.180 that the business handles has declined by more than 90 percent from around one and a half billion to

00:42:44.340 around 110 million last year, continues to fall rapidly. So there's another thing that's going

00:42:49.640 to happen. People don't send letters because they send emails and texts. Yet we saw a kind of a

00:42:57.120 recoiling against that. You've seen for a quarter century now, a moving of society toward ever more

00:43:02.680 digital and virtual forms of engagement. This reaches its peak during 2020, 2021, because of two

00:43:09.820 simultaneous phenomena. One was COVID, where you had to say goodbye to your granny from a hospital room

00:43:16.660 through Zoom. You couldn't even go hug her. You couldn't go to Christmas. And two, transgenderism, 0.95

00:43:21.700 which says that your true self has nothing to do with your body, that you can just live

00:43:24.840 as some kind of avatar floating in outer space. And this bled over into ideologies and absurdities

00:43:31.640 like transhumanism, uploading your body to the cloud, whatever, all that nonsense.

00:43:34.980 Two things hit at the same time. People have recoiled against that tremendously. They hated the COVID

00:43:41.220 restrictions. They want to go back out. They want to see people in person. And they hated the crazy

00:43:45.860 trans stuff, which is deader than disco. It's almost not worth speaking about anymore. But you're not 1.00

00:43:52.820 going to start sending letters, are you? You're still sending your emails. You're still sending your

00:43:56.320 texts. You're not... You can't totally avoid technology. I am as conservative as it gets. I am

00:44:05.380 Mr. Conservative, okay? And yet, I don't write letters. And people write me letters, I don't respond.

00:44:13.780 In order to conserve, you have to keep up with certain things. And what you want to preserve is

00:44:20.060 the aspects of life that are required for human flourishing, that are in coordination with your

00:44:31.340 human nature, that help preserve your identity. But you don't need to preserve every single

00:44:37.380 technology. And this is, again, where it seems to me, especially now, having seen the man up close and

00:44:42.960 listened to him speak about every issue for about four hours straight, I'm more convinced than ever that

00:44:48.300 Trump is a kind of a traditionalist. Because out of the one hand of his mouth, he's saying,

00:44:52.760 we're going to prosecute people for burning the American flag. And we're going to, you know,

00:44:56.120 make America great again. We're going to go back to the old ways. By golly, these cities used to be

00:45:00.500 so great. And now they're bad, and we're going to make them great again. And then on the other hand,

00:45:05.300 he's talking about all these investments in AI, including a first lady initiative, a first lady AI

00:45:10.720 competition, and new investments in AI, and the potential sovereign wealth fund that will look at

00:45:15.820 strategic industries like AI, and how we need to beat China in AI, and how we need to be the world's

00:45:19.880 leader in these things. Because there's no standing still. And maybe the best image I've heard

00:45:25.540 of traditionalism comes from Chesterton, two related images. One from Chesterton, one from Lewis,

00:45:35.280 I think it is. And they both involve fence posts. One is Chesterton's fence, where he says,

00:45:39.840 if you walk into the middle of a field, you see a fence, you have no idea what it's up,

00:45:43.600 what it's doing. Don't tear it down. Your impulse is going to be to tear it down. Don't tear it down.

00:45:48.020 First, you have to figure out why it's there. Only once you figure out why it's there,

00:45:52.300 why it was put up in the first place, can you tear it down. Second one is Lewis. I think it was

00:45:56.160 Lewis. Might have been Chesterton too, though. It's easy to confuse those guys. He says, if you put up a

00:46:00.900 white fence post, and you just leave it there, you leave it alone, you're not leaving it as it is.

00:46:06.180 You're leaving it to a torrent of change. And if you just leave it and don't fix it up every now

00:46:13.140 and again, you're going to have a black fence post pretty soon. Because the dirt and the wind and the

00:46:17.260 muck and the gunk is going to age, and the decay is going to age. You have to keep up on these things.

00:46:21.900 And that's a fine balance. And that balance is more an art than a science. The ideologues on the left

00:46:27.500 and the right, the libertarians and the neoconservatives and the thisists and the thatists,

00:46:32.140 they want everything to be a neat, fine clinical science that you can plug into an AI system and

00:46:37.040 you won't even need politicians anymore. The traditionalists understand that politics

00:46:41.080 really is much more of an art. And it's about, it's about balancing different virtues that not

00:46:47.580 to be too Chesterton heavy today, but that, that, you know, heresies come about when you take virtues

00:46:53.980 away from all the other virtues. You choose one to the exclusion of the others. You have to balance

00:46:58.300 these things though. It's a, it's a fine balance. So what you, what you need really is a, is an art

00:47:03.480 of the deal, which is why to the great shock and consternation of the political class in Washington

00:47:09.520 thus far, and now we're pretty much 10 years into this thing, uh, the president who everyone said

00:47:15.660 was going to be just awful has done a better job than any of them in my lifetime. Okay. Well,

00:47:20.200 that's a final message here from the White House. I'll be back in Nashville very, very shortly.

00:47:25.320 There's no member block. Secret Service won't let you in. So anyway, I'll see you back in the studio

00:47:29.920 tomorrow. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

The Michael Knowles Show - August 27, 2025

Ep. 1802 - I'm Officially The First Podcaster To Attend A Cabinet Meeting

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript