Ep. 1802 - I'm Officially The First Podcaster To Attend A Cabinet Meeting
Episode Stats
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Summary
On this episode of The Michael Knowles Show, host Michaela sits down with President Donald Trump to discuss everything from the longest cabinet meeting in the history of the White House, to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, and much, much more.
Transcript
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These are questions that take cultures thousands of years to answer. During Answer the Call,
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I take questions from people just like you about their problems, opportunities, challenges,
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or when they simply need advice. How do I balance all of this grief, responsibility?
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How do you repair this kind of damage? My daughter, Michaela, guides the conversations
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as we hopefully help people navigate their lives. Everyone has their own destiny. Everyone.
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I am at the White House, and it has been an historic day. It's been historic on two levels. One,
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I have learned, and I am deeply honored to learn, that I am the first podcaster ever invited to attend
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a cabinet meeting. So we'll get into that because of the second historic fact of the day, namely,
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that it was the longest cabinet meeting in the history of the presidency. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the
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Welcome back to the show. I have so much to tell you. I'm here at the White House. Now, I can sort of
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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
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that they built for Joe Biden. They've taken down some of the... That's a different background now.
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But this is it. This was the fake Joe Biden Oval Office. So I'm at least as much the president of
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the United States as Joe Biden was, which I suppose is sort of damning with faint praise. We will get
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to everything the president talked to. He talked about everything from war to Taylor Swift and Travis
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Do it, N-O-W. Where to begin? Where to begin? All anyone wants to talk about is Taylor Swift
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and Travis Kelsey. And the president weighed in on that as well. But we should get to slightly
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weightier matters first. Because as I was flying out to D.C., the president was making a lot of waves
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in part over his decision now to accept 600,000 students from China. So do you remember back in
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May, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who I was going to interview, but then this cabinet
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meeting went on for about four hours and he had other things that he had to do. Back in May, the
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Secretary of State came out and he said that the United States was going to start revoking visas
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for Chinese students. We just take too many Chinese students in. We're going to get rid of it. This is
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going to be part of a broader immigration restriction policy and also not a decoupling from China, but
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getting a little bit more intentional about our relationship with China. Anyway, fast forward to
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two days ago and the president comes out and sends Howard Lutnick out, his Commerce Secretary, onto
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cable news to say that the U.S. is going to take 600,000 Chinese students. When asked about the flip
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at the cabinet meeting, here's what the president had to say.
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Yesterday, you said you want to allow 600,000 Chinese students to study in the United States.
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Could you and the Secretary clarify what is the policy on Chinese students in the United States?
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Well, we think we're, you know, look, we're getting along very well with China and I'm getting
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along very well with President Xi. I think it's very insulting to say your students can't come here
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because they'll go out and they'll start building schools and they'll be able to survive it. But I
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like that their students come here. I like that other country students come here. And you know what
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would happen? If they didn't, our college system would go to hell very quickly. You'd have, and it
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wouldn't be the top colleges. It would be colleges that struggle on the bottom. And you take out 300,000
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or 600,000 students out of the system. I like having, and I told this to President Xi, that we're honored
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to have their students here. Now, with that, we check and we're careful and we see who's there. And Marco
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wants that. We spoke, we're in the same position, but we have a tremendous college system, the best
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in the world. Nobody even close. That's why China sends them here. From the beginning, I have assumed
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that most everything Trump says is part of a negotiation. Obviously, what the Chinese students
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issue is about is about a trade deal with China. That's, it's the whole thing. That's what a lot
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of the tariffs are about. That's what a lot of America now starting to kickstart some manufacturing
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again is about. That's what the student issue is about. That's what the Confucius Institutes are about.
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That's, it's all kind of a negotiation. This is why when President Trump says things, you know,
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he'll say, I'm going to end the war on day one or something. I don't take that literally. He
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obviously doesn't mean that literally. He's speaking like a New Yorker and he's speaking
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like a wheeler and dealer and everything's a negotiation. And this really is difficult for
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ideologues to understand because for ideologues and for people who view politics in a strictly
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academic abstract way, they just think it's all about five bullet points on the back of a napkin
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when everything is this act of negotiation. This is why, and actually this is another topic
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Trump touched on, that when it comes to the war in Ukraine, the libs and the squishes in
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the Republican Party are constantly going off about how Trump is too nice to Putin.
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Trump is too, and Trump actually at the cabinet meeting, he said, look, I have a very good
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relationship with President Putin. In fact, here he is describing just that.
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I had a very good relationship with President Putin. Very, very good. That's a positive thing again.
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And I think I'm probably the only, Steve Witkoff would tell you I'm the only one that can solve it.
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I don't know. You've told me that a few times, unless he was saying that just to build up my
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ego, but it's not really. I have no ego when it comes to this stuff. I just want to see yourself.
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Thousands of young people, mostly young people are dying every single week. If I can save that
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by doing sanctions or by just being me or by using a very strong tariff system that's very costly to
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Russia or Ukraine or whoever we have, you know, but I stopped seven wars.
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George W. Bush tried to have a good relationship with Putin. It didn't work. Then he gets really,
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really tough. And where did really, really tough, harsh rhetoric get us?
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Putin invaded Georgia. Then Barack Obama, he was really, well, he tried to be nice. He tried to do
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this stupid Russian reset where Hillary Clinton shows up to the foreign minister of Russia,
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and it misspells the word reset in Russian. They couldn't fact check or spell check one word,
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and that didn't work. So then you have Barack Obama talking real tough. He's a real tough talker. And
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where did that get us? That got us an invasion of Crimea. And then Trump comes in being accused of
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being a KJB Russian stooge because of a completely fictitious narrative cooked up between the Democrats
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and Obama's DOJ. And what does Trump do? He speaks a little softer. He does what Teddy Roosevelt says.
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He speaks a little more softly and carries a big stick. And he tries to have a good relationship
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with Putin. And you know what happens? Putin does not further invade a country. Then Biden comes in,
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Biden's a tough talker, and Putin goes all the way into Ukraine. So on the Ukraine-Russia war,
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he says, look, I have a pretty good relationship with Putin. And then he threatens him. He says,
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if Putin doesn't give us a deal, then it's going to be really, really tough. And here is
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President Trump clarifying what toughness means. I'm talking about economic, because we're not going
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to get into a world war. I'll tell you what, in my opinion, if I didn't win this race, Ukraine could
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have ended up in a world war. We're not going to end up in a world war anymore. But it would have ended
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up possibly in a world war. That would have been a deal. They were ready to trot.
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That was in response to a question, which was a tough question. And maybe a question that
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misunderstood the situation. He said, you told us that we were going to get a ceasefire as a
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precondition of further meetings. And we didn't get the ceasefire. We haven't had this. So where does it
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all stand? When Trump says, I demand a ceasefire? Well, actually, sorry, Trump himself says this
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when he explains what everybody's doing right now, in this case, specifically Vladimir Putin,
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Everybody's posturing. It's all bulls**t. Okay. Everybody's posturing.
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I love this. Because I'll wrap up the point on war here. All the abstract ideologues,
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all the neocons, the liberal imperialists, the radical progressives, all these ideologues,
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they, I don't know, they're like automatons. They're like robots. They think that you live like
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a white paper coming out of a think tank. Trump realizes that in geopolitics and statecraft and
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foreign policy, you have an end that you're trying to get to. And if you have an end that
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you're trying to get to, and you're not transgressing the moral order, then everything
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else is a negotiation. Everything else is up, not to ideology, but to prudence. Everything else,
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you're just trying to get to the end. And so for Trump, the end is peace. He says he wants peace.
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He talked extensively in what felt quite sincere, quite sincere way about the 7,000 guys who are dying
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every day. And he says, you know, you go out, you say, mom and dad, say goodbye to their son. You
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know, son goes off to war one week later. He's zapped by a drone, totally new form of warfare.
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We can't let that go on. That's not, that's not good. He didn't quite say blessed are the peacemakers,
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but that's what he was getting at. This, this is how Trump approaches all of the issues.
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It's how he approaches Chinese students and Chinese trade and European trade and the war in Ukraine
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and the war in Gaza. He says, we're trying to wrap it up really soon. This is another one,
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a reporter tried to get him on. You said you were going to wrap it up immediately. He said,
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there's no immediately, there's no totally final conclusion to this conflict. It's been going on
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for thousands of years, but we're just going to try to get the best solution for now that we possibly
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can. And then President Trump was asked about what really matters. You know, the question that was
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actually on everybody's mind. And that of course is the engagement between Taylor Swift and Travis
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Kelsey. We'll get to that in one moment. First, I want to tell you about Shopify. Go to
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slash Knowles, shopify.com slash Knowles. Most important news broke even more pop culture than the
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question that I was trying to ask. I was a little, I was a little miffed. I had a good question.
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I, but I don't, I'm not one of these scrum reporters. I'm not, I'm a chivalrous guy. I don't,
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if a lady is speaking, I don't want to, you know, shout over her. But anyway, my question I was going
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to ask President Trump was, and who knows, maybe the White House can answer this separately.
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I was going to say, look, Mr. President, you've invested in Intel to build a sovereign wealth fund.
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And you said you're going to invest in more companies. When are you going to acquire Cracker
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Barrel? That was what I want to know. We need to federalize Cracker Barrel, as I said on the show
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last week. But there was actually a more meme-y pop culture development while we were in this
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cabinet meeting. And it was finally, at long last, the engagement of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey.
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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
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guy. And I think that she's a terrific person. So I wish them a lot of luck.
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Never let it be said that the man is not disciplined. Trump is, how much, as he said,
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Taylor's no longer hot. She's a Democrat. She voted for Biden. She's dead to me. I'm hot. She's not.
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But he said, no, we want to make peace. We want to bring people together.
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We want to build these nice, strong coalitions. But he's up on it. You know, this reminds me of,
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I think it was Chris Rock, who was talking about Joan Rivers before Joan Rivers was murdered by the
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Obamas for revealing the truth about Michelle. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm joking. It was a joke.
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But she did, she was making jokes about Michelle and Beyonce and whatever. And Chris Rock said,
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he said, man, you know, Joan Rivers, the woman's like 80 years old, and she's so
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hip that she can make Beyonce jokes. She's so with it. That's what you see with Trump,
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because he's a showbiz icon. He already made the Cracker Barrel. I think he posted on Truth
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Social or something. He said, you know, Cracker Barrel must change the logo back. Bring back Uncle
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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,
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this feels very official given where I am right now, but this is in my official capacity as the
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host of the Michael Knowles show, I am now calling for a full fatwa on Cracker Barrel. I was previously,
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I said, maybe we can forgive them. They fire the glasses lady and they'll go back to Uncle Herschel
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and they'll bring back the Cracker Barrel and the barrel and it'll be nice and we can go have our
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chicken and dumplings and play the good old peg game. No, Cracker Barrel has not learned its lesson.
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Cracker Barrel has doubled down. This is their promise to you.
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In the, oh, this, oh, I don't even want to read it. This reads just like the 40-something glasses
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wearing saccharine liberal, probably cold as ice HR lady. Okay. This is, if the last few days have
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shown us anything, it's how deeply people care about Cracker Barrel. We're truly grateful for
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your heartfelt voices. Can you just hear the sarcasm dripping off the sheer contempt for the
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customer base for all of us? I, this is a little tangential. I was in the airport. I was in Nashville
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Airport two days ago, flying out to DC and a nice couple of a certain age stopped me and said, well,
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hello, you know, in the Southern from Tennessee and Alabama. We're just at Cracker Barrel. Really? Yeah.
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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
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
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to get through this at this rate. They go on. You've also shown us that we, sorry. You've also shown us
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that we could have done a better job sharing who we are and who we'll always be. What has not
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changed and what will never change are the values this company was built when Cracker Barrel first
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opened in 1969. Blah, blah, blah. The things people love about our stores aren't going anywhere.
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Rocking chairs, a warm foot, blah, blah, blah. We love seeing how much you care about our old timer.
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That's the cracker, the cracker in the barrel. And we love them too. Uncle Herschel will still be on
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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,
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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,
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it's not going to get a Michelin star. Okay, it's not. There are better places, mom and pop places,
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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
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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
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clueless woman comes in and says, yeah, well, you know what? You know what this is missing?
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
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.
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,
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
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
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
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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
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
00:30:33.360
year. Knock, knock, knock. 12 half-naked women walk into my room. Wow. Okay. What happened next?
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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,
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00:37:44.620
My favorite comment yesterday is from Ross Niemer 3142. It says, Michael's Snoop Dogg impression
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,
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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.