The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1835 - Lib Magazine DISRESPECTS Trump With Botched Photo

00:00:00.000 President Trump secures the release of the Israeli hostages, the end of the Gaza war,

00:00:05.160 and for now at least, peace in the Middle East. It is the most significant international achievement

00:00:10.560 of a presidential administration in decades. All of President Trump's critics have to eat crow.

00:00:17.400 He did the impossible. And Trump's enemies are so angry about it,

00:00:23.040 they shaved off his hair. I'm Michael Knowles, this is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to the show. Vice President J.D. Vance just made the most beautiful

00:00:50.240 Indigenous People's Day proclamation in the history of that made-up holiday. We will get to that

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00:02:15.740 first order. They just can't help themselves. They can't help themselves. Trump did the impossible.

00:02:23.700 He did the thing that everyone said he couldn't do, that his enemies said, oh, wear a MAGA hat if

00:02:29.240 Trump gets the Israeli hostages released. Oh, could you imagine? It was a punchline in the first term.

00:02:34.640 Can you imagine Trump? What's he going to do? He's going to bring peace to the Middle East,

00:02:37.260 right? Then this war breaks out on Biden's watch, the Israel-Gaza war, the October 7th massacre,

00:02:43.160 two years of strife. And then Trump ends it yesterday. And he brings the hostages home.

00:02:49.680 And it's just a completely unimpeachable, indisputable, astounding success.

00:02:56.360 So the Libs know that they have to acknowledge that he did this amazing thing. They already set

00:03:02.920 the stage for it. There was no way to back out of it. They had to acknowledge it.

00:03:05.940 And even as they acknowledge it, they have to try to just twist the knife a little bit.

00:03:09.880 So Time Magazine gives Trump this cover. And it's Trump's face. And it says,

00:03:16.360 His Triumph by Eric Cordelesa. Then another article, The Leader Israel Needed by Ehud Barak,

00:03:23.560 the former prime minister of Israel. Then How Gaza Heals by Mohammed bin Abdul Karim Al-Isa.

00:03:30.420 Okay. And what's the picture? It's a picture from below of Trump looking up.

00:03:37.200 So already we're at an angle that is not flattering ever. You never want the picture going up your

00:03:44.720 nose. But already it's a bad angle. And it's this angle that puts almost exactly in the center of the

00:03:52.340 photograph. Your eye is drawn because of the lines of his collar, of his necktie, of his neck, of the

00:03:58.960 near centrality of this particular point of the image. It's President Trump's neck kind of being

00:04:05.180 pulled in a wrinkle in at his collar. So it's not a flattering image. And I say this without

00:04:12.620 myself attempting to flatter Trump. He's a good looking guy. Trump is a good looking guy. And

00:04:18.340 before he got into politics, most people would acknowledge that. He's a good looking guy. He's

00:04:22.380 tall. He's well built. I'm not saying he's Fabio. I'm just saying he's a good looking guy. He cuts a

00:04:28.120 strong image on stage and on camera. That's why he was a number one TV star on network TV for 12 to 15

00:04:34.840 years. And this picture is not flattering. This image of where it looks like it's, I don't know,

00:04:40.840 they're making his face look like saran wrap being wrapped around a basketball or something.

00:04:45.560 Then you look up at his head. And it's a good facial expression that he's making. It's optimistic.

00:04:53.520 It's looking up, looking up toward heaven. We'll get to the significance of that.

00:04:58.820 But there's something missing. Can you tell what's missing about this picture?

00:05:02.340 Beyond, they make him look wrinkly and it's just an unflattering angle on anybody.

00:05:08.400 The angle gets rid of his hair. You get a little wisp of hair on the right side of his head.

00:05:14.640 The left side of his head, so the right side of the image, it basically looks like he's bald.

00:05:20.420 Light shining through it, a little bit of hair on the back. But where does hair go?

00:05:27.480 They got rid of his hair. So they take a picture of this man who is, for a man of a certain age,

00:05:33.260 he's a good looking guy. They take the least flattering picture they can, but the key to it,

00:05:39.340 and this is the part I don't think other people have really picked up on.

00:05:42.220 They get rid of the hair intentionally. First of all, images in newspapers, in magazines are selected

00:05:52.320 with great precision and specificity. There are people whose job it is, the photo editors,

00:05:58.140 to pick the images. Every part of the images are intended to convey something.

00:06:02.900 When you're talking about a legacy outlet like Time Magazine, the stakes go much, much higher.

00:06:07.860 When you talk about a cover image, it's much higher still. They picked this image intentionally.

00:06:13.740 And everyone's just focusing on, oh, they made it look like his neck is wrinkly. Oh,

00:06:16.760 they made it look like his head is kind of oddly shaped. And the key to it is the hair.

00:06:21.300 And Trump picked up on that. Trump is the only other person I've seen who's picked up on this.

00:06:26.100 He posted on Truth Social, Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me,

00:06:29.600 but the picture may be the worst of all time. They disappeared my hair and then had something

00:06:34.020 floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one.

00:06:37.480 Really weird. I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles. This is funny. You know,

00:06:40.840 it's funny. I saw that he posted about this. This is my first time reading it. And he's picking up on

00:06:45.520 all the points that I mentioned. I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this

00:06:49.020 is a super bad picture and deserve to be called out. What are they doing and why? Like I skimmed it,

00:06:54.580 but I actually hadn't paid much attention to what he actually said. He hones in on the key piece,

00:07:00.160 the hair. Why did they get rid of the hair? Just because they think it's funny if they make

00:07:04.520 him look bald. No. They had to get rid of the hair because the hair is President Trump's

00:07:11.200 most distinctive physical feature. People have been making Trump hair jokes since the 90s.

00:07:19.940 Okay. For my entire life, and I grew up in New York where Trump is a very well-known figure. Now

00:07:25.820 he's a globally well-known figure, but especially in New York, people have been making Trump hair jokes

00:07:30.140 since the 90s for 30 years, more than 30 years. They had to get rid of Trump's hair because they

00:07:37.260 had to diminish the distinctive nature of Trump's accomplishment. Trump did something that other

00:07:44.500 presidents have failed to do. Trump has achieved the biggest foreign policy win since the end of

00:07:49.980 the Cold War. And while they couldn't deny that he did that, it's manifest, it's obvious.

00:07:58.220 The next best thing they could do was diminish the Trumpiness of the whole thing.

00:08:05.320 So what they're going to try to do is say, well, this was a victory for America,

00:08:08.580 or this was a victory for the presidency or something, but they're going to try to diminish

00:08:12.300 the Trumpiness of it. They have to de-Trumpify the moment. And so they're de-Trumpifying the picture.

00:08:19.980 They're taking away his distinguishing feature. And there is a deeply psychological reason behind

00:08:26.560 this. For 10 years now, since Trump seriously entered into politics, the image of Trump has

00:08:34.600 been presented as the face of evil. The next coming of Hitler, Time Magazine actually made Trump kind of

00:08:41.160 look like Hitler. Their photo editors previously had a picture, I wish I could call it up right now, 0.79

00:08:45.360 that was reminiscent of Hitler in Time Magazine, sitting on a chair, looking over his arm.

00:08:51.500 And so they've made the typical picture you think of Trump, head on, serious expression,

00:08:58.220 hair in full view. They've made that into an image of evil. Because Trump has done something here

00:09:05.820 that is undeniably good, they have two options. They can either try implausibly to say that it's

00:09:12.680 actually bad, just like everything else Trump does. Or they have to try to convey that it's

00:09:18.780 not really Trump. They chose the latter course. That's what this is about. It's not just that this

00:09:25.800 is a particularly bad picture of Trump. It's that the image doesn't look like Trump. Go back to the

00:09:30.820 image. Trump's head, when you look at it, is rectangular. He has a particularly rectangular head

00:09:37.360 normally. This image is weirdly round. In the typical Trump picture, he has a ton of hair.

00:09:46.920 In this image, he barely has any hair. In the typical Trump picture, Trump's hair is blonde.

00:09:51.400 In this picture, because of the lighting, and who knows, maybe because of the photo editing,

00:09:55.140 his hair is white. It's not just that it's a bad picture, it's that it doesn't look like Trump,

00:09:59.540 because they have to deny that Trump did this. Because Trump can't have done this,

00:10:02.640 because they said he was Hitler, and he was going to cause World War III. And instead,

00:10:06.420 he has brought about a considerable degree of world peace, and he received a standing ovation

00:10:12.360 in Israel, something that Hitler probably would never do. That's what's going on here. That's what

00:10:18.560 the photo editors were getting at. That is what the left is going to have to grapple with here.

00:10:23.960 If we have now reached, but Trump's done a lot of great things that they've tried to deny.

00:10:27.380 Oh, no, the immigration policy is bad. He's not actually deporting all those criminals. And it's bad if

00:10:32.520 he's deporting people anyway. And his tariffs are going to cause the destruction of global trade.

00:10:36.760 And actually, shoot, the global trade's going fine. All right, the tariffs aren't even

00:10:40.520 implemented yet. And it's just they keep tripping over themselves. But with this one,

00:10:45.300 it's just the hostages are back. The hostilities have ended. The major global conflict,

00:10:52.600 regional conflict involving the entire world in the hottest area of the earth has been resolved for now.

00:10:58.960 Shoot. Okay, let's just pretend it wasn't Trump. Now, what does Trump think about all this? We'll

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00:12:33.660 order. President Trump on Air Force One, speaking to reporters, takes a 30,000 foot view. He's on Air

00:12:42.200 Force One, so maybe it's a 40,000 foot view of geopolitics. We're talking a lot about the Holy Land.

00:12:49.220 And he's considering religious matters. He previously had said that he wants to resolve

00:12:53.380 these wars because he wants to please God so he can go to heaven. Peter Doocy followed up on this

00:12:59.040 and said, can you expound upon where heaven fits into your political strategy? Here's what he had to

00:13:05.740 say. You talked about how you hope to end the war in Ukraine because it might help you get into

00:13:11.080 heaven. How does this help? Does this help? I mean, you know, I'm being a little cute. I don't think

00:13:19.700 there's anything going to get me in heaven, okay? I think I'm not maybe heaven bound. I may be in

00:13:26.560 heaven right now as we fly an Air Force One. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make heaven.

00:13:31.080 I love this answer. I love it. And it's not just the left that's criticizing him for this. There

00:13:38.220 are people who identify as Christian, who are baptized Christians, who are very angry at this 1.00

00:13:46.720 answer. And they point to this answer and they say, this is evidence that Trump is not a true

00:13:50.700 Christian and he's not really saved and we need to spread the gospel with him. I don't know about

00:13:54.700 Trump's personal religious convictions. I see his public religious convictions and I'm very impressed

00:14:00.000 by them. And I think he's obviously a great leader for Christians in America and throughout the world.

00:14:07.560 But even on this answer, as it pertains to Trump's personal life, I love it because this answer

00:14:13.880 is humble. It expresses a kind of humility that is deeply Christian. He's making a self-effacing joke 1.00

00:14:22.640 about his own unworthiness of salvation. He says at the top, he goes, you know, look,

00:14:28.620 I was being a little cute about the, I was being a little cute about the heaven thing.

00:14:32.260 He's setting a stage for it. Look, I'm making a little joke again. He said, but me, I don't know.

00:14:37.100 Hey, Mr. President, if you fix the war in Ukraine, is that going to get you into heaven? He goes,

00:14:41.380 me, I don't know. I don't think I'm heaven bound. Some pearl clutching Christians, they say,

00:14:46.660 he's confessing that he's damned. He doesn't have the theological virtue of hope.

00:14:50.620 He doesn't know that he is. He's making a joke about his unworthiness. Lord, have mercy on me,

00:14:58.720 a sinner. Most politicians are the Pharisee who says, oh, Lord, I thank you that you have not made

00:15:07.640 me like these wretched sinners, these tax collectors. Trump is in the person of the poor

00:15:13.400 man who knows his unworthiness, who says, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. I grant he's not saying,

00:15:19.640 Lord, have mercy on me here explicitly. I do think there is quite a bit of that implicit,

00:15:23.780 though. When he says, me, I don't know. I don't know if that. Could anything get me into heaven?

00:15:29.320 So certainly nothing of my own will could get me into heaven. None of my own works could get me

00:15:34.620 into heaven. Not even solving the war in Ukraine could get me into heaven. What is left unsaid here

00:15:38.720 is I would require God's grace to get me into heaven. That's a deeply Christian expression,

00:15:42.920 even if lots of it are being left implicit. And let's not even fill in the gaps. Let's say we don't

00:15:50.180 know Trump's personal religious views. So it remains to be seen, and I'm sure he's had a lot

00:15:54.620 of religious conversations. He's insinuated as much, certainly since his near assassination in

00:15:58.700 Butler. But I'll go a step further. I know this is going to be controversial. We're going to stir the

00:16:04.460 pot, kick the hornet's nest a little bit right now. Without weighing in on various debates between

00:16:11.800 all of the different Protestant points of view, you know, Calvinism and Lutheranism and Arminianism

00:16:17.440 and Antinomianism and this-ism and that-ism, without weighing in on those particular debates,

00:16:23.420 without weighing in on the merits of, say, Catholicism over the various Protestant views,

00:16:29.800 or Eastern Orthodoxy, or whatever. I just want to make a purely historical observation.

00:16:38.080 President Trump's uncertainty about where he's going to end up

00:16:43.460 is much more in line with the traditional Christian understanding of salvation than modern

00:16:51.400 views of salvation, such as the one popularly described as once saved, always saved. In other

00:16:58.220 words, Trump's saying, look, I don't know. I want to go to heaven. I hope I can go to heaven.

00:17:03.980 But I don't know. I definitely don't deserve heaven, and I don't know where I'm going to end up.

00:17:08.460 That is, indisputably, the much longer-standing traditional Christian view of salvation

00:17:17.280 than the notion that one can be saved as a one-time event and then not even possess the freedom

00:17:27.140 to turn away from God's grace. I know that there are many people who hold to that view.

00:17:33.320 There are very interesting conversations that can be had about Calvinism and eternal security

00:17:40.300 and the distinction, as in the Johannine epistles, between mortal and venial sin.

00:17:47.240 There are many interesting theological conversations. I'm making an historical point.

00:17:51.800 What Trump is saying here would be clearly understood historically by Christians going

00:17:58.760 back to antiquity. The notion that one does not possess the free will to reject God's grace

00:18:05.640 is a little bit more modern, okay? The too-long-didn't-read version of that.

00:18:13.280 Lay off Trump, okay? It's not just, let's not talk about when Trump brings up religion.

00:18:19.140 I really like when Trump brings up religion. This is refreshing to me. This is not pharisaical.

00:18:26.320 This is not theologically innovative and cocky and prideful and presumptuous.

00:18:34.620 This is an expression of humility in the leader of the free world,

00:18:38.660 specifically pertaining to eternal things. I really like, I for one like that. Raise your hand

00:18:46.800 if you like that. I do. Can we get a hands up? I don't know. Some people won't like it. That's okay.

00:18:51.200 There are plenty of opportunities for interesting theological conversations. For me,

00:18:55.020 I find it very, very refreshing. Now, one last note about what Trump's affairs with world leaders.

00:19:03.420 Trump was caught on a hot mic amid all of this great news and the resolution of the war in the

00:19:08.260 Middle East. The new prime minister of Canada, not Trudeau, but the other guy, whatever,

00:19:15.000 prime minister Maple Leaf. He shows up and apparently Trump had referred to him as president.

00:19:22.100 So just offhand, president is the head of state, prime minister is the head of government.

00:19:26.960 In our country, it's both in the same office, but in parliamentary systems, they're divided up.

00:19:32.160 So he just, he mixed it up. He called the prime minister president.

00:19:34.840 The prime minister says to Trump, hey, thanks for the promotion. Here's Trump's response.

00:19:42.200 I love it. It's a little hard to make out because the microphone has trouble picking it up,

00:19:57.880 but he goes, thanks for upgrading me from prime minister to president. Oh, did I say that? Oh,

00:20:02.040 that's funny. He's laughing. He slaps him on the back and then he goes,

00:20:05.260 least I didn't call you governor. I just, I love it. I love the, the ribbing,

00:20:14.980 the kind of vaguely threatening joke. We might invade you. We might, hey, watch out. But also the

00:20:20.980 camaraderie, the camaraderie, they, they kind of seem to get along. It's not the stodgy clinical,

00:20:26.200 sterile, defensive posture with international leaders. It's an aggressive posture.

00:20:32.920 This too, I think has Christian resonance because there's a line that we say about the church and we

00:20:38.060 say it because it's in the gospel and it's a line of our Lord, which is that the gates of hell will

00:20:44.620 not prevail against the church, which is often misunderstood as saying that evil forces will

00:20:49.700 never overcome the church, but that gets the direction totally wrong. We're not talking about

00:20:54.580 the armies of hell. We're talking about the gates of hell. Gates are themselves defensive mechanisms.

00:21:01.500 So when they say the gates of hell will never prevail against the church, the image is not

00:21:05.220 in the armies of hell attempting to vanquish the church. The image is of the church militant

00:21:09.640 conquering hell, conquering death. In other words, the church is on the move. And this is how we should

00:21:15.640 be thinking. For far too long, Christians have put themselves in defensive posture, 0.69

00:21:19.840 apologizing for everything. And not only the things that we should apologize for,

00:21:25.160 but apologizing for just everything, for being Christian, for holding good and virtuous views.

00:21:30.180 We're always on the defensive. You got to go on the offensive. Politically speaking,

00:21:34.540 the American right, which has a lot more to do with religion than the left does.

00:21:39.760 The right has been on the defensive. We're not this. We're not that. We're not racist. We're not this.

00:21:43.760 We're not that. No, we don't want to do this. We don't want to do that. We just want to shrink

00:21:46.180 the government. We don't want to do anything, actually. Trump flips that on a whole host of

00:21:50.840 issues. He says, no, we are going to deport people. We are going to force a resolution to

00:21:56.060 foreign conflicts. We're not just going to allow wars to fester forever. We are going to change

00:22:00.000 our trade policy. We are going to prosecute the bad actors, the corrupt people in government. We are.

00:22:06.080 The left has been doing that for a long time. And then we get into office and we say, we're not

00:22:08.940 going to do that because of some principle about losing all the time. No, we are. We are. We are.

00:22:13.860 We're doing stuff, baby. We're doing it. That is the right attitude. We got to be on the move.

00:22:20.140 All right. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Okay. The libs are up in arms. They're 0.99

00:22:26.160 furious. They have to eat a lot of crow today. There might be a MAGA hat on the view. We'll get

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00:23:49.340 biggest Bible study. Alyssa Farah, the fake Republican on The View. She is at least the fake Republican. 0.93

00:23:57.440 She's not an overt Democrat, but she's a lib. She's a lib like all the ladies on The View. 1.00

00:24:03.380 She previously said something that she might have to make good on vis-a-vis the war in Israel.

00:24:08.740 My point when I say I'm not going to be apocalyptic, it's not changing a tune. It's not making every

00:24:15.740 single thing a five-alarm fire. If he does good, if he gets the Israeli hostages out, I promise I will 0.97

00:24:20.920 wear a MAGA hat for one day on the show and say, thank you for doing it. She'll knock it right off

00:24:25.880 my head. But like, you have to be able to cheer for wins when they happen and then call out relentlessly

00:24:30.820 the wrongdo. Okay, great. Well, it happened. So are we going to get it today? I don't know. I don't

00:24:35.560 know what time The View airs. I assume it's after my show in the morning. I want to see that MAGA hat.

00:24:41.240 I'll be curious to see if she makes good on this bet. Obviously, the clip is going around. She knows

00:24:45.560 that she made this bet. I'll be curious to see if she can do it. Because on the one hand, it would

00:24:51.400 be gracious. It'd be fun. I remember Glenn Beck in 2016 really didn't like Trump. And then when he

00:24:57.300 saw that Trump was doing great stuff, Glenn had the grace to say, oh, I guess I underestimated him,

00:25:02.800 where I got things a little bit wrong. And he wore the MAGA hat on his show. And it was a great image.

00:25:06.580 Ben, actually, Ben Shapiro didn't like Trump in 2016. I did like Trump a lot. I forget what the

00:25:12.160 particular issue was. Trump did something that Ben really, really liked. And he said, all right,

00:25:16.040 Knowles, I'll wear your MAGA hat. Give me the MAGA hat. I'm going to wear it on the show. It was good.

00:25:19.000 That's a very gracious thing to do. It's very self-aware. So, okay, I got something wrong. All right,

00:25:23.660 I got it. I'm going to make good on that. Can Alyssa Farah do that? Who cares about Alyssa Farah and The View?

00:25:29.320 Can the left do that broadly? Or do they have to get the nasty picture of Trump? Not just the nasty

00:25:37.040 picture, but the picture that tries to de-Trumpify Trump. Can they acknowledge what Trump just achieved?

00:25:45.740 Because you got to sympathize with them a little bit. If they acknowledge that,

00:25:52.160 they will simultaneously be acknowledging that they were completely wrong about him for 10 years.

00:25:59.320 completely wrong about him. They said he was going to bring us war. He brought us peace.

00:26:05.120 They said that he was incompetent in politics. He's the best foreign policy president,

00:26:14.280 at least since George H.W. Bush. They said that he turns the whole world against us.

00:26:21.700 He's palling around, even with the prime minister of the country that he's threatening to invade.

00:26:25.400 And they're like joking together. He achieved something other people couldn't achieve.

00:26:31.440 He's not just okay at being president, which would be a major concession for the left.

00:26:36.300 He's really, really good at it. He's better than any other president probably in my lifetime.

00:26:42.440 Yes, certainly in my lifetime, because George H.W. Bush wasn't good enough to get reelected.

00:26:48.200 George H.W. Bush did a lot of great stuff, but he did not have the political skill of Trump.

00:26:54.920 We need to see a lot of that. I want to see that MAGA hat. Weirdly enough,

00:26:58.380 the view is going to be a weather balloon today, or a weather vane rather. The view is going to show

00:27:04.700 us whether or not the left can actually come to grips with this, because it would represent a sea

00:27:08.500 change in American politics. Certain big figures on the left simply cannot. Barack Obama in recent

00:27:16.100 days has taken the occasion of Trump's triumph to sit. And it's unbelievable. Even the way he's

00:27:23.280 sitting is so beautiful. It's Obama. He's not wearing a suit. He's not presidential. He's not

00:27:27.360 strong and established. He's sitting on some cushy, weak-looking modern chair with his legs crossed

00:27:35.640 over his legs, and his arms crossed. Always a terrible thing. Sometimes I see people do this

00:27:40.120 at public events. It really drives me crazy. Sitting with their arms crossed in public,

00:27:44.320 which just conveys to people that you don't like them. You don't want to be there. You're angry.

00:27:48.720 You're upset. It's very, very off-putting. People do it, though. At least top politicians should know

00:27:54.660 better than that. Sitting arms crossed, wearing his dark, looks like a turtleneck. It would be very

00:28:00.580 fitting if it were a turtleneck, but it's not. I think it's an Oxford shirt. In any case,

00:28:03.700 sitting there, it's me, me, me. I don't like what Trump is doing. Me, me, me, me, me. And

00:28:07.440 listen to what specifically Obama objects to.

00:28:13.000 We don't want kangaroo courts and trumped-up charges. That's what happens in other places

00:28:21.340 that we used to scold for doing that. We want our court system and our Justice Department and our

00:28:29.700 prosecutors and our FBI to be just playing things straight and looking at the facts and not meddling

00:28:37.060 in politics the way we've seen later. We need people who have whatever platforms they have

00:28:46.960 to be able to say, no, that's not who we are.

00:28:51.920 That's not who we are. I mean, that is who I am because I'm the one who started all of that.

00:28:58.960 It almost boggles the mind that he could make this statement with a straight face.

00:29:05.420 We don't want our DOJ and our FBI to be prosecuting our political enemies.

00:29:11.180 We want them to be playing it straight. We don't want them, for instance,

00:29:14.380 to be cooking up fake dossiers with the Democratic nominee for president at the end of the second

00:29:22.120 term of the Democratic president to create a false pretext to spy on the rival's presidential campaign.

00:29:30.060 And then, for instance, if that rival manages to make it to the White House,

00:29:33.980 to be used as a predicate for undermining his entire administration.

00:29:37.420 And we don't want to be wielding, once that rival is running for re-election,

00:29:45.520 we don't want our federal prosecutors to be trying to put him in jail four ways from Sunday.

00:29:51.900 Okay? And we don't want the FBI, under a Democratic president, to be raiding that rival's house.

00:29:58.000 And we don't want me. We are not who I am.

00:30:02.880 Wait, uh-huh. Say that again. He did all of it. He did it.

00:30:07.960 You can't even only blame Biden. It started, Crossfire Hurricane, all that.

00:30:12.600 The investigation into Trump's campaign started on Obama's watch.

00:30:20.400 With Obama's knowledge, one asks, would seem so.

00:30:26.660 Cooking up the fake dossier with the Democratic campaign, that was on Obama's watch. He did all

00:30:31.480 that. Take Trump out of it for a second. Barack Obama was the one who turned his

00:30:37.140 IRS under his flack, Lois Lerner, to spy on and persecute the Tea Party groups.

00:30:49.140 I was there. Some of you will not be old enough to remember this. I was a member of some of these

00:30:52.360 Tea Party groups. The Tea Party was growing up. It was a populist ground swelling. It was kind of

00:30:56.580 setting the stage for the Trump populist movement that took the White House in 2016. This was back in

00:31:02.020 2009, 2010. All these great groups. And Obama sicked the IRS on these Tea Party groups,

00:31:09.400 on all these conservative groups. The conservative group in LA, Friends of Abe,

00:31:12.720 they were doing everything they could to get the member list.

00:31:17.140 Something tells me if they did get that member list, a lot of people would have had audits from

00:31:20.360 the IRS. We know this all happened because of him. Maybe that's why he's so whiny and shriveled up

00:31:28.360 and bitter and angry and resentful. It's because he is the one, not Trump, Barack Obama is the one

00:31:35.900 who upended American norms. If any president is responsible for that in recent history, it's Barack

00:31:42.040 Obama. He's the one who did it. And he did it because he endeavored to fundamentally transform

00:31:47.960 America. His words, not mine. And he thought he won. He thought he did it. He thought the

00:31:54.500 Republicans were done. He thought conservatism was, for all intents and purposes, out in America.

00:31:58.820 And maybe there would continue to be two parties, but his ideology would dominate.

00:32:04.520 His apparatchiks would dominate. And if he had to go after his political rivals and weaponize the

00:32:10.980 government, well, okay, that's all we needed to fundamentally transform America. And it didn't work.

00:32:14.860 It just didn't work. And now he's whining. He says, hey, stop doing, stop doing to me what I did

00:32:21.800 to you. Stop doing to me a much more just and justifiable version of the thing that I did to

00:32:26.820 you. That's not who we are. That's not, I am not who we are. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Your thing is

00:32:33.460 not who we are anymore. And we're going to make sure that you pay a political price for that.

00:32:39.320 Okay. He makes one point even more explicit. And this bears some discussion. He talks about the

00:32:46.760 distinction between friends and enemies. The point is that we have blown through just in the last six

00:32:55.160 months a whole range of not simply assumptions, but rules and laws and practices that were put in place

00:33:09.760 to ensure that, you know, nobody's above the law and that we don't use the federal government to

00:33:23.140 simply reward our friends and punish our enemies. And the same thing's obviously happening in the

00:33:29.880 justice department. So people are right to be concerned.

00:33:33.300 Just pure, pure projection. I even remember his attorney general, Eric Holder. What was the

00:33:39.120 line Eric Holder said about Obama? He said, I'm your boy. I'm your guy. I'm your main man. I'm your

00:33:44.180 friend who's going to punish your enemies. The distinction here I think is key because as is

00:33:50.540 often the case, when the left is accusing, the left is projecting. But it gets to something that has

00:33:55.900 entered a little bit of the political discourse and controversy lately, namely the distinction between

00:34:00.640 friends and enemies. October is packed with new releases on Daily Wire Plus. We're talking new

00:34:04.660 series, new docs, new premiere of Friendly Fire. Join me, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan,

00:34:09.540 unscripted, unfiltered, no moderators, nothing off limits live this Thursday night at 7 p.m.

00:34:15.280 Eastern plus special appearances from Isabel Brown and your first look at the Pendragon cycle. Do not

00:34:21.380 miss a moment. Join now and get 40% off a new annual membership with code FALL40. This month,

00:34:25.980 there is more happening on Daily Wire Plus than ever before. Do not miss it. Go to dailywire.com

00:34:30.520 and join today. My favorite comment yesterday is from Dilmeister93. All those that shouted free

00:34:36.920 Palestine should thank Trump for freeing Palestine. Sure, that's true. Hey, Greta, where are you?

00:34:42.060 Greta, we will make America great again. We will make America greater again. How dare you 0.71

00:34:50.240 free the hostages and declare war in the Middle East? You have destroyed my flotilla. 0.93

00:34:56.480 Greta. Okay, we don't want to make any jokes about Greta, obviously.

00:35:03.460 Obama says you don't want to have a government that is just punishing its enemies and rewarding

00:35:09.540 its friends. Okay, this distinction between friend and enemy has come up. People have bandied this

00:35:14.360 about and there are all sorts of accusations flying around. If you even bring up the distinction

00:35:19.640 between friend and enemy. The reason for this in political philosophy is because this term,

00:35:25.060 the friend-enemy distinction, is attributable to a philosopher named Carl Schmitt. And Carl Schmitt

00:35:30.460 is controversial because he happened to be a German philosopher in the 1930s and 40s. It was not a

00:35:38.120 great, it was a little tough time to be, and so he was a Nazi. Not great, not good to be a Nazi.

00:35:44.180 Heidegger was a Nazi too. Heidegger is still taught in philosophy classes. For some reason,

00:35:47.560 Schmitt in particular, remains extremely controversial. The point that Schmitt is

00:35:53.360 making, though, is a really important one in the concept of the political. He says that there's this

00:35:59.860 kind of pre-political even distinction. The distinction that defines politics is the

00:36:04.000 distinction between friend and enemy. And when he says enemy, he's very clear. He's not talking about

00:36:09.220 personal enemies. He's not saying, you know, my friends are morally good and my enemies are morally

00:36:14.800 bad. And he's not even talking about personal enemies, like, you know, Billy slept with my

00:36:19.620 girlfriend in high school and I've never forgiven him. He's talking about political enemies, which is

00:36:23.480 distinct from personal enemies. The political enemy is, he uses the Latin ostis, and the personal enemy

00:36:28.600 would be inimicus. And he's just saying, he's not saying it's good or bad. He's just saying it's a fact

00:36:33.840 of politics that politics is distinguished between people in groups that are friends and people in

00:36:43.040 groups that are enemies to the political community. And it seems persuasive to me, at least. It's a

00:36:52.140 fair telling. I don't think there's anything particularly groundbreaking about that. What's

00:36:56.260 funny about Obama using this phrase is the left in particular has been advancing not only this idea,

00:37:06.080 but advancing this idea in a really irresponsible way. Because what they have been saying, at least

00:37:10.820 since the 2020 campaign, and actually much further back, is that conservatives in America are not

00:37:18.960 merely inimicus, you know, people that they don't like. That conservatives in America are not merely

00:37:24.220 the rival political party that they're going to endeavor to beat at the ballot box. They have been

00:37:28.580 arguing that they pose, that we pose, an existential threat to the country. That's their language.

00:37:35.220 He said, Donald Trump poses an existential threat to the country.

00:37:37.840 It's a threat to democracy, but an existential threat to our country, which justifies his

00:37:44.840 assassination. Ronald Reagan used to say in the 80s, I have no enemies here in America,

00:37:50.820 only opponents. And that's a really nice way to think of it. But the left doesn't think of it that

00:37:54.860 way. They say we're existential threats, which justifies, in their view, in self-defense,

00:38:02.780 assassinating someone like Donald Trump, which explains why they would excuse or minimize or

00:38:08.960 even celebrate the murder of someone like Charlie Kirk. That's a very dangerous way of viewing your

00:38:17.820 fellow countrymen. That's how they view it, okay? And so when they say, we don't want to just punish

00:38:23.560 our enemies. Well, then how about you stop calling us existential threats? How about you stop celebrating

00:38:27.580 it when some of us are murdered? How about you do that? We don't want to weaponize the government.

00:38:32.480 Well, then maybe you shouldn't have done that. Maybe you shouldn't have set the stage for that.

00:38:36.800 The only way out, though, is through. I've said this before. The distinction between a personal

00:38:43.440 enemy and a political enemy is actually an important distinction because it means that

00:38:47.000 things are not merely petty. And it's not just about petty vengeance and grievance or whatever.

00:38:52.520 That it's about viewing political interests, which is actually a better thing. It's a more

00:38:56.880 rational way to think about politics than just trying to slaughter everyone who's ever offended 0.71

00:39:00.480 you. I make the same point about political violence. We talk about political violence here. There are two

00:39:04.400 kinds of political violence. There's personal violence, vigilante violence, when the left goes

00:39:11.780 out and murders people. That kind of political violence being a uniquely left-wing phenomenon.

00:39:16.660 And there's state violence. And that's kind of it. The choice is not between violence and

00:39:24.500 kumbaya. That doesn't exist. When you have 100,000 gang members in Chicago, that's not your choice.

00:39:31.800 When you have leftists going around assassinating conservative campus speakers, you don't get that

00:39:38.500 choice. Okay? The only two options are vigilante violence, which generally speaking is unjust,

00:39:46.300 and state violence. When the state, through all the institutions that Barack Obama is talking about

00:39:51.280 here, the prosecutors and the courts and the jails, and actually effect justice. Those are the only

00:39:58.680 options you have. And the left wields the unjust kind of violence. We need to wield the just civil

00:40:05.580 authority to restore order. I think Trump has shown that. It's a more aggressive posture in politics

00:40:12.000 than conservatives have exhibited in recent years. But I think that's important, because the weak defensive

00:40:17.060 posture is what allowed people like Barack Obama to rise up and really screw up our whole political

00:40:21.640 order. Now we have an alternative in the Trump decade, and I think it's worked out pretty well. Okay. Now,

00:40:29.120 speaking of friends and enemies, an important story. I meant to get to it last week. I really want to get to it

00:40:32.560 today. The United States has deported at least 10 people to Eswatini. Do you know where Eswatini is?

00:40:42.300 No? No? Me neither. Eswatini is a very tiny landlocked country in southeastern Africa.

00:40:50.320 This story came out from Reuters. Trump administration sends another third country deportation flight to

00:40:57.140 Eswatini. And the people who have been deported here, just to let you know, as the left cries and

00:41:05.380 rings their garments over it, these people are rapists and child rapists and murderers. Okay? 1.00

00:41:12.180 It's not like abuela or your gardener or something. These are like really, really bad people.

00:41:18.880 But the question is, why are they being deported to Eswatini? Well, because we want to get them out of the 1.00

00:41:23.940 country. And there are all sorts of roadblocks to sending them to different places. And what the

00:41:28.340 left wants is for the rapists and the murderers to stay in America, because they apparently have

00:41:32.080 some right to it or something. But we want to get them out. And we also want to send a message.

00:41:39.420 Okay? First of all, the illegal aliens who come to this country, even the very, very vanishingly small 1.00

00:41:44.620 number of them who claim to be asylum seekers, even they are generally not really asylum seekers.

00:41:49.780 Because if they're from Venezuela and they're seeking political asylum because they're going 1.00

00:41:55.020 to be killed by the Maduro regime or something, they could stop the minute they get out of

00:42:01.600 Venezuela. They certainly could stop in Mexico. Why are they coming all the way to the United 0.97

00:42:05.200 States? That involves more danger. That involves more trial. Because they're not really seeking

00:42:12.220 political asylum. They could get that in Mexico. What they're seeking is economic opportunity and to

00:42:17.100 exploit the system and to take the invitation of Democrats who have invited them in. Okay,

00:42:22.060 so we got to get them out. And now the libs, if they don't want to explicitly defend rapists and 0.99

00:42:28.420 child rapists and murderers in America, they'll say, well, you should send them someplace closer.

00:42:33.600 You should send them to their country of origin or whatever. And my answer is, well, if these guys 0.99

00:42:38.960 didn't want a one-way ticket to Eswatini, they probably shouldn't have broken into our country in the 1.00

00:42:43.200 first place, huh? They certainly shouldn't have broken into our country and then committed some of the 1.00

00:42:46.920 most heinous crimes. I think we're going to send them wherever we want to send them.

00:42:51.940 I think they're lucky we didn't send them to some far-flung island in the South Pacific without any

00:42:56.460 food on it or with cannibals or something. That was the other option. I think Eswatini is the moderate

00:43:02.780 option is what I think. And if you don't want to go there, don't break into our country. Simple as. 1.00

00:43:08.380 There's so much more I want to talk about. I have so much more to say.

00:43:18.100 America is harvesting organs from suicidal Canadians. Did you know that? 0.91

00:43:24.560 Speaking of the governor, prime minister, president of Canada. I really want, I know,

00:43:29.760 I promised you we would get to that today. But we won't. Because I'm a tease. You're going to have

00:43:35.440 to tune back in tomorrow if you even want hope of getting to that. Because today is Tee Hee Hee

00:43:41.340 Tuesday. And the rest of the show continues now. And you do not want to miss it. Become a member

00:43:45.160 and use code Knowles, Canada WLES at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:43:49.260 여러분들.

00:44:03.080 You.

00:44:03.880 You.

00:44:04.200 You.

00:44:04.740 You.

The Michael Knowles Show - October 14, 2025

Ep. 1835 - Lib Magazine DISRESPECTS Trump With Botched Photo

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