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00:02:53.820And so it's like, if you do the no tax thing, for people that are already, say, struggling and aren't really paying taxes in the first place, it doesn't really.
00:03:09.520Now, some will object that the median black taxpayer already receives a significantly greater proportion of benefits to taxes paid relative to the median white taxpayer.
00:03:20.420However, others will observe that Sicilians are arguably North African.
00:03:27.060And I own a very convincing Coogee sweater from the 1990s.
00:03:31.220And I look forward to making those honky devils pay all the taxes my fellow Nubian kings.
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00:05:39.280Jasmine Crockett, look, if I can pass, I don't know, the Sicilians, we may all make jokes and everything.
00:05:47.080There was that famous line from True Romance.
00:05:48.740But I think the Sicilians still probably count as white, which means that I will still have to pay taxes, which means I oppose this policy.
00:05:55.980But it is delightful to watch Jasmine Crockett suddenly transform into the black lady Milton Friedman.
00:06:02.880It's just Miltonia Friedman because did you hear her rationale for why the black people shouldn't pay taxes beyond slavery and oppression, whatever?
00:06:13.800She says from an economic perspective, she said, well, if the black people don't pay taxes to the government, then that means there's going to be more money in their pockets.
00:06:22.620And that's going to help stimulate the economy because those individual taxpayers are actually better at spending their own money than the government is.
00:07:01.120Also, if we're just talking about, you know, who would deserve to pay less in taxes, for whom it would make more sense to pay less in taxes.
00:07:09.100Probably you would say it's the people who pay more into the system than the benefits that they get out of it relatively.
00:07:48.320It's wild how rural America, like they believe that land, you know, votes.
00:07:56.580And they don't understand that they're being taxed at a higher rate than somebody like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, who I want to remind everybody that's against immigration, is a f***ing immigrant.
00:08:12.140I just think it's really important to remind everybody all the time that Elon Musk is a f***ing immigrant that doesn't pay taxes, who is a parasite off the American taxpayer.
00:08:20.940Okay, Elon Musk is an immigrant, I guess that's true, and he doesn't pay any taxes.
00:08:25.160He's a parasite on the American taxpayer.
00:08:27.880He's taken more out than he's putting in.
00:08:30.420So you hear this canard a lot from the left.
00:08:32.960They say, these rich people, they don't pay any taxes.
00:08:36.240Even Warren Buffett, he made a smarter version of the argument.
00:08:39.180He didn't get caught in that ridiculous lie, but he didn't say they pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, which also isn't true.
00:08:46.020But let's take a look at Elon's taxes, because it is true that some years, based on publicly available data, some years Elon Musk has paid relatively little in taxes.
00:08:58.260For instance, in 2019 and 2020, he paid less than $100,000 in taxes.
00:09:03.480So, still, $100,000 in taxes is much, much more than most people are paying in taxes.
00:09:09.800But still, you say, okay, for the richest guy in the world to be paying less than $100,000 in taxes per year, yeah, that is relatively little, right?
00:09:16.360Now, of course, the reason is that Elon Musk makes most of his money from returns on his investments, because he owns all of these companies.
00:09:23.780He's not going in and punching a time card, he's not really getting a W-2, is he?
00:09:27.080He owns some of the biggest companies in the world, and so when the companies do well, he makes more money.
00:09:31.640When the companies do worse, he makes less money.
00:09:33.940In some years, he's going to make a lot of money, some years he's going to make less money.
00:09:36.460So, in those two years, his tax return showed that it was a relatively less profitable year.
00:09:42.420Other years, however, let's look at 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024.
00:09:48.340In those years, Elon Musk paid between $11 and $18 billion in taxes each year, $11 and $18 billion.
00:09:57.460The median American will pay between $279,000 and $306,000 in taxes over the course of their entire lives.
00:10:07.080That is income tax, that is federal income tax, that is state tax, that is capital gains tax, that is FICA, your Social Security.
00:10:17.180That's all those taxes, they're going to pay between $279,000 and $306,000 in the course of their lives.
00:10:23.680Elon, for 2021, two, three, four, paid between $11 and $18 billion, which means that Elon paid, even using the rosiest numbers for the median American taxpayer,
00:10:34.060Elon paid, in one single year, 58,000 times what the median American will pay in taxes over the course of their entire lives.
00:11:26.720I think people see now the reality of immigration.
00:11:29.020What we were told for our whole lives is diversity is our strength, and Americans are lazy and fat and stupid,
00:11:36.660and we need to be culturally enriched by immigrants.
00:11:39.480We don't really look into who those immigrants are.
00:11:41.120Now, I think we're seeing the reality of it, which is that the immigrants who cross the southern border do so with the help of criminal cartels,
00:12:31.880The left would say, no, we hate the guy who built this big company and is really helping America on the global stage and help get Trump elected.
00:13:29.480And I think Elon is super smart, and he's been unbelievably helpful to all of us when it comes to the political order, getting Trump elected, opening up speech for conservatives on social media.
00:13:41.720You know, the guy, he's right and brilliant about so many things.
00:13:45.140I think he's paid less attention to religion, to the ultimate questions.
00:13:48.980And I think these answers, they're not quite there.
00:13:51.080So we'll get into where he goes wrong.
00:13:52.360First, though, I want to tell you about Preborn.
00:15:35.980If Christians believe that God is constantly involved in the particular affairs of human beings, that divine providence governs the entire world, and that God intervenes directly into the world, that he actually entered into history through the incarnation, that he established a real church, that he has representatives on earth, that he gave us sacraments, that we can pray to him, that we can have a personal relationship with him.
00:16:02.180The enlightenment deist view is the divine clockmaker, the watchmaker, who sets up everything meticulously, perfectly, and then just lets it go, and is not involved.
00:16:13.340In many ways, that view of God is closer to Islam, where the relationship, the gap between a human being and God is unbridgeable.
00:16:21.980But Christianity, it is bridgeable because God becomes man, because there is the God-man of Jesus Christ who enters into history and who dies for our sins.
00:20:35.280And Elon has been busy thinking about a lot of other things and accomplishing much more than the vast majority of human beings could ever imagine to do in their lifetimes.
00:20:43.040He's one of the most exceptional people in the history, certainly in modern history.
00:20:48.140But he hasn't spent enough time thinking about these questions, the eternal questions.
00:20:53.680And if he has, because he's obviously very intelligent, if he has the instinct to start to follow some of these ideas, he needs to follow them more seriously.
00:21:03.000He's too smart to be making these kinds of logical errors, which to me just means he's just kind of distracted by other questions.
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00:23:48.880This was on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on Monday.
00:23:51.960I know it's Wednesday, but I really want to get to it.
00:23:53.340President Trump sends out this presidential message.
00:23:57.360This is on a feast commemorating the traditional Christian idea and the dogmatically Catholic idea, in fact, as far as I'm concerned, that Mary was conceived without sin.
00:24:09.840That Mary, being the new Eve, being the Ark of the New Covenant, was immaculate, preserved by a singular grace from her son, from the stain of original sin.
00:24:24.060This is a longstanding Christian belief.
00:24:27.060It was defined dogmatically within the Catholic Church.
00:24:30.160Many Christians, baptized Christians, who are not Catholic believe in this.
00:24:34.440Some baptized Christians don't believe in this, but nevertheless, this is what President Trump had to say.
00:24:40.720Today, I recognize every American celebrating December 8th as a holy day honoring the faith, humility, and love of Mary, mother of Jesus, one of the greatest figures in the Bible.
00:24:48.440On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Catholics celebrate what they believe to be Mary's freedom from original sin as the mother of God.
00:24:53.360She first entered recorded history as a young woman when, according to Holy Scripture, the angel Gabriel greeted her in the village of Nazareth with news of a miracle.
00:25:01.080Hail, favored one, the Lord is with you.
00:25:03.220You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.
00:25:07.080In one of the most profound and consequential acts of history, Mary heroically accepted God's will with trust and humility.
00:25:12.700Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord.
00:25:14.700May it be done to me according to your word.
00:25:17.200Mary's decision forever altered the course of humanity.
00:25:19.280Nine months later, God became man when Mary gave birth to a son, Jesus, who would go on to offer his life on the cross for the redemption of sins and the salvation of the world.
00:25:27.600A beautiful, beautiful religious statement.
00:25:30.880And even if you don't agree with the Immaculate Conception yet, even if you don't agree with that as a matter of religion,
00:25:37.220surely you must say this is wonderful that President Trump is speaking about religion and about Christianity in this open way.
00:25:44.920This was very common in American history until the last few decades, and things have gone to pot in the last few decades, and now he's doing it again.
00:25:55.960It says, for nearly 250 years, Mary has played a distinct role in our great American story.
00:26:00.060Here's the political import coming out of the White House.
00:26:02.160In 1792, less than a decade after the end of the Revolutionary War, Bishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the U.S.
00:26:08.200and cousin of the signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll, only Catholic to sign the Declaration, consecrated our young nation to the Mother of Christ.
00:26:15.420Less than a quarter century later, Catholics contributed to General Andrew Jackson's, or attributed to General Andrew Jackson's stunning victory of the British in the climactic battle of New Orleans, to Mary.
00:26:26.280Apparently, Catholics believe that Mary's intercession, just as we attribute the victory at the Battle of Lepanto over the Muslims to Mary's intercession, we attribute General Jackson's victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans.
00:26:39.800Every year, Catholics celebrate a massive Thanksgiving in New Orleans on this day.
00:26:43.060American legends like Elizabeth Ann Seton, Francis Xavier Cabrini, Fulton Sheen, who spent their lives glorifying God, had a deep devotion to Mary.
00:26:53.220It goes on about the role of Mary and Catholicism in the American story.
00:26:57.860And what I find so delightful about this, other than the fact that I'm a Catholic and I think that's just good, is the way in which history and our telling of history has changed.
00:27:12.440Even if you don't care at all about religion, if you're not Catholic, Christian.
00:27:15.50060 years ago, 70, 80 years ago, it would be unthinkable that in the United States of America, there would be a statement this explicitly Catholic coming from the President of the United States.
00:27:30.740200, 300 years ago, it would be absolutely preposterous to imagine that the chief executive of the country, outside of Maryland, that the chief executive of the country would be speaking in this Catholic way.
00:27:45.640Arthur Schlesinger famously said that anti-Catholicism is the deepest prejudice in America.
00:27:51.640And yet now we're getting this kind of, why?
00:27:55.940Well, you know, I think the weight and force of religious truth is helpful here.
00:28:00.840But two, let's not forget that around that same time that there was all this anti-Catholicism, you had Alexei de Tocqueville, the greatest analyst of American politics and the American political order.
00:28:09.900He makes this bold, shocking, audacious prediction that over time, America will become Catholic.
00:28:15.140This Protestant country will become Catholic or atheist, but it will trend in those two directions.
00:28:30.120And even beyond the level of religion, even if you're Catholic, if you're anti-Catholic, if you're anti-Christian generally, if you're, this is what happens in history.
00:28:40.840Our history changes, the telling of history changes, because our self-conception constantly changes, because our country is constantly changing, because political orders are dynamic.
00:29:16.140And I, for one, am quite excited by the way that I think certain truths are really coming to the top of history.
00:29:22.620Let's not forget, I mean, all of the Americans dedicated to the, to the, the Tilma, our Lady of Guadalupe, this Marian apparition that led to the conversion of millions of indigenous.
00:29:35.260Okay, speaking of presidential, presidential power, there's a major argument going on right now at the Supreme Court over presidential power.
00:29:53.460For most people, they hear this and say, hold on, you're asking if the president of the United States, the head of the executive branch, has the right to fire people in the executive branch.
00:30:01.840But, for 90 some odd years now, we have been told, no, the president doesn't.
00:30:10.160This was a major issue in Trump's first term.
00:30:13.840He was elected to drain the swamp, but he couldn't drain the swamp.
00:30:16.780He couldn't fire people, even within the branch of government that he supposedly controlled.
00:30:24.220So, the court is hearing these arguments now.
00:30:26.520And, as we all expect, Justice Ketanji Jackson comes in with the most preposterous arguments any of them are making.
00:30:40.300Some issues, some matters, some areas should be handled in this way by nonpartisan experts.
00:30:50.140That Congress is saying that expertise matters with respect to aspects of the economy and transportation and the various independent agencies that we have.
00:31:01.240So, having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the PhDs and replacing them with loyalists and people who don't know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States.
00:31:18.420These issues should not be in presidential control.
00:31:22.160So, can you speak to me about the danger of allowing, in these various areas, the president to actually control the Transportation Board and potentially the Federal Reserve and all these other independent agencies?
00:31:37.000In these particular areas, we would like to have independence.
00:31:40.280We don't want the president controlling.
00:31:48.420So, here you have a Democrat, Ketanji Jackson, a partisan Democrat on the Supreme Court, arguing very, very explicitly against democracy and our mixed regime, which is heavily Democratic.
00:32:06.780In our country, which is supposed to be self-government, the people elect the president to run the executive branch, and Ketanji Jackson says, well, the guy that the people elect should not be able to fire people within that branch.
00:32:24.140We can't let the president, elected by the people have control.
00:32:30.340We need to give power to the experts and the PhDs and the technocrats and the supposedly independent individuals who can govern us better than we can govern ourselves.
00:32:40.940An argument coming from a partisan Democrat on the Supreme Court to try to control the executive branch.
00:32:50.240This all comes from a case in 1935, Humphreys, Executor versus the United States, which was a case that established this notion that the president does not totally control the executive branch.
00:33:03.500And let's just zoom it out a little bit from 90 years ago is, should the president be able to control the executive branch?
00:34:21.500I think the reality is the chief threat to liberty within the organization of the federal government comes from the president not having enough power.
00:34:29.460I think we need much more power in the presidency.
00:34:33.020It might be an unpopular view among some of the, I don't know, the libertarians or the liberals or maybe the squishy types.
00:35:20.780It's been true for the whole history of the world.
00:35:23.340I'm just saying that the chief executive ought to be in charge.
00:35:27.300I don't think our constitutional system is such that the deputy assistant, deputy functionary at the Federal Trade Commission has power over the president of the United States.
00:38:24.540Watch a full uncensored episode right now on the Michael Knowles YouTube channel for the ad-free version with extra footage that won't let us post anywhere else.
00:38:45.100To be precise, in addition to what we just heard there, President Trump posted yesterday that you are, quote, and I'm quoting him now, not America first or MAGA, and your, quote, new views are those of a very dumb person.
00:38:59.440That's the president of the United States speaking about your, speaking about you.
00:39:03.020What's your response to these latest attacks?
00:39:05.920Well, actually, Wolf, I feel very sorry for President Trump.
00:39:12.460It has to be a hard place for someone that is constantly so hateful and puts so much vitriol, name-calling, and really tells lies about people in order to try to get his way or win some kind of fight.
00:39:30.520And I think that's exactly what's wrong in America today.
00:39:34.060That's what's wrong in this toxic political environment that has ripped our country apart.
00:39:39.420And I personally think that that's poor leadership from a president.
00:39:44.720It's a very bad demeanor, and Americans are very tired of it.
00:41:15.460Those things are involved, we hope, if you have a functioning polity.
00:41:19.300But what politics is primarily about is people.
00:41:22.660Because politics is just how we all live together in community.
00:41:25.720And the law, lawmaking, law enforcement, the law is an ordinance of reason for the common good by him who has care of the community and promulgated.
00:50:15.000To say that a child has some right to identify as lesbian or gay is to say that a child has a right to date privately outside the guardrails and supervision of the kid's parents.