Ep. 1894 - Trump Launches Investigation Into Don Lemon
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Summary
In this episode of 100 Days of Trump: A Year in the White House, The Daily Wire's own Mary Margaret Olhan gives us the summary of what's going on in the halls of power after a year of President Trump.
Transcript
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The Department of Justice is investigating Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry and Minnesota
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Governor Tim Walz for impeding law enforcement, a crime that they would be more likely to get
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away with if they had not admitted to it repeatedly on television. Then the DOJ investigates Don
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Lemon for conspiring with a mob to interrupt a Baptist church service on Sunday with the delightful
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kicker that Lemon might be charged under the Ku Klux Klan Act. And then speaking of the Klan,
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does anyone care about Martin Luther King anymore? Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day.
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No one really talked about it. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Welcome back to the show. 100 days of Trump. It's been, no, sorry, not 100. We're well past 100
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days. The first year of Trump is over. How quickly it flew. How much has changed. We have the Daily
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Wire's own Mary Margaret Olihan embedded in the White House so frequently. She will be giving us
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the summary, the update. What's going on? What's the scuttlebutt in the halls of power?
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A full year of Trump. That's a lot. That's roughly 365 days. And here we've had our Christmas
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decorations up for roughly 10,000 days at this point. But some people have asked about this.
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It's because it's Christmas Day. There's then the octave of Christmas. There is then the 12 days
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of Christmas. You know, my true love gave to me. But then the full Christmas season goes till
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candlemas. Crazy to think, folks, in a mere 12, 13 days, we're going to have to take these
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decorations down. Okay, I want to get to the federal investigations into the insurrectionist
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Democrats. First, though, I want to tell you about Melania by Amazon MGM Studios. Right now from
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January 30th. Go see it. Melania coming soon. Jacob Fry is very, very upset. He is the mayor of
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Minneapolis. You probably know him mostly from speaking in the Greedo, Boba Fett kind of Star
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Wars language. But he is not a Somali. He is an American, I guess. And Jacob Fry is very worried
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now because after months and months of covering up for Somali criminals, after weeks now of obstructing
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law enforcement, of opposing the federal government, of some might suggest helping to lead an insurrection,
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the federal government is now investigating Jacob Fry.
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I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal government.
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Of course, there's different perspectives when a different party gets sworn into the White House.
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Of course, there are different ideologies throughout America. That's part of what makes our country great.
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But you don't get investigated for having a different opinion. You don't have militarized
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troops deployed to a city for having a different perspective or because a city happened to vote for
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the opposite party. That may be what happens in other countries, but it doesn't happen here.
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Here, this is America, and we've got to be standing up for these American values.
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I totally agree, Jacob Fry. A rare moment of total agreement. Maybe there would be more moments
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of agreement if you spoke English more often instead of Somali. But we agree. You don't get
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investigated by the federal government simply for having a difference of opinion, certainly not under
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Trump. Maybe under Joe Biden and the Democrats you do. When the IRS is weaponized against political
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opponents, when the DOJ and the FBI are weaponized against political opponents, when they go spy on
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Catholics, when they go round up people who advocate on behalf of unborn babies. But that's true. But
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under Trump, you're right. You don't get investigated for a difference of opinion.
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You do get investigated for obstructing law enforcement. You do get investigated for aiding
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and abetting crime. You do get investigated for undermining federal law. You will get investigated
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for that, and you could go to jail for that. He says, look, we have different ideologies,
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different beliefs in America. That's part of what makes America great. That's true.
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That's been a feature of America from the very beginning. Doesn't mean we tolerate all ideologies,
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but we do embrace differences of opinion, and we deliberate, and we debate, and we persuade each other.
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Yeah, yeah, that's all great. You don't get investigated for that. That's true.
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You do get investigated for undermining the supremacy clause of the Constitution.
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Notice what he says there at the top. This is where he let the mask slip. He said,
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I never thought we'd be in a position where the federal government would invade our cities.
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What are you talking about? The federal government has done that many times,
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going back to the earliest days of the country. Some of the big threats against federal power,
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against a unified United States, going back to, I don't know, the Whiskey Rebellion,
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Shays' Rebellion, all the way up through the Civil War, certainly.
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I never thought, well, now I say, I say, Mayor Jacob Fry here of Minneapolis, I never thought
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I'd see this northern aggression come in here to undermine my state's rights, my city's rights,
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to fund al-Shabaab. I never thought I'd see this here. This is unconstitutional, I say.
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What is he talking about? Is he now making secessionist arguments? The federal government
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sent troops in to desegregate schools in the 1950s. What are you talking about? You didn't
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think the federal government had power to enforce federal law? No. You knew that. You just want to
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harbor illegal aliens and other foreign criminals who should not be in this country. That's what
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they're investigating you for. They're investigating you for things like this.
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There's little I can say, again, that'll make this situation better, but I do have a message
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for our community, for our city, and I have a message for ICE. To ICE, get the f**k out of Minneapolis.
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We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety,
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and you are doing exactly the opposite. That's what you're being investigated for,
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that kind of stuff. Get the f**k out. You're being investigated for your cringe millennial rhetoric.
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You're absolutely cringe-inducing diction, which is typical of your, our generation, I should say,
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but it's even beyond the vulgarity. That's why. You don't have the right to order out
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federal law enforcement carrying out federal law. You don't have the right to impede and obstruct
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law enforcement, to harbor criminals and keep them away from the federal government when they
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have committed federal crimes. You don't have the right to encourage and incite ordinary citizens,
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civilians, to obstruct law enforcement. That's the kind of thing you're being investigated for.
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Not just Jacob Fry goes all the way to the top in Minnesota. Here's Governor Walz.
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When things looked really bleak, it was Minnesota's first that held that line for the nation
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on that July 3rd, 1863. And I think now we may be in that moment that the nation's looking to us
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...order to prepare the Minnesota National Guard. We have soldiers in training and prepared to be
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deployed if necessary. I remind you, a warning order is a heads up for folks. And these National
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Guard troops are our National Guard troops. They're teachers in your community. They're business
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owners. They're construction professionals. They are Minnesotans. Minnesota will not allow our
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community to be used as a prop in a national political fight.
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Tim Walz is radical and openly radical, but he's so bumbling that he doesn't even realize he is just
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admitting to crimes. He's just openly committing crimes here. And he's not even doing it the way he
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thinks he is. So he comes right out. He says, this is Civil War. This is 1863. This is Civil War.
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Except the irony is, he's pretending that he is, in the analogy to the Civil War in the 1860s,
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he's on the side of the Union. But he's not on the side of the Union in this case. He would be on
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the side of the Confederacy because he is resisting the enforcement of federal law along with federal
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troops. So he says, this is, this is just like the 1860s. First of all, you're admitting, okay,
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this is Civil War. This is insurrection. And we're on the side of the secessionists and the
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insurrectionists. Why would you admit that? And then he doubles down. He says, we're calling up the
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National Guard and it's Minnesota National Guard. In other words, to oppose the federal troops.
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So yeah, that's insurrection. And the libs tried to pretend that granny's taking selfies in the
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Capitol on January 6th was insurrection for years and years and years. Now we got to give it to him.
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We got to give it to him good and hard. I'm pleased to see that the DOJ is investigating.
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I do have confidence that the DOJ is going to do what's right and is going to get all the
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information and all the evidence and nail these guys. Jail time. Jail time for the insurrectionists.
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Need to have it. Because Joe Biden put people who were far, far less guilty, far, far less
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plausibly committed insurrection in prison for years. So we got to do it. Because if we don't
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enforce the law, then all we're doing is getting the left riled up and they're going to do to us,
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again, what they have already done. If your fear is that we're going to shatter norms or something
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like that, I think it's pretty clear the left already shattered all those norms.
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So the only question is now, are we going to hold them to account? Are we going to hold them to their
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own standard? Are we going to weaken them politically in accordance with the law and justice? Or are we
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not? Or are we just going to rile them up? And are we going to wait for the next time they take
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power so that they can do far worse to us? We're not just looking here at the governor and the mayor.
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We are also looking at Don Lemon. Don Lemon, as you know, also admitted to committing crimes on
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camera on Sunday. I don't know what these people, they're like a moth to a flame with the attention.
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We're talking about it even with the live stream influencer club night that was going viral.
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All right. They all want to be on camera all the time. And they admit to things that they probably
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prosecuted. Don Lemon admitting to conspiring with a mob that invaded a church during a worship service.
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And now he might be held to account, including through the Ku Klux Klan Act. We will get to that
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Fund Distributors LLC. Harmeet Dillon, who is the number two there at DOJ, Assistant Attorney General,
00:13:15.180
Deputy Attorney General, she came out very strongly discussing with Benny Johnson whether or not Don
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Lemon, who insists that he's merely a journalist covering the invasion of the church by the mob
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on Sunday, whether or not he's going to be charged.
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Yeah, the Klan Act is one of the most important federal civil rights statutes, and it goes back
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to the time when President Lincoln emancipated the slaves, and yet the southern states, Dixiecrats
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mainly, were refusing to give them equal rights. In fact, you had sheriffs and you had law enforcement
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harassing the newly freed slaves. So the Klan Act is a law that makes it illegal to terrorize citizens
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to violate their civil rights, to get together and conspire to violate the civil rights. Some of these
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folks who did this have self-identified. Don Lemon himself has come out and said he knew exactly what was
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going to happen inside that facility. He went into the facility, and then he began, quote unquote,
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committing journalism. And as if that's sort of a shield from being a part, an embedded part of a
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criminal conspiracy, it isn't. Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest
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force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people
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away for a long, long time. Terrific. It's great. Obviously has to happen. What the mob did was
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obviously in violation, as Harmeet mentions, of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, as well as of the
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FACE Act, which is a much more modern act, which exists really just to protect abortion mills from
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people demonstrating or praying outside of them. But as a little fig leaf they gave to the conservatives
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to pass it, they said, look, okay, we'll protect the abortion mills, which is the church of the left,
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and we'll also protect the churches, which is the church of the right. So yes, this is really all
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about the abortion mills, but in order to get some votes to pass it, okay, fine, we'll also protect
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the churches and stop people from demonstrating at the churches. But they never do that, really.
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It's really just about protecting the abortion mills. So in any case, they have a good case here,
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especially against Don Lemon. Because Don Lemon says, I'm just committing an act of journalism.
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I'm just a real shoe leather journalist covering this event, but that's not true at all. It's not
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that some event happened and then Don Lemon showed up and said, I'm here at the scene. I'm Don Lemon,
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fired from CNN on, you know, lemonparty.com or whatever, I don't know, whatever his new news
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website is. And so, hi, this is what's happening and we're learning all the facts right now. That's
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not what he did. He rides up with these guys. He says, ooh, I know a secret. I know what we're about
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to do, but I can't tell you yet, but just you wait and see, admitting that he is conspiring with them
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not merely even to demonstrate, but to break the law. And then there are videos going around.
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He's giving them coffee and donuts afterward. He's working with these guys.
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And then he thinks he's being real cute and clever. He says, but I'm a journalist. Hold on,
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wait, put the coffee and donuts away. Forget about that stuff I said about knowing the secret
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and planning with these people. Now I've got my journalist now. I'm a journalist. That doesn't
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work. You can't, you can't like go out and murder your wife and then say, I'm a journalist. No,
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hold on. No, you don't understand. You can't arrest me. I'm a journalist. I'm just covering
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this murder. No, you committed, you committed the crime. And then just like talking about it
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on camera does not absolve you of the crime. Anyway, Lemon's got to go to prison. He's got
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to go to prison. He is daring the government to throw him in prison. That's what this is all about.
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Yeah. Come and get me. Yeah. You're going to do it. Yeah. You think you're tough punk? That's what
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he's doing. That's why he's doing all of this on camera. One, he, after his CNN firing, he,
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I think he wants some attention and he wants some money. I'm sure all of that's true. But as a
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political act, he's daring the government to enforce the law. He's trying to humiliate the
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government because he thinks that they're too chicken to do it. They have, the government has
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to prove him wrong. Okay. Speaking of the Ku Klux Klan, you know, yesterday was Martin Luther King day
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and I didn't see a ton of people talking about it. A little bit, a little bit people. But first of
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all, I'm still salty because DW did not give us the day off. The secular saint of the liberal
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liturgical calendar, a lot of the country gets the day off. We didn't have the day off, but I've
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noticed having observed the major solemnity of Dr. King since I was a child, I noticed it's a little
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less robust in its festivities as time goes on. People, I don't know, people just don't seem to
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care that much. The libs were pouncing on Trump yesterday because they said Trump did not issue
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a Martin Luther King proclamation. And these articles hit the news, but then you click on
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the article and it said, here is what Trump said about Martin Luther King. And the White House did.
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They didn't do it first thing in the morning. So then the libs said, ah, see, he hates civil rights.
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But broadly speaking, I don't see the kind of fervor and excitement for Martin Luther
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King that I did 10, 20 years ago. And I think that's to be expected. I'm not an MLK hater.
00:18:28.620
I know there are people on the right, actually on the left too, but there are people on the
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right who are big MLK haters who went, Charlie Kirk actually was quite anti-MLK, quite publicly
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anti-MLK. And I see the reasons for it. Because Martin Luther King is presented as this reverend,
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you know, this Christian leader, but he didn't believe in the most fundamental aspects of
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Christianity. He didn't believe in the Trinity. He didn't believe in the divinity of Christ.
00:18:54.840
He, I don't think he even necessarily believed in the virgin birth. So he didn't.
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Now, again, you could say the same thing about many of our founding fathers. So this is one of the
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reasons I'm not a huge MLK hater. To call him a Christian is kind of silly. He didn't believe
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in the central mysteries of the Christian faith. But his view on the Christian faith was basically
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the same as John Adams. And I like John Adams. So, you know, I'm not going to knock Martin Luther
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King for that as a political matter. Then people point out Martin Luther King, he was an adulterer.
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He, I think the FBI has it on file that he observed a rape and laughed about it in an interview.
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So, you know, he had a messy personal life. And that's true. So some people, they say,
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this guy, he was the worst and we hate Martin Luther King. I'm not a Martin Luther King hater
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in the sense that he was a good writer. He plagiarized his thesis. So, you know,
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when you call him Dr. King, he did plagiarize his thesis. I get what I'm saying is I get why people
00:19:49.960
aren't all that into Martin Luther King, but I'm not a big Martin Luther King hater because
00:19:54.060
as a symbol, he stood for something admirable. And really what it comes down to is not the personal
00:20:02.660
life of the man. It's not his academic work, such as it is. Letter from Birmingham jail is a
00:20:07.360
powerful, powerful document, but it's really the, I have a dream speech. That's that the King legacy
00:20:12.860
boils down to, I have a dream speech. And so the reason that I think Martin Luther King is much
00:20:19.360
less important now than he was 20 years ago is the left just openly rejects that the idea that you
00:20:26.200
won't be judged on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character, the left openly
00:20:29.480
rejects that. And Martin Luther King, who is a figure of the left, I know we sometimes claim
00:20:34.380
him as a Republican. He was a socialist. He was a figure of the left. The left now would reject a lot
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of what he's famous for, but because the left rejects that, the right has to view it as utopian
00:20:48.720
because the abstract legacy of Martin Luther King is the, I have a dream speech. It's like one speech
00:20:55.820
that he gave, he gave other speeches where he was more identitarian, more socialist, but that's the
00:21:00.480
big famous one. And the practical legacy is all the civil rights legislation, which does not live up
00:21:07.900
to the, I have a dream speech. The civil rights legislation, which boils down to reverse discrimination,
00:21:16.620
largely a discrimination against white people or against Asian people, which boils down to, it's just
00:21:21.180
not, I have a dream. It's not, you're judged on the content of your character. It is, you're judged
00:21:25.320
on the color of your skin. And so because the concrete legacy doesn't live up to the abstract
00:21:30.940
legacy and because half the country, the American left rejects the abstract legacy, legacy, even in
00:21:36.820
principle, he's just not going to be one of these enduring figures. The reason is not because he had a
00:21:43.460
messy personal life. All figures in history have messy personal lives, some more than others, but
00:21:49.420
they become heroes of history or secular saints because of legends about them, because of what
00:21:55.380
they represent. The problem is harder for Martin Luther King because what he represents
00:22:01.080
is now rejected by half the country. And when it was put into concrete political practice, it failed.
00:22:09.320
That's the problem. So I don't know what comes next. Probably not Malcolm X day, Ibram Kendi day,
00:22:18.640
Robin DiAngelo day. I don't know. I don't know. In any case, in any case, I had to go to work yesterday
00:22:23.940
and I'm still salty about it. Now, we will get to more racial politics because Michelle Obama is going
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00:24:16.580
to put off talking about Michelle Obama, we are joined by The Daily Wire's very own Mary Margaret
00:24:22.380
Olihan. A star of Washington, D.C., a frequent visitor to the halls of power who is coming to us
00:24:31.000
now at or around the White House, I think, telling us about Trump's first year in office.
00:24:39.820
Good to see you. You're physically frozen on my screen, but at least I can hear you.
00:24:43.760
Where are you right now? I'm trying to make out what room that is.
00:24:46.840
I am in the Eisenhower Executive Office building. You've been here, I know,
00:24:50.620
for interviews with Trump officials. That's where I am today. And we are right across the street from
00:24:57.260
Marvelous. So, Mary Margaret, we're just talking about how people didn't remember there was Martin
00:25:01.040
Luther King Day yesterday. And I think a lot of people don't realize it's the first year of Trump.
00:25:05.960
This is the Trump-versary right now. And you're getting, obviously, you get all the criticism from
00:25:10.460
the left that he's Hitler or whatever. But there is criticism from the right that's come against the
00:25:14.980
Trump administration. A lot of it, I think, very unfair. But the criticism, basically saying,
00:25:20.280
well, Trump hasn't lived up to his promises. He didn't do what we wanted him to do. Again,
00:25:25.200
I find it cynical and opportunistic. But what's the takeaway? What's the summary? What,
00:25:31.060
you know, now we got to take score. It's been one year. What do you do?
00:25:34.600
Do we lose it? We lost Mary Margaret. Well, listen, one thing I will agree with the critics on
00:25:39.840
is that the White House could improve its Wi-Fi. It could. I've been to the White House a number
00:25:45.220
of times. And the Wi-Fi is a little spotty. The cell phone connection is spotty. I think it's
00:25:50.980
probably for security reasons. Mary Margaret, we have you back.
00:25:55.120
I am back. I'm so sorry about that. I totally agree with you, Michael. I know you're saying that
00:26:00.160
some people are concerned about what the administration has done so far. But I'd argue
00:26:04.500
that if you look at the past year and all of the things that the administration has started to
00:26:09.300
check off its list, it's a pretty good amount of things for a first year in office. Trump campaigned
00:26:15.040
on immigration. He campaigned on fixing the border. He campaigned on fixing the economy,
00:26:19.560
on keeping our city safe. And a lot of those things have, in fact, been coming to pass.
00:26:24.980
If you look at how he's cleaned up Washington, D.C., for example, how the border literally has been
00:26:29.400
closed the entire year, the amount of deportations that are taking place. I know there's people that
00:26:34.320
want there to be more, but a lot took place this year. If you look at the Ice Enforcement
00:26:38.900
activities, his foreign policy, and he'll tell you himself, and he's told me and others many times,
00:26:44.360
he's ended eight wars across the world, maybe nine and maybe more. He's strong-armed and shown
00:26:49.800
the world how he means what he says when it comes to people like Nicolas Maduro. He's shown us all
00:26:55.620
over the world that when he threatens, he means what he says. And Rubio has emphasized this,
00:27:00.640
but now the rest of the world understands this as well. And then if you think about, I mean,
00:27:04.880
Michael, the things that we have talked about, you and I, Matt, Ben, everyone at the company for
00:27:08.800
years now, from the culture wars, keeping men out of women's sports, protecting children from gender
00:27:14.180
transition procedures, bringing pro-lifers who were imprisoned for protesting outside of abortion
00:27:19.020
clinics, all of those things were semi-rectified in the first month and a half of his administration.
00:27:25.620
So we did a big story on this last night and this morning for Daily Wire and kind of laid out the
00:27:30.260
picture of all the things the president had done in the last year. And it is no small thing. So,
00:27:36.000
you know, absolutely there are things that his supporters want him to continue to do. Absolutely
00:27:41.000
there are things that many on the right want him to improve on. One thing is abortion, which I know
00:27:47.360
you and I have talked about. Many on the right have talked about. There's many who want to see him
00:27:51.440
improve his protections for the unborn. But he's kicked off with a pretty good start, a very legacy
00:27:56.880
building start. And his critics would tell you that they're very upset with this first year.
00:28:02.680
And I think that's a good sign. That's a great point. You know, one rule of thumb is the way you
00:28:08.260
want to judge the success of a political campaign is how angry your opponents are. And the left is
00:28:13.480
apoplectic right now. It's funny, even as you're running through the litany of successes, the cleaning
00:28:18.520
up of Washington, D.C., I had totally forgotten about that one. I'm in Washington, D.C. all the time.
00:28:23.340
I fly in there quite frequently. And it's palpable. I mean, it's just unbelievable how far that city
00:28:30.020
had fallen. And that's just a minor point. On the deportations, I think you're right. You know,
00:28:35.320
there are some who are really trying to downplay claiming that Trump only deported two or three
00:28:39.300
hundred thousand people, the same number or less than Obama. The Obama numbers are cooked because
00:28:44.740
the Obama numbers include turnaways at the border. But but even by the formal figures, you got over
00:28:50.460
half a million deportations. Plus, from the Center for Immigration Studies and from the Labor Department,
00:28:56.460
you see the number of people who have left just by self-deportation. So, you know, it's potentially
00:29:01.500
up to like two million illegal aliens. I think Trump even claims it's more than that. So, you know,
00:29:06.200
that's a huge number. And then even just sealing the border. You know, we were told in the waning days
00:29:10.800
of Biden that he really wanted to seal the border, but he needed some new legislation to do it.
00:29:16.480
And that dastardly Trump was calling Republican lawmakers and telling them not to support his
00:29:22.980
beautiful legislation to close the border. So his hands were tied and the border was open.
00:29:26.640
And then what happens? Trump comes in and just immediately shuts off the border. And you realize,
00:29:31.280
oh, that was all just a bunch of lies from Biden. They did not need any new legislation whatsoever.
00:29:37.140
You see the same point on tariffs. They said, oh, the tariffs are going to destroy the economy.
00:29:40.640
It was going to be awful. They were going to be inflationary. What happened? The opposite happened.
00:29:44.020
The tariffs were totally fine. U.S. economic growth outperformed. And the tariffs actually
00:29:48.280
ended up being deflationary. So it just, I don't know, to me, I'm not saying it's all perfect and
00:29:52.560
tickety-boo. There's a lot more to go. We were in a very deep hole. But broadly speaking,
00:29:57.460
not just because I have affection for the guy in the administration,
00:30:00.500
it seems as though the admin has outperformed expectations. Am I being too rosy?
00:30:06.700
No, I would argue that you're completely on point, Michael. And look, a year ago,
00:30:12.540
right before Trump took office, we still had Biden as president. There were so many Americans who were
00:30:18.460
in jail over their political beliefs. That alone is a massive difference. And now you're seeing that
00:30:25.080
the president freed all of them pretty much immediately. And just that alone is a massive,
00:30:30.760
massive difference from the past administration. You no longer are seeing weaponization of the DOJ
00:30:35.840
against school parents, against Latin mass Catholics, against people who don't want their
00:30:40.900
children transition, against people who spoke out against child transition, against people who
00:30:45.520
spoke out against the Biden DOJ and FBI. So there's so many people who are no longer in danger
00:30:50.660
because of this presidency. And that alone, like I was saying, it's a massive difference.
00:30:54.660
But then if you think about Americans all over the country, they were actually proud of this
00:30:58.220
administration. They're proud of our foreign policy. They're proud of our posturing.
00:31:02.200
Now our military is cleaned up. There's no longer woke ideology at the Department of War.
00:31:06.620
Or Pete Hegseth is telling the generals to be fit, not fat. I mean, it's just a complete
00:31:10.960
culture change from the past year. And I think that's very evident when you look,
00:31:16.340
when Americans look around at the country that they've been living in. Obviously,
00:31:20.220
there's more changes people want to see. Obviously, people want their grocery bills to be smaller.
00:31:24.720
They want to pay less at the gas pump. These are things that are going to be ongoing. And the
00:31:28.100
president is promising that he's going to fix them. But they're coming down the pipe. That's what we
00:31:32.880
believe. And these tariffs, we've been told not to be panicants. We'll see how prices are lowered and
00:31:40.740
where the president takes things. But if you look at this on its face, I think Trump is happy with
00:31:45.660
what he's done. And I think the rest of the administration is as well.
00:31:49.540
Yeah, I agree. Even you mentioned the freeing of the pro-lifers. I mean, they're like
00:31:53.520
pro-life Catholic grandmothers who were in prison, political prisoners under Joe Biden.
00:31:58.200
And they were freed. I mean, that alone. And I had forgotten about it. And that's an issue I care
00:32:03.060
about a lot. You think about drug overdose deaths just dropping consistently last year. You think
00:32:08.920
about rents falling four months year over year. I don't know. It's funny. Thank you for this pep talk,
00:32:14.340
Mary Margaret. Because broadly, I think it's been a successful first year. But I had forgotten even a
00:32:19.820
lot of the highlights. And it drives me nuts. It drives me nuts when people from the sidelines start
00:32:24.780
throwing popcorn and just whining and complaining. People just don't appreciate how awful this could
00:32:32.460
have been. They don't understand what a precipice we were at and what a Kamala presidency would have
00:32:38.260
looked like. Anyway, I'll let you get back to it. Please give my regards to all of our friends down
00:32:42.200
there in the swampland. And I'll see you next time you're out here. Or I'm out there.
00:32:50.020
Good to see you. Okay. All right. Back to how bad things could have been. Because I want to talk
00:32:54.340
about Michelle Obama. Folks, it is here. What day is it? We're two days away. Very,
00:32:59.860
very exciting. The Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin is coming. This is Daily Wire's most
00:33:03.920
ambitious project by far, by an order of magnitude at least. Multiple continents, an amazing story,
00:33:10.080
a deeply Christian story, deeply mired in history and legend. Think of before King Arthur,
00:33:17.920
Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table. It's just terrific. I just love that this is the project
00:33:22.220
that we're launching massive premium entertainment on. It just came out magnificently. It's beautiful.
00:33:27.940
You need to see it, which means you need to be a Daily Wire Plus member. Right now,
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00:33:49.800
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00:33:53.680
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right now. Be there when episodes one and two of the Pendragon cycle rise in the Merlin premiere
00:34:01.960
Thursday exclusively on Daily Wire Plus. My favorite comment yesterday is from Joe R. Joe U60,
00:34:09.060
who says, Lemon said, don't push me after he storms the church with protesters. Yeah.
00:34:13.940
What Don Lemon did was the equivalent of going up to that pastor, grabbing his wrist,
00:34:20.240
hitting him with it in the face, and saying, hey, stop punching yourself. Stop punching yourself.
00:34:24.220
Why are you punching yourself? Come on. Why are you doing that? It was so not only childish, but
00:34:29.660
in Lemon's case, actually criminal. And he needs to put on an orange jumpsuit and rot in prison.
00:34:36.220
Maybe he'll like prison. I don't know. Let's turn to Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama has just
00:34:41.900
gone viral on Martin Luther King Day of all days for arguing. Well, I'll tell you the description.
00:34:48.440
This is what she went viral for. You tell me if what she says matches the viral description.
00:34:53.940
The description for which you went viral was Michelle Obama tells people not to shop
00:34:58.800
at white owned brands. Now you tell me if what she said matches that description.
00:35:04.620
If I hear of someone whose fashion that I like, and I know that they're a person of color,
00:35:11.620
I try to make it a point. But the clothes have to be available. You know, I think we can all do
00:35:17.940
some work to think about that balance in our wardrobes. You know, what does our closet look
00:35:24.240
like? And who's in it? Who are we supporting in it? Right. You know, and I think if you have the
00:35:30.900
money to buy Chanel, then you have the money to buy everybody. That's right. And so let us be mindful.
00:35:39.000
I think would be my advice. Yeah. Okay. So actually at a superficial glance, just hearing what she says
00:35:46.920
verbatim, I think you would have to say that that description is not fair because nowhere does she
00:35:52.400
explicitly say, don't shop at white owned brands. Nowhere does she say shop at black owned brands,
00:35:58.660
not white owned brands. That's not fair. In defense of Michelle, I don't defend Michelle
00:36:02.740
Obama a lot, but that's not explicitly what she said. She said, yeah, if I see a black owned brand
00:36:08.320
and I like their stuff, you know, I'll choose the black owned brand. But she stops herself.
00:36:14.360
She doesn't say, and I won't buy. She doesn't say I only do it because it's the black owned brand.
00:36:18.740
She says, if I like their stuff. Well, yeah, if you like their stuff and you have the money,
00:36:21.560
probably you will buy it. But she injects this racial thing. She says, and if it's black,
00:36:27.160
then I especially want to buy it. And if you have the money to buy Chanel, not a black owned brand,
00:36:33.060
I take it, I guess. I don't really know the corporate structure of Chanel, but assuming it's
00:36:36.220
not. If you have the money to buy Chanel, you have the money to buy, and she stops herself.
00:36:40.740
She doesn't say the black owned brand. She says, everybody. Well, hold on. What she's doing here
00:36:48.160
is she's trying to privilege the black owned brand. She wants to be a racial identitarian
00:36:53.540
when it comes to the positive of buying, of supporting the business. But she stops short
00:37:00.080
of being a racial identitarian when it comes to not shopping at the other places. She doesn't say,
00:37:06.940
don't shop at the white brands. She says, you need to shop at the black brands and everybody.
00:37:12.180
You need to shop at the black brands, but maybe not less at the white brands. You have,
00:37:20.000
it's this gobbledygook, which is why ultimately I think that the description of the video is fair.
00:37:26.360
It just, it doesn't totally see, it's like the IQ bell curve meme. It's like, it starts out,
00:37:32.020
she says, don't shop at white stores. And actually she said to shop at black stores,
00:37:35.460
but to also shop at white stores, actually she said to shop less at white stores because her minor
00:37:41.160
premise here is wrong. She said, if you have the money to buy Chanel, you have the money to buy
00:37:46.260
everybody. That's not true because money is a finite resource. Just because you have the money
00:37:52.200
to afford one expensive brand doesn't mean you have infinite money. And furthermore, even if you did
00:37:57.420
have infinite money, you have finite closet space. You have a finite number of dresses you're going to
00:38:02.660
wear. You have a finite number of days of the week where you're going to wear the dresses.
00:38:05.040
This is the problem with the whole diversity ideology is if you privilege one thing,
00:38:15.380
you are necessarily disadvantaging another. This is the problem with affirmative action
00:38:20.460
is we all say, Oh, it's great. We should help out black people. We say, that's great.
00:38:27.100
Who doesn't want to help out? I mean, I guess there are a small number of people who don't want to
00:38:29.980
help out black people, but I, for one, let me speak for the majority of Americans.
00:38:35.100
Yes, it would be great to help out black people. Let's help out black people.
00:38:40.080
But affirmative action in practice means there's a finite number of spots at the university.
00:38:45.840
There's a finite number of jobs that you can fill. So when you give an advantage to black people
00:38:51.800
simply for being black, you are necessarily disadvantaging, discriminating against on the basis of race,
00:38:59.120
white people or Asian people in the case of college admissions. And so there's an injustice that comes
00:39:04.760
with that too. When you say, I'm going to shop at the black brand, you are necessarily saying at the
00:39:10.840
margin case, the last dress you can fit in your closet, you are necessarily saying, I will not
00:39:15.640
shop at the white brand. I will choose not, even if I like the dress, I will choose not to go into that
00:39:20.360
shop because that person is white. I will discriminate against that person strictly on the basis of that
00:39:25.800
person's race. That's what Michelle Obama is saying. She's saying it without saying it.
00:39:29.520
She doesn't really want to go all the way, but there is no other conclusion to reach
00:39:34.540
from her premises. That's the problem. This is the issue. I mean, this ties in directly with why
00:39:42.240
people don't really talk about MLK as much anymore. Part of it is that the left rejects him because he
00:39:46.860
was too conciliatory and egalitarian in some of his speeches. But the other reason is
00:39:51.940
the practical politics doesn't match the reality. I have a dream that one day we'll all be judged
00:39:59.600
on the content of our character. And okay, say his successors, in order to achieve that dream,
00:40:04.740
we need things like affirmative action. We need things like the diversity ideology. We need things
00:40:09.620
like DEI. But then in practice, that simply undermines the premise of the speech. We're going to judge
00:40:18.180
white people on the color of their skin. And taken to its extreme, we're going to try to abolish
00:40:22.400
whiteness or not shop at white-owned businesses. Which means that even if you agree with the premise
00:40:29.460
of the Martin Luther King speech, you're totally undermining it with the practical implications,
00:40:37.760
So for Michelle Obama, I don't begrudge her shopping at the black-owned business exactly.
00:40:44.820
But if you're going to, I guess my message to Michelle Obama is, if you're going to say it,
00:40:48.240
say it with your whole chest. Go out and go, actually finish the sentence.
00:40:54.020
You should shop at the black businesses, the black, and again, like, let's look at the board
00:40:58.300
of directors. Let's look at the stakeholders. Are we going to look at, is it 50% plus one is black?
00:41:03.200
Then you can shop there. If it's 50% minus one, then it's white or not black. I don't know how
00:41:08.520
to calculate it, but whatever it is, say it with your whole chest. Say, shop at the black businesses,
00:41:14.860
don't shop at the white businesses, if that's what you want. And if not, then buy the dress you like.
00:41:22.540
But she's not going there. Speaking of the nasty implications of leftist politics,
00:41:27.480
a lot of us, even social conservatives such as myself and many of you, would say, well,
00:41:34.380
we ought to be nice to people who have kind of weird sexual hangups. We ought to be nice to them.
00:41:40.000
We ought to be inclusive in as much as justice, you know, permits. We would all, I think we say,
00:41:45.920
I certainly say that. But the problem is the practical implications of those inclusive policies
00:41:53.420
result in a lot of injustice. Here's a video that was going viral of an Irish teacher being arrested
00:41:59.580
after he was fired for refusing to embrace the transgender pronouns.
00:42:06.180
George Brian Krieger knew what would happen. He knew what would happen today.
00:42:09.860
This is insanity. And it's abuse of power. It is abuse of power.
00:42:14.100
You're working with the high court. It's illegal.
00:42:17.660
You're working with the high school in the country. Workplaces, businesses. And he's abusing his power.
00:42:21.920
Working with the government. You will not accept transgenderism.
00:42:26.020
Abusing his power. Abusing his power. Abusing his power. That's what he's doing.
00:42:30.300
Refuse to use transgender in the cab car. He's a well-dressed guy.
00:42:36.040
Abuse of power. Absolute insanity. Absolute insanity what's happening here at Wilson's Hospital School.
00:42:42.420
Abusing a boy and girl and man and woman. Forcing transgenderism on them. Nobody accepts this. They don't believe this.
00:42:48.880
People don't want to be told what to believe in. What they must believe in.
00:42:56.220
And they just drive away. Now, I think this was taken. He had already been fired.
00:43:00.400
He was fired. He was, by all accounts, a good teacher.
00:43:02.820
He was fired because he wouldn't call boys, girls, and girls boys.
00:43:05.560
He was fired for this. And he returns to his place of employment.
00:43:11.740
His place of employment is former place of employment. I don't know.
00:43:20.340
One of the good Twitter accounts, though, made the observation that America is an empire.
00:43:24.940
And the Western countries, including Ireland, France, continental Europe, all these.
00:43:33.920
And so, sometimes what happens in America takes a little while to trickle down there.
00:43:39.940
And sometimes we move past these fads while these other colonies, formerly known as the sovereign nations of Europe and Western civilization,
00:43:48.440
that they get them long after we even discard them.
00:43:52.120
So, transgenderism feels like it's kind of over here.
00:43:54.680
The left ideologically still has to hold on to it, but they realize it's a total loser politically.
00:43:59.060
But even after we think we're past the peak of woke, which was maybe 2022, 2023, it's still peaking over in these other places.
00:44:12.140
And it's actually helpful for us because the fever has passed for a lot of us.
00:44:16.160
But we can see it play out with a little bit more, I don't know, of a dispassionate view of it.
00:44:25.500
And you see the implications of all politics, I guess, is what the left presents is this limitless vision of politics.
00:44:42.900
But in real politics, there's pretty much always an upside and a downside.
00:44:47.880
Because real politics exists in the real world, which has limits, which is finite, which takes place in nations which have borders.
00:44:55.020
So, when you privilege people for being black, just for being black, you necessarily disadvantage people on the basis of their race just for being white or just for being Asian.
00:45:09.940
In the imaginary liberal fever dream utopia, you can have one without the other.
00:45:15.100
But in reality, which is constrained by logic and time and space, you can't.
00:45:20.320
In the liberal fever dream utopia, we can indulge in all sorts of humpty-dumpty word redefinition.
00:45:27.580
So that we just let people be whatever they want to be in a different sex or whatever.
00:45:32.840
But in the finite practical world, you have to enforce limits.
00:45:36.280
Such that if you don't buy into the utopian ideology, you lose your job and maybe you get arrested.
00:45:46.860
That's been one of the big takeaways from the first year of Trump.
00:45:59.460
Biden openly said, we cannot have a border unless you pass new legislation, which would have given amnesty and would have been a disaster.
00:46:05.960
We cannot have a border under current conditions.
00:46:20.420
We are simply slaves to the global market and international institutions.
00:46:37.620
We can stop the Iranian nuclear program or halt the Iranian nuclear program.
00:46:51.380
And not only can we, but the second conclusion is things really improve when we do that.
00:47:00.780
Like even I have here, this is what, is it ABC News?
00:47:06.480
U.S. overdose deaths fell through most of 2025.
00:47:10.900
Rents declined four months in a row, year over year.
00:47:13.640
The tariffs end up totally outperforming expectations, doing the opposite of what most of the economists feared.
00:47:24.240
Not only can we impose these limits, they can have real political effect pretty quickly.
00:47:36.780
Check out for two months free on all annual plans.
00:47:38.260
What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God?
00:48:08.740
I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.
00:48:59.720
Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the great light.
00:49:20.300
How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?
00:49:28.060
So clinging to the promises of a God who has abandoned you.