The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1934 - The Secret To Kim Jong Un's Nail-Biter Election In North Korea

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00:00:15.320 Major updates on the war in Iran, important poll numbers, and a significant escalation

00:00:21.140 involving ground troops. The Save America Act is being advanced in the Senate, sort of. It's

00:00:25.980 actually kind of a fake out. Environmental activist Greta Thunberg is upset that President

00:00:30.400 Trump is not burning enough oil. I want to make sure I read that correctly. Is that what? Great.

00:00:35.640 Greta is angry. Trump is not burning oil. Okay. A lot of people didn't see that one coming,

00:00:41.260 though I did. An election last night in Virginia throws the midterms into chaos.

00:00:45.280 There's a lot to get to. But first, the biggest election news. Kim Jong-un has officially been

00:00:52.820 reelected dictator of North Korea with 99.93% of the vote. By North Korean standards,

00:01:01.140 the election was a real nail biter, but the final results did come in with last minute

00:01:06.760 mail-in ballots in Georgia and Wisconsin reportedly pushing Kim over the finish line.

00:01:11.020 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:01:22.820 Welcome back to the show, Greta Thunberg, St. Greta of the Blessed Sailboat, who began her

00:01:38.560 activist career by skipping school and sailing her boat across the ocean to protest the use of oil,

00:01:45.540 is now back protesting the fact that Trump won't let Cubans use oil.

00:01:54.760 How is this possible? How could this, is it perhaps the case that Greta is not who she

00:01:59.400 told us she is? I have a long history with Greta Thunberg going back many years. We will get into

00:02:04.260 it first. I want to tell you about Pure Talk. Go to puretalk.com slash Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S.

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00:03:12.080 Values, Pure Talk, America's wireless company. Folks, first off the top, I want to thank

00:03:18.560 everybody for the happy birthday wishes. It's very kind. I am now officially an old man. I said

00:03:24.360 last year to my father, I said, I'm 35 this year, which means according to King David and Dante,

00:03:29.260 I am halfway through my life's journey. I'm middle-aged. And my father said, no, no, no,

00:03:34.240 you're not middle-aged at 35. You're only middle-aged when you turn 36. So now I'm middle-aged.

00:03:39.300 And as a gift to you for my birthday, you get a gift on my birthday.

00:03:42.560 We're doing a limited time deal on Mayflower cigars.

00:03:45.760 Truly, it would give me a great birthday pleasure to bring Mayflowers to even more people.

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00:04:02.700 We were at the Great Smoke in South Florida last weekend.

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00:04:18.080 and the Mayflower Dawn Petit Corona. We won't cover too extensively the North Korean dictator

00:04:24.680 election that Kim Jong-un with just 0.07% shy of 100% of the vote. However, it's worth pointing out

00:04:34.120 that democracy is so dominant around the world. It has, over the last, I guess, what,

00:04:44.380 300 years, 400 years, it has so established itself as the only legitimate form of government

00:04:51.180 that even the most totalitarian dictatorships on earth have to pretend to be democracies.

00:04:58.840 from the standpoint of history, that's pretty weird. There are, I know it's a heresy to say

00:05:06.380 in today's day and age, but there are other legitimate forms of government. There is such

00:05:11.040 a thing as a good monarchy. There is such a thing even as a good aristocracy. And there can be good

00:05:16.200 democracies. Although I'm with St. Thomas Aquinas, that the ideal regime is a mixed regime. I'll be

00:05:21.640 talking about that a little bit tomorrow because I'm going to be speaking at the National Catholic

00:05:24.960 breakfast. So if you're in Washington, D.C., hopefully I'll see you there. But today we're

00:05:30.000 told that the only legitimate form of government is democracy. It's funny because our founding

00:05:34.620 fathers, who gave us a substantially Democrat government, Democratic government, in the

00:05:38.820 Federalist Papers, the only references they make to democracy are negative. There are warnings

00:05:43.780 about democracy. But in any case, it shows you, man, when even Kim Jong-un has to pretend to be

00:05:49.800 democratically elected. Democracy won. And I don't know which election result was less believable,

00:05:57.600 those post-1 a.m. ballots in Georgia back in 2020 or the results coming out of North Korea.

00:06:05.740 Speaking of elections, big, big news out of Virginia last night.

00:06:11.440 The Republicans gave a big, big upset in a special election. Now, this is not a presidential

00:06:17.340 election. It's not gubernatorial. It's not Senate or the House of Representatives. This is the

00:06:21.660 Virginia legislature, the Virginia House of Delegates. It was the 98th district special

00:06:27.700 election between Cheryl Smith, the Democrat, and Andrew Rice. Now, the Republican was always going

00:06:36.220 to win. Andrew Rice was always going to win. But the district is an R plus 10 district.

00:06:42.500 So substantially Republican, but Rice did not win by 10 points. Rice won by 15 points.

00:06:52.020 The final tally was 62 and a half to 37.5. It narrowed there at the very end for much of last

00:06:58.260 night. It was really more like 64 and a half to 35 and a half. But in any case, that's a good result.

00:07:06.120 A 15 point result. Republicans ran way ahead in this special election.

00:07:10.320 Now, Republicans were very nervous after the gubernatorial election in Virginia,

00:07:13.820 the Mamdani result in New York. We're told that, historically speaking and looking at some of the

00:07:19.360 polls, the midterms are supposed to be a blowout for Republicans. I sat down with Speaker Mike

00:07:23.180 Johnson at President Trump's club at Doral, Florida a week or two ago. And Speaker Johnson

00:07:28.300 said, I don't think we're going to lose the midterms. I think we're going to defy the historical

00:07:32.480 trend. And I think that we're actually going to expand the majority. And I said, okay, well,

00:07:37.000 look, I have a lot of respect for Speaker Johnson. Part of his job is to rally the

00:07:41.940 troops, obviously, for the midterms. I said, I don't know if I buy that. I don't know. That's

00:07:45.420 really, you're going against history here. This is the first hard sign that we are getting out

00:07:51.440 of the only poll that matters, which is at the ballot box, that Republicans might not be in such

00:07:57.040 bad shape as we thought we were. If you listen to the podcasts, you know I've been really going

00:08:03.380 hard on the podcasters the last couple of weeks. I know that's not popular and not a popular view,

00:08:08.660 but I don't care. I'm here to tell you that it's the least popular view, which is how you know I'm

00:08:12.000 right. But if you listen to the podcasters, you only look on social media, you would believe that

00:08:17.540 Republicans are completely screwed. We're never going to win another election again. You would

00:08:20.920 believe that Trump Trump is sunk. His base hates him. It's all over. The war in Iran was the

00:08:26.880 greatest blunder of any president in recent memory. That's what you would believe if you

00:08:30.720 are listening to not just the media, not just the liberal media, but even the conservative

00:08:35.720 media ecosystem. And yet, when you look at the poll numbers, it's not quite right. Here's a poll

00:08:43.800 from no less an outfit, no less a liberal outfit than CNN.

00:08:48.900 Okay, MAGA GOP on the US military action to run. Look at this, nearly nine in 10,

00:08:54.940 And 89% approve of the U.S. military action around that as the MAGA GOP base.

00:09:00.460 Just 9% disapprove of it.

00:09:03.540 This is tremendously popular among the Republican base.

00:09:06.360 And, of course, Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, overseeing the effort.

00:09:10.240 It seems to me that a lot of people are taking that into account,

00:09:13.420 including President Donald Trump, who has been smiling an awful lot at Marco Rubio lately.

00:09:19.160 Okay, so it's funny.

00:09:20.740 They get in there at the end of this little horse race thing about 2028.

00:09:24.160 I have noticed a pretty big op, a pretty big concerted effort to drive a wedge in the Trump

00:09:30.480 administration. Don't forget, Trump has already basically endorsed J.D. Vance. Rubio has already

00:09:34.760 endorsed J.D. Vance for president. But there's this op to try to drive a wedge in the administration.

00:09:39.480 And I think the clearest way people are going to try to drive the wedge is to try to split J.D.

00:09:43.780 and Rubio. Because that's really the only way to cause division in the Republican primary.

00:09:49.280 Trump has said he wants J.D. and Rubio to run as a ticket. So I think the people who don't

00:09:53.520 want another Republican presidency. They're going to say, well, let's try to split Rubio and J.D.

00:09:58.720 Regardless of, they also hate J.D. Vance because they think he's too conservative.

00:10:02.620 But regardless, it wouldn't really matter who the personalities were. They just want to create

00:10:07.440 some division because the administration seems too unified right now. But let's just go to the

00:10:11.740 poll numbers. Let's just go to the data. 89% of MAGA GOP supports the war in Iran.

00:10:23.520 That was a surprising number to me. I'm not surprised that most of the Republican base

00:10:28.760 supports the war in Iran. I told you, as someone who is skeptical of intervention in Iran, who,

00:10:35.440 had I been on the NSC, I would have made arguments against it, but who ultimately

00:10:39.380 says, look, Trump has the greatest record on foreign policy of my lifetime. And so

00:10:43.480 I'm going to trust him on it, at least for a bit, at least while Trump says it's going to take five

00:10:48.320 weeks, I'm going to trust him on that. I'll start worrying in week six, maybe. But for right now,

00:10:55.100 I think, yeah, basically he's done a good job. He's been running on this for a long time.

00:11:00.260 Iran's been a thorn in our side for many decades, so on and so forth. So I don't really want to go

00:11:06.640 to war in Iran, but I kind of trust Trump. I think that's where most actual Republicans are.

00:11:11.620 That might not be where most tweeters are, but don't forget, Twitter represents a small fraction

00:11:17.020 of the United States. The reason it gets so much outsized influence is the same reason that Jon

00:11:21.980 Stewart's Daily Show got so much outsized influence. Very few people watched Jon Stewart's

00:11:25.600 Daily Show 20 years ago, but all of the journalists watched it. All the politicos watched it. And so

00:11:31.580 it seemed to have an outsized influence. Same thing goes for Twitter. If you just listen to

00:11:35.720 the podcasts and looking at Twitter, the Iran debacle is the least popular thing in the world.

00:11:40.120 That's a catastrophe. But if you look at the polls, the Iran intervention is overwhelmingly

00:11:45.800 popular. Now, there's a little wrinkle in all of this. And the key is that CNN in this poll

00:11:53.520 is citing the MAGA GOP. What does the MAGA GOP mean? Before we start popping champagne over the

00:11:59.460 great success of Iran, there are some warning signs. We'll get to the warning signs that few

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00:13:21.100 So great.

00:13:22.400 CNN says 89% of the MAGA GOP supports the war in Iran.

00:13:26.800 What is the MAGA GOP?

00:13:28.180 Notice it doesn't say 89% of the GOP.

00:13:30.380 It doesn't say 89% of conservatives.

00:13:32.280 It doesn't say 89% of likely Republican voters.

00:13:35.380 89% of MAGA GOP.

00:13:36.800 That is a subsection of the GOP and of the conservative movement.

00:13:41.600 Let's dig in a little deeper.

00:13:43.040 Shone Cooperman Research conducted a poll.

00:13:45.920 Now, this is a poll on behalf of the Israel on Campus Coalition.

00:13:51.060 The Israel on Campus Coalition presumably is pretty in favor of strikes on Iran,

00:13:56.680 would have to be my guess.

00:13:57.640 I don't know much about the organization,

00:13:59.260 but I don't think it takes a political genius to infer that.

00:14:02.580 Nevertheless, that poll finds 44% support the U.S.-Israeli military operation, 41% oppose.

00:14:12.600 So the electorate is almost perfectly split, though it still favors it.

00:14:19.780 Republicans are supportive, but it's not 89% of Republicans.

00:14:23.040 It's a little bit lower.

00:14:24.560 It's 82% of Republicans.

00:14:27.620 82% of Republicans support it.

00:14:29.540 only 32% of independents support it. 17% of Democrats support it. So yeah, the Republicans

00:14:36.500 are still overwhelmingly in favor of the Iran intervention, but it's lower than just the whole

00:14:41.560 MAGA GOP. And don't forget the Trump coalition is not the MAGA GOP. So I think what some of these

00:14:49.820 polls, some of these headlines want you to believe is that the MAGA GOP is the group that elected

00:14:55.620 Trump. That's not really true. The MAGA GOP is a subsection of one of the two political parties

00:15:02.380 in the country. So it's a minority of voters. The Trump coalition is the hardcore MAGA base,

00:15:08.840 the America First base, the moderate Republicans who came over to Trump, the disaffected Democrats,

00:15:16.260 the blue collar Dems, the Maha Moms, the independents who don't really have rhyme or

00:15:21.320 reason to their voting. That's the whole coalition. And so if you're President Trump and you're

00:15:26.760 looking ahead to the midterms, if you're J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio and you're looking ahead to

00:15:30.260 2028, 89% of the MAGA GOP isn't enough because MAGA, the actual MAGA coalition is way, way bigger

00:15:39.000 than that group of people. And 32% of independents, if 32% of independents support you, you're not

00:15:46.560 winning. 17% of Democrats, you're supposed to pry some of those Democrats away. Aren't you

00:15:51.340 going to try that? Now, I think what this is really all going to hinge on is whether or not

00:15:57.140 Iran works. That's what I've said. But on these people who say war is terrible and we should

00:16:00.820 never go to war, and they make it all about this pacifist ideology. Or the people who say,

00:16:06.320 we must go bomb the Ayatollah. He's a super-duper Nazi double Hitler, and we need to spread liberal

00:16:12.720 democracy all around the world. Those people, neither of those groups are to be taken seriously.

00:16:16.880 They're both ridiculous. We're talking about practically here. Reasonable people, I think,

00:16:22.720 must conclude it would be good to make the Iranian regime pro-Western. That's something

00:16:30.120 the United States has wanted since at least 1953. And it's hard to make the Iranian regime pro-Western.

00:16:37.840 We've tried it before, going all the way back to 1953, and it doesn't always work.

00:16:42.320 And regime change generally is very hard.

00:16:44.160 And so there are some real risks.

00:16:45.480 And the question is, what is the threat that Iran poses?

00:16:50.880 Why is it that we wanted to pose Iran?

00:16:52.560 How great is that risk?

00:16:53.440 How imminent is that risk?

00:16:54.620 And two, how effective will we be in the regime change and how efficient?

00:16:59.000 That's where the debate is.

00:17:00.100 It's all practical.

00:17:01.020 It's all prudential.

00:17:02.060 Right now, according to Rasmussen, 61% of people think that the war is successful so far.

00:17:08.940 29% think it is unsuccessful.

00:17:10.600 So even here, the Trump administration is winning, but it ain't 89%.

00:17:15.020 And don't forget, wars tend to be more popular at the beginning than they are at the end.

00:17:22.500 Wars don't become more popular over time. Wars become less popular over time.

00:17:25.920 This is one of the warning signs about the intervention in Iran,

00:17:28.420 is that the Iran war is the least popular war at launch that we've ever had in American history.

00:17:34.100 World War II had 97% support when we got involved,

00:17:37.500 probably because Japan and Germany both declared war on us,

00:17:40.040 and Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. But even Libya, even Barack Obama's

00:17:45.580 completely bungled intervention into Libya was actually more popular at launch than the Iran

00:17:49.460 war is at launch. So the devil's in the detail on these numbers. And as I've been saying for

00:17:54.480 weeks now, there is so much propaganda flying around in wartime. Not that you can always

00:18:01.200 believe what you read on Twitter to begin with, but at this point, it's just all war propaganda.

00:18:06.140 That's true of other social media as well. You even see that in some of the polls.

00:18:09.000 you really, really have to dig in. Meanwhile, you have a YouGov poll. Then I promise I'll be

00:18:15.860 done with the polls because the only poll that matters is election day. But this stuff could

00:18:20.720 affect election day. There's a YouGov poll that has just come out that shows that support is

00:18:26.840 dropping. Well, of course, that's what always happens during war. But the real worry here is

00:18:32.160 that support is seriously dropping among independents. So among U.S. adults this week,

00:18:38.380 36% strongly or somewhat approve, 56% strongly or somewhat disapprove.

00:18:44.600 So those numbers are moving in the wrong direction from last week when 39% of U.S.

00:18:48.920 adults said they approve, 52% said they disapprove. Now, Democrats, 92% disapprove.

00:18:55.380 Those numbers have not changed at all. For Republicans, the approvals has ticked down

00:19:00.700 just a little bit, 83 to 81, but it's still, it's still pretty close. Disapproval has only

00:19:06.440 gone up by one point. Actually, no opinion has gone up by 1.2, but it's the independents.

00:19:12.820 The independents here, 53% disapproved last week, 63% disapproved this week.

00:19:19.520 That's the fear. And so, look, I'm not telling the White House anything it doesn't know.

00:19:23.260 So what I'm observing is whether or not this is a success depends on how efficiently it can be

00:19:32.140 conducted. If this goes well, this will be the greatest foreign policy victory since the fall

00:19:39.380 of the Berlin Wall. You already have other political indications that the midterms are

00:19:43.340 not going to be as bad for Republicans as everyone is predicting. They might actually be pretty good

00:19:47.660 for Republicans. If you come into that with a success on the Iran war, who knows? We might

00:19:52.380 actually expand the majority in the House. Who knows? But every hour that the war goes on,

00:20:00.020 the riskier it gets. And we can point out that the podcast class has totally lost its mind over

00:20:09.440 this. We can point out that social media is really not to be believed over this because not only have

00:20:13.740 the sincere users of social media lost their mind, but it's just filled with foreign bots and op

00:20:18.140 accounts, especially during times of war. So we can point to all that stuff. But on the ground,

00:20:25.020 you look at poll after poll after poll, we cannot hang our hats on 89% of the MAGA GOP supports this

00:20:30.200 today. That is not going to help us in the midterms. That is not going to help us in 2028.

00:20:36.800 There's no substitute for victory. I think Trump knows that. But I want to remind the other

00:20:42.460 Republicans. Gotta win. Now, it's not just the podcasters that are up in arms over this.

00:20:51.060 There is one defection at the White House. That is Joe Kent. He was the director of the National

00:20:56.180 Counterterrorism Center. He's a combat veteran. He lost his wife in the war. His wife was a combat

00:21:01.040 veteran, and she was killed, so he's a gold star husband. He ran for Congress, unfortunately,

00:21:06.060 lost that race. So President Trump appointed him to run the National Counterterrorism Center.

00:21:10.980 he resigned yesterday over the war in Iran. And it was a lengthy letter. I'm not going to read

00:21:16.000 the whole thing, but it was pointed. He said, President Trump, after much reflection, I've

00:21:19.760 decided to resign from my position as director. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing

00:21:24.580 war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. And it is clear that we started this war

00:21:29.820 due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. So there he's just placing the

00:21:34.820 blame for this at Israel. And people are going to attack him. They're probably going to call him

00:21:39.980 anti-Semite over this. But in Joe Kent's defense, one of the causes belly that was offered by the

00:21:48.100 administration, specifically the Secretary of State, is that we got into this war because

00:21:52.200 Israel forced our hand. That was one of the arguments. That's not the whole story, but that

00:21:56.200 is one of the arguments. The official story, I think even today, is that Israel was going to

00:22:01.140 attack Iran. It was going to do so unilaterally. We had strong intelligence that if Israel attacked

00:22:06.560 Iran, which it said it was going to do, that Iran would attack American interests, and our casualties

00:22:12.380 would be much higher than if we just joined on the first attack and preempted them. That isn't

00:22:19.180 conspiracy theory. That isn't reading between the lines. That is the verbatim, explicit argument

00:22:24.620 made by the administration. So Joe Kent has a reason to say, look, I think it was basically

00:22:31.480 just Israel that pressured us into this. Now, the problem is that doesn't tell the whole story,

00:22:35.660 Because one, I'm not sure that that causes belly that was offered wasn't also strategic to kind of give the administration a little domestic cover in case the war wasn't all that popular.

00:22:50.860 And two, we just know that President Trump has wanted to do this for a long time.

00:22:55.400 President Trump has been talking about attacking Iran since the 1980s.

00:22:58.840 President Trump has campaigned on this in every one of his presidential campaigns.

00:23:03.300 In fact, in 2024, the administration ran specifically on backing a unilateral Israeli

00:23:09.340 strike on Iran to stop the nuclear program.

00:23:11.560 And Trump already struck Iran six months ago, or whatever it was, eight months ago.

00:23:17.660 So you can't put all of the blame at Israel's feet.

00:23:23.240 Yes, it might well be the case that Israel pressured us to get into this.

00:23:26.180 Might also be the case that Saudi Arabia was pressuring us to attack Iran.

00:23:28.580 But regardless, this has been a pretty high-level priority for U.S. grand strategy at least since

00:23:35.580 1979. And really, if you count the CIA coup in 53, 26 years earlier than that. So regardless,

00:23:44.020 Joe Kent is out. Now, you know, when people leave, when people are seen to diss Trump,

00:23:51.700 Trump does not react well. I think this letter, all things considered, was pretty respectful.

00:23:57.760 This was not one of these, you know, Trump, you're a dirty, rotten sellout, and I'm the only principled person.

00:24:03.600 It's not the kind of thing that we see from the emotionally incontinent kinds of people that you get in politics or in the political media.

00:24:10.860 I thought it was restrained and respectful.

00:24:14.140 How is Trump going to respond?

00:24:16.000 Well, he already gave his answer in the Oval Office.

00:24:18.700 Your director of national counterterrorism, Joe Kent, he just resigned today.

00:24:23.480 He said he can't support your conflict with Iran.

00:24:26.300 what's your reaction to that and did you well i read his statement i always thought he was a nice

00:24:30.300 guy but i always thought he was weak on security very weak on security uh i didn't know him well

00:24:37.220 but i thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy uh but when i read his statement i realized that

00:24:43.640 it's a good thing that he's out because he said that iran was not a threat iran was a threat

00:24:51.060 every country realized what a threat iran was the question is whether or not they wanted to

00:24:55.600 do something about it. And many people, many of the greatest military scholars are saying for years

00:25:01.560 that presidents should have taken out Iran because they wanted a nuclear weapon.

00:25:06.180 Okay. By Trump standards, that was the absolute height of restraint. And I really, really like

00:25:13.820 this. I really like this. I hope that this is where we leave it. And it doesn't really even

00:25:20.220 have anything to do with Joe Kent. I agree with President Trump. He does seem like a nice guy.

00:25:23.140 I don't know Joe Kent. I'm very grateful for his military service. He's obviously sacrificed a lot

00:25:26.880 for this country. He has a disagreement with the administration over Iran. I hope we just leave it

00:25:33.120 at this, because putting aside the personalities of Joe Kent and President Trump, putting aside

00:25:38.300 even the question of whether or not we should be in Iran or how the war should be conducted now,

00:25:44.480 the left wants division within the administration the left wants to crack up the coalition

00:25:53.180 that trump built not just the left but our enemies abroad iran well i guess iran is

00:26:00.060 otherwise occupied right now but they have been trying to crack up this coalition for a long time

00:26:03.460 russia does want to crack up that coalition china wants to crack up that coalition

00:26:07.620 our enemies foreign and domestic really really want to sow division and chaos within the

00:26:15.900 administration within the conservative media that cover the administration that fly some air cover

00:26:21.220 for the administration and that uh you know report the news and for all the people in between

00:26:26.680 and you saw a lot of rancor and division in the first trump admin and it prevented some things

00:26:32.340 from getting done. This administration has been remarkably unified. All these big names, big

00:26:39.320 egos, big intellects, multiple presidential candidates in this administration. The fact

00:26:46.180 that you could get President Trump and the vice president, J.D. Vance, and the secretary of state

00:26:50.920 all totally united, love that. Then you add on to that another presidential candidate, Tulsi Gabbard,

00:26:56.460 DNI. Then you add on to that another presidential candidate, Bobby Kennedy at HHS. Those are

00:27:01.880 presidential candidates from a different party. And you just get this unity, and you see that

00:27:06.800 unity throughout the administration. Let's not give them what they want. Let's, okay, we had a

00:27:13.940 disagreement over this issue. It's up to the president to direct foreign policy. Turns out

00:27:19.060 that the base is pretty behind Trump on this. It's a risk. We get it. Some people, they don't,

00:27:25.280 okay, that's fine. You can leave. That's good. We move on. Now, there is a big difference,

00:27:34.720 I think, between the vision that people were putting onto President Trump and the reality

00:27:38.820 of President Trump. Some people, they really thought that Trump was running against all wars.

00:27:44.680 I don't know where they exactly got this. He said he wants peace. Ronald Reagan said he wanted peace,

00:27:47.920 peace through strength. People imposed on Trump. They projected onto him this idea that he would

00:27:52.560 never intervene in the Middle East. I don't really know where they got it. Trump ran in 2016 on

00:27:56.420 going back to the Middle East to beat the hell out of ISIS. He dropped the Moab. He killed

00:28:00.720 Soleimani. The guy intervenes sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes. So look, there was a

00:28:06.260 chasm between this image that some people, especially disaffected Democrats, had made of

00:28:10.940 Trump and the reality of Trump. And if the chasm between those two things becomes unbearable and

00:28:18.320 one or two guys need to resign, so be it. They go their separate way. No harm, no foul. Thanks

00:28:23.460 for the contribution. We keep moving on. Speaking of the difference between image and reality,

00:28:29.360 Greta Thunberg, noted environmental activist, is now very, very upset. She is protesting

00:28:34.820 for people to burn more fossil fuels. We'll get to that momentarily. First,

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00:29:56.680 slash K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Right now, Cuba is in talks with the United States.

00:30:04.780 after 60 plus years, almost 65 years? We might end the embargo. We might normalize relations.

00:30:14.180 Who knows? Cuba might become a protectorate of the United States for all we know.

00:30:18.220 It has been before. We've controlled Cuba, I think, three times in the 20th century.

00:30:23.600 It's all, why is it happening? Because President Trump struck Venezuela,

00:30:28.220 which was the big sponsor of Cuba. Cuba lost its big sponsor. It lost its oil.

00:30:34.240 Now it can't power its island.

00:30:36.000 Now it's in talks.

00:30:36.920 And you would think that Greta Thunberg would be thrilled about this.

00:30:42.160 Her entire raison d'etre, we're told, is that she wants to stop people from burning oil.

00:30:50.120 She wants to reduce the use of fossil fuels because you have stolen my dreams.

00:30:55.960 You with your oil, your fossil fuels.

00:30:59.780 How dare you?

00:31:01.640 You're destroying the environment.

00:31:03.740 and you've stolen. Now she's upset that we've stolen her oil. Initially, she was upset that

00:31:12.300 we stole her future because we burned the oil. Now she's upset that we stole her oil

00:31:15.700 because she wants President Trump to give all that oil back to Cuba so they can burn more fossil

00:31:20.360 fuels. We need to talk about what's happening in Cuba right now. As the Trump administration

00:31:26.880 is waging illegitimate wars across the world, killing countless of people, it is also strangling

00:31:32.840 the Cuban people deliberately, methodically, and openly. The pedophile Trump himself bragged about

00:31:38.980 it, saying there's an embargo, there is no oil, there's no money, there's no anything. He said it

00:31:44.920 like it was something to be proud of, while millions of people have been plunged into darkness

00:31:49.220 by rolling blackouts, while hospitals lose power, while ambulances run out of fuel, while shelves go

00:31:54.700 empty. Perfect, perfect conclusion, perfect completion of the narrative for the Greta Thunberg

00:32:01.020 story. She enters the public scene as a teenager. She's 16, 17, truant, leaves school to sail a

00:32:10.820 boat across the ocean to protest fossil fuels, to bring awareness to climate change. Now, of course,

00:32:17.140 she had her handlers flying jets across the ocean to meet her. So she ended up burning more fossil

00:32:21.680 fuels on that stunt than she would have otherwise. But regardless, that was it. It was all about

00:32:26.600 climate change, fossil fuel, cover of Time magazine. One of the great women of the year.

00:32:34.580 She goes and speaks at the World Economic Forum at the United Nations, the voice of a generation,

00:32:41.500 the humanitarian leader crying out for the world to do the right thing and stop burning oil.

00:32:49.160 And now she completes this by remaking herself into the great humanitarian voice of a generation

00:32:57.240 crying out to the world, demanding that we all burn more oil.

00:33:01.800 So long as it's Cuban communists burning the oil, not American or European capitalists

00:33:06.780 burning the oil.

00:33:07.320 That's very, very bad.

00:33:08.960 When American and European capitalists burn the oil, that destroys the earth.

00:33:12.540 Then we're all going to die.

00:33:14.320 But when Cuban communists burn the oil, that's very, very good.

00:33:17.440 They have special ovens or something.

00:33:19.060 I don't know.

00:33:19.460 They have special stoves.

00:33:21.120 Their engines work differently.

00:33:22.660 When they burn the oil, it actually helps the environment.

00:33:25.240 Every time a Cuban turns on his petrol vehicle, a polar bear is born in the Arctic.

00:33:31.680 Did you know that?

00:33:32.960 That's what I have to infer from Greta's apparently incoherent activism.

00:33:37.860 Except it's not really incoherent.

00:33:40.160 And I've pointed this out over the various stages of Greta's career.

00:33:45.380 She's not an environmentalist.

00:33:47.440 chiefly. She can be incidentally or instrumentally an environmentalist,

00:33:50.880 but that's not primarily what she is. She's a leftist. She's a leftist truant with a funny

00:33:58.740 accent. That's what Greta Thunberg is. She's just a leftist. She's done more to get attention than

00:34:07.200 other leftists. I think of David Hogg. He was another teenage guy who decided to make his

00:34:13.140 cause celeb gun control because it was convenient for him to do that. So then he used that to get

00:34:19.240 on CNN and to go give speeches. And then he became the voice of a generation crying out,

00:34:24.420 demanding that the world take action. But the gun control was always secondary to what he really is,

00:34:29.720 which is just a leftist. They're just leftists. And they will just go along with whatever the

00:34:33.720 current thing is. We've already seen this with Greta. She started out saying we need to stop

00:34:39.180 burning oil. Then when Democrats stopped caring about climate change, I mean, Bill Gates just

00:34:44.100 this past year issued a letter saying, look, I know that this was our big issue for 20 years,

00:34:49.280 but it's over. We need more energy. So climate change, it's fine now. We solved it. It's fixed.

00:34:54.860 Yeah, I know. We said the world is going to end in 12 years. We said that like 11 and a half years

00:34:58.320 ago. I know. Yeah, I know. I remember Green New Deal or whatever. Yeah, but anyway, our business

00:35:03.160 needs, our political and business needs have changed. So climate change is solved. Mission

00:35:08.060 accomplished. Now we're going to do other stuff. So when that happened, and Greta fell out of the

00:35:12.860 headlines and she needed a new career, she decided that her new cause was going to be

00:35:18.120 Palestinian liberation for some reason. What that has to do with the environment,

00:35:22.360 I don't know. Well, I do know. It's just all vaguely leftist. So Greta turns in the sailboat

00:35:29.380 and she puts on the keffiyeh. And she goes away from the windmills and she starts picking up

00:35:36.160 Molotov cocktails. I don't know. I don't know what pro-Palestine activists pick up.

00:35:39.620 But regardless, that was her cause. And so she's marching in the streets and

00:35:42.740 just did the whole playbook again. She got herself arrested. She went on TV. She gave speeches

00:35:46.980 about a totally unrelated issue. And now you see the perfection of this,

00:35:52.240 which is not only has she engaged in an ideological digression, she's now totally contradicted

00:35:59.900 the initial political claim she was making. We need to burn less oil. Now we need to burn more

00:36:05.820 oil. But she's just a leftist. Not an environmentalist, not a humanitarian, just a leftist.

00:36:12.380 And that's really all these guys. All these guys, when they come and they say, this is the most

00:36:15.860 important thing. Climate change. Oh gosh, I heard that for how many years? How many decades do we

00:36:20.800 hear? Climate change is the greatest threat. And then it was, racism is the greatest threat. That's

00:36:26.800 why we need to, here, take out your environmental images on social media and put the black square

00:36:30.840 on social media. That's the greatest threat. And then it was COVID. COVID was the greatest

00:36:35.760 threat. Remember, we have to lock everyone down and take away their businesses and change the

00:36:39.380 election rules. By the way, what was that last part? Oh, no, I said we were going to shut down

00:36:43.940 businesses. No, no, no. After that, what did you? Oh, we're just going to change all the election

00:36:46.660 rules. Oh, excuse me? What? That was the big issue. But then BLM wanted to go out and murder

00:36:52.200 and loot and commit arson and stuff. So then the Libs said, oh, yeah, well, we need to all

00:36:57.040 lockdown for COVID, except for BLM, because racism actually exacerbates COVID.

00:37:01.520 Many scientists signed a letter saying that racism exacerbates COVID.

00:37:05.300 So we need to let BLM marchers go torture, terrorize cities.

00:37:10.480 But so it changes, it changes, it changes.

00:37:13.080 You could get to the point where the same people who said we need to stop burning oil

00:37:17.780 are now demanding that we do burn oil to save the world.

00:37:20.080 You could get to the point where the same people saying we need Black Lives Matter riots

00:37:25.580 would say we need White Lives Matter riots. It's pretty unlikely because they hate white people.

00:37:29.260 But I say that just to point out all of these issues are merely instrumental. They're mere

00:37:36.640 tactics for the longer-term strategy, the real objective of just bringing about leftist government,

00:37:46.020 a leftist culture, a kind of culture that maximizes individual autonomy, prioritizes

00:37:53.820 the will over reason and totally inverts the civilization we once called Christendom.

00:38:00.140 That's really what it's about. Don't be surprised that Greta is now a petrol head.

00:38:07.040 Folks, you know me, I've always loved the interactive parts of this show, the all-axis

00:38:11.780 and the Membrum Segmentum. Some of my colleagues, they don't like it as much, but I've always loved

00:38:15.200 it, like talking to you guys, and then I can hear your ideas and steal them and pass them off as my

00:38:18.960 Anyway, we will now get live chat for the members, but you have to subscribe. You got to go to

00:38:24.680 dailywire.com slash subscribe chat live during the show. I can take your questions. I can talk

00:38:30.160 to you. I can steal your ideas. Dailywire.com slash subscribe. Okay. My favorite comment

00:38:35.020 yesterday, before we get to some real policy, the Save America Act. Talk about changing the

00:38:42.920 voting rules. This is the top priority. President Trump says we're going to get it. This is a great

00:38:47.580 big issue, 85% support, both political parties. By golly, this is easy. It's a slam dunk, right?

00:38:54.900 No, the Senate doesn't want to pass it. Now they're saying they're going to bring it up for

00:38:58.380 debate. Do not be fooled. Devil's in the details. But my favorite comment yesterday is from Emma

00:39:06.280 Rance 7513, who says, Michael, when you mentioned the whole notion that things get precarious during

00:39:12.300 Lent, I couldn't help but realize that President Trump also mentioned the war in Iran solely taking

00:39:16.340 seven weeks, just more than 40 days. Yeah, that's true. What do we have left? Five weeks left?

00:39:22.940 Whatever the number is. There have been a few numbers offered, but it is quite interesting.

00:39:27.920 I hadn't put that together. The Trump who launched this war right around the start of Lent,

00:39:35.280 what, about a week into Lent? And then if he says the war is going to take, whatever, five,

00:39:39.720 six weeks, yeah, that takes us to 40 days. I've noticed that. I've just noticed it.

00:39:45.800 I, this is a, people are going to think I sound woo woo or mystical, or maybe it is a little

00:39:51.660 mystical, but the rancor, the strife, the difficulty, the suffering, it, it increases

00:39:58.660 during Lent. It just does. Those who have eyes to see can see, you know, it's a faith is like a

00:40:04.820 lens that allows you to see the world different. You know, it, that is probably the chief way that

00:40:11.100 faith sometimes feels like a superpower is it, you see the world, not just differently,

00:40:17.700 but more clearly, the world just makes a lot more sense when you have faith, when you don't have

00:40:21.940 faith, when you find yourself out of a state of grace, the world, even more than it seems scary

00:40:28.100 or, you know, I don't know, unpleasant, it just seems absurd. Tale told by an idiot full of sound

00:40:35.540 and fury signifying nothing, you know, it doesn't make sense. Or a bunch of weird molecules walking

00:40:41.080 around on a rock in the middle of nowhere. That's kind of what the world feels like when you don't

00:40:44.220 have faith. When you do have faith, you can see these things. And one of the things you see is

00:40:50.280 that things get real funny during Lent. It's true. Speaking of funny business, the US Senate

00:40:58.300 has been under fire in recent weeks from President Trump and from the MAGA base because

00:41:05.280 there's something called the SAVE Act. The House has already passed the SAVE Act multiple times.

00:41:10.760 The SAVE Act was to insist upon voter ID, to fix the voting rules such that if you vote,

00:41:21.260 we need to know that you're eligible to vote. Now, the Senate is considering the SAVE America

00:41:25.940 Act, which is a version of the SAVE Act. It's even a little bit beefier, but that's really

00:41:29.360 what it comes down to. Voter ID. Voter ID, contrary to whatever you've heard from Democrat

00:41:35.600 politicians or the liberal media, voter ID is one of the most popular issues in the country.

00:41:40.460 It enjoys 85% support among the whole electorate. 85% of people say that you should present an ID

00:41:48.800 to vote. That means not just almost all the Republicans, but the vast majority of Democrats

00:41:54.160 agree with that. And yet the Senate, made up of Democrats and Republicans, but more Republicans

00:42:00.100 and Democrats, the Senate can't muster the votes to get this thing through. So the Senate leadership

00:42:06.200 said, we're just not going to deal with it. Trump has come out and said, I will not endorse anybody.

00:42:12.880 I will not back any Republican who votes against the Save America Act.

00:42:17.320 The way, what the Senate leadership is saying is they don't have the votes to pass it because in

00:42:20.940 the Senate, you need 60 votes, not just 51. So they say, we need 60 votes. We don't have it.

00:42:26.720 The Republican majority is too slim. We're not going to get past the filibuster.

00:42:30.100 You could take it then to a talking filibuster.

00:42:33.140 That's like the old, you know, Mr. Smith goes to Washington kind of filibuster where, you know, a guy gets out there.

00:42:38.220 Even Ted Cruz did this famously.

00:42:39.800 He was reading Green Eggs and Ham.

00:42:41.740 Senators go out, read the phone book, and they just go for ages and ages and ages to try to stop this bill from getting through.

00:42:52.200 Thune doesn't want to do that.

00:42:53.460 And they really don't want to nuke the filibuster.

00:42:55.240 So they say, sorry, we can't do it.

00:42:57.060 Now, because of the pressure from President Trump, the Senate has decided they're going to take up a vote on the Save America Act.

00:43:05.380 On this vote, the yeas are 51.

00:43:07.540 The nays are 48.

00:43:08.880 The motion is agreed to.

00:43:10.660 Okay, and this is being reported as great news.

00:43:12.980 And all the naive social media influencers and some of the op accounts are saying, isn't this great news?

00:43:21.980 No, it's not.

00:43:23.440 i guess it could be event but this in itself this doesn't matter at all this bill has zero chance

00:43:32.020 of passing zero i i hate to be the bearer actually i'd love to be the bearer of unpopular

00:43:38.540 information i enjoy i like that when everyone is saying one thing that is false and i get to say

00:43:43.980 something that is true and everybody pillories me for it i don't i get a masochistic pleasure out of

00:43:48.280 it. Because I love the truth, okay? And the truth here is, this bill has zero, zero chance of

00:43:56.840 passing. This doesn't mean that no political good can come out of it. But the only political good

00:44:03.120 that will come out of this is that we will get the squishes on the record. And so that can help

00:44:10.460 prune the Republican Party. But we will also get the Democrats on the record. So the Democrats

00:44:16.540 will vote against it. They'll argue against it. We can play all those clips in the midterm

00:44:20.600 election. So it could serve the political purpose of helping us in the midterms.

00:44:23.820 You know what would really help us in the midterms? Voter ID. That's what would really

00:44:26.700 help us if we could. Look, President Trump has deported a lot of Democrat voters over the last

00:44:31.140 year. But what would really help us is the Save America Act. It's common sense. It is a national

00:44:37.600 scandal and a disgrace that the Democrats will not support it. And we can't even get enough

00:44:42.120 Republicans to support it. Disgrace. So they're going to kill it. Eventually, they're going to

00:44:45.820 kill it. Speaking of killing things, the effective leader of Iran, not the son of the Ayatollah,

00:44:54.320 not the guy who the New York Post tells us is a little light in the slippers. You know what I'm

00:44:57.920 talking about? Kind of Iranian, sometimes takes a long walk off a short roof. You know what I'm

00:45:03.140 talking about? I'm talking about Mojtaba Khamenei, not him. That guy's probably in a coma.

00:45:08.840 i'm talking about ali karijani ali karijani is the security chief of iran who is probably was

00:45:17.160 probably running iran effectively he was just killed by the state of israel now this doesn't

00:45:25.660 really matter other than to show you that tactically speaking the this war has been

00:45:29.920 pretty effective i mean we just keep killing everybody that is rising to the top with everybody

00:45:36.880 who keeps getting that job. One, two, or three in the Iranian regime, not a good place to be.

00:45:43.340 Not the sort of job you want. But the reason I mentioned it too is because Ali Kharyjani is this

00:45:49.340 really interesting figure because he's a scholar of Immanuel Kant. I mentioned this on the show

00:45:54.640 a while ago, right when the Iran war kicked off. He's a scholar of Immanuel Kant, who's one of the

00:46:00.040 very prominent philosophers of modernity. And Immanuel Kant is best known for deontological

00:46:06.940 ethics, which is a duty-based moral framework. Deontological ethics usually counterposed to

00:46:14.560 consequentialist ethics, the kind of ethics of people like Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill,

00:46:21.260 utilitarian kind of ethics that says that the ends justifies the means, and which is a really

00:46:27.420 hideous and immoral way of thinking about the world. But deontological ethics are only a little

00:46:34.020 bit better because deontological ethics is duty-based. It's this kind of modern attempt

00:46:40.580 to preserve Christian morality without Christianity. But that one's weak too.

00:46:45.760 That one's really weak too. And really, for the based conservative patriots, we are Aristotelians.

00:46:53.400 we like virtue ethics. The belief not that morality is based on consequences and calculations

00:47:00.220 of the ends justifying the means, and neither is it the belief that morality is based on some

00:47:05.200 universal moral duties that have nothing to do with the character of the person carrying them out,

00:47:11.080 but rather that morality comes from the cultivation of good habits of character,

00:47:17.580 from virtue, such that we cultivate the judgment and the prudence to know what is right and apply

00:47:22.800 them to the particular situations, which are not so cut and dry as Kant would have us believe or as

00:47:30.460 the consequentialists would have us believe. This actually does have import to modern life

00:47:35.740 because it seems to me that most of the screeching that you hear in our political discourse

00:47:40.980 is really between the consequentialists and the deontological ethics guys. It's really,

00:47:45.680 it's between the Benthamites and the Millians on one side and the Kantians on the other.

00:47:51.480 But Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, who brings Aristotle up through into Christianity,

00:47:57.760 they're actually right about everything. And so the way you can tell this in political discourses,

00:48:03.500 the people who seem like really, really evil, the ones who say you have to crack some eggs to make

00:48:07.620 an omelet, the ones who would kill whole populations of people to affect their political

00:48:11.820 ends, the wacky trannies with guns and stuff, those tend to be the consequentialists.

00:48:17.480 the preening uh moralizing sanctimonious just uh politically ineffective people

00:48:26.280 often on the right sometimes on the left tend to be the kantians and then the normal people

00:48:31.000 who are prudent who are effective who understand the mean between extremes as virtue those are the

00:48:39.920 aristotelians and a kantian is dead and i'm not losing sleep over it okay that's my actual it

00:48:45.700 It has nothing to do with Iran.

00:48:47.040 Really, my main read on his killing is all about modern and ancient philosophy.

00:48:52.660 There is an update, though, on the Iran war.

00:48:55.940 Do I have time to get to it?

00:48:57.060 I wish I did.

00:48:59.180 Gosh, I wish I did, but I don't.

00:49:01.960 Trump is giving an update, though.

00:49:03.740 Is the war going to end anytime soon?

00:49:07.260 Is President Trump afraid that this is going to become a forever war?

00:49:12.180 Are Marines about to land in Iran?

00:49:14.480 man. Okay, one bit before we go, look, I know we got to go. I'm going to hand this over to Ben in

00:49:20.500 a moment. But first, can we just go to Pete Sessions? Pete Sessions, member of Congress,

00:49:25.160 Republican, was just asked point blank, okay, how is the war going? Are we going to get troops on

00:49:29.740 the ground? Remember, initially, the question was, are we going to strike Iran at all? And it was,

00:49:34.240 okay, is this going to go on for more than a few days? Then it was, okay, are we going to get boots

00:49:38.500 on the ground? Here's what Pete Sessions had to say on television about potential boots on the

00:49:42.960 ground. Ron, the president is moving about 2,500 Marines to the region. Are you okay with putting

00:49:50.440 those two troops on the ground? I actually spoke to some media last night and I indicated that I

00:50:01.260 believe that what these 2,500 Marines of the Marine Expeditionary Force would be, would be

00:50:08.160 is probably secure the island the island is not in my opinion boots on the ground in combat

00:50:16.560 it is it is a territory it is iran facility

00:50:20.740 well i'm not going to argue that point as a matter of fact you're right but what i would say is the

00:50:28.780 president has chosen not to obliterate the the ability that uh to get oil and i think he wants

00:50:36.320 to go secure that to make sure the Iranians don't do themselves in. So I think it's probably

00:50:42.800 wisdom. Is that boots on the ground? No, not like inside Iran where they're in the cities.

00:50:50.260 Okay, hold on, hold on. I love political spin as much as the next guy. And you know me,

00:50:54.880 I'm a partisan and a team player. But you're telling me you got thousands of Marines

00:51:01.140 going to Iran, and they're about to step onto Iranian territory.

00:51:07.940 But that's not boots on the ground? He said, that's not boots on the ground. Well, for one

00:51:11.580 thing, they're going to take their boots off before they get off the ship. He said, hold on,

00:51:15.180 I don't care. I don't care if it's sneakers or if it's, come on, that's boots on the ground.

00:51:18.920 In fairness to Congressman Sessions, he's drawing a distinction between this very limited

00:51:25.900 occupation of an island for the purpose of getting oil moving and 50,000 ground troops going into

00:51:34.300 Tehran. There is a difference. I mean, in fairness to him, there is a difference between those

00:51:38.600 things. You're not going to commit a ground invasion with 2,500 Marines, that's for sure.

00:51:45.120 And frankly, the Marines might just be sailing over here as a show of force to spook the Iranian

00:51:48.740 regime. But regardless, the war is still ramping up. It's not ramping down. It's ramping up.

00:51:58.000 What are we? We're in week three of this. Trump said it was going to take about five weeks. So

00:52:01.520 I guess that makes sense that it's still ramping up. Hopefully, it'll ramp down soon. But it's

00:52:05.660 ramping up to take care of the flow of oil in the Strait of Hormuz, which is essential because if

00:52:09.900 the oil doesn't get flowing, we're going to be plunged into a global recession. That's going

00:52:13.540 to be very tough for the president's legacy. It's going to be very tough for the Republicans in the

00:52:17.060 midterms. So it's a live, it's a live event and the stakes are only getting higher and higher and

00:52:24.360 higher. But for right now, from the military perspective, even from the polling perspective,

00:52:30.180 President Trump is winning. For right now, his gamble is paying off. Whether that continues

00:52:34.700 into the future is anybody's guess. Now, the rest of the show is going to continue. This is my

00:52:40.660 birthday member segmentum. I'm very excited to spend it all with you. And then I'm going to go

00:52:44.800 fly to Washington, D.C., because I'll be speaking at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. So,

00:52:49.000 you do not want to miss this nice little hangout we're going to have. Become a member. Use code

00:52:52.440 K-N-O-W-L-E-S at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Michael Knowles Show - March 18, 2026

Ep. 1934 - The Secret To Kim Jong Un's Nail-Biter Election In North Korea

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