Ep. 1948 - Trump Haters Wrong Again： Iran Ceasefire EXPLAINED In 5 Mins
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Summary
For three days, the entire left, joined by the neurotic right, whined and cried over the prospect that on Tuesday evening, last night, President Trump would detonate a nuclear weapon and then perpetrate a genocide in Iran. The hysteria was based on President Trump s tweet on Easter Sunday telling Iran to, I m paraphrase, Open the effing Straight or they would all be living in hell after he wiped out their civilization.
Transcript
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For three days, the entire left, joined by the neurotic right,
00:00:36.280
whined and cried and rent their garments over the prospect that on Tuesday evening,
00:00:42.840
last night, President Trump would detonate a nuclear weapon and then perpetrate a genocide
00:00:50.300
in Iran. The hysteria was based on President Trump's tweet on Easter Sunday telling Iran to,
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I'm paraphrasing, open the effing straight or they would all be living in hell after he wiped
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out their civilization. Praise be to Allah. Now, some of us, a small number of us actually
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on the right, we're not particularly worried. Sorry, I should rephrase that. I think people
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on the right generally are normal. Some of us in the media on the right, we were not particularly
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worried. Some of us actually thought the tweet was pretty funny. Just as some of us, while everyone
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freaked out about Iran turning into an endless war, a decade-long quagmire, some of us, some,
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some of us said to calm down. That President Trump said it would be over in about five weeks.
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Now, halfway through week six, after decimating Iran's nuclear weapons,
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missile program, the entire military, we've got a ceasefire and at least an outline for
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long-term peace. Despite my profound distaste for saying I told you so, we will get into what
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that peace deal with Iran means, as well as, and this is crucial, turning back to domestic matters,
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as well as the mass amnesty bill that squish Republicans are trying to sneak through Congress
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while the rest of us were all distracted by Iran. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:02:45.360
Welcome back to the show. New York Democrats talk about sneaking through crazy legislation.
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be the best you with Just Thrive. Breaking news, President Trump did not detonate a nuclear weapon
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last night. Breaking, shocking, stopped the press's news. Trump didn't commit a genocide
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last night, as the entire left was telling us, and as a ton of neurotic, hysterical people on
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the right were saying. Oh, my goodness, for the last two, three days, all these tweets,
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all these podcast episodes. Trump, Trump, he's gone too far. You know, this time you hear that
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I supported Trump. I voted for him three times, but this is too far. He's going to do a genocide
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now. Oh my, oh my goodness. These people, how is it? It's been 10 years. It's been 10 years.
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and some of you people, not you people, you people listening are normal, but some of these
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people, especially in the media on the right, as well as the left, they still don't get it.
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10 years later, he's going to do a nuclear weapon. This is the end of the world. He's gone mad for
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two, three days. These people, their blood pressure through the roof, their cortisol spiking.
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And then the rest of us, very few of us in the media, very few of us in the political class,
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I hate to say I told you so most people I think who are ordinary normal balanced people who have
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normal jobs who don't who don't work in politics professionally who are on the right but I think
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most people knew Trump wasn't going to do a genocide or set off a nuke but in the media
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oh my goodness gracious for days here we go we have Sarah Jacobs Democrat Congress lady
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the president just threatened genocide the joint chiefs of staff must disregard any such
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military orders that violate federal and international law republicans in congress
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can't hide anymore we must consider all options including impeachment to stop trump lady would
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you like would you like a cigarette would you would you like a cocktail would you like to just
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Take a deep. Get a hold of yourself, woman. What's the matter with you? It's not just a woman.
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Bernie Sanders, same thing. It is very easy to become accustomed to Trump's ravings and laugh
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them off. That's a dangerous thing to do. When Trump states a whole civilization will die tonight,
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he is threatening to commit genocide. We cannot allow that to happen. Congress must end this war
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now. Ten years later, and people are still befuddled, befuddled. Now, the rejoinder
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to the observation that Trump obviously wasn't going to commit a genocide,
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wasn't going to set off a nuke. The rejoinder is, well, he threatened to wipe out a whole
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civilization. He threatened that they would be living in hell. So what? You can't trust what
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Trump says? That's what you're saying, Michael? Michael, you're saying that the lesson of this
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whole episode is that you can't trust what Trump says. Excuse me. You can trust what Trump says
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if you know what he means. You see, words, words have a tie to an objective reality,
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but they also mean different things depending on the circumstances in which they are said
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and depending on who is saying them. Because different people have different
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credibility. Different people speak to different audiences. And the way that Trump speaks
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is as a New Yorker, someone posted last night on social media said, maybe it's just you got to be
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from New York to know what he, and I'll tell you what, it helps. For years now, when President
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Trump uses quotation marks to mean boldface. So, you know, he'll do this like, we're going to
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destroy you or whatever. And he really, a lot of people don't understand that. My grandmother used
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to write like that. New Yorkers of a certain age write like that. They think the quotations mean
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a joke. They mean mockery. They mean verbal irony. But actually, sometimes New Yorkers use it. So
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it's true. New Yorkers speak in a different way. Maybe that helps. But the other thing that we
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know about Trump is that he uses hyperbole for rhetorical purpose. In fact, he tells you that
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he does that in the book that he wrote about how he makes deals. The very famous best-selling book,
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decades-old book, he says, yeah, I use hyperbole for rhetorical purpose. The passage about his use
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of hyperbole is actually worth reading. But you can trust what he says when you know what he means.
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I did that whole exegesis, as it were, of the Trump tweet about open the effing straits,
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you crazy bastards, or we're going to rain down hell on your civilization. Praise be to Allah,
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Donald J. Trump. I pointed out the tweet was not, as some said, reckless. It was a disciplined
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tweet. The proof that it was a disciplined tweet, it was a treat too, on Easter Sunday, no less.
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The proof that it was disciplined was in that last line, that dry humor, praise be to Allah.
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I want you to open the Strait of Hormuz, and we'll get to the now-opened Strait, which
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But the tweet was mocking the diction of the Iranians, because the Iranians are the ones
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who are always saying, the great Satan will go down in a ball of flame and la la la.
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And so Trump, who speaks in different ways, depending on the circumstance, sometimes he's
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a little more diplomatic, sometimes he's a little more blunt.
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but he did the Iranian thing. He said, we're going to rain down fire on you. You're going
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to be living in hell. You're all going to be gone. And he let you know that that was what
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he was doing with that final ironic line. Praise be to Allah. Yeah. Okay. Maybe I got to talk your
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language, Iranians. Anyway, you can trust what he says if you know what he means.
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And the proof is you're going to hear from all these people, all these hysterics.
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You're just saying, no, you just got lucky. He was really going to do it this time. I'm telling
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you, he was really going to do it. Okay. I think the proof is who freaked out over the Trump tweet
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and who didn't. The people who freaked out don't understand Trump. And therefore, they don't
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understand the political moment. And therefore, they might be entertaining. You might like them
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personally, but therefore you should not trust their opinions when it comes to political
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observation because they got it spectacularly wrong. And those of us who didn't freak out,
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those of us who kind of chuckled along with it, those of us who were completely right
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in this very high stakes moment, maybe those of us who said and did those things,
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maybe we have a better grasp on what's going on in politics. I don't know. I would never say such
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a thing because I hate to say I told you so. The further proof, before we get to the Dignidad Act,
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before we get to what this means in Iran, the further proof that these guys just look completely
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foolish is that they've now flipped their criticism. 12 hours ago, they were criticizing
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Trump for bombing Iran, for potentially dropping a nuke on Iran. Immediately after he didn't do that,
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after he stopped the war, actually stopped the war because we have a two-week ceasefire.
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Immediately afterward, they criticized Trump for not nuking Iran. We'll get to that momentarily.
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select states. The biggest tell, the biggest tell that these guys just don't know what they're
00:13:31.760
talking about, mostly on the left, a little bit among the hysterics on the right. And actually,
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here's a figure who fits both those camps, Bill Kristol. He's now on the left, but he is also
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an hysteric from the right. They immediately flipped from criticizing Trump for nuking Iran
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to criticizing Trump for not nuking Iran. Bill Kristol tweets out last night,
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The mother of all tacos. Taco Tuesday. What do they mean by taco? Taco is this
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acronym that cropped up on Wall Street, but has spread to the broader left and the Trump critical
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right, which is sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the two. Taco stands for Trump always
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chickens out. Now, the reason that this arose on Wall Street is because Wall Street got really
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freaked out last April because of the tariffs. When Trump said, I'm gonna tariff the whole world
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at 10 billion percent, and we're gonna replace the income tax with tariff revenue, and this is
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gonna completely reshape the economic order. And there were people on Wall Street who freaked out.
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Most people didn't, which is why the markets have remained not only stable, but have hit record
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highs. But some people freaked out, and then what did Trump do? The tariffs weren't as bad
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as he was threatening. Trump will threaten a 100% tariff on a country, and then he'll bring
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it down to 38%. And then maybe he'll bring it down to nothing. But then maybe that country
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does something he doesn't like, he threatens to bring it up to 15% again. And the upshot of it
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all is the tariffs were not nearly as bad as he threatened. So they said, okay, well, Trump always
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chickens out. And that's what they're now saying about Iran. Trump said he was going to nuke Iran
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and committed genocide of the Persian people, and then he didn't do it. What a chicken.
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Trump always chickens out. And whatever helps you sleep at night, whatever helps you to try
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to make sense of the world, if you guys are so befuddled as Bill Kristol is, that's fine by me.
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But this is a completely unfair understanding of what Trump is doing here.
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because Trump always chickens out. Taco implies, it assumes, I should say,
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that Trump actually wants the things he's claiming to want. But we know for a fact that Trump claims
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to want much more than he actually wants. One of the first guys 10 years ago to tune people
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into this fact was Scott Adams, who was one of the great readers of Trump. Scott Adams,
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who is an expert in persuasion tactics, really made his political career, after his Dilbert
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career, he made his political media career, observing all of Trump's strategies of persuasion,
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one of which is that Trump always talks past the sale. Trump says he wants 300% tariffs on a
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country, and then he walks it back. He's conciliatory, and he makes a deal at 50%,
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but he really wanted 50% all the time. 300% is totally ridiculous.
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us. Trump writes about these things in his book, The Art of the Deal. So it's a totally unfair
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attack on him because it is assuming that he wants something that he is telling you he doesn't
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actually want. It's an incoherent criticism. We should call taco, it should be tactical
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accentuation of critical objectives. How's that? Is that Trump accentuates critical objectives
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instead of Trump always chickens out Trump accentuates tactic. I like tactical is better
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tactical accentuation of critical objectives. It's hyperbole to achieve an end. This isn't
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5d chess guys. You don't have to construct some esoteric theory of, of Trump to realize that
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salesmen ask for more than they want. That's not, I don't think I'm the crazy one for pointing out
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that great salesmen talk past the sale. That's like sales 101. That's what he's doing.
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And if it takes a genius political philosophers like Bill Kristol to explain it as cowardice
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or something, okay, whatever. Regardless, Trump, we now have a two-week ceasefire.
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the Strait of Hormuz is opening under certain conditions. The war hawks are really upset about
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this. Reportedly, the Israelis are kind of upset about this. Trump seems happy about it,
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but people are accusing him of cowardice. That's the whole point of the taco attack.
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And I just want to point something out. I've thought about this. Since we hit the end of
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the fifth week on Iran, I was thinking about ways that Trump could fulfill his promise to scale this
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thing back after five weeks, which he has done, by the way. He did it three days late,
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four days late. But I'll give him a little wiggle room. He actually did what he said he was going
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to do. Is there a way to do it without ceding American strength, without seeming like you're
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a coward? And then I was going back through history and thinking about the greatest
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presidential examples of American strength in recent memory. Who are they? Okay, the first one,
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Ronald Reagan, right? Peace through strength. That was his slogan. Peace through strength.
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That cowboy, Ronald Reagan, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, won the Cold War for America.
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How did Reagan react in 1984 to the Beirut barracks bombings when Hezbollah, that is to say,
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when Iran killed over 200 soldiers? There's 241 Marines killed in the Beirut barracks bombings.
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what did Reagan do? Did he nuke Iran? Did he get into a decade-long ground invasion of Iran?
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No, you know what he did? He removed the Marines from Lebanon. Now, you might say, well, that was
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cowardice. That was terrible. The only point I'm making, the only descriptive point I'm making
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is that Ronald Reagan is one of the great symbols, universally understood, of American
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military strength abroad. And when he was in a very similar situation to Trump with the same
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enemy, he pulled back. His tactic was restraint, was not escalating even after a major provocation
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from Iran. What about George H.W. Bush? George H.W. Bush was actually the president during the
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literal end of the Cold War, when the Berlin Wall actually came down. George H.W. Bush,
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who invaded Iraq, don't you remember, in the Gulf War, what did he do? Did he occupy Iraq for 10
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years, 20 years? No, no, no. He stopped short of toppling Saddam. He stopped short of regime
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change. He pulled out. He's considered not only one of the great foreign policy presidents,
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but a symbol of American strength. What happened just after George H.W. Bush?
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Remember when Black Hawk Down happened in Somalia? Killed 18 troops.
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Not that we looked to Bill Clinton for great advice, but what did he do? He pulled out of
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Somalia. What about better symbols of American strength than Bill Clinton? Truman. Truman,
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dropped the nuclear weapon. Pretty tough guy. What did Truman do when MacArthur wanted to go
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from Korea to invading China? You know what he did? He fired MacArthur.
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What did Eisenhower do in Vietnam? Eisenhower, who was one of the people responsible for winning
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World War II, what did he do when France wanted the United States to back them and escalate into
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Vietnam? What did Eisenhower do? He offered a little bit of military advising, a little bit,
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but he restrained himself. He did not allow Vietnam on his watch to develop into a massive
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war. He viewed it as an unwinnable quagmire in East Asia. His successors unfortunately did expand
00:21:35.480
the war and they proved him right. Eisenhower, again, whether you say Eisenhower's decision
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was right or wrong, he is a true symbol of American strength. And yet when push came to
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shove, his tactic was restraint. Even Kennedy, Kennedy shot down intervention into Laos in the
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1960s. Kennedy backed down, he was restrained in the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was one of the
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great victories, supposedly, of the Cold War, was that we didn't end up in a nuclear war with
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Russia because Russia removed the missiles. The only reason Russia removed their nuclear weapons
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was because Kennedy removed his missiles from Turkey.
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regardless of what you think about the Iran war,
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and there's a scintillating New York Times report
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on how we actually got into the strikes on Iran,
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being a strong president, a symbol, actually, of American strength, and being restrained in
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your foreign policy, pulling back, not escalating, those two things are not necessarily opposed.
00:22:52.880
In fact, in almost all the examples I can think of in recent history, they go together.
00:22:59.280
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Grain of salt when we're talking about New York Times reporting.
00:24:25.420
This one is worth reading, or you can just listen to my very quick summary of what happened.
00:24:30.060
but this is how we got into Iran. How did Trump get into Iran? That's the report. It's a very
00:24:37.040
lengthy report by Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman. It opens up right at the top subheader in a
00:24:43.280
series of situation where meetings, President Trump weighed his instincts against the deep
00:24:46.880
concerns of his vice president and a pessimistic intelligence assessment. Here is the story of how
00:24:51.460
he made that fateful decision. So right off the bat, we see that the leading voice against the
00:24:59.580
strikes in Iran from the administration, according to the New York Times, Vice President J.D. Vance.
00:25:05.760
Now, you will recall, before, during, and after the Iran strikes, I said,
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if I had been in the National Security Council, had I been in the room,
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I would have made the strongest arguments I could against the strikes.
00:25:20.060
I trust Trump on foreign policy, so I'm not going to freak out. I'm not going to be a neurotic. I'm
00:25:24.360
not going to be a hysteric. I'm not going to say we're on the brink of nuclear genocide.
00:25:27.520
I trust Trump. He's got a great record on foreign policy. There are strategic objectives to be
00:25:32.420
achieved in Iran, but I just would have made the arguments with the information I had available to
00:25:35.960
me. I would have argued against the strikes. According to the New York Times, Vance was
00:25:41.640
doing the same thing, which reminds me, Vance, that guy's got a good head on his shoulders.
00:25:47.100
That guy's a very, very impressive leader. It's very rare you get raw intelligence,
00:25:53.320
which he obviously has, and a touch, a connection to normal people, which Vance obviously has,
00:26:02.260
read his memoir, and good political instincts. Those three things don't always go together.
00:26:09.520
They do seem to go together in him. In any case, what happened in the room,
00:26:12.720
according to the New York Times? In the Situation Room, Bibi Netanyahu comes in.
00:26:16.760
He's making the hard pitch for Iran on February 11th. Mr. Netanyahu made a hard sell,
00:26:22.080
suggesting that Iran was ripe for regime change and expressing the belief that a joint U.S.-Israeli
00:26:26.740
mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic. The CIA director, John Ratcliffe,
00:26:31.900
who President Trump calls central casting, Ratcliffe used one word to describe the Israeli
00:26:36.520
prime minister's regime change scenarios, farcical. You know, I was making the same
0.96
00:26:43.980
arguments. There are some people who say, we should never go to war, we should be pacifists,
00:26:47.420
or the Iranian regime is actually good, or we could really work with these guys.
00:26:51.700
I've never said that. The regime is awful, and it would be great if we could swap out the regime.
00:26:55.680
But what did I say? Before, during, and after the strikes, I said, I just don't think you're
00:27:00.500
going to unseat this regime. The last time we changed regimes in Iran, the 1953 CIA coup
00:27:07.360
that got rid of Mogadish and consolidated the power of the Shah, that regime lasted
00:27:11.760
for 26 years, was it? Yeah, 53 to 79, 26 years. The Iranian mullahs who won the Islamic
0.99
00:27:19.700
revolution, they've been in power almost twice as long. So we don't like them. They're terrible
1.00
00:27:24.600
for America. They're terrible for the region and the world. But I said, I think it's a more stable
00:27:29.660
regime than some of the hawks are pretending. And I don't think this is going to be an 88-minute
00:27:35.220
mission like in Venezuela. In other words, I agree with the CIA director. I think the notion
00:27:41.400
that Iran was ripe for regime change was farcical. I said that before, during, and after. And now
00:27:47.520
that we're six weeks in, five and a half weeks into this war, that would seem to be the case.
0.70
00:27:52.140
The Iranian Islamic regime has held on to power. You don't need to think that's a good thing. I
0.98
00:27:57.880
think that's a bad thing. I hate the Iranian regime. But nevertheless, they have held on to
0.98
00:28:03.080
power. The claims that Iran was on the brink of a popular revolution and the people were going to
00:28:08.980
take back their country and bring in Reza Pallavi or a secular government transitioning
00:28:13.620
to democracy. It just hasn't happened. So it looks like the CIA director was right.
00:28:18.720
Rubio translated what the CIA director meant when he said it was farcical.
00:28:22.700
At that point, Mr. Rubio cut in, quote, in other words, it's BS. He used the real word,
00:28:27.060
but this is a family show. Several others jumped in, including Mr. Vance. Now, J.D. Vance was
00:28:33.920
apparently not in the first meetings because Vance happened to be in Azerbaijan at the moment. He was
00:28:38.160
in Armenia and then Azerbaijan working to resolve that conflict. The Armenia Christian war against
00:28:43.940
the Muslims, really it's the Muslim war against the Christians there, has been an issue that we've
00:28:48.300
talked about on the show a number of times. Vance was over there, and this meeting was really last
00:28:52.040
minute, so he wasn't even in the room the first time. But when he did get back, Mr. Vance, just
00:28:56.020
back from Azerbaijan, also expressed strong skepticism about the prospect of regime change.
00:29:00.620
How about the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Raisin Cain? Cain replied, sir, this is,
00:29:05.440
in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell, and their plans
1.00
00:29:09.860
are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that's why they're hard-selling.
00:29:14.620
According to the New York Times, I have to keep saying according to the New York Times,
00:29:17.180
because I instinctively do not believe the New York Times. But it's a fascinating read in any
00:29:23.380
case. And because there is some disagreement on the right about this issue, they might be getting
00:29:30.280
decent sourcing. Within the cabinet, Mr. Hegseth, the Secretary of War, was the biggest proponent
00:29:36.540
of a military campaign against Iran. Ms. Wiles, Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff, has told
00:29:41.260
colleagues that she worried about the United States being dragged into another war in the
00:29:44.280
Middle East. Nobody in Mr. Trump's inner circle was more worried about the prospect of war with
00:29:48.880
Iran or did more to try to stop it than the Vice President. I think that has aged quite well.
00:29:53.800
Mr. Vance, whose disagreements with the whole premise was well established, addressed the
00:29:57.920
president. He said, according to the Times, you know I think this is a bad idea, but if you want
00:30:02.600
to do it, I'll support you. They're weak. Love it. Love it. So what's my takeaway from this?
00:30:07.300
One, I already was a great admirer of Vance. If this reporting is true,
00:30:13.100
my estimation of him has somehow increased even more. This is the right approach.
00:30:18.760
Say, look, I'm very skeptical. This is why I think the facts on the ground suggest that we
00:30:22.860
shouldn't wage a major operation against Iran that's aimed at regime change because you're not
00:30:26.820
going to get regime change. You could wage an operation aimed at stopping the nuclear weapons,
00:30:30.640
like we did last summer. You could wage an operation even to get rid of the ballistic
00:30:34.360
missiles, to take out one leader or another leader, to try to get a better leader in place,
00:30:39.840
but you're not going to get regime change, most likely. So for all these reasons, I oppose this.
00:30:45.080
Iran's a real country. Venezuela's less of a real country, but for all these reasons,
00:30:48.600
I oppose it. But if you do it, I'll support you because you're the president.
00:30:51.020
That's the right attitude. There's one president. There's one president. There's one guy in charge.
00:30:55.940
It's his administration. And it is the job of the people within the administration
00:30:59.460
to give their advice, to tell the truth, and then to support the guy who was elected with
00:31:08.880
the popular vote, I should add, to make the calls. Absolutely mature, responsible,
00:31:14.720
spot on sort of thing. The other thing I take away from this reporting is there has been an
00:31:19.320
op, and I've been calling this out for weeks, hate to say I told you so. There's been an op
00:31:23.600
to try to create division within the Trump administration. This is the most unified admin
00:31:28.600
I've ever seen in my lifetime. They're trying to create division. And so they're trying to pit
00:31:32.200
Rubio against Vance because right now, Vance is the heir apparent for 2028. He's already got
00:31:36.960
basically the endorsement of Donald Trump, who says that he wants to see Vance and Rubio run
00:31:40.720
on a ticket. And he doesn't even want Rubio to run for any other job. He's so good as Secretary
00:31:43.540
of State. So you got Vance there as the heir apparent. Rubio has already endorsed Vance
00:31:48.980
for president. He said, I'm not going to run if JD runs. I think he would be a great nominee.
00:31:54.060
But all these people trying to make division, they say, well, no, there's a huge division here.
00:32:00.960
J.D. Vance wouldn't support any operation in Iran.
00:32:06.300
Well, actually, at least according to this reporting, and by the way,
00:32:09.980
the New York Times has a real incentive to stoke division within the Trump admin.
00:32:15.200
It's one of the reasons I kind of trust the reporting is they say, no,
00:32:18.580
Vance and Rubio basically agreed on this, as did the CIA director and the chairman of the
00:32:23.220
Joint Chiefs. And maybe Hegseth was a little more in favor of war in Iran, but they're not even that
00:32:27.160
specific about that. Yeah, the admin was basically united. And Trump ultimately was persuaded that
00:32:32.680
there should be some kind of strike on Iran, but he clearly doesn't want an open-ended war.
00:32:36.600
He said it would last about five weeks. And guess what? We have a ceasefire five and a half weeks
00:32:40.680
in. My takeaway from this is unity here in the administration. There's sophistication.
00:32:48.380
Now, some people are going to say, well, what did we even get out of this war?
00:32:54.800
You people in the media and in the political class who were just completely wrong,
00:32:59.900
spectacularly 180 degrees wrong about Trump dropping a nuclear weapon,
00:33:04.060
about Trump perpetrating a genocide, about how long the war was going to go on.
00:33:07.720
You were just completely wrong about everything.
00:33:09.660
And now you have the temerity to come out and say, yeah, well,
00:33:21.100
I've told you. I've had my cards on the table the whole time. I would have argued against it.
00:33:25.360
But to tell me we didn't get anything out of it, we seriously set back the nuclear program
00:33:30.880
eight months ago, or eight, nine months ago over the summer. We here totally decimated their
00:33:37.620
ballistic missiles capabilities, the ballistic missiles which were being used to defend the
00:33:41.400
nuclear program. We sunk their Navy. We killed their leader, the Ayatollah, who has been calling
0.53
00:33:47.740
for death for America forever, and who, according to intelligence, tried to kill Trump multiple
0.98
00:33:53.120
times. We've arrested people for doing that. And then we killed everyone around him,
00:33:58.720
and we brought Iran to the table. Then Iran played the last card that they could play,
1.00
00:34:02.260
which was closing the Strait of Hormuz, which is a serious challenge. Trump said,
00:34:05.460
I'm going to reopen that strait, and here's how I'm going to do it. I'm going to send this tweet,
00:34:08.460
and all you hysterics are going to freak out about it. And guess what? The strait's opening.
00:34:12.780
Now, we'll get into what the details are of this, because it's a little unclear in this deal that
00:34:17.400
was negotiated with the help of the prime minister of Pakistan, what exactly are going to be the
00:34:22.440
terms of a 10-point piece? The US and Iran are saying different things right now. But regardless,
00:34:29.420
Trump has pulled it off. He pulled off the thing he said he was going to do. He was going to strike
00:34:35.820
Iran. He stopped talking about regime change very quickly. He said, look, Iranian people,
00:34:40.740
if you want to rise up, you can take over this regime if you want. But in the chief objectives
0.96
00:34:46.340
of the war, he didn't really list regime change. And he also pointed out they've killed so many
00:34:50.260
people at the top that in a way it kind of was regime change in the way that in Venezuela it
00:34:53.760
kind of was regime change. But it's really more you just take out the top people, then you point
00:34:57.960
a gun at the people who come up to run the country next. And you say, hey, play ball or we're going
00:35:02.560
to blow your head off. That's what Trump did to Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela. It seems like that's
00:35:06.700
what he's doing to the new supreme leader of Iran, the new supreme leader of Iran, who's never even
00:35:10.540
been seen in public. He's basically just a cardboard cutout. So whoever is running the
00:35:13.700
country. Trump's got a gun to that guy's head. And he says, open the strait, cry uncle. And as of
0.99
00:35:18.940
today, it appears that whatever the word for uncle is in Farsi, the Iranians cried it. Okay,
0.91
00:35:23.840
now let's get to domestic matters. Because while everyone was distracted with war in the Middle
00:35:27.780
East, squish Republicans at home are trying to pass a mass amnesty bill. Republicans win the
00:35:34.640
popular vote for the first time in 20 years, running on mass deportations overtly. So the
00:35:40.200
squishes in the Republican Congress. They say, I know what we need, mass amnesty. We'll get to
00:35:46.460
that momentarily. First, I absolutely love my friend Pavel, who is a longtime assistant director
00:35:54.200
here at Daily Wire, but he's an on-camera figure too. You know him from Lady Ballers, from various
00:35:59.320
on-air appearances backstage. Well, Pavel has a show. It could not be more timely. It's called
00:36:05.060
Be a Man With Me. He has a kind of funny Polish accent. He's a giant manly pole.
00:36:09.380
The latest episode of Be a Man With Me may just be the most intense yet.
0.77
00:36:12.500
Pavel teams up with the Hendersonville Fire Department to find out what it really means to be a man.
00:36:20.620
I just got reports that they got water on the fire, so they made an entry on the A-side, advanced down this hallway.
00:36:26.120
They're in the fire room currently working on fire services.
00:36:50.040
To see Pavel fight through 1,200-degree Fahrenheit burning buildings and more,
00:36:53.840
go watch the episode now on the Be A Man With Me YouTube channel on Daily Wire+.
00:36:57.840
Daily Wire+, members can now chat live with the show.
00:37:01.800
Ask your questions. Join the conversation right now.
00:37:03.960
Plus, don't miss our new show I am so excited about.
00:37:36.740
I don't know how to feel about that because I do eat Dunkin' Donuts sometimes, but it's terrible.
00:37:42.440
Dunkin' Donuts is terrible. My family, especially my family that lives in New England and Northeast
00:37:46.600
generally, they love Dunkin' Donuts. Dunkin' Donuts is my father's favorite establishment
00:37:51.800
in the world. But the coffee tastes like trash water. It tastes like it was filtered through a
0.99
00:37:58.960
big bag of garbage. The donuts are stale. And then I go into Dunkin' Donuts, there is a new staff,
00:38:05.400
a completely new staff, basically, every time I go into the same Dunkin' Donuts.
00:38:09.820
I don't know what, I don't know how that corporation operates, but it's bad at everything
00:38:16.840
and people love it. I even feel nostalgic. I still go in. I am a regular customer of
00:38:23.460
Dunkin' Donuts, but everything about it is horrible. And now you're telling me my show
00:38:30.000
logo. I don't know what to think of. We might need a rebrand. Okay. A Republican member of
00:38:39.160
Congress, along with a dozen or so other Republican members of Congress. While you
00:38:47.440
are all distracted looking at Iran, she is trying to ram through a mass amnesty bill
00:38:55.240
for illegal aliens. She is currently calling it the Dignity Act. But you want to know the kicker?
00:39:05.020
It's not even called the Dignity Act. That's not the actual name of the bill.
00:39:08.880
The bill is called the Dignidad Act. The Feliz Navidad Act. No, Dignidad.
00:39:16.320
It doesn't even have an English name. It has got a Spanish name, Dignidad.
00:39:20.080
And what does the Dignidad Act do from Congress Lady Maria Salazar, a fake Republican?
00:39:29.320
I want to be as fair and charitable as I can be. The Dignidad Act would, in principle,
00:39:35.520
secure the border. Oh man, I've heard that song before, haven't I? That's what the Democrats
00:39:40.240
promised Reagan in the 80s. They said, give us mass amnesty and we'll secure the border.
00:39:45.600
And what happened? We got the mass amnesty, they didn't secure the border.
00:39:50.080
It's the same bill. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. To quote George W. Bush,
00:39:54.300
the point is you're not going to fool me again. The same bill, Maria Salazar comes out and says,
00:39:58.780
hey, remember that time the Democrats totally tricked us in the 80s and they said they'd
00:40:02.000
secure the border if we gave mass amnesty? Let's just try that again. But the reason she's pushing
00:40:08.620
this, I think, is because she doesn't care about border security because she does want mass amnesty
0.99
00:40:14.340
and she wants a pathway to citizenship for all these people. This secures the border in principle.
0.95
00:40:27.680
They falsely claim that they need political asylum.
00:40:47.580
work authorization, travel authorization for undocumented individuals continuously present
00:40:53.020
in the U.S. since 2020. So the only thing here that is even remotely good is the border protection.
00:41:03.160
Here, though, they say, all right, if you've been here since 2020, if you're an illegal alien,
00:41:06.160
an undocumented American, undocumented individual, that's the language they use,
00:41:12.100
then if you've been here since 2020, you're good, you can stay. Now, do you see the problem with
00:41:16.600
this? Let's say you're an illegal alien who came here in 2019. And the law says, if you come here
0.84
00:41:22.720
in 2019, you got to go home. But if you come here in 2020, you can stay. What are you going to tell
00:41:28.620
the ICE officer? Probably, if you're a dishonest person, but if you're most people, I think,
00:41:35.860
you're going to say, well, I've been here since 2020. Now, the ICE officer is going to say, okay,
00:41:40.780
well we got to prove that but the problem is if the thing that distinguishes you is that you are
0.79
00:41:47.440
undocumented then you can't prove it so if the law says that you got to keep let these people in
00:41:55.520
then the law enforcement officers are going to defer to the illegals all that's going to happen
00:42:02.120
is you're going to walk up there you say hey hola i do solemnly swear i've been here since 2020
00:42:06.840
essay. I'm totally, you got to believe me, man, but I don't have any documents, but it's cool.
00:42:11.740
I'm totally honest. They're going to say, great, come on in. So it's mass amnesty for everyone.
00:42:16.500
Now there is a rule. You got to pay some taxes. You got to pay some back taxes.
00:42:20.760
But again, the problem with illegal immigration is not that these people don't pay enough taxes.
0.62
00:42:27.040
They don't. They're net takers of welfare programs. But the problem with them isn't that
00:42:31.440
they need to pay more taxes. The problem is they came here illegally. We don't want them here.
1.00
00:42:38.740
We have a legal immigration program. We take too many immigrants through that, by the way.
1.00
00:42:43.740
We now have the highest foreign-born percentage of the population we've ever had. It frays social
1.00
00:42:47.620
solidarity. It just doesn't work. No knock on them personally. No knock on even any part of
00:42:51.960
the world. It's just you can't take huge numbers of migrants and have your society continue to
1.00
00:42:56.120
function. So the problem is not that they're not paying enough taxes. The problem is that they are
1.00
00:42:59.660
here. They need to go home. Oh, and then the kicker, you know what the Dignidad Act does?
00:43:06.940
It's the Dream Act. It's the thing that Obama and the Democrats tried to pass.
00:43:11.860
It says that if you're a dreamer, what's a dreamer? A dreamer is this ridiculous euphemism
0.84
00:43:17.180
that the Democrats came up with for younger illegal aliens. And they came up with it 15
0.99
00:43:22.860
years ago. The dreamers. And the dreamers, you think of these little doe-eyed six-year-old kids,
00:43:29.480
brought here without their consent into America. The dreamers are like 50 now, okay? The dreamers
0.91
00:43:35.100
are like fat, balding 50-year-olds, the doe-eyed dreamers. So it gives the Democrats the main
0.95
00:43:41.620
amnesty legislation that they've sought for 15 years. This is just a joke. And then other people
00:43:46.160
are finding other provisions. The law gets worse and worse the more you read it. According to Will
00:43:50.920
Chamberlain, got to give a hat tip here for finding this bit of the bill. The Dignidad Act
00:43:57.420
prevents law enforcement from deporting gangsters because it prevents allegations of gang membership
00:44:05.780
that are in state or federal databases from being used to determine whether or not someone is in a
00:44:11.040
gang for the purpose of amnesty. So that guy, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, remember that one,
00:44:18.820
Senator Chris Van Hollen's boyfriend who got deported to Bukele's camp, and then the Democrats
00:44:23.040
whined and cried over this wife-beating illegal gangster being deported. Forget about the
0.96
00:44:28.080
constituents. It's the wife-beating illegal gangsters. We must protect them. They need
1.00
00:44:31.820
their dignidad. A guy like Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, who two judges said was a gangster, that guy
00:44:37.840
would get legal residency here through this stupid bill. It would also increase illegal
0.99
00:44:44.120
immigration, which is a big problem. We need no illegal immigration, and we need much less
0.95
00:44:48.960
legal immigration. We have too many immigrants. It's no knock on the, some of my family were
1.00
00:44:53.720
immigrants, legal immigrants, many, many years ago, well over a century ago, but we have too
1.00
00:45:01.280
many of them. We need, we got to chill out. This is what we do in America. We, when the country
1.00
00:45:05.580
was founded, we had basically no immigration. Then we let in some immigration from some places.
00:45:09.940
Then we closed off immigration again. And then 40 years later, we totally destroyed our immigration
00:45:15.020
system and flooded the country with particularly problematic migrants that skewed social
0.99
00:45:21.360
solidarity. But what this would do is increase the country cap from seven to 15 percent.
00:45:29.360
So especially immigrants from Mexico, India, China, double the number of immigrants we're
00:45:34.400
taking even legally. And the whole point of it is to give them citizenship. Now, Maria Salazar
00:45:40.860
dishonestly is saying right now that this would not give people citizenship. You need to read
00:45:45.420
the bill. She's yelling at my pal, Brandon Gill, the freshman congressman making a lot of big
00:45:49.800
waves. You need to read the bill before you open your mouth. That's not what this does. No, really.
00:45:54.820
Hey, look, hey, the big brains of the squish Republicans, they're actually, you know, this
00:45:59.800
is really good for border enforcement. If we want to win on the immigration issue, if you want to
0.93
00:46:05.180
get rid of the mass migration, secretly what we have to do is give mass amnesty to all of
0.99
00:46:10.740
these people because then they won't be illegal anymore, right? They'll be legal. These are what
00:46:14.880
the big brains are going to tell you. But don't listen to them because Marie Salazar elsewhere
00:46:18.640
admits the whole point of this is to make them citizens. We give them dignity. At some point in
00:46:25.820
the future, another legislator will write another law to give them path to citizenship. Right now,
00:46:31.340
what we need to do is to buy peace for these people, allow them to stay, to continue working
00:46:40.140
Look, I know you want to give them citizenship.
00:46:44.460
Down the line, some other legislator is going to do that.
00:46:49.320
Because if we, right now they might get deported
00:46:53.340
So we got to do, you got to go along with me, guys.
0.99
00:47:01.820
Trump won the popular vote running on mass deportations.
00:47:05.360
We're going to lie to them and say, this isn't about making them citizens.
00:47:08.260
And now we'll just buy them time so that we can finally get a Democrat in there to make
00:47:13.740
This is terrible fraud from this woman, Maria Salazar.
1.00
00:47:17.800
Any Republican congressman, there are a dozen or 14 of them.
1.00
00:47:20.920
I don't have that list in front of me or I'd read them.
00:47:24.520
Any Republican congressman supporting the Dignidad Act should be looked on with deep
00:47:31.640
I have my own proposal to counter the Dignidad Act.
00:47:36.080
I call it the, well, the point of the proposal will be to just deport these congressmen.
1.00
00:47:40.540
The point of the proposal will be to get rid of these squish congressmen,
0.89
00:47:44.160
at least to deport them from Congress, ideally from America.
1.00
00:47:47.020
And I'm going to call it the nicks, obnoxious, querulous, useless ingrates.
1.00
00:47:56.480
The Republicans elect them to mass deportation.
0.98
00:48:01.580
Nicks, obnoxious, querulous, useless, ingrates, and end Republican Obtuseness Act of 2026.
0.98
00:48:25.060
Very undignidadified of these Republicans in Congress.
1.00
00:48:30.860
Pathetic stuff. Kill that bill. This woman needs to take the L. She needs to go away.
1.00
00:48:35.980
And the other Republicans who supported this need to keep their mouth shut for a little bit and go
1.00
00:48:40.020
along with what the voters actually want. Disgusting. Disgusting. It's just amazing,
0.99
00:48:45.740
these people. Probably they're just perfidious. Probably they're just deceitful fraudsters
00:48:52.300
trying to pull a fast one on voters. But if they sincerely believe this is a good idea,
00:48:57.260
And they're actually saying like, hey, golly, hey, fellas, the people, most Americans just
00:49:04.720
voted for us on the basis that we would have mass deportation.
00:49:21.500
And so what we need to do is make it worse in every way.
1.00
00:49:25.500
but look it's broken so the only thing we can do is make it worse in every way
00:49:30.620
not going to make it okay i really want to get to these catholic sisters in new york these
00:49:35.940
religious sisters the dominican sisters of hawthorne who for 125 years have been caring
00:49:41.380
for terminally ill people all the people have to do is show up and say i have no one to care for
00:49:44.720
me they will care for them and now democrat legislators are trying to punish them if they
00:49:52.060
don't full-throatedly accept transgender pronouns. We don't have time. We'll get to that story
00:49:59.960
tomorrow. Today is work from home Wednesday, and I didn't assign anything, and too bad. The rest of
00:50:04.480
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00:50:07.220
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