Ep. 1974 - Xi Jinping Threatens WAR During Trump's Trip To China
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
3
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Toxicity
22
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Hate speech
36
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Summary
On this week's episode of The Michael Knowles Show: President Trump's first day in China, Congressman Riley Moore joins the show to discuss genocide in Nigeria, a woman named Desiree Cigari threatens Republicans on TikTok, and high school students are drinking at record low rates.
Transcript
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Chinese leader Xi Jinping threatens war with the U.S. on President Trump's first day in the
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Orient. Libertarian favorite Thomas Massey might go down in a massive primary showdown
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with the White House. Tells us a lot about the state of the Republican Party.
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And high school students are drinking at record low rates. And that is almost certainly a terrible
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thing. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
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welcome back to the show very excited later on we're going to have congressman riley moore
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joining the show one of my very favorite members of congress to discuss myriad topics including
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a topic that my debate opponent at Dartmouth denied, which was the genocide of Christians
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in Nigeria and how the U.S. should think about it and how we should act. First, though, I want to
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to unlock 15% off exclusions apply. All right, let's start out with some good news,
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because the biggest story is that Trump is in China right now, and Trump opens up with these
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really nice comments about Xi Jinping trying to make peace, make friends, make sure we all get
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along. And Xi Jinping comes out with a haymaker and essentially threatens World War III. So we'll
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get to what that means and the strange, not strange, very popular, but I think misunderstood
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historical theory that is undergurning the Chinese bellicosity. First, though,
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a little bit of good news. I want a little bit of good news here. There's a woman named
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Desiree Cigari. As a cigar man myself, I don't claim her. I'm very ashamed that she shares the
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name of my favorite hobby. Desiree Cigari threatened Republicans on TikTok.
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Okay, guys. So I would like to start a new movement called CMAGA.
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mega because people like that respond to fear and terror and aggression not logic and empathy
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and i don't know intelligence it doesn't work for them so fear works so if we all get our guns and
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use our second amendment right and our common sense at this point this administration is begging us
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to rise up and revolt and you see somebody with a mega hat that's what we do that's the way
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it's the only way put them back in their basements make them scared again to be
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racist homophobic and terrible just awful pieces of shit because i would way rather live next to
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immigrants than maggot people maggot people deserve to be terrified and scared to walk
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in the streets because they should know that real americans are gonna kill them okay that
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crazy lady uh was just sentenced to 14 months in federal prison after a jury found her guilty
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of making threats on TikTok. This is really good stuff. It deserves attention. It deserves
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applause. This is exactly right. I have been calling for this, not just over the last year
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since the near assassination of President Trump and the successful assassination of Charlie Kirk.
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I have been calling for this for many years. And now the government is doing something about it.
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This is really good. What's important about that video, though, what's important about the case
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of Desiree Cigari is that she is not an outlier. She's not a weirdo. There are about a zillion
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libs who have made exactly these kinds of threats. Notice, this isn't a direct threat
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against a specific person. I'm sure she's made those too. But this is a more general threat.
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I mean, it's specific in that she's saying, look, go to the MAGA people and go shoot them.
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But then it's a little ambiguous, she says, and put them back in their basements.
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Are we going to put them in the grave? Are we going to put them in the basements? It's a little
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unclear because she does say, go out there and shoot them. They need to live in fear.
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Well, hold on. This is exactly the kind of thing that the live streamer, Stephen Bonnell,
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who goes by Destiny, said. He said this right after Charlie was murdered. He said,
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no, I'm sorry. It was right after the, it's confusing. It was right after the near assassination
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of Trump. He said, these conservatives need to be afraid to go out in public.
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We need to threaten them. They need to be afraid to go out there in public.
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Hassan Piker has threatened to kill, called for the killing of multiple sitting U.S. senators,
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Ironic, too, because they're not the most bombastic senators.
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They're pretty moderate and pretty middle of the road.
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the prosecution of Desiree Sigiri should be celebrated maybe with a cigar, maybe with a
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Mayflower cigar. But this is just the beginning. This needs to be just the beginning. Because the
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really scary thing that we learned after, especially after Charlie was killed, is that
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this view is pretty mainstream. A huge chunk of ordinary liberals and Democrats think this way,
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desire the murder of Republicans, threaten the murder of Republicans. And the only way that
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you're going to change that behavior is first through prayer, second through our behavior in
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the world, modeling good behavior, being the country you want to be. But third, and you can't
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lose this point, through ruthless prosecution because the law is a teacher. So this is a really
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good start. Okay. Speaking of violence, President Trump is in China, China, and President Trump
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opens up contrary to what people say about him, that he's belligerent, that he's undisciplined,
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that he's emotional. He's really not. He's really quite good at negotiations,
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as we've seen throughout his entire career. And he can be very, very charming.
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Trump opens up in this very friendly and notice, very personal way, speaking about
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Xi Jinping, the leader of China. Well, President Xi, I want to thank you very much.
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First of all, that was an honor like few have ever seen before. And I think I was
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particularly impressed by those children they were happy they were beautiful the military is
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obvious it couldn't be better but those children were amazing and they represent so much and I
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know I know they represent so much to you you and I have known each other now for a long time in
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fact the longest relationship of our two countries that any president and president has had and that's
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to me an honor. We've had a fantastic relationship. We've gotten along. When there
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were difficulties, we worked it out. I would call you and you would call me. And whenever we had a
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problem, people don't know. Whenever we had a problem, we worked out very quickly. And we're
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going to have a fantastic future together. But it's an honor to be with you. It's an honor to
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be your friend. And the relationship between China and the USA is going to be better than ever before.
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Trump's tactic is, it's wonderful to be with you, my friend.
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You and I, personally, individually, you and I, not America and China,
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you and I, Xi and Donald, have known each other a long time.
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In fact, we have a longer personal relationship than any other previous president and president,
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or chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, because Trump has a non-consecutive second term.
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Thank you for that personal display that you guys just put on for me.
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Then Xi Jinping comes out, drops all the personality, and says that the two nations, China and the United States, might go to war.
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Currently, transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe and the international
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Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides trap and create a new paradigm
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Can we meet global challenges together and provide more stability for the world?
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Can we, in the interest of the well-being of our two peoples and the future of humanity,
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build a brighter future together for our bilateral relations?
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These are the questions vital to history, to the world, and to the people.
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are the questions of our times that you and I need to answer as leaders of major countries.
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This year, notice, notice the totally different framing. I haven't seen anyone else talking about
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this, but this is crucial to understanding the showdown right now between Trump and Xi and
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America and China. Notice it's none of this. Hey, Don, good to see you again, buddy. Love your suit.
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Hope we can go get a round of golf after this. How are the kids? It's none of that.
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This is a discussion of bilateral relations between your people and my people, the United
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The Thucydides trap refers to the history of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, the
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You have histories that are a little more fantastical.
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But Thucydides gets credit for the first kind of realist history, really down-to-earth history.
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The, I don't know, the archetypal kind of history writing that we think of as history today.
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And in the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides writes this one line that has gotten a lot of play among political scientists recently.
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He writes, it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.
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So this is one line from Thucydides. But in recent years, specifically by a Harvard political
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scientist named Graham Allison, this has come to define what international relations geniuses call
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the Thucydides trap. And the argument is that when you have an established power like Sparta
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and a rising power like Athens, when those two forces are at play and the rising power really,
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really, really starts to rise, war becomes almost inevitable. And this Harvard political
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scientist, Allison, says in a book, he writes that there are 16 historical instances of an
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emerging power coming to really rival a ruling power. And in 12 of those 16 instances, it led
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to war. So this is proving, almost proving Thucydides' supposed argument that the war
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was inevitable. This is the perfect way to see the difference between how Trump thinks and she
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thinks, how America thinks and China thinks. Because Trump is thinking in terms of individuals,
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great men, personalities, freedom, choices, opportunities. One man can change history.
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You have Donald Trump, an individualist, an American, a guy who thinks that anyone can
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I'll take over this industry and that industry.
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And then you have Xi, who's writing from the perspective of Chinese communism, who's
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thinking, no, history is defined by impersonal historical forces, the science of history.
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So he's not thinking about individual great men.
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He's thinking about these impersonal forces. So, of course, he's much more given over to the
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thinking of the Thucydides trap, which gussies up modern, mostly left-wing political theory
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in the robes of antiquity to give it this kind of patina of authority.
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But the question is, is that real? Is the Thucydides trap real? Is the argument real?
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And is America, therefore, on a collision course with China? We'll get to the answer
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valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. The Thucydides trap. I don't really
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like this phrase. I've invoked it before. I don't really like it, though, because I think it's a way
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for modern, especially liberal, poli-sci people to borrow the authority of a great historian
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like Thucydides. But there were a lot of serious academic historians, not just random Harvard
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political scientists, who said the Thucydides trap thesis is a bunch of BS. It's not true.
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If you look at the 16 conflicts that Graham Allison points to, they don't really work for
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the thesis. There are plenty of other conflicts and potential conflicts that don't really match
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the thesis. And even when you go to the Peloponnesian War, I mean, the great historian,
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Donald Kagan, who was a professor of mine, actually, he made the point, he was a Yale
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guy. There's another Harvard historian, Ernst Badian, who said that Thucydides' trap is bunk,
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actually. The reason that the Peloponnesian War broke out is because there was a quarrel in
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Epidamnus. There was the Megarian decree, the economic policies of the Athenians.
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There were the perfidious designs of the Corinthians. There was the person of Pericles
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who made specific decisions, who had free will, who made some decisions, some of which were not
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good. And then he died, by the way. He just sort of died because of the plague. And had he not
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died, maybe the war would have taken a different ending. The Thucydides trap is more appealing to
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communists and the we can work it out ideas of Donald Trump. It's more appealing to those who
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believe in great men. One is more appealing to China. One is more appealing to America.
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And I think Trump is right. And I think the Trump political project,
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Trump's whole raise on debt as a politician is to prove that great men really can change
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the course of history, that great men really can play a role.
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And so we often have these two theories of history contraposed against each other,
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the impersonal forces theory and the great man theory, the great man theory, which comes
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from the 19th century, Thomas Carlyle, very conservative guy.
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And my own theory of history, not to take a squishy middle road, but my own theory of
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history is a kind of Christian version of the great man theory. That's great man like the great
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man upstairs. In that, look, there's obviously providence to history. There are forces on the
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move in the world that are beyond our own individual will. God is sovereign over history,
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but God works through individual men, men who are made in the image and likeness of God
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and who are rescued by God himself who becomes man in Christ and who enters into history
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and all the political workings of history in the Roman Empire, in the time of Augustus,
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who is crucified under Pontius Pilate, who suffers death, who conquers death on the cross,
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who's resurrected on the third day, who institutes a church that is visible within the world.
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They're obviously historical forces at work, but men really have free will.
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Men, especially cooperating with God's grace, really can make a difference.
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Trump is saying all your stupid communist theories, liberal theories, left-wing IR theories, Thucydides trap, that's all a bunch of bunk.
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And if you make the wrong choice over Taiwan, we could blow up the world in World War III.
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But if you make the right choice, we can work together and we can have peace and prosperity.
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Don't try to shove your responsibility off on some impersonal forces of history.
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And we've been friends for a long time, longer than any other leaders of our countries.
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But from the standpoint of history, 20, 30, 40 years from now, I think a lot of the judgment
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of what the Trump era meant will be a judgment of that theory of history.
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The American empire was really on a steep cliff of decline.
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During the Bush era, second Bush era, and then into the Obama era, we were really just
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And then Trump comes in and he says, I'm going to make America great again.
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Are the impersonal forces of history too great?
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And Xi Jinping is saying, I don't know that a great man can make a difference in history.
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We're Athens, you're Sparta, and we're going to come to conflict.
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what's it going to be? I still think Trump is right, but it's a showdown. It's a showdown
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really to zoom out again. It is a showdown between a more Chinese view of the world and a more
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American view of the world. Okay. Speaking of Trump as the great man kind of guy, the vice
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president, JD Vance, just was asked a question yesterday. He keeps getting asked, hey, who's
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going to be the nominee in 2028? Is it going to be you? Is it going to be Rubio? Is it going to
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be someone else? Who does Trump want? Why does Trump keep asking these questions? Hey, crowd,
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Do you like Vance? Do you like Rubio? What's that all about? Vance, I think, gave the perfect answer.
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Us who are bringing this up a couple of days ago, Trump made this statement to people in the Rose Garden.
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Why do you think he does that? Do you think it's it's a little bit of toying with you both over your succession?
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Why do you think he brings that up? Just number one.
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Well, I just don't think it sounds like the president of the United States to have a televised competition for who would succeed him as his apprentice.
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I just think that's not at all what you would expect the president to do.
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But no, look, I think the president, he's always been fascinated by politics.
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If you talk to him, he was fascinated by politics 30 years before he ever ran for office.
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So I think it's natural for him to joke around with us a little bit, to play around with
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But I can tell you the president is as focused as any of us on making sure we do as good
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I love that he laughs it off, but with some real substance here.
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He says, hold on, is your question that Donald Trump seems to be creating a, some might call it a reality television show to determine who will succeed him in this big role?
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Are you suggesting he might be extremely internationally famous for doing just that?
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And then he turns it back to, but I'm not taking the bait.
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because the way that he's going to get that apprenticeship is he's going to play his role.
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He's going to do a good job as vice president, which he is doing.
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And he's obviously the favorite to succeed President Trump. That was true when he picked
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him. And President Trump made that clear in his comments just a few days ago.
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But this is the way to answer that question, especially this far out.
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We were talking about how AOC is currently the front runner for the Democrats yesterday.
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If I'm Gavin Newsom, I'm happy about that. I don't want to be the front runner a year and a half out.
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according to the polls. This is why if I'm the vice president, I'm not that concerned that
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Rubio is looking good in the polls right now. So yeah, this is not the time to be peaking.
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You know, it's a little, this would be peaking a little bit too soon.
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But I like the way that Trump is dealing with this too. One, he doesn't want to say this person
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is definitely my successor because then he becomes a lame duck. How's he going to negotiate with
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China or Iran or any of the other countries in the world if he does that? But two, he's saying,
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look, nothing is set by impersonal forces. Nothing is totally set in stone because the
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rules of the GOP say so. I'm the guy. Okay, I'm the guy acting in history right now. I,
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Donald, am a great world historic figure. That's his claim. Whether it's true or not,
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that's his claim. And I think there's some good evidence that it is true.
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And so he says, look, we're going to play this thing out. We're going to see how it goes.
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And it's very American in the sense that this lack of confidence in the certainty of the science of history or progressivism or whatever opens up a lot of opportunity.
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He's saying, hey, even if things look kind of bad, you can do things.
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We can change the supposedly doomed outcome of our country, our empire, what have you.
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You're really seeing this play out, by the way, in a congressional race in Kentucky, which we'll get to momentarily.
00:23:46.960
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thin, juggling responsibilities, expectations, and constant demands for his attention, he's not
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alone. This time of year only adds to it. Detachment does not mean caring less. It means
00:24:27.320
letting go of what he cannot control and placing it in God's hands. Because his work, his family,
00:24:32.440
his responsibilities matter, but they were never meant to carry the full weight of his heart.
00:24:35.920
Through simple daily prayer and reflection, this challenge helps him find real peace,
00:24:38.900
not based on circumstances, but rooted in trust. I love Halo. It's an amazing app. There's a reason
00:24:44.460
it has taken over the app store. It's really, really crucial, especially in our distracted
00:24:50.200
self-interested digital age. You need to find a way to focus on what matters. Go to halo.com
00:24:55.180
slash Knowles, download the Halo app, and join for three months free. That is halo.com,
00:25:00.060
H-A-L-L-O-W.com slash Knowles for three months free. The percentage of 12th graders who have
00:25:07.560
ever concerned alcohol, high school teens, has collapsed. In 1975, 92% of 12th graders
00:25:16.480
had ever, ever consumed alcohol. Today, 2026, I guess these data really only go up to 2024,
00:25:27.060
just 47%. So it's cut in half, basically. That should be a good thing, right? Well,
00:25:33.960
I don't know. Hold on. Who had ever consumed alcohol? I was having a little bit of wine at
00:25:38.520
Christmas dinner when I was six years old. Okay. And maybe because I'm of Italian extraction,
00:25:42.360
that's a little more normal. I don't know. But I didn't go to ragers or keggers in high school.
00:25:47.260
It would sometimes be at parties where there was alcohol, but I didn't really indulge. But I would
0.72
00:25:51.480
have alcohol a little bit with my parents' understanding. I mean, I'd have a cigar when
00:25:59.280
I was a teenager. I don't know. My mother would let me have a little bit of cognac or a little
00:26:02.700
bit of wine. I don't know. Maybe that's unusual. But the point that my mother made was, one,
00:26:08.560
you're going to go to college soon and you need to know how to drink so it doesn't get away from
00:26:13.100
you and you end up in the hospital or something like that. But two, because alcohol is part of
00:26:19.360
social and festive culture. When you go to Christmas dinner, when you go to a holiday
00:26:24.080
and all the adults are having beer or wine, maybe they give you a little sip too to make you part
00:26:30.540
of that. It's a social right. And so even when you think of the bad or abusive drinking that
00:26:35.540
happens in high school, you know, parties and where the parents don't know, keggers, whatever.
0.97
00:26:42.040
Why would it be a bad thing that teenagers are drinking less?
00:26:47.240
Because it means that they're socializing less. That's obviously what it means.
00:26:50.900
Some people are arguing, well, no, you know, look, alcohol use has declined,
00:26:54.120
but marijuana use has skyrocketed. Yeah, there's a little evidence that marijuana is much more
00:26:58.120
popular than it used to be. But look at the marijuana chart. Same chart, or same institute,
00:27:03.420
the Institute for Family Studies, shows that in 1975, 1977, 56% of 12th graders had ever used
00:27:12.100
marijuana. Now, that had cratered down to only 33, 34% by 1992 because, by the way, the war on drugs
00:27:21.980
worked. One of the worst retconnings, revisions of history, is this idea that the war on drugs
00:27:27.060
never worked, which was promoted by the left and the libertarian right. And that's totally fake.
00:27:31.160
The war on drugs worked really, really well. We largely stopped people from doing drugs. The
00:27:35.840
people who continued to abuse drugs, we put in jail and society was better. Nevertheless,
00:27:41.180
we'll go down to the bottom in around 1992. Then it spikes up again in the 90s when we gave up on
00:27:47.080
the war on drugs, but now it's fallen down a little bit too. So now we're at 34%. So even
00:27:51.960
marijuana use has dropped among teens. Taken in isolation, I would think that's a good thing
1.00
00:27:56.540
because marijuana is not the most social drug. Sometimes people do it, they pass a bowl around
00:28:01.760
or something like that, but it's not, it doesn't make you a more extroverted. It's not a social
00:28:06.220
lubricant. If anything, it makes you more introverted. But the fact that marijuana use
00:28:10.100
has declined alongside alcohol use declining means this is not about people just becoming more
00:28:16.400
temperate or something like that. It's because kids are not socializing. The Atlantic reports
00:28:21.280
that face-to-face socializing among high school teens
00:28:24.200
has declined by over 45% between 2003 and 2022.
00:28:35.800
This is a real crisis because people need to socialize
00:28:50.040
When we stop socializing in person, society breaks down because the definition of society
00:28:54.460
is people getting together. To say, to celebrate that alcohol use among teenagers has dropped
00:29:01.340
so precipitously is sort of like celebrating that peanut allergies declined in Nagasaki in 1945.
0.90
00:29:09.540
Like it's technically, it's true. And I guess that would be good. You don't want peanut allergies.
0.98
00:29:14.720
But the reason the peanut allergies declined in Nagasaki in 1945 is because we killed everybody.
0.88
00:29:19.740
To use a real-world example, not peanut allergies, there was this celebration five, six years ago that Iceland had eradicated Down syndrome.
0.97
00:29:29.800
Down syndrome is a difficult condition, and it causes all these problems for individuals.
00:29:34.120
But the reason that Iceland had eradicated Down syndrome is because they killed all the babies that had Down syndrome.
00:29:39.900
You say, well, that's kind of a Pyrrhic victory.
00:29:44.060
We're not going to celebrate genocide or murder.
00:29:48.020
we should all be hoping that the charts show that alcohol use among teenagers increases soon
00:29:55.960
because if people are not socializing face to face they're not having babies they're not being
00:30:03.220
well adjusted they're not getting to know their community they're not engaged civically they're
00:30:07.580
not if if if teenagers are not drinking alcohol and it's not being reflected in the data we're
00:30:14.160
going to have a lot more problems than 17-year-olds having hangovers the next day.
00:30:19.220
Okay, speaking of elimination, Thomas Massey facing a real challenge now in Kentucky. So
00:30:25.440
Thomas Massey is this libertarian favorite. The libertarians love him. And I've liked a lot of
00:30:32.420
what he's done over the years. I'm not totally anti-Massey. I'm not a libertarian, so I'm not
00:30:37.400
totally pro-Massey. And I got really irritated when he made this turn against Trump. He made
00:30:42.440
this turn. He decided he was going to pal around with Democrats more frequently. And so Trump said,
00:30:47.000
all right, you're out. You're out, guy. And I'm going to primary you. And at the time,
00:30:51.780
a lot of people said, look, you can primary someone like Adam Kinzinger. You can primary
00:30:55.420
someone like Liz Cheney, people who are not particularly popular with the base.
00:30:59.460
But Thomas Massey has a pretty loyal base of support, especially among his local constituents
00:31:05.420
and especially among the more libertarian side of the conservative movement. So I don't know,
00:31:09.980
you might be going a little far, President Trump. And right now, the Calci markets have
00:31:15.600
Massey's primary opponent at Galrain in the lead, 55% to 47. Now, it's changing by the minute. So
00:31:21.720
even as I'm saying this right now, it might have already changed. But you're seeing public opinion
00:31:26.180
polls showing this too. Qantas Insights reported that out of 908 respondents, Galrain, the primary
00:31:32.420
opponent, got 48.3% of the vote. Massey was over five points down at 43.1%, 7.6% undecided. So the
00:31:39.660
undecideds could decide it. And then among the undecided voters, 52.4% said they leaned toward
00:31:45.360
Galrain, Massey's primary challenger. On top of this, there is a new scandal that has supposedly
00:31:54.000
come out about Thomas Massey. This from Axios. Again, this is just days before a primary campaign,
00:31:59.700
so we need to take some big grains of salt here. But Axios reporting that an ex-girlfriend of
00:32:07.140
Thomas Massey, I guess from after his wife had died. His wife died somewhat recently,
00:32:10.480
and then an ex-girlfriend from after that period between his wife dying and his remarriage
00:32:15.740
is accusing him of offering her hush money because he got her a job with this other
00:32:21.940
congressman, Victoria Sparks, and then it didn't work out in that employment,
00:32:26.380
and then she didn't want to sign an NDA. So it was this, I don't know, it's very,
00:32:30.860
very complicated. It's not really related to any accusations of sexual impropriety
00:32:35.200
or sexual crimes or anything like that. I don't know. To me, this reads like a typical campaign
00:32:41.060
dirty trick. Both parties play it. That's just how politics goes. Nevertheless, I'm not really
00:32:46.420
interested in this supposed scandal with Thomas Massey or supposed hush money or any of that
00:32:51.280
stuff. What I'm interested in is, will Massey go down? A lot of outside money has flooded into the
00:32:57.760
race. And a lot of money specifically around the issue of pro-Israel or anti-Israel, because Massey
00:33:02.940
has taken more of an anti-Israel stance. And so a lot of pro-Israel donors have flooded money into
00:33:07.720
the race. But it's not just the Israel issue. To me, what's even more interesting than that is
00:33:11.940
what it comes down to over Trump saying, hey, you're out. You turned on me. You're not towing
00:33:18.320
the party line anymore. You're going a little bit rogue, Thomas Massey. You're palling around
00:33:22.440
with Democrat Ro Khanna. You're creating a lot of problems for the Republican political coalition
00:33:27.200
and for the White House. So I'm taking you out. And Thomas Massey says, come and get me, bro.
00:33:32.700
I'm really popular in my district. This is kind of the showdown as to whether or not
00:33:40.580
President Trump has an ironclad grip on the party. If Trump and Trump's political machine
00:33:47.240
can unseat Thomas Massey, it is indisputable that Trump and his coalition and his donors and his
00:33:56.580
voters and his everybody has an ironclad grip on the party. If Massey squeaks by and wins,
00:34:04.820
I think there's still a ton of evidence that Trump has a huge substantial hold on the GOP.
00:34:09.220
But it'll be a different thing. If Massey goes down, I don't see how anybody denies that Trump
00:34:16.600
has the GOP in a lock. It is just, it is his party. He took it over in 2016. He changed the
00:34:24.080
coalition. He grew the coalition and the GOP is him. Okay. Much more to get to. There is a wild
00:34:35.080
Democrat congressional primary going on right now where John F. Kennedy's grandson, Jack Schlossberg
00:34:41.200
is, I guess he's sort of the front runner, but the campaign is so bad. Even the New York Times
00:34:46.540
is calling it out, calling it a chaotic campaign with erratic behavior, staff turnover, questioning
00:34:53.680
defending young Mr. Schlossberg's readiness for office. And all of that has me really actually
00:34:58.740
just wanting to endorse Jack Schlossberg because it would be the funniest outcome in a solid
00:35:03.360
Democrat district. Anyway, well, maybe we'll get to that tomorrow. I also want to get to a kitchen
00:35:08.840
knife that now has a firmware update. We have to subscribe to everything now, including our knives.
00:35:12.520
What happens if you don't pay the subscription? It's going to jump off the counter and go right
00:35:16.840
at you, stab you in the chest. But speaking of Congress, we have an excellent, excellent guest,
0.99
00:35:22.480
one of my very favorite members of Congress coming on Ryler Moore to discuss an issue
00:35:25.980
that was denied during my Dartmouth debate with Mehdi Hassan a week ago. My favorite comment
00:35:31.720
yesterday is from Jessica Haggerty, Z8X, who says, unhoused, X, cross out, done. Untoothed,
0.86
00:35:40.660
check mark. That's where it's at. It's like the Drake meme. It used to be bums and vagrants and
00:35:46.700
indigents to refer to those people on the street. Then it became homeless, then it became unhoused,
00:35:50.900
but Karen Bass has changed it. It's now untoothed. They don't have teeth. That's why we need to give
00:35:56.320
your taxpayer money to give fake teeth to homeless, violent, schizophrenic methods. Of course,
00:36:02.260
it's political common sense. Speaking of political common sense, very, very pleased to be joined now
00:36:08.980
by one of my very, very favorite members of Congress. That would be West Virginia's Riley
00:36:13.540
Moore. Congressman Moore, thank you for coming on the show. Hey, Michael, thanks for having me on.
00:36:19.480
Look, I want to get your opinion on about a billion things. The first one, though,
00:36:25.440
pertains to me. The things that pertain to me are on the top of my mind. I was at Dartmouth last
00:36:30.260
week, and I was debating the left-wing pundit Mehdi Hassan. He used to have a show on MSNBC,
00:36:34.600
one of the leading left-wing pundits. And we were debating whether or not President Trump
00:36:39.620
has upheld the Constitution. I'm happy to say that I actually persuaded the Dartmouth audience.
00:36:44.680
Trump's constitutionality won the day, even in the Liberal Ivy League. It was all, it was,
00:36:48.620
because it was clear. It was the easiest case to argue in the world. Trump's obviously upheld
00:36:51.960
the constitution. There was this weird digression in the debate where Mehdi Hassan denied that there
00:36:59.980
was a genocide of Christians occurring in Nigeria. It was such a bizarre swerve. And it was really
00:37:08.100
shocking to me, actually. I thought, how could anybody deny this? And I know that among all the
00:37:12.220
excellent work you're doing on domestic issues, other foreign issues, you have really focused in
00:37:16.620
on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. So much so that the president has focused on that
00:37:21.500
a little bit too. Just to settle the score, clear the record here. Is Mehdi Hassan right? There's
00:37:27.380
no genocide of Christians in Nigeria or what's going on? Mehdi Hassan is absolutely wrong.
00:37:34.740
And the interesting thing is this is the same narrative. I guess they just send out like
00:37:39.240
talking points to every liberal and it's like, hey, here's the new narrative. They're saying
00:37:43.060
the same thing in Congress. We had a hearing on this, and Jayapal and everybody else were denying
00:37:49.240
that there's any Christian genocide. They're trying to make it about this farmer-herder
0.99
00:37:54.780
violence, intercommunal conflict, when it's very clear what's happening. I've been to Nigeria. I
00:38:01.300
went there. We went there in a congressional delegation, investigated this issue because the
00:38:05.880
president asked me to do so. I can tell you, I've seen it with my own eyes. The investigation
00:38:12.700
that we undertook and the report that we presented to the president makes it very clear
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00:38:17.800
what is happening in Nigeria is a Christian genocide. So I'll give you an example. In the
0.92
00:38:25.060
previous administration, Joe Biden, he kind of set the tone on this. He said, well, the violence is
00:38:32.060
actually, it's being precipitated by climate change. We have- I shouldn't laugh. It's too
00:38:39.720
dark, but the genocide is because of climate change? Well, that's why people are getting
00:38:45.380
killed because of climate change, because it's aerial land conflicts and herder farmer conflicts.
00:38:52.900
And so because of climate change, it's made it harder to grow crops and you graze cattle and
0.99
00:38:57.500
all these things, not due to the fact that there are Islamic terrorists just roaming the middle
0.96
00:39:04.260
belt of Nigeria and just murdering men, women, children, priests, nuns, everybody, because they
0.99
00:39:10.760
are Christian. They've burned down over 20,000 churches in Nigeria. We have well over 100,000
1.00
00:39:16.700
Christians murdered since 2009, and that just continues. Now, because of the work President
0.68
00:39:22.960
Trump has done, what we have done, we did see the administration over there in Nigeria start to move
00:39:30.280
in a positive direction, but it's kind of backslid right now. And I did come out with a
00:39:34.640
pretty forceful statement on it. But I can tell you as a fact, I met with people living in IDP
0.86
00:39:40.280
camps, internally displaced persons, Benway State, which is over 80% Christian. But 100%
00:39:47.240
of those camps are filled with Christians. So these Fulani Islamic militants, if it were about
00:39:54.340
land, why are they attacking refugee camps? I met a woman who had all five of her children
00:40:00.880
murdered right in front of her. I met another woman who had her two daughters and husband
00:40:06.340
murdered in front of her and they killed her unborn child. I mean, these are real horrific
00:40:13.380
genocidal crimes that are taking place in Nigeria that as Christians and you and I as Catholics,
1.00
00:40:19.140
we can't turn a blind eye to. We cannot turn a blind eye to this. And they're trying to smooth
0.89
00:40:25.620
this thing over as intercommunal violence or whatever it is. They can't take the narrative
00:40:31.040
that there are Islamic terrorists, Muslims running around murdering Christians. It is what's
1.00
00:40:37.360
happening. I've been there. It is exactly what is happening. Right. It's not the land. It's not the
00:40:44.080
sun monster. It's specific people. We were talking about this at the top of the show
00:40:48.200
when we were talking about Trump's trip in China, these two apparently different views of history,
00:40:54.280
China taking this much more structural science of history, Thucydides trap kind of view of history,
00:41:00.100
and then Trump taking the individual great man view of history. And you think, hey, guys,
00:41:04.940
it's not just the impersonal forces coming from the freaking sun. It's Islamic terror groups who
0.99
00:41:10.500
are killing Christians. Those are really specific groups for specific reasons. But then on the
0.99
00:41:15.020
on the question of America's role on the world stage, on America turning a blind eye or not
00:41:20.160
turning a blind eye, how are we to think about this? Because so much of the language of the
00:41:25.800
right, MAGA, America First, has been about focusing on domestic issues and getting out of
00:41:33.100
conflicts in the rest of the world. But then when you hear about an Islamic genocide of Christians
0.95
00:41:38.340
in Nigeria, I don't know, I think any person with a beating heart and a well-formed conscience says,
00:41:42.800
well, hold on, we have to do something here. We can't just totally look away from this.
00:41:46.980
So how should we be thinking of America's role in these conflicts?
00:41:50.920
Look, Michael, we're a Christian nation. We are 100%. We are a Christian nation. And I think we
00:41:56.440
have an obligation to do something here. These are our brothers and sisters in Christ that are
00:42:01.520
suffering for the profession of their faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We have to do
00:42:07.000
something on this. And look, the president has designated them a country of particular concern
00:42:12.560
which opens up a bunch of levers in terms of sanctions and visa restrictions and all these
00:42:17.300
things we can do. He did send the terrorists a Christmas gift last year, 12 Tomahawk cruise
00:42:22.440
missiles. And I do believe that we are going to start to continue to engage in a more forceful
00:42:29.820
manner on this if the Nigerians can't figure this out. We had come to the table wanting to work with
00:42:36.020
them in cooperation and coordination to help stabilize their country. And someone will say,
00:42:40.560
well, you're only talking about the Christians. Yes, Muslims are being killed too. Of course they
0.99
00:42:44.920
are because some of them won't submit to ISIS. They won't submit to Boko Haram. And it's horrific.
0.70
00:42:50.820
Every life has value. It's terrible when anybody is murdered, but it is five to one Christians
1.00
00:42:58.000
being killed in that country versus Muslims in a country that is 50% Muslim, 50% Christian. So
0.67
00:43:03.340
the numbers bear it out. It all bears it out what's happening here. But we have a duty in my
00:43:09.380
you as a Christian nation to stand up for our brothers and sisters. Now, before I let you go,
00:43:14.620
Riley, there are so much more I want to talk to you about. I want to talk to you about the Middle
00:43:17.480
East. I want to talk to you about China. I want to talk to you about domestic issues, but I can't
00:43:20.980
let you go because we've been talking about so much of Congress today without asking what is
00:43:26.620
going to happen in the midterms. Obviously, there's a lot of focus on Thomas Massey's seat
00:43:32.360
in Kentucky, just north of me right here on that Republican primary. But then even more important,
00:43:36.960
what is going to happen for the GOP broadly, because I was sitting down with a mutual friend
00:43:43.900
of ours and your leader in the house, Mike Johnson. This was a couple months ago. And
00:43:48.460
Speaker Johnson said, Michael, I think we're going to grow the majority. I said, what's in
00:43:53.080
your coffee cup? Can I have whatever he's having? Can I get a shot of that too, please? That sounds
00:43:56.360
great. And I know it's sort of his job to be encouraging, optimistic and rally the troops.
00:44:00.420
But then, then I started to see the redistricting in Florida.
00:44:05.920
I saw the redistricting, obviously, in Tennessee following the Supreme Court decision in Louisiana
00:44:09.920
versus Calais, which struck down the Democrats' racist gerrymandering, which gave some seats
00:44:15.920
I saw the Virginia Supreme Court strike down the absurdly deceitful referendum, which duped
00:44:23.280
a bunch of Virginia voters into disenfranchising the Republicans.
00:44:27.680
the GOP might pick up potentially 14 seats in the House. Maybe I don't need to be such a doomer.
00:44:33.800
Where do we stand in the midterms? Well, you know, look, before they overturned that referendum
00:44:38.760
in Virginia, I was not feeling very optimistic. But, you know, you had that VRA getting struck
00:44:45.380
down. I'm feeling a lot better about it. So we're going to have a lot less seats that we're going
00:44:51.040
to have to defend, that we're going to have to defend in this upcoming election. Obviously,
00:44:55.180
look, history's against us in this. It has happened before, though. We're able to maintain
00:44:59.500
the majority. At the end of the day, you're talking about 15 seats. 15 seats are going to
00:45:04.020
decide the majority. And so we now have to play less defense and can go on more offense.
00:45:09.500
I feel cautiously optimistic is what I'd say right now. But it's going to be hard. This is
00:45:14.880
not going to be easy. This is not a slam dunk. This is going to be hard, but it's going to come
00:45:18.920
down to 15 seats. Maybe just we need like three or four more court decisions. Get rid of like
00:45:24.120
three or four more states and Democrat representation there. And then I'd feel
00:45:28.500
even better. Riley, wonderful to see you. We could go on for another hour. So I very much
00:45:34.500
look forward to having you back to talk about everything else.
00:45:39.960
Good to see you. Now, speaking of God's blessings, today is Theology Thursday,
00:45:44.660
and I'm very, very pleased to be joined by another friend of mine who has an important
00:45:48.680
message for everybody and to chatting with all of you in the member segmentum, which means we've
0.99
00:45:53.320
got to say goodbye to the Hoi Palloi. I love you guys too on YouTube, but you got to come on over
00:45:56.760
if you want the real stuff. The hardcore black tar concentrate of the Michael Knowles show.
0.98
00:46:02.200
Go to dailywire.com, use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, and check out for two months free
0.96
00:46:18.600
Martin Luther King Jr. is an American icon, widely considered one of the greatest Americans
00:46:23.120
who ever lived. A man who had a vision for a colorblind society, a post-racial America.
00:46:30.320
He had a dream, it's just not the dream you thought it was. Were his true aims a colorblind
00:46:35.760
society or something far more radical who bankrolled him? What unfolded behind the
00:46:41.200
scenes in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963? Was civil disobedience actually peaceful?
00:46:47.360
we wanted to show you a clip of the i have a dream speech but according to our lawyers we
00:46:53.720
can't in fact king's family has made a lot of money suing media outlets they want to silence
00:46:58.380
critics like us what they're doing makes it very difficult to judge martin luther king jr
00:47:02.920
not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character is america today stronger more
00:47:09.220
unified and racially equal than before king's rise these questions demand answers and as americans
00:47:15.500
we are entitled to a full accounting of the Civil Rights Movement and its consequences.
00:47:19.500
King's Movement fundamentally transformed our country and our system of government.
00:47:26.500
Each day the war goes on, the hatred increases, though the cause of evil prosper.
00:47:33.500
First part of our two-part special on the Civil Rights Movement,
00:47:36.500
A New Constitution, available now on Daily Wire Plus.
00:47:45.500
When you travel well, your KLM Royal Dutch Airlines ticket takes you to more than just your destination.
00:47:52.500
It takes you to front row views, voices lost in the music and new shared memories.
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And when the last song fades, the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines crew is here to ensure your journey home hits all the right notes.
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KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, when you travel, travel well.