The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1997 - I Hate Soccer, But Even I’m Rooting For USA… Lib Congressmen Can't

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00:01:00.000 This episode is presented by Good Ranchers.

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00:01:15.420 The World Cup is happening, apparently, in America.

00:01:19.040 And I ordinarily wouldn't care or even know that fact, except for the strange phenomenon

00:01:24.820 that it has prompted.

00:01:26.720 While America hosts and competes in the big soccer tournament,

00:01:30.600 foreigners from around the world seem to be falling in love with America.

00:01:34.080 All while American politicians, Democrats, are rooting for other countries to beat us.

00:01:40.720 Not even just privately, publicly.

00:01:42.060 They're going on TV and talking about how they are rooting for other countries to beat us.

00:01:46.600 For all of soccer's sins, Foo Foo FIFA has provided the perfect example of everything wrong with our ruling class. 0.69

00:01:54.700 Then speaking of gay sports, the New York Yankees celebrate a mafia run hepatitis factory for Pride 0.77

00:02:00.440 Month. A new CNN poll shows Democrats hate America and President Trump's original enemies 0.83

00:02:07.020 turned sometimes supporters, turned enemies again, fume as he touts the Iran deal at the G7.

00:02:14.620 Nature is healing. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:02:24.700 Welcome back to the show. Joy Behar on The View apparently has a crush on J.D. Vance.

00:02:40.620 And what's most amazing about this, the number two guy in the American government,

00:02:45.820 one of the faces of MAGA conservative Republican policy goes on the extremely left-wing daytime

00:02:54.600 talk show. And one of the most extremely left-wing mainstream figures in America

00:02:59.160 actually starts to like him. He persuades her a little bit. And somehow this is being used

00:03:04.400 as an attack against Vance. It's a major political coup. This is an extremely impressive political

00:03:10.220 display. Somehow it's being used as an attack against Vance. But it's really also an attack

00:03:14.260 against Trump because the old fault lines from 2016 in the GOP, they're reemerging again. I'm

00:03:20.560 not sure if they ever actually went away. First though, before we get to any of that,

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00:04:45.660 delivered. This is an amazing display here. Soccer is happening. FIFA, World Cup. I would

00:04:53.680 not even really know this was going on had the Democrat politicians not done what would seem to 1.00

00:05:00.980 be the stupidest political move you can imagine, rooting against their own country. And yet, 0.99

00:05:09.260 New York, New York's Congressional District 13, you have an incumbent, Adriano Espayat,

00:05:16.800 Democrat. He's running against this woman, Daria Liza Chevalier, Democrat. They both go on the

00:05:24.240 local New York channel. They bring up the World Cup. They're Democrats, so they have to like

00:05:28.740 soccer. And they're asked, this is a real layup question. Hey, Democrat politician,

00:05:36.340 US representative, that's actually the title of a congressman. Hey, US representative. And hey,

00:05:42.000 lady who wants to be a US representative, what team are you rooting for in the World Cup? 1.00

00:05:47.920 And they somehow blow it. World Cup is here. The first match this weekend at MetLife Stadium 1.00

00:05:54.160 taking place in New Jersey, even though some people say it is technically New York. But what

00:05:58.620 do you think will win it all? Who are you rooting for? I like Mexico. Mexico. There you go. I'm

00:06:04.440 rooting for Senegal. Senegal. Okay. I'm rooting for Mexico. I'm rooting for Senegal. Not a hint 0.96

00:06:11.260 of irony, total obliviousness to how impolitic this is. That answer, even from a Democrat

00:06:20.000 politician, even from the most lib, deep down hates America politician you would have ever seen,

00:06:25.240 that answer was unthinkable before Trump. Even Obama. Obama obviously hated America.

00:06:32.040 Obama ran for president the first time, don't forget, campaigning that he would fundamentally

00:06:36.760 transform America, that that was what he wanted to do. And you don't try to fundamentally transform

00:06:43.160 things that you like. You don't go to your wife at night and say, hey, honey, love you so much.

00:06:47.240 I want to fundamentally transform you. That's not what you say. So Obama was getting pretty close.

00:06:52.780 that was a real break with precedent to say, yeah, I really hate this country.

00:06:56.640 But even Obama, if you had asked Obama, hey, what soccer team are you rooting for?

00:07:00.300 Well, I'm rooting for America. I'm president of the United States of America.

00:07:03.420 There's no red America. There's no blue America. We just watch soccer now. There's only gay

00:07:08.340 America. I don't know what he would have said. But in any case, he would have rooted for America. 0.69

00:07:13.040 After Trump, and especially after Trump won the popular vote when he was reelected,

00:07:17.660 that the Dems let the facade down. The Dems just became so nakedly anti-American that you now have

00:07:25.600 US representatives and would be US representatives coming out saying, yeah, I'm rooting for other

00:07:29.880 countries against our own country, even as we host the tournament. If that doesn't sum it up,

00:07:36.480 I don't know what does. And in this case, because America is the global empire, we have ceased to

00:07:43.140 be what the founding fathers and the framers established, which was a country that had a

00:07:46.680 common identity, that increasingly over time would even lose their state identities to just

00:07:50.960 have one cohesive national United States identity. No factions. They didn't even really want political

00:07:56.740 parties because they were afraid of factionalism. Now it's just the global empire where all of these

00:08:01.580 different ethnic groups, all these different tribes come in and try to get whatever they can 0.93

00:08:05.720 for their own kind. Or best case scenario on the left, they just root for some abstract other 0.99

00:08:13.080 faction, other party, other tribe, but not for the country. And the irony of this happening

00:08:18.160 during the World Cup is that while that's going on, you have foreigners coming to the country 0.55

00:08:22.520 to watch the soccer games, and the foreigners are falling in love with America. Phenomenon

00:08:28.940 has taken over social media. There's a guy, Mr. K, this is translated from Japanese. I guess a

00:08:37.000 Japanese guy comes in, posts a picture of a steak with that little basket bowl that you get at Texas

00:08:43.760 Roadhouse, a little thing of corn, says to those heading to America for the World Cup, if there is

00:08:47.240 a Texas Roadhouse near your hotel, head there immediately. It's a chain restaurant, but you can

00:08:52.500 get the best cost performance steak, especially the ribeye is the absolute best. And I'll be real,

00:09:00.820 he's right. Texas Roadhouse is great. For an affordable steak, Texas Roadhouse is awesome.

00:09:06.500 I was driving with sweet little Elisa the other day, and sweet little Elisa goes,

00:09:09.960 you know where we haven't been in a little bit? You know where I kind of want to go?

00:09:12.280 I want to go to Texas Roadhouse. Oh, I love it. I love those little rolls. I love it.

00:09:18.660 I do. Now, why do we like Texas Roadhouse? We agree with the Japanese guy because we love America.

00:09:23.860 So you said, Texas Roadhouse is awesome, man. It's not just Texas Roadhouse.

00:09:26.480 The big winner of these foreigners coming to visit, you have this guy, Freddy. I guess Freddy's 0.99

00:09:30.440 from Germany. Takes a picture of Bucky's, both the superstore with the jerky and the beef and

00:09:36.040 all the rest and the popcorn and all of it. And also the mile long gas stations. He goes, dude,

00:09:41.100 LMAO, this is a gas station. Freddie then posts another picture. He goes, dinner from Bucky's at

00:09:48.460 1 a.m. Just got all that nice corn, those tasty salmon. I love Bucky's. I love Bucky's. My kids

00:09:53.980 love Bucky. If we're on a road trip, they are much more excited about Bucky's than they are

00:09:59.180 about wherever we're actually going. One time we were at Bucky's and the Bucky beaver was just

00:10:03.940 chilling like the guy in the suit was there. My middle son, you would have thought he just met

00:10:08.500 Elvis. He was so taken. It was just it was a great experience. We had the same response

00:10:13.440 that the German guy had. I promise you, not a single Democrat politician 0.76

00:10:17.600 would have that experience. They would look down on Bucky's. They would say, oh,

00:10:21.440 this is gross American consumerism. It's all too big. It's so garish. It's so decadent. I hate it.

00:10:27.780 me, me, me, me, me. Freddy, even not just Bucky's, Freddy found Waffle House. And, you know,

00:10:33.180 obviously when you go, I love a good Waffle House too, but you got to put your Kevlar on when you're

00:10:37.620 going to Waffle House. Sometimes gets a little rowdy. Sometimes Waffle House punching above

00:10:45.360 its weight on the old violent crime statistics. Anyway, Freddy goes, late night snack in New

00:10:50.180 Orleans at Waffle House again. Unfortunately, we had to eat in the parking lot because you don't

00:10:53.280 want to catch lead. We had to eat in the parking lot this time because they closed the

00:10:57.680 dining area and only allowed takeaway. Okay, whatever. I love a good waffle house. I don't

00:11:01.840 even eat the waffles. I eat the ham and the egg with the cheesy grits. It's great. Anyway,

00:11:06.020 these posts on social media are getting millions of views, millions and millions of views.

00:11:12.480 Saying, man, that's so good. You got our ruling class talking about how much they hate our country,

00:11:16.240 how much they think our country sucks. And then you got foreigners coming in from the supposedly 1.00

00:11:20.660 much more cosmopolitan, civilized places. So advanced, according to the liberals, like Germany 0.86

00:11:26.140 and Japan, Europe. They come here and all the foreigners say, man, this is awesome. We don't

00:11:32.180 have buckies. We don't have this kind of abundance. Now, they're not the only ones. There's another

00:11:36.780 girl who's gone viral, Elsa, Elsa Thora, who says, Indiana is exactly how I dreamed America

00:11:42.300 would be. Small towns, wide open spaces, cornfields, barns, cute houses, diners, water

00:11:46.280 towers, friendly people, great food, American flags everywhere, so much more. Time for the next

00:11:50.260 part of this adventure. Thank you, Indiana. Now, when I saw this one, let me see, where is this?

00:11:57.640 Do I have any? Yeah, here we go. This is from The Atlantic. The Atlantic hit on something that I

00:12:03.020 wondered when I saw these posts, which is you can't believe anything you see on social media

00:12:07.420 anymore. So are these real? Are these real or are these organic or are they too good to be true?

00:12:13.260 Or is it just something that we want to be true? So those first two, Freddy and the Japanese guy, 1.00

00:12:18.460 Those are apparently real. Those are real people. They've spoken to media, to press. 1.00

00:12:23.300 That's a real reaction. Little Elsa here, though. Apparently, little Elsa is an OnlyFans chick.

00:12:31.520 So maybe she really likes Indiana. Maybe she's just trying to promote her pornography website. 1.00

00:12:35.900 There's another one. This one's gone really viral. This one, I knew the minute I saw it,

00:12:39.840 I knew it was fake. This is another Japanese account, Nobonaga. This is USA, a hibachi 0.82

00:12:46.100 restaurant. My American friends brought me here to enjoy the cuisine of my homeland,

00:12:49.320 and I witnessed a ritual I've never seen in 800 years of being Japanese. And it talks about the

00:12:54.440 whole hibachi experience. It goes on and on and on like a really cheap novel. And the minute I read 0.58

00:12:58.400 this, I said, this is AI slop. The guy's probably not even from Japan. And it seems to be true.

00:13:03.260 The Atlantic has this piece here. The World Cup tourists are genuinely fascinated by America,

00:13:07.680 right? Some of the people celebrating American excess are not what they seem.

00:13:12.460 So they're trying to deflate this.

00:13:14.760 The liberals at the Atlantic, of course, saying, hold on, these people don't really love America.

00:13:18.260 But if you go on and read the article, they'll say, no, no, no, some of them are real.

00:13:20.940 Some of the most viral ones are real.

00:13:22.880 Some of them might have ulterior motives, like the OnlyFans chick.

00:13:26.580 And some of them are just AI slop, like Japan nobunaga.

00:13:32.160 But even that doesn't make the point that the Atlantic wants to make here.

00:13:37.180 Because even for the fake ones, the AI ones or the porn ones or whatever,

00:13:42.120 the fact that those have gone so viral reflects that there is an appetite for American patriotism.

00:13:52.360 Even if some of them are real, but even if some of them are fake,

00:13:55.740 the fact that they've gone so viral reflect that Americans love these stories. We are so

00:14:01.620 starved for anyone saying nice things about America that we'll even buy the AI ones. We'll 0.65

00:14:08.960 even buy the porn ones. We don't care. And the reason we're so starved for that is that our

00:14:14.040 ruling class, by and large, hates us. And they don't even hate us in the kind of polite,

00:14:21.720 waspy, condescending way that they used to hate us in. They don't even hate us in the Obama way,

00:14:26.760 the sneering way, the, well, you don't want to fundamentally transform America.

00:14:30.940 They hate us in the like, I'm rooting for the other countries against us and you

00:14:35.920 kind of way. And this is reflected in public opinion polls. And you don't need to just

00:14:40.760 believe a Daily Wire poll or a Fox News poll. You can look at a CNN poll on this. We'll get

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00:14:56.500 Now, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Weeds out people that you're not going to have a good

00:15:00.480 marriage with. The challenge is finding the other people who are looking for the same things that

00:15:04.340 you are. So not just the hookup, not just long walks on the beach, though those are nice too.

00:15:09.720 But, well, the hookup's not, you don't do the hookup. You want to get married. That's obviously

00:15:13.520 why you're paying attention to Catholic Match. Well, if you want to match on the deeper issues,

00:15:17.520 all the way down to liturgical preference, that is why Catholic Match has become the largest

00:15:22.000 Catholic dating platform in the world, built from the ground up for Catholics by Catholics,

00:15:25.640 every feature built around helping people find someone pointed in the same direction,

00:15:29.080 spiritually, morally, in terms of family. Their customer service team is made up largely of

00:15:32.860 stay-at-home Catholic moms, women who are personally invested in seeing more sacramental

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00:15:55.540 to get started. We've got Harry Anton over at CNN. What does 4th of July mean to you? He's

00:16:04.040 he on CNN is reading from a Reuters Ipsos poll. Here's how the Dems think of it. Here's how the

00:16:08.700 GOP thinks about it. What does July 4th mean to you? Celebrate America, friends and family time

00:16:14.660 among Republicans. What do you see? You see the clear majority say it's a time to celebrate

00:16:18.960 america 65 among democrats however the plurality disagreed look at that will display the flag on

00:16:26.640 july 4th the american flag you come over to this side of the screen republicans basically are where

00:16:31.300 they were 25 years ago right 64 but look at that democratic percentage absolutely plummeting just

00:16:37.920 27 of democrats say they will in fact display the flag what about this idea are you proud to be an

00:16:44.660 American. Look at this again. The Democratic percentage absolutely plummets to just 29%

00:16:51.400 of Democrats say they're extremely are very proud to be an American. That's the craziest number.

00:16:56.500 That's the crazy. All of them are bad. Are you proud to be an American? Extremely very proud 0.95

00:17:00.860 to be an American. January 2001, 25 years ago, 90% of Republicans said they're extremely are

00:17:07.140 very proud to be an American. 85% of Democrats. So the Democrats were always less patriotic than

00:17:13.180 the Republicans, but only a little bit so. If you have boomer Democrat relatives, 0.56

00:17:18.160 I have plenty of boomer Democrat relatives or greatest generation Democrat relatives.

00:17:22.480 They actually struggle to understand the right-wing criticism that the left hates America.

00:17:28.540 They think we're being hyperbolic and uncharitable, but it's not true. They just

00:17:32.800 come from a different generation. And many of them have probably lost a lot of their patriotism too,

00:17:37.540 because 25 years later, the GOP, the Republicans, are exactly as proud to be American as they were

00:17:44.180 a quarter century ago. The Democrats have plummeted by, what, 56%?

00:17:54.360 56%. Sorry, 56 percentage points. They are now less than one-third as likely as Republicans to

00:18:02.780 say that they're proud to be Americans. These people should not be allowed to vote. I don't

00:18:09.680 even mean that as a joke. I don't even mean that as cute little hyperbole. These people should not

00:18:14.180 be allowed to vote. If you don't love your country, you should not be allowed to vote.

00:18:21.580 If you are not, bring it right back to soccer, if you are not rooting for America,

00:18:27.240 you should not be able to participate in the American political process.

00:18:31.920 This is the danger of democracy that the framers were writing about.

00:18:36.500 Let's not forget, the word democracy appears a handful of times in the Federalist Papers,

00:18:41.380 the Federalist, which was written to explain the Constitution and to sell the Constitution.

00:18:46.100 The word democracy appears a handful of times, always in the negative,

00:18:50.320 always as a danger, always as something to be cautious about.

00:18:55.000 This is why.

00:18:56.540 In the early days of America, throughout much of American history,

00:18:59.760 we didn't really vote that much.

00:19:02.420 The people did not elect the president.

00:19:04.500 The Electoral College elected the president.

00:19:06.100 Technically, the Electoral College still does,

00:19:07.880 but it's based on the voting of the people.

00:19:09.440 So for all intents and purposes,

00:19:11.080 we have an almost popular vote for the president anyway.

00:19:14.100 That was simply not true at the beginning of our country

00:19:15.840 or for much of our country's history.

00:19:17.360 The people did not elect the senators.

00:19:19.700 The Senate was elected by the state governments, not by the people.

00:19:22.580 many many people just could not vote and now we pretend that voting is an end to itself and some

00:19:30.660 sort of sacred right but voting is an instrument voting is an instrument to get us a good government

00:19:34.620 good government which is there for the common good of all if you have well over two-thirds of

00:19:42.220 democrats who are now saying they they're not proud to be an american they don't love their

00:19:47.540 country. They're not rooting for their country. Why would we let them vote? They're telling us

00:19:54.300 they are not interested in our best interests. They want us to lose. Why would we give them a

00:20:00.160 say in our government? How do you actually disenfranchise the people who openly hate

00:20:05.260 your country? I don't know. That's a little bit tricky. I guess one way to do it is to deport a

00:20:09.000 lot of people if you can deport them. Another way to do it would be to denaturalize some people who

00:20:13.100 We are denaturalizing some people right now who committed immigration fraud.

00:20:16.860 One way to do it would be to restore our previous system of voting, which is that if you committed very serious crimes, you would lose your right to vote.

00:20:27.460 One way to do it would be to install basic measurements, basic responsibilities in order to exercise the right to vote.

00:20:36.800 Like you have to go get an ID card to prove who you are.

00:20:39.780 Like you have to actually show up to the polls on Election Day.

00:20:42.660 like you have to care at all. Like you have to care at all. That would be one way to do it.

00:20:49.200 But you cannot have a good country. You cannot have a thriving, successful country

00:20:53.600 if two-thirds of the people voting actively want to destroy the country.

00:20:59.660 If two-thirds of the people voting don't want the good of the country.

00:21:05.860 We are starved for the legit foreigner posts and for the bot and even porn posts. 0.95

00:21:12.660 that say they love America because so many of the people running our country and participating in 0.94

00:21:17.500 our elections openly hate the country. Unsustainable. Now, speaking of Democrats,

00:21:26.220 there's one Democrat who, I don't know if she's actually rooting for our government or maybe she's

00:21:31.580 rooting for our country, but she does like, this is weird, she's one of the most anti-Trump

00:21:35.240 Democrats and she's apparently charmed by President Trump's heir apparent, J.D. Vance.

00:21:41.180 Here is Joy Behar.

00:21:43.640 And then he sat down with a joke.

00:21:45.320 I thought it was pretty good that his press team told him that this was a table of MAGA Republicans.

00:21:50.200 Yeah, that was funny.

00:21:51.240 You told him during the break that he should run for president because he has a good vibe.

00:21:55.040 I think that even though for a Republican, mind you, I said to you in the beginning of this conversation, I don't think that he's a bad guy.

00:22:02.100 So if he runs against, say, Gavin Newsom, that will be an interesting debate to see those two because they're both intelligent.

00:22:08.540 Joy Behar is super duper lib. I'm not saying she's like an Antifa operative or something. 1.00

00:22:16.300 She's more representative than that, actually. She's a kind of not all that with it, not all

00:22:22.300 that informed, reflexive liberal who just has Trump derangement syndrome, who hates anything

00:22:28.720 conservative and Republican. But J.D. Vance goes on her show and she says, you know, I think that

00:22:33.580 guy's intelligent. Furthermore, I don't think he's a bad guy. This is an amazing breakthrough

00:22:39.520 because Democrats, I mean, this has almost become cliche to understand it this way.

00:22:47.840 Republicans tend to think Democrats are misinformed. And sometimes they have bad

00:22:51.900 intentions, like the ones who are rooting against America. But mostly they're misinformed. As Ronald

00:22:56.740 Reagan said, it's not that our liberal friends are ignorant. It's that they know so many things 0.93

00:23:00.820 that aren't so. They just don't quite get it, and they don't understand us. Study after study

00:23:07.320 has shown that the right understands the left much more than the left understands the right.

00:23:12.820 We disagree with the left, but we know where they're coming from. We see how they arrived

00:23:16.560 at their conclusions. It's just based on mistaken premises, both about hard facts and also about

00:23:22.240 first principles. The left doesn't understand the right, by and large. And so the left has

00:23:27.380 to conclude that people on the right are either impossibly stupid or malevolent, that we actually 1.00

00:23:32.900 have bad intentions. Those are basically the only conclusions. And what's so notable about Joy 1.00

00:23:37.960 Behar's response to Vance's, she knocks both of those things down. She says, look, for a Republican, 0.98

00:23:43.540 I think he's pretty good. Look, I don't think I agree with him. I don't think, but he's not stupid,

00:23:51.400 and I don't think he's a bad guy. I don't think he has bad intentions. And I pointed this out 0.73

00:23:54.980 yesterday. I said that the clip to me that really showed JD's prowess on The View was when he was

00:24:02.080 talking to Whoopi. And Whoopi said, you know, what do you think about them? Erase some black

00:24:05.740 history. And he said, well, Whoopi, what do you mean? And he didn't even say it in a condescending 0.80

00:24:10.760 way. He didn't say like, can you cite your sources? Boom, you can't, owned, lib, destroyed,

00:24:16.120 facts, logic, boom. She didn't say that. He just said, hold on. Even when the audience started to

00:24:21.980 boo him a little bit. He goes, no, no, I'm just trying to, I just, I want to make sure I'm

00:24:25.000 responding to your actual point so that we're not talking past each other. What specifically

00:24:30.220 are you talking about? And it was so disarming. It was devastating because she had no answer.

00:24:36.520 She ended up going viral because she said, oh, I mean, there's so many examples that I can't pick

00:24:42.280 even one. And it totally took the air out of that conversation. What's really amazing about

00:24:49.320 the Joy Behar clip is you're seeing some people on the right who are attacking J.D. Vance for

00:24:57.760 charming Joy Behar. I think, hold on, this is one of the most conservative people in American

00:25:02.540 politics. In many ways, much more conservative than the GOP. In many ways, drawing on deeper

00:25:11.320 wellsprings of conservatism than what has passed for conservatism in the last four or five decades,

00:25:17.060 kind of vaguely neocon,

00:25:19.400 vaguely libertarian stuff.

00:25:20.560 I mean, J.D. Vance in his new book,

00:25:22.620 when he's talking about economics,

00:25:24.000 is citing Thomas Carlyle, okay?

00:25:25.900 And he's drawing on wellsprings

00:25:27.080 of conservatism

00:25:27.820 that come from Edmund Burke

00:25:28.960 from the very beginning

00:25:29.780 of Anglo-American conservatism.

00:25:31.840 And yet that guy was able

00:25:33.220 to charm Joy Behar.

00:25:34.560 That seems like a good thing.

00:25:36.860 This is one of Donald Trump's superpowers.

00:25:38.600 He does it in a very different way

00:25:39.640 and he's much more polarizing, of course.

00:25:41.220 But he was able to pull people in

00:25:42.940 who previously were on the left,

00:25:45.020 who previously were disillusioned by politics,

00:25:47.060 and he was able to pull them into his coalition. That's how he won. That's how he won the popular

00:25:50.500 vote. The fact that Vance could do that in maybe the most hostile enemy territory on mainstream

00:25:55.060 media, from joy-freaking Behar, that's impressive. That gives me a little bit of hope for the future

00:26:04.200 of the MAGA movement, conservatism, and the Republican Party. It's funny. You'll even hear

00:26:10.780 from the people who are going after Vance. They'll say, we need to restore civility to our

00:26:14.980 politics. We need to be respectful to our opponents. We need to whatever. And everyone

00:26:18.420 wants you to be respectful until you're respectful to someone they don't like.

00:26:23.580 Everyone wants it to be their political avatar to be respectful until it's to someone that they

00:26:28.180 don't like. But if you just show, I'm not saying you'd be obsequious. I'm not saying you flatter

00:26:32.220 or anything like that. But if you can just have a basic level of respect, talking to some communist,

00:26:37.120 talking to some wacko, talking to some radical or reactionary, if you can do that, it takes the 0.96

00:26:41.660 temperature down a lot, sometimes you can win people over. But the attacks that are coming in

00:26:46.000 on Vance right now are really, I think, just the reemergence of all the old attacks that you saw

00:26:54.580 on Trump back in 2016. And they're coming from many of the same people who hated Trump in 2016.

00:26:59.960 I think as we move into the 2028 primary, which we're almost into right now, got to get past the

00:27:04.520 midterms first, but we're almost into it. I think you are going to see the reemergence of all those

00:27:09.800 fault lines. I think never Trump really never went away. I think never Trump went a little

00:27:15.020 bit underground. Never Trump tried to play it cool. Never Trump tried to get on the Trump train

00:27:19.100 when that was the only viable path in Republican politics. But never Trump, I think, is coming back

00:27:24.080 and I think it's going after JD. We'll get to that momentarily. First, though, I want to tell

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00:28:50.060 President Trump at the G7 in France, obviously very concerned about this Iran war, which has

00:28:57.980 upended global energy markets, which has destabilized the Middle East even more so,

00:29:04.000 and which is really threatening the midterms, the conservative coalition.

00:29:09.000 Trump has secured this memorandum of understanding. They're flying to Switzerland this weekend

00:29:14.560 to try to get the first stages of a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

00:29:19.820 And this has caused a lot of consternation, including with the US's co-belligerent in the

00:29:25.200 Iran war, which is Israel. And President Trump has a very good relationship with the state of Israel.

00:29:30.200 The U.S. has a good relationship with the state of Israel, allies for a long time.

00:29:34.040 Trump's so beloved in Israel that they named a town after him in the state.

00:29:39.380 Trump getting a little bit tough on the Israeli prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu.

00:29:45.200 And you'll see that when you see the agreement, but it's appropriate that we release the agreement.

00:29:49.500 And we did send a copy to Israel, by the way.

00:29:52.480 They've been a good partner. 0.93

00:29:53.900 Again, I think they could do better with respect to Hezbollah.

00:30:00.200 I'm not saying they shouldn't protect themselves.

00:30:02.720 I'm saying when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly,

00:30:08.220 you don't have to knock down buildings in Beirut.

00:30:12.480 They could behave better.

00:30:13.840 And frankly, they could do a better job.

00:30:17.120 I love them as a partner.

00:30:19.560 They were terrific. 1.00

00:30:20.720 But they could do a much better job with Hezbollah. 1.00

00:30:24.100 On that, I don't think they're doing well. 0.79

00:30:26.520 And I feel very bad for Lebanon.

00:30:29.700 Lebanon's been, you know, it was a great culture.

00:30:31.860 It was a great, they had the professors, the doctors, the lawyers.

00:30:35.060 It was an incredible culture.

00:30:36.320 Maybe the highest in the Middle East for years and years, centuries.

00:30:40.260 And for the last 50, 60 years, they have been just trashed. 1.00

00:30:45.680 They have been, they have been living in hell.

00:30:48.920 So true. 1.00

00:30:50.060 I've been to Beirut. 1.00

00:30:51.200 Beirut's a great place and they were destroyed by the Muslims, 0.93

00:30:54.040 but it doesn't help when there's major instability in the Middle East, 0.60

00:30:57.020 which includes the wars with the state of Israel.

00:30:58.940 So what does Trump say here? I think he says exactly the right thing in exactly the right

00:31:04.260 tone. Because in the debates on the American right right now, you have these two crazy extremes that

00:31:12.360 do not reflect reality. On the one hand, you have some people saying Israel is the worst country in

00:31:16.720 the face of the world and absolutely perfidious and totally dominates Trump and they're blackmailing

00:31:22.500 him and they really run the show and whatever. Just this very, very deeply anti-Israel

00:31:28.380 kind of stuff, really, which is anti-Semitic at a certain point. I mean, at a certain point,

00:31:32.740 it's no longer criticism of Israel. It's going into another realm. So you do have that. That

00:31:38.040 really does exist. And then on the other hand, you have this totally obsequious slavish devotion 1.00

00:31:43.440 to a foreign nation where people will say they're our greatest ally that we've ever had, 0.99

00:31:47.940 and we have to back them in everything, and we have no divergent interests, and you can never

00:31:50.920 criticize them. And that's totally preposterous too. They're both forms of Israel derangement

00:31:57.420 syndrome. They're both two sides of the same coin. And what does Trump say? Trump does not say 0.90

00:32:02.480 Israel's awful and I hate BB and they're the worst state ever and they're pariah. He goes, 0.98

00:32:05.680 no, no, they're a good partner. They're a good partner. I've gotten along well with them.

00:32:09.940 I support them broadly. I have a good relationship with Netanyahu, but they're undermining America's

00:32:17.400 efforts and America's interests right now, and they need to cut it out. And he's using this

00:32:21.720 issue of Lebanon where he's saying, look, he's already said this probably, he says, look, if

00:32:25.280 Hezbollah is really hitting you hard, and you need to respond to that, obviously.

00:32:29.120 But you don't need to go knocking down buildings and whole blocks of a city

00:32:33.260 when a drone lands in the desert and no one's even injured,

00:32:37.740 especially in this case because we're trying to secure a peace deal.

00:32:40.320 And the reason this is such a hot issue right now is because,

00:32:44.340 while the U.S. and Israeli interests are substantially overlapped a lot of the time,

00:32:47.520 here they're diverging. 0.68

00:32:48.920 It is in America's interest.

00:32:50.420 It's not just that Trump wants it.

00:32:51.680 It is in America's interest to end the war for reasons that Trump explains momentarily.

00:32:57.600 But it's in America's interest to end the war in Iran.

00:33:01.300 There's still some open debate over whether or not it was in America's interest to start the war in Iran.

00:33:04.740 But I think there's a plausible case that there really was to set back Iran's nuclear program. 0.78

00:33:08.260 But nevertheless, now it's very much in America's interest.

00:33:10.420 Even the Israeli state admits that to end the war. 0.85

00:33:13.540 And it's in the Israeli interest to keep the war going. 0.95

00:33:16.160 Because Iran poses a different kind of threat to Israel than it does to the United States. 0.98

00:33:19.520 and with declining support for Israel in the United States, this might be Israel's last chance 0.93

00:33:23.260 to really take out the regime. So I see it. But Trump says, look, we're getting the peace deal

00:33:28.060 and you need to play ball. You need to be restrained. And then so there's some people

00:33:31.080 who say, well, how dare you tell the Israeli state that they can't respond? They're a sovereign

00:33:35.400 country. They can do whatever they want. You say, well, not really, actually. I mean, they are.

00:33:38.660 They're a sovereign country, but we fund their military. We are their chief. We're actually

00:33:43.520 their only protector among the great powers on the world stage. We're their co-belligerent in

00:33:48.600 war. We're the senior partner. They're the junior partner. And so if you're going to take that kind

00:33:53.140 of aid, if you're going to be reliant on that kind of support, if you're going to lobby us

00:33:58.900 to go in and take out one of our chief shared threats here, then you need to play ball with

00:34:06.140 us. If we're the senior partner, then we're really going to be the senior partner. And you're going

00:34:09.320 to have to deal with that. That's how politics really works. Why was it so important to President

00:34:14.460 Trump to end this war. He explains at the G7. And I'll tell you what, Israel's fighting Hezbollah

00:34:21.540 too long and too many people are being killed. And you don't have to knock down an apartment 0.93

00:34:27.140 house every time you're looking for somebody. Because there are a lot of people in those

00:34:30.840 apartment houses and they're not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you. And I suggested to Israel

00:34:36.600 to let Syria take care of Hezbollah. Because to be honest with you, I think they do a better job 1.00

00:34:42.800 up doing it okay so hold on here he's real this is before he explains why it needs to end he really

00:34:47.820 turns it up here right because he there's a lot of consternation coming out of the israeli press

00:34:52.920 and the israeli government and he's saying oh yeah you want to you want to play tough with me

00:34:57.420 i've been very good to you i've been very good to you we've been good partners we had a nice

00:35:02.020 relationship you told me i'm the greatest president for the state of israel ever now when i need to i

00:35:06.760 need to end this war and you're going to try to undermine that hey i'll tell you what maybe i'll

00:35:11.560 maybe, you know what I'll do? Maybe I'll give Lebanon to the Al Qaeda guy in Syria. What do 0.86

00:35:15.020 you think about that? Maybe he would do a better job. Now, I think this is hyperbole coming from

00:35:18.860 Trump. I don't think he's really seriously arguing that we're closer allies with the

00:35:23.200 former Al Qaeda operative who's running Syria right now, who, by the way, we all, with the 0.53

00:35:27.300 support of Israel and the United States, we did kind of install him to oust Assad because Assad

00:35:31.220 in Syria had the support of Russia. So even that, you know, even that we were backing Jolani,

00:35:36.800 the former Al Qaeda guy in Syria. Nevertheless, I think he's using a little bit of hyperbole to

00:35:40.740 say, hey, hey, hey, I'm the boss. I'm the senior partner. And when you have a partnership like

00:35:46.700 this, you got to deal with that. Politics is not totally abstract. It's not the United Nations

00:35:50.500 where we pretend that every nation is equally powerful and equally significant on the face

00:35:54.320 of the earth. We're in a kind of alliance here and we have a bigger role in the alliance and

00:35:58.920 we have to end the war. Why? If we didn't do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs

00:36:05.980 for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years.

00:36:11.480 You would never have the harm was straight open.

00:36:14.360 You would never have success.

00:36:16.780 Your market would have, instead of going up at levels

00:36:19.900 that nobody's ever seen before,

00:36:21.520 would go down at levels that nobody ever saw before,

00:36:24.900 maybe except for 1929 or whatever.

00:36:28.120 Yeah, but we could have done it a few more weeks,

00:36:30.300 but we were running out of time.

00:36:31.540 My pal Andrew Klavan was making this point yesterday

00:36:33.720 on Friendly Fire.

00:36:34.240 He said, this war was always time limited.

00:36:36.500 I mean, from the beginning, I was skeptical that it was worth even leveling the second

00:36:41.440 round of strikes.

00:36:42.300 The Fordow strikes last year were a different matter, but actually going in, trying to decapitate

00:36:46.800 the regime, I was skeptical because I knew that it was always going to end this way.

00:36:52.760 I feel completely vindicated.

00:36:54.340 I hate to say I told you so, but I was completely right about my prediction of what would happen 0.68

00:36:57.880 in Iran, which is you would ultimately be left with two choices.

00:37:01.080 you would either have to accept an unsatisfying deal or you would have to go all the way.

00:37:06.600 And I think there was greater hope that you could go all the way very quickly. You could get a

00:37:11.440 total regime change. It would transform the Middle East. I mean, there was a chance. No 0.98

00:37:14.980 one predicts the future perfectly. There was a chance that could happen. When it became clear

00:37:18.700 within a few weeks that that wasn't going to happen, then you were going to end up in a

00:37:21.940 situation where you could either have an unsatisfying deal. There's no question it's an

00:37:25.940 unsatisfying deal, of course. Or you could radically escalate boots on the ground,

00:37:30.920 regime change, occupy 10 years, election overseers, basically the same thing that

00:37:35.620 happened in Iraq. And even if Trump wanted to do that, which he doesn't, even if that would be a

00:37:39.820 good idea, which it's not, there was just no political appetite at all for that. So that

00:37:44.040 wasn't going to happen. So you had to take the unsatisfying deal. And you can still say,

00:37:46.660 but the people who say this was totally pointless, they say, no, no, hold on. We got a lot out of

00:37:50.160 this. We completely destroyed Iran's military. We, at the very least, seriously set back Iran's 1.00

00:37:55.540 nuclear program by 10 years maybe. We might, and I hope we will, get the nuclear dust. They won't 0.99

00:38:01.280 get sanctions, serious sanctions relief if we don't get the nuclear dust. So we achieved a lot

00:38:05.960 of shared goals for the US and Israel, but we basically got all of the US goals taken care of,

00:38:11.040 the most important ones. We didn't achieve the most important Israeli goals, but we did achieve

00:38:15.180 most of the important American goals. And now we're going to move back. Why?

00:38:19.840 Because the war was time limited. It was time limited by the markets. It was time limited by

00:38:24.240 the fact that Iran actually does control the Strait of Hormuz. It's their most powerful weapon, 1.00

00:38:27.740 much more so than a potential nuke. And because we're almost out of our strategic petroleum

00:38:32.080 reserve. I'm going to get bad press. I know that. Now, if I did the opposite, if I went out and

00:38:38.800 continued to bomb them for another floor, just bomb the hell out of them, I'd get bad press on 0.91

00:38:44.200 that. No, there's nothing I can do. But what this does is it allows the ships to go. If we keep 0.98

00:38:50.820 bombing, those ships won't be going. And you're talking about 500, 600, 700 million dollars

00:38:57.380 a day. It's a lot of money. A lot of money. That's why the world is okay. It's liquid.

00:39:02.580 It's fine. Also, we run out of reserves in about four weeks. You know, there are reserves

00:39:06.940 all over the world, and we would really run out. And there'll be a time when you wouldn't

00:39:10.780 be able to get it. And you want to see Bedlam? So for all those so-called geniuses that want 0.72

00:39:15.600 to show me how smart they are. Ask them why didn't they blow up General Soleimani. Ask that of the

00:39:22.460 general and a couple of other people that I like very much, but boy, are they wrong. Go ahead.

00:39:29.420 How about you? Yeah, this is the key. And so many of the ideologues just totally miss this.

00:39:36.700 There are real facts and resources on the ground here. And this is why the question I asked to the

00:39:41.840 people who are upset by this mou what's your alternative what was the alternative boots on

00:39:46.880 the ground that is the answer but they don't want to admit that so they'll say no we'll just keep

00:39:50.740 bombing okay we'll just keep bombing and then what we'll just bomb forever and we'll lose 20

00:39:55.320 of the world's oil supply just in ad infinitum and then we'll run out of all of our strategic

00:40:01.520 petroleum reserves and then gas will go up to two or three hundred dollars a barrel and then we want

00:40:05.440 to petrochemicals we want to fertilizer we want and then what and then we'll we'll keep this open 0.81

00:40:10.100 situation where the iranians eventually are going to keep striking not only israel but also our gulf 0.94

00:40:15.060 allies and we're then we're going to weaken and probably lose the petrodollar and then china's

00:40:19.920 going to come in and clean it up and then and then and then and then and then what's this what's the 0.89

00:40:23.320 end of it then the end of it is the only thing we could do to deal a death blow to the regime is to

00:40:28.760 invade the country with boots on the ground take a bunch of american losses inevitably and probably 0.86

00:40:34.360 occupy the place for 10 years and and almost perfectly recreate iraq that's what's going to

00:40:38.080 happen. And this is, you see Trump's frustration here. He says, all these geniuses who want to

00:40:42.200 tell me what they should have done, how would you have solved these discrete problems? None of them

00:40:46.520 have an answer for it. So now what's very clever, and you're kind of seeing this play out in the

00:40:52.440 political press, is Trump is right. They don't like that Trump is right. They want to oppose

00:41:00.300 Donald Trump, the people who are very upset about this MOU. And so they're trying to place the blame

00:41:03.940 on someone else. They're placing the blame on J.D. Vance. But ironically, it's just creating the

00:41:07.500 exact same fissures that you saw at the beginning of the Iran war, and frankly, all the way back

00:41:10.900 to never Trump, which we'll get to in a moment, because we're about to be living in that world

00:41:14.000 again for the next three years. First, though, smash the like button and subscribe. Also,

00:41:19.600 check us out on Spotify, where you can download full episode audio and video to watch or listen

00:41:24.240 whenever you want. Without using your data, do not miss an episode.

00:41:37.500 I want hot takes.

00:41:38.940 I want knee-jerk reactions.

00:41:40.540 That's not really what I do.

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00:42:21.040 klm royal dutch airlines when you travel travel well my favorite comment yesterday not from youtube

00:42:30.180 it's from spotify because i didn't realize that you could leave comments on spotify and now i'm

00:42:35.400 really tickled by that. And the Spotify comments are great. This is from White Pilot who says,

00:42:40.820 justice for the indigenous people of Britain. That's a great point. And all this talk about 1.00

00:42:47.200 anti-colonialism, the rights of the indigenous. What about the indigenous people of Britain

00:42:52.840 who are being colonized by a hostile foreign power? What about the Me Too movement? What about

00:42:59.180 you have a quarter million British girls are raped over the course of decades, 0.64

00:43:02.200 some of them murdered by a hostile foreign colonial power. Why don't, where's the outrage?

00:43:09.380 We got to defend the indigenous rights of the Brits.

00:43:12.760 What you were seeing before we move on, before we move on from the G7, one last point.

00:43:18.720 It's very, very funny. At the opening of the Iran war, a lot of people on the right

00:43:24.920 were attacking, not a lot of people, sorry, on the media right and the prominent right.

00:43:29.880 A lot of the rank and file people on the right, they just kind of trust Trump.

00:43:32.960 Trump's best foreign policy president of our lifetime.

00:43:35.440 They weren't actually that outraged.

00:43:36.580 But a lot of people in the media on the right and some political figures,

00:43:39.280 they really hated the Iran war.

00:43:41.720 I was always skeptical of it.

00:43:43.020 I argued against it.

00:43:43.700 But they were really incensed.

00:43:45.300 And one thing they would do is they would blame not Trump, but the people around Trump.

00:43:50.760 So they would blame the wicked advisors.

00:43:52.560 And this is a classic tactic of politics.

00:43:55.680 You never blame the king.

00:43:57.180 It's never the king's fault.

00:43:59.100 It's always those wicked advisors around the king who are giving him bad information.

00:44:04.080 You see, we Catholics sometimes do this about the Pope.

00:44:06.540 It's never really the Pope's fault.

00:44:07.800 The Pope never really said or did anything wrong.

00:44:09.480 It's just the wicked advisors around him giving him bad information.

00:44:12.320 Well, same thing about Trump.

00:44:13.160 So you saw this play out on the right at the opening of the Iran war.

00:44:16.980 It wasn't exactly Trump's fault.

00:44:18.000 Some people went for it.

00:44:18.680 I think Tucker really started to go after Trump.

00:44:21.100 But a lot of people were just kind of dancing around.

00:44:24.120 It's the bad advisors.

00:44:26.080 It's the people in the media, the people in the government.

00:44:28.640 And what's so funny now is now the sides have completely flipped.

00:44:31.820 And all the people who were cheerleading the Iran war at the beginning

00:44:34.320 are not only going against the Trump administration for the peace deal,

00:44:38.560 but they're using the exact same tactic.

00:44:41.100 They're saying, well, it's not Trump's fault.

00:44:43.080 It's those wicked advisors around Trump.

00:44:44.960 It's J.D. Vance's fault. 0.51

00:44:46.140 You think J.D. Vance is doing this peace deal without Trump's approval,

00:44:51.960 without Trump's knowledge?

00:44:53.980 Is it all the arguments from the beginning,

00:44:55.420 which is we're denying Trump's intelligence,

00:44:57.240 We're denying Trump's agency.

00:44:58.740 We're denying that Trump has a role in the world of affairs.

00:45:00.460 They're just doing the exact same thing now when Trump's doing something that they don't like.

00:45:05.540 And they're saying, no, it's Vance or it's Steve Wyckoff or it's Jared Kushner.

00:45:10.060 It's mostly Vance because he's the number two guy.

00:45:12.080 And Trump even made a joke about this.

00:45:13.740 He was asked a joking question from Peter Doocy.

00:45:16.280 And Doocy goes, hey, why are you putting Vance so front and center on this?

00:45:20.320 And he goes, oh, it's very easy because if it works out, I'm going to take all the credit.

00:45:24.160 And if it doesn't go well, I'm going to blame JD, which is a joke.

00:45:27.240 You know, in every joke, there's a little bit of truth.

00:45:29.180 But that's the argument that he's making.

00:45:32.500 And what's very curious is you're seeing these, I guess it shouldn't be curious.

00:45:37.620 You're seeing these fault lines reemerge in the GOP, which is that the people who are

00:45:42.460 most vociferously opposed to the memorandum of understanding in Iran, the Venn diagram

00:45:48.660 of those people and the people who really, really opposed Trump in 2016, it's like a

00:45:54.540 perfect circle.

00:45:55.780 It's just, it's really the kind of the never Trump faction is the one that is most outraged

00:46:01.720 about the memorandum of understanding.

00:46:04.560 And they're directing a lot of their ire at J.D. Vance, which tells you, you don't need

00:46:10.840 a PhD in logic to know that that means that J.D. Vance, whether he wins or loses, whether

00:46:16.480 he even gets a nomination or not, J.D. Vance is the heir to Trumpism because all the people

00:46:20.980 who hated Trump specifically in 2016 really hate J.D. Vance in 2026. So that tells you that for

00:46:27.320 better or worse, J.D. Vance is the heir to the Trump political movement. You're going to see

00:46:32.460 these fault lines reemerge. It's not that they went away in 2016. It's not even that Trump really

00:46:38.820 persuaded all of these people to support him or to change their views on tariffs or immigration

00:46:42.840 or foreign policy or whatever. It's just that Trump was too big and he won over the people

00:46:47.500 and you could not be in Republican politics if you didn't play ball with Trump.

00:46:51.580 And then when Trump, the individual, goes away, all of those fault lines are going to reemerge.

00:46:55.980 This is just how it is in the conservative coalition.

00:46:58.820 There are lots of different groups, the neocons and the paleocons and the libertarians and the traditionalists, and there's not a ton holding them together. 0.52

00:47:05.600 There was at least something holding them together during the latter part of the 20th century, which was the Soviet Union.

00:47:11.140 The Soviet Union, which could get the traditionalists and the religious right opposed to the secular material atheism of the Soviet Union, could get the libertarians opposed to the collectivism of the Soviet Union,

00:47:20.600 could get the Warhawk Democrats, the neocons, opposed to the imperialism of the Soviet Union.

00:47:27.080 But then the Soviet Union fell apart. The conservative coalition ceased to make a ton

00:47:31.880 of sense. That's what we're heading back into. And a lot of these fights over the Iran deal are

00:47:36.240 proxy battles over that. One last story before I go, I have to get to this. This is really,

00:47:40.340 really funny. It's from the New York Times. The New York Times accidentally admitting

00:47:44.740 that the Epstein scandal is not a Trump scandal.

00:47:49.560 We'll get back to some of the kind of crazy conspiracy theories about Israel.

00:47:52.780 They say they've got blackmail on him, on Trump, and they run the show,

00:47:56.280 and he's a puppet for, and they were, Epstein was a Mossad agent or whatever.

00:48:00.660 And they say, you know, Epstein's got all this dirt on Trump.

00:48:03.640 That's how they're all controlling the government.

00:48:04.940 And you say, I don't know.

00:48:05.620 Can you show me some proof of that?

00:48:07.260 Because I've got this New York Times piece right here.

00:48:09.100 You have the Democrats basically making this argument that Trump is,

00:48:12.880 he's part of the Epstein class, whatever.

00:48:14.740 lengthy New York Times article, the untold story of Jeffrey Epstein's death. Worth reading.

00:48:21.960 Here's just a little take. This is actually from Forbes.

00:48:26.140 Jeffrey Epstein's attorneys were in discussions with prosecutors before his death about potentially

00:48:29.780 trying to get him a more lenient sentence if he gave up information that could help them in other

00:48:34.280 cases. And who did they want to get? They wanted to get Trump. The New York Times reported Tuesday

00:48:39.300 with notes suggesting Epstein wanted to pass along information about Donald Trump. Okay,

00:48:43.600 here we go. We got it. Now, Trump, we know that Epstein was blackmailing people. That's what we

00:48:49.320 thought initially. Then everyone said, no, no, he wasn't blackmailing people. Then Bill Gates just

00:48:52.840 came out in testimony before the House of Representatives said, no, he was blackmailing

00:48:56.020 me. So Epstein was in the blackmail business. Was he working for a criminal enterprise? Was

00:49:01.660 he working for foreign state or states, plural, potentially? Was he just working for himself?

00:49:06.960 It's unclear, but here's the reporting. It's unclear how far those discussions proceeded

00:49:11.520 or who else Epstein could have information on.

00:49:13.680 Epstein reportedly tried to determine

00:49:15.020 if he had leverage against associates

00:49:16.480 like billionaire Bill Gates.

00:49:18.220 But the Times reports the late financier

00:49:19.840 was preoccupied with trying to provide information

00:49:22.880 about Trump based on notes he took at the time.

00:49:25.720 Okay, well, here it is.

00:49:26.400 There's a smoking gun.

00:49:28.100 There's a smoking gun.

00:49:29.180 Trump killed Epstein because Epstein had dirt on him.

00:49:32.640 And Epstein's associates probably still have dirt on him.

00:49:34.860 But hold on, here's the key.

00:49:37.560 Epstein's notes suggest

00:49:38.740 he didn't actually have anything noteworthy about trump who was then in his first term

00:49:44.500 making only vague comments like trump is a total con artist smoke and mirrors he never had money

00:49:52.820 in other words jeffrey epstein who we're told was so close to donald trump we're told they

00:49:59.980 committed all these terrible crimes together they spent all he was member mar-a-lago 1.00

00:50:03.380 the best dirt that epstein had on trump are all the lame stupid political slogans that you hear 1.00

00:50:12.600 on msnbc and on the view he's a con artist he lied about his wealth or whatever that's it that's all 0.99

00:50:20.540 he had he i've come to the conclusion donald statistically speaking trump might be the

00:50:26.760 cleanest person in america billionaire playboy you know basically worked with the mob doing real

00:50:31.960 estate in New York. Well, you'd think, but they have nothing on him. They have nothing on him.

00:50:40.440 The New York Times has to admit it. Jeffrey Epstein, the best thing Epstein has is he's a

00:50:46.480 con artist. He inflated his wealth. Wow. Crazy. In any case, love to hate to say I told you so 0.93

00:50:55.820 here. My original thesis, totally right. You remember what I said about Epstein? I've said

00:50:59.440 it for years. I said, one of two things are true about Epstein. Either Epstein is a super-duper

00:51:05.280 triple agent for Mossad, MI6, CIA, KGB, FSB, whatever. Either he is this international

00:51:13.680 James Bond, Blofeld man of mystery, in which case you're not going to learn anything more

00:51:18.820 than you already know about him. Or he just kind of is what they said he is, this criminal guy

00:51:26.240 who was self-serving,

00:51:28.100 in which case you already know

00:51:29.100 everything you're going to know about him.

00:51:30.940 But this is the big 10 billion page

00:51:32.780 New York Times report.

00:51:33.800 We're getting the dirt on Trump.

00:51:35.960 He had nothing.

00:51:38.080 The Epstein scandal,

00:51:39.560 as it was in the beginning,

00:51:41.620 is not a Trump scandal.

00:51:43.720 If it is any kind of scandal,

00:51:45.360 it's a Democrat scandal.

00:51:47.260 It's Bill Clinton who flew around

00:51:48.300 on that plane all the time.

00:51:49.400 It's Bill Gates,

00:51:50.060 one of the biggest,

00:51:50.940 most insufferable lib donors in the world.

00:51:52.540 It's all those other people.

00:51:53.500 It is not a Trump scandal.

00:51:55.200 There have been some Trump scandals.

00:51:56.960 This is not one of them.

00:51:57.880 Okay, the rest of the show continues now.

00:52:00.660 You do not want to miss it.

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The Michael Knowles Show - June 18, 2026

Ep. 1997 - I Hate Soccer, But Even I’m Rooting For USA… Lib Congressmen Can't

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