The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 2000 - Tucker Carlson Leaves The Republican Party

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00:01:29.780 Tucker leaves the Republican Party.

00:01:31.680 The Pope criticizes the free market.

00:01:33.680 And Chicago declares a trans-femicide state of emergency on the 2000th episode of The Michael Knowles Show. 1.00

00:01:50.100 Welcome back to the show. 0.79

00:01:51.420 It is the 2000th episode. Whoopi Goldberg believes President Trump should go to jail

00:01:56.840 for repainting the reflecting pool. There's a lot going on. But did I mention it's the 2000th

00:02:03.280 episode? I think it is an occasion that demands a Mayflower cigar. It's really two holidays today.

00:02:10.160 It's June 3rd, of course, and the 2000th episode. Many people did not think this show would make

00:02:17.040 it that long, including many of my bosses, actually, and a lot of the people. But I don't

00:02:20.640 know, they've continued to tolerate me. Thank you to all of you for being around for 2,000 episodes

00:02:25.320 of this show. Now, if you're watching politically unsavory content such as this, that the powers

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00:04:00.500 Chicago has declared a transfemicide state of emergency. This, according to Mayor Brandon

00:04:08.160 Johnson, quote, for too many transgender Chicagoans, the sense of belonging they deserve

00:04:13.700 in their city has been denied by exclusion and barriers to opportunity in spaces that should

00:04:18.200 feel safe and welcoming. Since declaring a transfemicide state of emergency, our administration 0.76

00:04:23.760 has strengthened the city's capacity to support LGBTQ plus Chicagoans. This framework builds on

00:04:30.140 that work by centering the voices and lived experiences of trans Chicagoans to chart a path

00:04:35.700 were to safer, more connected city. I looked into the numbers on the trans-femicide state

00:04:41.860 of emergency. How many trans-fems have been homicided? Last year, the number is one.

00:04:50.920 There was one trans-identifying guy in Chicago who was murdered, and he was murdered not by

00:04:58.640 a phobic right-wing person. He was murdered by his boyfriend. He was in bed. The boyfriend

00:05:05.840 apparently bludgeoned his skull in with a hammer. Very sad. But that would not seem to be an

00:05:12.160 epidemic of transfemicide. To help me analyze this crucial story, I bring on someone who was

00:05:20.940 around for the Great Chicago Fire, so has a good sense of the second city. That would be

00:05:27.260 arguably the founder of this show, Andy Millennial Klavan. Drew, thank you for being here.

00:05:36.660 Congratulations on, I thought it was your 5,000th show. It just maybe seemed like 5,000 shows.

00:05:41.660 It just feels like you are the founder of this show because-

00:05:46.100 I am. I'm going to have to answer for that before the form of God.

00:05:48.760 You will. I mean, we can get into your precise views on purgatory, but most theologians would

00:05:55.100 say that will get you 10 billion years in purgatory. I think 10 billion years in purgatory.

00:06:00.160 Yeah, that was that was it. My my recognition of Candace Owens talent and bringing you on my show.

00:06:06.660 You discovered Candace. I did discover Candace. You know, that's I don't know how I'm going to

00:06:12.900 answer for this. You also discovered Jordan. I discovered I just listen. I heard Ben Shapiro

00:06:19.900 on his L.A. radio show and actually texted him and said, you know, you're actually an A-level

00:06:24.980 talent. You should be on without all those people around you. You know, I grew up in radio. My dad

00:06:30.520 was a big time radio DJ in New York, and I've always just had this knack for knowing broadcast

00:06:35.360 talent when I saw it. Yeah. And you said, you said, look, Ben is a major talent. Candace is a

00:06:41.100 major media talent. Jordan is a major intellectual talent. And Michael brings me cigars. So you know

00:06:46.560 what give him a show and please get this kid out of my office and give him a show so he leaves me

00:06:50.240 alone that was the a little bit of lore on this my actual first appearance on the daily wire i

00:06:55.200 believe was when you brought me on to talk about a filthy cartoon with a talking hot dog yes you

00:07:02.160 know first of all you came on and did my social media it was then twitter and you did my twitter

00:07:08.120 feed and i and i said i was i was only half joking i said your imitation of me was so good

00:07:14.400 that I literally was looking at your imitations

00:07:17.220 for me to find out how I sounded

00:07:18.740 so I could send out posts that sounded like me.

00:07:21.660 I thought that's pretty amazing.

00:07:24.060 So the thing I actually want to talk to you about

00:07:26.520 is not transfemicide,

00:07:27.740 though I do want your last little thought on this

00:07:30.560 because when I see this story, 0.68

00:07:32.580 look, it's sad that this sexual aberrant guy 0.91

00:07:36.520 was murdered, one of them last year, 0.98

00:07:39.500 by his boyfriend in Chicago.

00:07:41.340 But when I read that headline,

00:07:43.240 I say, man, it's not 2022 anymore. It's not 2022. Why are we still doing this? I thought all that

00:07:49.220 craziness was over and it was behind us. But then I look around at the left-wing politicians,

00:07:53.680 whether you talk about the mayor of Chicago or James Tallarico or whoever, or even Abigail

00:07:58.880 Spanberger after she ran as a moderate. And you say, no, they're going to keep doing this.

00:08:02.440 The New York Times says on Father's Day, we need to celebrate trans women or whatever,

00:08:06.880 or trans men, I guess, lesbians with beards who say that they're fathers.

00:08:10.760 And I just think, oh, maybe it hasn't changed. Maybe the woke hasn't gone away. 0.63

00:08:15.960 And so I want your perspective on this. And this kind of pertains to the media too.

00:08:20.220 When this company started, and when Ben's show started, then your show started,

00:08:24.400 then mine started later, there was this discrete era. It was right after the Tea Party,

00:08:29.820 the Tea Party, which had followed the Bush era. And we were in this era of new media,

00:08:34.540 the conservatives are really coming to their own in new media. And the big issue was free speech.

00:08:38.820 and that was the issue for like five years and then the big issue became the weird gay race 0.88

00:08:45.700 communism we call it you know the weird kind of identity especially sexual politics culture wars 0.68

00:08:49.960 the peak of which was the transgender ideology that was five or six years ago now we're in some 0.69

00:08:56.060 new era i i thought at least but then you know the weird transfemicide story keeps coming up

00:09:00.940 so i if you're looking at all of these eras someone with great uh chronological uh range

00:09:06.560 where are we right now and where is the conservative movement and the media going

00:09:12.520 well you know they can't change because they're in a very specific situation and it does have a

00:09:18.600 chronology to it an important one that unfortunately young people don't remember which is the fall of

00:09:24.080 the soviet union the soviet union was going to be around forever it was the future i have seen the

00:09:28.960 future and it works this was it they finally brought in all of the marxism they you could

00:09:33.400 possibly want. And not only did it go horrifically bad with tens of millions of people being murdered 0.88

00:09:40.040 and countries being conquered, but it's then collapsed. It collapsed on its own. I mean,

00:09:46.060 we didn't do anything. It just fell apart on its own. I mean, Reagan was smart enough to see it

00:09:50.600 coming and to outspend them, but basically it doesn't work. It never works. It has never worked

00:09:55.980 any place. And, you know, when you listen to Bernie Sanders, we should be like Norway. You'll

00:10:00.360 go like, Bernie, Norway doesn't have socialism. Oh, well, I don't know anything about Norway,

00:10:04.020 but that's what we should be like. And people just follow this because it sounds like a dream.

00:10:08.840 So you have a thing that doesn't work. Not only does it not work, but every single problem that

00:10:13.140 America faces that is really troubling America, inflation, crime, Iran, it all started with

00:10:18.460 leftist policies. Inflation is there because of the printing of money to pay for things that we

00:10:22.260 can't afford. The crime is there because of lax policing and anti-police movements. And Iran is

00:10:29.560 because of Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter. Exactly. Exactly. So it's all of it because of left-wing

00:10:37.300 actions. So what do you got to do? You got to invent this world in which there are problems

00:10:42.000 that the left can solve. I mean, transgender murder, this one guy gets murdered. Obviously, 1.00

00:10:47.500 every murder is a bad thing, but this is not a real problem. The Jews are not a real problem. 0.98

00:10:53.420 This is not something that is going to affect them, but that's what they're running on in New 0.85

00:10:56.660 York, these socialist candidates who Zora Mamdani is blessing, these are the ones, that's what

00:11:01.480 they're running on. They're running on the Jews. It's all Israel. That's your big problem. If you 0.97

00:11:05.520 can't afford groceries in America, it's what's happening in Israel. And so all of this is fantasy. 0.94

00:11:11.700 And if it weren't for the fact that they have 50 to 60 years of a media willing to echo this

00:11:17.460 fantasy and make it seem like reality by printing it as news, quote unquote news, they wouldn't get

00:11:23.180 away with it. I mean, people would just know that they'd be informed enough to know that it's

00:11:26.860 nonsense. But what are they going to do? That's why it's called progressivism. It's progressive

00:11:31.860 like emphysema, you know, like cancer. It's progressive because you have to keep upping

00:11:35.860 the ante of the fantasy because the reality, it just doesn't work.

00:11:39.780 Right, right. So then, I mean, maybe an answer to the right-wing question was there in your

00:11:45.140 take on progressivism. But if I'm seeing these discrete errors correctly, which is, you know,

00:11:51.320 look, we've been, we've been at this now for 10 years. Daily Wire was founded over 10, 11 years

00:11:55.400 ago now. Right. And you think, okay. And I remember I came up politics in the Tea Party

00:12:00.080 era. That was when I did my first political campaign. And I was doing a bunch of campaigns

00:12:03.300 after that. The Tea Party era was really different from the early Bush era. And if you ran as a

00:12:10.880 Republican politician on Bush era stuff in 2011, you were going to get blown out of the water. It

00:12:15.740 was just so different. And then five years later, it really radically changed again at the beginning

00:12:19.680 of the Trump era, if you ran like a Tea Party candidate, you just seemed passe. The right-wing

00:12:25.880 base, both the media audience and the electoral activist base, they had just moved on to different

00:12:31.960 issues. They even changed their views a little bit on things like immigration, on trade, on

00:12:36.620 foreign policy. Then it seemed to shift again into this, it went from, say, I don't know,

00:12:42.960 immigration was the big issue in 2015, 2016, to the culture war issues. COVID obviously had a lot

00:12:48.660 to do with that. Now we're in in the big two six. What what are the issues? What is what is the big

00:12:56.260 enemy? What is the you know, what does the guy who's running in 2026? What do the talkers who

00:13:01.480 are focusing attention? What is it about? It's it's always about two things. It's about truth

00:13:07.320 and liberty. This is always what the right has as its advantage and always the advantage that

00:13:12.580 they squander. And if we've learned nothing from Donald Trump is that you can speak the truth and

00:13:17.420 win. Now, listen, Trump is a one-off. I don't think everybody can pull off the kind of belligerence

00:13:22.680 and sometimes rudeness that he uses. It was acquired. It was a godsend. It was a godsend

00:13:27.780 to break the chains of niceness censorship. Don't say that. It's not nice. You say, well,

00:13:34.440 there's a lot of crime in black neighborhoods. Oh, you're a racist. You say, well, maybe homosexual 1.00

00:13:38.600 marriage is not the best thing for this social network. Oh, you're a homophobe. You have to say 1.00

00:13:45.020 these things, I think, with complete honesty, with complete fearless honesty, but you also

00:13:50.580 have to say them with, you know, as Paul Simon would have said, with a little bit of tenderness

00:13:54.680 in your honesty. I think that this is the thing that we miss. And it hurts us, especially with

00:13:59.120 women voters. And I think that the first thing we have to say is that liberty is a good and it is

00:14:05.940 the prime mover of the American founding. Individual liberty, your liberty to say what

00:14:11.880 you want to say, to worship the way you want to worship, to live the life that you want to live,

00:14:16.680 and to build, not only build the things that you're capable of building, but to keep the money you

00:14:20.920 make. Because money, you know, people talk about money like it's somehow dirty. Money is time.

00:14:25.460 You know, you put in the time, you put in the effort, you get the money, and you create wealth

00:14:29.000 for other people. These are the kind of logical things that I think the Republican Party has been

00:14:33.540 too chicken to say for too long, because they believed that the press had more power than it

00:14:39.360 did. I think the blessing of the Daily Wire, with the exclusion of your show, of course,

00:14:43.740 the blessing of the Daily Wire is, and all of the rebel media, is that it has broken the monopoly

00:14:50.160 that the left-wing, aged left-wing press had. Why were they knocking us off the air? You know,

00:14:56.000 you were there for the censorship of the Biden era. That was the worst censorship I've seen in

00:15:00.180 my lifetime, which goes back, as you know, to the Civil War, you know, so it's like, it was really

00:15:05.100 bad. Worse than Woodrow Wilson, when you had the old-timey Drew show during the Wilson

00:15:10.220 administration. Yeah, that's right. That's right. With the coal engine, I had to keep cranking the

00:15:15.780 engine. You know, these are the two things, the two things that the left has are silence and

00:15:21.720 fantasy. They have to quiet, they have to silence the truth with bullying, and they have to invent

00:15:26.500 problems that aren't really problems. I mean, transgenderism, let's face it, it's not a problem. 0.62

00:15:31.020 You know, don't butcher children, you know, let people live their lives.

00:15:34.880 Nobody was bothering the occasional person who wanted to live, you know, dress up as

00:15:39.240 a girl or whatever.

00:15:40.520 He wasn't going into, you know, men's bathrooms and vice versa.

00:15:44.660 But this idea that you have to use a pronoun, you have to change your language to lie. 0.99

00:15:50.380 You have to be a liar. 0.94

00:15:51.420 That's all they've got.

00:15:52.460 You know, if they cannot fix the world so that they really do believe that if everybody

00:15:56.580 lies, the lie will become the truth.

00:15:58.560 So for us, I think it's the opposite. The truth is our friend. Everything that conservatives believe in works. Countries don't become as powerful as America in just 250 years. Don't go from a bunch of guys clinging to the coast of a continent to this major superpower without freedom. Freedom works every time it's tried.

00:16:17.900 You know, Greece became an empire. Rome became an empire by being because they started out being free. The same thing has happened to us. That's the thing we're trying to defend. And you do it, you know, you can't do it. You can't always be playing defense. I think that's the problem. You do have to solve problems, but you solve them in a free way. You know, you solve them in a way that doesn't say, oh, the government is going to do this for you, which means someone's money and freedom is being taken away.

00:16:42.140 You know, I think that this is if I had to pick two things that I think the right could work on a little less belligerence in telling the truth, you know, tell the truth fearlessly, absolutely fearlessly.

00:16:52.780 But you don't have to be belligerent about it. And the other thing is notice the problems before the left does.

00:16:58.980 The left is really good at this, at picking up things that kind of bother people and then elevating them.

00:17:03.520 And I think, you know, we have it. We actually have the solution to inflation.

00:17:08.160 It's don't print so much money, which means don't spend so much money, you know.

00:17:12.020 And I think that that's the thing that we just, we are not fearless about facing, especially our politicians.

00:17:17.160 Yeah, it's true.

00:17:17.740 That is the one era where conservatives, I think, prefer fantasy over the left.

00:17:23.180 The left has it 99.9% of the time, but we, we're a little too rosy, you know, and we, when the left brings up affordability, say, or problems in the healthcare system, we just try to dismiss it and minimize it.

00:17:36.480 You say, no, those are real problems.

00:17:38.160 We do have better solutions to those problems.

00:17:40.540 But they're going to get an optical advantage by calling attention to it first.

00:17:45.700 And maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss it.

00:17:48.220 Drew, it occurs to me also, before I let you go, this has been going on for so long

00:17:52.540 that when you were coming on my show in the early days, you came on as Andy Millennial.

00:17:57.840 Because Lauren Chen had heard Noam De Plume was Roaming Millennial.

00:18:02.520 Allie Stuckey was going by Conservative Millennial.

00:18:04.760 So you came on as Andy Millennial. 0.64

00:18:06.500 This has been on so long now that millennials are old. 0.84

00:18:08.960 now is there when is andy zoomer coming on the show to become like a trans nazi vaping

00:18:14.760 i have to say we i think we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you and i have the worst

00:18:19.540 poker faces of any two people possibly on the planet we used to we used to have these hilarious

00:18:25.160 routines and we get about 20 seconds into them and we do them dip and then fall off we were

00:18:31.280 shameful we really were just the worst possible uh comedy routine in history but it was i'll never

00:18:37.960 stop laughing over the Tide. Remember those Tide Pods? Yes. Well, if you can make it to Nashville,

00:18:44.860 I'll let you go. But if you can make it to Nashville, we are having a delicious Tide Pod

00:18:48.560 reception afterward. So we might not make it to episode 2001. Drew, thank you once again for

00:18:54.700 my career and founding the show and everything. And looking forward to recapping at the 4,000th

00:19:01.380 episode as well. Absolutely. Congratulations, Bob. Thanks. See you. Okay. Okay. There's a lot

00:19:06.500 where I want to get to. I want to get to, hey, Tucker's leaving the GOP. You want to talk about

00:19:10.120 shifts in conservative media. You have one of the biggest cable news host ever, who was the

00:19:16.100 leading conservative on cable news, has just left the GOP. Also, the Pope is criticizing the free

00:19:21.840 market. Also, Tulsi Gabbard is nailing Anthony Fauci. Also, there's so much to get. I'm going

00:19:28.620 to need 2,000 episodes to get to all of this. Also, the Libs are trying to imprison Trump for

00:19:32.820 repainting the reflecting pool. First, I want to tell you about Brickhouse Nutrition. Go to

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00:20:45.000 at TakeLean.com. Tucker Carlson is leaving the Republican Party.

00:20:53.000 I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party.

00:20:56.860 i'm not going to support the democratic party i don't know what i'm going to do but at this point

00:21:01.500 you know how could you support how could i or any american voter support a political party that's not

00:21:06.380 loyal to the united states that puts the interest of a foreign country above those of its own

00:21:10.860 citizens like that's that's you know it's not possible to vote for people like that and i'm

00:21:15.980 not going to and i think i voted republican my entire life i worked at fox news i've cnn msnbc

00:21:22.860 I've been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party.

00:21:28.840 I mean, very consistent defender, but there's no defending this because it's immoral and

00:21:33.400 it's exactly the opposite of what a political party in a democracy is charged with doing,

00:21:39.640 which is representing its own voters, its own citizens, its own nation.

00:21:43.820 And they're not doing that.

00:21:44.840 So, no, I'm out.

00:21:46.160 And if I'm out, then I think a lot of other people are out.

00:21:48.900 So Tucker's out of the GOP. He's been one of the leading conservative voices for decades,

00:21:54.280 and he's out of the GOP. And a lot of people are asking, why? Not because the Republican Party is

00:22:01.940 so great. As I frequently say, the Republican Party is the absolute worst party in the United 0.89

00:22:06.820 States other than the Democrats. But why is he doing this now? And what changed? And I think

00:22:14.500 the most obvious answer is that Tucker, in this stage of his public life, is doing a Pat Buchanan

00:22:20.540 thing. Pat Buchanan, who also was one of the leading Republicans who ran to get the GOP

00:22:25.960 nomination for president in 1992 after Reagan, who advised Nixon, who advised Reagan, who ultimately

00:22:31.320 lost the nomination to Bush. And then he left the GOP and ran for president on the Reform Party

00:22:36.660 ticket. And then he was an independent for a few years. Then he came back to be a Republican again.

00:22:41.320 And so you could say, all right, maybe he's doing a Pat Buchanan kind of thing.

00:22:45.500 He feels that the Republican Party is not sufficiently conservative.

00:22:49.020 We're not conservative in the right way.

00:22:50.680 Even here, Tucker says the big issue is the GOP is too pro-Israel.

00:22:55.180 Pat Buchanan also was skeptical of Israeli influence on American politics and on the GOP.

00:23:00.420 So the analogy, I think, works pretty well, except that if the issue is that the GOP is too pro-Israel, the GOP has been pro-Israel for the whole time Tucker's been a Republican and for well before Tucker was a public Republican.

00:23:19.900 You know, he says it was 35 years here.

00:23:22.080 The GOP has been pro-Israel since at least Richard Nixon.

00:23:25.480 Richard Nixon saved the nation of Israel.

00:23:27.880 The nation of Israel probably would not exist without Richard Nixon's help.

00:23:32.320 So, and even before that, the GOP, from the very founding of the state of Israel,

00:23:38.020 the GOP was favorably inclined toward it.

00:23:41.020 So what changed?

00:23:44.220 If the issue for Tucker is the Iran war, if it's foreign intervention overseas,

00:23:50.660 specifically the kind of foreign intervention that might help the state of Israel,

00:23:54.020 what changed even with Trump?

00:23:55.840 Don't forget, Trump ran against the Bush neocon wars of the 2000s, but Donald Trump after George

00:24:05.160 W. Bush obliterated ISIS. In fact, he ran in 2016 on obliterating ISIS. He struck Syria again to go

00:24:12.040 after Bashar Assad because of Assad's purported use of chemical weapons. He took out the Iranian

00:24:18.180 general during the first term. He killed the top Iranian general, Soleimani. He intervened in

00:24:24.240 Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Africa. He issued the raid killing the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,

00:24:30.800 who died like a dog infamously. What changed? Trump has been super pro-Israel the whole time.

00:24:38.580 They named a town after him in Israel during the first term, not during the second term.

00:24:42.940 He was belligerent against Iran in the first term, not just during the second term.

00:24:47.660 And then, of course, George W. Bush intervened very heavily in the Middle East. Tucker was a

00:24:51.620 Republican the whole time. So what changed? I don't think you could say it was the GOP that

00:24:57.140 changed. I don't think you could really say it's Trump that changed. A lot of people say, well,

00:25:01.760 Trump ran against foreign wars. Trump ran, but kind of, but he also throughout his entire

00:25:08.260 presidential career from the first term through the now second term, he has been intervening in

00:25:14.620 the Middle East. He has been dropping the Moab. He has been killing Iranian generals. He has been

00:25:18.520 doing all of that. So I don't think he really changed. And Trump was talking about going after

00:25:21.760 the Iranians since the late 70s. So you could say, well, maybe it's just Tucker's perspective

00:25:27.840 has changed. Could well be the case. But the other thing to remember here, and Tucker has been open

00:25:33.120 about this, is I don't think Tucker voted for Trump or for anybody in 2016. Tucker told Politico in

00:25:39.060 2021, quote, I never vote. So that's the truth. I didn't vote this time. I never do. I'm registered

00:25:44.320 with a party that I sincerely despise because I think it's really a force for bad in this country

00:25:49.400 and it's the Democratic Party. But I'm registered because I live in the district. So he registered

00:25:54.020 as a dem because he lived in a dem area and wanted to influence the local elections. He was a one 0.79

00:25:59.500 party state. And the one election I always vote in is the mayor's race because it matters. I own

00:26:03.440 property there. I raise four children there. So he initially says, I never vote. And he says,

00:26:07.340 no, I actually do vote in these local races, but I don't really care about the presidential race.

00:26:11.580 He apparently didn't vote in 2016 or 2020.

00:26:15.680 I don't know.

00:26:16.240 In 2020 then, there was other reporting that he might have written in Kanye West.

00:26:19.880 This was Kanye before he kind of went very extreme when he was doing the birthday party thing.

00:26:24.060 So it's very, very unclear to me.

00:26:29.360 Over the 35 years that Tucker's talking about, Trump hasn't really changed.

00:26:35.120 But in as much as the GOP has changed, it has only changed for the better.

00:26:39.980 The GOP has gotten better on immigration.

00:26:42.200 The GOP has gotten better on trade.

00:26:44.040 The GOP has gotten better on national identity.

00:26:46.820 The GOP has gotten better on the social issues.

00:26:49.020 The GOP, there were Republicans campaigning for partial birth abortion in the 90s.

00:26:54.320 The GOP has gotten better on that. 0.96

00:26:55.520 Then when the GOP had a little dalliance embracing gay marriage, they've turned back on that one too. 0.89

00:27:00.500 The GOP has gotten better on foreign intervention.

00:27:02.300 So I just, I don't really know what changed about the GOP.

00:27:07.620 I'd be curious.

00:27:08.020 Maybe we should have Tucker on to talk about it because I don't know.

00:27:11.160 It seems to me the change is more just in his perspective rather than in the GOP or Trump

00:27:15.700 itself.

00:27:16.200 In any case, though, I'm sympathetic to the view that we want some independence.

00:27:19.340 We don't want to be shills and partisans.

00:27:21.240 Dante is this famous line that his grandfather tells him in Paradise, in the Divine Comedy,

00:27:26.720 where he says,

00:27:27.240 It will be better for you to be a party of yourself because you're going to be betrayed

00:27:35.660 by all these elements of your party and the other party.

00:27:37.700 And so I'm sympathetic to that. But if you are going to participate in politics, it's a team sport.

00:27:42.540 So you pick one of the teams, and you try to reform that team from within. You try to beat

00:27:46.540 the other team, crucially. If you take yourself out of that, you're going to embrace a kind of

00:27:53.120 political quietism that cedes the ground to your opponents. Maybe we should have Tucker on to talk

00:27:58.100 about it. I don't know. In any case, speaking of political independence, the Pope is criticizing

00:28:03.660 the free market. Is this heresy? Is this a betrayal of John Paul II? The man who destroyed

00:28:09.400 communism? Is he a woke, globalist, liberal, communist pope? We'll get to that. First,

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00:29:34.480 promotion details. America, the 4th of July is next weekend. The cutoff to ensure that your

00:29:40.980 Mayflower cigars arrive in time is closing. You must order by this Thursday, June 25th at midnight

00:29:48.060 Eastern. I'm smoking the delicious Mayflower Dawn right now. Delicious. This Thursday, June 25th,

00:29:56.300 if it's not in before then, we cannot guarantee your Mayflower cigars will arrive in time

00:29:59.560 to enjoy on the 4th. You need to enjoy America 250, the right way fireworks, various grilled

00:30:04.540 meats and Mayflower cigars. Do not miss out on the historic celebration. Lawyers tell me you must be

00:30:08.880 18, sorry, 21 years or older to order. Void where prohibited. Conditions and exclusions apply. Can

00:30:15.480 you believe this? Can you believe that we used to be a proper country and you could smoke at 18?

00:30:21.780 And some of us who are Italian Americans from New York maybe had our cigars starting about 15.

00:30:25.740 And now you have to be 21 years. You're going to have to be 50. You're going to have to be

00:30:28.620 Drew's age pretty soon to have your first cigar. Okay. I want to get to the Pope on the free

00:30:32.720 market and his criticism of the free market. I want to get to Dr. Fauci. But before we get to

00:30:38.660 any of that. I want to bring on Mr. Ben Shapiro with his brilliant Harvard Law School legal

00:30:46.100 knowledge to talk about Whoopi Goldberg's suggestion that President Trump go to jail

00:30:51.580 for repainting the reflection pool in Washington, D.C. Before we bring on Ben, here's Whoopi.

00:30:57.520 he is claiming that vandals are to blame he says they illegally placed chemicals in the water

00:31:09.780 and left a 300-foot gash in the pool now five people are said to have been arrested

00:31:19.220 he says a 10 year prison sentence will be strictly enforced oh well if he's saying he's

00:31:28.820 going to jail for 10 years i'm gonna let him go because i mean it seems to me

00:31:39.640 that had he not messed with the pool,

00:31:45.200 you know, it would still be a reflecting pool

00:31:48.860 instead of a liquid jungle,

00:31:52.420 which is what it looks like.

00:31:54.200 I want somebody to sue

00:31:56.020 because if a contractor did this at your house,

00:31:59.500 this is what you would do.

00:32:01.280 I think the country needs to say,

00:32:06.400 we're suing you, suing you for doing this.

00:32:09.540 without our permission and we're suing the people who who did it because clearly they didn't know

00:32:16.120 what they were doing okay i think i got i think i've got whoopi's argument i think i now i know

00:32:21.060 ben first of all thank you for coming on well i mean first of all congratulations on making

00:32:28.660 your 2000th episode i vowed on your 1000th episode you would not make your thousand and

00:32:32.740 first episode and yet here you are a thousand episodes later and you are still here so congrats

00:32:39.160 on, if nothing else, your durability.

00:32:41.020 Well done.

00:32:41.540 Thank you.

00:32:42.060 I appreciate that.

00:32:43.360 Well, one, thank you for, at the very least,

00:32:46.400 the benign neglect to allow this show to continue

00:32:49.940 as you're focused on other things.

00:32:52.820 I know that, Ben, you went to Harvard Law School.

00:32:55.980 Whoopi, I think, went to Stanford or Yale Law School.

00:32:58.460 I forget which one.

00:33:00.940 That was after her Rhodes Scholarship.

00:33:03.900 What do you make of her legal argument here

00:33:06.560 that Trump, by repainting the reflecting pool,

00:33:08.720 has committed the very crimes he's accusing the vandals of committing.

00:33:12.900 I mean, it's a brilliant, it's a brilliant argument.

00:33:15.300 I mean, I've rarely heard outside of, you know, Atticus Finch,

00:33:18.960 argumentation, this brilliant.

00:33:20.780 It's really like something that, you know,

00:33:22.900 Justice Scalia might have written, basically.

00:33:25.520 It's always exciting when Whoopi decides to sign into chat

00:33:28.060 with regard to her legal analysis of the situation.

00:33:30.680 Can I just point out that I think actually what's going on

00:33:32.620 with the reflecting pool is the best America 250 thing ever

00:33:35.940 because the entire country is apparently enthralled 1.00

00:33:38.680 with this idiot story about a dumb pool 1.00

00:33:40.920 that I don't care about. 1.00

00:33:42.400 That is what happens when you have the richest country

00:33:45.000 in the history of the world.

00:33:46.520 That we are all so bored and rich

00:33:48.300 that we can basically afford to sit around

00:33:50.580 and caterwaul about amoebas in a pool

00:33:54.320 that exists for most of us thousands of miles away. 0.84

00:33:57.320 You know what they're not doing in like Russia

00:33:59.040 or Ukraine or Iran or Saudi today?

00:34:02.380 Worrying about a random pool in a place

00:34:04.620 that was possibly refaced not properly

00:34:07.160 and also might have been vandalized.

00:34:10.340 It's a great signifier that America is doing fine,

00:34:13.540 that we are all deeply worried

00:34:14.680 about the color of a reflecting pool

00:34:16.460 in the middle of the summer when the algae grow.

00:34:19.480 That is maybe the most hopeful news story

00:34:21.740 I guess I've heard in weeks.

00:34:23.640 And, you know, Whoopi here,

00:34:25.020 she conflates a couple of things.

00:34:25.960 She suggests a criminal charge for Trump

00:34:29.900 based on what he's suggesting.

00:34:31.360 She then says someone should sue

00:34:32.800 because the pool didn't come out precisely to her liking.

00:34:36.140 And it does seem there's a real political story under this,

00:34:39.160 which is that they still really hate this guy

00:34:41.260 and they still actually do want him to go to jail.

00:34:43.600 I mean, maybe Whoopi's half joking here,

00:34:45.120 but in every joke, there's a little bit of truth.

00:34:46.880 And I do wonder, as we look,

00:34:50.540 still a little far ahead,

00:34:51.860 but we're looking toward the end of the Trump era,

00:34:54.660 are they gonna try to put him in jail again?

00:34:57.380 Are they ever going to get over it?

00:35:00.100 Oh, absolutely.

00:35:01.100 They will, right?

00:35:02.800 Yes, 100 percent, 100 percent. And this is why, you know, I heard you talking about the whole Tucker, I'm leaving the Republican Party thing, which, you know, listen, I've been calling for ideological borders for a long time.

00:35:12.560 So I'm also in favor of ideological self-deportation. So self-deportation is a perfectly fine policy for those who are illegal immigrants into the Republican Party and take advantage of our culture and values and refuse to assimilate. 0.98

00:35:23.400 They can leave. It's OK. But, you know, the thing. Are you calling to send Tucker to Bukele's prison camp or anything? Can we make news on this show or? 1.00

00:35:32.800 I mean, I'm not calling for him necessarily to be sent there.

00:35:36.440 But if you wound up, no, we're not doing that.

00:35:38.680 But if he decides to self-deport to his house in Qatar, that is perfectly fine with me. 0.88

00:35:43.260 In any case, when you do that, when you have people in the Republican Party who keep saying that they're going to leave because they're pissed off with Iran. 0.98

00:35:51.260 By the way, I'll point out, I'm not super happy with our current Iran policy. 1.00

00:35:54.900 I'm sticking around and voting for the Republicans because I don't want these schmucks to win in November. 1.00

00:35:59.180 And this is, I think, the biggest thing that you've been pointing out for a while, which is, you know, the alternative to whatever is going on, whatever the issues we have with what's going on on any of the sides. 0.98

00:36:08.880 The alternative is these people who are literally standing there protesting in favor of algae and calling for their political opponents to be jailed on the basis of they just don't like them.

00:36:18.780 And so if you think that that everything that we saw under Joe Biden has gone away permanently, whenever people say woke is dead, woke is not dead.

00:36:25.980 woke is just asleep and it is perfectly capable of waking up at any second and being significantly

00:36:31.100 worse than it ever was, by the way. If you think that it's going away or that it's moderated or

00:36:34.840 something, that is absolutely untrue. The left, Unleash, will come for revenge, not just on Trump,

00:36:40.740 but on everybody who just doesn't share their value system. And I think that's what you're

00:36:44.160 seeing there. I totally agree. This is one where I get the impulse to say, well, not everything is

00:36:51.620 going exactly as I want and, oh, the GOP is imperfect and, oh, I prefer this policy. I get

00:36:57.200 it, of course. And look, I love cigars and port and tweed and talking about beautiful ideas in

00:37:03.940 the realm of forms. It feels great. Light a nice fire and a nice cozy study. Wouldn't that be fun?

00:37:09.680 But as much as I enjoy the purity of that experience, politics is not pure. It's ugly

00:37:15.840 and mucky and messy. And it involves being on teams with people who you don't like or who you

00:37:21.600 don't think are competent or who, you know, and to your point, but you say, I don't like the Iran

00:37:26.100 policy either from the exact opposite direction. But you say, I'm not thrilled with that, but I'm

00:37:30.540 sticking on the team. I'm going to try to change the team from within to some degree, but we got

00:37:34.620 to focus on who the big threats are. I totally agree. The impulse to just kind of walk away from

00:37:39.640 politics, I don't have it. I don't know, which is why I'm still here at 2000 episodes and which is

00:37:44.520 why i'll be clinging to my desk at episode 4000 as you drag me kicking and screaming you say enough

00:37:49.920 i've had it with the cigars you're leaving the studio michael i will still be clinging to it

00:37:53.280 because it just seems to me that the political project is something we are called to do and to

00:37:58.060 your point it's a great rejoinder ben which is that you in countries that have uh really

00:38:03.660 explosive civil strife you don't get to sit around debating a swimming pool you don't get to do it

00:38:09.260 And it's actually a privilege to be able to do so.

00:38:12.840 I think that's exactly right.

00:38:14.120 And again, listen, I'm sympathetic to the idea

00:38:15.820 that there are times when you do have to walk away

00:38:17.480 so that you can walk back in in the future, right?

00:38:19.360 I mean, that was actually my perspective in 2016

00:38:21.380 where I didn't actually vote for the presidency.

00:38:23.460 And then by 2020, I realized like,

00:38:25.060 this is the world that we live in

00:38:26.000 and we have to vote for one of these two parties

00:38:27.540 because one of them is going to win

00:38:28.760 and one of them is going to lose.

00:38:30.160 And I think that your point that you were making earlier,

00:38:32.680 and I was listening in, by the way,

00:38:33.860 I thought it was brilliant up until the very moment

00:38:35.780 you started quoting Dante in Italian,

00:38:37.240 at which point I have to say, Michael,

00:38:39.100 That is not you're you're probably if you're looking for, like, total available market, I feel like that is limiting your total available market, quoting Dante in the original Italian in the media on your show.

00:38:48.780 Yeah. Yes. The populist, the populist angle to quoting Dante in the original Italian is limited.

00:38:54.900 I mean, I'm just going to put that out there as a tactical matter. But if the if this sort of idea is that, you know, the that you're going to walk away, then you're going to walk back in.

00:39:05.620 Like your point is really well taken, which is that the Republican Party has moved in the direction of a lot of the people who are now complaining about the most over the course of the last 10 years in a lot of different ways.

00:39:16.920 It's gotten more conservative in a lot of different ways.

00:39:18.780 It's also gotten bigger government in a lot of ways I don't like over the course of the last 10 years.

00:39:23.280 I mean, there have been a lot of changes in the in the Republican Party.

00:39:26.100 Some of them I like, some of them I don't.

00:39:27.480 But again, when it comes right down to it in November, one of these parties is going to have a lot more control. 0.95

00:39:32.540 And I'd prefer that it not be the party that is busily attempting to trans the kids, which, again, that will come back. 0.84

00:39:38.180 If you think that's not if you think that's gone away, it's never coming back. 1.00

00:39:40.940 Nonsense. That absolutely 100 percent will come back.

00:39:43.080 Yeah, that's right. The party that is still wants to trans the kids, which is the crazy, craziest ideological policy of the last ever. 0.95

00:39:50.860 And and the party that wants to jail its opponents and the party that wants to do violence against us. 0.80

00:39:56.040 and they're pretty open about it. 0.69

00:39:57.580 I totally agree.

00:39:58.380 All right, Ben, I'm going to let you go do your show.

00:40:00.680 I'm going to finish my 2000th episode

00:40:02.160 and we'll see if I make it to 2001.

00:40:04.440 In any case, I appreciate you, one,

00:40:07.160 for helping to give me my entire career

00:40:10.580 and letting this show stay on for 2000 years.

00:40:13.380 And everybody will go watch your show after this.

00:40:16.740 Thanks, Michael.

00:40:17.520 Thank you.

00:40:20.080 The ScoreBet app here with trusted stats

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00:40:23.800 Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game?

00:40:25.840 Well, statistically speaking...

00:40:27.380 Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions. 0.97

00:40:31.860 That's not really what I do.

00:40:34.000 Is that because you don't have any knees? Or...

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00:40:50.440 Hungry now.

00:40:53.680 Now.

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00:41:00.640 grab an O'Henry bar to satisfy your hunger.

00:41:04.440 With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts

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00:41:13.000 Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today.

00:41:15.880 O'Henry, O'Henry.

00:41:18.860 That was a Freudian slip where I said 2,000 years.

00:41:21.140 I meant 2,000 episodes.

00:41:22.200 We're looking ahead to 2,000 years of my show.

00:41:24.040 folks smash the like button and subscribe also check us out on spotify where you can download

00:41:28.780 full episode audio and video to watch or listen whenever you want without using your data do not

00:41:34.100 miss an episode my favorite comment yesterday from spotify is from nope who says michael you

00:41:39.180 need to run for office that's very kind of you i say you need to run for office your platform can

00:41:43.060 be make america normal again or mana with the tagline leading us to the promised land that is

00:41:49.040 freaking good. That is good. Mana. Mana. Make America normal again. Ooh, that's significant.

00:41:58.900 You might, look, you might have convinced me. I'm not eager at this moment to run for office

00:42:04.160 because it's a terribly thankless job that these days can land you in prison or dead.

00:42:11.160 And you have to be away from your family a lot. You don't make any money. And it's not the nicest

00:42:17.420 capitalist career, but it is public service. And if I can run with a cool tagline like that,

00:42:21.760 maybe I will. Okay. Speaking of political independence and confounding ideological

00:42:28.260 purity, Pope Leo XIV has just come out. He's gone viral for criticizing the free market.

00:42:36.040 Is he a woke globalist, world economic forum, communist pope? What did he say?

00:42:41.600 What did he say? Here's what he said. He said, it is important to resist the commodification

00:42:46.680 of basic human needs. Food, water, and healthcare cannot be subordinated to market considerations

00:42:53.700 or geopolitical interests. Access to adequate food is a fundamental human right grounded in

00:42:58.300 the dignity of every person. Meeting this need not only alleviates suffering, but also addresses

00:43:02.160 underlying causes of geopolitical instability. Indeed, food security is an essential component

00:43:06.540 of global and integral security. And cue all of the charges that he's a communist, he's betraying

00:43:12.700 his conservative predecessors, Benedict XVI, and John Paul II, the great conqueror of communism.

00:43:20.440 Is this out of step with the Catholic tradition? People say, food costs money. What are you

00:43:24.240 talking about? It can't be a commodity. Food costs money. Healthcare costs money. Shelter

00:43:27.160 costs money. What did JP II say? JP II wrote an encyclical called Centesimus Annus, 100 years,

00:43:34.000 on the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, which is the beginning of Catholic social teaching,

00:43:39.240 written by Leo's predecessor, Leo XIII. And here's what John Paul II said. This is after

00:43:44.460 the fall of communism. He says, it would appear that on the level of individual nations and of

00:43:48.300 international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources

00:43:53.260 and effectively responding to needs. Boom, owned. Pope JP II owns Pope Leo XIV, right?

00:44:00.040 Not quite, because JP II goes on. He says, but this is true only for those needs which are solvent

00:44:06.040 insofar as they are endowed with purchasing power

00:44:08.740 and for those resources which are marketable,

00:44:11.380 not like you can sell them online,

00:44:13.100 but marketable meaning they have a place in the market

00:44:14.940 insofar as they are capable of obtaining

00:44:16.820 a satisfactory price.

00:44:18.640 But there are many human needs

00:44:20.260 which find no place on the market.

00:44:21.940 It is a strict duty of justice and truth

00:44:24.020 not to allow fundamental human needs

00:44:25.980 to remain unsatisfied

00:44:27.360 and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish.

00:44:30.340 It is also necessary to help these needy people

00:44:32.480 to acquire expertise,

00:44:33.920 to enter the circle of exchange,

00:44:35.260 and to develop their skills in order to make the best use of their capacities and resources.

00:44:40.380 He goes on, but this is crucial.

00:44:42.520 He says the free market is the most efficient way to allocate resources,

00:44:45.700 but we need to recognize that there are some resources that are not solvent,

00:44:51.040 and there are some that are not marketable.

00:44:53.460 Sorry, there are some needs which are not solvent,

00:44:54.880 and there are some resources which are not marketable and don't achieve a satisfactory price.

00:44:59.040 What he's saying, in other words, is perfectly harmonized with what Pope Leo is saying.

00:45:04.340 He's saying, look, yeah, JP2 is focusing more explicitly on the free market and the goods of

00:45:08.460 the free market. But he's saying, look, some people are destitute. And the arch ideological

00:45:14.120 laissez-faire capitalist would say, too bad, you're on your own. I got mine and my property is 100%

00:45:19.660 perfectly, absolutely mine. And too bad, I'm not my brother's keeper and you can go starve on the

00:45:24.300 street. But what JP2 and Leo are saying is, no, no, no. When there are needs that are not solvent,

00:45:30.360 when there are resources that are not marketable, that can't obtain a satisfactory price in the 0.98

00:45:35.240 market, we have an obligation to intervene because men have dignity, which is prior to

00:45:41.200 market regulations. And so that doesn't necessarily mean that you need some big

00:45:47.700 government, some central planner to step in, though there probably is a role for the government.

00:45:51.320 It could be charity. It could be the role of the church. It could be corporate philanthropy.

00:45:55.500 But in any case, we actually do have an obligation to the poor people, to the elderly people, to the people who can't really take care of themselves, to the people who don't really find a place within the free market.

00:46:08.020 We furthermore have an obligation to help try to bring those people into the market so that resources can be allocated efficiently.

00:46:14.360 There is, in other words, a right to property and a universal destination of goods.

00:46:18.400 And man actually does have a dignity that is prior to all of those market considerations, market considerations that nonetheless are important when we're talking about the good of properly allocating resources in a society.

00:46:28.980 There's really no contradiction whatsoever from what Leo is saying.

00:46:32.460 He's not being as explicit in his promotion of the goods of the free market, but there is no contradiction here between him and JP II, who everybody loves, and the long story of Catholic social teaching.

00:46:43.520 This is really important.

00:46:44.520 I mean, JP2 even goes on and says, in third world contexts, certain objectives stated by Rerun Novarum remain valid and in some cases still constitute a goal to be reached if man's work and his very being are not to be reduced to the level of a mere commodity.

00:46:58.960 That's what this is about, okay?

00:47:01.220 That's what this is about.

00:47:02.340 We have responsibilities one to another.

00:47:04.680 We are not mere commodities.

00:47:06.260 And we employ the goods that come out of market dynamics for something greater.

00:47:12.800 That's how it works.

00:47:13.380 Totally agree.

00:47:14.520 Sorry, trying to write off the Pope as a commie, not going to work today,

00:47:18.040 unless you want to do the same thing to John Paul II.

00:47:20.140 Okay, before we bring on, I have a very, very wonderful guest who's coming on for the member

00:47:25.820 segmentum. Before we do that, though, I got to get to Rand Paul. Sorry, Rand Paul and Congressman

00:47:31.460 Brad Wenstrup totally nailing Anthony Fauci because Tulsi Gabbard, as she is leaving the

00:47:37.500 office of the Director of National Intelligence because her husband is sick with cancer.

00:47:41.580 She goes out.

00:47:42.300 We covered it a couple days ago.

00:47:43.720 She goes out and says, hey, I'm releasing a bunch of documents that show that Fauci

00:47:47.700 misled you during COVID.

00:47:49.340 He funded the kind of research that led to COVID at the place where COVID broke out,

00:47:54.180 and he lied about it, and he perjured himself.

00:47:57.180 And all of the Fauci defenders, they're going to try to sweep this under the rug.

00:48:01.000 All the liberals who lock down your life, they're going to try to sweep this under the rug.

00:48:04.440 But they have this guy dead to rights.

00:48:06.220 There are two claims that are being made here by Tulsi Gabbard.

00:48:08.940 One is that Fauci perjured himself when he was talking about the funding of gain-of-function research.

00:48:13.960 This would have happened in 2021, Senate testimony with Rand Paul.

00:48:17.300 Here's the clip.

00:48:19.180 Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan?

00:48:26.260 Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect

00:48:32.380 that the NIH has not ever and does not now

00:48:37.260 fund gain-of-function research

00:48:40.980 in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

00:48:43.180 Do they fund Dr. Barrett?

00:48:45.300 We do not fund gain...

00:48:46.880 Do you fund Dr. Barrett's gain-of-function research?

00:48:49.740 Dr. Barrett does not doing gain-of-function research,

00:48:53.100 and if it is, it's according to the guidelines,

00:48:56.480 and it is being conducted in North Carolina.

00:48:59.400 Yeah, we you are entirely Dr. Paul, Senator Paul, you are entirely incorrect.

00:49:06.080 We do not fund gain of function. And then what happened? What did we find out? We found this

00:49:10.420 out when I did my show still available on Daily Wire, Fauci Unmasked. We found out, no, he actually

00:49:14.520 did fund that research. He funded EcoHealth Alliance under Peter Dejac, and they funded

00:49:19.860 gain of function research, this kind of research in Wuhan. We've come to find out it was it was

00:49:25.420 research on bat coronaviruses. So that's perjury, right? Well, the way Fauci's getting out of that

00:49:31.840 is he's relying on a very, very narrow definition of gain-of-function research that has all of these

00:49:36.420 technical criteria that was instituted in 2017. Gain-of-function research just means beefing up

00:49:41.200 viruses to make them more potent. That's the general definition. But there is a very, very

00:49:46.340 narrow regulatory definition that maybe the kind of research that he was funding doesn't quite

00:49:52.760 meet maybe. But this is cheap. I mean, this is real deception. It's like a 24-year-old saying

00:49:57.900 that he's a kid. You say, hey, 24-year-old, are you an adult? And he'll say, no, no, no,

00:50:01.720 I'm a child. Because there's some research in psychology that shows that the brain doesn't

00:50:07.660 fully develop until age 25. So technically, I'm a child. I'm not an adult. You say, well, look,

00:50:11.960 I mean, maybe there is some really narrow definition by which you can try to make that

00:50:15.740 really tenuous argument. But in plain language, if you were, for instance, speaking to a bunch

00:50:20.600 of senators, you wouldn't be using that highly debatable and technical language. You would have

00:50:26.700 to answer the question bluntly, and he didn't. He deceived here. But whatever, it's passed the

00:50:30.760 statute of limitations for perjury. That was five years. It's now passed the five-year mark on the

00:50:36.220 2021 testimony. So Fauci is going to get away with that. But that's not the only claim against

00:50:40.700 Fauci. Fauci was then asked, also under oath, did you ever speak to the intelligence community

00:50:46.080 about this kind of gain-of-function research regarding COVID.

00:50:50.040 Here's Fauci's answer.

00:50:52.180 Before, during, or after the COVID-19 pandemic,

00:50:55.580 did you speak to the FBI, CIA, DIA, or any U.S. intelligence agency

00:51:01.020 concerning viral research of any kind?

00:51:07.520 What time frame are you talking about, sir?

00:51:10.260 I said before, during, or after.

00:51:14.900 Could you be...

00:51:15.820 Could you remind me what time?

00:51:17.280 Any time.

00:51:18.380 Did you speak to the FBI, CIA, DIA, or any U.S. intelligence agency

00:51:24.760 concerning viral research of any kind?

00:51:30.220 I can't give you the specifics of it,

00:51:32.480 but back in the time of the anthrax attacks,

00:51:36.160 we certainly had a number of briefings.

00:51:39.580 We talk about anthrax, we talk about COVID.

00:51:42.060 By agencies that were intelligence agencies.

00:51:45.100 I don't remember who they were.

00:51:46.400 It could have been any of the above that you mentioned.

00:51:49.180 But not as related to, say, COVID-19.

00:51:52.420 Not to my knowledge about COVID.

00:51:54.600 There it is.

00:51:55.540 There is the lie.

00:51:56.720 There is the perjury.

00:51:58.460 Did you ever have conversations with the intelligence community about the origin of COVID-19?

00:52:04.600 And you know they got him dead to rights here because Fauci's always got a quick answer.

00:52:08.240 You're totally, completely incorrect.

00:52:10.280 And there he obfuscates.

00:52:12.020 It's like the kid in class who doesn't know the answer or who doesn't want to give the answer.

00:52:16.320 Yes, Johnny, what's your, could you, hold on, you, and he'll repeat the question.

00:52:20.960 What time?

00:52:21.920 Before, during, or after COVID.

00:52:23.660 Could you be a little, what, could you repeat that, please?

00:52:27.060 And he says, not to my knowledge, no.

00:52:29.120 What Tulsi releases is troves of CIA memoranda, CIA briefings, whistleblower reports, intelligence

00:52:35.700 community documents showing that Fauci did, in fact, have these conversations about the origin

00:52:40.940 of COVID, and he was trying to cover it up. He was trying to suppress it. Then he perjured

00:52:44.860 himself under oath, and that was in 2024. So the statute of limitations has not run out.

00:52:48.260 The problem is Joe Biden gave him an unprecedented blanket presidential pardon.

00:52:53.500 Every president uses pardons, but what Biden did was unique in that Biden pardoned people,

00:52:59.320 including his criminal son, for 10 years of any federal crimes that might have been committed.

00:53:06.640 In other words, he didn't specify the crime for which he would be pardoned. And this is not,

00:53:14.100 probably the presidential pardon power is too absolute to really question,

00:53:19.060 but this is not found in American history. Even when Jimmy Carter gave these blanket

00:53:23.640 pardons to the draft dodgers, he was giving the pardons for a specific crime. 0.62

00:53:27.160 In the case of Fauci, he just got this blanket, I think, dubious presidential pardon.

00:53:30.440 You're not going to overcome it.

00:53:32.340 He's going to get away with it.

00:53:33.860 But he lied.

00:53:35.420 He perjured himself.

00:53:36.840 They've got this guy dead to rights.

00:53:38.840 He misled you.

00:53:39.840 He screwed up your life.

00:53:41.140 He funded the research.

00:53:42.560 He tried to cover up his own crimes.

00:53:44.500 He'll never pay a penny for it.

00:53:46.340 He'll never spend one second in an orange jumpsuit.

00:53:48.560 But he did that.

00:53:49.800 They were entirely in the wrong.

00:53:51.400 They were deceitful. 1.00

00:53:52.300 They were liars. 1.00

00:53:52.900 And they're going to try to do it again. 0.98

00:53:54.100 Keep that in mind next time.

00:53:55.080 Okay.

00:53:55.480 The rest of the show continues now.

00:53:56.900 You do not want to miss it.

00:53:58.000 Become a member.

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The Michael Knowles Show - June 23, 2026

Ep. 2000 - Tucker Carlson Leaves The Republican Party

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