00:02:17.100but it's an older building and they host a lot of functions. I've never been invited to a state
00:02:21.400dinner or anything like that, but from what I hear, it's kind of small and they have a difficulty
00:02:26.300doing that and they have to erect all sorts of tents on the lawn and then it rains and it's just
00:02:31.540not the sort of thing that the global hegemon should do. It seems to me reasonable to think
00:02:36.340that the global hegemon, the greatest country on earth, should be able to have a place for dinner,
00:02:43.640Right. Seems pretty easy. But no, if Trump says the sky is blue, Democrats have to say it's orange.
00:02:50.280If Trump says that the moon is made of rock, they have to say that it's made of green cheese.
00:02:54.280So he goes to build this nice ballroom and the Democrats make a big fuss about it.
00:03:00.380This works its way up to the Supreme Court.
00:03:02.360Now you say, how does he even make it to the Supreme Court?
00:03:05.080Well, the people who claim to have standing are the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
00:03:10.300And that's the key to this case, because after months and months of all this fighting about it, in a 5-4 split decision, you've got the conservatives in the majority, you have the liberals plus John Roberts, again, in the minority, you have Trump winning this case.
00:03:26.040And the argument that the majority made was not even ruling so much on the substance of the case, but rather staying this lower court ruling that was stopping the construction because the president of the United States thought the White House should have a ballroom.
00:03:40.300The reason, the argument of the majority was that the National Trust for Historic Preservation
00:03:46.940does not have standing to go in and stop the President from redecorating the White House.
00:03:53.380The argument from the National Trust for Historic Preservation was basically that when I'm walking
00:03:57.980along Pennsylvania Avenue, I can sometimes squint and see the east wing of the White
00:04:02.180House and so I have a right to tell you what sort of renovations you can make.
00:04:08.760like the most super-duper Karen HOA kind of busybody that you've ever seen in your life.1.00
00:04:15.660And the court ruled, no, you don't have the right to do that. And the court, the lower courts,0.83
00:04:20.980don't have the right to impose this undue burden that would make the renovation much more costly
00:04:26.360and that would, you know, call into question its ultimate success. You don't have the right to do
00:04:31.260that. And so I think the real key here, forget about the ballroom for a second, though there
00:04:35.200is more to say about that. The real key here is who should have more power in a democratic republic
00:04:43.100such as ours? Should the duly elected president who basically won the popular vote have a little
00:04:49.920power, not over everything, not to be a totalitarian dictator, not to be an authoritarian
00:04:55.240ruler, but to like at least renovate the White House a little bit, just like a little bit so
00:05:01.100that people can have dinner there when the prime minister of Uzbekistan comes over for dinner? Can
00:05:05.680the president at least do that? There's those people on the one hand, and then the people who
00:05:10.040say no. One federal judge out of 700 ought to be able effectively to overturn a presidential
00:05:15.800election. No, one organization, the National Trust for Restoric Preservation, ought to overrule the
00:05:21.280president of the United States when it comes to a ballroom. By the way, this point in the ballroom
00:05:26.900is really key here, because it's not just a ballroom. And this is the historical context
00:05:32.160that I think a lot of people were missing. The ballroom is also kind of a military facility.
00:05:39.640So the history of the ballroom, I don't want to belabor the point too much, but the history of
00:05:42.780the ballroom is that in 1942, the East Wing of the White House was built to cover a bomb shelter
00:05:49.700that was under FDR. Truman, who succeeded FDR, renovated the bomb shelter, and he made the
00:05:56.400Presidential Emergency Operations Center. So the PEOC had different military additions added over
00:06:04.020the decades. This is famously where the Vice President Dick Cheney went on 9-11 when George
00:06:08.820W. Bush was away from Washington, D.C. It's an important facility for the U.S. military and for
00:06:14.740the President of the United States. And from the very beginning, the whole point of the East Wing
00:06:20.960of the White House was to cover this thing. So that's a little of the history. There is nothing
00:06:26.500that Trump is doing here that's outside the scope of historical precedent. But I guess the reason
00:06:31.440that it matters to me politically is your reaction to this story is going to depend on where you
00:06:37.100think the threat to your liberty and the threat to your traditional way of life lies. A lot of
00:06:41.680people, especially the libertarian type, say that the real threat to your liberty lies in a president
00:06:45.680who's too powerful. I don't think that's true. I think threats to my liberty and way of life come
00:06:50.300from the deep state, from the unelected bureaucracy, from the extra-governmental institutions,
00:06:56.820the big tech platforms that control our public square, that can censor us and destroy companies
00:07:01.540at will. I think there's a big threat there. From our educational institutions, from Congress,
00:07:05.920which at this point structurally can't really do anything. From the Supreme Court, which very
00:07:09.900often arrogates to itself a lot of powers that it probably shouldn't have. Doesn't really have
00:07:14.660a ton of checks and balances. It's just kind of the wing of the government of last resort.
00:07:19.120So I don't think the threats to our liberty and way of life are coming chiefly from the president.
00:07:23.760I think the president is pretty low on the list of threats to our liberty.
00:07:27.240And so I think by beefing up the powers of the president, at least over pretty basic stuff,
00:07:33.920like can you renovate a room of the White House or a wing of the White House,
00:07:37.960I think that actually would be a good way to check those other powers.
00:07:41.820This will show you, though, your reaction to the story will show you the specific flavor of your politics
00:07:47.480and where you think the threats really lie.
00:09:55.600OK, on top of that, you get Hassan Piker reportedly.
00:09:59.860I don't know. I don't really follow him, but he's reportedly deleted Twitter from his phone.
00:10:04.720I deleted Twitter off my phone. Finally, I'm going back to I'm going back to the basics.
00:10:09.980It's working. And and now Bernie and these other Democrats are saying there is an operation, a political campaign underway to try to make it seem like Hassan Piker is anything more than a Twitch streamer, a podcaster.
00:10:23.680He doesn't have any real influence. Come on. That's a Republican opposite. Was it Republicans who invited him to campaign with you? Was it the Republicans?
00:10:33.220Republicans, I thought actually it was all of the top Democrats, specifically of the0.94
00:10:37.400Abdul El-Sayed, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mamdani wing of the party, they're the ones who invite
00:10:58.980And the Republicans are having a good day because, at least for now, some random non-profit and one federal judge can't stop the President of the United States from beefing up a military center at the White House and giving foreign dignitaries a place to have dinner.
00:11:12.680Okay, there is much, much more to get to. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:11:28.980breaking maha news this is a big one it affects not just politics but it affects my household0.99
00:11:42.980and my budget and it will make you angry but it also makes me kind of happy because it proves me
00:11:50.020right you know the seed oil thing sweet little lisa she totally seed oil pilled me said don't1.00
00:15:54.680It would seem to me the healthiest, most conservative, most prudent way to eat is just like eating kind of normal things in a balanced way.
00:16:40.520You know what I would strongly recommend? My takeaway from this, other than that I've been defrauded of lots of money on potato chips, my main takeaway is we should just be normal, right? We should just be normal.
00:16:55.380and you don't have to just eat like gallons of sauerkraut every day
00:17:01.420along with one stick of butter and a seltzer.
00:22:29.580But it's so much easier if you can prevent it
00:22:31.880from ever happening in the first place.
00:22:33.640And once I realized that was even possible, learning it from doctors that were older than me and had been doing it decades longer than me, yet I never heard about it one time in my dental school education.