Ep. 223 - Trump’s Moral Clarity At The UN
Summary
Trump's speech to the United Nation's General Assembly is one of the best I've ever seen, and it's not even close to being one of my favorite speeches of all time. I'm not even joking when I say that.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Did you know that over 85% of grass-fed beef sold in U.S. grocery stores is imported?
00:00:05.240
That's why I buy all my meat from GoodRanchers.com instead.
00:00:08.900
Good Ranchers products are 100% born, raised, and harvested right here in the USA from local family farms.
00:00:14.600
Plus, there's no antibiotics ever, no added hormones, and no seed oils.
00:00:21.280
Best of all, Good Ranchers delivers straight to your door for added convenience.
00:00:24.760
So lock in a secure supply of American meat today.
00:00:26.980
Subscribe now at GoodRanchers.com and get free meat for life and $40 off with code DAILYWIRE.
00:00:32.420
That's $40 off and free meat for life with code DAILYWIRE.
00:00:37.780
That bumbling nincompoop, Donald Trump, who's a total rube and doesn't know anything and only accidentally became president anyway,
00:00:45.000
just gave one of the top 10 speeches in presidential history at the United Nations.
00:00:51.640
Then, Brett Kavanaugh is guilty until proven innocent.
00:00:54.240
Michael Moore's movie Bombs, Cruz gets run out of a restaurant, and the GOP is more popular than it's been in years.
00:01:00.260
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:01:14.460
I was up, you know, this speech wasn't that long ago.
00:01:20.320
If you haven't seen it, we will go through it point by point.
00:01:22.780
It was one of the great presidential speeches, which is why the UN audience absolutely hated it.
00:01:30.020
Before we get to that, we have to thank our wonderful sponsor.
00:01:33.720
And, you know, I couldn't have watched this speech without them.
00:01:35.600
I couldn't open my eyes in the morning without them.
00:01:40.160
National Coffee Day is coming up September 29th.
00:01:42.540
You know what is going to be in my morning mug.
00:01:45.000
Black Rifle Coffee, mixed in with some nice little helping of leftist tears.
00:01:51.900
I put in leftist tears, and it's very delicious.
00:01:58.480
You just pick your blend, the amount that you want.
00:02:00.820
Black Rifle ships your coffee right to your door every month.
00:02:03.860
You don't have to run out of coffee like I always would do, especially when I was single.
00:02:08.680
It's roast to order, guaranteeing you fresh, delicious coffee with every order.
00:02:13.320
The most important thing, number one, is that they make excellent coffee.
00:02:16.860
That's actually all I care about with my coffee, and they really, really do.
00:02:20.160
After that, I love it because they're tied in with veterans' causes, first responder causes.
00:02:27.600
They've got a beautiful gun right on their logo.
00:02:31.880
Right now, visit BlackRifleCoffee.com slash Covfefe.
00:02:38.440
It will become your favorite coffee, as it has mine, BlackRifleCoffee.com slash Covfefe.
00:02:45.080
Don't worry about, you know, all of those other coffee stores that look like homeless shelters now.
00:02:58.460
We don't have enough time to dance around it here.
00:03:01.760
President Trump at the United Nations General Assembly.
00:03:06.000
I really, I know that people say that he is stupid.
00:03:10.380
Even people on the right say this, that he's stupid, that he's a bumbling idiot.
00:03:17.280
But the only argument against that is that he just keeps getting everything right.
00:03:25.480
And you know how you know that is they laughed at him and they mocked him and they jeered him.
00:03:30.780
Here is President Trump getting laughed at at the U.N.
00:03:33.160
My administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.
00:03:52.900
So he says, my administration has accomplished more than almost any other administration.
00:04:02.920
I mean, he had very low expectations to begin with.
00:04:05.500
But everything has gotten better under his watch and in some cases better at record highs.
00:04:10.540
Joblessness, the stock market, foreign affairs have been handled very ably.
00:04:15.820
Protection of rights, expansion of freedom, deregulation.
00:04:20.000
Now, I was very impressed with President Covfefe here.
00:04:23.380
Because typical President Covfefe would just like, he would just turn around and moon the entire audience.
00:04:32.100
But he actually handled it with a little bit of charm.
00:04:42.720
Apparently he writes a lot of these great speeches.
00:04:51.840
The priority of the prioritization of policy was beautiful.
00:04:55.820
It just struck all the right notes at all the right times.
00:05:00.320
Here is President Trump on global governance to the UN itself.
00:05:04.520
Each of us here today is the emissary of a distinct culture, a rich history, and a people bound together by ties of memory, tradition, and the values that make our homelands like nowhere else on earth.
00:05:24.080
That is why America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination.
00:05:35.600
I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions.
00:05:43.100
The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship.
00:05:49.080
We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.
00:05:55.200
From Warsaw to Brussels to Tokyo to Singapore, it has been my highest honor to represent the United States abroad.
00:06:09.700
They were just laughing, oh, ha, ha, ha, oh, Donald, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
00:06:14.560
The first thing I want to point out, because a lot of people on Twitter, all the headlines, all the news headlines are,
00:06:20.660
President Trump gets laughed at at the United Nations.
00:06:29.740
First of all, some of the most horrific countries on earth, Venezuela, Iran, those guys are laughing.
00:06:46.820
People who would take away the rights of their citizens and of citizens around the world to govern themselves.
00:07:02.220
This isn't going to be some fluffy, eccentric speech.
00:07:06.320
The United States will resist global governance by bodies specifically like the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.
00:07:15.840
And, you know, there is a movement right now around the world, especially in Europe, to pull away from these supranational institutions and organizations that take away people's rights to govern themselves.
00:07:37.400
He stands up and, for all intents and purposes, says the U.N. is a dystopian fantasy.
00:07:42.480
And not that it's a wonderful, great, nice dream idea.
00:07:45.720
That it's a bad fantasy because it takes away the rights of people to govern themselves.
00:07:49.680
And he has the courage to go to the U.N. and say, for all intents and purposes, we oppose you.
00:07:55.640
And then he gets into specifics because the way that this point of view is caricatured is that, oh, he's an isolationist.
00:08:05.180
It's going to ignore the international community.
00:08:11.820
But this view, the view of this administration, whether it's Trump's view or not, it is now because he's articulating it, is that we, it's much more nuanced than that.
00:08:24.860
In this vein, we urge the United Nations-led peace process be reinvigorated.
00:08:31.880
But rest assured, the United States will respond if chemical weapons are deployed by the Assad regime.
00:08:50.900
He's saying the peace process in the U.N. wants to keep going on.
00:08:55.380
We're not going to make it our national priority to rebuild a country in Syria or to institute regime change or to do any of these pie-in-the-sky Wilsonian endeavors in Syria.
00:09:11.820
He said, look, you don't have to choose between total isolation and nation-building.
00:09:16.880
You can have a moral minimum here which says, we're going to let this keep going on.
00:09:21.700
We're going to not impose, entirely impose from right above Western liberal democracy on Syria.
00:09:28.300
But, but, if the regime in Syria uses chemical weapons in violation of international treaties, like a butcher in a bloodbath, we will intervene.
00:09:42.980
We're not trying to intervene, but if you make us intervene, we will.
00:09:45.440
We will insist upon a moral minimum in the international order.
00:09:49.280
If you don't meet that moral minimum, we will take your country away.
00:09:54.480
If you do meet that moral minimum, you can govern yourself in peace, unmolested by us.
00:09:59.200
This is a nuanced view, and this is the steel man.
00:10:01.720
This is the serious view that Trump's critics on the left and the right, the Wilsonians and the isolationists, won't acknowledge,
00:10:08.260
which is that there is a middle ground that respects the sovereignty of nations.
00:10:13.780
Then, he goes on into the refugees, and this is where, this is where demagogues also on the left and the right want to hit him,
00:10:21.540
and this is where the nuance of this position is so clear.
00:10:25.840
I commend the people of Jordan and other neighboring countries for hosting refugees from this very brutal civil war.
00:10:36.480
As we see in Jordan, the most compassionate policy is to place refugees as close to their homes as possible
00:10:46.880
to ease their eventual return to be part of the rebuilding process.
00:10:54.660
This approach also stretches finite resources to help far more people, increasing the impact of every dollar spent.
00:11:06.840
We appreciate people who are taking in refugees in neighboring countries, countries like Jordan or wherever,
00:11:15.920
They say, oh, if Europe will not allow itself to be flooded by young Muslim men from failed states
00:11:22.100
who haven't been vetted from Syria, from Afghanistan, from wherever,
00:11:27.520
then if you don't allow that, then you're not compassionate, then you're wicked, then you're evil,
00:11:32.160
you're un-Christian, you're un-Western, you're un-liberal, you're on this, you're that, you're this or that.
00:11:39.540
Barack Obama wanted to flood the country with refugees from Syria.
00:11:45.460
Why on earth would they go from Syria, pass through all the neighboring countries,
00:11:49.840
get into Eastern Europe, Western Europe, cross the Atlantic Ocean, go to the United States?
00:11:55.580
How are you un-Christian if you think that maybe that's not the most efficient way to care for these people?
00:12:00.660
Why? But there are vested political interests in making that happen.
00:12:05.460
There are vested political interests by the left, by the advocates of World Federation,
00:12:10.300
by the advocates of global governing bodies like the United Nations,
00:12:13.900
who want that to happen because they want to erase, for all intents and purposes, national boundaries.
00:12:19.760
President Trump is saying, no, I'm not going to let you call me anti-refugee or anti-compassionate or whatever.
00:12:26.040
However, I think that these people should be taken care of.
00:12:29.060
We should support efforts to take care of them.
00:12:31.460
But it doesn't mean they have to flood countries that are thousands and thousands and thousands of miles away.
00:12:41.980
If we want our dollars, our charity dollars, to go as far as they can, help as many people as they can,
00:12:47.020
why would we be flying all of these people over to the United States or going, you know, thousands of miles through Europe
00:12:55.180
when we could help them in neighboring countries?
00:12:59.220
He says they need to be in those neighboring countries so that they can rebuild their country when the civil war is over.
00:13:04.260
And he's calling their bluff because all the pro-immigration, pro-refugee people say,
00:13:16.900
Well, okay, but if they're going to go to a temporary place, why bring them to America?
00:13:22.740
Of course, what their real purpose is is to bring them all to the West, bring them all to the United States,
00:13:27.520
have them become American citizens in large numbers, and disregard the will of the American people,
00:13:34.780
whether or not they want that many refugees, that many unfetted people,
00:13:38.100
that culture that comes from a war-torn area to come to the United States.
00:13:42.400
And they demagogue on the issue, and they say, if you don't permit that,
00:13:46.140
then you're not living up to your own values, which nobody else lives up to, but also you're un-Christian,
00:14:03.680
And President Trump is being very nuanced here.
00:14:07.780
We want to help them in the way that is best suited for their interests and for their nations and for their countries.
00:14:17.400
It totally exposes the lie, which is that it's not about helping refugees from a particular civil war.
00:14:24.060
It's about transforming the makeup of Western countries in the United States.
00:14:32.500
Now, you know, Barack Obama made Iran the pinnacle of his foreign policy.
00:14:37.240
He was willing to give away everything he had and a lot of things that he didn't have to secure the Iran deal,
00:14:43.720
which for all intents and purposes put Iran on the path to get a nuclear weapon.
00:14:50.500
But the reason he singles out Iran is not just because they're bad guys, although they are bad guys.
00:14:54.420
It has everything to do with the nation state, with nationalism, with the international order.
00:15:01.780
Every solution to the humanitarian crisis in Syria must also include a strategy to address the brutal regime that has fueled and financed it.
00:15:17.540
Iran, Iran's leaders, sow chaos, death, and destruction.
00:15:26.480
They do not respect their neighbors or borders or the sovereign rights of nations.
00:15:36.940
They don't respect the sovereign rights of nations.
00:15:38.540
He points out that they're bad guys and they're brutal and they're all of this.
00:15:41.660
But there are a lot of brutal regimes around the world.
00:15:45.080
And over the course of history, brutal regimes are the norm.
00:15:49.580
So what makes Iran so awful is that Iran undermines the international order and the system of nation states that we've had for 350 years.
00:15:59.280
Since the Iranian revolution decades ago, they try to keep one foot in the international order and one foot out.
00:16:08.340
They'll send their heads of state to speak at Columbia University.
00:16:13.280
They have different agreements with other countries.
00:16:15.980
They'll sign on to fake treaties with the United States under Barack Obama.
00:16:20.260
They'll demand to be treated as though they're serious players in the international community.
00:16:28.460
And they'll fund terrorists all around the world.
00:16:29.880
The largest state sponsor of terror around the world.
00:16:41.180
Why could we tolerate this country having one foot in and one foot out?
00:16:44.880
Either you're in to the system of nations or you're out of it.
00:16:48.600
We've had the system of nations now for 350 years.
00:16:51.040
We'll explain that and explain why it's so important in a second.
00:16:54.180
Because President Trump concludes his speech with a rousing call to defend it.
00:16:57.800
But even institutions like the United Nations in many ways undermine this.
00:17:04.760
By tolerating supranational institutions that remove the sovereignty of independent nations.
00:17:14.100
And he says, you know, you better watch out Assad.
00:17:18.480
But he really singles out Iran as being wrong per se.
00:17:24.580
And it's because of how they behave with regard to nationalism.
00:17:29.060
Then, lest you think that he's only beating up on foreign affairs in the Middle East.
00:17:33.120
Only tackling the most complex issues of the last decades.
00:17:39.900
For decades, the United States opened its economy.
00:17:45.380
The largest by far on earth with few conditions.
00:17:50.520
We allowed foreign goods from all over the world to flow freely across our borders.
00:17:57.260
Yet, other countries did not grant us fair and reciprocal access to their markets in return.
00:18:05.740
Even worse, some countries abused their openness to dump their products.
00:18:17.600
And manipulate their currencies to gain unfair advantage over our country.
00:18:26.340
Because a lot of conservatives now are saying Donald Trump is anti-free trade.
00:18:31.540
There's nothing in that statement that makes him sound anti-free trade.
00:18:35.040
He's not saying that the problem was that we opened up our markets to foreign goods.
00:18:40.780
He's saying the problem is we didn't get their markets in return.
00:18:43.840
Which is what people who have been defending this policy of threatening tariffs have been saying for a while.
00:18:51.180
Which is that this is, we never had free trade.
00:18:59.900
Just to take China alone, they steal our intellectual property.
00:19:05.440
And this is not something that Donald Trump just started talking about.
00:19:08.300
I was on John Huntsman's campaign in the early days of that campaign in 2012.
00:19:14.380
He was running in many ways like a Tea Party candidate.
00:19:16.300
And he was saying we need to force China, about which he knew a lot because he was the ambassador to China.
00:19:22.860
He said we need to force them to stop manipulating our currency and stealing our IP.
00:19:27.540
Now President Trump is actually following through on this, putting a lot of pressure on China.
00:19:34.160
But previously, before the Trump era, there was widespread agreement on this from virtually all flanks of the Republican Party.
00:19:41.240
From the conciliatory, nice tone, you know, more elite end of the party, all the way to the populist end.
00:19:48.000
There was a consensus that you need to force people to play fairly on trade.
00:19:52.360
Now they're attacking him as though he doesn't know anything about economics.
00:19:55.500
Though the strength of our economy right now would seem to suggest maybe those experts are the ones who are mistaken.
00:20:02.380
And it also points out that, first, the logic of the trade war and the trade threats should be simple to everyone.
00:20:16.980
One of the main arguments against tariffs is that they will start a trade war.
00:20:23.220
Because it is expected that rational nations, when they have tariffs imposed on them,
00:20:27.700
when they have unfair trade conditions imposed on them, will respond in kind.
00:20:31.240
But if tariffs are always, in every case, there's no use for even threatening tariffs,
00:20:37.880
The argument for tariffs, or the argument rather against tariffs,
00:20:41.900
undermines the argument against threatening tariffs or against trying to play fairly.
00:20:48.360
He didn't get up and say, we're never doing trade with any other countries.
00:20:56.560
And he said it right to their face, right in the General Assembly.
00:21:03.960
I was waiting for President Trump to rip his mask off,
00:21:09.500
and, you know, put the glasses on and the big glass ring,
00:21:21.020
For similar reasons, the United States will provide no support and recognition to the International Criminal Court.
00:21:30.820
As far as America is concerned, the ICC has no jurisdiction,
00:21:38.780
The ICC claims near universal jurisdiction over the citizens of every country,
00:21:47.200
violating all principles of justice, fairness, and due process.
00:21:51.420
We will never surrender America's sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable global bureaucracy.
00:22:04.600
We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism.
00:22:13.520
Around the world, responsible nations must defend against threats to sovereignty,
00:22:24.060
but also from other new forms of coercion and domination.
00:22:33.120
the United States didn't have to articulate this policy.
00:22:38.160
and spelled out what the State Department was going to do about it.
00:22:45.740
which is going to go in and try to prosecute American soldiers.
00:22:49.560
We will take every action against them that we have to take.
00:22:52.560
But President Trump chose to underline this today at the UN.
00:22:59.520
not just of the wonks and the State Department, whatever.
00:23:02.100
It has the full support of the President of the United States.
00:23:13.860
and Donald Trump is underlining that beautiful thing.
00:23:51.080
To whom are these international organizations accountable?
00:24:13.460
You know, different countries have different ideas.
00:24:44.260
and he's exposing the shallow saccharine sentimentality
00:25:03.340
We recognize the right of every nation in this room
00:25:51.300
for a democratic republic controls the country.
00:26:02.900
maybe they'll all start voting for republicans,
00:26:21.420
It happened at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648
00:26:23.860
because the Catholics could not reclaim empire,
00:26:42.900
But now we find ourselves defending that system.
00:27:24.780
just to remind you that a lot of people in this room
00:27:51.820
Venezuela was one of the richest countries on earth.
00:42:23.460
We believe survivors, except for Karen Monaghan and Juanita Broderick and all the others,
00:42:38.400
if they were abused by Democrats. But we believe random people who come out of the woodwork when
00:42:44.180
Brett Kavanaugh, a virgin until after high school, is up for the Supreme Court. That was too long,
00:42:50.340
so they had to change it to we believe survivors, but they don't believe. Oh my gosh. I wish I could
00:42:57.080
say that these were wacko lefty lunatics. It's not. They're not. They're not. All of these,
00:43:01.500
this was the top trend on Twitter yesterday. We believe survivors. None of these women, by the
00:43:05.720
way, have accused anyone of rape. Not even like the wackiest accusations have involved rape,
00:43:13.240
but that's what they say. We believes or we believes. Okay. So they chase him out of this
00:43:17.640
restaurant. And, and, uh, there's this guy on Twitter. He's a transgender activist named
00:43:23.100
Charlotte Clymer who said, he tweeted out, he said, well, you know, Beto O'Rourke has never
00:43:28.700
gotten chased out of a restaurant. Yeah. Because his opponents aren't hysterical children like the
00:43:33.860
Democrats are. Right. That, yeah, we don't do that. I'm very proud to say we don't do that.
00:43:39.080
But this is, so they scream at Ted Cruz and all, this is not going to play well. We have so much more
00:43:43.660
to get to, but unfortunately we're running late. So I will skip to this point because, uh, you know,
00:43:48.480
a lot of us are wondering how all of this is going to affect the midterm elections, which are coming
00:43:52.940
up again, Democrat, they're coming up in December and close your ears for a second and Republicans,
00:43:57.900
they're coming up in November. Uh, so how is this going to affect the election? Uh, according to Gallup
00:44:05.340
polling, which leans left, it's not a right-wing polling firm. The GOP is more popular than it's been
00:44:10.220
in seven years. You wouldn't know that if you just listened to those shrieking little children,
00:44:15.220
uh, at the restaurant, you wouldn't know that if you were listening to MSNBC or reading the New York
00:44:19.260
Times or the Washington Post or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they, the GOP,
00:44:22.760
the Republican party, not even just Trump, who's also doing well, but the GOP is the most popular.
00:44:28.060
It's been in seven years. They've made, so the favorability is 45%. Democrat favorability,
00:44:34.040
according to Gallup is 44%. The Republicans are more favorable, more favorable to be viewed right now.
00:44:39.880
than Democrats. This, this is up for Republicans from 36% last year. This is a major gain. By the
00:44:46.860
way, since 2008, since, since the election of Barack Obama, Democrats have almost always rated
00:44:52.380
higher and often significantly higher in favorability than Republicans. Now you would say now, a lot of
00:44:58.320
people watching the news would say now Republicans have, they've never been less popular. Oh, it's all
00:45:02.240
awful. It's going to hell in a handbasket. No way. Republicans are historically popular. You won't read
00:45:07.660
about it in the New York Times. You won't see it on NBC, but it's true. There have been major gains in
00:45:11.600
the last few months. Oh, but what about Stormy, Kavanaugh, whatever, Mueller, whatever. Oh, it
00:45:18.140
really should have declined, right? No, it hasn't. Part of the reason for that jump is that the GOP right
00:45:23.800
now is more likely to view their own party favorably, but the Democrats view of the GOP has not declined.
00:45:30.640
It hasn't diminished. A lot of people say, yeah, well, okay. The GOP, Republicans might be viewing their
00:45:36.580
own party more favorably, but they're totally losing Democrats and people on the fence. Not
00:45:40.680
true. That's not reflected in Gallup polling. Democrats view the GOP and the Democrat and their
00:45:45.280
own party, the Democrats, in exactly the same way as they did. The GOP has seen a jump among people of
00:45:51.120
all economic groups and especially middle-class income earners. Why is that? Because they've managed
00:45:56.460
the economy very, very well. This is very good news. It tells me not to believe the polls very much
00:46:01.880
because the generic election polls, for instance, one, because there's no such thing as a generic
00:46:08.460
candidate. People are voting for their own candidates. And because a lot is not reflected,
00:46:13.880
when you inject Trump into questions, a lot of numbers get skewed. And also, you know, when you
00:46:20.760
call up different people, polling has had a number of crises in the last years because of methods of
00:46:26.320
collecting information. But these numbers, in so much as we can look at the polls, these numbers
00:46:31.540
are really pretty good. And if President Trump keeps going up there and offering a choice, not an
00:46:37.540
echo, not being Democrat-lite, not being UN-lite, but going out there and going after them and defending
00:46:44.740
American interests, which are in the interests of the world for America to follow American interests,
00:46:49.860
I could see great popularity. I could see being surprised in November because it's true historically
00:46:58.620
we should lose the House. Maybe we will lose the House. But I could see a real surprise. Now,
00:47:04.200
if they back down, if the Democrats go squishy, if Chuck Grassley doesn't hold this damn vote,
00:47:08.660
if Republicans cave, I could see a blue tidal wave coming and taking us all. The choice is up to our
00:47:15.780
elected officials. But at least one of our elected officials today handled himself very, very well.
00:47:21.560
Okay, that's our show. I got to get out of here. I won't see you tomorrow unless you're in Ohio.
00:47:25.180
Then I will see you. I look forward to going out there. In the meantime, I am Michael Knowles.
00:47:29.620
This is The Michael Knowles Show. I will see you again on Thursday.
00:47:38.120
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Senia Villareal. Executive producer, Jeremy Borey.
00:47:43.900
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay. Our supervising producer, Mathis Glover. And our technical
00:47:49.200
producer is Austin Stevens. Edited by Jim Nickel. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Hair and makeup is
00:47:56.020
by Jesua Olvera. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.