Ep. 474 - Don’t You Know There’s A War On？
Episode Stats
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Summary
After Iran launches a missile attack on a U.S. air base in Iraq, the question remains: Are we at war with Iran? We will examine what the strike means, as well as the broader Trump doctrine. Then, Covington kid Nicholas Sandman wins a big payout from CNN as the fake news company settles a $250 million defamation lawsuit. And finally, the New York Times asks the right question and gives a dumb answer in the dumbest article on the internet today.
Transcript
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Iran launches an attack on a U.S. air base in Iraq.
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The missiles flopped and no Americans were killed, at least as of this airing.
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But the question remains, are we at war with Iran?
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We will examine what the strike means as well as the broader Trump doctrine.
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Then, Covington kid Nicholas Sandman wins a big payout from CNN as the fake news company settles a $250 million defamation lawsuit.
00:01:05.600
Speaking of fake news, the media are spreading lots of it when it comes to the Australian wildfires.
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And finally, the New York Times asks the right question and gives a dumb answer in the dumbest article on the internet today.
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All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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Are we at war? Are we going to war? Should we go to war? Is war ever justified?
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First, the facts, because from the moment that this attack was launched last night from Iran onto these U.S. air bases in Iraq,
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there was a ton of opinion, a ton of fake news, very little in the way of facts.
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What do we know? We know that Iran lobbed more than a dozen ballistic missiles at Al-Asad air base in Iraq last night.
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That's the bad news. The good news is, as of right now, Wednesday morning, there are no reported casualties at all.
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No American casualties, no Iraqi casualties, no casualties, period.
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Obviously, information is coming in in drips and drabs, but that's the latest that we have.
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You might be confused to hear that because last night, left-wing media outlets, including MSNBC, Washington Post, Raw Story,
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a ton of them, were reporting without any evidence, just baselessly promoting on television and in the newspaper,
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Iranian propaganda that they had killed or injured 30 Americans, 80 Americans.
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Complete fake news propaganda coming out of Iran, and MSNBC takes that propaganda and airs it without even trying to vet it.
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Same thing with the Washington Post, same thing with Raw Story.
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They said, and they would at least attribute the information to Iranian state media, but that raises the question,
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why is the Washington Post just senselessly regurgitating Iranian state media while Iran is attacking the United States?
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Why is MSNBC pushing Iranian state media on their television network?
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I mean, the good thing is nobody's watching, but the good thing with the Washington Post is nobody's reading.
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But how reckless, how irresponsible, what total fake news, what obvious, clear evidence that the mainstream media
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would rather take the side of Iran than take the side of the duly elected U.S. president
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because they don't like him, because orange man bad.
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We'll see even before the attack how clear this was in the New York Times, but those are the facts right now.
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There was a major, lots of smoke, lots of fire, missile attack on a U.S. base, and yet nobody has been killed.
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So what does this mean that they've attacked this U.S. base, multiple bases?
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Actually, fewer people were killed in this attack last night than have been killed in
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As of late December, there had been 11 Iran-linked rocket attacks on U.S. positions in Iraq, including
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in the green zone, over just the past two months, and they produced American casualties.
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Last night was less bloody for Americans in our conflict with Iran than the previous two
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You might not know that from watching the mainstream media or from watching the big
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fire and fury that was going on on videotape, but actually it was less bloody for Americans
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It means that the White House strategy on Iran is working.
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It means that killing Qasem Soleimani, who is probably looking up on us from the afterlife
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Despite all the missiles and the fizzles and the fire and the fury,
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it actually appears to have de-escalated the conflict with Iran, which had been increasing
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for the past several months and really for the past several years.
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There was a moment where the United States and Iran cooled their tensions.
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This is in particular after we returned to Iraq in 2014, but the only reason for that was
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We stop the hostilities with one another for that period of time.
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We killed the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
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Qasem Soleimani himself is responsible for the deaths of over 600 American servicemen.
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President Trump makes the correct decision to take out Soleimani.
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This was greatly feared by the mainstream media.
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First of all, it was neither an escalation nor a provocation because we'd been dealing
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Iran lobbed some rockets into the dirt and they give Iraq heads up, according to recent
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They apparently told Iraq that they were going to launch this attack.
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And yet there were no Americans that were killed as well.
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Previously, before this attack last night, Trump said, you're not going to be able to predict
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He said that if you strike us, you go and try to kill some Americans, that we will hit
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not just military targets, not just oil fields, but cultural sites as well.
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Maybe it's because I've been paying attention the last three years.
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But when Trump says something, you've got to read it through the mind of a guy who at
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least had the art of the deal ghostwritten for him.
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You've got to read it through the lens of a guy who speaks in hyperbole, who exaggerates,
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who understands that in order for threats to work, you need to have the credible threat
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of violence, but you also need to know when to bluff.
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You need to know when to walk away and when to run.
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And the way that Trump talks is you just never quite know what he's being serious about,
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And so did I fear that Trump was going to attack some 3,000 year old site in Iran?
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I mean, that's the message he's sending to Iran, which is an important message.
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He has since walked it back when they said, are you going to commit a war crime?
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He was sitting in the White House and he said, no, no, I probably won't commit a war crime.
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You want to figure out, Mr. President, whether the Iranian cultural sites would be on any future
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Well, as I said yesterday, it was very interesting.
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They're allowed to blow up everything that we have.
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And we are, according to various laws, supposed to be very careful with their cultural heritage.
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If that's what the law is, I like to obey the law.
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Although we have to be very gentle with their cultural institutions, but I'm okay with it.
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If Iran does anything that they shouldn't be doing, they're going to be suffering the
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It's ridiculous because we should be able to just absolutely glass the country and kill
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If you are trying to get the mullahs to pull back their attacks on US troops, you need to
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I mean, what is on Trump's mind when he's making these comments?
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He's saying, we just took out their top general.
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I want these guys to know that I will rain down fire and brimstone and hellfire and
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And apparently it worked because as of right now, all those missiles landed in the dirt.
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I mean, that's, this is based on initial reports.
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Regardless, until five minutes ago, until President Trump, the opinion that we should
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take a hard line on the mullahs in Iran, the opinion that these guys are some of the worst
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people on earth, the opinion that we should hit them so hard.
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They've never been hit harder in the entire history of Iran, was not a controversial opinion
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until the left decided that anything Trump did was terrible.
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Hillary Clinton, the guy that Trump, that's a Freudian slip, the lady that President Trump
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beat in 2016, years ago, in the recent past, expressed the exact same opinion on Iran that
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Here is the former future president, Hillary Clinton.
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Whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program in the next
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10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would
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That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that,
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because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish,
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Everybody held this view until the left decided orange man bad is their organizing principle.
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The left is currently rallying to the side of Iran, not just on Twitter, not just by
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pushing Iran wartime propaganda on the airwaves and in the Washington Post last night.
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You can see it in two obituaries run side by side in the New York Times on the same day.
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We will get to that in a second, then we'll get to the Covington kids.
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No time has that been clearer than the last few days.
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On the same day, the New York Times runs two obituaries.
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This will show you what side they're on in our international conflicts and in our domestic
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The one op-ed is of Qasem Soleimani, the world's most notorious terrorist who we splattered all
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Qasem Soleimani, master of Iran's intrigue and force, dies at 62.
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The master of the intrigue, the most interesting man in the world.
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He does kind of look like the guy from the commercial who's the most interesting man in
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Here he did until, you know, master of intrigue and force.
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Sam Weich, who was the last coach to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl, but
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who was later fined by the National Football League for barring a female reporter from the
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That's how they refer to the terrorist who hates America, who's trying to kill American
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A coach who led the team to the Super Bowl, but was later fined for barring a female reporter
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That's how they refer to an American football legend.
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So beyond the mainstream media, which have lost, in my view, whatever little shred of
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credibility they had left by pushing Iranian propaganda as they are attacking our soldiers.
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Beyond the question of the mainstream media, the question is, are we at war?
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We've been at war for years, decades at this point.
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We've been in a renewed conflict with Iran for months.
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It was a response to the war that Iran started.
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Well, the trouble with war is that your enemy has a say.
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Your, your enemy gets to have a part in that decision as well.
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The answer to that is, we must be able to deter our enemies.
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Under Obama, we were not able to deter our enemies.
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And things got a lot more dangerous and we got bogged down in a lot more conflicts.
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Under Obama, when Iran provoked us and took our sailors hostage, how did we respond?
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We sent them pallets of cash and apologized to them and thanked them so much for letting
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And we kill their top military official who was very likely going to be a leader of Iran
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It would appear that we have deterred our enemies because their response to our killing,
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one of the most important men in their entire country, was to throw some rockets into the
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dirt and make a big stink about it and get their lackeys at MSNBC and the Washington Post
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But ultimately, as of this moment, not to kill any American servicemen or anybody.
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Then the question becomes, is war ever permissible?
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And this is a question that's been coming up on the right even these days, as well, of course,
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I expect the kind of moral incoherence from the left.
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But when it crops up on the right, that troubles me more greatly because the right is supposed
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I mean, there have been people on the right, even on the far right, as the media calls them,
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Pacifism seems all really nice and happy and huggy and feely.
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C.S. Lewis, the great theologian, the great moralist, he put this very well in a book called
00:19:11.800
The Weight of Glory in an essay in that book called Why I'm Not a Pacifist.
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The key passage, C.S. Lewis writes, you should read the whole essay.
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But the key passage is he writes, the doctrine that war is always a greater evil seems to
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imply a materialist ethic, a belief that death and pain are the greatest evils.
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I think the suppression of a higher religion by a lower or even a higher secular culture by
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Nor am I greatly moved by the fact that many of the individuals we strike down in war are
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That seems, in a way, to make war not worse, but better.
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That two soldiers on opposite sides, each believing his own country to be in the right,
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each at the moment when his selfishness is most in abeyance and his will to sacrifice in the
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ascendant, should kill each other in plain battle, seems to me by no means one of the most
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Of course, one of them, at least, must be mistaken.
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The question is whether war is the greatest evil in the world, so that any state of affairs
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which might result from submission is certainly preferable.
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And I do not see any really cogent arguments for that view.
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The question here is not between wonderful, lovely doves who want us all to get along and
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those awful, terrible warmongers who are willing to send American soldiers overseas to go fight
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The question, when you're looking at these wars, is what is the least bad option?
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What is going to protect American interests and secure peace over the long run and maybe
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not just for the next week or two weeks or three weeks?
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This killing of Soleimani is a great example of it.
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There were many people on the left and some on the right, some prominent people on the right,
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who said the killing of Soleimani is indefensible, it's going to lead to all-out war, it's going
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Obviously, anything can happen in war, but we were already in a state of war.
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The question is, will responding, will offering the credible threat of violence, will reestablishing
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deterrence increase peace and prosperity over the long run, or will it diminish it?
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And it would seem that taking a hard line on Iran, killing their top military guy, has
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reestablished deterrence, even once all the smoke and fire clears from this missile attack
00:21:59.080
It's an important lesson to remember because pacifism is so seductive.
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It's such a, because you want, you want to seem like a peacemaker, but pacifism is not
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In, in the long run, strength establishes peace.
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And weakness, which is what pacifism is, weakness only encourages greater hostilities.
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The, the key story today, I mean, the, the good news is, obviously, no reported casualties
00:22:34.980
at this moment, that the strategy worked, that Iran is making a big spectacle, but as of right
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The underlying story here is the absolute corruption of the media, the absolute disgusting
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But we already knew that the media were absolutely disgusting, the mainstream media.
00:23:05.080
And this is the greatest domestic news story of the new year.
00:23:11.580
Probably the greatest news story of the last 12 months.
00:23:16.100
Nicholas Sandman, the Covington kid who was filmed on video standing at the mall in Washington
00:23:23.680
while a bunch of black supremacists were screaming awful things at him and some maniac Native American
00:23:31.900
And this kid stood with total dignity and just took it, stared at, didn't cede his ground,
00:23:38.640
This kid was smeared all over the mainstream media.
00:23:43.180
Reza Aslan, a former CNN contributor, said he had a punchable face.
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Everybody smearing this kid is a racist and a bigot based on nothing.
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That kid has just settled a lawsuit, a defamation lawsuit with CNN for an undisclosed amount of
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Even if he got $5 million, I don't know, that would be incredible.
00:24:17.520
Because he's also got these lawsuits out at the Washington Post.
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He's got them at all of these media outlets that smeared him.
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He should take them for all that they are worth.
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Because even after it came out that the mainstream media had unfairly smeared Nick Sandman, they
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He did an interview, this kid, on the Today Show.
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During this interview, after it was clear he did nothing wrong, after it was clear that
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he was the victim, she asked him if he wanted to apologize for anything.
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Do you feel from this experience that you owe anybody an apology?
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As far as standing there, I had every right to do so.
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I don't, I, my position is that I was not disrespectful to Mr. Phillips.
00:25:18.860
And, I mean, in hindsight, I wish we could have walked away and avoided the whole thing.
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What a terrific response to an absurd question.
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She says, hey, okay, so, yeah, we figured out that it was those black supremacists who
00:25:36.780
And, yeah, this, this maniac was banging a drum in your face and you were just sort of
00:25:41.380
So, do you, do you want to apologize for standing?
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You're supposed to lie down and let the left and the mainstream media trample over you.
00:25:51.040
So, don't you want to apologize for, you're not allowed to stand.
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You're a Catholic high school kid who was, who was in Washington, D.C. to demonstrate against
00:26:00.120
abortion and to demonstrate for life and to try to put a stop to killing a million babies
00:26:08.640
And he said, uh, no, I'm not sorry for standing at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
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I don't, I'm going to check my 10 commandments here.
00:26:24.340
I don't, yeah, I don't think there's any, any commandment against standing.
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Sandman's attorneys, Todd McMurty and Lin Wood, filed, it was actually more than 250, it was
00:26:40.260
Uh, they said very accurately, CNN was probably more vicious in its direct attacks on Nicholas
00:26:47.260
And CNN goes into millions of individuals' homes.
00:26:54.960
It does not go into millions of people's homes because as far as I can tell, not a soul actually
00:27:00.800
watches CNN, but they do go into a lot of airports for some reason.
00:27:06.220
CNN couldn't resist the idea that here's a guy with a young boy that Make America Great
00:27:13.340
They've still got these lawsuits out at the Washington Post, NBCUniversal.
00:27:19.400
And they're planning to sue Gannett, who are the owners of the National, of the Inquirer,
00:27:29.260
At the beginning of the Trump era, we were told that the greatest threat of this moment
00:27:36.040
The greatest threat was to those wonderful people in the mainstream media.
00:27:59.540
They push Iranian propaganda as Iran is attacking our troops.
00:28:05.960
They push Iranian propaganda on TV and in the newspaper.
00:28:09.400
They go after a high school kid for wearing a hat that says, make America great again.
00:28:15.240
It should be the least controversial statement in the country.
00:28:26.680
Except now, people are pushing back against them.
00:28:33.100
No one should believe, even for one second anymore, the lie that the mainstream media are brave,
00:28:46.260
But the edifice, the entire system, is rotten to the core.
00:28:52.520
And it must be dismantled and rebuilt again, if you want to have any faith whatsoever in the institution of the media.
00:28:59.840
We got to get to Hollywood because there is an amazingly brave man in Hollywood who...
00:29:09.840
He's making the choice to save our entire planet by re-wearing a custom tuxedo a couple of times before discarding it and getting a new one.
00:29:24.080
Comes to us from the fashion designer Stella McCartney.
00:29:28.040
We will get to some other lies on climate change.
00:29:32.380
We'll get to the dumbest article on the internet today.
00:29:34.220
First, I got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
00:29:44.260
That's coming up tomorrow, so get your questions in.
00:29:48.820
If you get to the all-access story, you get to speak to us personally on the website.
00:30:15.880
And just try to understand the amazing work of this living martyr, Joaquin Phoenix.
00:30:27.900
The fashion designer, Stella McCartney, posts a photo on the internet of Joaquin Phoenix.
00:30:33.320
This man is a winner wearing custom Stella because he chooses to make choices for the future of the planet.
00:30:43.340
He has also chosen to wear the same tux for the entire awards season to reduce waste.
00:30:58.980
I was really upset because obviously the sun monster is going to destroy the entire planet unless we all make our sacrifices to the god of carbon tax credits or something.
00:31:10.320
And then one man, Joaquin Phoenix, decided to wear a very, very expensive custom tuxedo.
00:31:25.420
And that alone, the fact that he would wear a really, really nice high-end custom designer tuxedo, that would be...
00:31:40.540
He's going to re-wear it like two or three times before he gets a new one.
00:31:54.460
They say they're just a bunch of craven egotists who prattle on about nonsense and political silliness instead of just doing their jobs.
00:32:06.400
But Joaquin Phoenix and Stella McCartney are saving the world.
00:32:14.220
Maybe I'll wear mine four times before I throw it out and then I can be a living martyr too, a secular saint.
00:32:21.040
Obviously, this is a ridiculous story coming out of Hollywood.
00:32:23.560
The only thing that ever comes out of Hollywood is ridiculous.
00:32:26.480
And in Joaquin Phoenix's defense at the Golden Globes, he actually gave a pretty good speech about how if you care about climate change,
00:32:32.240
you should actually try to do things yourself like, you know, not take private jets and fly commercial.
00:32:37.460
So I don't really mean to beat up on Joaquin Phoenix here.
00:32:40.240
I do sort of mean to beat up on Stella McCartney.
00:32:42.480
She's the one who made this ridiculous and stupid statement.
00:32:45.340
But it's indicative of what we're hearing from the left around the world.
00:32:48.240
Look no further than the fires that are ablaze in Australia.
00:33:00.800
For weeks now, we have been told that Australia's devastating wildfires are caused by climate change.
00:33:08.020
NPR says, all these articles, how climate change is affecting Australia's fires.
00:33:14.340
ABC, how climate change has intensified the deadly fires in Australia.
00:33:18.200
Washington Post, Australia's apocalyptic fires are a warning to the world.
00:33:24.320
The Atlantic, Australia will lose to climate change.
00:33:27.780
BBC, is climate change to blame for Australia's bushfires?
00:33:36.020
Do you know who's to blame for Australia's bushfires?
00:33:40.000
Because now we found out that police have arrested 183 people in connection with these fires.
00:33:47.780
And they've charged 24 people with deliberately setting the fires.
00:33:55.560
Police have taken legal action against another 159 people.
00:33:59.880
Among them are 53 who allegedly failed to comply with a total fire ban.
00:34:04.780
And 47 people who threw a cigarette or a match on the land and helped to start the fires.
00:34:15.300
Did you think, because possibly at the very, very worst case scenario,
00:34:21.880
the earth has warmed like 0.002 degrees in recent years,
00:34:28.300
that that was causing all of Australia to be set on fire?
00:34:36.220
It wasn't this grand apocalyptic vision of climate eschatology
00:34:41.600
that produces all of these models, all of which turn out to be bogus,
00:34:47.060
New York City, not underwater, like the climate scientists, meaning Al Gore, told us it would be.
00:34:51.580
Florida, not underwater, like the climate scientists, meaning Al Gore and political activists,
00:34:59.560
But it doesn't deter them from pushing this narrative.
00:35:05.520
Because the purpose of the mainstream media today is not to report the news.
00:35:12.380
The purpose of the mainstream media is to push a narrow, specific leftist agenda.
00:35:27.960
They try to ascribe major, serious news stories to their own political narrative
00:35:38.420
And then on the other hand, you've got Trump, flawed though he may be.
00:35:43.200
Trump said something the other day that I think is really important
00:35:47.660
when we try to adjudicate his presidency, or when we try to figure out where we stand,
00:35:55.740
Trump said, it's one of my favorite quotes he's said since he's been in office.
00:35:59.580
He was giving a speech to some evangelical Christians.
00:36:08.880
We've done things that nobody thought was possible.
00:36:11.520
We're not only defending our constitutional rights,
00:36:14.180
we're also defending religion itself, which is under siege.
00:36:17.660
America was not built by religion-hating socialists.
00:36:20.160
America was built by church-going, God-worshipping, freedom-loving patriots.
00:36:28.640
Obviously, his statement about America is true.
00:36:36.840
People say he's completely absorbed with himself.
00:36:41.800
He has no sense of what's going on in the world.
00:36:43.620
He's the worst, most wicked, most unethical, most immoral president we've ever had.
00:36:51.120
He slaps his name on every building he's ever looked at, okay?
00:36:58.820
But as for his alleged narcissism, compare it to Barack Obama.
00:37:04.040
Would Barack Obama say, I may not be perfect, ever?
00:37:10.620
I think Barack Obama is the guy who says, seriously, with a straight face, when I am elected, the
00:37:16.940
earth will begin to heal and the oceans, the sea levels will recede and we'll have peace
00:37:27.680
Trump says a lot of things about how he's the only one who can ever do anything.
00:37:30.920
Very often, though, he's kind of making a joke.
00:37:32.580
He's being hyperbolic because at the same time, he'll say things like this, I may not
00:37:38.880
Or a little while ago, he said, I have never had a drink.
00:37:43.920
I may be the only president who's never had a beer.
00:37:46.080
It's probably the only good thing you can say about me.
00:37:55.060
People attack, the left attacks, Christians who support Donald Trump.
00:38:07.540
The simple statement, I may not be perfect, is a profoundly Christian statement.
00:38:14.660
It's a much, much more Christian statement than what we've heard in recent years from politicians.
00:38:20.040
A little touch of humility, beyond the bragging, beyond the hyperbole, beyond all the showmanship.
00:38:37.360
And it also shows you the moral clarity that that humility can give you to say, look, I'm
00:38:47.080
But we've gotten things done that are really good.
00:38:49.260
We're defending our constitutional rights, but we're defending religion.
00:38:53.220
Because America was not built by religion-hating socialists.
00:38:55.960
It was built by church-going God-worshipping freedom-loving patriots.
00:39:02.880
And I think that for Christians who support Trump, we've known that the whole time.
00:39:07.260
We say, yeah, of course this guy is not some saint on earth, okay?
00:39:11.620
The guy has lived a pretty shady life in many cases.
00:39:14.720
But he's doing good things, and he's got a little bit of self-awareness.
00:39:17.880
More than you could say for a guy like Barack Obama.
00:39:21.520
More than you could say for much of the Republican field, for that matter.
00:39:25.100
Okay, we've got the dumbest article on the internet today.
00:39:27.440
We've got to get to it in just our remaining few moments here.
00:39:29.760
Because it's actually asking a very important question, but it gives a very dumb answer.
00:39:35.320
The question it asks, Richard Freeman is a psychiatrist who wrote this op-ed.
00:39:41.920
He said, why are young Americans killing themselves?
00:39:46.180
Suicide is now their second leading cause of death.
00:39:53.120
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young Americans.
00:39:58.200
You know, just in the past few years, among 12 to 17-year-olds, suicide is up 70%.
00:40:08.740
Then he writes, how is it possible that so many of our young people are suffering from depression
00:40:15.720
and killing themselves when we know perfectly well how to treat this illness?
00:40:22.780
He's identified correctly the rates of depression skyrocketing, rates of suicide skyrocketing among teenagers.
00:40:33.860
He says, we know perfectly well how to treat this illness.
00:40:43.100
We know how to treat certain symptoms of depression through therapy.
00:40:52.440
It's not for any individual person, but as a social phenomenon.
00:40:57.080
I think that it is no coincidence that almost directly in the same time frame as religion has collapsed,
00:41:05.380
particularly among young people who largely were raised without any religion,
00:41:10.540
so depression has increased and anxiety and stress and suicidality.
00:41:23.560
In addition to my current show, we're launching a show on PragerU called The Book Club.
00:41:27.320
And the first book that we're doing for The Book Club is called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
00:41:32.100
It's going to be a great episode with Dennis Prager.
00:41:35.280
Viktor Frankl's thesis in that book is that man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life.
00:41:41.660
The whole book is about living in this Holocaust concentration camp and then getting out in multiple concentration camps and then getting out afterwards and making sense of his life.
00:41:52.280
Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in life.
00:41:56.300
Some say that man's search for sex is the primary motivation.
00:42:00.340
Some say man's search to impose his will on people is man's primary motivation.
00:42:09.480
There are a lot of different psychological theories.
00:42:15.280
It seems pretty clear to me, as Ronald Reagan quoted Winston Churchill as saying,
00:42:19.940
that when great forces are on the move in the world, we learn that we're spirits, not animals.
00:42:23.980
That the destiny of man is not measured by material computation.
00:42:26.720
If you are going to try to treat this terrifying phenomenon going on in society, especially among young people,
00:42:35.620
you can't treat human beings as bags of flesh, as clumps of cells.
00:42:47.680
You might say that man is fundamentally a religious being.
00:42:54.780
The most hardened atheist has religious longings, which is why when you get rid of traditional religion,
00:43:03.780
You get a bunch of kooky superstitions, like the crystals and the chakras and the yoga,
00:43:08.840
and all of the, and Mercury is in retrograde, and all of this kind of craziness.
00:43:16.000
You know, often atheists and materialists will describe religious people, Christians, for instance, as superstitious.
00:43:23.380
Christians are some of the least superstitious people in the world.
00:43:29.740
We're the ones who are trying to ground our religious longings in fact.
00:43:38.560
And when you take that away, you get some of the craziest superstitions you've ever heard of.
00:43:45.720
I don't really understand what the crystal thing is, but there are a lot of crystals, okay?
00:43:51.680
Remember her when she was running for president in the Democratic primary?
00:43:56.900
She was saying all sorts of kooky New Age stuff.
00:44:03.120
And even if you're a little skittish about religion, at least acknowledge the spiritual dimension of life.
00:44:08.040
That our loves and our joys and our hopes and our dreams and every single thing that actually matters to us is not material.
00:44:15.460
And you are not going to be able to treat something like depression.
00:44:17.800
You're not going to be able to treat despair, right?
00:44:23.580
You can't treat hope if you're only looking at man as a material being.
00:44:36.000
He asks, what explains the epidemic of teen depression and suicide?
00:44:39.520
There are lots of theories, but few definitive answers.
00:44:43.040
Drugs and alcohol are always a popular culprit.
00:44:45.020
But in this case, they're an unlikely explanation, as the studies cited above, controlled for drug use.
00:44:51.240
In addition, there's no evidence of a significant increase in the use of drugs or alcohol in young people during this period.
00:44:58.320
Of course, the drugs and alcohol, even if they're involved, are a symptom of something else.
00:45:03.700
This is a key characteristic of intellectuals and of cultural elites and of the mainstream media in our modern era.
00:45:15.640
Most of the people at the New York Times have a very high IQ.
00:45:30.500
They say, we're trying to figure out all of the physical causes, but we can't find a physical cause.
00:45:40.260
It's something beyond this world and it speaks to the natural longings that we have for something beyond this world.
00:45:46.060
The only way that you are going to understand your own health, your own psychology, politics, culture, questions of domestic politics, questions of war and peace, like we're looking at right now.
00:45:59.100
Or if you examine them, not merely on the physical level, not merely as though we're all just stuff.
00:46:05.680
But if you take into account all of the metaphysical things that actually matter to us, when you take that into account, all of it, war and peace and love and hope and despair, all come into focus.
00:46:23.080
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00:46:33.960
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00:46:39.340
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00:46:44.360
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
00:46:51.460
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies.
00:47:01.380
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00:47:16.860
Production assistants, McKenna Waters and Ryan Love.
00:47:19.540
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00:47:24.180
Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
00:47:27.580
A huge win for President Trump and America in Iran, and a brutal defeat for the terrorist Iranians and their allies, the American news media.
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