The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 952 - Propaganda War

00:00:00.000 The late American Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said that there were three

00:00:05.380 types of knowledge in war, known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. That is things

00:00:13.580 that we know that we know, things that we don't know, and things that we don't even know that we

00:00:23.040 don't know. But there is a fourth type of war knowledge, known unknowns. That is things we

00:00:31.400 think we know that in fact we do not know. And when it comes to the war in Ukraine, it is that

00:00:37.620 fourth kind of knowledge that we are all full of. Everyone knows, for instance, about the ghost of

00:00:44.220 Kiev, the ace fighter pilot who shot down five, maybe even seven Russian fighter jets on just the

00:00:50.960 first day of fighting. We know about him because we read about him on social media. We even saw

00:00:56.760 videos of his heroics in the sky. Except we didn't. The video isn't real. The airplane isn't even real.

00:01:06.400 It's a cartoon from a digital combat video game. Everyone knows, for instance, that Ukrainian 1.00

00:01:13.220 President Volodymyr Zelensky is not only refusing to flee or surrender, but is actually fighting on

00:01:19.900 the front lines. We know this because we've all seen the photos of him wearing combat fatigues,

00:01:25.300 gun in tote. Except the photo isn't from last week. It's actually from months ago and a long way

00:01:32.900 from Kiev. Here we go. Reuters fact check. Everyone knows about the 13 brave sailors guarding Snake Island

00:01:41.360 who refused to back down to a Russian ship, whose final words to the Russians were,

00:01:47.820 go F yourself before all 13 were killed. We know this because we saw the video.

00:01:55.900 This is the Russian warship comes up. This is the Russian warship. I repeat,

00:01:59.260 I suggest you surrender your weapons and capitulate. Otherwise, I will open fire.

00:02:04.220 Do you copy? Okay. And then you're just, you're just seeing this on the island and you're hearing

00:02:10.740 this audio. The Ukrainians said, this is it. Should I tell him to go F himself? Just in case. 0.98

00:02:18.260 Turns up the volume. Russian warship, go F yourself. And then we were told they were all killed,

00:02:25.860 killed. But what a way to go out. We saw that happen. Except we didn't. It turns out the sailors,

00:02:32.720 happily, were probably not killed, but captured, as even the Ukrainian foreign ministry now admits.

00:02:39.720 None of this is to take away from the bravery of the Ukrainians. Those sailors, they seem like pretty

00:02:45.200 tough dudes, okay, regardless of whether they were killed or captured. The Ukrainian servicemen,

00:02:50.740 the civilians, and President Zelensky himself are all demonstrating immense bravery.

00:02:54.980 But most of the stories you're hearing right now about this war seem incredible, precisely because

00:03:01.120 they are not credible. They are the product of dueling propaganda machines with both sides going

00:03:06.400 into overdrive to spin the best yarns to help their side. This war is unlike anything we've seen in my

00:03:14.180 lifetime. It occurred to me a couple of nights ago that this is the first major war in my lifetime

00:03:20.180 to take place between civilized nations. And it's all the more frightening because our political elite

00:03:26.060 in the West did not believe it could actually happen. I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:03:38.160 Welcome back to the show. My favorite comment Friday is from Not A Cat, who, quoting John Kerry,

00:03:43.500 says, hey, please invade with hybrid electric tanks. Thank you. Yes, that's true. That'll help turn

00:03:49.760 things around. That way we won't get distracted by the bloodshed and the tanks and the missiles and

00:03:55.000 the airstrikes, distracted from the really important issue that is the sun monster. That's what we've got

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00:05:12.520 Promo code Knowles. One day after the fighting started in Ukraine, there were people, friends of

00:05:20.180 mine here at the Daily Wire, outside the Daily Wire, they said, oh my gosh, Michael, did you hear

00:05:25.040 about the ghost of Kiev? I saw it trending. What's the ghost of? Oh, Michael, it's unbelievable.

00:05:31.440 There's this ace fighter pilot. No one knows who he is. And he's just shooting down Russian fighter

00:05:36.740 jets left and right. They haven't seen this kind of thing since World War II. They haven't seen this

00:05:40.960 thing in 70 years probably. I said, oh yeah. And how do you know about the ghost of Kiev? I said,

00:05:46.000 well, we saw him trending on Twitter. Oh, Twitter, that thing that is completely controlled by

00:05:51.100 a handful of extremely ideological people that totally manipulated. And why else do you believe?

00:05:57.320 Well, we saw this video, man. It's like something out of Hollywood. Oh, something out of Hollywood,

00:06:01.600 you say? Huh? Maybe, maybe, and I don't want to sound like a tinfoil hat guy here. Maybe it's

00:06:08.300 completely fake. Like most of what the establishment tells us, maybe it's just completely made up in some

00:06:15.100 soundstage in Hollywood or more likely on a hard drive in Hollywood. Of course, there's a ton of

00:06:21.240 propaganda. There's propaganda in every war. We happen to be living in an age of extremely accelerated,

00:06:29.040 extremely heightened propaganda because of how advanced our technology has become. Just think

00:06:33.800 about how easy it is to make a deep fake. Think about how easy it is to use Photoshop. Now place the

00:06:38.680 most powerful governments on earth in charge of that technology and recognize that they've also got

00:06:44.900 access to the widest communications distribution platform ever known to man that can be highly

00:06:50.500 manipulated without you even realizing it. And then you see propaganda taken to brand new heights.

00:06:56.100 This is, this is not a war between say a superpower on one hand and illiterate goat herders on the 0.98

00:07:03.160 other. This is a war between civilized nations. Okay. Civilized nations who are known, well, it's,

00:07:10.240 it's a war technically between Russia and Ukraine, but it's really a proxy battle between Russia and the

00:07:15.040 West. So you're seeing a kind of replay of the cold war here to, two entities very well

00:07:20.480 known for their extremely sophisticated propaganda, especially the Russians. I'm not saying, I'm not 0.97

00:07:26.520 saying necessarily that everything you think you know about this war is false. I'm not saying, what I am

00:07:34.060 saying is that there is absolutely no reason to believe that any of the things you think you know

00:07:40.880 about this war are true. We just, we just don't know. We just don't know. We are in the midst, obviously the

00:07:48.360 Ukrainians are in the midst of a real guns, firepower war. The rest of the world is in the midst of a very

00:07:54.200 intense propaganda war. Now this isn't to say there's no genuine heroism. There's a story, appears to be a very, a real

00:08:00.240 story of, of a hero sailor. Vitaly Shakun Volodymyrovich. I'm sure I'm butchering the pronunciation. This was a

00:08:10.060 Ukrainian sailor who saw that the Russians were about to cross a bridge from Russian occupied Crimea

00:08:15.400 to mainland Ukraine. So he runs out on the bridge, onto the bridge. He realizes that, that he's not

00:08:22.380 going to be able to get off if he wants to destroy the bridge and he blows himself up. Now this, that story

00:08:27.480 appears to be true. It's very, very impressive. That's genuine heroism. It's very hard to parse

00:08:33.480 though, the re the real heroism from the made up propaganda. There's a parliament member, a member in

00:08:39.360 Ukraine right now. Uh, so this woman in Ukraine, uh, tweets out quote, I learn to use Kalashnikov 0.97

00:08:46.080 and prepare to bear arms. It sounds surreal as just a few days ago, it would never come to my mind. Our women will

00:08:51.400 protect our soil the same way as our men go Ukraine. Now it seems like she's staying in Ukraine. I don't think

00:08:57.360 she's fled. It seems that she's got a Kalashnikov in her hand. This is one of the, I guess it's true. 1.00

00:09:03.540 I guess it's real. It's hard to tell. A little bit more of a margin call. And then some things we

00:09:10.100 just can't possibly know. The Ukrainians are claiming that they have killed thousands of Russian

00:09:15.980 fighters. The Ukrainian government is claiming that Russia has suffered about 3000 troop casualties

00:09:20.860 and, and, uh, lost 516 kinds of various military vehicles, 80 tanks, 10 airplanes, seven helicopters.

00:09:29.260 That was just by Friday. I'm sure they're claiming much higher numbers now.

00:09:33.440 Is that true? I don't, I don't know. We just don't know. We don't really know what is going on

00:09:41.040 in Ukraine. And yet we're all glued to it and we are following this and we're very wrapped up in

00:09:48.940 the outcome obviously. And we're, you know, Vladimir Putin appears to be implying that he's

00:09:54.260 willing to use nuclear weapons for goodness sakes. This war feels very different than other wars that

00:09:58.840 we've had, at least in my lifetime. There've been a lot of wars in my lifetime. This one feels totally

00:10:03.980 different. Why? What occurred to, I got into a lot of trouble for saying this. I don't, I don't even,

00:10:09.620 I did not expect to get into a ton of trouble for saying this, but as usual, when you say something

00:10:14.440 that is obviously true, those are the tweets that get you into trouble. And so what I said

00:10:19.380 the other night was, this is the first major war in my lifetime to take place between civilized

00:10:25.840 nations. There have been other wars. Okay. There have been wars. There was the breakup of Yugoslavia.

00:10:32.480 There were those wars. Was that a mate? I wouldn't call those major wars. There was Kosovo. I remember

00:10:38.100 Kosovo vividly from the nineties. Would you, would you call that a major war though? All of the world is

00:10:43.480 holding their breath. Probably not. There were obviously the middle Eastern wars,

00:10:47.240 but would, would you, would you say, please forgive me. I know I'm not supposed to say this.

00:10:53.140 Would you really say that Muammar Gaddafi's Libya is the height of civilization? I don't think so.

00:10:59.840 Bashar Assad's Syria. You think that's really, that's it. You think of Renaissance Rome and Bashar 0.66

00:11:06.060 Assad's Syria. Yes. Civilization. Ain't it great? No, I don't think so. Some people responding,

00:11:11.860 a lot of very angry blue checks were responding to my observation and they said, Michael, don't you 1.00

00:11:18.020 idiot? Don't you know that Iraq is the birthplace of civilization? Many thousands of years ago, 1.00

00:11:23.160 Iraq was a civilization. Yeah. It's been a while. Hasn't it? Hasn't it? Do you, are you, do you think

00:11:28.860 now today or even during Saddam Hussein's reign, you're just going to go to, to Iraq for a lovely

00:11:34.820 getaway, part of the grand tour. We're going to go to all the wonderful civilized salon discussions in,

00:11:39.580 in Saddam Hussein's Iraq? I don't think so. Okay. It's so disingenuous. This war really is

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00:13:41.780 of it. This war is different. This war is different. When I said that this is the first

00:13:49.920 major war between civilized nations in my lifetime, I chose those words carefully. And all of these 0.60

00:13:55.280 liberals got so angry. I mean, there have been thousands and thousands of responses, all sorts

00:13:59.740 of blue checks. And one thing I notice about all of the responses to my observation is they're really

00:14:05.480 angry and they call me all sorts of names and they use all sorts of nasty language. And none of them

00:14:10.260 have examples of, of, of wars that prove me wrong. They'll say, they'll say, what about the Nagorno,

00:14:18.520 what about the 2020 and 2021 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict? What, what are you talking about?

00:14:25.820 Well, what about, what about the war in Afghanistan? I said civilized. Well, what about this or that? 0.85

00:14:32.080 There's major war between civilized nations. I'm, I'm sorry if it hurts your feelings to point out

00:14:41.800 that Libya is not a particularly civilized place. I'm sorry if it hurts your feelings to point out

00:14:46.540 that a battle between Saudi Arabia and Yemen does not match all of those criteria, but this is a little

00:14:52.360 different. We're talking about reality. You've got a nuclear former superpower conquering its neighbor, 0.73

00:14:59.840 Ukraine, a state with a long history of civilization. That's a little bit different.

00:15:05.800 Okay. I'm not even making the point when I, when I made this observation, it wasn't some dunk on

00:15:11.540 Middle Eastern tin pot dictatorships. It wasn't, I, it, it wasn't to say, oh, how wonderful Russia is

00:15:17.900 or Ukraine is even, or Western Europe for that matter. It was to point out that this is a different

00:15:22.740 kind of war. That's why we're treating it differently. And the propaganda has really

00:15:25.900 turned up a level because of that civilization, because they're really, really good at it.

00:15:30.580 They're better at it than Yemen is. Okay. And it's even, it's even more crucial to how we view this 0.99

00:15:37.220 war because the liberals didn't think this could happen. Right. This was the argument. The, after the

00:15:43.160 Cold War, we've reached the end of history. We're going to, liberalism won, relatively free markets

00:15:48.860 won, globalism won, free trade among nations at one. We're going to just slowly expand that into a

00:15:53.980 new world order. And I'm not, this is not a tinfoil hat phrase. This is a phrase used by the

00:15:58.300 president of the United States by state department officials. We're going to have a kind of order of

00:16:03.200 the nations. We've got one hegemonic superpower. That's the United States. We're all going to trade.

00:16:07.940 We're all going to get along and there's not going to be any more wars. Certainly no more wars between

00:16:11.780 the civilized nations, except there are, except it's happening. But Putin, he's not supposed to

00:16:16.900 invade Ukraine. Yeah, well, he did. So what are you going to do about it? The thing that you said 0.98

00:16:21.680 wasn't going to happen, that all of us conservatives said very likely would happen, very much could

00:16:26.880 happen. That thing did happen. So Jen Psaki, so White House, can you just answer me a simple question?

00:16:33.860 What policies have you used with regard to the Ukraine conflict? What policies have you put in place

00:16:41.520 that have worked? What have you guys done throughout this slow moving Russia crisis

00:16:47.980 that has worked? In what capacity? Well, the president talked to Putin. He talked to the G7.

00:16:55.480 He threatened sanctions. He put sanctions in place. Now he says the sanctions are going to take 30 days

00:17:00.320 or about a month. Do you guys think the people in Ukraine have about a month? Well, Peter, let me just 0.97

00:17:06.260 take a step back and explain to everyone how diplomacy works and how our approach from the United States

00:17:11.100 has worked. What the president has done is he has built a global coalition to stand up in the face of

00:17:18.800 President Putin and President Putin's aggression and invasion of Ukraine. What he has done is he has

00:17:24.800 rallied the world, our European partners, even at cost to them in some capacities, to put in place

00:17:31.960 significant sanctions, historic sanctions that would have an enormous impact on the Russian financial

00:17:40.280 sector. It is President Putin's choice to go to war and invade Ukraine. That is what he has done.

00:17:46.700 So nothing. You got nothing. Okay. You knew that Jen Psaki had nothing the moment that Peter Doocy

00:17:53.860 finished asking the question. And she said, hey, what, wait, hold on. What worked? What do you mean

00:17:58.500 what worked? Like she's stalling like kids do in class, you know, seventh grade English class? 0.86

00:18:03.320 Hey, Johnny, what, what happened in chapter three? Uh, chapter three. Do you want me to answer the

00:18:09.300 question about you? Yes. That's what I asked you. Chapter three, huh? Um, well, let me get, let me give

00:18:14.340 you a little lesson about literature. That's what she's saying. Let me give you a little lesson about

00:18:17.860 diplomacy. No, I don't need a lesson about diplomacy. I don't need international relations 101. Just

00:18:21.820 cite the policy that's worked. Well, um, well, hey, forget about the policies that we've already

00:18:28.260 tried that didn't work. Uh, we're going to put some sanctions on Russia. Oh, oh, you're going to

00:18:33.480 put sanctions on Russia. The thing that Trump did that then Biden took away, but okay. What kind of

00:18:38.480 sanctions? Cause Trump put sanctions on Russian energy. Trump stopped the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,

00:18:44.080 which is if any specific individual event is at the heart of this war right now between Russia and

00:18:52.960 Ukraine, it would be this pipeline because the minute that Vladimir Putin gets to the green light on his

00:18:57.400 pipeline, he gets to invade Ukraine because he doesn't need to rely on Ukraine to ship his oil

00:19:00.900 from Russia to Europe. So what about that? Oh, right. Joe Biden gave the green light to the

00:19:06.500 pipeline, which was essentially rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.

00:19:10.820 What are you doing now? Oh, you're putting sanctions on Russia, except you're not sanctioning

00:19:14.040 the Russian energy industry, which is the only thing that matters in Russia.

00:19:18.660 This news had started to break on Friday. Okay. We're going to have sanctions on all the other

00:19:23.880 industries in Russia. Russian haberdashers are going to be in trouble. The people who make those 1.00

00:19:29.360 stacking dolls in Russia, oh boy, they're going to have a bad Christmas. They're going to have trouble

00:19:34.240 heating their homes, but they're not going to have too much trouble because the Russian oil industry is

00:19:38.360 going to be just fine. The Russian gas industry is going to be just fine. Nothing. They've done

00:19:42.400 nothing that has worked. And I was trying to figure out why, why we know that the Bidens are in the

00:19:48.060 pocket of Ukraine. Let's not forget, speaking of the energy industry, Joe Biden's son Hunter had a

00:19:55.100 no-show job in Ukraine because Ukraine is also a corrupt oligarchy, just like Russia. And he had 0.75

00:20:00.580 this no-show job where he was being paid hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to do absolutely

00:20:04.160 nothing for the expertise in Ukrainian oil that he obviously does not possess. So the Biden family has

00:20:11.360 some interest in Ukraine. Why do they seem to be so incoherent in their policy? Because they don't

00:20:19.900 have any direction. They didn't think this war was pot. The liberal establishment did not believe this

00:20:25.540 war would really happen. It breaks their view of the world that Russia would invade another country.

00:20:33.800 And so they don't know what to do when it happens. And they go one way and they go the other and they

00:20:37.020 keep vacillating back and forth. And what they're really trying to do is just pretend that it's

00:20:41.320 not happening. But it is happening. And it's happening because of specific policies and

00:20:46.160 incentives you left in place. What can Joe Biden do? Not very much if you ask him.

00:20:52.960 Let me pull this out for you. Where is it? There you go.

00:20:59.540 You got it? Okay. Say, presidents can't do much. Thank you.

00:21:05.440 Thank you. I dropped my speech. Where is my? Presidents can't do much. Some presidents can't

00:21:15.440 do much. This might be the truest thing that Joe Biden's ever said. Joe Biden can't do much at all.

00:21:21.840 He's given no direction. We know because of the propaganda that's flooded everywhere.

00:21:26.620 All we really know about the Ukraine conflict is Ukraine good, Russia bad. Change your Facebook

00:21:34.600 profile picture to be the Ukraine flag. That's going to help. That's going to be really helpful.

00:21:39.900 And tweet about it. You got to tweet about it. That's very important. And maybe make videos

00:21:49.040 involving slam poetry about how Vladimir Putin has mommy issues. That'll show him. That'll stop the war.

00:21:55.200 And beyond that, I don't know. Beyond that, who? Who beats me? This reminds me of when Michelle

00:22:03.920 Obama, during the Obama administration, was responding to the Boko Haram crisis in Africa.

00:22:10.300 Boko Haram, this terror group, had gone in and captured a bunch of extremely young girls and 0.85

00:22:15.760 brought them into sex slavery. And the Obama administration's really forceful response there

00:22:20.680 was to have Michelle hold up a white sheet of paper that said,

00:22:23.640 hashtag bring back our girls. And I remember, you remember when the head of Boko Haram just

00:22:29.240 broke down crying. He said, please, no more. No, no more hashtags, Michelle. We can't take it.

00:22:35.200 Okay. You can take back your girls. Take them, take them back, Michelle, please. No more white 1.00

00:22:39.840 sheets of paper and memes. We can't take the memes. I think, no, that's not what happened at all.

00:22:45.100 It's not what happened at all. It's completely, completely incoherent.

00:22:47.880 And this is what got Donald Trump in trouble. Because he made a comment over the weekend at

00:22:52.600 CPAC that got him, it was a true comment that got him in trouble. This is what I thought about

00:22:56.360 when I made my tweet about how this is the first major war between civilized nations in my lifetime

00:23:01.700 and everyone got angry. I thought they didn't get angry because it's false.

00:23:05.740 No, people don't generally get angry at false statements. They just kind of ignore them or they

00:23:10.300 laugh at them. They get really angry when you make true statements that political correctness says

00:23:15.240 you're not allowed to make. And that's what Donald Trump did over the weekend at CPAC.

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00:25:38.160 Vladimir Putin is a very smart man. The Western leaders, by and large, are very stupid men. 1.00

00:25:46.820 I'm not making a value judgment. I'm not ascertaining or comparing the character, 1.00

00:25:55.960 the virtues of this world. I'm just making an obvious observation. Vladimir Putin is smarter

00:26:02.740 than Western leaders. Donald Trump made that observation at CPAC and it got him into a whole

00:26:08.840 lot of hot water. Yesterday, reporters asked me if I thought President Putin was smart. I said,

00:26:15.980 of course he's smart, to which I was greeted with, oh, that's such a terrible thing to say.

00:26:21.300 I'd like to tell the truth. Yes, he's smart. The NATO nations and indeed the world,

00:26:28.120 as he looks over what's happening strategically with no repercussions or threats whatsoever,

00:26:36.400 they're not so smart. They're looking the opposite of smart. If you take over Ukraine, 0.98

00:26:44.560 we're going to sanction you, they say. Sanction? Well, that's a pretty weak statement.

00:26:51.360 Putin is saying, oh, they're going to sanction me. They sanctioned me for the last 25 years. You

00:26:55.640 mean I can take over a whole country? Are they going to sanction me? You mean they're not going

00:27:00.060 to blow us to pieces, at least psychologically? The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of

00:27:09.640 course he's smart, but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb. 100% correct. It's funny that 1.00

00:27:20.160 people accuse Donald Trump of being prideful, haughty, irresponsible, reckless, boastful.

00:27:28.020 He's demonstrating a great deal of wisdom and humility in this statement. Wisdom and humility

00:27:33.600 that our current leaders don't have. Ironically, it's our current leaders, Joe Biden, not the least

00:27:39.920 of them, who are demonstrating the haughtiness, the recklessness, the irresponsibility in underestimating

00:27:47.620 Vladimir Putin. Ukraine is in this situation today because Western leaders for a long time,

00:27:53.500 but mostly Democrats and especially Joe Biden underestimated Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump

00:27:59.500 is giving the devil his due. He's saying, no, look, this guy, he's clever. He's smart. He's going to

00:28:04.520 pursue what he feels to be in the national interest of Russia. He's got cojones. You got to give him 0.99

00:28:11.420 that. He's got cojones. He's not, he is going to call NATO's bluff. He's going to call the American 1.00

00:28:16.980 bluff and we're not going to do anything about it. We're not even going to institute real sanctions.

00:28:21.100 We're going to, we're going to put little fake sanctions on Russia that won't do a damn thing

00:28:26.780 to, to, to really gut their economy. If you really wanted to gut their economy, you could put much

00:28:32.080 stiffer sanctions, obviously on the energy industry, on specific oligarchs who are holding Vladimir

00:28:37.800 Putin's money, but they're not, they're not exactly doing that, at least not yet. Our leaders are dumb. 1.00

00:28:45.800 They're, they're so dumb that our leaders are so dumb. They are making the best argument to support 1.00

00:28:51.500 Putin. I don't think Putin is making a very good argument to support Putin. Putin is a sort of

00:28:56.020 cartoonishly villainous figure and he's now invading this country and the war is obviously being brought 0.86

00:29:00.860 by him. I don't think it's very complicated as to who is bringing this war. And yet Western leaders

00:29:07.100 are so stupid that they, that they have to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory, even on the publicity 1.00

00:29:12.100 front. Why would anyone, why would anyone support Vladimir Putin in this war? Richard Moore, the head 1.00

00:29:19.980 of MI6, the British spy agency, he actually gave us an answer. He gave people a reason. He tweeted out

00:29:26.280 over the weekend, quote, with the, with the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine,

00:29:32.680 we should remember the values and hard won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin. None more

00:29:39.940 than LGBT plus rights. So let's resume our series of tweets to mark LGBTHM. Is that history month? I 0.61

00:29:52.860 thought that was October and whatever, 2022. If the only thing, if the main thing that distinguishes us

00:30:04.900 from Vladimir Putin is that we trans the kids, pass the vodka, man, that's it? That, are you kidding

00:30:12.660 me? You're going to have half of this country go sign up for the Red Army if that's the thing that

00:30:17.060 distinguishes us. Transgenderism is what distinguishes us from Putin? That's the best you've got? Oh my 1.00

00:30:24.200 gosh, these people. This, it makes me feel a little bit better, actually. I'm sometimes tempted

00:30:30.460 to believe that the world is actually run by just a secret cabal of the intelligence agencies. There's

00:30:36.080 a fair bit of evidence to that effect. You know, the CIA and MI6. And, and the, the thing that makes

00:30:43.100 me believe that isn't true is how stupid the heads of these intelligence agencies are. It's, it's like 1.00

00:30:49.440 this guy is Putin's publicist. Let's find one of the worst things that the West is doing, you know,

00:30:56.660 trancing the kids. One of the worst things we've ever done, frankly, we're mutilating little kids

00:31:01.420 because of a false anthropology and convincing little boys that they're little girls. And,

00:31:05.820 and we're going to say that that is the, the very best thing that we're doing. And the only thing,

00:31:10.300 or the chief thing that distinguishes us from our enemies. Yeah, that'll do it. Good grief. You're

00:31:16.180 gonna have people turning in their AR-15s for Kalashnikovs. Good grief. Good grief.

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00:31:49.560 propaganda, this is a story from last week. I didn't get to it, but we had, it actually fits

00:31:54.360 in much better with what we're talking about today. The queen has COVID. This is a very sad thing.

00:32:00.960 I love the queen. She is a very nice German lady. She is one of the last sensible, distinguished, 1.00

00:32:08.500 noble people in Europe or greater Europe, Britain, and she's one of the last vestiges of a government 0.99

00:32:16.000 that's not completely insane in the West. She's got COVID and she's very old, so I hope she comes out

00:32:21.440 of it. There was a media report about her COVID diagnosis. I will describe it as it plays in case

00:32:33.600 you're listening to this, but there's very little inconvenient fact that the reporters put into this

00:32:41.640 news report. People in the 90s are a significant danger of the bad outcomes of COVID. It's true.

00:32:49.200 Dr. Makesh Heiker-Wall says a COVID patient the queen's age should be isolating and might benefit

00:32:54.880 from new medicines currently approved for high-risk patients at Australian hospitals.

00:32:59.500 Dr. Matovimab and stromectal, which is- Hold on, am I paused? Hold on. So the first one was just some

00:33:06.920 kind of medicine. Go back a little bit. Oh, hold on a second. Stromectal, prescription only,

00:33:13.220 three milligrams, four tablets each containing three milligrams of ivermectin. Oopsie daisy. I was

00:33:22.580 I was told that ivermectin is a horse dewormer. The queen is taking a horse dewormer? Man, she's

00:33:30.640 dumber than Joe Rogan. Man, that's so crazy. Does the queen fight in UFC? She must be smoking a lot 1.00

00:33:36.840 of pot too. She's probably a crazy Alex Jones conspiracy theorist. That's weird. In a news 0.97

00:33:42.100 report about how the queen at her advanced age would benefit from some therapeutics to fight off

00:33:48.040 the coronavirus, they include ivermectin. Now, if you try to find that clip right now,

00:33:53.560 you won't succeed because the public health establishment got very upset. The powers that

00:34:00.080 be, the censors got very upset when it came out and they took the clip down and the news,

00:34:04.320 the news organization edited it, took it out. What they said was, this is according to Snopes,

00:34:08.920 the network played some B-roll footage that showed a package of stromectal, a brand name version of

00:34:13.880 ivermectin, which accidentally, accidentally insinuated that the queen was using this drug. 1.00

00:34:19.140 The network has since apologized and explained that the footage shown should not have shown

00:34:23.840 Sotrovimab, or should have shown rather Sotrovimab, which it already did, and approved COVID-19

00:34:29.700 medication, not stromectal. Okay, so it's not, it's not real. Don't believe your lying eyes. It's all fake.

00:34:37.780 We're sorry. The news organization said we're really, really sorry. The queen is definitely not

00:34:43.120 taking ivermectin. You know, ivermectin, that very well-known drug that has been used and prescribed

00:34:50.520 to humans for many years now, the discoverer of which won the Nobel prize, you know that,

00:34:57.380 but that in the last 18 months was just called horse dewormer and you're not even allowed to

00:35:01.280 prescribe it anymore. Yeah. Do you know that drug that lots of people who have COVID have taken?

00:35:05.220 Yeah. The queen's totally not taking that. And you, you can believe them because these are the same

00:35:11.300 people who told you about the ghost of Kiev and the snake Island massacre and all of the other

00:35:18.160 propaganda that just is not true at all. You, you, listen, they might've been lying with all of their

00:35:23.940 other propaganda, but this, this time they're totally telling the truth. I would never, hey,

00:35:28.320 hey, YouTube censors, I would never insinuate that the queen is obviously taking ivermectin and that the 1.00

00:35:34.520 news report was right. And that now they're pretending that it was wrong because of the pressure from you

00:35:38.160 guys. I wouldn't insinuate that. Why would I insinuate that? I believe anything that,

00:35:44.240 that the ruling elites tell me. Of course they're, they're always right. And they would never lie to

00:35:48.820 us. Right. Isn't that the case? I'm not so sure. There is some good news coming out of the United

00:35:53.720 Kingdom though. The good news is that the UK will be lifting all remaining COVID restrictions.

00:36:00.620 Boris Johnson announced, quote, we will remove all remaining domestic restrictions in law from this

00:36:05.800 Thursday, the 24th of February. We will end the legal requirement to self isolate following a

00:36:10.600 positive test. We will end routine contact tracing and no longer ask fully vaccinated close contacts

00:36:15.960 and those under 18 to test daily for seven days. We will remove the legal requirement for close

00:36:21.480 contacts who are not fully vaccinated to self isolate. Great stuff. I love that. That's really

00:36:26.700 good news. It's not just good news coming out of a nominally conservative, but actually effectively

00:36:32.500 pretty liberal government in the United Kingdom. It's coming out of private corporations, woke

00:36:38.140 corporations, super leftist American corporations. Google is dropping their vaccine mandate. Really,

00:36:45.960 really good news. Google has announced that they are dropping social distancing requirements and masks

00:36:51.000 for vaccinated employees in most areas. They are going to have a few cities that will still require

00:36:57.560 masks, but they're likely to drop those soon. Unvaccinated employees who are approved to enter 1.00

00:37:01.680 offices. We'll still need to follow some additional protocols, but basically Google's going back to

00:37:06.820 normal. You're seeing this in lots of cities around America, even left-wing cities. They're dropping the

00:37:10.800 mask requirements. They're dropping the vax requirements. It's over. Why? Why is it over?

00:37:17.400 It's over because it's election season. It's not over because COVID's gone. It's not over because we're

00:37:26.120 getting to COVID zero. Remember, that's what the libs told us for a while. When we get to zero cases,

00:37:30.380 zero transmission, that's when we'll get rid of it. No, actually, what they originally told us was

00:37:34.680 two weeks to slow the spread. That was two years ago. What day is it? February 28th. This all started

00:37:40.080 on March 16th, 2020. We are two weeks away from two years of this. And they kept moving the goalposts

00:37:49.580 all the time. And it was slow the spread, then flatten the curve, then find a cure, then get the jab,

00:37:54.200 then get like three more jabs. Then you got to stop the surge again. There was another surge of the

00:37:58.280 Omicron or the Delta or the whatever, and it was going to go on forever. And people pushed back and

00:38:03.720 it killed the ruling class in the polls. And then all of a sudden, poof, like magic, the science changed

00:38:09.420 and we get to get rid of the masks and the vaccine mandates. Why did this happen? It ties right in with

00:38:16.200 what we're talking about on the show today. Because the people stopped believing the propaganda,

00:38:21.260 propaganda, the very concerted propaganda effort of our ruling class, not just the government,

00:38:29.320 but the corporations and the media and big tech and all of it. Okay. When it gets to something like

00:38:36.360 the queen, is the queen taking ivermectin or not? I don't know. What do I know? I don't know. I'm not

00:38:42.300 her doctor. I don't see the queen's prescriptions. It is not necessarily, it's similar to what I said at

00:38:49.600 the top of the show. It's not necessarily the case that the queen is taking ivermectin for her COVID.

00:38:55.540 But it is certainly the case that we have no reason to believe that the queen is not taking

00:39:01.600 ivermectin for her COVID because we can't trust these people. This is another thing that's really,

00:39:10.440 really weird about the Ukraine-Russia war that's different than some of the other wars that we've

00:39:16.200 had in the last 25, 30 years. You've got nations that are not really united in any way.

00:39:26.740 Say what you will about George Bush or the wars in the Middle East, but at least when we went in 1.00

00:39:30.980 to Afghanistan in particular, but even Iraq, the nation was broadly in favor of it.

00:39:37.440 Almost all of the Democrats voted for the Iraq war and the Republicans were pushing the Iraq war.

00:39:41.380 The New York Times was pushing the Iraq war, right? Everyone was kind of in on it. Now we are much 0.97

00:39:48.240 less united than we were. We don't really trust our institutions. We don't trust our elections.

00:39:56.500 The Republicans don't believe in the 2020 election in large part. The Democrats don't believe in the

00:40:00.840 2016 election. The Democrats don't even really believe in the 2000 election. We are not united.

00:40:05.340 So the war is a little difficult to process. There's a caveat here to the way that we're

00:40:17.580 trying to understand the Ukraine-Russia war. I think that there are some people on the right

00:40:22.780 in the United States who are tempted to really admire Vladimir Putin. I'll give you the reasons why.

00:40:30.980 Well, Trump says he's smart, right? He is looking after his nation. Vladimir Putin ain't no citizen

00:40:37.400 of the world. That's for sure. Vladimir Putin is interested in Russia and expanding Russia.

00:40:42.180 And there are a lot of Americans who wish that American leaders were much more interested in

00:40:46.860 defending America's borders than they are borders around the world. That would be one reason. 0.90

00:40:50.560 What's another reason? Vladimir Putin's not woke. Okay. Say what you will about the man. He ain't woke.

00:40:54.740 Okay. And Vladimir Putin has been using state money to build beautiful cathedrals in Russia. He built

00:41:01.240 that beautiful cathedral just a few years ago. What do we build in America? We build drag queen 1.00

00:41:07.080 story hour venues. What is Russia building? Big cathedrals. That's something I understand why 1.00

00:41:11.900 some people might like that sort of thing. There's something though that the admirers of Vladimir Putin

00:41:18.380 are missing, which is Vladimir Putin doesn't like us. Okay. Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Putin does not

00:41:27.200 care about cultural battles in the United States. He's not on the side of conservatives. He's not

00:41:34.160 rooting for us to win. It's actually a product of liberalism. I think that we believe that all of

00:41:41.440 our political battles in the United States just translate exactly perfectly to political battles in

00:41:48.100 Ukraine or Russia or China or anywhere else. It's a product of globalism actually that makes us

00:41:53.720 believe that our political concerns here in America are exactly, can be perfectly mapped onto what's

00:41:59.160 going on in Russia or Eastern Europe or Asia or wherever. But that's not the case. Vladimir Putin

00:42:06.280 doesn't care about American conservatives. He doesn't care about American liberals. He doesn't like America.

00:42:11.080 He views America as its adversary and he's trying to counter America and counter NATO, particularly in these

00:42:17.320 battlegrounds in Eastern Europe. The trick for us is how do we here in the West get control back of our

00:42:27.320 own governments? Because I don't think that our own established, I don't think our governments like us

00:42:31.900 either. Nobody likes us is the problem. Vladimir Putin doesn't like us. The ruling class in America and the

00:42:38.880 West more broadly doesn't like us. The ruling class in the West thinks that we're neo-Nazis, thinks that

00:42:43.400 we're bull Connor, thinks that we're hate filled, awful, terrible people who just need to go away and 1.00

00:42:49.120 die. And then we need to go die of COVID. Like that teacher said, that teacher was caught on a hidden 1.00

00:42:53.360 camera, said that we played last week. We're just, Oprah Winfrey said this on television. She said, you know,

00:43:00.380 some of those backwards conservatives, they just need to die. Okay, they just need to go die. 1.00

00:43:05.900 Joe Biden said it just a few weeks ago. Half the country's awful terror. So nobody's really sticking up for us and it 1.00

00:43:11.860 makes us think, well, I don't, I don't like Biden. I don't like my ruling class. So am I supposed to, no, I don't really

00:43:17.740 like Putin. I don't know anything about Ukraine. I don't, you know, Socrates was, was one of the

00:43:26.640 smartest men in the history of the world because he knew that he knew nothing. I think that is what

00:43:30.200 is required now. When we're talking about this Ukraine issue, reading a, a think piece on it and,

00:43:36.960 and following the Twitter trends and watching videos supposedly about the coast of Kiev does not

00:43:41.080 make you an expert on Ukrainian policy. Now I'm preaching to the choir in a way here. I think

00:43:46.620 that generally the conservatives, the more independent minded people, even in the center

00:43:50.580 and independent minded liberals, they know all this. Okay. You guys know all of this,

00:43:55.200 but the mindless automatons who are just taking all the propaganda that they are fed, 0.96

00:44:01.460 they do not know. They do not know all of this at all. And it can really lead to some pretty 0.97

00:44:07.680 disastrous results. I'll give you just one anecdote of this. In California, a woman tried to get on a 0.99

00:44:13.760 bus, public bus. She wanted to get on the bus. She was turned away from the bus because she didn't

00:44:17.740 have a mask on. She then was run over by the bus, but at least she didn't get COVID. She was run over,

00:44:26.340 tragically killed. Lucy Prieto Frescas, 50, 59 years old. She's a young woman, tried to get on the bus,

00:44:35.080 turned away. Somehow she fell underneath the bus and was run over. This is the perfect analogy 1.00

00:44:40.480 for our COVID regime. People driven crazy by absurd propaganda forced into their heads for two years

00:44:49.760 straight are now doing much more harm than good. The lockdown measures have always been doing more

00:44:56.880 harm than good. Some of us called this two years ago, but it's certainly the case now. We in the West,

00:45:03.940 what we have done out of fear of a cold, out of fear of a cough, have thrown our citizens literally

00:45:13.740 under the bus. It's sad that this real life tragedy is such a good analogy, but it is.

00:45:20.860 Speaking of California, there are some signs that things are improving, at least on the right.

00:45:26.640 Kevin McCarthy is the House Minority Leader. He's the Republican Leader in the House of Representatives.

00:45:30.700 Kevin McCarthy just threw his former colleague, Liz Cheney, under the bus. Liz Cheney was in 0.99

00:45:36.560 Republican leadership. Can you imagine that? Shows you how bad off the Republican Party is.

00:45:41.040 Liz Cheney was in Republican leadership and she spent all of her time going on CNN,

00:45:46.820 talking to the Washington Post, attacking Republicans and conservatives. Now Kevin McCarthy,

00:45:51.560 her leader, has endorsed her primary challenger, Harriet Hageman. That's good. That's a good sign.

00:45:58.960 The people who like Liz Cheney are Democrats exclusively. And so from a tactical standpoint,

00:46:07.740 even for maybe the moderates or the independents or whatever, who are, they're kind of more liberal,

00:46:13.620 but maybe they'd consider voting for her. He's like, maybe, okay, maybe we should go with

00:46:16.900 Liz Cheney, right? Maybe she can appeal to more people because she's more in the middle, 1.00

00:46:22.360 even more a little bit on the left. She won't appeal to more people. She'll appeal to nobody. 0.99

00:46:27.720 That is propaganda. Liz Cheney appeals to people who will never vote for a Republican. 0.98

00:46:35.680 She is the Republican where Democrats say, you know, I could vote for that kind of Republican,

00:46:40.660 but they, maybe they could, but they wouldn't. They would always choose the Democrat over her.

00:46:45.840 We have been fed this kind of propaganda, we on the right in America, for decades. Well,

00:46:51.500 you better nominate John McCain because Democrats could vote for that kind of Republican. Yeah,

00:46:55.720 they could, but they won't. Yeah, you should vote for Mitt Romney. You should nominate Mitt Romney.

00:47:00.640 Democrats could vote for that Republican, except they won't, except they won't do it.

00:47:04.420 Okay. There has been, there is a huge amount of waking up. There's a little bit of a paradox.

00:47:09.000 We live in an age where propaganda is so easy to produce and it's so easy to produce at a very high

00:47:13.580 level that actually, I think a lot of people are waking up to it. They're seeing through it. They're

00:47:19.500 saying, wait a second, if I can't even believe a video that I'm watching because it was likely

00:47:23.540 manipulated. What can I believe? We are headed for a very, very messy period politically.

00:47:30.920 Internationally, you're already seeing that happen. Domestically, you're seeing that happen too.

00:47:34.060 The only way out is through. Do not believe everything you see on the internet.

00:47:39.400 I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. See you tomorrow.

00:47:53.540 And tell your friends to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you

00:47:59.860 listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro

00:48:05.220 Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show. The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies.

00:48:10.880 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Our technical director is Austin Stevens. Supervising producer,

00:48:16.520 Mathis Glover. Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky. Editor and associate producer,

00:48:21.120 Danny D'Amico. Associate producer, Justine Turley. Audio mixer, Mike Coromina. And hair and makeup by

00:48:27.980 Cherokee Heart. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

00:48:33.700 Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Vladimir Putin surrounds Kyiv and puts his nuclear forces on high

00:48:38.060 alert as Europe moves to isolate him. We'll bring you all the latest. That's today on The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:48:42.040 Give it a listen.

The Michael Knowles Show - February 28, 2022

Ep. 952 - Propaganda War

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