The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire： California Tea Party, America's Browning & Putin's Pilgrims

00:00:00.000 Bet mode activated.

00:00:01.820 The Scorebet app here with trusted stats and real-time sports news.

00:00:05.200 Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game?

00:00:07.260 Well, statistically speaking...

00:00:08.800 Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions. 0.97

00:00:13.280 That's not really what I do.

00:00:15.440 Is that because you don't have any knees? Or...

00:00:17.840 The Scorebet. Trusted sports content, seamless sports betting. Download today.

00:00:23.360 19 plus, Ontario only.

00:00:24.760 If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you,

00:00:27.840 please go to conixontario.ca.

00:00:30.080 Booking a Vrbo vacation rental means you get VrboCare and 24-7 life support,

00:00:34.220 verified reviews from real guests, and top-rated homes with the Love by Guest filter.

00:00:37.920 I just booked my Vrbo because there was a sweet wine fridge.

00:00:40.400 We all have our reasons. If you know, you're Vrbo. Terms apply. See Vrbo.com slash trust for details.

00:00:45.640 Is there a bespoke GLP-1 that primarily deals with melting the fat in your brain?

00:00:52.520 Because that's basically the only explanation I can have for...

00:00:56.000 or it truly does look like this is this is this is mental illness like this is not

00:01:03.860 you know what if you're gonna surf those waves you gotta surf hard man you gotta you gotta surf

00:01:09.540 those waves all right so um okay we can sit here and we can make fun of our competitors or we can

00:01:14.780 start friendly fire so here we go already folks welcome to friendly fire as you can see we've 0.77

00:01:20.200 murdered my usual compatriots and we've replaced them with replicants we have ben dominich and 0.61

00:01:25.720 obviously isabel brown is here as well and you know it'll be fun it'll be fun guys because i 0.80

00:01:31.560 have no idea what we're talking about but we'll make something up as as we go along

00:01:34.620 and again don't panic our friends michael matt and andrew are all dead no they all had conflicts

00:01:45.660 today actually michael is traveling to the uk he was not banned from the uk we think i mean at least

00:01:51.480 as long as they didn't pick up my phone call so first of all welcome to both of you

00:01:55.000 Thank you so much. It's good to be with you. And I think, Isabel, I think we have to start off with

00:02:00.100 our tribute to Scott Pelley by just, you know, chewing the edge of our glasses very, very

00:02:06.160 pensively. Pour one out, pour one out for the end of the pompous Democrat would-be anchor newsman

00:02:15.820 who has apparently been in combat. Who knew? You know, when he went overseas.

00:02:19.800 That was great. Did you see that? Isabel, did you see that he actually, like in his letter,

00:02:24.100 He was like, I've been in, he literally said he was in combat, which is like, like firing

00:02:27.660 a weapon in anger, or you mean that you were just a war correspondent?

00:02:30.940 Like, what are we talking about?

00:02:31.940 Shades of Hillary Clinton saying that they fired at her plane in Bosnia or whatever that

00:02:35.440 was.

00:02:35.880 And Brian Williams, Brian Williams.

00:02:37.360 Literally.

00:02:38.060 Yes.

00:02:39.060 The only thing I can think of when it comes to Pelley, and I've thought this for years,

00:02:43.060 and I should preface this by saying that I did work for my sins for CBS News way back

00:02:48.660 in the day.

00:02:49.500 It was a very fun night in 2016, very memorable.

00:02:52.420 I had an argument with Jamel Bowie that made him leave the bureau and he had to walk around the city and then he wrote about it for Slate.

00:02:59.240 The thing that I remember the most from the time there is that every time I talked to Scott Pelley, he reminded me of the doofy anchor from Die Hard, who, you know, they had that scene where the psychologist is talking about Helsinki syndrome.

00:03:14.880 And he says, Helsinki, Sweden.

00:03:16.540 And he says, Finland.

00:03:17.360 and it's it's just like it's that is who he is it's like it's pompous but with confidence like

00:03:25.440 the confidence is is uh is the thing that matters the most not actually getting the news right and

00:03:30.020 i just find this whole thing very hilarious that people are now saying this is such a loss to the

00:03:34.640 industry 60 minutes is dead you know the ghost of andy rooney is rolling in his grave it's it's

00:03:39.680 terrible isabel i have a question for you because you're now a member of the younger generation

00:03:44.760 The two Bens are old people now.

00:03:46.860 And so I did want to ask Isabel

00:03:48.640 about whether she's heard of a show called 60 Minutes,

00:03:51.040 whether it exists in her opinion.

00:03:52.860 And if so, whether it is indeed relevant to you

00:03:55.920 that Scott Pelley has been defenestrated

00:03:57.640 as the anchor of 60 Minutes

00:03:59.320 or whether you're like,

00:03:59.960 why is this old man jabbering at me?

00:04:01.320 And I don't mean me, I mean Scott Pelley.

00:04:02.840 Hey Ben, yeah, I can hear you.

00:04:04.000 Sorry, my camera's having some issues.

00:04:05.480 So we're working through that.

00:04:06.380 Gotta love real-time TV for the internet here.

00:04:10.620 Is 60 Minutes remotely relevant to me in any way?

00:04:12.920 know except for maybe the butt of a few great jokes on hit sitcom tv shows i have zero opinion

00:04:19.720 whatsoever about who hosts it because turns out no one under the age of like 67 watches 60 minutes

00:04:25.820 but little do people remember in the realm of integrity journalism who are so outraged by all

00:04:32.040 of this that it was literally just a few months ago that 60 minutes deceptively edited the entire

00:04:36.600 interview with kamala harris right before the election like our standards for journalistic

00:04:41.120 integrity are in the frigging toilet probably is why the daily wire is so important and so

00:04:45.680 necessary in our culture today. But I'm really excited to see Barry Weiss clean house and bring

00:04:50.280 in a new standard of journalistic integrity again. Yeah. So other than I do have to, I do have to

00:04:55.060 ask you about it. It's very sad. It's very sad that Isabel Brown is not familiar with the great

00:04:58.960 works of Morley Safer. I mean, in the, in the ranks, I mean, if we have to do like top five

00:05:05.320 douchey anchors um and we have to exempt present company uh then who exactly would we put on that

00:05:12.520 list of douchey i mean scott pelly ranks really high like the swarm factor on scott pelly was

00:05:17.080 really really really high uh and and so him going like he may be apex predator you know in terms of

00:05:23.780 the ones that that got that have gotten taken out i mean i still think it's hard to beat dan rather

00:05:29.000 i mean you know just just the entire experience we're old enough we lived through that uh the

00:05:34.040 pompousness around Rathergate, having a movie come out about it that entirely tried to spin

00:05:40.260 what happened there with a scandal that I'm sure happened probably when Isabel wasn't even alive.

00:05:46.560 But one of the things that I think we can take away from this, I don't know if what Barry is

00:05:51.600 doing will work. I don't know if it'll work as TV, but the truth is that these properties have

00:05:56.560 all been so defunct for so long. And the only reason that people watch 60 Minutes in this day

00:06:01.980 and age is that they fell asleep during a particularly bad NFL game on CBS and then

00:06:07.400 just left their TV on. So that's that's I think that's the only reason we got that kind of lead

00:06:12.080 in. I mean, I think that's true. I also think that this bizarre kind of false narrative that

00:06:17.540 60 Minutes was somehow objective journalism center, obviously not true. And I said right

00:06:21.920 at the beginning when Barry took over CBS News that were it I, I would have just canned everyone

00:06:26.400 who is the deep state CBS News because those people were definitely there. And I'm glad that

00:06:31.400 And I think retroactively, she's having to clean house and I'm glad that she's doing it.

00:06:34.900 OK, so I want to move on from a person who is not relevant to most of our lives, Scott Pelley, to the situation over in Iran.

00:06:42.280 So obviously a lot of heartburn on, I think, all sides over what exactly the US strategy is over in Iran right now.

00:06:49.540 Do we have a strategy? What the hell is going on?

00:06:52.960 I have to admit that I am a little bit bewildered by the Trump administration strategy right now.

00:06:57.600 I'm not sure exactly what they are trying to do.

00:07:00.260 It seems like there are a few outcomes here.

00:07:02.400 There could be a really bad outcome. 0.95

00:07:03.960 To me, the worst outcome, what an L actually looks like is we relieve all the sanctions.

00:07:07.680 We don't get the nuclear dust.

00:07:08.940 We don't get an end to the nuclear program. 0.85

00:07:11.420 They use all that money to rebuild their ballistic missiles and their terror apparatus. 0.75

00:07:14.680 And we link a stop to Israel's actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon to the reopening of the 0.84

00:07:20.800 strait, because that would basically put Iran in a better position than they started the

00:07:23.780 war if that were to happen, if the sanctions get released.

00:07:26.380 That is the worst case scenario.

00:07:28.220 And then there to me is like the best case scenario, which I don't think that we're going

00:07:31.260 to get, which would be the United States bombing Harg Island and the oil facilities and basically

00:07:35.880 putting the regime on its last legs and then basically say, OK, we'll call it a day.

00:07:41.020 We're done here.

00:07:41.820 You want to handle the Strait of Hormuz, UAE, Qatar, Saudi, go for it.

00:07:45.060 I don't think that's what's going to happen.

00:07:46.580 And then there's sort of the third case scenario, which is we do that stuff, but we don't bomb

00:07:50.760 the oil fields, which I think is probably the most plausible at this point.

00:07:54.460 Let's be clear. 0.99

00:07:55.260 every time the Trump administration says a deal is forthcoming, the Iranians try to dunk on him. 1.00

00:08:00.180 And so there is no deal that is forthcoming that will be anything good. And I think that 1.00

00:08:03.620 when people say, was this a good idea, was it a bad idea? Like every other war, you only know

00:08:07.660 whether it was a good idea or a bad idea in retrospect. Some wars that start off bad and

00:08:12.220 well, some wars that start off well and poorly. But we're not going to know until we hit the

00:08:16.760 endgame here. But I don't know where you're at on this, man. So in the interest of adding some

00:08:22.340 fire to the friendly fire. Let me give the case from kind of the other side, even though I don't

00:08:26.840 agree with it. The case from basically Republicans on Capitol Hill is that the Trump administration

00:08:32.360 kind of went into this believing that they had plans that could deal with Iran doing, basically

00:08:39.060 playing the cards that it's played with mining the strait, that they expected more help from

00:08:44.720 the Europeans who obviously, you know, the ballistic missile program that the Iranians have 0.53

00:08:50.180 can reach into basically every, you know, major city in Europe, particularly in Western Europe, 0.94

00:08:55.980 which I think was a shock to people when they saw those concentric circles and the like, 1.00

00:09:00.080 and that they, for some reason, you know, have been surprised by the way that the Iranians have 0.98

00:09:05.680 approached this in a way that they shouldn't have been. I don't know that that's true or not,

00:09:09.680 but that's basically the message that you hear when you talk to Republicans on Capitol Hill. 0.98

00:09:13.680 And so they're just trying to save their asses. They're trying to basically say, 0.98

00:09:16.960 you know, if we lose in November, then it's just going to be another impeachment and more

00:09:22.000 investigations and all these other things. And so the president needs to wrap this up as quickly

00:09:26.880 as possible so that we're going to have cheap gas prices in the summer. I don't think the president

00:09:31.120 buys that at all. I think the president is basically saying, no, as he explicitly said

00:09:36.460 this past week, you know, he doesn't care. He's not thinking about the midterms. He's thinking

00:09:40.100 about the long term. He's thinking about Iran with a nuclear weapon. He's thinking about,

00:09:45.400 you know, the future essentially and his legacy. And that does not necessarily matter when it comes

00:09:51.340 to the plight of Republicans in the House of Representatives who spend more time just kind

00:09:56.860 of picking at each other and fighting than they do actually doing anything functional.

00:10:00.760 So from my perspective, that's basically what this tug of war has been. And Republicans on

00:10:05.340 Capitol Hill are ticked off at him anyway because of the things that he's done when it came to

00:10:09.340 Senate endorsements, the Cassidy thing, the Cornyn thing, you know, all this other stuff.

00:10:13.560 And so I think they're just looking out for their, you know, they're just engaged in CYA and the administration is being affected by that. And that's why I think that they're kind of playing this in the way that, as you say, and I agree, doesn't make a lot of sense and doesn't really deal with the problem as it stands and could ultimately end up being just a bad deal.

00:10:34.300 I think the one thing that we can have in terms of some confidence, though, is that the president doesn't want to be remembered for making a bad deal.

00:10:41.200 He hated the Iran deal. He hated Barack Obama over it.

00:10:44.940 And so, you know, the degree of confidence that you have in Donald Trump to kind of cut a good deal on this is basically the test here.

00:10:53.620 Yeah. So, Isabel, where are you at on all this?

00:10:55.320 Obviously, you know, it didn't go, I think, so far as as well as I would have wanted it to go, because I think, frankly, the president shouldn't have cease fired in late April, early May.

00:11:05.680 I think that it hasn't gone nearly as poorly as critics of the war are suggesting, where they say it's a catastrophic failure for the United States.

00:11:10.980 I just don't I don't see any evidence at all that this is a quote unquote catastrophic failure.

00:11:14.220 But that in between space is definitely an awkward space.

00:11:17.900 Yeah, I don't think it's a secret that people are upset over this, Ben, in particular, people under the age of 40 or 35.

00:11:23.620 this core young conservative voter base that did decisively deliver a victory to the Trump

00:11:29.080 administration in November of 2024 and cited no more involvement in foreign wars as one of the

00:11:34.540 primary reasons for electing Donald Trump and J.D. Vance at the time. A lot of that came from people

00:11:40.020 like Charlie Kirk, who regularly spoke out about this on his show leading up to the 2024 election

00:11:44.360 and certainly was a key advisor to the Trump administration in those early months before

00:11:48.660 his assassination last year. This seems to me to be one of the primary things that voters are

00:11:53.760 paying attention to going into the midterm elections and certainly in deciding who the

00:11:58.380 heir apparent and the next king will be going into 2028, although no kings. I got to be careful. No

00:12:03.600 kings, no kings in America. That said, I wonder even if everything were to come to an end tomorrow,

00:12:09.480 if that really would help the Republican Party going into the midterm elections.

00:12:13.460 I don't know. And if I'm putting my Trump administration hat on, I'm probably betting

00:12:17.560 on the fact that only once, I believe, in American history has the party that won the White House and

00:12:22.640 a full sweep of Congress held on to that majority during the midterm elections. The status quo has

00:12:27.480 always been that you can pretty much expect to lose at least the House, if not the House and

00:12:31.680 Senate together, come midterms. And it's a totally different realm of the presidency in those last

00:12:36.000 two years in office. So I'm guessing he's probably thinking a lot more legacy rather than chances for

00:12:41.300 the Republican Party at the midterms. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the midterms right now,

00:12:45.580 I will say that obviously the polls are not good for Republicans.

00:12:49.000 They weren't good before.

00:12:49.580 As you say, it's kind of a normal pattern for the party in power to lose seats in the

00:12:53.840 midterm election. 0.99

00:12:55.080 And I think that people pre-gaming that if the Republicans lose, it's because of Iran

00:12:59.320 as opposed to because of, say, the tariffs or because of the bad staffing decisions or 0.51

00:13:04.120 because of these sort of bizarre slush funds or because of the corruption stories.

00:13:09.840 There are a lot of factors that go into a bad election cycle, for sure.

00:13:13.220 the biggest one being just sort of the systemic way that our elections work off your elections

00:13:16.780 don't go for the party in power. I will say that to me, the points of vulnerability for the

00:13:21.220 Republicans in 2026 have very little to do with foreign policy and have a lot more to do with

00:13:26.380 some of the candidates that are getting picked. So I think that if the Republicans were to lose

00:13:30.020 the Senate, they're almost certainly going to lose North Carolina. One of the reasons they're

00:13:33.700 going to lose North Carolina is because the president decided to go to war with Tom Tillis.

00:13:37.040 The Republicans could win in Michigan where they normally would lose because the Democrats have

00:13:42.200 picked a psycho over there. Susan Collins is suddenly looking like a more robust candidate 1.00

00:13:46.080 in Maine than she would have probably in this particular election cycle because the Democrats 1.00

00:13:50.160 picked a psycho. It's possible that the Republicans lose Iowa because it turns out that Republicans 1.00

00:13:55.060 in Iowa in the primaries are selecting some candidates who are sort of not the Joni Ernst

00:14:00.500 traditionalist Republicans of Iowa. They're a little more out of the box and they could lose

00:14:04.860 that. So in the end, all these elections come down to sort of the sort of secular spirit of

00:14:10.260 the election, the broad spirit of the election. And then they come down to candidate quality

00:14:13.680 always. And I will say that there's some pretty differential candidate quality across the board

00:14:17.920 here. If Republicans somehow lose the seat in Texas, for example, that will be both of those

00:14:23.340 factors coming into play. I think that the Iran war, let's put it this way, if the Iran war

00:14:27.440 were happening and the oil prices were not up, it wouldn't be about the Iran war. It's really

00:14:30.360 about the oil prices. And so if the oil prices are down by the time of the election, then I think

00:14:34.120 everybody basically is going to attribute the loss to other factors, if indeed there is an L

00:14:38.220 for the Republicans. Well, and I also don't think we can discount the bad policy happening in

00:14:43.300 Congress right now, too. I'm hearing more and more, especially in the social media realm from

00:14:47.400 young voters, how disillusioned they are with Republican leadership in Congress, which often

00:14:52.160 gets lumped in with this larger anger toward the Trump administration or falling approval rates

00:14:56.840 toward the right at large. But make no mistake about it. One of the biggest things young voters

00:15:00.920 are angry about right now is a bill introduced by a Republican in the House of Representatives

00:15:05.460 from your home state of Florida, Ben,

00:15:07.280 that's offering mass amnesty

00:15:08.720 to 10 million illegal immigrants,

00:15:11.100 including some who have already been deported

00:15:13.380 from the United States under this dignidad status 1.00

00:15:16.460 when there are 10 million unemployed Gen Zers 1.00

00:15:19.620 living in America right now. 1.00

00:15:21.140 So I think you're seeing a lot of this

00:15:22.940 by the mainstream media

00:15:23.980 and the 60 Minutes and CNNs of the world

00:15:26.160 being conflated with failures of the Trump administration,

00:15:29.040 when in reality, the Trump administration

00:15:30.340 is really putting the gas to Congress

00:15:32.360 here in Washington, D.C.,

00:15:33.920 But Congress is failing to act or acting completely not in their own self-interest, really losing the election for themselves up front.

00:15:42.240 I just don't know why you would vote for a Republican.

00:15:45.020 Like, I just I don't hear their vocalization of like what they would actually offer us, what they would do.

00:15:52.400 They don't seem to be doing much with the power that they do have other than basically being a block for the Democrats.

00:15:58.280 And, you know, the fact that the Senate can't get its act together on so many different

00:16:02.020 things, the fact that, you know, you've got this Republican leadership that just sort

00:16:05.300 of seems like they're asleep at the wheel.

00:16:07.900 I don't think they're doing themselves any favors either.

00:16:10.020 So, you know, a lot of this, everybody says that all of this revolves around Trump, but

00:16:13.280 like the anti-Trump base of the Democratic Party is going to be activated anyway.

00:16:17.140 They're going to be completely, you know, dedicated to this.

00:16:19.360 And we've seen that, you know, ever since this era began.

00:16:22.460 But I just don't see a lot of Republican arguments for why they should keep their jobs, why they should be sent back that are really taking hold.

00:16:31.040 And, you know, as Isabel said, the concerns about the the economy and energy prices are the driving actual issue here.

00:16:40.660 There are fewer people who are complaining about the Iran war, even, you know, whatever the polls sort of say.

00:16:45.080 It's more about how is this affecting me?

00:16:47.760 And I don't see or hear Republicans talking about that at all in many cases, I think, because they don't know how to talk about it.

00:16:55.520 And they've become so devoted to the Trump approach to politics that they're just kind of standing around waiting for him to say something so that they can all agree, which is not.

00:17:05.060 Well, I think that's right. I also think that when it comes to the Iran war, particularly the president keeps saying that basically don't you're not going to experience pain.

00:17:12.600 He's saying that with regard to the oil prices. Right. He's trying to talk the oil markets down.

00:17:16.380 And the reality is that if you want to actually get the outcome that is the best outcome here, you will need to see a temporary price spike in oil.

00:17:23.060 If he hits the oil facilities in Iran because he wants to get out and make it faster, then you will see a temporary spike and then it will come down.

00:17:28.740 And that was sort of the original promise here was that this thing would be quick.

00:17:31.760 It would be fast. It would be over.

00:17:33.200 And instead, if it seems to drag out, then even if the price spike is only moderate, like from $70 a barrel to $98 a barrel and not to $150 a barrel, people don't like slow moving disasters.

00:17:45.140 Actually, the American people can take a fast moving problem that solves itself fairly quickly a lot easier than they can take this kind of slow feeling of stagnation, which is what you got under Joe Biden.

00:17:54.720 And I think that's the thing that Trump is running up against.

00:17:56.480 By the way, speaking of Susan Collins in Maine running against an actual Nazi, you know, the guy with the Nazi.

00:18:01.640 I don't know. I feel like it's fair. John Fetterman said it. He's right. 0.78

00:18:03.680 If you have a Nazi tattoo, I feel like I can call you a Nazi. 0.90

00:18:06.100 I feel like that's like what are our standards at this point? 0.52

00:18:08.960 Can I suggest something?

00:18:11.100 But wait, Ben, isn't now,

00:18:15.460 like particularly after what we've seen

00:18:17.040 in the last couple of weeks,

00:18:17.980 isn't the Nazi tattoo kind of like

00:18:19.620 not even in the top five things

00:18:21.160 to be worried about with this guy?

00:18:22.820 Like he had a kick account

00:18:24.380 that he signed up for

00:18:25.820 and took a picture of himself shirtless

00:18:27.440 with an open toilet behind him,

00:18:28.860 like in a towel.

00:18:29.600 Like it's like this guy seems like,

00:18:32.880 I'm not, I'm going to put myself

00:18:35.620 in a position of defending a Totenkopf tattoo.

00:18:37.880 I can't believe it.

00:18:38.440 saying that i'm just saying it's like i knew it ben i knew i knew it was just waiting here

00:18:42.880 we're waiting to see who's gonna be the crypto nazi on the show the real question the real

00:18:46.920 question is did he just get the tattoo so that tucker would endorse him no to main voter tucker

00:18:52.020 carlson yeah i can't imagine that he will not end up as a guest on that on that program at some

00:18:55.840 point but kalshi marcus by the way suggests that susan collins kalshi is one of our sponsors that

00:19:00.860 susan collins i believe is at 46 percent to to win that see but you can see the massive drop there

00:19:07.440 from just a couple of weeks ago.

00:19:10.100 Just a couple of weeks ago,

00:19:11.360 the Democrats were up near like 70%.

00:19:13.620 And now the Democrats are down in the 54% range

00:19:17.380 and dropping quickly

00:19:18.220 because it turns out that Susan Collins,

00:19:20.140 by the way, is a survivor

00:19:20.880 and she survived a thousand elections at this point.

00:19:23.060 So, I mean, if you had to game out the Senate right now,

00:19:25.240 I would say that the Republicans win Maine.

00:19:27.280 I think that the Republicans win Texas

00:19:28.860 because it's very difficult to win Texas

00:19:30.180 if you're a Democrat,

00:19:30.840 even if you are a bizarre pretend Bible teacher

00:19:34.920 like James Tallarico.

00:19:36.000 You know, I think the Republicans are I think they'll win Michigan because I think that the people of Michigan are not super hot on terrorism.

00:19:41.220 But we'll find out. We might have our first actual full on terror supporter in the in the actual Senate, which would be surprising.

00:19:46.880 But that'll that'll make up for some losses in some of the other areas.

00:19:50.240 Well, you know, all of this. Listen, I think that the big thing for Republicans is that they should not sleep on the possibility that things could get even worse because things can always get worse.

00:20:00.460 But you should sleep on your Helix Sleep mattress. That's the reality.

00:20:05.260 Your Helix Sleep Mattress is the thing

00:20:07.420 that will allow you to sleep better at night.

00:20:10.020 And that Helix Sleep Mattress allows me to sleep

00:20:12.640 through all of the chaos and all of the insanity.

00:20:16.700 Helix, of course, is the mattress sponsor

00:20:18.780 that allows you to take a sleep quiz.

00:20:20.660 And that personalized sleep quiz allows you

00:20:22.260 to pick your actual best mattress.

00:20:24.380 I did this.

00:20:24.960 I've done this with my wife.

00:20:25.840 It is great.

00:20:26.620 It allows me to rest comfortably

00:20:27.880 even when the world is an uncomfortable place.

00:20:29.740 Helix has over 20 mattress models.

00:20:31.260 So whether you run hot, sleep on your side,

00:20:33.040 or need extra support,

00:20:34.020 There's one built for you.

00:20:35.500 They even have cooling upgrades, which are great for those summer nights.

00:20:37.900 Helix is the most awarded mattress brand tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired.

00:20:42.280 Free shipping right to your door in the U.S., a 120-night sleep trial, and a limited lifetime warranty.

00:20:46.920 So you can try it completely risk-free.

00:20:48.360 They call it the Happy with Helix Guarantee.

00:20:51.460 Again, summer, it's very easy during the summer to get on one of those mattresses that, like, it just retains heat.

00:20:57.140 It's just terrible.

00:20:57.720 That's not going to happen with Helix because you're going to get a mattress that is great for you.

00:21:01.480 It's made for you.

00:21:02.060 Go to helixsleep.com slash dailywire.

00:21:04.020 For 20% off site-wide, that's helixsleep.com slash dailywire for 20% off site-wide.

00:21:08.820 Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you.

00:21:11.720 That's helixsleep.com slash dailywire.

00:21:15.300 Alrighty, so I believe any moment here, we are going to have Jesse Arm from Manhattan Institute

00:21:20.000 to discuss the situation just more broadly.

00:21:23.980 We have a bunch of election results that are coming out.

00:21:25.980 And later on in the program, Steve Hilton is going to be stopping by as well.

00:21:29.600 But Jesse is here at the moment.

00:21:30.880 But Jesse, you've been hearing us discuss the prospects for the Republicans in the midterm

00:21:34.360 elections.

00:21:35.220 So on a scale of one to 10, 10 being we lose and one being we lose like really, really

00:21:41.000 badly.

00:21:41.740 How badly are these election cycles going to go for Republicans in 2026?

00:21:46.120 That's a little bit of a complicated scale.

00:21:48.660 What if I think we're going to win?

00:21:50.100 Is that not available to me as an unavailable answer?

00:21:54.060 I mean, if you believe we're going to win, then I want I want some of what you're having

00:21:57.400 because, you know, again, I don't think 2026 is prime for, but make us the optimistic case.

00:22:03.860 No, I mean, I'll be frank with you, Ben. I do think that the Republican chances of

00:22:08.820 controlling the Senate and possibly even maintaining control over the House are somewhat

00:22:14.360 underrated. There's been a lot of redistricting that has happened at the House level,

00:22:19.140 and that has not gone the way that Democrats anticipated the gerrymandering wars would go

00:22:25.100 for them. And time remains on the clock. We still could have a significant amount of action in Iran,

00:22:33.320 in the Middle East. The situation is very fluid. None of these ceasefires seem to be sticking

00:22:38.140 to a particularly long amount of time. It may be the case that the president dropped some big

00:22:43.800 bombs between now and November. There's still a fair bit of time to go. I agree with your assessment

00:22:48.800 that the situation in Maine and Texas looks pretty good for the Republicans as of today,

00:22:54.440 Where I would push back a little bit is that in Michigan, I think it is dangerously close.

00:23:00.140 That is my home state. And I am less convinced perhaps than you are that my home state could possibly send a terrorist to the United States Senate.

00:23:08.420 And that's why I'm actually holding out some hope that this Democratic primary goes in such a way where we don't send a terrorist sympathizer in my home state to be the Democratic nominee for Senate.

00:23:19.080 I don't care if it marginally improves Mike Rogers' chances of making his way to the United States Senate.

00:23:24.920 That's the Republican running in Michigan.

00:23:26.920 I'm deeply worried about that seat, and I'm hoping that there's enough sanity left together among Michigan Democrats that we can prevent that outcome.

00:23:35.680 And Jesse, I want to ask you about Iowa because there was there was a there was a big race in Iowa last night that a lot of people are using as a bellwether for the possibility that Republicans could unexpectedly lose a Senate seat in Iowa in this in this election cycle because Joni Ernst stepped out.

00:23:49.620 So that election seat was a GOP primary for governor in which President Trump had endorsed Randy Feenstra, who was, I believe, originally he had replaced, who was it, Steve, I forget the name of the very controversial Republican, Steve King.

00:24:06.300 Steve King had been replaced by Randy Feenstra. Feenstra was then running for governor.

00:24:09.960 He had been endorsed by a lot of sort of the more establishment and President Trump figures. 0.73

00:24:13.480 He was defeated by a sort of Maha Republican who is friendly with kind of the kooky wing of the Republican Party, shall we say.

00:24:22.020 And there are some indicators that right now, for example, Cook Political just moved that gubernatorial race into toss up area. 0.99

00:24:29.340 And the Calci markets are suggesting that the Republicans could lose the Ohio governorship or the Iowa governorship.

00:24:34.440 rather. If they it looks right now like there's a real possibility that Republicans get clocked

00:24:39.380 in Iowa. If that happens, the map is opening pretty wide for Democrats in the Senate, because

00:24:43.400 again, North Carolina looks not great. If you as you say, Michigan looks not great.

00:24:47.180 Iowa looks not great. They got to pick off one more and they're in control of the Senate.

00:24:50.180 What do you make of what's going on in Iowa? Well, Michigan wouldn't be a pickoff, right?

00:24:55.460 That's that's one where Republicans actually have the opportunity to have the pickup. But

00:24:59.640 I'm concerned about Iowa. I'm really concerned that President Trump's endorseee did not win that

00:25:05.260 race. I think if the president's pick had gotten across the finish line in Iowa, Republicans would

00:25:10.040 be in a much stronger position right now. So that's not great. And we also have to look at

00:25:16.500 the Senate election in that state where Democrats nominated the better option from their standpoint,

00:25:22.540 Josh Turek, and not the other candidate who was the Elizabeth Warren endorsed kooky leftist.

00:25:29.120 So, yeah, Iowa Democrats have the right candidates in the right position, and they may break through. Iowa is not as red a state as some of these other places that we've been talking about. But I do think some of these other red states where Democrats think they can have a shot at making some ground, I don't really buy it.

00:25:46.200 Ohio, as one example, I think Vivek Ramaswamy is going to come through and secure the gubernatorial

00:25:50.900 election there. John Husted, who's the Republican nominee for Senate, is a very solid guy,

00:25:56.980 inoffensive to pretty much everybody. And the Democratic candidate, Jared Brown, I mean,

00:26:02.580 at one point would have been a pretty strong candidate when he was an incumbent, but it's a

00:26:06.180 lot harder to pick yourself up off the mat once you've already lost and you're running from

00:26:09.980 the outside. And then there's Nebraska, where Democrats seem to think they have a chance

00:26:14.520 because they've nominated. Well, they haven't actually nominated him. They're throwing their

00:26:18.480 support behind an independent named Dan Osborne, who is part and parcel with the Democratic Party.

00:26:26.520 Everything you look down his issue priority list, he is a progressive far left Democrat. He's got

00:26:33.800 the, you know, Israel obsessive gene. And they think this is what Democrats are deluding themselves

00:26:38.920 into thinking. They think that Graham Plattner and this guy in Nebraska, that they can fool

00:26:45.260 white male voters into thinking that there's something different about them without any kind

00:26:51.860 of ideological moderation. Republicans are actually doing the opposite. The president is

00:26:56.480 allowing Susan Collins a little bit of wiggle room to maneuver politically and buck the party 1.00

00:27:02.160 when necessary. And I think that's a good thing. And it says good things about Donald Trump's

00:27:05.580 political instincts. I wanted to follow up on one of the things that you mentioned. So you,

00:27:13.560 sorry, you've been paying attention to and concerned about your home state of Michigan

00:27:19.820 nominating somebody who's pro-terrorist. That's not the only pro-terrorist person that we saw

00:27:24.240 having some success lately. You know, you saw this situation in New Jersey. You saw,

00:27:30.080 you know, some of these, these candidates who've percolated up. You know, one of the things that

00:27:34.720 we talk about on this show and what we talk about at the Daily Wire regularly is how much

00:27:39.100 the Democrats versus the Republicans is a fight between podcasters on the right of center side

00:27:45.600 and actual candidates and politicians on the left. Talk to me about why these people are passing

00:27:53.860 muster with even the likes of Chuck Schumer coming out and saying, you know, Plattner's going to win

00:27:59.120 and we're going to beat Susan Collins as if, you know, depicting Susan Collins as if she's some

00:28:04.280 kind of far right wing, you know, a figure as opposed to somebody who crosses the party aisle,

00:28:09.200 you know, constantly to work with Democrats. Why do you think that these candidates who are not

00:28:14.500 just anti, you know, sending money to Israel, which is something that we've seen happen,

00:28:19.120 you know, on both the right and the left as being something that percolates up,

00:28:22.140 but they're, they go far beyond that. They're actually friends with terrorists. They embrace

00:28:26.760 that side of things. And then if you come after them, they say you're being Islamophobic or

00:28:31.320 something along those lines. Why is that success being found? What do you see in your polling data?

00:28:36.440 Well, I think it's deeply disturbing. And I'm going to do something that maybe cuts against

00:28:40.480 the grain of what those podcasters have to say about the Daily Wire. And I'm going to say some

00:28:44.600 pretty choice, critical words for AIPAC. AIPAC spent a lot of money in New Jersey congressional

00:28:50.300 elections this cycle, but they spent it in the wrong one. They were spending big in the New

00:28:55.440 Jersey 11 special election earlier this year on behalf of it's very complicated. They had a pro

00:29:03.640 Israel sort of Democrat who they didn't like so much, who they were spending against, but they

00:29:09.160 ended up benefiting and building up the hardcore, viciously anti-Israel far left candidate instead.

00:29:16.040 And it was sort of a cluster F. OK, and then there's this New Jersey 12 congressional primary

00:29:23.220 That happens yesterday where we've got Adam Hamawe, pardon me if I'm not pronouncing his name correctly, but this is somebody who volunteered for an Al-Qaeda front group, lied under oath in court and defended the blind sheikh, who was a terrorist involved in the first World Trade Center bombing.

00:29:45.060 And AIPAC didn't spend a nickel against that candidate.

00:29:49.600 The transcript is pretty hilarious, too.

00:29:51.340 He's basically like, yeah, he's like a friendly guy from the neighborhood.

00:29:54.440 You know, it's it's the most hilarious.

00:29:57.060 So I'm totally by that.

00:30:00.740 I'm totally confused by that.

00:30:02.760 And this notion that AIPAC is this all powerful, all knowing super force in American politics

00:30:09.380 that can take out anybody they want.

00:30:11.600 It's like, no, they're one pack among many operating within our political environment.

00:30:17.460 OK, there are a lot of moneyed interests.

00:30:19.320 There are a lot of Americans who hate Israel.

00:30:20.980 There are a lot of Americans who like Israel. There are a lot of Americans who hate guns,

00:30:24.260 who love guns, who hate abortion, who love abortion. And they're all spending big money

00:30:29.020 to try and affect these races. OK, and this is a pretty clear indication. I saw Ilhan Omar tweeted

00:30:35.860 just before I got on this podcast that last night, Adam Hamawe winning in this New Jersey 12th

00:30:42.780 congressional district is an indication that the special interest groups lost. No, quite the

00:30:48.060 opposite. There were a lot of special interest groups that spent really big on trying to get

00:30:53.100 that candidate over the finish line. There's now anti-APAC money that is coming together.

00:30:57.940 Millions of dollars are being spent to propel candidates who adopt this pseudo-pro-terrorist

00:31:03.740 line. And that is a disturbing phenomenon in our politics. It's a lot more disturbing

00:31:08.440 than a bunch of people spending money who think we should, you know, have a positive relationship 0.94

00:31:12.700 with Jewish Wakanda over in the Middle East and vending super weapons for us.

00:31:16.420 outside of all these special interest groups i'm curious to get your take on these redistricting 0.65

00:31:22.780 efforts that are happening across the country right now it looks like that probably will tip

00:31:26.560 favor in the side of the republicans but there's a lot that could change between now and then what

00:31:31.000 can we expect from that well i think the big story with redistricting is that both sides have kind of

00:31:37.820 fought this to a draw it's not clear that either one is going to come out the big winner but

00:31:43.260 Democrats really screwed up by kind of upping the ante at every opportunity that they got.

00:31:48.900 Why is that? Because if there's no clear winner from the gerrymandering wars in this election,

00:31:53.840 then we have to look a little bit further out to like 2030 or 2040. What happens in those years?

00:32:01.080 Reapportionment. We have a census and all of the states get their congressional seats.

00:32:07.200 OK, and what's happening more macro nationwide right now, people are moving out of blue America and into red America where Ben lives.

00:32:16.280 OK, and where The Daily Wire is based. The Daily Wire is an example of this.

00:32:19.920 And Americans are voting with their feet, moving into these red states.

00:32:23.980 So what's going to happen when that census rolls around?

00:32:26.720 All of the Republican states are going to have more people living then, which means they're going to have more congressional seats.

00:32:32.120 And if everybody is gerrymandering all day long until the crows come home, that's going to mean there's going to be more Republicans in Congress moving forward.

00:32:42.020 And that is not so good for the Democrats.

00:32:45.140 So they are really the ones incentivized to be coming to the table, calling for a truce, taking whatever they can get. 0.59

00:32:51.700 Because at the end of the day, Americans, again, are voting with their feet and going to Red America. 0.58

00:32:55.980 And that is bad news for them in the context of these gerrymandering wars. 0.52

00:33:00.580 Well, Jesse Arm, I know that you have to run to really appreciate the time and all of the

00:33:04.620 quick question before he goes or go for it.

00:33:07.940 Should we root for the Knicks because President Trump likes the Knicks or against the Knicks

00:33:13.480 because Timothee Chalamet hasn't done enough in life to deserve a life this charmed?

00:33:19.040 I'm a pretty hardcore Detroit Pistons fan, so I'm still holding a bit of a grudge for

00:33:24.800 the Knicks beating us last year and betraying his employer.

00:33:29.840 yeah i don't like seeing i don't like seeing all those celebrities in the front row happy

00:33:36.240 well we can't have mom donnie be happy we get the we don't have to pay less attention to lebron

00:33:45.100 anymore so that's why i'm rooting for the spurs yes that is the argument that's the actual we

00:33:49.820 actually we actually have i think unanimous support unless isabelle is a knicks fan i think

00:33:52.900 We actually have unanimous support

00:33:54.140 for the San Antonio Spurs.

00:33:56.360 Amen, yep.

00:33:58.280 So yeah, by the way,

00:33:59.840 I'll be watching that with my son tonight.

00:34:02.300 But speaking of my children,

00:34:03.880 I have to make sure that they are taken care of

00:34:05.360 in case, God forbid, something should happen to me.

00:34:07.520 And you have to do the same thing for your family.

00:34:09.580 And this is why you need to go to Policy Genius.

00:34:12.460 June marks the first days of summer.

00:34:14.220 And somehow all of us are still here,

00:34:16.000 which seems like a miracle

00:34:17.280 given how these conversations sometimes go.

00:34:19.660 And we have big plans this summer.

00:34:21.040 I don't know.

00:34:21.500 Ben, you doing anything fun this summer?

00:34:24.620 Yes, we do our annual trip to celebrate the 4th of July by, you know, celebrating our nation by blowing up a small part of it in rural Arizona and looking forward to it because it'll be my new son's first sojourn into the desert and it'll be a lot of fun.

00:34:43.960 Isabel, you doing anything fun this summer at all?

00:34:46.260 Lots of fun things.

00:34:47.240 My sister's getting married in Alaska in three weeks, so we're taking a big family vacation up there and then spending a 250 here in our nation's capital.

00:34:55.140 I'm so excited.

00:34:56.660 Yeah, we're having a baby because I don't have enough stress in my life, so we're having another baby in about a month and a half here.

00:35:03.560 Wait, wait, you're having a baby in the 250th anniversary?

00:35:07.760 That's awesome.

00:35:08.520 Yeah, that's very cool.

00:35:09.280 there's a there's a there's a not insignificant shot that this is a july 4th baby which would be

00:35:13.200 awesome because i've made a deal with my wife which is that if the if the baby is born on july

00:35:17.300 4th i get to name the baby john adam like that that is the thing that i i made i made that deal

00:35:22.420 with her but but we listen we're all going to be busy this summer what none of us have the time

00:35:26.340 for is waiting through confusing insurance websites trying to figure out if we're getting

00:35:29.440 a good deal and that's where policy genius comes in most people know they need life insurance they

00:35:34.440 just keep putting it off because it feels complicated policy genius makes it simple

00:35:37.520 It's an online marketplace where you compare quotes from America's top insurers side-by-side

00:35:41.320 for free, coverage amounts, prices, terms, all laid out.

00:35:43.660 Clearly, no guesswork.

00:35:44.600 Their licensed team handles the paperwork, answers your questions, and advocates for

00:35:47.900 you throughout the entire process.

00:35:49.360 They're not trying to upsell you.

00:35:50.340 They're working to get you the right policy at the most affordable price.

00:35:53.420 Protecting your family financially is not a someday task.

00:35:55.800 It's a priority.

00:35:56.600 With thousands of five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot, people are finding great policies

00:36:00.160 and checking this off their list for good.

00:36:01.980 So just get it done in minutes and then get on with your summer.

00:36:04.560 Protect your family with a policy that grows with your life.

00:36:06.760 With PolicyGenius, you can see if you can find a 20-year life insurance policy starting at just 276 bucks a year for a million dollars in coverage.

00:36:13.180 Head on over to PolicyGenius.com slash fire to compare life insurance quotes from top companies.

00:36:17.780 See how much you could save.

00:36:18.900 That's PolicyGenius.com slash fire.

00:36:21.720 Okay, so speaking of our great country's birth and breaking away from the British, the UK is in the news because they decided they were going to ban a couple of American terror supporters from their shores.

00:36:32.840 And so they put out some sort of statement

00:36:34.560 and they said that Cenk Uyghur and Hassan Piker,

00:36:36.960 who are their family, Hassan's an Epo baby.

00:36:39.520 They said, you're not allowed to come to the UK

00:36:41.240 and go to Oxford Union because you guys are a,

00:36:44.540 essentially, you create the conditions

00:36:46.140 for the possibility of violence,

00:36:47.680 which I think is a terrible excuse, by the way.

00:36:49.660 I don't like the heckler's veto

00:36:50.840 because that basically says that, you know,

00:36:52.800 Ben or Isabel, if any of us decided to go to Britain

00:36:55.260 and people decided to protest us and create violence,

00:36:57.800 then they could just ban us from Britain.

00:36:59.060 So I don't like the excuse.

00:36:59.820 I do, however, like them banning Hassan and Shank.

00:37:03.020 And the reason is I do not think that any country has the obligation to bring into its country people who love terrorism or China or Cuba. 0.53

00:37:10.400 I think that we should apply that same rule in America. 0.99

00:37:12.780 I think that people who come here, it's about a bunch of anti-American bullshit. 0.99

00:37:16.320 Those people should not be allowed in our country. 0.99

00:37:18.620 And frankly, if people came here and they immigrated and they lied on their immigration forms, I think they should be booted out. 0.89

00:37:24.540 So I know this is some there's kind of a weird thing that's broken out on the right where some people like, no, libertarian free speech concerns for the UK, which is a foreign country.

00:37:33.800 But I'm not sure where you guys are on this. Isabel, where are you on it?

00:37:37.300 Yeah, you know, Ben, I was really surprised to see this story break through the headlines the other day because just a few weeks before all of this,

00:37:43.100 the UK banned my friend Ava Vlardinger Brook from coming into the UK to give a speech for a more conservative wing of British politics.

00:37:51.320 And their reasoning for that is because she directly inspires violence all over Europe by promoting this re-migration movement of Europeans having more babies to counteract the crazy, horrifying, devastating effects of mass migration.

00:38:05.940 And honestly, I'm interested a little bit to see the UK applying this across the board to people on the left and the right. 0.69

00:38:13.280 But I just find it rich that all of a sudden the UK government and Keir Starmer seem so excited about stopping the proliferation of violence in the United Kingdom. 0.96

00:38:21.900 When in reality, they themselves are directly responsible for mass importing millions upon millions of people who are literally raping teenage girls in broad daylight on the street, who are normalizing mass violence in the name of eradicating British culture for this Islamic takeover of their society. 0.94

00:38:39.000 And you're not allowed to talk about that. In fact, if you're a British citizen and you tweet about that, they'll throw you in prison for 20 years, but they won't actually stop violence. 0.96

00:38:47.320 So I don't really know where this is coming from. It certainly isn't in line with their

00:38:51.300 political agenda that they've been enacting domestically. But I am curious to see how

00:38:55.320 they keep applying it. And I'm supposed to go to the UK in August. So we'll see if they let me in.

00:38:59.940 We'll see if that works or not.

00:39:02.220 I think that Britain just loves banning things in this kind of nation of decline

00:39:09.280 that they represent now. They're banning things willy nilly. You can't have a cigarette if you're

00:39:15.360 under a certain age. I mean, this is where Dunhill is from, which is what I smoke, but it had just

00:39:19.880 that it's the kind of thing that is so infuriating to me. It's like, can't you like, I don't know,

00:39:25.960 rebuild your Navy. It used to run the world. Couldn't you have like functional, you know,

00:39:31.460 number of ships that we could depend on, maybe ask you to help with some things like the

00:39:35.760 Strait of Hormuz? No, we can't. That's the kind of thing that I think a nation does when it just

00:39:40.560 kind of spirals into itself and becomes this nation that basically just says, no, we have to

00:39:46.820 ban tweets. We have to ban people. We have to ban messages. We have to, because all of these things,

00:39:51.060 they just accept that leftist idea that words are violence. At the same time, does it have to,

00:39:56.740 do I have to have sympathies for Hassan Piker in this moment? I feel bad just to taking this

00:40:01.680 position. No, you don't. I'll tell you why you don't. I'll tell you why you don't. You are right

00:40:05.220 about one thing, Ben, which is that this actually brings to mind Cheeky Chesterton's long essay

00:40:12.880 about, he doesn't have short ones, about what he saw in America a little over 100 years ago when

00:40:17.700 he came here. And he talked about, that's where the line comes from of America being the only

00:40:22.020 nation founded in a creed. He talked about the sort of optimistic, hopeful idea that one of the

00:40:29.320 questions he had to ask on his immigration form was are you an anarchist question mark and then

00:40:35.300 like you have to yeah the nation believes that you should ask that question believing you're

00:40:40.680 going to get an honest answer that there's something charming about that we should be

00:40:44.780 able to keep people out of this country who hate our country and mean it ill and want to support

00:40:49.440 terrorism and that should extend by the way to candidates for the u.s congress yeah you know

00:40:54.980 one of the things there's this tweet so people we've all been on twitter for a long time for no

00:40:58.940 good mental health reason. And every so often, somebody will bring up a tweet that's like 15,

00:41:03.300 20 years old at this point. And one of the tweets that I get thrown back in my face a lot is a tweet

00:41:07.680 that I wrote, I don't know, it must have been 10 years ago or something, where I say, I don't care 1.00

00:41:10.440 about the browning of America. I only care about the ideologies of the people in America. And for 0.57

00:41:14.940 some reason, this is used as some sort of a dunk, which I really don't understand, frankly, because 0.60

00:41:18.580 I don't judge people on the basis of their skin color, but I do judge them very harshly on the

00:41:22.900 basis of their ideology your dunk is so much less damaging than mine which is uh what does

00:41:30.500 it take to go on a date with megan mccain and me responding to it do not want

00:41:34.180 yeah that one aged like sour milk for ben but

00:41:42.700 i don't think you have a more owned tweet than that there is nothing you have ever said

00:41:51.280 that is my wife will occasionally my wife will bring it up and she says but it turned out you

00:41:56.580 did one oh my gosh i i have a similar thing not a public tweet like that but i remember i was on

00:42:04.480 my fourth date with my wife and i turned to her and i said i really like you and she said she said

00:42:08.680 to me i like things about you and i was like wow that's that's uh that i was like that and so now

00:42:14.640 solo uh princess leia stuff right there i know exactly we were at disneyland at the time we're

00:42:20.800 actually at disneyland at the time and and i and i every so often we've been married almost 20 years

00:42:25.320 at this point i do turn to her every so often and i'll be like well that's the fifth baby right

00:42:29.640 there in your stomach so in your belly is our fifth child so i win you lose like that's the

00:42:33.740 way that this works anyway but that tweet the sort of browning of america tweet i i will say

00:42:38.180 it is it is kind of astonishing to me that that was ever a controversial tweet or remains one

00:42:42.500 Because the the merit, obviously, of human beings doesn't lie in their melanin level.

00:42:47.320 It lies in the ideas that they bring forth, which is why, you know, I'm very much of the

00:42:51.420 view that if we were legally capable, we should expel people who hate the country from the

00:42:56.400 country.

00:42:57.020 I understand that we can't do that legally, because obviously, if you're born in America,

00:43:00.060 you have legal rights to say and do pretty much whatever you want.

00:43:02.980 It's one of the great things about America.

00:43:04.100 But that does mean we have to be pretty selective about who we let into this place.

00:43:07.460 And one of the gigantic mistakes made by Europe and by the United States that we are not selective

00:43:11.320 at all for the past several decades about who we let into our houses. And now we turn around

00:43:16.760 and everybody's spray painting the walls and pissing in the corners. And we're all supposed

00:43:20.640 to be shocked by this. The other thing is, the other thing is, and this is what, I mean, this

00:43:25.280 is kind of a key to just quickly, this is the key to kind of Luke Rosiac's reporting over the last

00:43:30.460 several weeks, you know, and obviously over months that led up to it, is this clash between

00:43:36.200 low-trust societies and high-trust societies, people who come here who want to be Americans

00:43:41.620 and become Americans, and people who come here essentially as outposts within our society,

00:43:47.620 trying to extract as much money out of our government systems, use them to their benefit,

00:43:52.760 calling people racist for questioning it, and then sending it back home.

00:43:56.320 It's obscene. It's horrible. It damages the interests of Americans themselves,

00:44:01.660 particularly working-class Americans. And the fact that the Republican Party was so unwilling

00:44:05.920 The coalition of the right was so unwilling to embrace this or even depicting people who did talk about this as being racist or on the outskirts or something like that, accepting this leftist argument for so many years that laid the foundation for why Donald Trump won in the first place.

00:44:20.920 And it's still, I think, a lesson that these Republicans haven't learned. They still talk about this stuff just naturally as if we're in like 2002 and it's George W. Bush and we have to figure out things for guest workers and the like.

00:44:33.420 this is a completely different population that you've imported over the last 20 years and it's

00:44:37.460 very different from the kind of people that you just talked about in the past who are workers who

00:44:41.140 are going to come here and then go back home that does not happen they extract as much as they can

00:44:45.360 from our taxpayers and they send it wherever they want well and i'm just curious to throw out to the

00:44:51.060 group here feel free to agree or disagree or take this any way you want i generally agree with the

00:44:56.560 sentiment of that tweet ben that anyone can make up their mind about anything and certainly your

00:45:01.040 skin color is not indicative of your intelligence level or your ability to have your own opinion

00:45:06.060 formed independently from what you look like. That said, there is a really interesting and I

00:45:10.740 think important cultural conversation happening in America right now, led by mostly young people

00:45:14.940 about certain cultures being incompatible with that of Western civilization. And largely I'm

00:45:20.460 thinking of Islam and those imported from the Islamic world, which does involve to some degree

00:45:25.700 ethnicity involved in there as well. What's your take on that?

00:45:29.280 Well, I mean, I think that Thomas Sowell does a really great job of breaking down.

00:45:32.460 He has a great book called Discrimination and Disparities.

00:45:34.620 And one of the things that he talks about in there is sort of a typology of discrimination.

00:45:38.680 He says that there is normal discrimination where we discriminate by making choices every

00:45:42.440 single day.

00:45:42.840 When you go to a restaurant, if you pick one dish, you are discriminating against the other

00:45:46.000 dishes.

00:45:46.340 That's what it means to have, say, discriminating taste.

00:45:48.600 And then there is discrimination in the sense that you look at a group of people and based

00:45:53.620 on the group data, you make an informed sort of judgment about the likelihood that a person

00:45:57.840 is going to act in a particular way.

00:45:59.720 And we do that all the time.

00:46:00.520 If we see a group of people

00:46:01.420 and they're wearing white coats in a hospital,

00:46:02.820 you're going to make the informed decision

00:46:04.260 that that person is likely to be a doctor.

00:46:06.120 You look at the outward indicators

00:46:07.360 that suggest behavior and you make that decision.

00:46:10.080 And then there's hard discrimination.

00:46:11.700 Hard discrimination,

00:46:12.580 the kind of discrimination that he says is wrong

00:46:14.600 is the discrimination where

00:46:15.900 you actually know the individual in question

00:46:17.840 and you let the group data trump the individual data.

00:46:19.960 So in the absence of individual data,

00:46:22.560 making a group judgment

00:46:23.560 is just a natural thing that we all do

00:46:25.360 because obviously how else

00:46:26.440 are you going to make judgments?

00:46:27.160 But when you have individual data, then you can allow that individual data and you should allow that individual data to trump the group data.

00:46:33.780 And so there are two separate questions, say, about Muslim immigration to the United States.

00:46:38.880 Some people will say, so you're saying that no Muslim can come to the United States and be a good citizen?

00:46:42.460 No, that's not what we're saying.

00:46:43.920 It is quite possible that there can be a Muslim or some Muslims or many Muslims who could come and be good citizens if they actually demonstrate specifically and individually that they are going to be good citizens. 0.87

00:46:53.320 But if you look at Islamic culture in, say, Pakistan, the idea that you could mass migrate a million Pakistanis to the United States, and on average, that is going to work out well for the United States, that is a really ridiculous proposition.

00:47:04.820 And the same thing, of course, you can have cultural distinctions.

00:47:07.520 I think that what you've seen from some parts of the fringe right is the inability to distinguish between cultural differentiation and racial differentiation.

00:47:16.380 The idea will be, and that's where you get into actual discrimination, where it's like, okay, I know that guy.

00:47:21.180 He lives next to me.

00:47:21.940 I know him really, really well.

00:47:22.940 he's a good american citizen and i wouldn't let him in even knowing him because there's a group

00:47:28.100 data that on average people are like this and that that is a bit of a of a different thing that's

00:47:32.300 that's how i would kind of break down i think soul does a really good job of breaking down

00:47:35.200 that typology but again i think that you know there's been a couple of false binaries that

00:47:40.520 have been injected into the right on these politics you see it all the time where it's like

00:47:43.840 i i get the feeling these days that basically all politics has been depixelated right we've 0.97

00:47:48.180 we've sort of made everything very blunt and stupid and not nuanced. And so to take an example 0.97

00:47:52.940 of sort of the free speech debate, right? There's this idea that you see from somebody like Britain

00:47:57.500 is not doing free speech when they won't allow Chank or Hassan into their country. They're not 1.00

00:48:02.620 doing free speech. And it's like free speech is not the proposition that you get to go to every

00:48:06.240 foreign country that you want and spew whatever malignity that you want in a foreign country.

00:48:10.160 That is not the proposition. And free speech is not even the proposition that anything that you 0.82

00:48:14.080 can say is morally equivalent to anything else that you can say right you see that one pop up

00:48:18.100 a lot or it's like well you question somebody's view and they say it's not even free speech is

00:48:22.540 not even remotely a value of the united kingdom so you're having a pointless argument at that

00:48:26.760 point too right exactly but everything just gets depixelated all the time and and so i feel the

00:48:31.520 same thing about this sort of what is an american debate but what is an american debate the answer

00:48:34.700 is like all of the above right that yes of course we have a specific time involved in a particular

00:48:40.080 way. Yeah. Can I ask you a question prompted by the social media expressions that we've seen over

00:48:45.880 the past couple of weeks? Do you think that these people who rail about like how much this country

00:48:50.280 has changed and fallen away from, from, you know, uh, values that they only recently discovered,

00:48:56.160 let's say, um, do you think that they want to import all of Moscow into America? Cause it 0.95

00:49:01.040 sure seems like that over the past week, the way that they've been talking about the glorious,

00:49:05.240 you know uh christianity that they find uh on their paid trips to russia i mean it's it's just

00:49:12.020 insane some of the stuff that they've been saying oh that's an astonishing laughable i i find it

00:49:17.320 laughable because i actually so i love like one of the things that i uh you know uh have a

00:49:23.860 disagreement about with with certain people and certain uh family members is occasionally when

00:49:28.560 they when there's an anti-russian thing i just point out they have a phenomenal literature they

00:49:32.880 have phenomenal music. There's all this tragedy that has birthed wonderful things that came out

00:49:37.320 of Russia. You know what hasn't come out of Russia? Actual appreciation for Christianity 0.99

00:49:41.540 that is endorsed by the Kremlin. And it's absurd, the kind of things that we're seeing,

00:49:46.520 this op playing out in front of us. But it's like, okay, so do you want to import those people here?

00:49:51.260 Is that the way that this is supposed to work? Or are we supposed to become more like them in 1.00

00:49:55.260 some kind of embrace of this KGB approach to governance way? None of this makes any sense

00:50:01.180 to me on any real level other than I'm just being paid to say this. Oh, man, I can't even speak to

00:50:08.300 how stupid I think you have to be to fall for the op that's currently taking place in Moscow. 1.00

00:50:11.780 I mean, truly, like if you don't understand that it's an op, I don't know. You're the mark. 1.00

00:50:16.340 Like it is that obvious if you're literally going over to a country that is enemies with

00:50:20.320 the United States and make no mistake. I mean, Vladimir Putin is not oblique about this and

00:50:24.200 neither is Alexander Dugin, who sort of is outreach master. They are not oblique about

00:50:28.080 their intent for the United States. And it is not good if you're going over there and you're

00:50:31.120 going to a country that has one of the highest abortion rates on planet earth a country that

00:50:35.000 has essentially no birth rate a country that has legitimately no religious observance for the vast

00:50:41.320 majority of its population they have something like a 10 church attendance rate and the only

00:50:45.240 real legal church that is promoted is just a propagandistic outlet for the russian government

00:50:49.920 which is why it was banned in ukraine it's not because they don't believe in eastern orthodoxy

00:50:53.440 it's because they said that the russian orthodox church is actually just a tool of the government

00:50:57.340 in russia that's the real thing that's happening and if the thing that's being promoted by marjorie

00:51:00.840 taylor green and tucker and candace and andrew tate first of all if you're buying into the andrew

00:51:04.820 tate is a good christian thing andrew tate is somehow less christian than i am like that's

00:51:08.720 like i actually believe people should go to church like i also am not guilty or have it has it ever

00:51:14.120 been alleged sexual harassment or sexual abuse of any kind so i'm i'm fairly certain that even i

00:51:18.800 have more credibility on this matter than andrew tate but if like you're trotting out these people

00:51:22.120 as like andrew tate is desperate for you to go back to church and be a good christian i i don't 0.69

00:51:26.500 know how dumb you have to be to believe this i like i i don't like to insult members of the 0.86

00:51:30.160 audience who believe things. But I mean, honestly, at a certain point, at a certain point, the word 0.98

00:51:35.180 retarded was invented for this kind of op. It really is insane. What a wild time we live in. 0.94

00:51:44.400 Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I look, look, we're old, Isabel. So we grew up injected with like

00:51:50.900 anti-communism just like was part of the deal, you know, like it's, it just sort of was, was

00:51:57.740 there from from our inception you know and i and i still i mean you know i'll i'll admit to getting

00:52:04.300 teary-eyed every time i go back and just randomly watch the miracle on ice again you know but it's

00:52:09.740 one of these things i thought you were gonna say rocky four i thought you were gonna say rocky four

00:52:12.860 rocky four is every time you watch rocky four yeah yeah no uh uh the crack in al michael's voice

00:52:21.280 is always just what gets me anyway the but the thing that is is is so infuriating about this is

00:52:26.160 the op is so obvious. It's just like, it's who wants you to see this? Why are they putting this

00:52:32.020 in front of you? Why are they pretending like there isn't a hammer and sickle in the, in the,

00:52:36.940 uh, stained glass of this church that they're describing is beautiful and wonderful and an

00:52:41.480 indication of Christian culture. It is absolutely absurd. Anyone who buys into it is an idiot. 1.00

00:52:46.980 And please like, you know, go back and read some Turgenev, go back and read some, some, uh, you know, 1.00

00:52:53.120 Russian literature is great.

00:52:55.280 What it will teach you is to hate communism

00:52:57.400 and hate everything that it produced 0.53

00:52:59.640 within the Russian culture. 1.00

00:53:02.100 To put this into perspective for my generation 1.00

00:53:04.220 and God forbid our children

00:53:05.600 who are going to have a whole heck of a time

00:53:07.500 growing up like this,

00:53:08.800 even Russian-oriented literature

00:53:11.000 or warnings about, I don't know,

00:53:12.840 the implications of Stalinism like Animal Farm

00:53:15.200 are now being turned into cartoon movies for children

00:53:18.260 that actually dunk on capitalism

00:53:20.540 as the source of all evil in society now.

00:53:23.800 And somehow, George Orwell is rolling over in his grave over all of this.

00:53:26.760 So I think it's really fashionable right now to just be contrarian for the sake of being

00:53:32.320 contrarian, even if it flies in the face of objective reality.

00:53:35.620 And that certainly generates a whole lot of clicks and engagement on social media.

00:53:38.980 But I am also starting to see young people realize that not everything is a conspiracy

00:53:44.660 just because a whole lot of big, important things happened to be a conspiracy in the

00:53:49.780 last several years. And I've found a really interesting corner of the internet from so many

00:53:53.620 young people who are just tired of all the noise. They're tired of the ops. They're tired of the

00:53:57.220 clickbait. They're tired of the attack wars of the podcast realm. And they want real solutions.

00:54:02.400 They want suggestions for what they can actually do to safeguard their culture from an individual

00:54:07.420 decision-making perspective. I think the answer is really easy in America for how you fight

00:54:11.820 the demographic shift. It's not to mass import people who hate your country and want to destroy

00:54:16.680 it. It certainly isn't to mass import people from other cultures that do not share our foundational

00:54:21.700 values of Christianity, like the faux Christianity that we see in Russia. I think it's really simple. 0.94

00:54:27.520 Make more babies and go to church and exercise your civic duty in voting and understand how

00:54:32.640 our society works. When you can reframe all of this away from the click engagement and the

00:54:37.840 disgusting stuff that you see on X, and you actually can tell young people you can be the

00:54:42.360 solution to this, I think it's really meaningful. And there's not a lot of people doing that.

00:54:45.720 Well, on that positive note, once again, I just want to remind you that, you know, you should support us here at Daily Wire Plus because we may be the last bastion of sanity in this cruel, cruel, dark world.

00:54:57.120 But again, you will only be able to see content like this if you subscribe.

00:55:00.700 You'll get to see all of our wonderful hosts back on the next episode of Friendly Fire.

00:55:05.760 And in the meantime, for Isabel and for the other Ben, we bid you a good evening.

00:55:11.000 When you travel well, your KLM Royal Dutch Airlines ticket takes you to more than just your destination.

00:55:18.600 It takes you to front row views, voices lost in the music and new shared memories.

00:55:25.640 And when the last song fades, the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines crew is here to ensure your journey home hits all the right notes.

00:55:35.360 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. When you travel, travel well.

The Michael Knowles Show - June 03, 2026

Friendly Fire： California Tea Party, America's Browning & Putin's Pilgrims

Episode Stats

People

Summary

Transcript