The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire： Hegseth. Homeland Security & Happy Meals

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00:00:43.280 If your country has not figured out waste disposal,

00:00:47.560 we're not going to accept anyone from your country. 1.00

00:00:49.680 Michael, your area of specialty and interest lies in fast food.

00:00:53.340 I'm a secret fat guy.

00:00:54.640 It's a scam is what I'm telling you.

00:00:56.100 Matt Walsh's show will just be called Old Man Yells at Cloud.

00:00:58.580 That's the show now.

00:00:59.480 What are you talking about?

00:01:00.700 Friends like these.

00:01:02.120 Who needs enemies?

00:01:03.820 Friends like these.

00:01:05.320 Who needs enemies?

00:01:08.020 Welcome to Friendly Fire.

00:01:09.700 We're all fat and happy after Thanksgiving.

00:01:11.760 We're actually not so happy because the country is falling apart.

00:01:14.760 A lot to get to.

00:01:15.840 Obviously, the tragic shooting of two National Guardsmen just a day before Thanksgiving by an Afghan national. 0.99

00:01:22.840 A lot of people asking, why do we have all these Afghan nationals?

00:01:25.520 Why do we have all of these Somalis committing fraud in Minnesota and sending their money to terrorists overseas? 1.00

00:01:30.600 We'll get into the big immigration question because America's, I think, public opinion has moved vastly to the right on this on immigration.

00:01:38.320 And I give three cheers for that.

00:01:40.940 Also, speaking of Latin America, our Secretary of War is just zapping drug boats left and right, which is a very, very beautiful thing in my view.

00:01:50.480 Now the libs are taking the side of the narco terrorists and accusing him of war crimes.

00:01:54.020 And even some on the right want to say it might be a war crime.

00:01:56.820 We'll get into that.

00:01:57.440 And then the most important question raised by our very own Matt Walsh, why do restaurants suck?

00:02:02.200 They didn't used to suck, and now they kind of suck.

00:02:04.380 Matt's words, not mine.

00:02:05.940 We'll get into all of that first, though.

00:02:08.020 You know what Cyber Monday means?

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00:02:14.620 DailyWire.com slash subscribe.

00:02:17.100 All right, before we get to the most important question, the restaurant question, this migration issue is brutal.

00:02:25.260 And it's truly, you read terrible headlines all the time.

00:02:29.300 And right before Thanksgiving, this was one of those stories that makes you personally very, very angry.

00:02:36.260 And it should make you personally very, very angry.

00:02:38.440 These two young people, a young 20-year-old woman, 24-year-old guy, National Guard in Washington,

00:02:44.800 serve in their country right before the American holiday.

00:02:47.580 And this Afghan national comes out and murders the woman, puts the man in critical condition. 1.00

00:02:52.940 This following another attempted Afghan terror attack in Oklahoma last year, right on Election Day.

00:03:00.580 This after we've seen a lot of crimes being committed by these Afghan immigrants, 1.00

00:03:04.420 or refugees, I suppose, taken in under Joe Biden.

00:03:07.140 This on top of all of the Somalis in Minnesota apparently defrauding the taxpayer and sending their money to Al-Shabaab. 0.75

00:03:13.520 So clearly something's gone very, very wrong with immigration.

00:03:17.220 Now President Trump talking about pausing immigration, maybe even deporting people who are ostensibly legal residents or citizens.

00:03:23.720 What are we to do about it?

00:03:25.760 I assume the most belligerent take will come from you, Matt.

00:03:28.380 So what's your take?

00:03:30.220 Yeah, well, look, I first on what Trump has said, I completely agree with the tweet that he put out over the weekend.

00:03:37.600 And shut off third world immigration. 1.00

00:03:40.720 You know, I've been saying that for a long time.

00:03:41.880 A lot of us have been.

00:03:43.180 We need to look at denaturalizing. 0.63

00:03:44.980 So it's not just deporting illegals, but also deporting people who are, as you say, ostensibly legal citizens, denaturalize them.

00:03:52.500 And it's not just because we don't like them.

00:03:54.200 It's because they are committing fraud.

00:03:56.320 As we know with Somalis, this is a huge problem. 1.00

00:03:59.740 It's a systemic problem.

00:04:02.100 But also they're lying when they come here.

00:04:04.040 They're supposed to pledge allegiance to our country.

00:04:05.920 That's part of the application process.

00:04:08.000 And we have this very good evidence that a lot of them just flat out lied.

00:04:11.000 So that's a form of fraud and they should be kicked out for that.

00:04:13.520 The one thing I will say with Trump, though, is that, you know, and this has been an issue with Trump going back to the first term, is that if you're going, and I think he's done a lot of great things in the second term.

00:04:22.960 But if you're going to say that you're going to take these kinds of radical steps, radical in comparison to what presidents of the past have done, if you're going to say that, then you actually have to do it.

00:04:34.000 Because if you say it and then you don't do it, now it's the worst of all worlds.

00:04:36.800 Because you're still going to get hit.

00:04:38.500 You're going to get the blowback for doing it because you said you were going to do it, but you don't actually get the result of having done it.

00:04:43.560 So if you say it, if you throw down the gauntlet and say we're going to shut off immigration from third world countries and we're going to denaturalize citizens who defrauded this country, you're going to get a lot of blowback.

00:04:54.840 He's already getting it.

00:04:55.840 Well, now you've got to go and actually do it.

00:04:58.020 And I think this case with the Afghans is a perfect, it shows exactly why it needs to happen. 1.00

00:05:04.900 Because, you know, it's not just, as you say, Michael, it's, we know the attacks on the National Guardsmen.

00:05:11.180 We know the terror attack that was, that was foiled.

00:05:13.940 It's not even just that.

00:05:14.800 There was a, there was a case in Fairfax, Virginia this year of an Afghan, you know, quote unquote, refugee was pulled over, ends up opening fire on the police officers.

00:05:24.480 Fortunately, none of them were killed.

00:05:25.600 He was killed in the, in the, you know, in the gunfire, in the return fire.

00:05:30.320 He, he says on the body, you can go listen to the body cam we talked about on the show today.

00:05:34.080 He says, you can, it's picked up on the body cam, this Afghan refugee after he's pulled over, it was just for a traffic stop. 0.96

00:05:40.400 And he says, you stupid white people, you let me into the country.

00:05:44.600 He actually says that.

00:05:45.620 And then he, and then he opens fire.

00:05:47.380 And the reason why this kind of, to me, it kind of encapsulates the whole problem because why, why are these people in the country in the first place? 0.66

00:05:54.180 Right.

00:05:54.540 They're here because we're told for, in many cases that like we owe it to them.

00:05:59.160 And, and, and, and some cases they, they worked with, uh, with American forces.

00:06:04.620 They work with the CIA.

00:06:05.680 So we owe it to them.

00:06:06.820 Well, first of all, uh, and this is the kind of thing that isn't, that isn't said very often, but it's like, well, okay.

00:06:12.680 So you were a turncoat, um, and we, we paid you money and you worked for us.

00:06:17.640 And so now we want to take you in.

00:06:19.020 Well, I, I guess I appreciate it, but at the same time, that actually makes me trust you even less.

00:06:23.540 Uh, but, but second, this idea that we owe it.

00:06:27.820 So you come here because we have some kind of debt to you.

00:06:30.540 And this is kind of, it's the same thing with the Somalis that come here. 1.00

00:06:32.880 It's this, it's this perverse notion that in some way, like we have some kind of responsibility.

00:06:39.180 The Somalis are even crazier. 1.00

00:06:40.660 It's not like the Somalis ever helped us out in a war. 1.00

00:06:42.940 At least I kind of get it with the Afghanis. 1.00

00:06:44.820 Well, it's, it's, it's, it's the same kind of argument that, well, they're, they're country is in, is in tatters.

00:06:50.920 And, and then, and then an argument we've made that, well, American foreign policy was responsible for this and that.

00:06:57.240 And, and, uh, but it's always that it's always about, they're not coming here to contribute to us.

00:07:01.780 They're not even pretending that that's what they're here for.

00:07:04.020 The argument isn't even that they're here, that we should bring them in because our country benefits.

00:07:09.260 It's that it's, it's, they benefit from it and we should be nice and allow it.

00:07:13.280 And, uh, that just doesn't, that doesn't work.

00:07:15.780 It should always be as Americans.

00:07:17.640 The question is what's in it for us.

00:07:19.200 What's in it for our, for our people, for our children.

00:07:22.300 And, uh, uh, and we don't benefit at all from bringing in a single Afghan or a single Somali. 0.97

00:07:26.980 I think that's pretty great.

00:07:27.340 Ben, do we owe anything to these people?

00:07:28.880 Um, I mean, I think that obviously when it comes to the Somalis, the answer is no.

00:07:32.680 I mean, their, their country has been a trash heap for generations at this point.

00:07:36.220 And the United States tried to get involved and tried to help on a humanitarian level.

00:07:40.480 And then obviously that didn't work out very well.

00:07:42.520 The idea that we had to go from 2,500 Somalis living in the United States in 1990 to 175,000

00:07:49.080 Somalis living in the United States as of today, as some sort of apology for what us not being 1.00

00:07:54.180 good enough at bringing them food, uh, is pretty insane.

00:07:57.200 Uh, and obviously you have massive culture clash.

00:08:00.460 You have lack of assimilation.

00:08:01.980 Uh, you have mayoral races that are being divided by actual tribal loyalty in Minneapolis.

00:08:06.160 That's what happened in the last mayoral race is that actually certain members of certain

00:08:09.440 Somali tribes voted against candidates who are siding with other members of other Somali tribes.

00:08:14.880 We don't need that sort of full scale tribalism in the United States.

00:08:17.840 We've got enough problems as it is, uh, with, with regard to Afghanistan, I think it's slightly 0.68

00:08:21.940 more complicated, not that we should take in vast numbers of unvetted immigrants from

00:08:26.940 Afghanistan because we screwed things up in Afghanistan. 0.96

00:08:29.500 I think there's a couple of original sins.

00:08:31.380 One of them, frankly, is just the pullout from Afghanistan, the way Joe Biden did it.

00:08:35.260 I think that, that if you pull out from Afghanistan and leave no governing institutions behind such 0.76

00:08:39.900 that everybody who helped out the U S army is going to be murdered where they stand, we

00:08:43.940 should find some place for them to go.

00:08:45.140 That's not the United States.

00:08:46.120 But I do think that, you know, if we ever want to have alliances with anybody else on

00:08:49.460 earth ever again, and we're going to have to work with people against regimes that exist,

00:08:53.060 then we want to find some place for some of those people to go.

00:08:55.980 This, this case is a little bit weird because the guy not only worked with the CIA, he was pretty

00:09:00.900 well vetted when he came in in 2021.

00:09:02.240 And then the Trump administration did grant him actual asylum in 2025 on the basis of that

00:09:08.580 prior vetting, presumably, despite the fact that in 2023, we now know from the New York

00:09:12.640 post, he actually had been reported by other members of his community as having mental breakdowns.

00:09:18.000 And he was, he was depressed and he was, he was going out like on these long drives and

00:09:21.480 we knew where he was and all this kind of stuff.

00:09:23.960 And so the, the, the idea that we got from the department of Homeland security is that actually

00:09:28.260 when he came in, he wasn't nearly as much of a problem as obviously he would later become

00:09:32.240 and that he was radicalized.

00:09:33.260 And to me, this is a separate issue, but both need to be dealt with.

00:09:36.340 One of them is obviously, why are we letting in hundreds of thousands of people from third 0.63

00:09:39.800 world countries?

00:09:40.360 We cannot vet.

00:09:41.040 And I think we all agree that's insane.

00:09:42.820 And then there's the secondary issue that I think is nearly as problematic, maybe just as

00:09:47.260 problematic, which is the number of terror attacks that the United States has suffered

00:09:50.740 from people who are radicalized while living in the United States is really, really high.

00:09:55.760 Okay.

00:09:56.200 This guy, according to DHS was radicalized after coming to the United States, after working

00:10:00.300 with us, he came here, he was radicalized.

00:10:01.960 But I mean, I know that we all just sort of memory hold the fact that there've been a

00:10:04.880 bunch of terror attacks on American soil by ISIS affiliates, but there have, I mean, this

00:10:09.620 year in January, you remember in new Orleans, there was a terror attack that killed 14 people

00:10:13.780 where a guy had like an ISIS flag on his truck and just ran people over.

00:10:17.240 And we, we all memory hold that.

00:10:18.680 We don't remember that the single worst mass shooting in America to that date was the pulse nightclub

00:10:23.880 shooting.

00:10:24.180 Obviously there was Vegas afterward. 0.92

00:10:25.700 The pulse nightclub shooting was a radicalized guy who was radicalized by association with

00:10:30.840 ISIS that there, there was a shooting in San Bernardino, 14 people were killed again, radicalized

00:10:35.660 by ISIS while living in the United States.

00:10:37.240 And so I think it's the combination of both of these things.

00:10:39.560 One is this mass migration.

00:10:40.940 You don't know.

00:10:41.620 You don't get to come here just because your life sucks somewhere else.

00:10:44.020 Guess what?

00:10:44.300 It turns out America amazing.

00:10:45.620 I understand why everybody wants to get in.

00:10:47.140 We have no obligation to take you in on that basis, but we also have a massive problem

00:10:51.080 with institutions in the United States that pay people not to assimilate, that allow them

00:10:55.960 to radicalize and that foster the radicalization.

00:10:58.380 I think that the biggest detail in that Somali case is that the government knew they were committing 0.57

00:11:02.160 fraud.

00:11:03.000 And many of these groups were going to the government and threatening to sue on the basis

00:11:06.880 of discrimination.

00:11:07.620 If they were actually targeted by law enforcement and the, and Minnesota just went, oh, I guess,

00:11:12.200 well, if you're going to call us racist, I guess we can't do anything, but let you steal

00:11:15.260 a billion dollars in taxpayer money.

00:11:17.580 Unbelievable.

00:11:18.240 You know, one of the things you're not allowed to say in this whole debate used to be, you

00:11:21.780 couldn't even advocate for drastically less legal immigration.

00:11:25.240 Now I think you can advocate for that.

00:11:27.000 One of the things I think you're still not allowed to say though, is some groups are just

00:11:31.960 less good at being immigrants and there's nothing wrong with excluding them at higher 1.00

00:11:36.760 rates than other groups.

00:11:38.440 You know, this is ancient wisdom, goes back to Aristotle, goes through Thomas Aquinas.

00:11:42.940 It wouldn't be an episode of this show if we didn't bring up those guys.

00:11:45.920 But nine minutes in, dude, you couldn't, you couldn't, man, I'm shocked it took me this

00:11:49.040 long.

00:11:49.440 Dropping it like it's hot.

00:11:50.540 You know, Aristotle makes this point and really, actually, I think St. Thomas does this

00:11:54.440 really well.

00:11:54.820 He reads the Jews in the Old Testament and he reads the writing of Aristotle and he says,

00:11:59.480 look, you can bring in immigrants, but you have to be very, very careful about it. 1.00

00:12:03.340 You know, the Jews in the Old Testament, they did it cautiously. 0.91

00:12:05.400 They did it very slowly.

00:12:06.520 They wouldn't grant citizenship until three generations. 0.82

00:12:09.440 He's reading Aristotle here as well.

00:12:11.600 You know, because immigration can reduce social solidarity. 0.99

00:12:15.560 And he says the Jews in the Old Testament, some people, they felt they could assimilate.

00:12:19.780 Others, it was a little harder.

00:12:21.240 Some, you know, the Amalekites say, you just can't let them in. 1.00

00:12:24.140 And I think what's obvious is when we talk about immigration, we're pretending it's all 1.00

00:12:29.920 exactly the same.

00:12:30.980 No, we could take any number of Englishmen into this country and they would be just fine. 0.65

00:12:35.860 I don't know if there were any Englishmen left in England, as a matter of fact, but

00:12:38.940 it would be fine because they speak the same language.

00:12:41.440 They look roughly the same.

00:12:42.600 We come from England.

00:12:43.660 We roughly believe in the same religion.

00:12:45.640 We have roughly the same habits.

00:12:47.500 And if we want to have chicken tikka masala, guess what?

00:12:49.960 It was invented in England.

00:12:50.960 So that's fine.

00:12:52.100 And it's much harder to bring in Somalis or Pakistanis or Afghanis.

00:12:57.400 You know, Michael, I'm going to argue with that in one second because I enjoy doing that,

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00:14:11.800 Ben, I'm not going to let you argue with me yet.

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00:15:14.540 Okay, back to how Somalis probably can't become Americans. 1.00

00:15:18.640 Okay, so Michael, I was going to disagree with you.

00:15:20.660 So here's the only thing I'm going to disagree with you about in that.

00:15:23.820 I don't think we can take in any number of Englishmen.

00:15:26.060 See, I'm actually more pessimistic about our immigration status than you, perhaps, at this

00:15:30.240 point, not that I think that it would not be easier to assimilate Englishmen than it would

00:15:34.900 be to assimilate, you know, Somalis, but I do think that right now, if you said to me,

00:15:41.180 we're going to take in 100,000 Englishmen, I'd think to myself, uh-oh, because that is a lot of

00:15:46.880 people who voted for the Labor Party and Keir Starmer, meaning that the ideology of the West

00:15:51.760 has become so thoroughgoingly self-defeating that I'm not sure that this is actually a good proxy

00:15:57.020 for who can assimilate to American...

00:15:58.840 Frankly, I think that a lot of Americans don't hold particularly American values at this point,

00:16:02.200 but they are Americans, so they get to stay.

00:16:03.980 But, you know, if we're talking about whom to import and whom not to,

00:16:07.380 I agree, obviously, not all groups are the same in terms of assimilability,

00:16:12.500 their ability to assimilate, but I think that we may be now at the point in American history,

00:16:17.480 and maybe just in Western history, where we can only do it on an individualized basis.

00:16:21.940 That's all we can do.

00:16:23.120 How do you make a policy out of that, though?

00:16:24.600 Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, maybe you can.

00:16:27.080 Maybe you can.

00:16:27.860 I mean, really, like, we could have a better record than we currently have.

00:16:31.700 I mean, I think that, you know, now maybe I'm being even more restrictionist than Matt

00:16:35.740 would be on immigration, but it seems to me that pretty much every individual who comes

00:16:38.880 into the country needs to make an affirmative case as to why they ought to be in the country,

00:16:42.500 and we ought not to do it by groups.

00:16:43.680 We ought to do it just by, should you be here?

00:16:45.500 What are you going to offer us?

00:16:46.460 And what do you actually believe in?

00:16:48.340 But I guess my point, Ben, I see all that.

00:16:50.120 My point is, you know, especially assuming that the Afghan who committed, actually multiple

00:16:56.300 Afghans who have committed these horrible attacks were radicalized in America.

00:17:00.180 Let's say they were properly vetted, and they said all the right things, and they passed

00:17:03.000 the test, and they were radicalized here.

00:17:05.500 However, they, you know, they act a little more in keeping with their tribal origins than

00:17:10.240 with regular old American leftism or something.

00:17:12.600 It just seems to me that there is more to citizenship than passing a quiz.

00:17:18.740 And it seems to me, you know, I'm with Thomas Aquinas, and I'm with the ancient Jews, which 0.98

00:17:22.840 is, it seems to me it takes generations, that there really is something that is inarticulable

00:17:27.720 about identity within a nation that you can't totally write out, you can't totally explain,

00:17:33.340 but it's something about how you appreciate apple pie on the 4th of July and hot dogs and

00:17:37.080 fireworks, and there's just something you've got to kind of get into your bones.

00:17:40.120 And it seems to me that people with traditions and religions and cultural practices and institutions

00:17:46.120 that are closer to ours, like England, despite that a lot of them voted for labor.

00:17:50.120 I agree with that, but I think part of that, honestly, is just a failure of what we have

00:17:54.740 done as a society about immigration and about our own values, meaning that one of the things

00:17:59.280 that makes it easy for people to stay in these sort of groups that never assimilate is the

00:18:04.780 fact that, number one, we're importing people as gigantic groups, and number two, we're then

00:18:08.140 supporting them with welfare dollars and telling them they never have to assimilate.

00:18:11.720 And so if you look at the nature of immigration for the first century and a half of America's

00:18:15.760 existence, there was an awful lot of immigration for the first century and a half of America's

00:18:19.380 immigration system, that what you see is because there were very few actual supportive structures

00:18:25.340 for immigrants, that meant that you had to assimilate and become American.

00:18:28.380 And when you went from Europe, you know, for my ancestors, Eastern Europe, for Michael's

00:18:33.720 ancestors from Sicily, when they came here, I mean, I assume, Michael, that your family

00:18:38.500 didn't come here rich.

00:18:39.860 I mean, everyone's family came here basically dirt poor, and they didn't know the language,

00:18:43.420 and then they assimilated as fast as humanly possible.

00:18:45.500 So for my ancestors who came here at like 1900 or so, they came here and they all spoke

00:18:49.740 Yiddish.

00:18:50.280 And within like three years, they were saying to their kids, like immediately, they said,

00:18:53.840 you're not allowed to speak Yiddish in the house, you need to start speaking English,

00:18:56.120 right?

00:18:56.300 Exactly.

00:18:56.940 Get with it, because if you want to integrate into the American lifestyle and economic system

00:19:01.200 and take part of the American dream, you have to like actually take part in the American

00:19:04.720 dream.

00:19:05.060 And then in 1965, we decided that we were basically just going to throw the doors wide

00:19:09.180 open.

00:19:09.520 And not only that, provide a gigantic social welfare net that people are going to take

00:19:13.120 advantage of.

00:19:14.060 And that's how you end up with importation of 100,000 Somalis who immediately start bilking 1.00

00:19:18.300 the welfare system to the tune of a billion dollars.

00:19:20.780 That can't happen in the absence of these governmental structures.

00:19:23.380 So I'm not going to make it just about the immigrants.

00:19:25.220 Human beings have terrible natures by the essence of who they are.

00:19:29.880 I'm going to say that the incentive structures that we've created here are truly awful, because

00:19:34.220 we've been able to take in enormous numbers of Cuban Americans and Venezuelan Americans

00:19:38.640 and Vietnamese Americans and Chinese Americans.

00:19:40.920 The Cubans get a pass. 0.98

00:19:42.040 They're great.

00:19:42.600 The Cubans are great.

00:19:43.420 The other ones, I'm not totally sold out.

00:19:45.660 I think it's kind of, it's both, because I agree with Ben that we need to evaluate each individually,

00:19:51.640 but you can also make determinations based on groups as well, uh, by looking at like group

00:19:56.960 tendencies.

00:19:57.460 And I think, so here's one policy.

00:19:59.640 I like the idea of if you're a third world country, we're not going to import anyone, 1.00

00:20:02.540 uh, from your country, but maybe another way of putting that, because of course, then

00:20:06.500 you get in the argument, like, well, how do you define third world country?

00:20:08.300 How about this?

00:20:09.360 If your country has not figured out, um, waste disposal, okay, if you don't have a system

00:20:16.540 for waste disposal, then we're not going to accept anyone from your country at all, which 1.00

00:20:21.660 is just another way of saying third world country, because like you, you go to these 1.00

00:20:24.700 third world countries.

00:20:25.400 If you've ever been to one and you see that, you know, of, of, of, of the many different

00:20:29.160 forms of dysfunction, one of the most obvious ones that you can see and smell is that they've

00:20:34.120 just got giant piles of trash everywhere and they, and also they just throw their trash

00:20:38.340 into rivers and their, and their water is undrinkable for that reason.

00:20:41.740 Now, I mean, there were, there were societies at 2000 years ago that figured out, uh, waste

00:20:46.640 disposal.

00:20:47.100 And yet you've got people in modern times who still haven't figured it out.

00:20:49.700 This is just like the basic, these are, these are the, the basic functions of a society

00:20:54.480 that these people, it's not just the government, but the people have not figured out.

00:20:58.860 And if you're one of those people, then you probably don't have a lot to offer us.

00:21:03.260 And, you know, there's also talk about things we can't talk about, Michael.

00:21:06.560 I mean, Somalis have an IQ on average of about 70.

00:21:10.320 Okay.

00:21:11.000 Uh, that's, that's a, right.

00:21:12.860 That's a, that's a real, that's a real thing.

00:21:14.700 And so if you've got a group with an average IQ of 70 and you bring them into this country, 1.00

00:21:19.940 what are you going to get?

00:21:20.940 So I think you can make these kinds of group level distinctions and then also narrow it

00:21:24.360 down to individual.

00:21:25.340 The other thing we also need to keep in mind is that, you know, most people, there was a,

00:21:29.120 there was a, there was a, there's a clip going viral right now of, from the

00:21:32.200 whatever podcast and it's a woman from, uh, I think Columbia and she's got tattoos all 1.00

00:21:37.720 over her face, which number one, if you have tattoos on your face, you should be deported 0.97

00:21:41.140 already.

00:21:41.600 Even, I don't care if you've been here since your family's been here since 65.

00:21:44.140 I like him.

00:21:44.920 Right.

00:21:45.520 Except for him, but everybody else.

00:21:46.820 But she, she, so, so she, she, he's, she's asked, well, if Columbia and the United States

00:21:52.320 were at war, who would you side with?

00:21:53.660 She says Columbia.

00:21:54.720 And the guy is like shocked by this.

00:21:56.780 It's like, well, why would you side with Columbia?

00:21:58.320 And she says, and she's almost confused by the question because it's obvious to her.

00:22:01.660 And she says, well, because I'm from there.

00:22:03.780 Like I'm from there.

00:22:04.620 Of course, of course I'm going to side with Columbia.

00:22:06.540 Let's say the United States went to war with Columbia.

00:22:09.960 Who do you side with?

00:22:12.060 Columbia.

00:22:12.680 Why do you side with Columbia?

00:22:14.240 Because I'm from Columbia.

00:22:15.460 You've lived here for 10 years and you're now a citizen.

00:22:17.800 And the reality is like the vast majority of immigrants, maybe not all of them, but the 0.90

00:22:21.660 vast majority of immigrants in this country right now, first generation and second

00:22:25.500 generation, if you ask them the same question, they give the same answer for the same reason.

00:22:29.260 And it's not because if they, you know, the Somalis, they still feel this tie to their

00:22:33.340 homeland.

00:22:34.120 And maybe it's confusing to Americans because we say, well, Somalia is a total hellhole. 1.00

00:22:37.920 Why do you care about Somalia so much?

00:22:39.700 You came here.

00:22:40.580 Why are you still proud of Somalia? 1.00

00:22:42.400 Well, it's, it's because they're from there.

00:22:44.380 It's like, they're tied to that by blood.

00:22:46.500 And yeah, they chose to come here, but your blood is stronger than your personal choice.

00:22:50.180 And heritage is enduring.

00:22:51.620 Absolutely.

00:22:51.900 It's, it's no different than if I were to say, you know, I love my children and you

00:22:56.440 were to ask, well, why do you love your children?

00:22:57.800 I'm not going to tell you, well, they get, uh, they do well in their schoolwork and they're

00:23:01.500 obedient and they're talented and intelligent.

00:23:03.500 I think all those things are true about my children.

00:23:05.680 That's not the reason I love them because if they were stupid, I would still love them.

00:23:08.320 I love them because they're my children.

00:23:10.000 That's why it's the only, they're my children.

00:23:12.200 That's why I love them.

00:23:13.100 You love your homeland because it's where you're from.

00:23:15.320 Your ancestors are buried there.

00:23:17.840 And, uh, and so it's kind of goes back to your point, Michael, there's something enduring that

00:23:21.120 lasts for a long time.

00:23:22.540 And so we've got a lot of people, when you bring these people in this country, they,

00:23:25.660 that, that, I agree with a lot of that, but obviously we do have this knowledge, this notion

00:23:28.520 in America that is historically true that you can in fact adopt the American identity and

00:23:33.660 Michael, maybe your solution is the right one, which is that we only start to see that

00:23:37.100 over the course of a serious period of time that it's not like day one, you're here and

00:23:40.800 then magically you're, you're an American.

00:23:42.460 And so it actually takes some time to integrate and we have to actually check back in and make

00:23:45.720 sure that you're, you're properly assimilating and all the rest.

00:23:47.820 And sort of one thing that, that I would add to sort of Matt's analysis when it comes

00:23:51.860 to judging by group.

00:23:53.200 So Thomas Sowell talks about discrimination.

00:23:55.180 One of the things he talks about is this type of discrimination that is initially a judgment

00:23:59.280 by group in the absence of individual information.

00:24:02.020 So what he says is it's not discrimination to judge based on group identity.

00:24:06.100 So long as you don't know the individual, cause you have to operate based on best available

00:24:09.420 data, right?

00:24:10.000 If you walk into a room and in the room, everybody is of a particular height and you assume that all

00:24:17.040 of them are therefore not amazing at basketball because they're all 5'10", then that's, that's

00:24:20.900 like not the worst assumption in the world to take an innocuous example.

00:24:23.360 But if it turns out that one of those people happens to be, you know, Allen Ivers or Spud

00:24:27.500 Webb or something, and now, you know, that guy, you know, okay, now, you know, so when it

00:24:31.220 comes to, you know, looking at immigrants from, from places that suck, uh, who, where they 1.00

00:24:35.780 don't have running water or proper sewage disposal, you know, I think that there are individuals

00:24:41.180 who obviously, and we can name them who have come from crappy countries and who end up

00:24:44.960 being tremendous Americans, right?

00:24:46.500 I mean, like an example of a person who came from a truly crappy country, I think she was 1.00

00:24:50.320 from Sudan and who ends up being like an indispensable member of Western civilization, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

00:24:55.560 comes to mind, right?

00:24:56.520 Ayaan Hirsi Ali ends up, you know, basically running away from a forced child marriage and

00:25:01.900 she ends up in Denmark where she becomes a sort of gadfly anti-Islamist there.

00:25:06.820 And then she comes to the United States and she marries Neil Ferguson and she converts to

00:25:10.920 Christianity and all this sort of stuff.

00:25:12.780 You know, like that's, that's an amazing story and that's wonderful.

00:25:15.640 But if you're judging in terms of groups, obviously you have to term, but then if we

00:25:19.720 can get to the individual, that's maybe the best way to bring people in.

00:25:22.800 Because one of the things we have to worry about when it comes to immigration, and we

00:25:25.300 do have to worry about this is for example, you want to brain drain, right?

00:25:28.920 You do want the smartest people to come to the United States.

00:25:31.020 You do want the most highly motivated, gritty people to come to the United States.

00:25:35.420 And this is why I think that the, the term of art that, that is most important here is

00:25:38.680 mass migration, right?

00:25:40.200 When we're talking about mass migration, large numbers of people coming in, it's almost impossible 1.00

00:25:44.700 to do the kind of thing that I'm talking about, but I want to make sure that we don't throw

00:25:47.560 the baby out with the bathwater.

00:25:48.620 But think about this, Ben.

00:25:49.560 Look, of course, we, we all love Ihan Ursi Ali and we want, we want these exceptional individuals

00:25:54.660 to be, to be part of our country.

00:25:56.360 And immigration is like spice and Indian food. 1.00

00:25:59.140 You know, a little bit goes a long way.

00:26:00.420 You don't actually need a ton of it.

00:26:01.660 But, but I saw Wajahat Ali, who's this liberal talking head.

00:26:05.680 I think we've all debated him at some point or other.

00:26:07.900 In some ways, he's this totally assimilated guy.

00:26:11.020 His parents are from Pakistan.

00:26:11.960 He was born in California, graduated Berkeley, bloviates, dresses like a slob. 1.00

00:26:16.260 You know, he's like the perfect American lib.

00:26:18.080 But he had this vicious rant the other day that he posted to social media.

00:26:22.120 And he said, you know, ha ha, you white people, you lost.

00:26:25.380 And we brown people, we're going to outbreed you. 1.00

00:26:28.020 And we're, our, your parties suck and everything about you sucks. 0.96

00:26:30.460 And we're better at everything.

00:26:31.960 And what was amazing was he's on the one hand, so liberal.

00:26:35.140 On the other hand, it was this deeply tribal animosity at the native population of the United

00:26:39.780 States.

00:26:40.360 And, and I thought, you know, he's accidentally kind of telling on himself on the problem of,

00:26:44.920 of migration, which is even to your point, Ben, even if we could examine each individual

00:26:49.480 and, and pick them for their best qualities, you know, a kind of meritocratic immigration

00:26:53.340 system at a large enough scale, I don't think it really works because Wajjah Ali says, you

00:26:58.220 know, you bring one of us over.

00:26:59.400 And the thing about immigration is we're going to bring our cousins and our uncle and our

00:27:02.780 dad and our spouse and our this.

00:27:04.180 And because people have these enduring bonds, which they should, you know, if they're family

00:27:07.920 and their community.

00:27:08.320 But Michael, I mean, it, it did work for a very long time.

00:27:09.760 So we have to ask what changed.

00:27:11.600 1965, the Hart-Celler Act.

00:27:12.800 I mean, I, I agree with, I agree with you.

00:27:14.320 That's the thing that changed.

00:27:15.640 And so maybe the, the discussion, at least half, I agree with you.

00:27:19.160 The, the, the argument, we need to shut, shut it all down until we know what the hell

00:27:22.240 is going on.

00:27:22.780 But maybe at least half the discussion that we're having should be about number one, the

00:27:26.560 sources of immigration.

00:27:27.260 And number two, the gigantic welfare system that allows people to live off the public

00:27:31.400 dime and then integrate into our worst places, colleges and universities, and learn the kind 1.00

00:27:36.340 of crap that Wajjah Ali was taught.

00:27:38.240 Because the truth is-

00:27:38.960 And be subsidized in it.

00:27:39.780 Yeah, exactly.

00:27:40.400 I mean, by the way, the only difference between Wajjah Ali and a typical liberal Berkeley member

00:27:45.240 from, you know, the middle of the country is the color of their skin. 0.68

00:27:48.560 Right.

00:27:49.220 Like, like truly.

00:27:50.680 What was amazing about that Wajjah Ali- 0.86

00:27:51.640 And the arguments that come from that.

00:27:53.000 But yeah, sorry.

00:27:53.360 Yeah, no, I mean, the Wajjah Ali clip, the thing that's really astonishing about it is

00:27:57.060 that everybody on the right is constantly accused of great replacement theory if you

00:28:01.020 said exactly the same thing in exactly the same words that Wajjah Ali said it.

00:28:04.980 It's truly an unbelievable thing.

00:28:06.260 But if you say it with a smile on your face about how it's good, then apparently it's no

00:28:09.620 longer great replacement theory.

00:28:10.880 It's just the natural way that things should go.

00:28:12.440 It's pretty amazing.

00:28:12.960 Yeah, so this is what Mike Anton calls the celebration parallax.

00:28:16.560 If you think it's good, then you get away with it.

00:28:18.760 It's not happening, and we're glad that it is.

00:28:21.540 Yes, yeah.

00:28:22.420 Exactly.

00:28:22.740 And so, I mean, this to me is, this is where it comes back biblically and philosophically

00:28:28.160 is, I want to be clear, I mean, we're kind of beating up on, you know, the third worlders 1.00

00:28:31.340 and everything.

00:28:32.200 It's not that I am opposed to all immigration.

00:28:35.320 I don't think that assimilation is always harmful necessarily, or it should be totally 0.99

00:28:40.340 cut off, or it's impossible.

00:28:41.640 But you have to be really, really precise about it.

00:28:45.080 You know, Ruth, who is in the genealogy of Christ, is a Moabite who says to the Israelites,

00:28:50.320 your God will be my God, and your people will be my people.

00:28:53.100 And so, obviously...

00:28:53.920 Well, actually, actually, Michael, this is important.

00:28:54.960 The actual verbiage is, your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.

00:28:58.340 Yes, yes.

00:28:58.540 So, actually, your people comes first, right? 0.96

00:29:00.040 So, I'm asking me, right?

00:29:01.020 Your people are going to be my people. 0.97

00:29:02.400 Yep.

00:29:02.820 Yes.

00:29:03.200 And so, you know, there's this, you know, look, we're living in time and space, and we're

00:29:07.020 incarnate creatures, and so, like, these bonds of family and community really matter.

00:29:10.600 Even the notion of patriotism comes from patria, and it means that it's an extension of the

00:29:15.160 love of your family.

00:29:15.940 And we've just become so, I don't know, disembodied or something in our modern view

00:29:21.300 of politics and ourselves, and this is really clear in the 1965 Hart-Cellar Immigration Act.

00:29:26.440 You know, look, at different times in American history, we had very little immigration, very

00:29:30.480 restricted from where it could come from.

00:29:32.040 Then we opened it up a little bit, and it caused problems.

00:29:34.400 And I'll say this, I'll bring up the old Italians. 1.00

00:29:36.940 You know, immigration from Britain is one thing.

00:29:40.520 Immigration from, say, Germany, you know, in the 19th century, it was okay. 1.00

00:29:44.180 It was fine, it was a little harder to assimilate than the Brits, but okay, we still had memories 1.00

00:29:47.680 of the Hessians.

00:29:48.600 The Italian immigration, look, it ultimately, I think, basically worked out, even though 0.93

00:29:52.220 we got Pelosi's out of it, but it did introduce a lot of social problems.

00:29:56.380 And I think it's because it's kind of harder to assimilate, even Southern European people

00:30:01.360 into America than it was Northern or Central European people.

00:30:04.580 And so you take that to its extreme, and you say, look, you go to a place like Somalia, which

00:30:08.720 has very, very little in common with us, other than that we're all children of God.

00:30:12.880 And you say, maybe they just don't really get to come that much, except the one or two

00:30:17.800 exceptional people.

00:30:18.900 Well, if you want more quotations, by the way, from Thomas Aquinas, and more Latin paraphrases

00:30:24.160 from Michael, then you absolutely should become a subscriber, by the way.

00:30:27.060 I should just mention that we do have an excellent deal on right now to become a Daily Wire subscriber,

00:30:31.500 so go check that out right now.

00:30:33.560 And we also have a lot of sales over at the Daily Wire shop.

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00:30:37.740 It's like 70% off all of the conservative gifts for everyone on your wish list.

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00:31:06.940 goodies.

00:31:07.260 We have so much good stuff coming next year.

00:31:09.020 I can't even begin to describe all the good stuff that we have coming next year, truly.

00:31:11.800 Like, it's kind of amazing.

00:31:13.300 No, I think we need to restore a little balance, Ben.

00:31:15.720 I think we need to restore a little balance to this show if you tell us about Balance of

00:31:19.520 Nature.

00:31:20.720 I was going to do that.

00:31:23.000 That was going to be my transition.

00:31:24.620 Let me try that again.

00:31:25.500 Hold on.

00:31:25.780 Hold on.

00:31:26.060 Let me try it again.

00:31:26.920 Take two.

00:31:28.140 Don't cut this.

00:31:28.840 This is good stuff.

00:31:29.920 Hey, Matt, I think we need to restore a little balance to our show.

00:31:33.360 I was going to say the bit about the balance.

00:31:36.140 Whatever.

00:31:36.440 It's fine.

00:31:36.740 Let's talk about Balance of Nature.

00:31:38.920 You know, their ingredients are 100% whole fruits, vegetables, spices, and fibers you

00:31:44.120 can experience for yourself, as I have the original balance of color, taste, and smell.

00:31:49.500 Their fruits and vegetable supplements include 31 colorful ingredients of 16 whole fruits and

00:31:55.340 15 whole vegetables.

00:31:56.600 Ingredients include mango, pineapple, wild blueberries, banana, shiitake mushrooms, wheatgrass, spinach,

00:32:03.200 kale, cayenne pepper, broccoli.

00:32:06.480 And the fiber and spice supplement features stuff that I can't pronounce, but psyllium husk

00:32:11.800 is what you get.

00:32:12.380 It's important to get the psyllium.

00:32:13.420 I don't know what that is, but I see that and I just feel like I need to have more psyllium

00:32:17.380 husk in my life.

00:32:18.900 Flaxseed, whole apple, and monk fruit.

00:32:21.060 It also includes 12 aromatic spices, such as cinnamon, turmeric, and cardamom.

00:32:27.160 I actually take the Balance of Nature supplements.

00:32:29.800 It's one of the only things I do for my health.

00:32:32.460 I never go to a doctor.

00:32:33.660 I refuse to.

00:32:34.780 I pulled my hamstring over Thanksgiving break, playing pickup football with my kids outside.

00:32:40.100 I'm crippled.

00:32:40.780 I refuse to go to a doctor for that.

00:32:42.320 My wife keeps saying, why don't you go to a doctor? 1.00

00:32:43.940 You can barely walk.

00:32:44.700 I say, the doctor's not going to do anything for me.

00:32:46.940 What do I got to take?

00:32:47.380 Get an MRI?

00:32:48.300 I got to be in that tube.

00:32:49.940 It's kind of weird and claustrophobic.

00:32:52.420 Anyway, I won't do any of that, but I will take Balance of Nature, which you should as

00:32:57.280 well.

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00:33:02.440 100% real fruit, bananas, mangoes, pineapple, and strawberries, freeze-dried to lock in flavor

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00:33:14.860 membership with your first set of Balance of Nature supplements.

00:33:17.720 Go to balanceofnature.com to claim this limited time offer before it ends.

00:33:22.800 Speaking of food, Matt, you focused on the real issues while we were all stuffing ourselves

00:33:29.120 over Thanksgiving, and you talked about why restaurants suck now.

00:33:33.520 And I actually, I didn't catch it, and I want to hear it.

00:33:37.280 Well, you haven't caught a single piece of content I've ever put out since I've been here.

00:33:41.500 Including stuff we've done together.

00:33:42.340 That doesn't surprise me.

00:33:45.080 But yeah, so over the Thanksgiving break, we put up a video.

00:33:49.660 I told my team, I want to do, you know, and maybe there were some skepticism, I don't know,

00:33:55.380 because it's one of those topics, you don't know exactly how much it'll resonate.

00:33:58.260 But I have this impression, and I think a lot of people have it, that everything sucks

00:34:03.860 now.

00:34:04.040 The quality of everything has gone down.

00:34:06.940 And that's especially the case with food.

00:34:09.180 And I was thinking about this the other day, because we got it, we ordered pizza.

00:34:12.600 And all these, I can remember when I was a kid, that you'd order a pizza, and you could

00:34:20.000 pretty much order a pizza from almost anywhere, and it was pretty good.

00:34:23.320 And not only was it pretty good, but it was different.

00:34:25.620 Like, you could get a pizza from Domino's, and that was one thing.

00:34:28.700 We'd go to Papa John's, it was like a very different flavor.

00:34:31.040 It was a different kind of pizza.

00:34:32.180 You could go to Pizza Hut.

00:34:33.480 You could even go inside Pizza Hut.

00:34:35.040 They had a salad bar.

00:34:36.620 You'd sit down.

00:34:37.180 It was a whole thing with my family.

00:34:39.180 We very rarely ordered out, because we have a million kids in the family.

00:34:42.540 And going to Pizza Hut was like, put on your Sunday's best, and go to Pizza Hut.

00:34:46.260 It was a night on the town.

00:34:47.280 It was a lot of fun.

00:34:48.460 And the pizza was great.

00:34:49.900 And now you order from these places, and there are two things you notice.

00:34:52.680 Number one, it all tastes exactly the same, and it's all terrible.

00:34:56.980 It's like cardboard with ketchup smeared on it, put in a microwave.

00:34:59.720 That's what all pizza tastes like.

00:35:00.980 And you go to these chain restaurants.

00:35:02.920 And I haven't been to a chain restaurant in a little bit.

00:35:05.660 We took our kids to, I guess I won't say that.

00:35:08.740 No, we went to Outback.

00:35:10.740 And we sat down.

00:35:12.660 It was like inedible.

00:35:13.700 I actually could not finish it.

00:35:15.960 It was salty.

00:35:16.480 Did you get the Bloomin' Onion?

00:35:18.120 Yeah.

00:35:18.680 Well, that I could finish.

00:35:19.880 But I finished it.

00:35:21.500 I didn't enjoy it, though.

00:35:22.660 I hated myself the whole time.

00:35:25.080 And then we got the rest of the food.

00:35:27.200 It was like everything is really salty, and it tastes bad.

00:35:29.700 And that's the case with most of these chain restaurants.

00:35:31.540 So this is what I've perceived.

00:35:33.200 I did a little video on it.

00:35:35.280 Is there a theory attached to this?

00:35:36.800 Or is it just you being an old person bitching? 1.00

00:35:39.300 Well, this is just me complaining.

00:35:39.660 Yeah, exactly.

00:35:40.620 There is a theory.

00:35:41.800 There's a theory.

00:35:42.000 You're realizing that when you were eight years old, everything tasted great, including

00:35:44.980 some of the trashiest food on earth?

00:35:47.160 There is a theory.

00:35:48.260 So this is what I'm saying.

00:35:49.440 I said, I want to look into this.

00:35:51.200 Like, this is the impression I have is that the quality has gone down.

00:35:53.900 Is it just nostalgia?

00:35:54.800 Or is there something real that's actually happening here?

00:35:57.720 And there is something real.

00:36:00.100 So quality has dropped.

00:36:01.740 And I think it's across the board with many things in American life.

00:36:04.260 But just focusing on food for a moment, it has gone down.

00:36:07.840 Because a few things have happened as I researched this.

00:36:11.160 And number one, a lot of these restaurants have been taken over by these private equity companies

00:36:16.840 that come in.

00:36:17.420 And this has happened, especially over the last 20 or 25 years, where most of these places

00:36:21.480 are not owned.

00:36:22.200 They're owned by the private equity firms.

00:36:24.680 And then part of that is that now they come in.

00:36:28.020 It's like, we've got to cut costs.

00:36:29.920 And so they go to these big distributors like Cisco.

00:36:34.320 And so it's all the same food.

00:36:36.420 Like, 80% of these places, they're ordering the food from the same place.

00:36:40.320 Everything is frozen.

00:36:41.260 None of it is fresh anymore.

00:36:42.940 And it wasn't always that way.

00:36:45.100 And it is now.

00:36:46.180 So the quality has gone down.

00:36:47.760 And then the third part of it is that none of the people involved from, like, the person

00:36:52.300 behind the cash register all the way up to the people that own the places now, none

00:36:55.920 of them actually care about the quality of the food.

00:36:58.880 It doesn't matter to them.

00:36:59.920 There's no one involved who has any passion about the quality of the stuff that they're

00:37:04.380 giving you.

00:37:05.340 They're just there for the profit or they're there for it because it's a job.

00:37:09.080 And so if you complain about the quality, there's no one to even complain to because

00:37:12.220 no one cares.

00:37:13.060 No one that you're talking to cares about it.

00:37:15.120 And so this is a real thing.

00:37:16.920 So how did that part change?

00:37:18.420 The food part, okay, I see they changed their supply chains or whatever.

00:37:22.260 What happened with the employees?

00:37:25.780 Well, I think, well, part of it is that if you go back, again, 20 years ago, a lot of

00:37:31.480 these places, they were employing, like, high school students.

00:37:34.740 I worked at a pizza place when I was in high school.

00:37:37.580 Subway sandwich artists.

00:37:38.360 And that's happening less and less now.

00:37:40.320 Now you've got also the numbers of people who work in these industries now who have,

00:37:46.160 like, substance abuse problems, who are older with substance abuse problems.

00:37:49.680 That's gone up considerably as well.

00:37:52.360 But also, if you're working for one of these, and look, I'm this capitalist as the next guy,

00:37:56.480 but you're working for one of these places that's owned by some conglomerate or owned

00:37:59.660 by a private equity firm, it's like you don't feel a tie to it anymore.

00:38:05.120 You don't really care that much about the product.

00:38:07.980 And as I said, the people that own the place don't care about it either.

00:38:10.740 I actually think it's not even, I think that it's corporate versus not corporate.

00:38:14.420 I think it's family versus corporate, meaning, so most people who start restaurants,

00:38:18.120 right, like small restaurants, it's usually like you and your family members.

00:38:20.780 So I was making, we were talking about whether we should do this topic earlier,

00:38:24.240 and I was kind of making fun of you guys because I was saying,

00:38:26.400 in the kosher community, like, I eat kosher.

00:38:28.320 So I'm coming from a different context from you guys.

00:38:30.680 Like, the last time I ate at a chain restaurant, like a normal not kosher chain restaurant, 0.97

00:38:34.900 I was 11 years old, and it was Kentucky Fried Chicken.

00:38:36.840 So it's been 30 years for me.

00:38:38.420 And, like, they have some chain restaurants in Israel, and they are similarly not as good,

00:38:43.200 but they're certainly better, I think, than the ones that are in the United States.

00:38:46.820 In the kosher community, every single restaurant is a family-owned restaurant.

00:38:50.180 Even the family-owned restaurants that have, like, three or four different restaurants,

00:38:53.760 that's, like, the extent of it.

00:38:54.660 There's no such thing as a kosher chain restaurant because there are, like,

00:38:56.480 eight of us in the United States.

00:38:57.900 And so what that means is that the restaurant quality has actually gotten better and better

00:39:01.400 and better since I was a kid because you're getting people who are aging into more income,

00:39:05.620 and as they age into more income, they can spend more of their income on these restaurants,

00:39:09.040 and the community isn't big enough to support a gigantic, like, chain of hamburger restaurants.

00:39:13.680 And so instead what you get are, like, really good, excellent kind of locally sourced dishes

00:39:19.000 where the family owns it.

00:39:20.880 Because that's – I think everybody in our – and you guys have big families.

00:39:24.320 I've got a big family.

00:39:25.280 And so everybody has the aunt who's like, you know, she's a really good cook.

00:39:28.220 She should really start a restaurant.

00:39:29.420 Somebody should actually start – and then it turns out that restaurant is, like,

00:39:32.820 the hardest business to succeed in, and they go bankrupt at an extraordinary rate.

00:39:36.040 And so what that means is that particularly if you are a person who is trying to just keep your restaurant open,

00:39:41.420 you've got to work your ass off, right?

00:39:42.840 You've got to love doing it.

00:39:43.900 You've got to love the food.

00:39:44.620 You've got to bring your 14-year-old in from middle school to, like, get behind the counter

00:39:48.740 and really work – I spent my entire life in restaurants, by the way.

00:39:51.540 Like, my dad worked at a restaurant my entire childhood.

00:39:53.460 He was – he played the piano at a restaurant.

00:39:55.280 And so I was, like, in the kitchen with the waiters and, like, hanging out with the bartenders

00:39:58.820 for fully 10 years of my life, 15 years of my life when I was a kid.

00:40:02.320 So I love these restaurants.

00:40:03.720 I'm big into kind of the local restaurants.

00:40:05.480 And I will say that when it comes to kind of chain product, the people who get into the McDonald's business

00:40:11.000 are there to make money.

00:40:12.220 They're not there because they want to make a great burger.

00:40:14.440 The people who want to make a great burger are starting their own kind of local – their own local shop.

00:40:18.360 So I actually think there is something to that, and I do think that you can feel it in the food.

00:40:21.300 Can I please interject some facts into this?

00:40:23.880 Because you're both speaking in generalities that – and you're just missing it, okay?

00:40:28.560 And I don't know how – I've been a little open about this, but I'm a pretty heavy user of fast food.

00:40:35.300 I get a Mac attack pretty regularly.

00:40:38.260 And I can tell you with certain – I'll just go down the list.

00:40:40.700 KFC has gotten worse in the last 25 years.

00:40:43.340 There's no doubt about that.

00:40:44.580 Domino's, on the other hand, has gotten better in the last 25 years.

00:40:47.840 McDonald's has gotten much better.

00:40:49.380 I don't even want to – McDonald's, the fries used to be better, sure.

00:40:52.360 Now they use fresh beef for the double quarter pounder with cheese.

00:40:55.200 Or for the regular quarter pounder, it's much better.

00:40:57.200 Arby's was awesome, got really bad, is much, much better now.

00:41:01.060 The double beef and cheddar was an absolute – it was a revelation.

00:41:06.400 Texas Roadhouse, as good as it's ever been.

00:41:08.620 Cracker Barrel, the food's a little sloppier now, but the service is still great.

00:41:12.660 Outback, I grant you, has not really kept up with the times.

00:41:15.280 I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

00:41:19.620 Hardee's got worse and Carl's Jr. got worse after Andy Puzder left.

00:41:22.700 So, look, there are particularities here, but I think, Matt, you're feeling a little bit of nostalgia for your childhood.

00:41:29.400 Because I grew up in New York.

00:41:32.120 So my friends who grew up in the middle of the country or in the south or even a little bit on the west coast, they did not have –

00:41:37.400 I had nice actual family restaurants growing up that were casual, that were cheap, but they were very, very good.

00:41:45.520 And so I wasn't as – yeah, I'd do the Applebee's every now and again.

00:41:50.100 Yeah, I'd do the Outback every now and again.

00:41:51.700 But if you look at the actual, like, not chain restaurants, I think they've gotten generally much better with one exception,

00:41:59.520 which is that hipsters made the plates get much smaller.

00:42:02.280 They inserted, like, a bunch of dumb, like, adjectives into it, like activated Brussels sprouts.

00:42:06.320 But otherwise, I actually think – this is the one area where I'd say things have gotten noticeably better.

00:42:14.040 With chain restaurants?

00:42:15.060 I basically call you all ignorant on your use of fast food.

00:42:18.720 First of all, Michael, hang on a second.

00:42:20.200 Michael, so you said you're going to inject facts, and then all you did was just arbitrarily go down a list of which restaurants you personally prefer more.

00:42:29.000 I'm the one injecting facts in the discussion.

00:42:30.800 I'm telling you that there is a number of actual significant changes that have factually occurred.

00:42:37.460 One of them is that these places, most of them, do not use fresh food anymore, and they used to.

00:42:44.920 Like, most of these restaurants used to use fresh food, and now they don't.

00:42:48.360 Now they're getting the same frozen food off the back of the same truck.

00:42:52.180 Wendy is always fresh, never frozen.

00:42:54.500 McDonald's used to be frozen, now fresh.

00:42:56.600 You think you're injecting facts?

00:42:58.020 I'm injecting facts.

00:42:58.960 God, the level of passion, Michael, that you have for this is, man, like, I never say, you're big on the Aquinas, but I think that your actual area of specialty and interest lies in fast food.

00:43:08.400 I'm a secret fat guy.

00:43:09.860 Look, first of all, I'm not disagreeing.

00:43:11.960 I actually think that McDonald's, of all the fast food options, gets a bad rap, but it is, like, it's.

00:43:16.120 Burger King is like a homeless shelter now.

00:43:17.560 That one got much worse.

00:43:18.480 McDonald's is pretty consistent.

00:43:19.940 If you want fast food, you should just go to McDonald's.

00:43:21.540 It has, by far and away, if you want a fast food breakfast, you're not going to get better than McDonald's.

00:43:25.380 I'll 100% agree with you there.

00:43:26.700 It's like, five guys is great, but guess what?

00:43:28.960 It's fresh.

00:43:29.580 They actually use fresh ingredients.

00:43:30.600 You also have to take out a second mortgage to get five guys.

00:43:32.840 I mean, five guys.

00:43:33.720 But that's, see, that's what you got to pay because it's actually fresh.

00:43:36.400 They don't have a freezer in the place.

00:43:37.700 You're getting fresh ingredients.

00:43:38.780 What you pick up when you go to, like, Applebee's or Chili's, the food, it's literally the same food.

00:43:43.560 Okay, the Cisco truck goes with the frozen food to Applebee's, and then it goes across the shopping center to Chili's and unloads the same damn food that then's put in a microwave and served to you with a 6,000% markup.

00:43:58.400 Okay?

00:43:58.820 It's a scam is what I'm telling you.

00:44:00.460 But what did Chili's replace?

00:44:01.780 This is quality of life.

00:44:02.720 You know, they accuse us.

00:44:04.360 They say, you know, conservatives, we're just conserving the liberalism of 15 years ago or whatever.

00:44:08.140 This is a good example of that.

00:44:09.560 You know, when Chili's came, I'm not just blaming Chili's.

00:44:12.820 I actually never get that into Chili's.

00:44:13.920 But when Chili's and the similar restaurants came in, they displaced old, like, mom-and-pop diner type things.

00:44:21.420 And there were all sorts of reasons.

00:44:22.580 One of my favorite diners growing up constantly was failing health inspections.

00:44:26.540 It was gross, like, getting people sick.

00:44:28.180 But I loved it.

00:44:28.940 It was good.

00:44:29.940 And so I think, all right, now if the chains are being bought up by private equity faces corporations and they're all no good anymore, does this offer an opportunity?

00:44:37.520 Am I being too hopeful?

00:44:38.260 Does this offer an opportunity for more rancid mom-and-pop diners to fail their health inspections and delight customers like me?

00:44:46.060 Well, maybe.

00:44:47.200 But the problem is, I mean, you just point out, like, Five Guys, obviously, it's not a mom-and-pop place.

00:44:51.060 But it's so, you know, it's expensive.

00:44:54.480 Like, when everyone is going the frozen food route and they're getting the same, they're just, you know, wholesale frozen food and everything, put it in a microwave.

00:45:02.500 And then you come in and say, I want to do fresh food.

00:45:04.520 You're going to have to charge a lot more.

00:45:05.700 And then that's up to the consumer to choose the more expensive thing, which, unfortunately, most consumers won't.

00:45:11.380 I mean, and that's what it comes down to.

00:45:12.480 And I also think the fact, I mean, like we said before, the fact that one of the biggest differences is that you're dealing with people who don't care.

00:45:20.580 I just thought I had to, this is not food, but I had a problem with Wi-Fi.

00:45:25.920 And I had to call the internet company.

00:45:28.700 And it's like one of those things where, you know, you have to make this phone call.

00:45:31.460 You're going to be on the phone for seven hours of your day and you got to go through all the automated messages.

00:45:36.820 Finally, you get to talk to a person.

00:45:38.280 I talked to like 10 different people.

00:45:39.760 And I'm aware of the fact, while I'm talking to all these people, that nobody I'm talking about gives the slightest shit about the problem that I'm having.

00:45:49.320 None of them care at all, even a little bit.

00:45:52.380 And there's no incentive for them to solve my problem.

00:45:54.940 Whether my problem is solved or not means nothing to them.

00:45:58.000 They don't benefit from it being solved.

00:45:59.720 It doesn't hurt them if it isn't solved.

00:46:01.460 And so it's this utterly hopeless feeling you have while you're on the phone shouting at some person in India who doesn't care at all. 0.98

00:46:10.400 You're like, I need Wi-Fi.

00:46:12.020 My family's coming over.

00:46:13.060 They need to be able to watch TV.

00:46:14.360 We want to put a football game on.

00:46:15.960 And you're talking to someone who doesn't even know what American football is.

00:46:18.120 Okay?

00:46:18.620 And this is everywhere you go now.

00:46:20.220 Matt, I'm just telling you, we're going to fast forward 20 years.

00:46:23.580 And it's just going to be Matt Walsh's show will just be called Old Man Yells at Clouds.

00:46:27.420 I mean, my God.

00:46:29.000 That's the show now.

00:46:29.900 What are you talking about?

00:46:30.560 20 years.

00:46:30.880 I know.

00:46:31.220 You're not old enough.

00:46:32.500 So now the middle-aged man yells at Clouds.

00:46:34.460 But one aspect of this that may be worth asking is when we were all growing up, maybe it's because none of us, I think, grew up rich.

00:46:41.660 Going out to dinner was like a big deal.

00:46:43.460 Going out to dinner was like a super big deal.

00:46:46.120 There were four kids in my family.

00:46:47.520 You really didn't go out to dinner unless there was a special occasion in some way.

00:46:50.640 You didn't just go out casually to dinner.

00:46:52.520 And I feel like people just go out to dinner much more or order in much more.

00:46:55.920 And so it's possible that the market has decreased in value in terms of like what people are paying for their dinner just because people are ordering in more.

00:47:03.860 Like everything when I was growing up was home cooked.

00:47:05.620 Like everything.

00:47:06.240 And I think that more and more people have accessed eating out or shipping food in as a normal mode of eating.

00:47:14.180 And that means the prices have to go down because otherwise you just can't afford it.

00:47:16.600 If you're a family that has a couple of kids and you're bringing in restaurant food every night, it can't be really, really good restaurant food every night or you're going to be poor.

00:47:25.220 And so I assume that that's why all these big chain stores continue to churn out not very good food but make decent money off it because people are just too lazy to actually home cook or they don't feel like home cooking.

00:47:35.540 I mean I would imagine that if you check the stats here, and we'll have to check it now, that people are eating significantly more takeout food than they were when we were growing up.

00:47:45.800 You know, the salient point of Matt's rant, I think, other than his, I think, absolute calumny against fast food restaurants compared to fast casual.

00:47:55.660 The really salient point is the feeling that, this happened to me at a Burger King the other day, which again is not just like a homeless shelter but is a literal homeless shelter in most cases.

00:48:05.240 I went up, I was standing there, I wanted to order a Whopper, and there were two women behind the counter and one employee had just gotten off. 0.99

00:48:11.640 And no one would take my order, and the employee who had just gotten off was laughing at me. 0.99

00:48:16.280 He was laughing at me that no one would take my order.

00:48:18.280 They didn't hear, I went, I got a sandwich somewhere else.

00:48:20.540 You know, I'm reminded of Barry Goldwater in his book, Conscience of a Conservative, ghostwritten by Brent Bozell, who said,

00:48:26.420 We conservatives, we're not just against, you know, big monopolistic government.

00:48:30.160 We're against monopolies in all of their forms because they're not as responsive and that kind of power can take away our rights as well.

00:48:36.480 So I agree.

00:48:37.020 We need a political missile, a legislative missile perhaps, to fix that problem.

00:48:42.960 And we have literal missiles that are currently blowing up Venezuelan narco-terrorists by our Secretary of War. 0.91

00:48:50.920 Now, some people, mostly on the left but a little bit in the Republican Party, are accusing the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, of committing war crimes by taking out the narco-terrorists.

00:49:00.760 Before I get the educated opinion of a Harvard lawyer, Matt, I think this is totally fine and awesome.

00:49:06.120 What's your take?

00:49:07.380 Yeah, I think it's great.

00:49:08.440 I mean, please kill more.

00:49:09.660 I think, here's what I'll say, blowing up a boat full of narco-terrorists or bringing poison into America and are part of a, you know, billion-dollar criminal enterprise that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans over the past decades. 0.99

00:49:27.820 You know, doing that is more defensible, I think, legally but certainly morally, than anything the United States of America has ever done in the Middle East.

00:49:39.660 Like ever, which is also why it's funny to have someone like Mark Kelly out there complaining about this, when this, again, is more defensible than anything that he did when he was in the Middle East, when he was part of the Navy.

00:49:53.720 I think he was talking about, he was on MSNBC, I think, or CNN, one of the two, talking about when he was in the Navy, well, they blew up, you know, he was responsible for blowing up some Iraqi ships.

00:50:06.180 But that was okay, he said, because, you know, they were, he was trying to kick them out of Kuwait. 0.96

00:50:11.940 And so, it was a good reason, it was a good reason to blow up the Iraqi ships to keep them out of Kuwait. 1.00

00:50:16.920 Well, okay, so that's okay to keep the Iraq out of Kuwait so we could blow up ships. 1.00

00:50:21.280 But to keep poison out of America that's killing actual Americans, that's a, that's a problem. 0.57

00:50:28.320 So, to me, it's like very clearly, this is, this is where the United States military should be most activated, is in defending our actual homeland, like our actual physical country, from things that are actually hurting and killing Americans directly.

00:50:45.220 And once we've done that, then we could talk about the stuff that's happening thousands of miles away.

00:50:50.080 But this, to me, is just pretty obvious.

00:50:52.080 Now, the alleged war crime was, according to reporting, you know, so take it with a grain of salt, but they said there was a, an oral order, not a written order, but an oral order from the Secretary of War to kill them all.

00:51:03.780 You know, to not, not, like, go and try to arrest them or, you know, give them a court.

00:51:07.460 Yeah, that's what you do, that's what you do with a missile, that's, I don't know that it's true that he said to kill the survivors in the water.

00:51:12.840 Yeah, I see, no, he denies it, the White House denies it.

00:51:15.060 But even if he did, but, but so what?

00:51:16.880 I mean, you, you hit the boat with a missile, obviously you're trying to kill everybody.

00:51:20.700 So what, if some of them survive, you're just to be a good sport, you're supposed to send a rescue boat out to, to rescue them.

00:51:27.200 The whole point, I'm pretty sure the missile, the point was not like a practical joke or a fun prank.

00:51:31.900 The point was to actually kill the people on the boat, if any are alive, then of course you kill them too.

00:51:36.360 It's like if you blow up a building, do you have to have firefighters on standby to put out the fire and rescue anyone who happens to be inside the building?

00:51:43.000 I mean, the whole point was to kill the people inside it, I would think.

00:51:45.140 And assuming those people are actual terrorists who want to kill Americans, then it's totally legitimate. 0.78

00:51:49.440 That's the Matt Walsh addendum to the Geneva Convention.

00:51:51.500 Yeah, exactly.

00:51:52.000 I was wondering, okay, so, so yeah, here's where it gets a little dicey.

00:51:55.340 So there's the moral question of whether we should blow up drug boats.

00:51:58.760 And the answer, of course, is, of course, we should blow up as many drug boats as humanly possible.

00:52:02.280 Like, that is an affirmative good for us to blow up drug boats with Hellfire missiles, very much pro. 0.99

00:52:07.500 Then there is the legal question.

00:52:09.180 There are really two legal questions here.

00:52:10.900 One is whether you need some sort of authorization from Congress to continue to blow up drug boats in the Caribbean when they're not, like, directly off of America's shores and their international waters and all the rest of this sort of thing.

00:52:22.060 That's sort of question number one.

00:52:23.520 You know, I'm of the legal opinion that you can totally blow up those drug ships and that that seems to be fairly well predicated at the very least.

00:52:30.300 And then there's the secondary question, which came up because of this Washington Post story.

00:52:33.800 Under American domestic law, you're really not supposed to be killing people who are deemed to be out of combat, right?

00:52:39.400 That's the actual legal terminology.

00:52:41.420 So, for example, if you're on a battlefield anywhere in the world and you shoot somebody and you've incapacitated them, they're unconscious on the battlefield.

00:52:47.320 You're not allowed to, like, walk up to them while they're unconscious on the battlefield and put two in their head.

00:52:51.360 It's just not something that you're supposed to do because they've been rendered non-threatening.

00:52:54.960 And so now there's kind of a debate over whether the boat was completely destroyed or whether it theoretically could have been salvaged, whether they had the ability to call up their other drug trafficking friends and have them come out and pick them up.

00:53:05.800 That was kind of the best defense that I saw of this order if it was given.

00:53:08.840 I find it kind of hard to believe just on the merits that Pete Hegseth would say kill everybody and nobody in the military line of command would say, OK, I just need some clarifications.

00:53:16.700 You mean that we're supposed to, you know, just like kill floating bodies in the water or like, what are we talking about here?

00:53:22.160 And to me, a lot of this report, something smells about this.

00:53:25.500 Here's what smells about this.

00:53:26.600 It feels like a coordinated op.

00:53:28.100 And what I mean by that is that the Democrats started with this.

00:53:30.700 You're not allowed to follow illegal order stuff last week, right?

00:53:33.980 They put out this video the end of the week before last in which a bunch of Democratic Congress people and senators said, if you're a member of the military, we're telling you you're not allowed to follow an illegal order.

00:53:43.440 And everybody went, what illegal orders are you talking about, right?

00:53:47.360 Like you should actually name the order because it actually is pretty counterproductive if the idea is that we're only going to find out whether an order was illegal in your view when you gain power.

00:53:55.160 How does anybody ever carry out an order at all, right?

00:53:57.860 Because it could be a Democrat gets elected two, three years from now and then turns around and says, oh, by the way, every order that you carried out for the last 10 years was illegal.

00:54:05.720 All of you are going to jail.

00:54:06.900 And so what you're really doing is creating a sort of bizarre Ferguson effect for the military where you remember by the police.

00:54:12.440 The idea was that if you enforce the law, you might go to jail.

00:54:14.860 So the police stopped enforcing the law.

00:54:16.700 So our Democrats trying to tell members of the military that if they don't want to go to jail, they need to not actually do the thing they're supposed to do, which is carry out the orders of the commander in chief.

00:54:25.960 It feels coordinated because they released that video.

00:54:28.080 And within a week and a half, there's a story in the Washington Post about Pete Hegseth issuing a quote unquote illegal order to, you know, blow people out of the water.

00:54:36.160 The whole thing kind of stinks to me as a general matter.

00:54:38.460 So I think that it's illegal.

00:54:39.540 Again, we'll have to see what the fact pattern is.

00:54:42.500 This is where Congress has article in one authority to actually investigate and determine who said what and when.

00:54:47.160 Our sponsor, Kalshi, shows prediction markets regarding, for example, which cabinet member is most likely to go.

00:54:53.400 Pete Hegseth right now, like 29 percent.

00:54:55.160 But, you know, the reality is that I think there's a tempest in a teapot.

00:54:59.200 And it also, on the other hand, kind of feels like that time when Trump deported a wife abuser.

00:55:06.060 And then the entire left was like, how dare he violate the law by deporting the wife abuser?

00:55:10.840 And, you know, I just don't think that plays politically.

00:55:12.900 How dare you kill the narco traffickers who are trying to murder Americans with fentanyl? 1.00

00:55:17.100 Doesn't seem to have.

00:55:18.040 I don't know.

00:55:18.560 It doesn't seem like a political winner to me.

00:55:20.060 You know, Walter Kern, I thought, had a really good take on this.

00:55:22.140 He said he thinks that maybe the war on drugs failed.

00:55:25.420 And I actually I don't think the war on drugs failed.

00:55:27.640 I think it actually was quite successful for a time.

00:55:29.600 And the history has been rewritten.

00:55:31.760 However, he says if it failed, you know, he thinks it failed because people, they're not used to seeing it like an actual war.

00:55:39.300 In this case, we are fighting the war on drugs as very closely like a war.

00:55:44.560 Where it gets really weird to me, though, is even in international law, which a lot of conservatives say is just bunk anyway.

00:55:49.840 But if you grant some some legitimacy to international law, we're not signatories to the Rome Statute.

00:55:55.840 So the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction here.

00:55:58.300 We recognize the Geneva Convention.

00:56:00.120 But then you ask, OK, what's the point of the Geneva Convention?

00:56:02.580 The Geneva Convention exists in large part to protect civilians in times of war.

00:56:08.000 And so part of that is if you play by the rules of war, then you can have certain privileges.

00:56:12.860 And if you don't, like if you're a terrorist and you target civilians and you act outside the norms of war, you don't really get those privileges.

00:56:19.020 Mark Thiessen years ago made the great point that if you extend Geneva Convention protections to terrorists, you actually totally undermine the Geneva Convention protections.

00:56:27.100 So I think that's kind of interesting, though, even for terrorists, I guess you're supposed to afford them some basic, you know, privileges, notably not killing them if they're out of combat.

00:56:35.300 And then to your point, Ben, on U.S. domestic policy, you have the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which says, OK, U.S. troops are not allowed to do X, Y and Z.

00:56:43.840 What's very interesting about this, though, is it would not really apply, in my understanding, to the Secretary of War, because the Secretary of War is not one of the troops.

00:56:52.460 He's a civilian who is in charge of that department.

00:56:55.600 And so it's all very, very murky to me.

00:56:59.140 And then I think, OK, well, let's get down to the brass tacks of it all.

00:57:02.660 These are foreign terrorist organizations, formally declared so.

00:57:06.640 They're shipping poison into our country, killing 75,000 Americans a year.

00:57:10.760 We have exercised control over the Western Hemisphere for over 200 years.

00:57:14.880 And now the Democrats are on the side.

00:57:17.140 First, they were on the side of the wife beater who got deported because he was an illegal alien, maybe a gangster.

00:57:21.340 And now they're on the side of the narco terrorists. 0.90

00:57:23.540 Is this really going to play well in the midterms or in 2028?

00:57:27.540 Right.

00:57:28.040 And that's the big issue, I think, for the Democrats politically here is they keep glomming on to what they think are temporary wins that end up being long term losses because they're so into the idea that, oh, my gosh, we've got him on procedural tic-tac foul.

00:57:40.060 And because we got him on a tic-tac foul, the American people are going to be really, really upset with Trump.

00:57:44.460 Name the American who's truly upset with Donald Trump for blowing narco traffickers out of the water. 0.99

00:57:48.240 I cannot imagine who those people are unless, you know, they went to Berkeley.

00:57:52.200 That's pretty much like the entire constituency for that argument.

00:57:55.160 It does raise, you know, one other question, which is it looks very much as though the Trump administration is trying to force Maduro out in Venezuela.

00:58:01.600 And I'm kind of for it.

00:58:03.760 I mean, like, I think that if we can do it without very much cost, you know, low blood and treasure, not a lot of, you know, no boots on the ground or not a lot of boots on the ground.

00:58:11.120 Good things happening with very little cost is my game.

00:58:13.900 I kind of enjoy it.

00:58:14.740 I think it's a good thing.

00:58:15.280 But, you know, I really hope, let's put it this way, I hope that the CIA really does have somebody inside the Venezuelan government who's ready to push Maduro off the cliff here.

00:58:24.900 Because if not, then this is an awful lot of resource expenditure for very little payoff in the end.

00:58:31.040 And typically, if you're talking about a coup in Latin or South America, you have to have somebody inside the army or at least elites inside the kind of top echelon who are willing to push the guy out.

00:58:40.100 Otherwise, Maduro is just going to sit there and be and be OK.

00:58:44.300 Yeah. You know, Americans are sick of regime change, certainly in the Middle East.

00:58:47.900 It's a little different in Latin America because we've been doing that for a very, very long time and it's closer to our interests.

00:58:53.500 Matt, where I don't know, where do you fall on this?

00:58:55.360 Are you are you ready for a regime change in Latin America?

00:58:58.420 Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm always I'm always skeptical of a regime change.

00:59:02.160 I do. I kind of agree with you that it's if it's closer to home, you can make a better argument for it actually advancing American interests.

00:59:11.620 And when I say American interests, I mean the interests of actual Americans like American families still.

00:59:15.760 I think it's still still kind of hard to make that argument.

00:59:17.960 And if you if someone was going to make that argument, I wouldn't be the one to make it.

00:59:21.180 I think just politically, well, practically and also politically, I think the focus should stay on the narco terrorists. 0.97

00:59:29.000 That's that's a winner. It's a winner for Americans, most importantly.

00:59:33.620 And as you already pointed out, it's it's just a it's a political winner because this is this is the genius of it from a political standpoint,

00:59:39.300 is that they're kind of backing Democrats into a corner of being defenders of of drug traffickers.

00:59:46.560 And I don't know what polling has been done on this, but I just I'm sure there's been some polling on it.

00:59:50.740 I just find it hard to believe that there's any American in the country, like actual American who's waking up at night worried about the fate of of narco terrorists. 0.99

01:00:02.200 I think I think we all have the same feeling of we're just we're just like we're sick of this.

01:00:05.560 Why are we allowing you know, why are we allowing this scenario where these billion dollar criminal criminal enterprises are are able to kill tens of thousands of Americans?

01:00:17.180 We don't have to allow it. I mean, we're the United States of America.

01:00:20.620 We have the most powerful military on the planet. We don't we don't. This is a choice.

01:00:24.260 We don't have to allow this. And and I think that's where almost every American stand.

01:00:29.660 Yeah, this is, you know, this gets down to a deeper divide that's within MAGA, which is there even when people talk about like the neocons versus the populists.

01:00:39.260 And that's that's that's an interesting divide, too. But at an even deeper level, there is this debate over what America first means.

01:00:46.340 And there's America first, which has this hard nationalist bordering on isolationist point of view.

01:00:52.880 And I don't think that's what Trump is. I think Trump has an America first, much more imperialist kind of view, which is different than the neocons who were kind of liberal imperialists who wanted to sprout up Madisonian democracy everywhere.

01:01:04.560 I think Trump is much more like a big leader of the global hegemon. And I think that's why he wants Greenland.

01:01:11.000 I think that's why he's threatened to invade Canada. And I think that's why he throws his weight around on the world stage for the benefit of Americans, not for abstract ideology, but explicitly for the benefit of Americans.

01:01:21.640 And I think, look, we are the world empire. And that's just a fact. And we've exerted control in our hemisphere for a very long time.

01:01:27.700 And so if Maduro is willing to play ball with us, that's one thing. If he's not, if he's going to work with our enemies, if he's going to ship drugs up into our country, well, then maybe we don't need to tolerate him.

01:01:38.260 And also the other thing, too, is and I think you alluded to it, that, you know, the argument against it, I think most Americans are not up at night worried about narco terrorists.

01:01:48.240 But there are some people who have this libertarian view that, well, the war on drugs failed. And that is a very common view.

01:01:54.780 Yes. And my view of that is like, well, the war on drugs, the war on drugs was never tried.

01:01:59.980 I mean, we never actually went to war against drugs. And I think it's kind of like that scene in Breaking Bad where, you know, where Mike says, you know, no more half measures.

01:02:11.380 If you're going to do it, it's got like either do it or don't. You can't have a half measure. And when it comes to the quote unquote war on drugs, it strikes me that it was it's kind of been a at most a half measure.

01:02:22.120 Oh, yeah. Worked a little in the 90s.

01:02:23.940 Right. Well, again, I think it means you've got to take the war to the to the actual drug traffickers.

01:02:27.780 Well, that's that's that's the real key, right? I mean, I think that every time we declare a war on a concept, it is bound to fail.

01:02:33.120 Right. If you declare a war on poverty, you can't defeat poverty. If you declare a war on drugs, that's an object.

01:02:36.820 War on terrorism. Right. It has to be a war on the drug traffickers. Right.

01:02:41.000 War on drug cartels. Like these are material things that the material that our military, which is excellent at finding things, breaking them and destroying them, that they can actually go and do like not so good at stopping people's drug habits.

01:02:52.620 Really, really good at blowing up narco terrorist boats in the middle of the Caribbean. 0.94

01:02:56.380 And so it seems to me we should, you know, do what our skill set sort of suggests that we should do with the American military, which is, you know, break things.

01:03:02.900 I think that we're really, really good at breaking things and we're less good at putting things back together, which is why I say about Venezuela that I really hope that there's something waiting in the wings to take over. 0.92

01:03:10.780 When there is or if there is a regime change. I don't think, by the way, my ideology of regime change is not that we have to have democracy everywhere.

01:03:17.040 I think we need a regime that's better for America everywhere that it's possible for there to be a regime.

01:03:20.940 And again, the key word there is possible. And there you have to calculate risk reward. Right.

01:03:25.020 What are we risking and what's the upside reward?

01:03:27.900 I think any realist would suggest that there are certain rewards that are not worth the risk and there are certain risks that are not worth the reward.

01:03:34.040 And so I think that when you look at Venezuela, if you're talking about a very small pinprick military intervention and then Maduro goes bye bye and suddenly you have a friendly regime that it's going to denationalize the oil industry, for example, and crack down on the narco traffickers. 0.83

01:03:47.660 That sounds pretty good to me. If you're talking about 100,000 troops, it's a completely different story.

01:03:51.980 And the same thing is true about interventions literally anywhere else on Earth.

01:03:54.840 If what you're talking about is one bullet finishing a problem, I'm very much for it.

01:03:59.320 If what you're talking about is 100,000 troops finishing the problem, I'm very much against it.

01:04:02.080 But then the question, of course, becomes, I mean, you mentioned CIA, you know, activities within Latin America and maybe within Venezuela.

01:04:09.560 The question then becomes, is the CIA James Bond, Jason Bourne, efficient, ruthless, controls everything, or is the CIA burn after reading?

01:04:20.440 Every time it tries to do something, it just gets worse and worse and no one has any idea what's going on.

01:04:25.520 And I, no knock, look, there are very heroic people who have worked for the CIA.

01:04:29.820 The CIA has also done very bungled things.

01:04:31.280 Not to be like a huge cop out here, there's evidence for both.

01:04:36.960 I think, let's put it this way.

01:04:38.460 The evidence from the 50s of the former is much better than the evidence today for the former.

01:04:44.580 I'm much closer to the burn after reading version of the CIA today than I would have been prior to the last 25 years of American history, for sure.

01:04:52.900 All right, so I guess we're not, I do want the oil, though.

01:04:54.740 I want the oil.

01:04:55.400 And I actually love that Trump is open about this.

01:04:57.060 This actually is one of my favorite things about Trump.

01:04:58.600 I really like that.

01:04:59.660 I like when he was talking about the war in Iraq, even.

01:05:01.740 He's like, it wasn't a war for oil, but maybe it should have been.

01:05:04.480 Maybe it should have been.

01:05:05.400 You want to deal with affordability?

01:05:06.620 Let's get that oil. 0.88

01:05:07.500 How about that?

01:05:07.980 How about that?

01:05:08.540 Why don't we give everything away to the whole world?

01:05:10.260 Okay.

01:05:11.360 All in the spirit of Thanksgiving, give us your oil.

01:05:13.580 Okay.

01:05:14.440 That's it.

01:05:14.900 That's our show.

01:05:16.060 When are we back?

01:05:17.000 I think we're doing another one tomorrow.

01:05:18.240 Is that right?

01:05:18.800 No?

01:05:19.080 No, I can't catch your two.

01:05:19.920 Okay.

01:05:20.340 Maybe within two weeks.

01:05:21.460 Good to see everybody.

01:05:22.860 Everyone else out there, see you next time on Friendly Fire.

01:05:24.800 We'll see you next time on Friendly Fire.

The Michael Knowles Show - December 01, 2025

Friendly Fire： Hegseth. Homeland Security & Happy Meals

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