The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire： Iran Ceasefire, INDIGNIDAD Amnesty & A.I. Supermodel Gone Rogue

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00:00:58.120 welcome gentlemen and lady coming on later to friendly fire we didn't know if we were going

00:01:12.360 to have this show today because the world was supposed to end last night in nuclear holocaust

00:01:18.300 and there was going to be a genocide perpetrated against the persian people and trump you know i

00:01:26.000 supported him for three elections, but this is too far. I was, the left was freaking out about it,

00:01:31.320 but there was a hysterical part of the right that was freaking out. And now it's fine. We might have

00:01:36.460 a ceasefire. The Iran war might be over. The Strait of Hormuz might be open. We might actually be 0.88

00:01:43.040 taking tax with the Iranians on the Strait of Hormuz. And in any case, there's a lot of dignity

00:01:49.300 in establishing peace. There's also a lot of dignity in Congress, where a Republican Congress

00:01:55.060 lady thinks it's a really good idea to give amnesty to basically all the illegal aliens in

00:01:59.800 the country. Threats from AI that could take us all down. There's so much to get to. But before 0.98

00:02:07.020 we get to any of it, I want you to buy stuff from me. Spring cleaning is almost over at the Daily

00:02:12.040 Wire shop. You can save up to 50% off for just a few more days. Conservative gear that doesn't bend

00:02:18.100 the knee that tells the truth, that loves America. Our brand new terrorist tears tumblers comes with

00:02:26.180 a side of freedom fries. You're either with us or you're with the terrorists. We have George Bush

00:02:31.160 coming on the show actually later to pitch it. It's in honor of Easter weekend's incredibly daring

00:02:35.260 mission to rescue the American Air Force officer from behind Iranian lines. Ben's latest New York

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00:03:04.940 today. We have a special guest also coming on. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Are you,

00:03:09.900 just excuse me, are you really not going to plug my book that is only up for an Edgar for

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00:03:17.940 Wait, hold on, you write books?

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00:03:33.880 Exactly, named after Raisin Cain.

00:03:36.140 Yes, you can go, if you want a book without words, get mine.

00:03:38.960 If you want a book with Ben's signature, get his.

00:03:41.220 And if you want a book from an actual writer,

00:03:43.780 an actual award-winning writer,

00:03:45.240 the real words we we also met we have you on the show today

00:03:50.360 yeah i mean it's my favorite show to do so i don't i how could i how could i not be

00:03:56.120 yeah no and this is where i find out about a new merch drop which is great terrorist tears i mean

00:04:03.600 whose idea was that we know whose idea that was i i think it was donald rumsfeld's idea actually

00:04:10.360 I know he's dead, but I think we got through some kind of advanced CIA technology.

00:04:15.640 He came up with the new Terrorist Tears Tumblr.

00:04:18.980 It is the kind of idea you would get from a dead man.

00:04:20.880 I cannot think of, if you're looking for merchandise that's just pure, like, boomer bait, pure Fox News boomer bait merchandise, Terrorist Tears Tumblr.

00:04:32.160 I mean, yeah.

00:04:34.120 Beat Mondale.

00:04:34.600 That's good.

00:04:35.060 That's good.

00:04:35.460 We've got our new Beat Mondale Tumblr coming out next week, too, so that one will be great.

00:04:39.740 be sure to, that will be full price though. That won't be 50% off. We are back in the Middle East

00:04:45.240 though, sort of, maybe, maybe not. There was this amazing daring rescue mission where the CIA was

00:04:51.400 using crazy advanced technology and Sutterfuge to pull this guy out. He went down on Good Friday,

00:04:56.680 he hid in a crevice in a mountain, and then he was rescued on Easter Sunday. It's amazing. It's

00:05:02.720 wonderful. Thank God. What's more interesting to me, did you guys see the New York Times piece

00:05:07.000 on the internal deliberations about whether or not to go to war with Iran in the White House?

00:05:12.840 The Maggie Haberman piece, yeah?

00:05:14.340 Yeah, Haberman. So according to it, the guy arguing most vociferously against the strikes

00:05:20.600 was the vice president, J.D. Vance, who, as far as I can tell, has exactly my position

00:05:26.140 on the Iran war. He said, look, I don't think this is a good idea. I don't think it's going to work.

00:05:32.820 In terms of actual regime change, I think we're being oversold here.

00:05:35.900 Looks like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs agreed with that. Looks like Marco Rubio agreed

00:05:39.120 with that. People are trying to drive divisions between Vance and Rubio. Looks like they were

00:05:43.340 totally on the same page here. Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, was on board, 0.96

00:05:47.340 chairman of the Joint Chiefs. According to the reporting, Pete Hegseth was more in favor of the

00:05:51.180 strikes. In any case, though, we were supposed to get nuclear disaster last night. And instead,

00:05:57.040 I guess we have a ceasefire. None of us know anything about actual news reporting. So we

00:06:02.580 have Cabot Phillips, who does our actual hard news show, Wired in Live. He's joining us too.

00:06:08.560 Do we have a ceasefire? Yes, of course. Donald Trump says we have a ceasefire. So there's

00:06:13.860 definitely a ceasefire, Michael. I interviewed a former Defense Department liaison last night,

00:06:20.000 and he said, look, given what the Iranians are reportedly demanding, and given all the

00:06:25.500 complications with Israel, who by all accounts wants this war to keep going, as we saw this

00:06:30.180 morning with their continued vomiting of Lebanon, given the Iranian desire to keep control of the

00:06:36.580 strait. He said, you're going to have fighting again within four days. And at this rate, it looks

00:06:42.340 like we'd be lucky to make it four more hours with this thing holding, given all the latest news

00:06:47.460 coming out in the last hour. And Michael, I remember the morning that the war first broke out.

00:06:52.420 You were here on my lovely new set, which still not as good as your set, but a beautiful new set

00:06:58.900 here for Wired In Live.

00:06:59.940 Everyone go tune in.

00:07:01.040 And you scoffed a bit.

00:07:02.920 We had a very nice young lady 1.00

00:07:04.340 come on the show.

00:07:04.920 I'm not going to say her name,

00:07:06.340 but she was in a big support

00:07:08.320 of this conflict

00:07:08.980 the morning it launched

00:07:09.860 and said,

00:07:10.360 there really are no potential

00:07:12.020 downsides to this war.

00:07:13.300 Do you remember that?

00:07:13.780 She said,

00:07:14.100 there are no potential downsides.

00:07:16.000 And you interjected and said,

00:07:17.880 well, I think there could be

00:07:19.820 some potential downsides.

00:07:20.680 I can think of a few. 0.98

00:07:21.820 Yeah, and that woman too, 0.99

00:07:22.940 I mean, she was a nice lady, 1.00

00:07:23.780 but she said,

00:07:24.420 this war is so important.

00:07:25.920 It's so great that America's involved 1.00

00:07:27.280 because it's such a great day

00:07:28.520 for the Persian people and the Persians have been waiting for this for so long and how wonderful for

00:07:33.260 the Iranian people. And I said, well, you know, respectfully, I like Persians and stuff, but why

00:07:39.020 am I supposed to care about that? I'm an American. Why is this? This is the best case you can make 1.00

00:07:44.400 for the war. So according to the reporting here, Bibi Netanyahu flies to the White House. They have

00:07:50.060 this high level meeting. Vance at the time was in Azerbaijan wrapping up that trip. But even with

00:07:55.680 the vice president out, everyone was saying, look, the Israelis are overselling this. I think

00:08:00.200 the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, said that. Same thing with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of

00:08:04.660 Staff. And you're really probably not going to get regime change. I was always so skeptical

00:08:09.260 of this idea that the Iranians were going to just rise up and take over their government 1.00

00:08:13.980 because, you know, all we ever see is these hot Persian women smoking cigarettes, ripping off 1.00

00:08:20.500 their hijabs. I said, I don't think that's reflective, actually, of most of the Persian 1.00

00:08:24.200 people. And so obviously we're not getting regime change. The White House hasn't even really pushed

00:08:27.820 that for the last four and a half weeks or so. But by the end of this conflict, the question is,

00:08:32.940 is the straight opening? Does Israel want to go along with the ceasefire? Apparently not.

00:08:39.560 Will Trump do it anyway? Will Trump force it through? And what will we have gotten out of it?

00:08:45.940 You know, I just, I want to say just one thing that Israel, you know, as I keep saying every

00:08:50.660 time we do this show, Israel and the U.S. have many areas on the Venn diagram where our interests

00:08:56.920 are aligned. But Israel also has some areas that are quite serious that have nothing to do with us,

00:09:04.020 like the fact that they're surrounded by enemies. Their country is the size of a matchstick and

00:09:08.120 they're surrounded by enemies on either side. Anyone who's ever been to Israel, wherever you

00:09:12.380 stand, you can see people who want to kill you. I mean, it is quite remarkable. It is a remarkable 1.00

00:09:16.900 way to live. So the fact that they're still fighting and they're fighting especially with

00:09:21.280 Lebanon because Hezbollah has been hurling missiles into their country is not necessarily

00:09:26.600 violating the ceasefire. You know, I mean, they're not attacking Iran. They're defending

00:09:32.660 themselves against that. And that's something, you know, I'm glad they're doing, but it has

00:09:36.960 nothing to do with what decisions we should make. And I also just want to add about that New York

00:09:40.860 Times piece. When has the New York Times ever reported anything that concerns Donald Trump

00:09:45.600 That was one, true, and two, even its truths were not designed to hurt Trump in some way.

00:09:54.600 And I couldn't help as I was reading that thing to think that that piece was written by Tucker Carlson, you know, that it was kind of like the evil Jews came in and overrode the American firsters.

00:10:03.940 And I just thought, I don't know about that. 0.78

00:10:05.920 Trump has been very cautious about war-making, and I think he's done a good thing, and I think

00:10:13.800 that it's probably coming to an end one way or another. But Israel's fight, Israel's not breaking

00:10:18.760 the ceasefire if they're fighting with Hezbollah. They have to fight with Hezbollah. And it shouldn't 0.86

00:10:22.540 have anything to do with our ceasefire. It doesn't have anything to do with it.

00:10:25.180 The question still is, I think there's one question still has not been answered, which

00:10:33.060 why exactly was this necessary for America to get involved in right now? I don't think we've ever

00:10:39.640 gotten, to my mind, a sufficient answer to that. Not like, well, maybe it'll work out, but why was

00:10:46.240 it necessary? Why did we have to do this right now? I don't think it's been a good answer to that,

00:10:52.660 and especially when the nuclear program is used as the answer. Well, we were told that it was

00:10:57.640 obliterated back in June. So it's difficult to understand how both those things could be true,

00:11:04.240 that the nuclear program was obliterated, but also the nuclear program is why we had to launch

00:11:08.920 this war. I don't think we've gotten a good answer to that. And then how are we better off?

00:11:16.340 How has America benefited from it? Getting the strait back open, well, great. It was already

00:11:21.100 open before this. So it's hard to see that we could say that that was a good reason for the

00:11:27.040 war to start. And I also think that, you know, in my own personal view that I've been very open

00:11:32.840 about is that I don't think this is in America's best interest. I think that there were a lot of

00:11:37.340 breezy assurances made by proponents of this war early on. You guys were talking a little bit about

00:11:42.040 that, that there's like basically no downside. It'll be perfectly fine. It's treating Iran like

00:11:49.200 they're not even a country. It's just, or comparing it to Venezuela, totally different

00:11:55.160 situation and not enough wrestling with the real ramifications of doing something like this.

00:12:02.560 And I got to say, that's one thing that's really frustrated me about this entire thing. And I think

00:12:06.840 it was reflected in the conversation yesterday about Trump's truth social post about how we're

00:12:14.680 going to, the entire civilization is going to die. And it's, for someone who tries to be reasonable

00:12:20.820 about these things, it's really frustrating because what I see is, yeah, on one side,

00:12:24.500 you have some people who do panic about it and they act as though there's a chance that Trump 0.84

00:12:31.900 will actually just nuke Iran and kill everybody. And I think that most of us who are rational knew

00:12:39.280 that that was just not going to happen. But on the other end of the spectrum,

00:12:44.280 you have people who are proponents of this war and reflexive defenders of it acting as though

00:12:49.480 there is no reasonable criticism a person could make of a president saying publicly,

00:12:56.580 the entire civilization will die. Like a reasonable person, a rational person can

00:13:03.580 obviously without panicking, you're not being a panic in, you're not saying that the sky's

00:13:08.840 falling, but you can look at that and say, huh, you know, I, I don't know if that's the best

00:13:14.020 strategy. And I also don't know if morally it's like ever okay to threaten to kill an entire

00:13:20.600 civilization, even if you get your way. So that's a conversation we can have. And just like the bad

00:13:28.440 faith and the dishonesty from people on both sides, I find really frustrating. Because look,

00:13:34.740 here's the thing. I agree with the people who say that, yeah, there's no way Trump was actually

00:13:39.940 going to do that. He's not going to do that. I get it. Okay. Well then, but why are you saying

00:13:44.040 it then? I'll give you an answer on this. Well, hold on. But if you're not going to do it and

00:13:48.860 everybody knows you're not going to do it, then the threat is totally meaningless. Like the Iranian 1.00

00:13:53.920 regime, they have access to Twitter. I mean, they can see the conversation also. And so if 0.85

00:13:59.780 everybody in the world knows he's not going to do it, then the threat has no meaning. And if they

00:14:06.420 think that he will do it, but then he doesn't. Well, now you just look like a fool. You look 1.00

00:14:11.800 like you're full of bluster. I mean, when you make this threat, if you, hold on, if you make

00:14:17.320 this threat and you will never actually do it ever, no matter what they do, then all you've

00:14:24.460 done is made your threats completely meaningless. No, so the fear is that, and I've seen people

00:14:30.560 say this. They went from criticizing Trump for bombing Iran to criticizing Trump for not bombing

00:14:37.100 Iran. Bill Kristol came out. He said, this is a taco. Trump chickens out. And so the criticism is,

00:14:41.340 well, this means you can't trust what Trump says. But I don't think that's true. I think

00:14:45.020 you can trust what Trump says if you know what he means. And so, yes, no one, no reasonable person

00:14:51.400 thought that Trump was going to drop multiple nuclear weapons on Iran and genocide the entire

00:14:56.420 population. So no one thinks he's going to do that. But people do think he might do something.

00:15:01.600 And this is one of the arguments for some strikes in Iran. Again, I'm a skeptic on the strikes.

00:15:06.640 But one of the arguments for it is Trump is a dove. He advocates for peace. He doesn't want

00:15:12.000 to get in these quagmires. And then he kills Soleimani. Or he drops the Moab. Or he takes

00:15:16.860 out Maduro. Or in this case, he takes out the Ayatollah, the most senior Muslim leader in the 0.71

00:15:20.880 world. And he does these things that allow him to maintain some unpredictability. So with that 0.92

00:15:25.460 tweet that he sent out, he goes, open the effing straits or you'll all be living in hell. Praise be

00:15:30.780 to Allah. To me, what I really liked about that tweet is it seemed very disciplined. It seemed

00:15:36.220 reckless at first, but when you read that dry humor line at the end, all praise to Allah,

00:15:40.620 you can see he's being disciplined here and he's mocking the way that they speak. The Iranians are 1.00

00:15:45.600 the ones who I say, the great Satan will go down in a ball of fire, you know, whatever. And so he's 1.00

00:15:51.380 kind of mocking the way that they speak. My argument for what he's doing, just in a short

00:15:56.940 way, a concise way, is there was good to be achieved here. I never thought the Iranian 1.00

00:16:03.360 regime was going to fall. I always thought that those kinds of comments were way overselling the

00:16:08.260 war. The goods that are achieved are you further weaken their nuclear program, which they're going

00:16:12.380 to continue to pursue. You really mess up their ballistics missiles program, which was being used

00:16:17.480 to defend the nuclear program, you sink their military, you kill the top, like, 15 layers of

00:16:22.480 their government, but the regime remains in place in a similar way that we saw in Venezuela, and

00:16:27.840 especially if you can make sure the Strait of Hormuz remains open so that the best card that 0.69

00:16:32.020 the Iranians have to play doesn't actually redound to their benefit, then you have achieved some

00:16:36.800 strategic objectives that the U.S. has had for 47 years. Again, I'm very skeptical of the whole 0.97

00:16:41.680 thing, but it doesn't mean you don't accomplish nothing. I want to break in here on two points.

00:16:46.860 You know, first of all, Pete Hexeth, the god of war, said that, or secretary of war, whatever

00:16:51.240 they call him, he said that the Iranians knew exactly what Trump was talking about, that

00:16:56.340 they knew exactly what he was going to hit.

00:16:57.880 There was nothing they could do about it.

00:16:59.500 I think that that is probably exactly accurate.

00:17:01.820 So Trump was making a big fuss for the press and driving the press insane, as he loves

00:17:06.000 to do. 0.98

00:17:06.680 But in fact, the Iranians knew exactly what was coming. 0.99

00:17:09.080 And it was bad. 1.00

00:17:09.820 You know, it was stuff.

00:17:10.460 They were going to get hit on Karg Island.

00:17:11.980 They were going to get hit in their infrastructure.

00:17:13.500 And I think that he was making a deal insofar as it goes.

00:17:18.280 But the other thing about this, and look, my point about this war from the very beginning was, if it ends well, it'll be good.

00:17:24.760 If it doesn't end well, it'll be bad, like every war, essentially.

00:17:28.500 But I thought that there was a good reason for doing it, although whether we should be doing it now or not is a fair question.

00:17:36.480 All kinds of questions are fair.

00:17:37.980 I agree with Matt. These people who say there's no downside to a war are out of their freaking minds. 0.99

00:17:43.180 That's ridiculous. 0.99

00:17:44.040 A war, we call it kinetic for a reason. 0.97

00:17:46.240 We are fighting to build a country.

00:17:49.220 Trump is fighting to build a country and a North America that can stand up to the onslaught

00:17:53.560 from China that is coming, I would say, approximately 15 minutes.

00:17:58.400 And I think that one of the things that he has done, when he went into Venezuela, a lot 0.56

00:18:03.040 of the people running out of that country were suspiciously yellow, you know, suspiciously 0.98

00:18:07.020 look like Chinese people. 0.99

00:18:08.340 When he went into Iran, a lot of that oil coming through the strait is going to China, 0.88

00:18:12.580 something like 40% of their oil is for China. And that's stuff that China needs. And as they go

00:18:19.080 forward and as Donald Trump sits down with Xi and says, oh, my friend, my good friend, we get along

00:18:24.000 so well, it would be a shame if you couldn't get your oil. It's going to matter who is in charge

00:18:29.160 of the Strait of Hormuz. And so I think that this is all about, I mean, Trump is actually doing a

00:18:34.220 visionary thing, which in America is forbidden because we live from not just election to election,

00:18:38.900 We live from pole to pole, but I think he actually is doing a visionary thing.

00:18:43.060 I think it is a good thing.

00:18:44.080 I don't think it has to involve us changing the regime in Iran.

00:18:48.180 I think it has to do with our crippling them, which he seems to have done almost completely 0.85

00:18:53.000 as far as I can tell.

00:18:54.580 And yeah, you know, Matt is right again about that.

00:18:56.800 We didn't obliterate their nuclear program before.

00:18:59.480 I think now we may have buried a lot of their nuclear goods underground such that it will

00:19:04.460 be tough for them to get it out without our seeing them and going after them again.

00:19:08.720 So I don't know.

00:19:09.320 I think he has accomplished something.

00:19:10.920 And I think that he would like to get out.

00:19:12.700 I've been, you know, for the last two friendly fires, I've been saying time is running out.

00:19:16.540 And I think there are a lot of people who are, you know, thinking that we have to go in and destroy everything in Iran to get rid of the leadership or change the regime.

00:19:25.740 That's not going to happen.

00:19:26.580 Hold on.

00:19:26.880 Before Matt starts to just scream his rebuttal to that, I want you all to realize out there that a lot is happening and it's hitting everything from your paycheck to your freedoms.

00:19:36.720 So you can either guess or you can know.

00:19:39.320 The Daily Wire gives you live breaking news, investigative reporting, ad-free daily shows,

00:19:42.940 and experts who are actually part of the story, especially on Cabot's show.

00:19:46.540 Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe.

00:19:49.000 Before we get to Cabot, Matt.

00:19:52.000 Yeah, I think, look, there's this weird thing we do now with wars where we talk about them very theoretically,

00:19:59.800 especially this latest one where we're sort of theorizing about, well, maybe we're doing it for this reason.

00:20:04.880 Maybe this is the reason.

00:20:06.220 as though we don't have leaders who are running the country whose responsibility is not to

00:20:13.380 actually tell us this stuff. It used to be that for most of American history, when we went to war,

00:20:19.440 it was like kind of a big deal. And so the American people had to know why we're doing it.

00:20:24.520 That doesn't mean that the generals have to sit down at your kitchen table and lay out all the

00:20:29.080 blueprints and lay out all the battle plans for you. Some things are confidential. We get that.

00:20:33.500 you want the element of surprise. But a basic conversation about why are we doing this? Why

00:20:39.200 now? You as Americans are going to pay the price for this one way or another. You're going to pay

00:20:44.920 a financial. At least there's a risk. There's a risk. If America goes to war in any part of the

00:20:49.940 world, there is a serious risk to American people, to American livelihood, to American lives. No one

00:20:55.100 can deny that. And so for that reason alone, we have a right to know why are we doing this? Why

00:21:00.220 was this necessary right now? And well, what happens is that Trump says things and then some

00:21:07.880 of us say, well, hold on, but that can't be true. That doesn't sound exactly right. And then we're

00:21:11.720 told by the proponents of the war, oh, well, you know, but that doesn't, you can't take that

00:21:15.220 seriously. He didn't really mean that. So Trump said obliterate the nuclear program. Well, but no,

00:21:19.280 he didn't really mean obliterate it. Trump said, we're going to, the entire civilization is going

00:21:23.300 to die. Well, obviously he didn't really mean the entire civilization. Trump said the Iranian people

00:21:26.900 will rise up and it'll be regime change. Well, obviously not really a regime change. And then,

00:21:30.820 and then Drew, you say, well, really, this is about positioning with China. Well, okay,

00:21:35.380 but no one in power has said that. That is not what Trump has said. So that's part of the plan,

00:21:42.520 that if he says that, if he says that, he's telling China what he's doing and he doesn't

00:21:46.640 want to do that. But it doesn't work that way. It's not that I disagree with you, Matt. I just

00:21:50.280 think that this is the way it is, you know? I mean, I get it. I get it. I wish Trump were an

00:21:55.860 eloquent, good spokesman for what he's doing. He's not. It's not about being eloquent. It's

00:22:00.220 not about being eloquent. It's just about being straight. It's about being straightforward and

00:22:04.100 honest about what America is doing with our money and our lives. What are we doing and why? We have

00:22:12.000 a right to know. And this thing that we hear from proponents where basically we have no right to

00:22:18.420 know. Just have faith in Trump. Just have faith. Hold on a second. Trump is not God, okay? He's

00:22:25.780 not jesus christ i i'm not called upon to have faith in him i don't have faith in any in any

00:22:30.760 politician faith this is not this is a what is a call to faith in a politician that doesn't it's

00:22:36.340 the other way around no i don't have i don't have to trust him you have to earn that trust always

00:22:41.460 every and it's not just you can't cash in on on past truck trust yeah has he not earned the

00:22:46.640 i think he's earned trust on foreign i think he's earned the trust about this too yeah it's

00:22:51.980 just, yeah, I thought what he did in Venezuela was great. That doesn't mean that what's happening

00:22:58.780 right now is great. Like Trump has done some things that are really good. He's also done

00:23:03.040 things that are bad. I thought the way Trump handled COVID was terrible. We all like to

00:23:07.560 pretend that never happened. But what about foreign policy? I'm saying on foreign policy

00:23:10.820 in particular, I think he's earned a lot of trust. I think he's done a lot of good things.

00:23:15.240 I've generally supported what he's done on foreign policy. This thing over here, though,

00:23:19.740 is a whole new thing. And what I'm saying is that I'm not convinced that this is in America's

00:23:25.620 best interest or that it was necessary. And no one in a position of power has made the case for

00:23:30.820 why it is. And when they do make the case, I'm immediately informed by pundits that the case

00:23:35.860 they made was not actually the case and that I should know that, yeah, they're saying that,

00:23:40.620 but that's not really the reason. There's some other reason that they, the pundits can explain

00:23:44.540 to me, but the administration cannot. And I'm saying that that situation is untenable.

00:23:49.360 Matt, listen, I think all of these complaints are absolutely good. But at the same time,

00:23:56.060 I do think that something's happened that has been really good for America. I think what he

00:24:00.920 has done in Iran has already been good for us, and it will appear to be good for us pretty quickly

00:24:06.480 in the course of history. But you're absolutely right. He doesn't explain anything. The pundits

00:24:13.860 have been awful about this. I mean, there have been so many pundits on the left, I guess we'll

00:24:19.240 call them whatever the anti-American pundits who are most pundits who have played this thing as if

00:24:24.580 we were somehow, you know, our cities were being bombed. You know, you read the New York Times and

00:24:29.080 the Wall Street Journal. It sounds like, you know, a rise in gas, which is bad. It's bad. But it

00:24:33.220 sounds like Hiroshima and America, the way they play it. The Wall Street Journal and one of the

00:24:38.900 funniest, you know, headlines I'd seen saying if Trump ups this war, then it might strengthen

00:24:46.040 Iranian resolve. I thought, like the Black Knight in a Monty Python movie, how much stronger can

00:24:53.720 their resolve be? Nothing seems to convince them that they've been beaten. So I praise them for

00:24:58.740 their resolve. However, however, stepping back from all of that stuff, which is all true,

00:25:03.820 I do look at this and I think we're in a better position now than we were six weeks ago. And I

00:25:08.800 think all the hand-wringing has also been wrong. I think the hand-wringing is wrong, and I think

00:25:14.280 you're absolutely right about this, Walsh. It's been driving me nuts, too. These people say,

00:25:17.860 oh, it's great. There's not even a risk. It's not even a problem. It drives me nuts. But on the

00:25:22.480 other hand, I think the hand-wringing is equally wrong. I think we are actually in a better place

00:25:26.180 today than we were when the bombing started, and I think if he can get out of it right about now,

00:25:30.960 which is what I've been saying since for the last two friendly fires, right about now is when I

00:25:34.520 think he should get out of it and make sure the straight is open if he can. And that, I think,

00:25:40.160 we'll be in a better position. Kevin, are we in a better place right now than we were five weeks

00:25:43.020 ago? I think it's easy to say if things hold, if the ceasefire holds, then yeah. And if we're able

00:25:47.720 to get anything to the straight, then yeah, we're in a better place. The big question, though, is

00:25:52.000 can you actually get out right now? I mean, yeah, Trump can say, oh, well, it's a ceasefire. But if

00:25:57.440 it's a one-sided ceasefire, all that means is that we're no longer bombing them. If the straight,

00:26:02.120 if you're having to pay $2 million to get a tanker through the strait, if the Iranians are still 0.99

00:26:06.340 holding the energy economy globally hostage, then of course you're not in a better position 0.98

00:26:12.460 than you are in the long run. And I do think, Andrew, I agree that the pundit class has been

00:26:18.040 terrible messaging on this, but we can be honest that the White House has been completely all over

00:26:22.820 the place on messaging. One day, President Trump is saying, well, we can get out without the

00:26:26.720 strait of Hormuz. The rest of the world can figure out oil on their own. And then the next day he's

00:26:30.540 saying, if you don't open the strait, we're going to bomb you in oblivion. So does the

00:26:33.000 strait matter or does it not matter? And then one day it's regime change. Trump's saying,

00:26:36.560 hey, when this conflict is over, this will be the best chance in generations for you all to

00:26:40.180 topple this regime. And then the next day, regime change is not even mentioned by the

00:26:44.260 State Department in the list of objectives. Can I bring a little Thucydides in here?

00:26:48.120 Just a little to go back to the OG historian of war. In the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides writes

00:26:53.680 that nations go to war for three reasons, fear, interest, and honor. And the late great

00:27:00.060 historian of ancient Greece, Don Kagan, who was a right-winger also, one of the few in academia,

00:27:04.660 he said, everyone takes seriously the fear part. Everyone takes seriously the interest part.

00:27:08.860 No one takes seriously the honor part, because we live in this materialist society.

00:27:12.960 And so when you say, Matt, well, hold on, why is it? Give me the one reason why we went to war.

00:27:18.020 Or Cabot, you just mentioned that the rationale keeps changing. I don't think it's changing so

00:27:22.100 much as there were multiple reasons to go to war. There is the fear that Iran could get a nuclear 0.93

00:27:27.000 weapon. Iran has been pretty open about pursuing a nuclear weapon for decades now, and it might be

00:27:31.780 overhyped how close they are to actually achieving a nuclear weapon. I agree with that, but they 0.96

00:27:36.300 clearly want it, and so that causes rational fear, certainly for the United States, but for the rest

00:27:40.400 of the world. In terms of interest, there's a lot of interest when we're talking about specifically

00:27:45.360 the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the oil for the global market flows through. To say nothing of

00:27:50.800 petrochemicals, to say nothing of fertilizer, they're in a geopolitically very important position.

00:27:55.960 And then there is honor. And this gets to your point, Drew, when we're talking about China. You know, the United States is the global hegemon. American hegemony is predicated in no small part on the petrodollar. If we were in a position where Iran has really strengthened its hand, where China rather has really strengthened its hand in Iran, where countries, the Gulf states are starting to look more toward China than to the United States to protect them.

00:28:18.760 we could be in a world in which the petrodollar goes away, we end up with the petroyuan, 0.75

00:28:23.180 China all of a sudden is running the show globally, and America's stature would not 0.90

00:28:28.040 just diminish a little bit, we would lose our role as the global hegemon, which benefits us 0.96

00:28:33.180 greatly. So I think the answer is, there were a billion reasons to go to war in Iran. The regime 0.99

00:28:39.300 change part of it would just be kind of a bonus, I guess, if we could have a regime that is

00:28:43.860 favorable to the West in there. But there were all these reasons. This is why so many presidents

00:28:47.360 had considered doing it. So I'm the guy, had I been on the NSC, I would have argued against

00:28:52.500 these strikes, as I've said again and again. To your point, Drew, can we trust the New York Times?

00:28:55.940 I certainly don't, reflexively. But it is curious that the left is always trying to stoke division

00:29:00.620 within the Trump administration. The fact that here they're showing that Vance and Rubio,

00:29:05.360 who were supposed to be so far apart, are actually aligned. Yeah, they're trying to hit Trump and say

00:29:09.860 that he's the one who's the lone wolf here being duped by Bibi, and the rest of the admin is really

00:29:14.560 smart in America first. Yeah, the New York Times has its own rationale, certainly. But it seems to

00:29:20.040 me here that we might be able to rely on some of the reporting that's coming out. And I just think

00:29:24.640 it's a tricky call. And he had to get out after five weeks. And the point that I would make on

00:29:31.040 the ceasefire is Trump said at the beginning, this war, it's going to go on for about five weeks.

00:29:36.000 And then when five weeks and one day hit, my Twitter mentions blew up with, hey, Michael,

00:29:41.520 are you going to start freaking out now? Are you going to start getting concerned? And I said,

00:29:44.480 well, I'm starting to get a little more concerned. But if the ceasefire holds, it will have come

00:29:48.420 into place five weeks and two days after the war began. That's pretty impressive.

00:29:54.640 Originally, he said four to six weeks, I think. So he's right in there. Listen, I just think that

00:30:00.920 there are political considerations. I keep saying this. I do not want the left to take this country

00:30:06.020 back. I mean, the left is far more dangerous. The inside left is far more dangerous enemy to us

00:30:11.460 than the Iranians. And so I think Trump is playing with fire when he lets his popularity 0.99

00:30:17.720 sink as low as it has. But I still do think that you have to be able to think beyond the interests

00:30:25.740 of the press. The interests of the press are Thursday. They think like, we're thinking as

00:30:30.460 far as Thursday, and this could go bad if gas prices go up. The disaster predictions that have

00:30:37.200 come out of this event have been so absurd that, you know, you can't even read the paper without,

00:30:43.760 you know, kind of just throwing it away and thinking, I can't get any information out of

00:30:48.040 this. The disaster predictions are absurd. Certainly the nothing could possibly go wrong

00:30:53.160 idea is nonsense. The way that, you know, the other thing I agree with you, Matt, about is

00:30:58.580 the way that people are savaged for talking about this as if it were a complex event with good and

00:31:05.220 bad things involved. But but I do think but I do think that Trump has earned our respect in terms

00:31:12.120 of foreign policy and in terms of visionary foreign policy, which in America means foreign

00:31:16.840 policy lasting beyond, you know, six weeks from now and thinking about the fact that the Chinese

00:31:21.840 are serious. You know, they're seriously going after Taiwan. They seriously mean to replace 0.98

00:31:26.180 our hegemony with their hegemony. And I think that Trump is basically confessing what he has

00:31:32.020 to confess, which we all have to confess is we're an empire. We are an empire and we have to

00:31:37.480 solidify the Western hemisphere in order to remain the good empire instead of the bad empires that

00:31:42.580 are actually growing as we speak. Is there any reason though, is there any reason to think

00:31:48.060 that let's say the ceasefire holds and I don't know how likely that is to happen. Let's say that

00:31:54.580 it does. And then, so then this is the, you know, the status quo. Whether or not this was worth it,

00:32:02.800 whether or not it worked, whatever that means, because as we've established, we don't really

00:32:07.760 exactly know what the goals are. That's not something we can judge right now. And that's

00:32:14.060 the other frustrating thing about the war proponents is that they're, like, as soon as

00:32:19.100 the ceasefire was announced, you had people saying, you see, it all worked out fine. It's

00:32:23.880 been 10 seconds. I mean, if this goes bad, I'm not saying it's going to go bad because we're

00:32:29.760 going to have a nuclear war. I know maybe there's some people saying, oh, it's going to be a world

00:32:33.040 war. It's going to be a nuclear holocaust. I am not saying that. I think that most skeptics of

00:32:37.460 the war aren't really saying that. Maybe some of the loudest voices are, but most aren't.

00:32:41.160 I think most of us who are skeptical are saying that, yeah, it might work out fine in the short

00:32:47.800 run, but there's no reason to think that in the long term, we're going to be in a better position 0.98

00:32:53.440 with Iran than we were before it. And there's good reason to think that it might end up worse, 0.88

00:32:58.120 because what history has clearly shown us, including the recent history of the Middle East,

00:33:02.920 is that when you create a power vacuum, if they've even successfully done that,

00:33:07.000 which I don't know that they have, but even if they did do that, especially in the Middle East,

00:33:12.980 what happens is the power vacuum gets filled, and it's going to invariably be filled,

00:33:17.560 not by, like, the nicest, most democratic, most liberal-minded, secular people.

00:33:23.700 It's going to be filled by the people who are the most brutal and the most ruthless

00:33:28.420 and the most, especially in the Middle East, the most fundamentalist 0.87

00:33:30.860 who are willing to kill the most people to claim power.

00:33:34.180 So, hold on, one point, just before you both start attacking each other on this,

00:33:38.340 well, hold on, I have to shift my framing here.

00:33:40.020 I'm mirrored here.

00:33:41.040 So before you both, anyway, before you guys start going at it on this,

00:33:43.980 It is worth pointing out, I'm pretty opposed to regime change in Iran, not because the regime is

00:33:50.740 good, it's an evil regime, but because of your concerns, Matt. The issue is, if this ceasefire

00:33:56.960 holds, then we actually are in a situation that is much closer to what we saw in Venezuela, which is

00:34:02.980 they didn't get rid of the regime. They didn't get rid of the party. They got rid of the top of it.

00:34:06.400 They pointed a gun at number two, Delce Rodriguez, and said, play ball with us or you're next. It'll

00:34:10.840 be worse for you than it was for Maduro. And the same could be true here. If you get rid of

00:34:14.680 Khamenei and who knows, Khamenei's junior seems to be in a coma right now, and you just keep

00:34:20.260 taking out all that top level leadership, you leave the Islamic regime in place, then you avoid

00:34:24.940 the fear of total chaos there where the genuinely bad actors might come in. You cut off the potential 0.98

00:34:30.280 of a flourishing democratic whatever Iran, but you might have a rump regime in place that can

00:34:35.580 maintain order, and also deal on friendlier terms with the United States. Before we get to Drew's

00:34:40.920 point about how, Matt, you and I are totally wrong, I have to say goodbye to Cabot. I am

00:34:47.300 looking forward to welcoming Isabel. But more important than any of that, I want to talk about

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00:36:12.060 Matt, do you take care of your family

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00:36:15.340 No, look at him for crying out loud.

00:36:18.000 I've got, they each have a piggy bank in their room

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00:36:25.480 And hopefully I live a lot of months

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00:36:28.960 But right now, that's my whole plan.

00:36:30.240 Yeah, that's good.

00:36:31.260 Well, all the more reason we need to maintain dollar hegemony.

00:36:33.780 You know, you don't want that inflation to kick in.

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00:37:10.920 slash fire. Cabot, next time I'm going to try to shut these other guys up so I get to hear more

00:37:16.680 from you. Good to see you. Everyone go check out Wired in Live, an actual excellent show that in

00:37:22.960 spite of ourselves, we have now put on The Daily Wire. I'm very excited to see Isabel Brown. But

00:37:28.480 first, last word, gentlemen, Ben, sorry, Matt and Drew. Last word. Matt is wrong, you say, Drew?

00:37:37.840 Yes, I want to take a moment here. You know, now I was alive during Vietnam. A terrible mistake,

00:37:43.600 awful, the worst thing we ever did. America sucks. It was all this bad news. You never read, 1.00

00:37:48.940 there is no such thing as a book that praises the war in Vietnam. All I know is for 30 years

00:37:53.220 afterwards, you didn't hear a peep out of the Chinese because they were so scared of how crazy 1.00

00:37:57.660 we were to fight them the way we did in this nowhere backwater and try and keep them out. 1.00

00:38:03.360 I mean, it actually had a good effect ever since Trump's first presidency. And I would go further

00:38:09.400 and say George W. Bush, who I did not like what he did in the Middle East. I did not like the way

00:38:13.800 he handled the things he tried to do. But the situation in the Middle East has steadily improved.

00:38:20.200 It is better now than it ever has been in my lifetime, which, as I say, goes back to Thucydides.

00:38:26.180 The mistake that, or if it was a mistake, if it wasn't just sinister that Obama made in

00:38:32.760 strengthening Iran, created an opportunity for Trump to go to the other powers in the region

00:38:39.320 and say, look, do you want to deal with Iran or do you want to deal with Israel? And mostly they 0.94

00:38:43.440 wanted to deal with Israel, the one free country in the Middle East. So now you've got the UAE, 0.85

00:38:49.120 you've got a fairly progressive regime, you've got even Saudi Arabia kind of scratching their chin

00:38:53.880 and saying, look, we hate these guys. They hate Iran. They're bullies. They're the cause of all

00:38:59.080 the violence in the region. And they're saying, you know, we actually would rather deal with

00:39:03.480 Israel than with these guys. The situation in the Middle East is better than it has been, 0.87

00:39:08.660 as i say before um the the 9-11 but you know 9-11 was the turning point and it has now gotten better 0.99

00:39:16.080 these guys are tired of being bombed they're tired of bombing they're tired of saying their

00:39:20.000 kids go off and get killed there's sophisticated people in these regions if you take a look at the

00:39:25.140 uh secretary of state the minister of state they call her in in the uae she is one of the sophisticated 0.56

00:39:30.700 politicians alive these are smart people who understand that if they want to be part of the

00:39:35.200 future. They're going to have to stop killing and raping people and acting like savages. 0.98

00:39:39.820 So I think that this is an opportunity. And I do think that a very clear path to something better 0.56

00:39:45.380 has been opened by this war in Iran. All of the rest of it, that there's no complexity to it, 0.50

00:39:51.740 that there's no negative to it, that it has to go on forever because Israel wants it to happen. 0.93

00:39:56.140 All of that stuff, I think, has got to be thrown out the window. And I do trust, this is where I 0.87

00:40:01.060 agree with you, Knowles. I trust Trump on this stuff because I realize what he wants is strength,

00:40:06.440 American hegemony, and prosperity. That's his whole thing. He wants people to say,

00:40:11.260 that wonderful Trump, he gave us prosperity. And I think that this is part of his scheme to do that

00:40:16.200 over the long term. Now, I agree that, you know, we need to bring a little dignity onto this show

00:40:22.960 instead of just having it be all of us. I'm leaving. So we're very happy to have

00:40:28.460 Isabel Brown joining us because there's this new act. Well, we're all debating. We're all focused

00:40:34.420 on Iran. There's a Republican member, sorry, Republican member of Congress, Maria El, what's

00:40:41.440 her name? Maria Fernandez, whatever it is. Salazar. Salazar. I was going to say Elazar.

00:40:46.520 Maria Salazar is a Republican who decided the best way to respond to the first popular vote

00:40:53.420 victory for Republicans in 20 years, a victory won largely on mass deportations, is to propose

00:40:59.540 a mass amnesty bill for illegal aliens that she is now calling the Dignity Act, but the actual

00:41:05.800 bill is not called the Dignity Act. It's called the Dignidad Act. Hola, hola, Andele. Andele,

00:41:12.880 Isabel, you got into a kerfuffle exposing the bill. Oh, Michael, Michael, Michael. I love that

00:41:20.360 you're pointing out that this is all happening while the entire media apparatus and virtually

00:41:24.500 everyone in government is banking on the fact that you are just going to keep your eyes on the

00:41:29.220 Middle East. Of course, there's also other disappointing things happening here in

00:41:33.000 Washington. It's tough to live here down the street from Congress. I got to say,

00:41:36.700 makes you pretty nauseous several times a day. These are the same people who are still on like

00:41:40.840 a three week recess because they refuse to enact voter ID, which we also delivered a mandate on

00:41:46.600 in November of 2024, Dignidad Act is wildly frustrating. This was introduced by a Republican

00:41:53.140 member of Congress and she insists to her dying breath is not a mass amnesty bill, but quite

00:41:58.720 literally is a mass amnesty bill. It would allow for a pathway for millions of people who came here

00:42:04.380 illegally as children to stay as permanent residents in the United States, would even allow

00:42:08.560 the Secretary of Homeland Security to welcome back up to 4 million people who were deported

00:42:14.480 from January 2017 on while they can reapply for dignity status from outside of the United States

00:42:21.560 and be granted permanent residency. It even prohibits the government from looking at criminal

00:42:26.620 gang databases at the federal or state level to determine if someone should stay in America. 0.91

00:42:33.200 It is bonkers insane. And there are upwards of like 30 Republican members of Congress

00:42:37.640 supporting this, you should be pissed about this. Why are they? It's a dumb question,

00:42:45.580 but you just think this is the most cartoonishly preposterous bill that Republicans, and it's about 0.99

00:42:53.560 a dozen, I think it's a dozen or 14 Republican members of Congress could propose. This woman, 0.98

00:42:58.640 by the way, now she's saying it's not amnesty, it's not amnesty. There's video footage of her

00:43:02.480 saying, well, look, I mean, eventually some legislator is going to come along and give

00:43:07.100 these people amnesty. So it's going to give them a pathway to citizenship, I should say. But right

00:43:11.020 now we just got to give them peace. We got to keep them here. So she's admitting on camera,

00:43:14.200 by the way, it would also effectively pass the DREAM Act, the DREAM Act, which was formulated 0.73

00:43:19.320 by Democrats 15 years ago to say that these doe-eyed little dreamer illegal aliens, who are

00:43:25.000 now like 50, by the way, that they all need to get mass amnesty and a pathway to citizenship.

00:43:29.880 I mean, this thing is as rancid as a bill as ever I have seen.

00:43:36.340 Why?

00:43:37.420 Why are they doing it?

00:43:39.560 Oh, I think we all know the answer, honestly.

00:43:41.480 We lose enough seats during the midterms.

00:43:43.020 Yeah, literally.

00:43:44.340 It's so infuriating, honestly, because it is a betrayal.

00:43:47.800 It's the American people.

00:43:49.520 But it's also just like rocket science, apparently, for most people in Congress.

00:43:53.580 to how to govern on offense as a conservative and to conserve American borders, culture,

00:44:01.120 way of life, legal system. It's like we're so afraid of the potential that we might disappoint

00:44:07.180 some theoretical middle of defense voter out there that really doesn't exist in 2026. So you

00:44:12.960 just change your entire strategy the minute that you get in office. I'll actually add this too

00:44:16.760 before opening it up to the rest of you guys. This is really interesting stuff. This bill was

00:44:20.220 introduced almost a year. All of a sudden, it's just now picking up traction while they're hoping

00:44:24.720 that you don't pay attention to any of this stuff. It is 261 pages. So it's a whole lot more

00:44:30.880 complicated than some simple way to reform immigration. And the byline of this bill is

00:44:36.540 literally called to secure the border and reform the immigration laws. Secure the border, but go 0.84

00:44:42.980 off. I actually interviewed Congressman Brandon Gill about this. This will be our episode for

00:44:46.800 tomorrow. He's one of the good ones left here in Washington. And I loved his take on it.

00:44:51.260 I think of a clip for you guys. You know, we're not going to sell out our entire country for an

00:44:57.080 extra five basis points of GDP growth, which seems to be the bargain that the sort of the

00:45:04.260 libertarian wing in our party has made for a long time. We've got to move away from that.

00:45:09.140 And that is what we ran on, by the way. To your point, we ran on a platform of deportations. And

00:45:15.320 whenever you tell the American people that you're going to push mass deportations, you cannot turn

00:45:20.820 around and introduce an amnesty bill. You know, that really is like two middle fingers to the

00:45:27.420 people who voted us and elected us and got us a trifecta and got President Trump the popular vote.

00:45:33.540 I mean, it's really a grotesque betrayal of everything we've been saying for years now.

00:45:39.400 If we betray our voters like this Dignity Act does, which again is an absolute abomination,

00:45:46.040 I think it will be unforgivable.

00:45:48.040 It will be absolutely unforgivable, and we'll be dealing with this a decade from now.

00:45:54.040 Yeah, that's exactly what they did in Britain, right? 1.00

00:45:56.160 They keep voting in people to stop the migrants coming in, and they keep letting the migrants 1.00

00:46:00.320 coming in, whether it's left or right. 0.99

00:46:01.700 It's exactly the way that Britain has become whatever it is now.

00:46:06.200 I have a bill proposal.

00:46:07.560 It's called the all new denizens actually leave on mass bill or the or the on delay bill.

00:46:15.600 And I want I don't know.

00:46:17.440 Maybe I'll send it to Brandon Gill and maybe he can introduce it.

00:46:20.620 I don't you know, to me, this is the most important issue that I voted on.

00:46:25.200 I want mass deportations.

00:46:27.660 I don't just want the face tattooed criminals gone. 0.98

00:46:30.920 I want we have upwards of 20 million illegal aliens.

00:46:34.200 We don't know how many illegal aliens we have. 1.00

00:46:35.700 I want them gone. It's not even anything necessarily about them. I'm sure the abuelas 1.00

00:46:40.840 are really nice, but abuela has to go too. Most abuelas have to go. Maybe a few exceptions. 1.00

00:46:46.160 They have to go too because you cannot have a system where you have the highest foreign-born 0.58

00:46:51.300 percentage of the population we've ever had, a massive collapse of social solidarity, 0.97

00:46:56.020 no trust in the most basic laws that we have in our country, and a popular election. An election

00:47:01.900 where you win the popular vote on this issue

00:47:03.940 and then you don't deliver on this issue.

00:47:05.880 Matt, are they doing enough to deliver?

00:47:08.460 Forget Congress.

00:47:09.440 Is the White House doing enough to deliver on the issue?

00:47:13.320 Well, this is the thing.

00:47:14.540 I mean, I've, not to bring it back,

00:47:17.860 I'm trying to avoid bringing our conversation

00:47:21.060 circling back to Iran again. 0.99

00:47:22.820 We're going back to Iran.

00:47:24.060 I can't make a Farsi joke. 0.99

00:47:25.760 I can only make Spanish jokes. 1.00

00:47:27.960 I will admit this is one of the main reasons 1.00

00:47:31.440 why I have opposed it, opposed the Iran war, and I still do. It's like the first thing I thought of 0.99

00:47:38.480 because of how my mind works when I heard we were launching these strikes, is that

00:47:43.460 if Trump is going to do something that is politically risky, potentially politically

00:47:51.540 catastrophic, although maybe not. Drastic, you know, raises some constitutional questions

00:48:00.420 and all of that, like a huge swing like that, you know, and using a lot of political capital. 1.00

00:48:08.040 I would much rather it be on mass deportations of every single illegal immigrant in the country

00:48:15.340 and also, and this is where we get to the constitutional questions, 0.96

00:48:19.440 defying every federal judge who tries to stop him.

00:48:24.380 That's, and here's the thing, unlike some right-wing commentators,

00:48:27.800 there are right-wing commentators who are calling for mass deportations

00:48:31.000 and will also insist that, yeah, we could do it.

00:48:33.460 The people will love it.

00:48:34.440 We're not going to suffer any big political backlash.

00:48:37.040 If anything, it'll be a red wave because people will love it so much.

00:48:40.600 Maybe it works out that way.

00:48:42.020 I tend to doubt it.

00:48:42.800 But I'm not sure exactly politically how this would play. I mean, if you did mass deportations, not just, Michael, to your point, not just the face tattooed criminals, but you're actually deporting people who've been here for 10 years, have never committed an additional crime aside from coming to the country illegally, and you're deporting millions of them.

00:48:59.300 I'm not sure how that plays, what that looks like. We know that the media propaganda campaign, they would treat it like a nuclear holocaust. We saw what they did when we were only deporting the face tattooed criminals.

00:49:09.560 We were deporting sex offenders, pedophiles, Somali fraudsters, and they treated it that way. 0.98

00:49:14.920 You can only imagine if it was actual, yeah, if it was actual mass deportations of non-criminal aliens, except for the crime of coming here illegally. 1.00

00:49:21.800 So I don't know.

00:49:22.760 But what I'm saying, it is possible.

00:49:24.860 I will admit this right now, that if you were to do that, and you were especially to do the second part, which would be necessary, of basically flipping the middle finger to the federal judges and saying, yeah, I get you guys don't like this.

00:49:35.460 We're going to do it anyway.

00:49:36.820 It needs to be done.

00:49:38.440 the federal judges are completely out of control. They've claimed power over the entire government.

00:49:44.220 They claim executive, judicial, and legislative power for themselves. There's no way to solve

00:49:48.980 that other than just, we're going to ignore you and do it and let the chips fall where they may.

00:49:52.840 And if you were to do that, I don't know how it plays out. It may end up being a political

00:49:56.920 catastrophe. I mean, it may end up being blue wave in the midterms, Democrat president, maybe.

00:50:03.380 That's a risk that I'm willing to take for that result because it must be done. And I think a lot

00:50:07.620 of Americans are willing to take it for that result. You know what? If we did mass deportations,

00:50:11.300 we did what had to be done. We reclaimed our country. And the consequence, I'm not convinced 0.56

00:50:15.780 of what happened, but if the consequence was that a Democrat gets elected in 2028 because people are

00:50:20.140 really mad about it, to me, that's a price. It's not a price I want to pay. It's a price worth

00:50:24.240 paying. I'm not willing to pay that price. Not that I get a choice in the matter. I don't want

00:50:29.600 to pay that price for Iran. I want to pay it for this. And here's the thing. I think that especially 1.00

00:50:36.540 recent history showed us that as a president, you typically don't get to take multiple huge

00:50:43.300 swings like this. You don't get, time is finite and the attention of the American people is finite

00:50:48.800 and there's not a lot of time. So it's like if you're going to take a big swing, if you're going

00:50:53.480 to do something huge, you probably only get one. And I would hate to think that we've used it on

00:50:58.940 Iran. I think that, and if we're getting out of Iran now, great, because then you could argue 0.93

00:51:03.880 that maybe it doesn't end up being a huge thing if it only lasted a few weeks. 0.80

00:51:07.020 And so let's go do this thing over here, actual mass deportations and let the chip fall.

00:51:14.140 I think that's a totally reasonable point of view, except for the fact that the idea

00:51:18.900 of Trump focusing on something and remaining focused on it is such a fantasy.

00:51:23.380 It's like trying to imagine infinity.

00:51:25.060 You know, your mind can't comprehend it.

00:51:27.500 But I think in terms of normal politics, I think that's a perfectly reasonable point

00:51:31.500 of view. 0.83

00:51:31.700 If you're going to take the chance, you'd rather he take it on illegal immigration. 0.95

00:51:35.600 I think all told, I would agree with that.

00:51:38.520 I just can't imagine Trump focusing on anything for more time than it takes to send a tweet.

00:51:44.920 You know, there's another problem here, which is I was speaking to some members of Congress.

00:51:48.720 This was a while ago.

00:51:49.460 This was right when they came in the last year.

00:51:52.860 And I said, guys, it's really all about the deportations.

00:51:56.720 You really just have to get it done.

00:51:58.040 I was making really your points, Matt, which is, you know, this is it.

00:52:02.640 It's going to be, could be politically costly, but the American people do really want it

00:52:07.100 at a deep level and it's transformational.

00:52:09.900 The left has been open about the fact that their long-term electoral strategy is to radically

00:52:14.520 transform the demographics so that they can have a permanent majority.

00:52:17.540 We have to stop that. 0.83

00:52:18.780 Time is running short on that.

00:52:20.520 We're talking about time running short on the Iranian nuclear program.

00:52:23.280 Time might even be shorter on the domestic program of the Democrats.

00:52:27.400 So you really have to do it. Just go and deport Abuela. And I was speaking to these members of 0.98

00:52:32.820 Congress off the record. I won't say their names, but a lot of them did bring up the point. They

00:52:37.700 said, Michael, that's all well and good. We would love to do that. The problem is it's not only

00:52:42.540 opinion polls that we have to answer to. We also have to answer to the donor class or we're not

00:52:48.120 going to get a crack at that. We also have to, and the donor class, by the way, doesn't want to

00:52:51.840 deport abuela. We also have to answer to the media because the media, even today, still has a lot of

00:52:57.740 power to tank these guys. And I'm sympathetic to their point of view because politics is very

00:53:03.600 complex and it's easy for a pundit. Can I be honest though? Yeah. Can I be honest? I'm just

00:53:09.780 tired of that excuse. And maybe this is a generational, but particularly when it comes

00:53:14.040 to Congress, I am sick and tired of people sitting down the street from me in Washington,

00:53:18.380 D.C., who have been here longer than twice the time I've been alive, who run every two year on

00:53:23.380 the same empty promises to fix all the issues in our country that then they have no incentive to

00:53:28.040 fix because they have nothing to run on in 24 months. We'll receive a blank check from the

00:53:32.340 donor class and also get to manipulate the stock market behind our back and make a net worth of

00:53:36.840 $413 million, a la Nancy Pelosi, who, oh, by the way, has served in Congress for the last 38 years 0.97

00:53:43.580 consecutively. This woman was born before the invention of the microwave oven and the pen. 0.64

00:53:49.060 And these are the people who are telling young people, oh, you just have no idea what you're

00:53:53.440 thinking about. Like the level of societal disconnect is astounding. And I'm honest,

00:53:58.440 tired of being told from so many people in Washington, oh, well, that's just the way

00:54:02.480 Washington works. Like we don't have to accept that. We don't have to live that way.

00:54:06.600 Our framers and our founders designed a system of government that was supposed to serve the people

00:54:11.200 and not the other way around. And the people mandate on a silver platter in November of 2024.

00:54:16.440 That is inexcusable now to turn this around. I think it's perfect how Congressman Brandon

00:54:20.940 Gill said it. It is unforgivable for Republican members of Congress to introduce mass amnesty

00:54:26.220 bills that not okay. Look, I agree. I agree with it. We all agree on that. We're all sick of it.

00:54:33.460 And when you say this is totally unacceptable and, but there is that old maxim from systems,

00:54:38.180 which is that the purpose of a system is what it does. And the fact is we can complain until

00:54:42.880 we're blue in the face. But if the incentives of the system are such that, the incentives and the

00:54:48.020 disincentives are such that the congressmen don't have any real power to do it, and that they might

00:54:53.380 even be able to get away with proposing a mass amnesty bill in 2026, and they might not even

00:54:58.360 suffer political consequences for that. You just think, okay, there's a structural problem here

00:55:02.280 that needs to change. This is why, by the way, to your point, Matt, I had the same reaction,

00:55:05.700 Again, as someone who, before, during, and after, was quite skeptical of the Iran strikes and argued against it, I do actually get why Trump is doing more stuff in foreign policy than he might be able to get done in domestic policy.

00:55:20.540 That said, there have still been, what, over 700,000 deportations formally in the first year, another million or more self-deportations, which we can track on multiple levels.

00:55:29.680 So there was something. We all want 10 million deportations. We want 15 million deportations.

00:55:33.660 But the reason he's playing more in foreign policy is actually because there are no district judges in Bahrain.

00:55:39.820 The reason he's doing it is because he has a lot more control to actually affect things in foreign policy than he does in domestic policy.

00:55:45.640 You can say that's a terrible system. I agree that it is.

00:55:48.680 But, you know, they're the ones who actually have to go out there and do the things in the political order.

00:55:53.280 It's much easier for pundits to complain about it, myself included, as one of the people who complains.

00:55:58.300 And that's, I mean, I think that that's correct.

00:56:01.380 And so doing something like this, I mean, it is, to your point, it's easy to talk about mass deportation, especially for those of us who don't actually have to do it.

00:56:10.200 But we have to acknowledge, we have to be sober-minded about it if we're going to advocate for something like this, and acknowledge, as we've talked about, it could be politically disastrous.

00:56:19.300 And more than that, it's like it is a system-shaking, it shakes the very, the system itself.

00:56:26.980 potentially catastrophically. I mean, it could tear everything down because as I said, it would

00:56:32.080 require, you can't do it if you're going to listen to the judges. And when I say that,

00:56:38.180 oh, defy the judges. I don't mean to say it in some kind of breezy kind of casual way.

00:56:42.620 I understand what I'm saying. That's not a small thing. Everyone says, oh, that'd be a

00:56:47.780 constitutional crisis. Yeah, probably would be, but we're already in the crisis. That's the point.

00:56:51.940 we're in a constitutional crisis already. And so someone has to be willing to say,

00:56:56.420 now's the time. We're going to have this out right now. Whatever happens is whatever happens

00:57:00.640 afterwards. We'll deal with that afterwards, but it must happen. And here's the thing about Trump.

00:57:05.540 I also want to say this, because I think from Trump's perspective, he probably looks at

00:57:12.500 at right-wing commentators like myself who criticize him pretty strenuously for things

00:57:23.080 like Iran. And his attitude is probably, hey, you're so ungrateful. I mean, I've done all

00:57:29.060 these things that no other president has ever done. No one else has done these things. And

00:57:33.780 I'm actually done. Yeah, maybe I'm not doing full-on mass deportations, but we went in,

00:57:37.900 we got rid of some of the Somali fraudsters. Maybe we've done more deportations than other 1.00

00:57:41.480 presidents have. If you add self-deportations in, that is a real thing. We've shut down the border.

00:57:45.880 I mean, no president had done that before me. And he probably looks at that and feels like,

00:57:49.440 well, there's a kind of a lack of gratitude there. Like we should be more appreciative of

00:57:53.220 the actual good things that he's done. And he has done some really significant good things.

00:57:58.540 And I get that. Like I actually understand if I were in his shoes, I'd probably feel

00:58:02.820 something like that. But here's the thing. The reason why it's important, even for those of us

00:58:12.840 who support Trump and have supported a lot of the things that he's done, the reason why it's

00:58:16.800 important for us to say it's not good enough, like, yeah, be kind of ungrateful about it.

00:58:20.920 Because you know what? Being grateful to politicians, that's not part of the arrangement.

00:58:25.100 We're not called upon to have an attitude of humility and gratitude before our great

00:58:30.740 politicians who run the country. It's actually supposed to be public servant. Like that's the

00:58:35.920 word we use for these people. That's not what the relationship has been any time in recent history,

00:58:40.720 but that's what it's supposed to be. Where actually you are, you're our servant. You work

00:58:44.520 for us. That's what it's supposed to set our system apart for many other systems that have

00:58:50.000 existed. And so number one, it's not enough for us to just say, oh, you know, I'm grateful for

00:58:55.840 that. At least you did something. But number two, it's because we recognize that Trump is willing

00:59:02.380 to do things that no other president is willing to do. That is why we cannot. That's why we expect

00:59:07.980 him. Yeah. Right. That's why we cannot be satisfied. When I'm talking about mass deportations,

00:59:14.900 and this is a credit to Trump as well as being a criticism and a call to action.

00:59:20.820 I recognize that if he won't do this, I don't think anyone else ever will.

00:59:26.760 If Trump will not do this, I don't think, certainly no president in my lifetime before

00:59:30.900 him ever would have done it and didn't do it.

00:59:32.920 I cannot imagine any president doing this if he won't do it.

00:59:36.440 And so that's why our message to Trump has to be, you've got to do it.

00:59:42.600 If it's not you, it won't be anybody.

00:59:44.580 And we cannot be satisfied unless you do it.

00:59:47.460 Because if we're willing to say, okay, fine, Trump didn't do it.

00:59:50.580 That's not us just saying, fine, Trump's not doing it. It's us saying, okay, fine. It will

00:59:54.620 never happen. Well, you mentioned recent history, Matt. I think you have a show

00:59:58.700 that is about recent history. Am I correct about that?

01:00:04.900 Yeah. Well, recent history, old history, we kind of go through the gamut.

01:00:09.720 The most recent episode we just put up was about the Civil War. So we've done,

01:00:14.740 our first episode was the real history of slavery. We did the real history of the American Indian.

01:00:19.000 and the Indian Wars that were, you know, hundreds of years long campaign.

01:00:24.940 And then we just, we put up our most recent one about the Civil War.

01:00:29.260 And, you know, look, you got to become a subscriber, go watch the episodes.

01:00:33.620 I think that kind of on whichever side you're on,

01:00:37.220 you might be surprised by the way we handle the episodes.

01:00:39.960 I thought you meant whichever side, like Union or Confederate.

01:00:43.740 Whatever, whatever side, all different sides.

01:00:47.420 I think you'll be surprised by how we handle it,

01:00:48.700 because what we're not trying to do is take the left-wing propaganda that has been disseminated

01:00:54.700 by the school system and Hollywood and all that, and replace it with our own sort of overly

01:01:00.060 simplistic cartoonish kind of right-wing version of these events. We're not doing that. And

01:01:05.200 especially with something like the Civil War, you kind of find that where, you know, you've got

01:01:08.880 the mainstream narrative, which is that the Union, you know, the Confederates were all just evil

01:01:15.420 Nazis, basically, and the Union were freedom fighters. But then you have the kind of response

01:01:21.220 to that, the revisionist side, that flips that on its head. And now the Union are the evil demons

01:01:26.620 and the Confederate. And so what we're trying to do is actually take this and look at it objectively

01:01:32.860 and just tell you the story, the real story of this episode. I think we have a clip, which is

01:01:39.560 complex. Oh, we do. Okay. Why am I babbling about it? Just play the damn clip. I wanted to hear the

01:01:43.440 I do believe that if people have committed treason against the United States of America,

01:01:53.620 their statues should not be in the Capitol.

01:01:57.520 History is written by the victors.

01:01:58.820 And since the 1960s, we've been told mostly by people whose ancestors didn't even live

01:02:03.160 here during the war that the South committed treason.

01:02:06.620 But if the Confederates were traitors,

01:02:08.440 then why was Jefferson Davis never put on trial for treason?

01:02:15.820 What were Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson afraid of?

01:02:19.420 Do they know something they're not allowed to say today?

01:02:23.380 It's time for the truth.

01:02:24.940 So here it is.

01:02:25.860 Robert E. Lee was a military genius and a man of immense honor.

01:02:29.360 He was beloved by Americans from the North and South for a century after the war.

01:02:34.140 This is the real history of the Civil War.

01:02:37.220 Now, enough about history. I want to talk about the future. We have very little time left,

01:02:48.120 but in two minutes, have you guys seen the story about Claude's new AI, which is so good

01:02:54.520 that Anthropic will not allow anyone to use the AI because it could just completely crash

01:03:01.360 our entire global system of data and security. Isabel, have you looked into this?

01:03:09.780 I have. And it's interesting, about a week and a half ago, my entire XFeed was all

01:03:15.040 pro-Clawed messaging. And I hadn't really ever interacted with Anthropics AI before. I've played

01:03:21.040 with ChatGPT and Google Gemini and all of the fun things. Grok, of course. But they announced

01:03:26.480 about a week and a half ago that they released this where Claude can run your computer, your

01:03:32.580 desktop. You are away from your phone. You can tell Claude, hey, export a PDF of that business

01:03:39.560 pitch I was working on and eat to my boss. And it can do all of these things for you or edit 100

01:03:45.680 photos of this wedding. I just took a bunch of pictures as a wedding photographer while I'm out

01:03:50.480 using this preset and it'll do all of it for you. It can clean out your email inbox. It can basically

01:03:55.620 be you while you're out and about doing things. That was terrifying to me, and I couldn't believe

01:04:00.660 how many people were that excited about it. But I guess now in the week and a half since,

01:04:04.680 it's gotten so good that they're kind of pulling the reins back on some of this stuff.

01:04:08.820 All right. We've got like 30 seconds left. But I know, Matt, you despise AI, and you think it's

01:04:14.020 going to destroy all of art and everything. Our sponsors over at Calci have a prediction market

01:04:19.420 on whether or not we're just going to stop AI. 10% of users believe any of the major big tech

01:04:24.660 AI platforms will pause their research out of concern for public safety. 90% of people know

01:04:30.340 that they're just going to keep trying to make money. Everyone's definitely become more cynical

01:04:33.480 on this recently because just over a year ago, 30% of people thought that the AI companies would

01:04:39.400 say, you know what? We actually don't want any more money. We're going to stop this for the

01:04:42.260 common good or whatever. I'm like a cautious AI bull. I don't even think it can do many of the

01:04:48.920 things, at least artistically, that people are pretending that it will do. But should we stop

01:04:53.180 it? What do we do? Round the horn, 10 seconds. Should we stop AI? Well, you know that I'm

01:04:59.420 an apocalyptist, if that's a word when it comes to AI. I will say that, because look,

01:05:06.320 there are certain things that AI can't do. And so I take some solace in that. Like there are

01:05:11.780 innovations, ideas, creativity that AI is not capable of. For example, like no AI could have

01:05:17.720 ever come up with uh the terrorist tears tumblr no it's just too that's the kind of brilliance

01:05:23.800 that's the kind of brilliance that's gonna get you know you know how badly we're setting up

01:05:32.180 people to get bullied like you're gonna be out in public drinking and someone's gonna what's that

01:05:36.220 i'm drinking terrorist tears yeah you're about to be drinking a swirly is what you're gonna be

01:05:40.400 drinking anyway but no but it's it's a great tumblr and you should definitely buy it all

01:05:45.760 jokes aside. Probably $75. They ask me to do the ads, and then they have Matt here to do the

01:05:52.780 anti-ads. Say, no, don't. Whatever Michael says to buy, don't buy it. How much is the terrorist

01:05:57.960 tumbler? I think it's only like $400 or $700, I think, I assume. I haven't looked at the prices

01:06:02.340 recently, but you can get it. Buy one, get one for the full price of the first one.

01:06:09.400 Drew, are you an A up? Before we go, we have like three seconds. No, I am a believer in the

01:06:13.620 human race. I believe it's a tool. We'll use it as a tool. We'll make it better. I think that it's

01:06:18.160 spooky what it does. This new one actually can create its own apps. So all those people who

01:06:22.500 were told to learn to code now have to learn to play the violin. I think it should have been told

01:06:27.900 in the first place. But no, I think, look, everything that we do needs regulation. There'll

01:06:32.660 be regulations, but it shouldn't be regulations stopping the development of it. It should be

01:06:37.060 regulations against using it for evil instead of good. And I think that once we use it for good,

01:06:41.840 people will add to it and create things. If people are not feeding it information,

01:06:45.960 it goes haywire. So it's still going to require the human race. I think it's going to be a great

01:06:52.140 new tool. We'll see what happens. Or there'll be a nuclear disaster tonight instead of last night.

01:06:58.440 It won't matter. Isabel, wonderful to see you. Matt, Drew, you were seen as well. Wonderful to

01:07:07.080 be with everybody out there in the audience. We'll catch you on the next Friendly Fire.

The Michael Knowles Show - April 08, 2026

Friendly Fire： Iran Ceasefire, INDIGNIDAD Amnesty & A.I. Supermodel Gone Rogue

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