The Michael Knowles Show - Friendly Fire： The JD Vance Debate, Midterm Madness & Return of the Firing Squad

00:00:00.000 visit betmgm casino and check out the newest exclusive the price is right fortune pick

00:00:06.900 betmgm and game sense remind you to play responsibly 19 plus to wager ontario only

00:00:12.340 please play responsibly if you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to

00:00:16.540 you please contact connects ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge

00:00:23.640 betmgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with i-gaming ontario

00:00:27.920 Before you knew what a stock was, you traded snacks, cards, turns.

00:00:34.840 That instinct to trade didn't disappear.

00:00:37.200 It just grew up.

00:00:38.280 With no minimums, no monthly fees, and 100 free trades, TD Easy Trade taps into that instinct.

00:00:44.020 Because you are made to trade.

00:00:46.100 And TD Easy Trade is made to help.

00:00:48.920 So what was your reaction when FIFA tried to steal that World Cup game away from us?

00:00:54.680 Yeah, no, I mean, I've been obviously watching the coverage for, you know, I can't even sleep. I'm so, because Pele, right, was kicking it with his head. I'll tell you, man, I am so black-pilled that Americans are taking soccer seriously.

00:01:12.560 Well, we're taking it seriously because we're finally good at it.

00:01:15.160 Yeah, I hate that. I don't want us to be good at it. I don't want us to play it.

00:01:18.260 No, this is a good rule.

00:01:19.140 No, this is a good rule.

00:01:20.960 Look, here, this is not being anti-American already. I want us to be great at everything.

00:01:24.520 a poverty ball. I hate this freaking sport. It sucks. It's third world. It's gay. And I don't 0.99

00:01:29.640 like it. I mean, but if we get good at it, then it's the most important sport. That's the way I

00:01:36.380 see it. I feel the same way. I feel the same way about like the Olympics. I just want America to

00:01:43.400 be the best at everything. I want us to kick everyone's ass. Do you want us to be the best 1.00

00:01:47.660 at transgender ballet? USAID was funding that in the Philippines. Should we, let's say they start

00:01:53.400 a transgender ballet league and america joins do we want to be the best or the worst i want to be 0.99

00:01:58.400 the worst in that um yeah i i mean now we get to the question whether soccer is inherently immoral

00:02:04.480 michael yeah it's inherently immoral i'm not going that i'm not quite there though i'm close

00:02:09.640 it's that i find it inherently well it is the most corrupt sport i mean by far is it that i actually

00:02:15.620 yeah well i mean i mean they're literally trying to get us out of the tournament right now i mean

00:02:19.240 that's that's what's happening is 100 the most corrupt sport our best our best score was just

00:02:23.900 red carded for legitimately no reason because fifa decided that it's impossible for the united

00:02:29.000 states to essentially make the quarter so that's that's the right am i getting this right ben this

00:02:33.760 is the other thing is it's like it does seem anti-american i'm not even just intrinsically

00:02:38.880 in the sport i mean like the people who play it and fifa and whatever they don't seem to be super

00:02:44.060 pro america and also if we're gonna have a world championship i want it to be like baseball where

00:02:49.160 where we just declare what the world is.

00:02:52.000 Like we do the World Series,

00:02:53.140 there's us in Canada.

00:02:54.240 But see, this is someone

00:02:56.220 who should be a big fan of soft power.

00:03:00.280 The World Cup here in America

00:03:01.680 has been the biggest soft power export

00:03:05.040 of American values that I've seen

00:03:07.140 in years, in decades.

00:03:09.560 All these people are going to go back home

00:03:11.240 and demand of their politicians, 0.93

00:03:12.860 why don't we have air conditioning? 1.00

00:03:14.440 Why don't we have showers at work?

00:03:16.360 Why don't we have all these things?

00:03:17.800 This World Cup has gone so well, and all of these foreign fans who came over have been so impressed by all the different aspects of it, that they're going to go back home and export American values and capitalism and say, what are we doing living the way that we currently live when we've seen the way that people live in America? 0.80

00:03:34.220 We've seen Buckees.

00:03:34.820 That's something that's great. 0.99

00:03:36.060 Yeah.

00:03:36.420 And it doesn't require any more money for the Pentagon.

00:03:38.900 Yeah.

00:03:39.200 No, look.

00:03:39.720 Actually, that's the best argument to watch soccer that I've ever heard in my entire life and ever will hear. 0.99

00:03:44.580 The fear, of course, with all of this cross-cultural pollination is that, you know, is it us exporting our soft power or are we just importing third worldism and, you know, this kind of lame sport? 0.98

00:03:55.440 But to your point, yes, people are talking about Buc-ee's, they're talking about Waffle House, they're talking about ranch dressing. 0.99

00:04:00.660 And did you see the guy Freddy is apparently going to the White House?

00:04:06.440 Well, so he was invited.

00:04:09.300 Here's the thing with Freddy, and I don't know if you've followed this.

00:04:12.260 We've been paying attention to it on the opinion side.

00:04:13.980 The backlash against him on the internet has been insane because basically people dug up some vaguely right of center things that he might have tweeted out in the past and things that, you know, they've gone after him basically as being someone who clearly wants to stay sort of, you know, he hasn't shown his face.

00:04:36.160 He wants to stay, have some degree of anonymity and like be normal when he gets back from this.

00:04:40.600 Probably never had any expectation of going viral.

00:04:42.680 But I also think it's phenomenal in the sense that all these different people, he is one of many, and there are so many people who are going to go back and, I think, import the values that we still have here in this country that are good and are valuable back.

00:04:57.280 I think that this has been one of the best things that we could possibly do in America's 250th, and I did not expect that.

00:05:03.520 I honestly thought it could be a complete crap show, but it turns out to be great.

00:05:07.380 Yeah. Okay. Look, you, you have done more to convince me to like soccer than anyone has ever 0.98

00:05:14.900 done. You don't have to watch it. I'm not saying you have to watch it.

00:05:18.640 I, you know what I wanted? Oh, first of all, I guess I should say it's friendly fire.

00:05:28.980 The 4th of July is coming up. So we're all getting ready to celebrate Somali independence 0.98

00:05:33.340 day in columbus ohio i don't know if anyone's going to make the trek out there but do you guys

00:05:37.960 do you have any big fourth of july plans uh might have my uh yes that's like that's an actual thing

00:05:47.180 we are right on the verge yeah no we are right on the verge of of baby time uh i thought like

00:05:54.320 one of the reasons that i can't stick around for the entire broadcast as you can hear my voice is

00:05:58.020 totally gone the reason my voice is totally gone is because like two nights ago my wife started

00:06:03.040 having contractions about 20 minutes apart and we thought for sure it was time to go to the hospital

00:06:06.960 and uh that lasted until about two o'clock in the morning at which point it abated so i was so short

00:06:12.180 on sleep that it totally wrecked my voice but yeah i mean any any moment and and i've had a deal

00:06:16.740 for 20 years with my wife uh which is that if the baby is born between july 2nd and july 4th

00:06:23.540 any year but particularly into 50 year then i get to use a founding father name so this is like uh

00:06:29.900 So this is exciting.

00:06:32.680 So governor, I assume, or are you going to flow what the options are?

00:06:36.920 Gouverneur Morris, yeah.

00:06:37.980 Gouverneur Morris is going to be, yeah, exactly.

00:06:41.080 But there are some good ones to choose from.

00:06:44.540 Jefferson Shapiro sounds kind of wild, but there are some possibilities.

00:06:49.780 Charles Carroll Shapiro, that could be a good.

00:06:52.360 Dude, if your kid is born on the 4th of July, in the 250th, that would be,

00:06:57.500 it's like Providence, you know, Providence has its ways. God has its way in history,

00:07:03.460 has his way rather. Okay. Now, well then if I only have you for like five seconds,

00:07:07.720 what I am told on this schedule that we have to talk about, and I actually do want to talk to you

00:07:11.700 about is I was just in DC. I'm not totally on baby watch yet, but the reason I look terrible

00:07:19.240 and sound only slightly better is because I've been traveling all over. We were in DC.

00:07:24.400 I was already going for the unveiling of this statue of my great, great, great, great, great

00:07:28.760 grandpa, Simon Knowles, part of the American Revolution displays. And then I was stopping by

00:07:32.900 the great American state fair, play the yes or no game. But then at the last minute, the vice

00:07:36.820 president was able to make some time. He actually gave us a whole hour to interview him about his

00:07:41.040 book and Iran and 2028 and the Democrats and all this stuff. And so did you, Ben, I don't want to

00:07:48.520 presume. Did you catch any of the interview? Yeah, I did. I caught much of the interview,

00:07:53.620 actually. I thought you did a good job. It was a really interesting interview.

00:07:57.060 Obviously, I have significant disagreements with the vice president on a wide variety of issues,

00:08:00.620 as we've discussed on the program. I thought that, to me, the kind of bizarre fixation that

00:08:08.760 the vice president has on criticizing people who are mad at the MOU is, I think, unbecoming for him.

00:08:14.680 He's far more critical of the people who are critical of the MOU than he is the people who have been legitimately undermining the war and siding with Iran the entire time, which I find bizarre.

00:08:22.960 But obviously, listen, he's really well-spoken.

00:08:25.040 He's very smooth.

00:08:26.980 Yeah, and I thought you did a good job of the interview.

00:08:28.560 No, thank you.

00:08:29.100 I appreciate it.

00:08:29.560 You know, it's funny that you mentioned that, the criticism of criticizing the people who are criticizing the MOU.

00:08:34.800 Because I did, even when he was talking about that, I wanted to clarify.

00:08:37.820 I said, hold on, you're talking about the people who are upset about the war not continuing versus, you know, it's unclear which critics he was talking about.

00:08:44.680 And, uh, but you made that clear. I, my take on it is that the media, at least, I don't know if

00:08:50.360 it's really the admin as much, but the media at least had made him kind of the face of the MOU.

00:08:55.180 And so criticism of the MOU is often seen as criticism of him, even though obviously look,

00:09:00.420 it's, Oh, I mean, listen, I've criticized him directly for the MOU. I mean, I'm not gonna put

00:09:04.360 it on the media. I've criticized the president for signing it, but JD Vance made himself the

00:09:07.940 face of this. He personally negotiated it. He continues to personally do press on behalf of

00:09:12.500 an MOU that is currently falling apart, not just in the Strait of Hormuz, but also because

00:09:16.580 an actual good peace plan has been put forward in Lebanon, which runs directly against the

00:09:21.320 MOU, you know, Vance's approach, which has been to essentially take sort of an Obama-esque

00:09:26.360 tack with regard to opponents of the MOU.

00:09:29.000 All they want is endless war.

00:09:30.500 They just want endless bombing.

00:09:31.680 That's what they're promoting.

00:09:32.580 And we've discussed this on the show multiple times on Friendly Fire.

00:09:35.540 Like, what would alternatives be?

00:09:36.680 I mean, one alternative would be just to walk away from the strait and not hand them things. 0.85

00:09:39.680 Another alternative would be to bomb Harga Island and provide as much aerial defense for the Saudis, Bahrain, and UAE as possible and basically destroy the Iranian economic capacity from this point forward. 0.81

00:09:50.840 Another possibility would be to essentially arm up all of our allies and then attempt to actually project into the Strait of Hormuz. 0.80

00:09:58.860 And if the Saudis don't like it, tell the Saudis to stick it. 0.57

00:10:00.840 Project Freedom is something that the president wanted to do. And the Saudis apparently said, no, I have never and will never understand the idea that if we are funding and paying for a base in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia gets to tell us what to do with that base. That's insane to me. I think that we should tell the Saudis, listen, we're paying for your defense. All your F-35s belong to us.

00:10:20.000 Right. But now we're trying to protect you from your moral nemesis in Iran. 0.99

00:10:24.780 If we feel like opening the strait using bases that we are supplying, staffing and running, then we're just going to do that. 0.98

00:10:30.440 But in any case, those are all, I think, fair critiques of the MOU without reference to eternal war, forever war.

00:10:38.160 And I don't like the dumbed down version of this politics that sounds very much like Barack Obama's defense of the JCPOA, where Obama would say, if you oppose the JCPOA, it's because you want a forever war with Iran or you want a nuclear war with Iran or you want to obliterate.

00:10:49.900 Iranian civilization or anything like that. I get the criticism, but isn't it in the context

00:10:54.800 of not just the GOP, but in the context of Trump, a criticism of endless war is not just

00:10:59.580 Obama-ian, it's also Trump-ian. Trump in 2016, one of his big breaks with the rest of the GOP

00:11:07.000 is he criticized George Bush for endless wars and specifically Iraq. So when the vice president

00:11:12.780 comes out and uses that language, that seems to me to be very much in line with Trump.

00:11:17.080 Well, the problem is that Trump's version of the endless war.

00:11:20.840 Hold on.

00:11:21.560 Ben, talk.

00:11:22.280 I actually, I've not had the time to watch the interview yet.

00:11:27.020 I have to ask you, did you ask the vice president about his criticism?

00:11:30.100 Me, personally.

00:11:31.080 Did he criticize you?

00:11:33.480 When he went on Megyn Kelly, Megyn Kelly read him a list of things that had been said about the MOU by some people, by Mark Levin, by others.

00:11:42.380 But then one of them was from me.

00:11:44.020 and that was what led into him saying all these people just want to keep the war going on forever

00:11:48.960 they want to keep bombing until all the iranians really oh as someone to get the ratings someone

00:11:54.220 who opposed the iraq war the iraq war that by the way tons of people supported including his old

00:12:00.460 boss david from who was calling people like me unpatriotic conservatives at the time that we

00:12:04.720 opposed the iraq war i i think it's really i think it's unfortunate and i think it's beneath him

00:12:11.700 to suggest that people like me who do not,

00:12:15.860 in fact, I've been, you know,

00:12:17.360 really do want to just walk away from this thing.

00:12:20.080 I think this deal is bad. 1.00

00:12:21.420 Don't want to hand the Iranians any money. 1.00

00:12:23.500 Want to keep bombing until all the Iranians are dead. 0.99

00:12:27.040 That, I didn't realize, 0.98

00:12:28.800 I think, Ben, you might have frozen up a little bit.

00:12:30.420 I don't think that the, you know,

00:12:34.500 it wouldn't have been great to bring up that question

00:12:36.380 had I known about it.

00:12:37.220 In fact, I think to get the real ratings up,

00:12:40.020 I should have had you walk out from the back,

00:12:41.360 like, well, we have him here. Ben Dominic, you are the father. That's, wow, that's amazing.

00:12:47.400 Could you have the glass shattering sound before I walk out? I just think that I have to agree

00:12:56.700 with Ben. I think that he's, it's unfortunate that he's using that argument because there's

00:13:02.980 a lot of us who back the president, who think that he did something that was bold here,

00:13:08.200 who just don't like the nature of this deal

00:13:10.760 and who certainly don't want to keep 0.58

00:13:12.620 bombing the Iranians forever. 0.86

00:13:14.380 Are you kidding? 0.97

00:13:15.120 Hold on, didn't Ben, our other pal Ben on here

00:13:17.460 just said he did want to keep bombing the Iranians, didn't you?

00:13:19.860 No, I actually didn't.

00:13:21.000 Nothing that I just implied actually said.

00:13:23.200 You said to bomb Karg Island.

00:13:24.620 None of which, none of which.

00:13:25.980 But bombing Karg Island is not bombing 0.99

00:13:28.100 until every Iranian is dead, Mike. 0.95

00:13:29.660 I'm confused. 0.97

00:13:30.440 No, I'm not saying every Iranian is dead. 0.98

00:13:32.800 Well, hold on.

00:13:33.760 Karg Island is a small island off the coast of Iran

00:13:36.300 with a completely military population,

00:13:39.180 it would take presumably about three B-2 sorties

00:13:42.520 to finish Harga Island,

00:13:44.060 and then you would never have to go there again.

00:13:45.480 That does not sound like an endless bombing of Iran

00:13:47.740 resulting in the death of 90 million citizens to me.

00:13:50.520 I might be getting that wrong,

00:13:51.680 but I'm not sure that's how bombs work.

00:13:53.220 No, no, I'm not saying, look, I don't know.

00:13:56.560 I actually didn't even hear the vice president's comments

00:13:58.380 about, you know, destroying all this.

00:14:00.400 I guess President Trump did say

00:14:01.780 he was going to destroy the whole civilization,

00:14:03.400 but I didn't hear that.

00:14:04.220 He's the only one who's threatened to do it.

00:14:05.460 I didn't threaten it, neither did Ben Domenich.

00:14:07.500 But yeah, there you go.

00:14:08.200 No, I just mean the issue here with the MOU, I think everybody can agree, and I predicted

00:14:13.640 this from the beginning, that if we did end this with a deal, the deal would be deeply

00:14:17.100 dissatisfying.

00:14:18.100 So I don't think anybody disagrees on that.

00:14:19.620 But it just seems like right now we have a couple of options, which is either, maybe

00:14:23.720 there's a third, but you get some version of the MOU, or you get some version of continuing

00:14:29.540 to bomb them and fire missiles at them.

00:14:31.700 Or, you know, you could walk away, but now you're walking away with Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz, so now you're in a much worse position. 0.91

00:14:38.200 And they're effectively in control of the Strait anyway. 0.96

00:14:40.020 Honestly, I'm of the opinion that we'd be better off walking away from the Strait of Hormuz completely, retaining the sanctions, making them float their ghost ship.

00:14:48.060 Yeah, that's right.

00:14:49.200 Like replace the MOU with a ham and cheese sandwich.

00:14:51.500 Yeah, exactly.

00:14:53.440 I agree with this.

00:14:54.500 So that was one issue that I had with what the vice president was saying.

00:14:57.960 The other one was, of course, the vice president's bizarre attack on Milton Friedman's economics, as though Milton Friedman's economics stopped applying in the 1980s for some unspecified reason, because the vice president in 2019 read Rerum Novarum, which means that now Milton Friedman is irrelevant, which is a strange timeline, since it turns out that he wrote that after Rerum Novarum.

00:15:17.460 Hold on, here's the clip for those who didn't see it.

00:15:19.300 part of why Milton Friedman's ideas made more sense in the 1980s is because they were being

00:15:28.200 advocated in a country that still had a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity.

00:15:35.200 And so like being laissez-faire in a world where there are Christian guardrails on everything

00:15:42.440 is a much different proposition than being laissez-faire in a world where

00:15:47.420 globalized liberalism has become the sort of status quo of american elites

00:15:52.140 okay so i'm not sure i disagree with that yeah there we go all right i i i thought i don't i

00:16:00.780 don't think he's wrong there i think i think that one of the problems that we've known about when

00:16:05.460 it comes to the american capitalism is that we didn't just import cheap televisions for people

00:16:11.680 to watch we didn't just import you know these different goods uh from around the world that

00:16:16.120 people enjoy here in America. We also imported a lot of their values with it unintentionally.

00:16:21.400 We thought that this was going to change China, but it changed us. And it's one of these things 0.92

00:16:25.940 that I think is sort of an underestimated aspect of it. You need kind of both of these things

00:16:30.720 to have a really strong nation. That doesn't make Milton Friedman's approach wrong. It means that

00:16:36.760 we need a religious revival in America, which is what I have argued consistently with my

00:16:42.320 atheist libertarian friends, you guys should be the biggest fans of like Rick Santorum or,

00:16:47.900 you know, pick your, pick your, Mike Huckabee, what have you, religious revivalism, because you

00:16:52.720 need that strength of society and family and everything else that goes with it in order to

00:16:57.020 have the type of laissez-faire free nation that we've enjoyed for centuries. Ben, other Ben,

00:17:02.780 you totally disagree. Well, so I agree, obviously, that church is very, very important. I mean,

00:17:08.320 I've spent my entire life preaching in favor of the idea that people need to go to church.

00:17:11.760 And obviously, church membership was higher in the 1980s than it is now.

00:17:15.080 I mean, if we're going to get factual about this, the reality is the church attendance in America really started to decline around the year 2000.

00:17:20.900 That's really when things started to drop fairly precipitously.

00:17:23.560 As late as 1999, 70 percent of people, adults, were members of a church synagogue, a church or a synagogue in the United States.

00:17:32.060 But the idea that the fundamental basis of economics changes because of church attendance, and therefore what you need is government to somehow come in as the centralizing force that's going to re-inculcate a common good.

00:17:45.660 So welfare programs or redistributionism or government regulation are going to re-inculcate virtue in the American population.

00:17:53.040 It seems to me that if we are going to look at a correlation, the growth of government since the 1960s has been exponential.

00:18:00.220 the attendance in church has dropped radically in that same exact period in fact i think it can make

00:18:05.780 the very strong case that actually one of the reasons for attendance declining in church and

00:18:10.820 church membership declining is government actually replacing the functionality of church in everyday

00:18:15.340 life for people uh like this is certainly true to say social security is that you know if the

00:18:20.680 government pays for social security you don't take care of grandma and she doesn't live in your house

00:18:23.940 if you don't i don't have to give as much charity through my church or be a member of my church

00:18:27.900 or engage in the values of my church

00:18:30.540 in order to gain access

00:18:31.660 to all of the institutional support of the church

00:18:34.340 in order to just go pick up a check from the government.

00:18:36.360 And so this bizarre attempt

00:18:37.640 to sort of reverse engineer virtue

00:18:40.060 via government fiat, government redistributionism

00:18:42.900 and centralization of economic resources,

00:18:44.980 it's completely backward to me.

00:18:46.960 I think when you have that dollar sign

00:18:49.040 as like the primary motivation in your life too,

00:18:51.940 that also allows for the type of lies to emerge

00:18:55.640 that build off of that social security experience

00:18:58.020 that all of these socialists,

00:18:59.500 who I know we're going to talk about later,

00:19:01.200 you know, can exploit

00:19:03.000 because everything becomes just a monetary issue.

00:19:06.340 It's all about, you know, who gets the money,

00:19:08.620 who's scrabbling over this piece of the pie.

00:19:11.040 And there is no kind of shared communitarian value

00:19:14.360 that brings people together.

00:19:16.100 And that says, I mean,

00:19:17.840 just think about something as simple

00:19:18.960 as the cost of childcare in America

00:19:20.520 when we have gone from an era

00:19:22.520 in which, you know, relatives and friends,

00:19:24.960 and you could have trust teenagers that you could trust to watch your kids and not just

00:19:28.740 have their nose in their phones. Like that's something that definitely we have lost here

00:19:33.860 in the recent decades. And it's a major problem. And I think that it's one of the reasons why all

00:19:39.020 these people are able to exploit a message of anti-capitalism to a bunch of dumb people who 0.97

00:19:44.360 don't understand that it's what made the country as powerful as it was in the first place. 0.94

00:19:48.320 But also when we talk about the growth of government, I agree with a lot of those

00:19:52.100 observations. But we can't only think about it from a quantitative perspective. There is also

00:19:56.780 a qualitative perspective. In some ways, in the earlier parts of our country, we had a much bigger

00:20:02.360 government role than we do today when we were prosecuting blasphemy. At the very least, when 0.99

00:20:06.980 we had blue laws that said you couldn't sell goods on Sundays or restricted the sale of liquor or

00:20:13.060 what have you. So in some ways, we had a much bigger government then. Since the 60s, obviously,

00:20:18.380 You've had this massive growth in the welfare state, but you've also had court rulings that have said the government has to pull back on certain moral matters.

00:20:27.040 So I think there's a qualitative aspect there, too.

00:20:28.980 So, Michael, I agree with a lot of that, actually, but that's not what the vice president is suggesting.

00:20:32.940 He's not suggesting a return of blue laws and blasphemy laws.

00:20:35.600 He's suggesting massive governmental intervention in the economy, and that reverses the arrow of causality.

00:20:41.420 So I think that you can make a very solid historical case that church arrow capitalism because that's actually true.

00:20:48.020 I mean, the reality is that market capitalism in the West was actually an outgrowth originally of property rights rooted in sort of Catholic perceptions of property and then later adamrated by Protestant perceptions of the value of free markets, capitalism, innovation, and work ethic.

00:21:04.040 I mean, that's Max Faber.

00:21:05.600 And so you can say these institutions precede capitalism, which clearly is true, but I don't think that you can then say the Marxist thing, and it actually is a Marxist idea, that economics precedes social institutions.

00:21:16.960 And so what if we just change our economic system and then people go back to church?

00:21:20.240 That's actually not.

00:21:21.820 There are, I think we can say that political communities precede some social institutions or are coincidental with them.

00:21:29.600 And so, you know, in the way, and you can't really firmly separate politics from economics, though maybe the Marxists would like to focus much more on the material and the economic.

00:21:38.480 But the juxtaposition that the vice president is making here is not between Milton Friedman and Karl Marx.

00:21:44.660 it's between Milton Friedman and the economics of Alexander Hamilton. Last I checked,

00:21:49.080 Hamilton precedes Milton Friedman. I don't mean to diss Friedman. I like a lot about Friedman.

00:21:54.240 But there are some things that seem to be important for the government to take on. Namely,

00:21:59.640 under a totally laissez-faire system, which developed under the name of neoliberalism in

00:22:05.520 the last 40, 50 years, we've outsourced a lot of our manufacturing or supply change to a degree

00:22:11.720 that means that we are now very, very vulnerable to China.

00:22:15.100 If we ever were to go to a serious war with China, 0.92

00:22:17.800 we would be really up the creek without a paddle. 0.63

00:22:19.840 We saw a preview of that during COVID.

00:22:21.720 So that might suggest that maybe the government

00:22:23.640 could focus in a Hamiltonian way

00:22:25.220 on the development of industry in the United States

00:22:27.380 so that we're not in a dangerous situation.

00:22:28.680 The Hamiltonian argument on a national security level

00:22:30.980 is something that I've actually agreed with

00:22:33.380 and it makes sense to me.

00:22:34.420 I think that he's using what we would call in law school

00:22:36.760 an argument that proves too much.

00:22:38.140 He's basically saying that because

00:22:39.720 you're taking key industries and outsourcing them. Therefore, the government should be in control

00:22:44.440 of an enormous swath of American industry that has nothing to do with national security or just

00:22:48.660 call it national security and stuff it under that rubric. And I think that that's totally wrong.

00:22:53.200 And when he talks about Alexander Hamilton, I can guarantee you this, the idea that Alexander

00:22:57.200 Hamilton would have been in favor of the kinds of nationalization schemes, full scale, that are

00:23:01.720 being contemplated, or the gigantic welfare state that has been built, or the gigantic administrative

00:23:06.080 and regulatory state is totally insane. What Alexander Hamilton was stumping for in a national

00:23:09.920 bank was the idea that America ought to be able to pay its collective debt. That is the thing

00:23:14.520 that he was attempting to craft an institution to do. The entire purpose of the national bank

00:23:19.120 was basically to uphold the solvency of the United States because the United States kept

00:23:23.780 blowing out a bunch of meaningless paper notes. Now, if you're talking about consolidation under

00:23:29.720 a single institution, you may notice that the main concern of Alexander Hamilton, which was that

00:23:33.360 our good faith and credit be good is being undermined by the very institutions that J.D.

00:23:38.000 Vance is calling to expand because the full faith and credit of the United States is not being put

00:23:42.120 at risk by paper speculators in South Carolina. The full faith and credit of the United States

00:23:46.740 being put at risk by, yes, by Congress and by the Federal Reserve and by the Secretary of the

00:23:52.600 Treasury and by blowing out money at an exorbitant rate, unsupportable and unprecedented in all of

00:23:58.320 human history. Yeah, listen, I'm all for reigning back Congress. I think that long precedes the

00:24:03.080 Trump administration, certainly. But even to that, one last point of Friedman, and then right before,

00:24:07.860 I know I have to let you go, but I do want to talk about Tucker's new political party.

00:24:11.340 But one last point of Friedman, let's not forget, during the very height of Milton Friedman's

00:24:16.280 influence, which is a relatively recent innovation in American history, you also had no less a free

00:24:21.700 trader than Ronald Reagan protecting U.S. steel. Was he really doing that for national security

00:24:26.840 purposes? Harley Davidson's, agriculture. You had George W. Bush, for example, protecting

00:24:31.840 industries. So you can trace protectionism back to Alexander Hamilton, to George Washington.

00:24:36.920 It's precedented. It's just dumb. It's precedented. It's just dumb. It was not a good idea in the 1.00

00:24:40.520 80s. It wasn't a good idea when George W. Bushed it. It's a dumb idea now, unless you're doing it

00:24:43.820 for national security reasons. Okay. Now, before I let you go, big news, maybe. I actually don't 0.96

00:24:49.000 think it's that big news. But Tucker left the GOP. He's starting a new political party. It's

00:24:55.220 going to be a non-interventionist, America first, reformed political party. Where have I heard of

00:25:01.220 that before uh it's not easy can i just ask which which version of tucker is this party like like i

00:25:08.820 mean he he contains multitudes you know he is legion you know but it does i mean you look back

00:25:14.340 it's a funny question but there's a real answer to it i think the real answer is pap you can

00:25:18.420 right am i am i misreading that yes i know that's right that's right it's like the pap

00:25:22.500 you can version of the reform party in 2000 where pap you can in 1.4 percent of the vote but just

00:25:27.620 enough in uh in florida to cast the presidency to george w bush uh that's that his only role in

00:25:34.100 history pat buchanan um but the the the idea first of all it's not true okay tucker's saying he's 0.92

00:25:40.260 launching a third party he's not doing any of this shit but let's explain exactly what tucker is 0.75

00:25:43.800 doing here what tucker is doing here is he's blackmailing the republican party into embracing 0.96

00:25:47.660 his positions by claiming that he's going to posit a threat to the republican party from the outside

00:25:52.600 So what you actually have right now is Tucker trying to run a quasi-DSA play.

00:25:56.740 Essentially, he's looking at 2026.

00:25:58.920 2026 is going to be a disaster area for Republicans.

00:26:01.700 Right now, Republicans are running dead even or behind in all six of the various states in which they have races up to and including Iowa, Texas, and Alaska.

00:26:09.800 Tucker is looking at that. 0.97

00:26:10.960 He is hoping he wants the Republicans to get their asses kicked because then what he's going to say is the reason that they got destroyed is because they didn't cater to people like me. 0.99

00:26:18.800 and me sitting outside here with my non-existent third party, if only they'd engaged with me, 0.99

00:26:24.700 if only they'd come back to me, then they would have won. And so it's basically a blackmail play.

00:26:28.780 And it's smart. It's smart. But the idea that Tucker Carlson, who, again, says in that same

00:26:33.660 interview that he has no attention span and is widely known in the media as one of the lazier

00:26:37.320 members of the media, that Tucker is going to sit there with the actual nuts and bolts of building a

00:26:43.260 ground up political party based on the pretensions of thomas massey marjorie taylor green and joe

00:26:48.960 kent yeah uh good luck i mean listen my dream is that he starts a third party i would love for

00:26:53.580 tucker carlson to start a third party because then we could have a clear referendum on the 0.98

00:26:56.580 stupidity of his ideas but instead what he's going to do is not that what he's going to do 0.98

00:27:00.120 is he's going to falsely claim that 2026 happened because not because it was an off-air election 0.99

00:27:04.980 not because trump was unpopular on a wide variety of issues but because tucker carlson personally

00:27:09.540 was displeased with Donald Trump's policy on Iran and Epstein and all the rest. And therefore,

00:27:14.860 the only way to assure Republican victory going forward is to put Tucker Carlson in the driver's

00:27:21.140 seat of the party. And obviously, Tucker is very much aligned with J.D. Vann. So I think that's

00:27:24.500 the political move he's making here. You know, I could sense that this was just a replay of the

00:27:29.320 Reform Party, especially the 2000 Pat Buchanan version. Tucker himself. Can I disagree for a

00:27:35.340 second, I've met Pat Buchanan. I know Pat Buchanan. Tucker's no Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan

00:27:41.720 is smarter than Tucker. He's more consistent than Tucker. He is a more disciplined speaker than

00:27:48.220 Tucker. I still think that his 1992 convention speech was something that presaged. It is

00:27:54.600 essential viewing for anyone to understand American politics. And by the way, while being

00:27:59.860 referred to as a culture war speech it is mostly about economics it is not it is about it is about

00:28:05.200 crime economics and and working class issues and then they did this whole revisionist history

00:28:11.220 where it was like oh no he came in and destroyed hw's chances for re-election uh by turning it

00:28:16.980 into this uh you know election that was going to be about abortion and gays and stuff like that

00:28:20.740 the truth is that i think that you have to understand you need to understand pat buchanan

00:28:25.780 in order to understand politics.

00:28:27.520 I'm not sure you need to understand Tucker.

00:28:29.140 And I'm not sure it's possible to understand him

00:28:32.040 just given how crazy he's been in the last couple of years.

00:28:35.060 No, it's an interesting point.

00:28:36.220 And I guess, I mean, if the roadmap

00:28:38.980 for the new Tucker party or in Ben's view,

00:28:41.920 not like kind of fake out party is just,

00:28:44.320 okay, I'm gonna do what Pat Buchanan tried to do in 2000,

00:28:48.960 then you could, I mean, even to your point, Ben,

00:28:50.880 where you say, I don't compare Tucker to Pat Buchanan.

00:28:53.000 You say, well, if you're just gonna replay

00:28:54.640 the same script, then, you know, one, it can only happen first one time. And, and to your point,

00:29:00.380 other Ben, I really, this is very annoying, you know, having the only other two guys in the show.

00:29:03.960 Anyway, it, to your point, it like, it didn't work out. He got point. We'll figure this out

00:29:09.020 eventually. Yes. But, but it, it actually had not occurred to me. I can't read Tucker in when he

00:29:15.960 does these things that are really out there and I can't, some people in politics, I can read them

00:29:20.220 like an open book. Tucker, I couldn't figure out exactly what he was getting at here.

00:29:24.660 But sociopathy is very, very difficult to understand.

00:29:28.160 I think your read on that is probably right. I don't, I don't, Tucker's too smart to want to

00:29:33.520 start another political party. And he doesn't. And just by the way, there is a, there is our

00:29:38.420 sponsors at Calci have a market on Tucker running for president in 2028 himself. And I guess it's

00:29:45.620 currently at around 25%, something like that. Yeah. And I would short that. No way. I would

00:29:50.800 short that. Absolutely. He does not have the discipline. He does not have the discipline

00:29:55.700 to start a political party. He does not, definitely doesn't have the discipline to run for president.

00:29:59.640 All right. That's not going to. On that, I guess no one here is joining the Tucker party. No one,

00:30:03.700 you're not, neither of you are signing up. Okay. That's fine. But Ben, you are signing out. You

00:30:07.120 got, you're on baby watch. That's awesome. Everybody keep Ben and more in your prayers.

00:30:11.120 If your kid is born on 4th of July, I'm going to have severe birthday envy, but it would be very cool.

00:30:18.900 And I look forward to Governor Shapiro coming out.

00:30:22.900 Good to see you, sir.

00:30:23.460 Thanks so much, guys.

00:30:24.320 Now, all of you folks, the Declaration of Independence names three rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:30:30.940 Notice that order.

00:30:31.640 Life comes first because without it, the other two mean nothing.

00:30:34.520 The founders understood this, and yet every day in America, unborn babies are denied that first and most basic right.

00:30:39.880 Pre-Born exists to change that.

00:30:42.480 I love Pre-Born.

00:30:43.540 It is a wonderful ministry.

00:30:45.440 It is one of my very favorite nonprofit organizations.

00:30:47.740 I personally support it.

00:30:48.780 I encourage you to give whatever you can.

00:30:51.000 And they're so good, they even fundraise for their administrative costs elsewhere.

00:30:54.660 So every dollar you give is going towards saving babies.

00:30:57.480 You give $28, that buys an ultrasound.

00:31:00.580 A mother who sees her baby on ultrasound for the first time is 80% more likely to choose life.

00:31:07.500 It is one of the best RIs you're going to get.

00:31:09.880 In honor of America's 250th birthday, we're asking our friends to prayerfully consider

00:31:14.320 a special gift of $250 to multiply your impact and help save even more lives.

00:31:19.360 Right now, donate.

00:31:20.760 About pound 250, say keyword baby.

00:31:22.320 That's pound 250, keyword baby.

00:31:24.320 Or go to preborn.com slash Knowles.

00:31:26.620 Preborn.com slash Knowles.

00:31:27.580 Every gift is tax-deductible.

00:31:28.780 Preborn.com slash Knowles.

00:31:31.740 Do we have Cabot?

00:31:33.500 Oh, we do.

00:31:34.680 We do.

00:31:35.200 Hey, Cabot, what's up?

00:31:37.060 And now it's less confusing because there's only one better.

00:31:38.860 Thank goodness.

00:31:39.460 It was driving me nuts, man. I've only worked in media for like 10 or 15 years. I couldn't figure out how to do it.

00:31:46.140 We got to be thing one and thing two or something like that.

00:31:50.460 So, all right, Cabot, we already covered my interview with the vice president and Iran and Tucker's new political party, which I heard you just joined.

00:31:59.040 But now I want to talk about the Dems. Where do the midterms stand?

00:32:04.760 Yeah, it's been really interesting.

00:32:06.820 I think given the last three or four months,

00:32:09.060 you would have expected Republicans

00:32:10.520 to have lost a ton of ground on the generic ballot

00:32:13.120 with regard to the midterms.

00:32:15.340 But if you actually look back,

00:32:16.660 the week before the war in Iran started,

00:32:18.940 Democrats were at like 47.5%,

00:32:20.980 Republicans in the high 43s.

00:32:23.460 Despite the last three or four months

00:32:25.120 of inflation going back up

00:32:27.420 and the war getting worse

00:32:28.480 and people not being happy with the war once it ended,

00:32:31.900 Democrats have only gained about half a percent

00:32:33.960 in the generic ballot.

00:32:34.940 And so I'm still maybe delusionally optimistic

00:32:38.140 that given the lack of momentum for the Democrats,

00:32:42.720 given the apparent ceiling that we're seeing,

00:32:44.660 given these new socialist candidates

00:32:46.160 that are going to give the Republicans people to point to

00:32:48.460 and make this race about,

00:32:51.120 that things maybe won't be as bad

00:32:53.540 as a lot of Republicans are bracing for.

00:32:55.160 I'm always the delusional optimist though.

00:32:57.840 But yeah, the big thing is just

00:33:00.580 what these socialist races are going to do

00:33:02.800 to the midterms more broadly.

00:33:05.360 And we talk about that a lot

00:33:06.460 on my new show, Wired In,

00:33:08.000 which we filmed right on the set.

00:33:09.440 Which Ben Dominic has been on

00:33:10.780 about half a dozen times.

00:33:12.160 And Michael Knowles,

00:33:13.760 what do we got to do to get you back?

00:33:14.940 Yeah, I did it.

00:33:15.720 No, I did it once.

00:33:17.280 And I got, I don't know,

00:33:18.040 I felt too intimidated.

00:33:19.240 You on that nice big set.

00:33:20.540 I kind of felt like you were

00:33:21.240 set and suit mogging me.

00:33:23.040 So I don't know, maybe I'd like to come back

00:33:25.020 now that we're in the heat of midterm season.

00:33:28.420 And you point out you got all these socialists,

00:33:30.680 but you're too rosy about it.

00:33:32.160 Ben, can you please bring us down to earth?

00:33:35.240 Yeah, so I actually think that this midterm is going to be terrible for Republicans.

00:33:40.980 And I think that they are likely to still hold the Senate.

00:33:45.780 But that's still, I think, something that is a lot closer than anyone expected it to be, just given the map.

00:33:51.860 Some of the decisions that they've made have made this a lot riskier.

00:33:56.040 We saw that New York Times poll, for instance, that has Ken Paxton tied with James Tallarico.

00:34:00.600 uh something uh along the lines of these supreme court cases that just came down uh they they

00:34:07.540 benefit tallarico because uh paxton is going to have to lean hard on the birthright citizenship

00:34:12.500 uh question uh he's going to have to support whatever the republicans coalesce around in

00:34:16.820 response to that tallarico gets to punt on uh the transgender sports question because he can

00:34:22.640 basically say texas decided not to have men and girls sports and i agree with them and that's

00:34:27.720 going to be fine. And I have nothing to do with that as a senator. And the problem that really

00:34:31.860 shows in that poll is, and it's been apparent across multiple polls actually, is that Paxton

00:34:36.980 is losing Hispanics to Tallarico dramatically. So you don't have the same type of situation that

00:34:43.020 you had with Ted Cruz, for instance, just two years ago. Now that doesn't mean that I don't

00:34:47.460 think Paxton's going to win. I actually do think he's going to win, but the amount of time that's

00:34:51.180 going to be spent backing someone like him, the amount of money that's going to have to go into

00:34:54.500 a state that should have been safe. That's stuff that comes away from other states that are much

00:34:59.660 riskier. Democrats are also trying to play fast and loose in a bunch of these situations. We've

00:35:04.500 seen them do it before, backing independent candidates in certain sentences. In Alaska,

00:35:09.220 they actually put a guy with the same name as Dan Sullivan on the ballot, which is pretty 0.87

00:35:14.120 ridiculous. The one thing that I do think, though, that we should keep in mind is the Democrats lost

00:35:19.980 this redistricting war. And so in a lot of these situations, these people are running in completely

00:35:25.080 new districts. And the candidates, therefore, you can't rely on a one-to-one comparison

00:35:30.800 compared to how they performed before because they have a different electorate that may not

00:35:35.800 know them, that has a new response to them. I think the real question here is if the Democratic

00:35:41.240 Party is able to basically pull the wool over the eyes of the independent voter, say that these

00:35:47.360 socialists that are confined to just these little spots in the country. Don't care about that.

00:35:51.800 Don't look at that. You know, there is no man behind the curtain who believes in Marx and

00:35:56.540 Engels. You know, we are instead going to, you know, try to, you know, turn this into a situation

00:36:02.280 where we are the party that's about affordability, that's about anti-corruption, that is anti-war,

00:36:08.580 that is, you know, going to make your gas prices come down, et cetera, et cetera. They're going to

00:36:12.660 try to run in that direction. And I think Republicans are going to run on crime and

00:36:18.040 calling Democrats crazy. That doesn't tend to be the kind of message that gets people out who

00:36:23.520 aren't already going to vote. Wow. Yeah. And so it makes me even more upset about the Supreme

00:36:28.640 Court decisions because the birthright citizenship one ultimately is much, much more important,

00:36:33.320 I think, than the Title IX decision, which seemed actually in contradiction to Gorsuch's view from

00:36:39.740 the Title VII decision. And I don't know, it seemed a little bit like they were kind of just

00:36:43.300 following the headlines and the opinion polls. But regardless, birthright citizenship, that is a

00:36:48.360 nation-shaping, like Demos-shaping event. And so that's obviously terrible for Republicans. But at

00:36:53.900 least we got the trans win, right? No, to your point, Ben, that takes the killer issue for the 1.00

00:36:59.820 Dems, especially in places like Texas. I mean, Ted Cruz really wrecked Colin Allred. When that race

00:37:06.040 looked like it might be a little tight. He destroyed him on the trans sports issue.

00:37:10.720 Now it's totally off the table. Yeah. It bails them out. And the last thing I would just say 0.97

00:37:16.980 about this is I think Republicans always miscalculate how much voters are actually

00:37:22.100 paying attention to the craziest things that congressmen and, in some cases, Senate candidates

00:37:28.400 in Michigan and in Maine, Senate candidates, or I'm assuming the craziest guy is going to win in

00:37:33.800 michigan uh that they always kind of count on that to help them across the country and i don't think

00:37:41.000 that that's actually the way it works in midterms it can help you when you're doing a national

00:37:45.000 election in a presidential year but it helps you less when it comes to these midterm elections

00:37:50.840 because it's it is more localized and it's more about people's immediate concerns i think

00:37:55.640 unfortunately republicans have been you know they've been throwing rocks at each other here

00:37:59.800 here in Washington. They can't get on the same page. White House and the Senate are split,

00:38:04.560 you know, and all these different, you know, House things or shenanigans are going on.

00:38:08.540 I just do not see a lot of signs that, you know, this is going to be a good situation,

00:38:14.600 you know, for Republicans. I know that there's a there's a Calci market on this, of course,

00:38:19.560 which party will win the U.S. Senate that you can check out. They're one of our sponsors,

00:38:24.320 of course. And I think that this is a situation where everything has tightened. People are a lot

00:38:30.960 more concerned about this than they were six months ago when Republicans were confident they

00:38:36.900 were going to hold that body. It could end up being 50-50, in which case, J.D. Vance, clear your

00:38:43.440 schedule. You're going to be voting a lot. Ben, I agree with you that I think the average primary

00:38:48.520 or the average midterm voter

00:38:50.640 maybe isn't super aware

00:38:52.220 of what Chevalier is doing

00:38:54.300 or what Kiros in Colorado is doing.

00:38:58.080 But I do think that Democrat leadership

00:39:00.840 is very aware of those people

00:39:02.720 and they're very scared of them.

00:39:04.220 And we've started to see Democratic leadership

00:39:05.840 be forced to embrace them.

00:39:07.920 We saw Kamala Harris this week come out

00:39:09.780 and call Momdani personally.

00:39:11.900 She called a number of pro-Palestinian groups.

00:39:14.900 Please, please, please do it.

00:39:16.080 Yeah. And we saw J.B. Pritzker try to run as a socialist. But we saw J.B. Pritzker. I beg you for America. Do it. Pritzker went on CNN and he said, yeah, the strategy of these socialist candidates, he didn't fully endorse them. He said their strategy is one that's going to win in 2026 and beyond.

00:39:32.260 Well, yeah, as a billionaire, he has to say that so they don't kill him.

00:39:35.960 Yeah, but my point is that I think that these candidates, while they might not have a huge

00:39:40.780 impact on Senate voters in Texas, they will have an impact on the broader perception of

00:39:46.380 Democrats in that they're going to force Democratic leadership to go further left for fear of

00:39:51.420 being eaten, as you point out.

00:39:52.600 Usually Pritzker's the one doing the eating, but in this case, he's the one getting eaten.

00:39:55.120 I wasn't going to say it.

00:39:55.840 A lot for people to feed on there.

00:39:57.820 But I think that's going to have an impact.

00:39:59.480 I'm sure he lost all that weight naturally.

00:40:00.880 Yeah.

00:40:01.360 Yeah. What I want to know about the DSA stuff, there was that poll that just came out that

00:40:06.820 showed that rank-and-file Dems have a higher opinion of the Democratic Socialists than they

00:40:12.460 do of Democrats in Congress. And you think, well, all right, that's a low bar. Democrats in Congress

00:40:17.060 aren't polling that well. But it's pretty scary that the Democrat voter would today prefer the

00:40:23.520 Socialists, who used to be this kind of fringe, weird, young element of the party, even six,

00:40:28.520 eight years ago, to now they're polling higher than the Democrats in Congress. What does that

00:40:33.420 tell you about the state of the party? To me, when I got that news, it reminded me of what we

00:40:40.900 saw after Charlie was killed, which is, you know, that itself was obviously a major personal trauma

00:40:45.620 for a lot of people and a political trauma. And then there was this additional political trauma,

00:40:49.920 which is that you found out 28% of young leftists agreed that it was okay and, you know,

00:40:55.560 it could be justified. And huge swaths throughout the mainstream left on television, in office,

00:41:02.300 they would all minimize or dismiss that killing. You say, okay, well, that's now a major political

00:41:06.660 scandal. You're seeing, I don't know, you're just seeing a lot of evidence coming out that the

00:41:13.580 Democrat party, you look at the California state senators, they just voted to allow child molesters

00:41:20.680 to run for office. They voted down a measure that would keep them out of office. That wasn't just-

00:41:24.400 more representation. They do. No, they do. I mean, the headlines, the headlines weren't even

00:41:29.820 as bad as the reality. I mean, who will speak for Epstein's Island? No, the original thing that

00:41:36.780 we were seeing in the headlines is Scott Wiener was the one who did this. And Scott Wiener is a

00:41:42.280 total freak and a pervert and a deviant, but it wasn't just him. It's like, I wish it were just 0.99

00:41:46.240 him. It's the mainstream dem, most of the dems on this panel. So what does that say about the party?

00:41:51.920 So can I just, I'm going to vote a random guy on X who I think had a great explanation for this. 0.97

00:41:58.080 Shout out to Roman Helmet guy. 1.00

00:42:00.200 America is a Latin American country now. 1.00

00:42:02.440 So let me explain politics. 0.99

00:42:04.120 We elect communists to kill the rich. 1.00

00:42:06.160 Communism brings poverty and crime. 1.00

00:42:07.900 So we elect fascists to kill the communists. 0.99

00:42:09.860 And then the fascists hand the economy to oligarchs. 1.00

00:42:11.940 So we elect communists to kill the rich. 0.74

00:42:14.080 And unfortunately, as someone who has been saying for a long time that I thought that American politics was starting to look more and more like Latin America, including, by the way, with Donald Trump, you know, you must, you know, elect the strong man, elect the man who's going to solve the problems, you know, kind of thing. 0.56

00:42:33.660 I think that that is unfortunately, dangerously what we are setting up in this situation, which is a takeover of a decrepit, octogenarian Democratic Party that is out of touch with its most engaged activist voters.

00:42:50.780 And it's going to, I think, completely reorient them.

00:42:53.740 We saw this happen to a degree with the Tea Party, but the Tea Party, basically what happened was their ideas were subsumed into the Republican Party and the fundamental Republican kind of framework that that, you know, three legged stool that we have talked about, you know, for to the nth degree that remained intact.

00:43:12.580 It just was sort of a change in priorities.

00:43:16.120 But I don't think this is just a change in priorities.

00:43:18.380 I think this is a change in one of the American parties.

00:43:21.340 And I think that, unfortunately, capitalism may end up being a monopartisan affair faster than we could even imagine.

00:43:29.660 We've had this huge movement of rehabbing Richard Nixon's image, and we've been Nixon-maxing this summer.

00:43:36.140 I think we might have to start Pinochet-maxing.

00:43:38.420 Y'all, don't threaten me with a good time.

00:43:40.300 We might have to start.

00:43:41.180 Pinochet did nothing wrong.

00:43:42.580 Exactly. But on the topic of socialism, that poll of the number of Democrats that view socialism favorably, I just can't help but think that that's more a reflection of their despair over the situation in America, their feeling that neither party is speaking for them.

00:43:57.160 And to that point, I do think that a lot of people who are embracing socialism, while the ideas obviously are abhorrent, they're not all wrong in saying that they have reason to be angry with the way that they've been treated in the country.

00:44:08.820 But I don't think that actually means what they necessarily think it means.

00:44:13.680 Like, I don't think most of them would actually support the Democratic Socialists of America

00:44:17.260 agenda.

00:44:17.920 And to that point, if you actually look at the agenda, we know that the DSA supports

00:44:22.020 universal health care, universal child care, and student loan forgiveness, and amnesty.

00:44:27.360 That's child's play compared to where the DSA platform actually is.

00:44:31.760 So this month, they published their new, what they call it, the Workers Deserve More plan.

00:44:36.760 The official plan from the DSA includes abolishing the Senate, defunding the entire War Department, quote, replacing the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

00:44:52.500 The official DSA platform is do away with the White House, do away with the presidency, do away with the War Department, do away with the Senate.

00:44:58.460 Establish the third international.

00:45:00.600 Yeah, do away with the cops, do away with the border.

00:45:02.500 I don't think that the average Democrat who says, yeah, socialism, I'd do it favorably.

00:45:06.520 I don't think they're supporting that.

00:45:08.040 But that is what the USA members are supporting.

00:45:10.880 But Kavit, can I ask you, I assume you probably saw that viral clip of AOC responding to the

00:45:15.740 question about, you know, J.D. Vance says you would be a really competitive candidate,

00:45:20.920 you know, if you ran for president.

00:45:22.800 And one of the things she says in that clip is about how people in her generation feel

00:45:30.680 like they've been handed you know a bad situation by the people who came before to me that argument

00:45:38.320 is the most powerful one that they have because it's true because the simple fact is that the 0.94

00:45:44.880 boomers are the greatest generation in terms of distribution to themselves and they there's a 1.00

00:45:50.580 reason why we have the kind of resentment for a situation where they are still by far even though 1.00

00:45:56.740 they have continually shrunk, obviously, as a generation. They own the most houses in America.

00:46:02.280 They own the most property in America. They don't want to sell it. They don't want to give it up.

00:46:07.320 And so you have people who are trying to form families who have to live in apartments. And

00:46:10.780 that's the kind of thing where that resentment, there's a core truth to it that I think Republicans

00:46:16.880 have unfortunately failed to address. You know what I find unfortunate? The Cabot's still on

00:46:21.940 this show. So get out of here, you. No, listen, I know you all want more, Cabot. So whatever you

00:46:27.600 do, make sure right now to go and subscribe to Cabot's new show, Wired In, on Spotify or Apple

00:46:32.860 Podcasts. That is the only way you will be sure to see Cabot's return to this program. Cabot,

00:46:39.860 any parting words? Yes, please go watch Wired In, if nothing else, just so that you can stick it to

00:46:46.120 Michael Knowles. Yeah, he just had his big 2000th episode. We're on episode 50, and that's something

00:46:51.140 worth celebrating. So come join us live on Daily Wire, 4 p.m. Eastern, every Monday through Thursday.

00:46:55.960 It's a lot of fun. And we'll get Michael Knowles back on for the people. I'll do it, especially

00:46:59.400 if you guys go over there en masse, then I'm going to have to go over there and say, hey,

00:47:03.900 I'm still here. Go, come on. Hey, watch me. That's wonderful. Cabot, thank you as always.

00:47:07.600 Good to see you. Now that we've just returned, it's just me and Mr. Dominic, I feel like I can

00:47:14.400 rest easy. And if you want to rest easy, you need to go check out Helix. America turns 250 this week.

00:47:21.140 which means it's been 250 years since anyone in this country got a good night's sleep.

00:47:25.560 The founders ran a revolution on no rest at all. George Washington crossed the Delaware in the

00:47:29.340 middle of the night. Those men had no choice. You do. Between the kids, the show, and everything

00:47:33.500 happening in the country, a good night's rest is about the most patriotic thing I can think of.

00:47:39.380 And for that, I thank our sponsor, Helix. I'm such a good dad. I'm such a good father. I'm not

00:47:46.340 a founding father, but I'm a father, that I got both of my kids who are out of the crib,

00:47:50.100 Helix mattresses. And you know what? I just, for anyone who's going to be a house guest of mine,

00:47:55.280 I just ordered another Helix mattress for our guest room. Ben, have you gotten a beautiful

00:48:01.180 Helix yet? I do. I actually already had one before I joined the Daily Wire. I like it very much. In

00:48:07.000 fact, it's my favorite mattress to sleep on, especially when my kid is trying to wake me up

00:48:13.120 at about 3.30 in the morning and I'm trying to get my wife unsuccessfully to change his diaper

00:48:18.160 instead of me. That's very fair. When you said it's my favorite mattress to sleep on, I think, 0.56

00:48:24.260 how many, maybe I need to start mattress maxing. Maybe I need to get another one. Well, with Helix,

00:48:28.060 the prices are so good, you could get many. They have over 20 mattress models, whether you run hot,

00:48:32.060 sleep on your side, or need extra support. There's one built for you. They even offer cooling

00:48:35.880 upgrades, which in July is not a luxury. It's a necessity, especially if you live in Mom Donnie's,

00:48:41.280 New York. It is the most wanted mattress brand. It is so great. 78 degrees. You saw that? 78

00:48:45.640 degrees. 78 degrees. Cool. A nice, a nice balmy night in New York. Uh, go there right now.

00:48:51.800 HelixSleep.com. Do it. You're going to love it. HelixSleep.com slash Daily Wire. 20% off site

00:48:56.740 wide. 25% off Luxe mattresses. 30% off Elite mattresses. HelixSleep.com slash Daily Wire.

00:49:01.520 20% off the regular ones. 25% off the Luxe. 30% off the Elite. Make sure you enter Daily Wire

00:49:09.500 at checkout so they know we sent you at HelixSleep.com slash Daily Wire. There's one more thing

00:49:14.080 I got to sell. You got to sell it, Ben. Sell it for me. Yeah. So you mentioned Washington crossing

00:49:19.600 the Delaware. When Washington was crossing the Delaware, he understood the power of truth and

00:49:23.680 the power of stories. And so he had literally being read to the troops in their boats when

00:49:29.200 they were crossing the Delaware River in the middle of the night to do their famous raid

00:49:34.720 that changed the course of history 250 years ago. He had them reading the opening passage

00:49:41.280 to Thomas Paine's American crisis,

00:49:43.820 which decries the summer soldier

00:49:46.180 and the sunshine patriot.

00:49:48.740 We need more people than summer soldiers

00:49:50.980 and sunshine patriots.

00:49:52.600 We need people who are engaged

00:49:54.180 at this moment in our country

00:49:55.720 and understand the crisis that we're in.

00:49:57.920 And the way to understand that crisis

00:49:59.380 is to subscribe to the Daily Wire Plus.

00:50:02.520 We are so proud to bring you a new deal

00:50:05.360 on the 250th anniversary of this country

00:50:08.720 that is going to be a three-month deal for $17.76, sorry,

00:50:16.360 that is going to offer you everything that The Daily Wire has to offer.

00:50:21.020 It is everything.

00:50:22.000 It's all of the documentaries.

00:50:23.720 It is a, you know, it's all of the different historical truths.

00:50:27.240 It's all of the different articles and pieces and things,

00:50:29.960 the content that we're rolling out, the documentaries,

00:50:32.300 the whole entertainment library.

00:50:33.760 And we're going to be putting out a bunch of stuff this summer.

00:50:35.940 So you definitely need to sign up for this.

00:50:38.060 If you've been on the fence about joining, there's no better moment than on the nation's 250th birthday.

00:50:45.080 Dailywireplus.com.

00:50:46.340 Go sign up.

00:50:47.300 And happy Independence Day.

00:50:48.660 Okay.

00:50:49.000 Can I actually be totally sincere and earnest, which I almost never am, certainly not on this show?

00:50:54.400 That was an inspiring ad read.

00:50:57.220 The Summer Soldier and Sunshine Patriot, Washington.

00:51:00.500 That was a good, man, that was good.

00:51:03.680 I want to sign up.

00:51:04.920 That was great.

00:51:05.620 I really liked it.

00:51:06.160 Okay.

00:51:06.540 Before I let you go.

00:51:07.440 Hey.

00:51:07.680 Hey, look, I'm not sure Tom Paine would approve of me using his words to sell things, but

00:51:16.060 I think it's actually true.

00:51:17.220 I think that what the Daily Wire offers is the truth about history, the truth about who

00:51:20.920 we are.

00:51:21.720 That's what Paine was offering those soldiers.

00:51:23.460 They knew in that night how desperate they were, that they were really down to the end.

00:51:28.320 And this was the kind of desperate, brave, heroic act.

00:51:32.840 and they could never have appreciated that they were in the midst of founding the greatest nation

00:51:38.300 in the history of the world. And I think that that's something that we should appreciate now.

00:51:42.680 And subscribing to Daily Wire is, you know, the way I think that you can help appreciate it and

00:51:47.660 understand it now. And you know what else, you know, we now know, thanks to historians,

00:51:52.140 is that Thomas Paine slept on a Helix mattress. So head on over to, no, no, he didn't. I don't

00:51:56.680 think he actually did that. Okay. We are now bringing on Theo Wald to talk about, before we

00:52:00.920 let all of you guys go. The Supreme Court decisions, I want to go through them. We talked

00:52:05.200 about the political implications a little bit, but I want to know about the decisions themselves,

00:52:09.780 and then also Idaho becoming the first U.S. state to use firing squad for executions. Is that the

00:52:16.520 first U.S. state ever, or just we're bringing it back? I don't know. I don't know. I'm not expert

00:52:21.060 on that. I think that's a question for Theo. Do we have Theo? Theo. There we go. Yeah, it's good

00:52:27.200 to be with you guys. And I just want to say, Ben, you know, Thomas Payne was a pamphleteer and a

00:52:31.680 hustler. I think he would actually appreciate the sales pitch there. I was trying to make a buck,

00:52:36.540 right? He literally was the original, you know, I'm interested in your ideas and I wish to

00:52:41.040 subscribe to your newsletter. That's right. So on the big case, on the one that really matters

00:52:48.380 the most, on the birthright citizenship case, I never thought the court was going to go along

00:52:53.920 with us out of cowardice. I thought there were good legal arguments and good historical arguments

00:52:58.160 for the courts to go along with us. But I think the court is just institutionally cowardly for

00:53:03.700 good reason. The Democrats keep threatening to destroy them for almost a century now. But in

00:53:09.080 terms of the actual legal matters, what happened? Yeah, I think all of that as preparatory comment,

00:53:17.000 that's correct. I think anyone who listened to oral argument knew that both Justices Kavanaugh

00:53:22.900 and ACB, Amy Coney Barrett, were skeptical. That's probably the best way of putting it,

00:53:29.100 skeptical at best of John Sauer, the Solicitor General, his arguments before the court.

00:53:34.820 I think the Roberts opinion, one way of sort of distilling this down is to say it's essentially

00:53:40.160 a discursive armchair historian's view of the 14th Amendment, but really rooted in Anglo common

00:53:46.620 law. What is the notion of citizenship or subjecthood, more likely, that was imported

00:53:52.100 from Britain into the United States. And that's where he kind of hinges his entire argument. And

00:53:57.480 I think Alito is right to say in his dissent, and Thomas does the same, that Roberts really misses

00:54:03.900 everything from the Declaration of Independence forward. And so you've got a very narrow reading

00:54:11.140 of what citizenship requires. Hadley Arcus, the famous natural rights theorist, he really

00:54:17.760 pinpoints this line from robert's opinion where robert says really what this is about is citizenship

00:54:22.540 is the right to have rights which really would have struck the framers obviously as bizarre but

00:54:29.160 also the framers of the 14th amendment as bizarre so i i think the the majority opinion is trying to

00:54:35.200 do a lot and what it's really trying to do to your your point michael is to satisfy this question of

00:54:40.440 what is the meaning of the 14th amendment what is the meaning of citizenship once and for all and

00:54:44.640 as we've seen over the last 40 years, anytime the court tries to settle definitively what is really

00:54:51.000 at root, something of a small P political question, the court ends up regretting it.

00:54:56.300 You know, just think of Planned Parenthood v. Casey or some of these other sort of seminal

00:54:59.900 cases where the court tried to say, no, this is the definitive answer for all time. And I think

00:55:04.300 the dissents from Thomas and Alito both get at this, that not only is it a wrong reading of the

00:55:09.020 14th Amendment, but it's also a political mistake the court's making. So Theo, I have a couple of

00:55:14.560 questions about this. And I want to preface this by saying that I'm someone who has for a very long

00:55:18.140 time, along with including hardline immigration people like my friend Mark Kotorian, supported

00:55:24.500 birthright citizenship. And the reason that we support it is because we don't believe in having 0.98

00:55:28.920 stateless children, and we believe that it's chaotic, and we believe in border control,

00:55:34.660 immigration enforcement, the kind of things that prevent this from being exploited. But the

00:55:39.180 situation that we face today is obviously dramatically different than everything that

00:55:44.100 we've seen even just a few decades ago when it comes to the level of birth tourism, when it comes

00:55:49.540 to the level of people who are aligned to come here for a brief amount of time just in order to

00:55:53.560 have a baby who can claim dual citizenship, who are exploiting generous Medicaid and other

00:55:58.560 welfare programs in blue states. Like this is a completely different scenario than we were in

00:56:04.580 even 15, 20 years ago. And obviously that includes the importation of untold millions during the

00:56:11.560 biden era the decision though to go with an eo that i know that you were you know uh obviously

00:56:18.240 a key uh component of that you know is is from you i actually don't know how much of it you

00:56:23.020 you worked on or if you draft the whole thing but that eo was always something that seemed to put in

00:56:29.740 people's minds this thing is going to get kicked out because it's not congress it's not something

00:56:34.460 that has the backing of you know a partisan or potentially even a bipartisan i think you might

00:56:40.360 gotten some democrat randoms in the in the house that might have gone along with some kind of

00:56:45.120 solution on immigration just based on where they are um that tried to deal with this birthright

00:56:50.700 question which has loomed over us forever with all of these random decisions and no definitive 0.97

00:56:55.900 answer i think robert's opinion is crap i think it's just like ridiculous um but i also think 0.90

00:57:03.160 that this outcome is one that most americans are just kind of going to kind of shrug at 0.89

00:57:08.160 unfortunately do you think that it was a wrong decision to do this via executive order

00:57:14.440 yeah i mean i so the the executive order project that i worked on in 45 you could probably say

00:57:22.880 it was much more about nipping and tucking and really getting at those uh four categorical

00:57:28.640 exemptions that roberts kind of dismisses out of hand and says that's a closed universe right

00:57:32.400 Native Americans, envoys or ambassadors. Right. Exactly. So really trying to hone in on is that the is that the defined space here or is there more sort of elasticity in the joints, if you will, because of the new situation we face with the millions of birth tourists in Miami or Southern California, you know, the false asylee claimants, etc. 0.98

00:57:54.220 So I think the idea of tackling this through executive order and I'll note executive order alone, right, this could have always been dual tracked with a statutory effort in Congress from the word go back in January of 25.

00:58:09.000 I think the idea of pushing this solely through executive order, it wasn't just Roberts and ACB who were uncomfortable with that.

00:58:14.380 Obviously, Kavanaugh notes that, in his opinion, with the existing statute from the 1950s.

00:58:18.640 And I think both Alito and Thomas both are kind of, you know, the idea that you could do this exclusively through unilateral executive power makes them uncomfortable.

00:58:29.520 So I think that was also a mistake here and especially a mistake in that I don't think it teed up to your point, Ben.

00:58:36.280 I don't think it teed up in a neat way the larger political discussion we need to have.

00:58:41.440 What was missing was exactly what Alito said in his dissent, which is, you now have this very weird scenario where legal immigrants coming to the country applying for citizenship have to engage in kind of like this reason-based, Thomas Paine, if you will, based naturalization process.

00:58:57.280 They've got to prove their loyalty, their understanding, civics, education.

00:59:01.040 But then a whole host of people who come here as birth tourists or illegal aliens can just have the magic of birth and automatically give birth to an American citizen. 0.93

00:59:09.220 And that that's a weird as a very weird scenario. And that's open. That would have been very promising ground for Republicans in Congress or elected Republicans in the state houses across the country to make that argument. 0.61

00:59:21.440 What we require this of naturalization. Why wouldn't we require something more domicile and allegiance for any citizen who's coming here and giving birth and missed opportunity again?

00:59:31.800 Yeah. And even so beyond the question of executive order versus legislation or even the Supreme Court precedent, which obviously comes from Wong Kim Ark or the public meaning from the framing of the 14th Amendment, you make this very good point, Ben, which is that Roberts is leaning on or sorry, Theo, you might have made this point.

00:59:52.500 Well, one of you did, and probably the other one agrees with it, that Roberts is leaning on the Anglo tradition, which is where we get our law from, you know, the English common law.

01:00:03.200 And the English common law had birthright citizenship, so we are told, you know, us soli versus us sanguinis, the right of the blood.

01:00:11.560 But this, I think, misses a really important point, which is that you had a birthright as a subject of the king, not in any modern sense of citizenship.

01:00:23.900 And so if we're going to make the parallel and we're going to cite the United Kingdom, we should look at what happens after the Second World War when the United Kingdom begins to change its previous sense of the relation of subject to king into a more modern national kind of citizenship.

01:00:40.560 What does the UK do?

01:00:42.060 The UK gets rid of birthright citizenship.

01:00:44.020 And they vote for this in 1981.

01:00:46.040 It goes into effect in 1983 precisely because of these problems of mass migration.

01:00:50.860 And so you say, look, Wong Kim Ark does not decide this definitively in 1898.

01:00:54.980 The Congress hasn't really weighed in on it.

01:00:56.980 Obviously, the framers of the 14th Amendment didn't think that what they were doing was just giving a free ride to every Chinese spy that wanted to fly to Guam.

01:01:05.060 You know, it's totally absurd.

01:01:06.080 And if you're going to look to the English common law, maybe we consider what the Brits did after that.

01:01:11.720 Because the court ruled on the substance of the matter, because the court came in, 5-4, Kavanaugh would not join them for the substantive point.

01:01:19.840 And they say, sorry, 14th Amendment gives every Nicaraguan peasant birthright citizenship immediately.

01:01:26.220 Is there anything that we can do, the executive or the legislature, to fight back?

01:01:31.940 Or do we need to fight another 49-year Roe v. Wade-like battle to get this case overturned? 0.51

01:01:38.620 Yeah, I think that's an excellent distillation, Michael.

01:01:41.860 And, you know, funnily enough, I was just in London a week ago giving a presentation on exactly what you just laid out on both the 48-49 citizenship bill that obviously Enoch Powell essentially made his career on, the early part of his parliamentary career, fighting that.

01:01:56.980 And then the 1981 and then the subsequent mid-90s Citizenship Act. So the British have changed their notion of citizenship three times in a fundamental, massive way. And yet we have a chief justice who's saying, well, we got to go back to the 15th century to look at the way the British understand subjecthood. It makes no sense at all.

01:02:15.740 So to answer your question, unfortunately, because of the expansive opinion here that this is resting on a constitutional interpretation, and I'd also add to Ben's point, because of the flaw in presenting this as an executive order assertion of power, I think in large part, most of what Congress can do has been foreclosed by this opinion.

01:02:35.820 It will require a constitutional amendment. And I think the white pill, as I've shared elsewhere, is to say that might be a good thing to get people thinking again about the form of citizenship, what's required in a small r republic and having a fulsome discussion about what we want in terms of the rights and duties and obligations that citizenship imposes.

01:02:58.980 part of the problem here is for 50 years we essentially neglected this entire conversation

01:03:03.940 and left it to abstract legal theory or judges and ropes to determine who is and who is not a

01:03:09.620 citizen right and this is can i just you know uh can i just make the point that the politics of

01:03:16.180 immigration also played into this in the sense that for a long time republicans saw immigration

01:03:21.780 as kind of a second uh you know third rail of politics other than like uh you know kind of

01:03:26.680 medicare or something like that they didn't want to touch it because they were worried they were

01:03:30.600 going to piss everybody off by doing it and the truth is that in that window where you could have

01:03:36.120 probably moved something on something like this i'm thinking the late 90s early 2000s that didn't

01:03:42.120 happen and because that didn't happen we're we're left with this situation as you said you know uh

01:03:48.760 left with a legal academic comment and and judges and robes making this decision i think that we

01:03:54.680 we need to have a real considered moment here

01:03:59.720 about what it means to be a citizen,

01:04:02.760 about what kind of citizens we want and want to welcome.

01:04:07.320 And look, Calvin Coolidge said that the founders

01:04:10.460 fought the war following 1776

01:04:14.480 because they wanted to be citizens, not subjects.

01:04:16.820 And that's what we want.

01:04:18.160 There are a lot of people I think today politically

01:04:21.200 who would be perfectly happy to just be subjects

01:04:23.800 And we should not be those people.

01:04:26.020 A very, very good point.

01:04:27.720 Before I let you go, Theo, we have to talk about, speaking of the dignity of the person and living on our own terms,

01:04:35.540 I've long thought, if God forbid I'm ever convicted of a capital offense, I'm not joking, this is not just a setup.

01:04:41.300 What I would want to do is go out, standing up, blindfolded, probably a cigarette in my teeth, by the firing squad.

01:04:48.640 That actually seems to me to be the most dignified way to go.

01:04:51.880 So Idaho has this. I believe you were rather involved in that.

01:04:57.960 I actually don't get what the big deal is.

01:05:01.700 Yeah, great question, Michael.

01:05:03.660 I mean, you know, The Guardian and a couple of other international publications have lost their mind in the last 24 hours about this.

01:05:10.460 You know, the archaic, barbaric, gun-obsessed Americans are bringing back firing squads is essentially how the op-ed from The Guardian read yesterday.

01:05:17.500 Look, I mean, really, at issue here is something, a very basic premise. It's tied to our previous conversation, which was the people of Idaho, reflective in numerous red states and some blue states across the country, elected to have capital punishment for a certain class of offenses.

01:05:34.140 and not you know abolitionist activists and a number of their sort of institutional backers

01:05:42.060 have campaigned to restrict the ability of states like idaho to import the drugs that are necessary

01:05:47.060 to create the three drug compound for lethal injection this is essentially their way of

01:05:51.480 short-circuiting the preferred choice of the people and the establishment of the law and idaho's

01:05:57.200 answer wasn't like some other red states well i guess they got us we don't have access to the

01:06:01.700 drugs. We can't use compounding pharmacies anymore. So I guess we'll have no more capital

01:06:05.940 punishment. Instead, what Idaho said was, OK, then we will revert back to a form of execution

01:06:11.360 that is still recognized under the Eighth Amendment. And to your point, Michael, it turns

01:06:15.360 out actually there are lots of criminal defendants across the country who prefer the firing squad

01:06:20.140 because it is a far more effective and humane form of execution. The average firing squad

01:06:25.600 a formalized medical death occurs in seconds as opposed to eight, nine, ten minutes in the few

01:06:31.860 lethal injections that actually occur correctly. And I think, you know, you're using trained

01:06:36.720 professionals, marksmen who are former retired military or police officers, and there's no

01:06:40.940 violation of the Hippocratic Oath that you require with health professionals using the lethal

01:06:45.640 injection form of execution. So it makes sense for Idaho. And really, again, at root here is just a

01:06:50.360 way of saying you're not going to use your embargo and your activism to short circuit the legal

01:06:54.920 choices that the people of our state have made. Yeah, I say kill them all, you know, no, no, 0.99

01:06:59.980 kill them all. But, but, you know, if you're going to have capital punishment, that seems like the 1.00

01:07:03.280 humane and right way to do it. Uh, totally, totally agree with you. Gentlemen, I have to run,

01:07:08.520 but, but not before Ben gives his final thought. Great work, Theo.

01:07:13.720 Thanks guys. Thanks for having me. Good to see you. Mr. Dominic, I'm leaving. I'm leaving on a

01:07:19.980 jet plane. I'm getting out of here, man. I want to go hang out for the 4th of July. And if anything

01:07:27.440 happens to me, I just, God forbid, I want you to make sure that my family cashes in my life

01:07:34.660 insurance policy. Everyone knows summer is upon us. We are now deep into it. And by some miracle,

01:07:39.420 we are all still on speaking terms, okay, with all, you know, somehow, I mean, even though most

01:07:45.560 of the hosts left us for today's show, maybe we're not on speaking terms. Anyway, look, one thing we

01:07:49.280 all agree on is policy genius. Whatever your, whatever your plans are, I can tell you what

01:07:53.820 they should not include. Squinting at some labyrinthine insurance website, trying to divine

01:07:58.500 whether you're getting a good deal or not. That's what policy genius is for. Most people know they

01:08:02.320 need life insurance. They just keep putting it off. If process feels complicated, you don't want

01:08:07.240 to think about how you're going to die, even though you're going to die. So policy genius makes it

01:08:10.920 super easy. It's an online marketplace. And for once, the word means what it says. You compare

01:08:16.420 quotes from America's top insurers, side-by-side, for free. Free really means free. Coverage,

01:08:22.380 prices, terms all laid out plainly. Their license team handles the paperwork and advocates for you

01:08:27.300 the whole way. No upselling, just the best policy at the best price. So right now, go to

01:08:32.020 policygenius.com, protect your family, see if you can get a 20-year life insurance policy starting

01:08:38.280 at just $276 a year for $1 million in coverage. Policygenius.com slash fire, F-I-R-E.

01:08:46.420 which can be the cause of you needing to cash in your life insurance policy.

01:08:50.800 Fire.

01:08:51.360 Compare the quotes right now.

01:08:53.220 Policygenius.com slash fire.

01:08:56.120 Mr. Dominic, good to see you, sir.

01:08:58.300 Happy 4th of July.

01:09:00.160 We may, who knows if we do a friendly fire during the octave of independence,

01:09:03.460 but if not, I will see you afterward.

01:09:06.720 Happy 4th of July to you, Michael, and great to be with you today.

01:09:09.720 All right, see you all later.

The Michael Knowles Show - July 02, 2026

Friendly Fire： The JD Vance Debate, Midterm Madness & Return of the Firing Squad

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript