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Feb. 17, 2025 - Triggered - Donald Trump Jr
01:05:56
The Left is Taking one L After Another, Live with Michael Knowles | Triggered Ep. 217
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Thank you.
Happy President's Day, especially with your guy's favorite president in charge again.
We had yet another weekend of non-stop breaking news, and my father isn't slowing down one bit, including on the racetrack.
Also, J.D. Vance went to Germany and delivered a reality check that had the globalists.
The people who hate us, the people who've given up all of their freedoms and rights other than those in charge, perhaps.
He had them in tears, quite literally.
And later, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles will be here, and he recently went into the left-wing's lion den and absolutely obliterated the entire Democrat Party platform.
We'll play you the tape.
We'll talk to him.
So make sure you are liking...
Sharing, subscribing, so that you never miss one of these episodes.
That's how we get the word out.
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Make sure everyone hears what's actually going on.
And remember, you can go to Apple or Spotify if you missed the show here on Rumble.
You can check it out there.
Or if your friends get their podcasts that way, make sure they are aware of it.
And for all the latest headlines that we cover here on the show, check out my news app, MXM News, like minute by minute, MXM, where you can get the mainstream news without the mainstream bias.
Also, guys, make sure to support our brave and incredible sponsors like the Birch Gold Group, where you can text Don Jr., D-O-N-J-R, to the number 989898 to get your free info kit on gold.
And joining me now from the Birch Gold Group is Philip Patrick.
How are you, Philip?
Doing very well.
Thank you for having me.
All right.
So gold has been in the news quite a bit lately, Philip, with its recent all-time highs.
What's driving the gold price right now?
Look, it is.
We saw 40 record new highs throughout 2024 and several record highs already this year.
Short answer in terms of what's causing it.
Demand, right?
And demand is at all-time highs.
Total gold demand set a quarterly record of almost 5,000 tons of gold by the end of 2024. Central banks bought more than 1,000 tons for the third consecutive year.
We've just seen the three biggest years in human history of gold buying by central banks.
Overall, I think the most Powerful dynamic driving gold's price is currency, right?
And I think we have to remember that over the last number of years, the Fed has printed more dollars than the rest of American history all combined together.
On top of that, as we've discussed before, Biden's 2022 weaponization of the dollar against Russia directly resulted in a five-fold growth.
Of central bank gold buying.
So we're seeing demand from central banks.
We're seeing investment demand and technology demand all growing for precious metals throughout 2024. So there's been a lot of talk recently about disruptions in the physical gold market.
What exactly is going on there?
I'm hearing Elon wants to video to see if there's actual proof of the US reserves at Fort Knox, if it's actually there.
I guess that's 4,500 tons.
What do you think is going on there?
By the way, Elon's absolutely right.
Ron Paul's been calling for a public audit of Fort Knox for 30 years, and they won't do it, citing national security, right?
But in my mind...
Why would somebody resist an audit, right?
It's simply for clarity.
So it's concerning.
And I think Elon's heading down the right path.
We need more transparency.
The London market's very similar.
It's getting crazy.
Demand for gold is at an all-time high in New York.
So they are shipping and almost emptying out the Bank of England vault.
To meet demand here in the United States in anticipation of tariffs and a continuing surge in demand.
And it's looking like they may have technically defaulted.
London are not getting the metals out in time.
So it's an interesting time in the precious metals market.
Demand is creating some uncertainty given that only 4% of all the gold being traded is physical.
Now people are requesting physical delivery.
So it's an interesting time, but it's being driven by demand.
I know there's a lot of confidence right now that the Trump administration is going to turn the American economy around.
Obviously, that takes some time.
People say, why haven't egg prices gone down yet?
I'm like, guys, we took over a disaster.
That doesn't just turn around overnight.
We can start opening doors, shedding light on things, but it doesn't happen right away.
What's the case for diversifying with gold?
I mean, it's as strong as ever, and you're absolutely correct.
We are finally now heading down the right path, but the administration are telling us to expect a bumpy road, and they're right, right?
How do you deal with a $36 trillion debt problem without some shorter-term hardships?
Now, it is encouraging, right?
Doge is very encouraging, looking at government efficiency.
President Trump is...
Pushing to rebuild a manufacturing base, but they're going to need time, right?
In the meantime...
We've got spending issues.
We have de-dollarization.
We have inflation, which, as you know, was caused by the last administration.
And it's difficult to iron out.
So we've still got a bumpy road in front of us.
Precious metals are about the most conducive asset for climates like this, right?
You know, we hit many records last year.
We continue to hit new records and all-time highs this year.
I expect it to continue as President Trump and the team try and iron out.
But the argument for precious metals today, still very, very strong.
Well, Philip, thank you very much.
Great having you on.
Guys, don't forget to check out the Birch Gold Group.
Get your free info kit on gold.
It doesn't cost you anything.
Text Don Jr., D-O-N-J-R, to the number 989898. And now, with all of that, let's get into some of the top headlines of the week.
Over the weekend, Team USA showed what America will stand for under my father.
And we will not be pushed around anymore, folks.
And we won't tolerate having our national anthem booed by other countries.
And if you do, here's exactly what will happen to you.
We're going to drop the gloves right away.
Yep.
Sam Bennett.
Brady Kachuk.
What a tilt.
What a winner.
Miller.
Miller dropped the gloves.
Perico is going to answer.
Perico.
The way speeds Eichel into the zone.
Flipping it through.
Scores!
Game tied!
As Team USA has answered.
And away goes Larkin.
It's a 2-1.
Larkin scores!
Dylan Larkin and Team USA has the lead.
Down the ice, Larkin with the open net.
Across to Gensel, scores.
Jake Gensel's got his second.
And a clincher here for Team USA.
That's going to do it.
A hard-fought Team USA victory.
And meanwhile, while that was nice, you'd think the Canadians would probably be better at hockey than...
It's very cold up there.
But I guess that's what happens when you antagonize America.
But in the meantime, my father isn't slowing down one little bit.
Yesterday...
he visited the Daytona 500 and even took a lap around the track, Daytona Motor Speedway in the Beast.
And Mr. President, the radio is yours.
This is your favorite president.
I'm a big fan.
I am a really big fan of you people that you do this.
I don't know, but I just want you to be safe.
You're talented people and you're great people and great Americans.
Have a good day.
Have a lot of fun.
And I'll see you later.
Well, I imagine if you're at Daytona, if you're a racing fan, probably pretty MAGA.
I'm not sure the sound on that mic was all that awesome.
I think we could...
That sounded a little jumbled, but it was an awesome day.
I remember when I got to do that, man, a couple years ago when my father was president the first time around and just buzzing Daytona Motor Speedway in Air Force One and then seeing the entire crowd just go nuts.
It was absolutely awesome.
And while the Trump White House continues to rack up win after win by deporting illegals, rooting out waste and stopping fraud, the media is getting dizzy while they spin in circles.
Here's CBS anchor Margaret Brennan yet again showing just how dumb the mainstream media really is interviewing Secretary of State Marco Rubio, suggesting that free speech is what caused the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust. suggesting that free speech is what caused the rise of You cannot make this insanity and this level of stupidity up, folks.
Standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.
And he met with the head of a political party that has far right views and some historic ties to extreme groups.
The context of that was Changing the tone of it.
And you know that, that the censorship was specifically about the right.
No, I have to disagree with you.
Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide.
The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those.
They had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews.
There was no free speech in Nazi Germany.
There was none.
There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany.
They were a sole and only party that governed that country.
So that's not an accurate reflection of history.
It never seems to be an accurate reflection of history.
They just say things hoping that no one will actually call them out.
But again, in this Trump administration, those days are over.
We will speak truth to liars in the media because that is speaking truth to power.
Unfortunately, they still have a lot of power.
But as you can see, their bias knows no bounds.
Now, those remarks came in response to Vice President Vance J.D.'s speech.
In Germany last week, where he excoriated the Europeans for putting censorship, open borders, endless war, and woke madness over the simple safety and security of their very own citizens.
Check this out.
Oppressing opinions isn't election interference.
Even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential.
And trust me, I say this with all humor, if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg's scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.
But what German democracy...
What no democracy, American, German, or European will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.
Well, Vance's speech even had one European diplomat in tears, literally in tears.
You can't make this stuff up.
No wonder Europe's almost over.
I mean, it's hard to believe.
Check this out.
One did this better than President Zelensky.
Let me conclude and this becomes difficult.
And yesterday, Germany and the media proved Vance right as German officials went on the record to 60 Minutes, saying that posting an insult online is a crime.
You literally cannot make it up.
Posting an insult is a crime.
The people who've destroyed European civilization think that's a crime, but you know what?
We'll let in a bunch of rapists, and if they rape our women and children, I mean, who cares?
It's just a cultural anomaly that you just can't quite understand.
To insult somebody in public?
Yes.
Yes, it is.
And it's a crime to insult them online as well?
Yes.
The fine could be even higher if you insult someone in the internet.
Why?
Because in the internet, it stays there.
If we are talking face-to-face, you insult me, I insult you, okay, finish.
But if you're in the internet, if I insult you or a politician...
That sticks around forever.
Yeah.
There's no chance they can survive with these asinine policies on there.
Don't forget, the guy that was crying on that stage, the guy that was boohooing, that was the guy that laughed when my father called out Russia and their energy prices in Europe, that they wouldn't be dependent on them, yada, yada, yada.
And as always, like with any good conspiracy or with any leftist politician, anything they say, they were wrong.
My father was right.
And we've seen what's happened over the last few years.
So these are the incompetents that are running Europe.
And they keep electing themselves, keep destroying their civilization.
It's ridiculous.
But remember now, if you make fun of someone online, it's a crime in Europe.
So they are not a bastion of free speech.
They are not a bastion of democracy.
They are an invaded nation run by absolute lunatics.
So whether it's Germany or so many of the other countries there, hopefully they do something about it before it's too late, if it's not already too late.
Speaking of invasions, on the border, we are already seeing historic success as the era of catch and release is over, folks.
One shelter in San Diego even says they've not had one migrant walk through its doors since my father took office.
And the facilities that are filling up are the ones filled up with those who are being removed, repatriated, and deported.
Here's border czar Tom Homan laying it out right now.
Has closed an office that was opened up to receive illegals.
What's that tell us?
That tells us the border is more secure than it's ever been.
We're going to have additional facilities built to detain for removal, not to hold to release.
Detained for removal.
That is what the Trump administration is doing.
That's what the promise that President Trump made to the American people.
We're concentrating on the export program.
We're not going to be—catch and release is over.
So those facilities that were at great taxpayer expense, to welcome people flying to the city of their choice, give them a free hotel room at taxpayer expense, three meals a day, free medical attention, those days are over.
We're going to detain, we end catch and release, and we're going to hold people to remove, not to release.
And on the economy?
My father is making it clear that America isn't going to be taken advantage of any longer, and that reciprocal tariffs are coming if other countries choose to put tariffs on us.
But of course, if you make your products here in the United States, if you employ great, blue-collar, hard-working Americans, then you don't have to worry about the Trump tariffs.
So maybe you should start listening.
Maybe you should start manufacturing in America again.
And foreign companies seem to be getting the message loud and clear.
Just look at this piece from Fox Business, where even a quartz and marble company from China just announced a $250 million investment into America, writing, and I quote, with President Trump in power, we're more excited than ever to commit to the United States, adding...
Hmm.
Interesting, guys.
Are you tired of winning yet?
Uh, is it nice when the adults are actually back in charge?
Seems to be to me.
But to those on the left, many are still doubling down on the woke nonsense that lost them the election in the first place.
For example, our next guest, Michael Knowles, Had this exchange with a trans activist, and it was quite the moment.
It's allowing men to be treated for the purposes of the law as women.
It's men taking 900 sports trophies from women in recent years.
Okay, that's not it.
They didn't take 900?
They took 900. This report just came out from the United Nations, actually.
890 trophies and medals across 600 women who were competing, competitors, across 29 different sports and 400 competitions.
That came out like yesterday.
And they deserved them.
It didn't happen, and they deserve them.
Okay, that is the logic I hear from the pro trans crowd.
Thank you.
They do deserve it.
We're going to get into all of that in just a few seconds with Michael.
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And guys, joining me now, host of the Michael Knoll Show on the Daily Wire, founder of Mayflower Cigars, the one and only Michael Knolls.
Good to have you back, Michael.
I think Michael's there.
Voice coming through?
I got you now, buddy.
There we are.
We're just going to have to fire some people on this side of the mic.
It's tough, but someone's got to do it.
In the Trump economy, they'll probably be able to find other jobs.
Probably not in the federal government, though.
I understand those jobs, they're gone for good, which is fun by me.
I've seen plenty.
I've seen the incompetence.
I've seen the graft.
I've seen the fraud.
I imagine Doge has only just begun.
Given that those people allowed those things to happen, given that there wasn't whistleblowers for all of this insanity, I'm not sure that they're hireable outside of government.
I don't know that they're qualified to do anything other than be a bureaucrat.
I feel badly for them, but I sort of feel like they've also done this to themselves.
Maybe that can be part of the trade with the tariffs.
You know, as we reshore American manufacturing, maybe we can just ship all of those bureaucrats overseas to Mexico, Canada, China.
That seems like a good trade to me.
I certainly do.
But, you know, you saw the clip, you know, just now, you talking to, you know, another radical activist.
I've seen all the other clips from your show where you literally debate with a bunch of left-wing activists.
It was like...
Batting practice at, like, T-ball.
We just played a clip.
What is that like?
Because it's infuriating for me to watch it because it's like, well, that didn't happen.
And if it did, it's great.
And now that we know that it happened, it's actually wonderful and we must continue to promote it.
What's going on here?
I mean, they just keep lying and lying and lying.
But I think the good news is it exposes people and, you know, hopefully that shifts the momentum.
Well, Don, I think you know exactly what that's like.
Somebody tells me you've been surrounded by a lot of people who want to rip you to shreds in recent years, as have most conservative Americans, actually, because the mainstream culture is extremely liberal.
And over the last five to 15 years, it has pushed really, really radical stuff.
The open borders, the trans craziness, you name it.
So most people are familiar with being surrounded by people who want to rip you apart.
The Surrounded podcast just...
Distills that into its most concentrated form so that you're sitting there in the center surrounded by a couple dozen people who disagree with you on everything.
And some people seem surprised that when I went on this show, chatted with these guys for like two hours or something, that I was calm.
But I think that most conservatives can behave that way because...
The facts are on our side.
We're confident in what we believe.
Reality does not actually change despite the fantasies of the radical left.
So, yeah, why wouldn't we become, you know?
And I think actually in this particular political moment, that's all the clearer.
When you've got the establishment media, the radical left activists in the government.
Shrieking and hollering because of, as we were just discussing, Elon and Doge or because J.D. Vance is scolding Europeans at the Munich Security Conference or because your father is deporting criminal aliens with face tattoos.
When the left is screeching and screaming and crying about it.
We don't really need to have an emotional reaction because we are confident that what we are doing is right.
We know that the American people are behind us.
A landslide election with the popular vote will show you that.
And now we happen to have some political power so we can restore some sanity to things.
I mean, I think it's a mark of a debate.
Just generally, that the side that is screaming and pulling its hair out and turning red in the face versus the side that is calm and collected and just stating facts, anybody, any reasonable person who's watching that debate is going to be on the side of the sane, normal person.
And I think maybe you see that play out on YouTube, but I think we've seen that play out nationally in the last six months.
Yeah, because it's sort of amazing, right?
I mean, the left doesn't really have an equivalent where...
You know, someone who's actually versed in these things sort of gets owned, you know, by one of these activist types, right?
It's the conservatives.
They'll let anyone talk.
They'll let the thought leaders of the left.
They'll debate them.
They'll talk about them.
You know, I feel like the left equivalent, they find like someone who knows nothing about it.
They try to find, you know, probably someone who means well, but just isn't all that educated on it, even if they are disagreeing with it.
And like, that's when they're like, oh, I got you because they found, you know, the lowest IQ individual on the right to actually debate.
And then it's You know, they don't have an equivalent.
They try to own people who just, you know, wouldn't be able to do that, wouldn't be great at it.
And you don't even see that anymore because it feels like literally toddlers could go up against their narrative right now and demolish it.
I think it is pretty telling that especially with the Jubilee Surrounded show, generally speaking, it's one conservative versus a couple dozen radical leftists.
And it's usually not the other way around because if it were the other way around, the 25 conservatives would be respectful and would probably present pretty good arguments and they would be genial about it.
And that doesn't make great TV. So I think actually it's the difference between the left and the right that is kind of built in there.
In terms of practical politics, one of the first rules is that when your opponent is making a mistake, you should not interrupt.
And that's generally what happens on here.
When the radical leftists are spewing total nonsense, you can kind of guide them into their inconsistencies, but really you can just let them speak.
They're going to hang their own arguments with their own rhetorical rope.
And at the national level, I think that's exactly what's happened in the last five years.
Really, you could say that's what's happened for the last 50 years.
The left has become so extreme, but especially you think that the last five years, record numbers of illegal aliens crossing the border under Biden, Biden basically welcoming them for that.
Obviously, the trans craziness, the social policy, even the foreign policy has just spun so out of control.
The left has just made so many mistakes.
They've so exposed themselves that the American people broadly turned on them in November, and it's going to take a lot for the left to unwind that.
Now, it seems to me, they still haven't really learned any lessons.
The one kind of moderate Democrat in the Senate isn't a force anymore, Joe Manchin.
So, I don't know.
They haven't really learned their lesson at all.
And I say, great.
Let them speak.
Put them on TV. Have them say everything they believe.
Have them lose their minds when your father and Elon are exposing graft and fraud at USAID. Have them defend that.
For goodness sakes, have the left defending plastic straws.
Love it.
That's a 90-10 political issue.
You guys want to defend the indefensible?
Be my guest.
Yeah, and we saw so much of that.
You know, Margaret Brennan had a couple great ones.
You know, one, I guess it was with J.D. when it was like, well, they only took over, you know, radical Venezuelan gangs only took over a couple of buildings in Colorado, J.D., and then it was with Marco this weekend.
I mean, listen, you know, free speech led to the rise of Nazi Germany.
I mean, where are they getting these history books?
It's wild, and they keep doing it.
So it's not just the...
You know, the dumbest of their movement.
These are the people that they think of as, like, their thought leaders, and they don't get it.
I mean, I love that, to your point, like, let them keep making the mistake.
Let them keep talking about it.
But it's actually shocking that they could be that ignorant, given where the world is right now and what's going on over the last four years.
Well, this is what makes me think they're going to keep making these mistakes through the midterms, through the next presidential election.
Even, you mentioned Margaret Brennan on CBS, and she in particular keeps making these mistakes, trying to defend USAID spending that didn't work out very well.
But Michael, who wouldn't want to send $7 million for, you know...
Trans Elmo cartoons in Guatemala.
I mean, it's great use of taxpayer funds when we have crappy roads, crappy health care, crappy education.
You know, our country's falling apart.
People are getting murdered in the streets.
I mean, isn't that still great use of funds, Michael?
Come on.
Well, the framers spoke so highly of transgender Argentinian Elmo.
It's literally in the Constitution.
Of course.
Where?
It's there, I can tell you, Michael.
They keep doing it, and you alluded to it just now, but Margaret Brennan suggesting, her words not mine, that the Holocaust...
was caused by an abundance of free speech.
And you think, you know, look, I'm not the greatest scholar of the Second World War, but it seems to me in 1933 in particular, you had at least three or four major provisions out of Nazi Germany that severely limited free speech and civil liberties.
Miss Brennan, can you have any example to the contrary?
And of course, they can't offer one.
You know, Ronald Reagan famously said, the problem with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
They keep going back to that.
I mean, I think this is the most tedious aspect for people left, right, and center in America, that for the American left, including the mainstream...
Every moment is 1930s Germany.
Every Republican is Hitler.
Every policy is about to bring about the Holocaust.
And people know it's not true.
They're completely sick of it.
Believe it or not, other things happened in history beyond the Second World War.
And of course, the irony is the people who constantly compare every event to the Second World War.
Don't even know that much about the Second World War.
They're just exposing a lack of knowledge and political sophistication that is stunning, which is really delightful if you're on the right side of things.
Yeah, you don't have to be a World War II scholar to know that, of course, Hitler started banning guns.
He was burning books.
They limited free speech.
That was the beginning of the rise of Nazi Germany.
It's literally the opposite of what she said.
Anyone who's taken You know, sixth or seventh grade, like, world history would know that, and yet they conveniently either forget or don't know or don't care, all equally bad.
Exactly.
And there is a reason that the left has sought to censor people.
You saw this when JD was lecturing Europe.
Europe has been even more egregious about this, effectively banning right-wing political parties, prohibiting people from praying 50 meters away from abortion clinics.
I mean, really, really crazy stuff.
But you saw it here, too, in the abuses under Biden.
The DOJ going after Catholic parishes, arresting pro-lifers in front of their seven kids.
Calling parents terrorists and domestic extremists.
So we've seen it pretty substantially in America, too.
Why is it?
This is where debates like the show that I just went on that's going viral, this is where I think you see why they're censoring it.
Because if a debate is able to happen in public for everyone to see a fair fight where both sides can be heard, be that on a YouTube interview show or be that in a presidential election, if it's a fair fight, Then the right side is going to win right now, because the left has lost the common sense.
And so, thankfully, we were able to get a little foothold into social media, which so tried to destroy your father in 2016 and 2020. Once you get just a little bit of that exposure, you are not only going to win over the choir and your core base, you are going to win over, as we saw, the majority of Americans.
Yeah, I mean, it's why the left, they were such Elon fanboys until he helped level that playing field.
You know, when they had the entire weight and force of social media, I mean, and they still do, you know, across the broad spectrum of, you know, apps or whatever you want to look at it at, when you have the entire weight and force of mainstream media, and then you have a government backing it up and or subverting truth, whatever it may be, through USAID funding all sorts of other levels of journalism, like...
I was always shocked, frankly, that elections are as close as they are.
I feel like if I was running the other side with the resources that they had, with the operatives that they had that are all home team, all functioning as the marketing department of the radical left, elections would be like 99.9 to 0.1.
It wouldn't even be close.
And yet they were still close because the ideas were always absurd.
They never made any sense.
Once you had a little exposure to that, they freaked out because they realized that they're We're losing badly, and it's the first time they've lost the cultural wars, even with the handicaps that they were giving themselves for all these years, perhaps certainly in my lifetime.
Well, and think about this.
Elon Musk put his money where our mouths are, $44 billion, to purchase...
The smallest major social media platform.
We get lost in, you know, Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.
We all think it's kind of the same.
No.
Twitter is by far, or at least was before Elon really made it much better, but it was the smallest one by far compared to Facebook and Google.
Just getting that tiny foothold into the social media was enough to shift the entire dynamic of the election.
Just cleaning up One agency of the federal government, USAID. The left loves to say now it's less than one percent of the federal budget, which first of all is a lot of money when you're considering the United States federal budget.
But in any case, sure, okay, it's just one agency of the federal government.
Just one agency.
With all of that graft, all of that abuse, all of those payoffs to fund not only foreign liberalism, but domestic liberalism.
Just to use one example, when you've got the taxpayer dollars, you pay your money to the IRS. The IRS funds the federal government.
Federal government gives money to USAID. USAID gives money to the Tide Center.
The Tide Center funds BLM.
BLM goes down, burns down your neighborhood, starts extorting corporate America to further advance leftism.
And it's this hideous feedback loop.
That's like one tiny little example.
The moment you start shedding a little bit of light on this, I think the people, even those of us who were aware that there was serious corruption, are just astounded by the sheer enormity of it.
Yeah, I guess, you know, all these left-wing narratives really collapse on themselves.
Once you reduce...
The conversation down to basic truths.
There's a lot of sort of cognitive dissidence on the left.
We're seeing it all play out in very obvious ways.
What are some of the other most egregious examples that you've seen play out where you can't even believe that you're having the conversation?
Well, I can believe that the left has gotten this extreme because their ideas have consequences.
And so left unimpeded, they're going to go all the way from, you know, Gloria Steinem in the 70s saying a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, all the way to...
A woman really can become a man.
And the reason that that particular ideology has really overtaken public discourse is because it's just so obviously ridiculous.
And on certain issues, you can negotiate and meet in the middle.
You know, the left wants to steal all of our property.
We want to keep our property.
All right, we're going to meet in the middle and have a 35% tax rate.
Not ideal, but you can...
Or on gun rights.
We want to keep our guns.
The left wants to take our guns.
They take some of our guns.
You can meet in the middle sometimes, unfortunately.
On an issue like human nature, there's no meeting in the middle.
Either a boy can become a girl or he can't.
It's not like you can suddenly become the opposite sex at age 19 and a half or something.
It's either true or it isn't.
So that's one reason that I think that issue has really taken off.
It's the same reason that the immigration issue has taken off.
It's because, as you say, Don, you don't need a PhD in philosophy or history to understand that...
Nations need borders.
You know, a border is literally the thing that delineates a nation from all of the other nations.
So when you have the left with their genius experts coming out and saying, well, actually, you know, we don't really have a border.
And actually, the law technically doesn't mean that you can distinguish.
You know, you just think, hey, shut up, man.
I'm pretty sure we can enforce basic immigration law.
And if one's political ideology runs contrary to all of our common sense...
The left thinks that means there's a problem with our common sense.
In reality, it means there's a problem with that political ideology.
And if the voters have the opportunity to vote that out, which was a little unclear because the left wanted to take your father off the ballot in this past election.
To save democracy, though, Michael.
We're going to not let you vote for people to save democracy.
And then when the person we do elect stops performing, we're just going to replace them without an election also.
Exactly.
I mean, you saw this just at the Munich Security Conference that J.D. caused this big ripple at.
He said, you know, democracies don't have firewalls.
And I think a lot of Americans are not familiar with this term.
Germany, and therefore Europe, has this so-called firewall to prevent right-wing parties and even ordinary conservatism from rising in Germany, which is the leader of Europe.
And J.D. pointed out, he said, All you guys here, you prattle on and on about democracy, but you're afraid of your voters.
You're afraid of your constituents.
You won't let them speak online.
You arrest them.
You have midnight raids because they say something you don't like online.
And then you have a political order that actually, formally...
Kicks out the right-wing parties through a so-called firewall.
And in many ways, I think J.D.'s speech there was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan.
Ronald Reagan goes to the Brandenburg Gate, he says, Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
What J.D. was saying, literally, to the Germans and to the Europeans was, tear down this firewall.
Allow your people who are smart, who have good interests and the heart of your civilization, you know, close to them.
Allow them to have their way a little bit.
I mean, if you really believe in democracy, live up to what you're speaking.
But they don't.
They want to have power with the people that are in power.
They want to make sure that no one else has a voice.
They want to keep doing their thing because there's no consequence to them.
And frankly, they probably couldn't make it in a world where it was fair.
That's right.
They couldn't.
They certainly could not.
And so that's why what you're seeing.
is a real upending of this political order.
It's not an original insight.
I first saw it from Walter Kern, but he pointed out that this shift from Biden to the second Trump administration feels like an actual peaceful transfer of power.
You know, we always hear the left prattle on about the peaceful transfer of power, but when you go from Bush to Clinton to Bush to Obama.
It kind of just feels more like people changing shifts at the regular job.
This, however, seems like a legitimate transfer of power, and the left is not particularly peaceful about it, but it's a new vision for the country.
And every entrenched power is upset about it, other than the people.
And the people, happily, in this case, have had their say.
Well, we touched on it a little bit, but obviously we're learning that the entire...
Woke agenda has really been propped up by our own tax dollars.
It was a lot of smoke and mirrors from the start.
The left can't really exist without essentially the government subsidies that we're getting.
I mean, I noticed that none of the things in USAID or any of the other things went to prop up anything that was even remotely right-leaning or conservative.
It was just always the worst of the left.
And then you start looking back in hindsight now that you know where this money is coming from.
And you understand exactly why they took the positions that they did.
It was pay for play.
The media artificially propping up those who paid them and allowed them to continue their propaganda.
This, I think, is why it was so brilliant to go after USAID first.
A lot of people would have said, you know, of all the priorities for the administration, who cares about this?
Foreign aid agency.
But of course, it wasn't really just about foreign aid.
I mean, even the good programs at USAID, and there were a couple of them, but even those had been poisoned by liberalism.
I mean, just the fact that Joe Biden...
It tied all foreign aid to the promotion of LGBT ideology and abortion.
Just that alone poisons it.
But of course, so much was leading to domestic unrest and astroturfed leftism.
And so it was so brilliant, as the administration is really going into high gear, to say, okay guys, if people really oppose the basic common sense policies that we're instituting, that's fine.
They can protest it.
This is a democracy.
But we are not going to force taxpayers to fund those protests because of the radical leftists in the government.
And what's amazing is, ever since those funds have been cut off, Don, have you seen mass protests in the streets, BLM 2.0?
I don't know.
Maybe I've just missed it.
I haven't seen it anywhere.
Well, I imagine they were funding all of that, too, by the way.
And I'm sure we'll find out more in the coming months.
But, you know, we talked about J.D. Vance a little bit.
And he literally brought a European diplomat to tears for simply saying we shouldn't have censorship or give away endless money to Ukraine.
By the way, that was the same guy that when my father said, hey, Russia's going to own your lunch if you don't have yada, yada, yada.
He laughed at him, you know, five or six years ago.
Turns out, like all conspiracy there is, my father was right and the leftist morons were proven wrong.
I mean, what is wrong with these people?
I mean, imagine being brought to tears by just a disagreement of something that, I don't know, seems fairly obvious.
Is it just that they see their power slipping away and they understand that they're inextricably linked to that hegemony and it's at risk?
I totally understand why not just the one guy, but why so many at the Munich Security Conference would have been brought to tears.
Because they, as you say, are seeing their power slip away and they are seeing a fundamental shifting.
Of the political order.
And I think this is why it was so important.
It seems to me like the second Trump administration has been around for three years now.
So much has gotten done.
I'm actually exhausted by it, which is good.
You know, I guess that's what your father said when he talked about being tired of winning.
I'm not tired yet.
Please don't stop the winning.
But I see all of these things happening.
And I think many people did not expect.
Tariff threats against Colombia, for instance, for not taking our criminal migrants that we're deporting.
I think they did not suspect really serious tariffs being levied on China.
I think they did not suspect renaming bodies of water, you know, such as the Gulf of America.
I don't think they expected this rapidity.
And part of the reason why it was so important to do that is so that your father's administration can show there is a new sheriff in town.
We are not afraid to wield power.
We are the global hegemon.
You might like that.
You might not like that.
But we are that.
And we are not going to squander this opportunity.
In part, it makes me think there was a certain providence to Joe Biden assuming the presidency for four years, allegedly.
I don't know.
I haven't seen a lot of evidence that he was all that actively the president.
But in a way, there was a kind of providence because the speed and intensity.
With which the second Trump administration has been able to hit the ground running, the clarity of political vision is not just an ordinary second term.
This feels to me like a major shift.
And it's not just me.
Look at all the tears that were being shed in Munich last week.
A lot of other people are sensing that, too.
Yeah, and I think maybe that's what we needed.
I would say, hey, you know, the last four years under Biden, it's sort of like addiction, right?
Maybe you have to hit rock bottom to understand.
What you have to understand just how fragile it all is and how one dolt like Joe Biden and a couple radical leftists in his cabinet can literally destroy it.
We also had those four years to figure out who was actually really good.
So you're not just rolling over the 16 to 20 team that we just didn't know any better when we got in.
Now they're getting things done to the...
Guys like James Carville are like, don't worry, guys.
Just wait.
They can't keep this up forever and we can get ahead of the narrative again.
It's like by the time they get outraged and all the talking points memos go out, it's like there's three things already that have gone on since then.
They can't keep up.
They don't even know what to be outraged about anymore.
This is the really important point too about transparency and giving the voters in a democracy real ample notice of what you're going to do, is that when the supposedly controversial picks for the administration came up, Tulsi Gabbard, Bobby Kennedy, Kash Patel, even Elon Musk over at Doge, no one could seriously argue that this was a big surprise.
Your father was campaigning with these people.
I was at the Madison Square Garden.
But they tried to, right?
I didn't elect George Soros or Alex Soros or any one of the other.
The difference is my father campaigned with them.
I campaigned with them all numerous times.
I mean, the American public knew who was going in the cabinet.
The American public knew who would be in charge of various things because we made it very clear.
Unlike sort of the shadow government of the Democrats, the big funders there, no one voted for any of those people.
And they certainly don't campaign with them.
They just take their money and run on their radical agenda doing whatever they wish.
Exactly.
The Democrats, they hide the ball on the real powers there.
But when your father goes out, really not beholden to anybody, one of the advantages of running after a very successful business career, is he can say, look, look, Republican squish senators, you don't want to confirm Bobby Kennedy, you don't want to confirm Tulsi Gabbard?
Well, the American people voted for them.
Or he can say, hey, look, establishment media, you're trying to raise a ruckus about Elon Musk going in and cleaning up the government.
I campaigned with him at dozens of rallies.
The American people voted for him.
So you can lie and pretend that this is some big surprise, but you're going to do so at your own peril.
You and the media, the peril of your ratings collapsing, which they have for the liberal media, and you squish Republicans in the Senate, good luck running for re-election because the American people clearly voted for this, okay?
And if you want to stymie that now and you want to go side with the swamp and the Democrats and the careerists in the bureaucracy, Be my guest.
You're not going to be around Washington very long.
Yeah, you're not going to be on the right side of history.
And, you know, we had to deal with a couple of those early on in sort of the administrative process, just getting those through.
And I think we sent that finally.
Conservatives finally, you know, sort of got together and be like, OK, he won.
There's a mandate.
Popular vote.
All the swing states.
Yada, yada, yada.
He was very clear who he wanted.
There were some, you know, squishy Republican senators that weren't going that way.
I think that when they made that very clear.
You know, guys like you, me, a bunch of the other people, we just sort of went after him and everyone else followed suit.
I think that reigned in a lot of insanity that allowed us to get Tulsi, that allowed us to get Pete Hegseth, that allowed us to get Bobby Kennedy.
Again, all people that were, you know, quite vocal and...
You know, always part of that team.
The next one, obviously, we got to get across the line is Kash Patel.
I'm seeing the feed just blow up about that because I think, you know, you need someone who actually understands those things because I think if there's a department that the American people were frustrated with before it was all exposed, before all this information was out there, you know, half the people probably watching had no idea what USAID even did until about three weeks ago.
But what happened at the FBI? The weaponization of, you know, the DOJ and the FBI against ordinary Americans.
We talked about, you know, concerned mothers at PTA meetings.
But, you know, the guy drove through a Christmas parade.
You know, well, that guy was on our watch list, but we couldn't do anything because he checked a couple boxes.
I mean, that's next.
And, I mean, I imagine we're going to find a lot there.
I totally agree.
And what you're seeing here with what Kash Patel is going to do, I'm quite confident, what Tulsi Gabbard and Bobby Kennedy and the whole admin are doing, is in many ways not charting some...
Totally novel course.
In many ways, it's just restoring what's normal.
I so loved when your father the other day made the Libs' heads explode because he tweeted out a quote attributed to Napoleon, which is that the good of society is...
No man violates the law when he is saving a country.
And this line from Napoleon echoes...
Much older political wisdom coming from Cicero in On the Laws, who says that the good or the health of the people is the supreme law or should be the supreme law.
It's actually used as an epigraph in John Locke's Second Treatise of Government.
In other words, the Libs lose their minds, big headlines, Trump is going to make himself Napoleon, it's the end of the Constitution.
And what do they find?
They find out that actually your father is articulating the words of classical political thinkers, enlightenment political thinkers.
The very men who served as the basis of our Constitution when our framers actually put it together.
It even reminds me of when J.D. Vance was lecturing Margaret Brennan about the order of charity, the Ordo Amoris, and the Libs all lost their minds.
They had no idea where it came from, that this was a basic concept, not only in Christianity, but in our political tradition.
And it's so refreshing because you recognize how much of this Modern liberal order is totally foreign to how things used to be in this country.
We used to have a pretty normal country back when we were flourishing.
And so every time the liberals' heads explode because your father tweets something or more importantly does something, I think a lot of people are just waking up to the fact that, oh wait, that thing that Trump is talking about, that thing that Trump is doing, that's actually what used to be normal in America.
Maybe we should get back to that.
Yeah, it seems like their extremism hasn't gotten as much other than, you know, failure, poverty, and war.
Maybe we should go back to that old way in terms of political think.
I mean, it seems to make a lot of sense.
But, you know, the media, again, they're losing their minds over everything.
You saw this week the AP is melting down over being taken out of the White House pool.
They're writing letters complaining about it.
They're going nuts.
They're trying to get the other media.
What do you make of the press briefing so far?
Because again, it's all available to everyone.
A company that's been activated, that's done a lie.
They've lied.
They've weaponized themselves against one side.
Why do they deserve to sit in that versus, I don't know, maybe a podcaster who is a much bigger following could objectively be proven to be far more accurate over the last few years.
There's no First Amendment right to be able to just get in the Oval Office.
You can report on everything the way everyone else does.
That's right.
You have to ask yourself, what is the point of these briefings?
Be they from the briefing room or be they from the Oval Office?
The point is to inform the American people of what the government is doing and to hear the questions from the American people for the government.
If the media are not fulfilling that intermediary role, then there's no purpose in them being there.
The last time that I was on this show with you, Don, we made a little bit of news because I suggested...
Kicking some of these establishment outlets out.
And you said, well, you know, not to get too out ahead of our skis here, but stay tuned because that's exactly what's going to happen.
And I have to say, I had suggested kicking out the New York Times or the Washington Post.
And what the White House has done is even better than that, because the New York Times and the Post have their own problems.
But the Associated Press is the...
Biggest purveyor of fake news in the establishment media today.
Just through the AP Style Guide alone, just in recent years, the AP Style Guide has insisted on woke transgender pronouns, has actually called to eliminate the use of the word woke as a pejorative.
The Associated Press Style Guide has called to capitalize the letter B when talking about black people, but lowercase the letter W when talking about white people.
Yeah, just so everyone's clear, maybe give them a little bit of understanding, right?
The AP aggregates a bunch of news from all over, then they write it as though it's their own.
But they put out a guide as to how to do journalism.
And the guide is like a manifesto of the most insane views of the radical left.
You know, anything that's conservative has to be minimized, not even talked about it.
That's not in good taste.
Anything that's woke, articulated, elevated, put out there very differently.
I mean, these are the supposed to be arbiters and aggregators of news that have done exactly the opposite.
They've pushed an agenda in each and every story published across their board because if you don't follow the style guide, you don't get to actually report there and they won't cover it.
Exactly.
You know, in many ways, it's much more insidious than what the New York Times does.
At this point, most people know the New York Times is a left-wing paper.
So you know that going in, you know what to expect.
But as you point out here, Don, the AP is establishing the rules for writing journalism.
And as I point out in my book, Speechless, the way that the left has most thoroughly...
Controlled our political order is by controlling language through political correctness or wokeness, through the schools, through the establishment media, through style guides like that of the Associated Press.
And theirs has been so insane, demanding that journalists refer to men as women.
When the right finally exposed critical race theory and its insidious effects on society and education, the AP style guide said, stop using this acronym, CRT. Please, if you're going to speak about it only...
I think the other one was you can't refer to illegal aliens as illegal because illegal is, you know, strictly reserved for people who broke laws.
But, you know, obviously coming into the country illegally is not breaking a law in their mindset.
Again, they're trying to soften the reality of what's happened on one way and then trying to make it much harsher.
Anytime a conservative does anything even remotely, it's blown so far out of proportion that that's how they've manipulated so much.
So I love that they threw them out.
They probably should never come back.
I love it.
I totally agree.
It was an important statement, and it's good in itself.
You know, it means that the...
Second administration for your father is coming in and saying look We have a mandate here and we're gonna take that seriously even on the littlest things I loved when when your father said the penny costs two pennies to produce that's crazy We're gonna get rid of the penny.
We are going to save money Even when it comes to counting pennies.
It reminds me of a line from the first season of The Crown, which is the head butler in the royal household says that it's in the little things that the rot begins.
If you really want to refresh an institution, you need to pay attention to the really tiny little things, that little federal agency that no one's paying attention to, the little pennies, and especially the words that we are using.
You've got to send that message.
Cross the bow to the establishment media.
If they still had a big audience, it'd be one thing.
If they were still doing good journalism, it would be one thing.
But neither of those things are true right now.
And so it's very important to kick these people while they're down.
Not in a cruel way, not in an unjust way, but we have to kick them while they're down.
They're down for a reason.
They have failed in their jobs.
They have failed the American people.
The American people have looked for an alternative, and it's incumbent upon us to give it to them.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because obviously Biden was an absentee president at best, right?
Nowhere to be found.
And the media just sort of went along with it.
They were fine.
He's not in company.
He's not this, despite numerous incidents, you know, falling upstairs, falling downstairs, can't remember anyone's name, walking off the stage, shaking hands with invisible people.
I mean, now my father's everywhere and the media can't keep up.
I think part of this is, like, they just don't like people working too much.
I mean, that's why they're against coming back into the workforce.
They don't want to have to work long hours because he does for the American people.
Do you think that's part of the outrage?
Certainly it is.
I loved when Elon said, look, we're not going to fire everyone in the government, but...
You guys need to come back to the office, okay?
The majority of you aren't even showing up to the office anymore.
This would not pass muster in any kind of middle-class job.
So, sorry, you've actually got to show up to work.
They can't really keep up with it.
I think you've honed in on an important point as we're talking about all the vices of the establishment media.
One of them is they are lazy.
They really are profoundly lazy, and they've been able to coast because they've had institutional power, and now that power is being taken away from them.
Really revealing them.
Also, their old tricks don't work.
You know, the fact that the left wants to call your father a Nazi, or even in those viral exchanges you were showing earlier when I was on the Surrounded podcast, you know, some girl comes up to me and says, I'm going to call you a fascist.
And I thought, okay.
All right.
I used to say this about racism, so they moved racism to Nazium.
It's like sort of the easy button of the left, right?
It's like, if I can't win an argument, I'm just going to call that out, even if you're talking about basic things.
And the problem is, I'm not saying there's not racism left in the world.
It's just not like the cause of and solution for all of life's problems.
I mean, it's a minor thing, but it is something that happens.
When you use it as the excuse to win any argument that you can't otherwise win, the only people you actually do a real disservice to are those that are actually afflicted by it.
Because now someone here is racist or Nazi and they just kind of roll their eyes and move on.
It doesn't have any effect because everything has been racist.
Everyone's a Nazi.
You know, it doesn't meet anything.
And you actually hurt those, you know, and I don't think it's a lot of people, but it's probably a lot of people throughout the world who are actually affected by these things.
And by the way, good luck calling your father, or MAGA broadly, racist.
And historic proportion of the Black vote, of the Hispanic vote for a Republican.
So good luck.
It's totally ridiculous.
It's another reason that I love your father's Napoleon tweet the other day.
They say, you know, you're an authoritarian or whatever.
And he kind of jokes about it.
I read that tweet.
I thought this joke, oh, yes, I'm Napoleon now.
What kind of headlines are you going to write?
Nobody believes this stuff anymore.
Well, Michael, where can we watch the Michael Nell show as well as some of the other stuff that you were doing?
Because I think people may want to see these full interviews.
I mean, just for the entertainment value of it all, you know, what else can preview?
And I know we still have to get that Mayflower cigar together sometime.
Well, you can find my show on Michael Knowles' YouTube channel, on The Daily Wire, of course, all around the interwebs.
You can find the show that I just sat down with that is going viral over at Jubilee.
It's the Surrounded podcast.
But most important of all, you can find the cigars at mayflowercigars.com.
And Don, you're a busy guy.
You're juggling about, by my count, like half a dozen jobs right now.
But whenever you get a breather, let me know.
I will make sure the humidor is stocked.
I look forward to it, my friend.
Michael Knowles, thank you very much.
I look forward to seeing you soon, buddy.
Good to see you.
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