On the ninth day of Christmas, Iran may give to me death to Ayatollah Khamenei! Mideast analyst Josh Yasmeh joins to analyze what the Iran riots mean for the United States and the world order. Then, Amanda Prestigiacomo and Amber Athey join the Panel of Deplorables to talk Huma, Comey, and the Deep State DOJ; the first abortion clinic-free state in the union; and the widespread that a YouTube star known only for smashing dinner plates on the Internet has turned out to be somewhat gauche.
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What do Kim Jong-un, Mahmoud Abbas, and Steve Bannon have in common?
They messed with the wrong bad hombre.
We will analyze Trump's castration of Bannon and the important lessons it holds for international relations.
Then, this day in history.
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
What a day.
You know, I think we're going to have to reshoot that Christmas morning video that we did.
We released a Christmas morning video a couple weeks ago and, you know, the Daily Wire did it.
It had me and Drew and Alicia and Ben was in a bunny suit.
But we're going to have to reshoot it now because I now know what Ben Shapiro really looks like on Christmas morning.
We've got a lot to talk about before we get to that.
We have to talk about something just as important, maybe more important, and very, very fitting for the tone of today's show.
That is American History Tellers by Wondery.
So, first thing you gotta do, there's a great new podcast.
Go subscribe to American History Tellers on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Go do that right now.
I talk all the time about how nobody reads any history.
You should.
It is...
I think the best bang for your buck and education for your minute listened or read, you're going to get by studying history.
So how well do you really know history?
You know, we're talking about the stories that make up America and Americans.
Everything from the words we speak, the ideas that we share, the values that we admire, and the freedoms we defend, they can all be traced to our shared history.
Trouble is, nobody knows anything about history.
If you read like one history book, you will know more about that topic than virtually anybody else in the country.
I know what you're thinking.
You don't have time to read history.
You didn't have time to study it.
That's fine.
Tune into this great podcast.
It puts you inside the shoes of everyday people in the time, place, and event that made history.
The Cold War, the American Revolution, Prohibition, the Space Race.
There's one on the Gold Rush.
It will show you how history affected them, their families, and it affects you today.
This is hosted by Lindsey Graham.
No, not that Lindsey Graham.
It would be funny, though.
It would be funny to hear his voice doing a podcast.
No, this is Lindsey Graham, who's a history buff.
He's teamed up with PhD historians to bring you a new take on history.
So they take a first-person's narrative with sound design to really get history stuck in your mind.
It's a really innovative way to do it.
It's really tailored for the medium.
It's a good show.
You should definitely check it out.
The first six episodes for this new series cover the Cold War.
This is something that I studied a lot when I was in college.
The stories of the Cold War are endlessly enlightening.
You could keep studying them.
They're having ramifications certainly today.
You know, one way to debunk a lot of nonsense news stories about Russia is to actually learn about our relationship with Russia in the Cold War.
So the show premieres today, January 3rd.
You can start listening to the first episode right now.
Listen to the rest of my show first, but then make sure you subscribe so that you can listen to that show today.
It's really, really good.
American History Tellers on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen.
American History Tellers.
Subscribe today.
Okay.
Talk about American history.
And what a great opening to the third season of America.
It's only January 3rd, but this is the third season of America, the reality show.
The second season ended in a kind of boring way.
I don't know if you remember the last episodes, but it was tax reform, lower corporate tax rates, blah, blah, blah.
Now we've got new cast members, better plot lines, new conflicts.
So let's get into this first episode.
It all began when quotes leaked this morning that Steve Bannon allegedly gave to author Michael Wolff, who's now writing a book called Fire and Fury Inside the Trump White House.
So according to these quotes, Steve Bannon calls Donald Jr.
a traitor, unpatriotic, and says that he's going to get cracked like an egg on national television.
So of course, the White House issued this response.
I want you to get this where he brings.
I want you to find this Nancy boy, Elliot Ness.
I want him dead.
I want his family dead.
I want his house burnt to the ground.
I want to go to the middle of the night.
I want to kill the dead.
No, I'm only joking.
I'm only joking.
Trump's response was far more vicious than Al Capone.
This response is so incredible.
I am just going to read it verbatim.
It's a little long.
Don't worry.
You will not want to miss one syllable.
President Trump, this is a statement from the president.
Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency.
When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.
Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating 17 candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican Party.
Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn't as easy as I make it look.
Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country.
Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than 30 years by Republicans.
Steve doesn't represent my base.
He's only in it for himself.
Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party.
Yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was.
It is the only thing he does well.
Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue whom he helped write phony books.
We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda.
Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.
Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.
And with that, Rosie O'Donnell learned that Trump actually went very easy on her 10 years ago.
This is brutal.
This is classic Trump, vintage Trump.
Watch the language.
He says when he was fired.
Now, Steve Bannon insisted when he left the White House that he chose to leave.
He said if he could better support the MAGA agenda from outside of the White House, from Breitbart or wherever.
Trump totally smacks that down.
And by the way, Trump held his fire at the time, didn't he?
When Bannon was saying all these things, Trump played very nicely.
He didn't contradict him.
It's only when Bannon turned on Trump that we get this smackdown.
More language.
He says he lost his mind.
What Trump is telling you is Steve Bannon is not credible.
Do not believe it.
not just he has a vendetta against me or he's an angry ex-employee who wants to get back at me.
He's saying he lost his mind.
He's saying his very capacities of reason are not credible.
He then goes on and says Steve was a staffer, not a strategist, not the ex-CEO, not the blah, blah, blah.
Steve was a staffer.
Who does he work for?
He works for me, numero uno.
And we have these memories, these images of Trump that says you're fired.
You're fired.
That's why he uses that word in the statement.
That's why he calls him a Stafford.
Donald Trump is the guy who decides who gets fired.
That's his catchphrase for 15 years.
He brings up the Senate seat in Alabama.
Now, why does he pounce now?
Steve Bannon has been causing trouble for Donald Trump for a few months now, for more than a few months now.
Why does he pounce now?
Because Steve Bannon's credibility is at the lowest it's ever been.
Steve Bannon, through sheer tyranny of will, made Republicans lose the Alabama Senate seat for the first time in decades.
We lost Alabama.
This is impossible.
So he strikes him exactly when he's weakest, when he's most vulnerable, when he knows he can pry Bannon right off of the actual Trump base.
And look at even just the wording, pretend.
He uses the word pretend twice.
Steve just pretends that he has influence.
He's just a pretend guy.
He uses the word fool.
He uses the word phony.
Why?
Donald Trump knows when words stick to people.
Ask Little Marco.
Ask Lion Ted.
Ask Crooked Hillary.
Ask Low Energy Jeb.
On and on and on.
He's using these words because Bannon has no political experience.
And after Alabama, he has no demonstrated political skill other than his brief association with Donald Trump.
So why pretend?
Because Steve Bannon is playing the political guru.
He's playing Karl Rove.
He's playing David Axelrod.
He's playing a guy who's been in politics for a long time.
To my knowledge, he's worked on one campaign.
Granted, he entered that campaign at a pretty high level for a brief period of time.
But...
There was a tweet that went out yesterday and it said Steve Bannon is constantly walking around thinking that he's in his own Martin Scorsese biopic.
He's got the Layla piano song playing in the background.
That's the image you get.
It isn't the real political strategy.
He isn't the real Metternich.
He isn't the real Machiavelli.
He's just playing one on TV and that's something for our culture in which so many things are merely performed for television rather than legitimate and with substance.
He's gluing this to Steve Bannon.
And what does he close on?
He closes on build it up and burn it down.
You get these two different images.
We know Steve Bannon is famous for saying he wants to burn it down, burn that lady dog to the ground, burn it down.
But what is Donald Trump's image?
He's a builder.
He's worked in construction.
He builds things.
He's going to build a big, beautiful wall.
I know how to build things.
He's contrasting himself with Steve Bannon, what he does, which is constructive, with what Steve Bannon does, which is destructive.
And he's lumping him in with what he said about Democrats on Twitter just a couple days ago, which is that I get results and all of these other people are just obstructing and attacking and breaking things apart.
Really classic word choice, classic Trumpian word choice.
So there's a lot to be learned from this statement, not just from Trump's personal behavior, also about his foreign policy.
First, let's cover the basic thing with the word choice.
Donald Trump is a New Yorker, and New Yorkers do not take any guff from anybody.
And I don't mean guff.
That's actually the line that Billy Joel used to use to end his shows.
He would play whatever song he'd turn and say, don't take any guff from anybody.
Don't do it.
This is a real thing that is prevalent in New York, I'm sure elsewhere in the country as well, but it's a real sense.
And Billy Joel, Donald Trump, these guys are from Queens, the Bronx, Long Island.
Don't do it.
Don't ever take any guff from anybody, not even once.
Why?
The preeminent military historian Don Kagan once told me that he knew that passages of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War were true because of the Brooklyn schoolyard Sometimes it takes a thief to catch a thief.
Sometimes it takes a bully to catch a bully.
Everybody I know who knows Donald Trump, and I know a few people who have worked for him, known him socially, knows family, they all talk about his loyalty.
If you're loyal to Trump, he's loyal to you.
What happens when you turn on Trump?
Well, just ask Rosie O'Donnell.
In 2006, completely unprovoked, Rosie went on The View to criticize Trump for giving Miss USA Tara Conner a second chance after it was revealed that she drank and partied underage.
I know something none of us have ever done.
So Trump decided not to decrown her, and Rosie criticized him.
During that segment on The View, she called him a snake oil salesman, she accused him of having gone bankrupt multiple times, and she attacked his multiple marriages.
So what did Trump do?
He just kind of, he said, that's okay, I'm not going to respond, right?
That's what he did?
No, he did this.
Well, Rosie O'Donnell's disgusting.
I mean, both inside and out.
You take a look at her, she's a slob.
She talks like a truck driver.
Rosie attacked me personally because I was very happy when her talk show failed.
The other thing that failed, and this was a real monster, and everybody was suing her, was her magazine.
Her magazine called Rosie was a total disaster.
So I loved it.
I gloat over it.
I think it's wonderful because I like to see bad people fail.
Rosie failed.
I'm happy about it.
She's basically a disaster.
Well, she called me a snake oil salesman.
You know, coming from Rosie, that's pretty low because when you look at her and when you see the mind, the mind is weak.
I don't see it.
I don't get it.
I never understood.
How does she even get on television?
I believe Barbara made a terrible mistake putting her on, and I think Barbara's probably paying a big price.
If I were running The View, I'd fire Rosie.
I mean, I'd look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers.
I'd say, Rosie, you're fired.
Very subtle.
Typical subtlety from Donald Trump.
But this is how New Yorkers talk.
There are three components to glean from what he just said.
It was blunt, it was brutal, and it was funny.
It was funny.
You can't help but laugh.
Even if it's so mean, it's mean-spirited, it is funny.
This is the last part that everybody seems to miss.
So the big news yesterday was Kim Jong-un.
So Trump responded, quote, Now, the pearl clutchers on both the left and the right started wailing and gnashing their teeth.
I love this response for three reasons.
One, it's a response to a genuine threat from North Korea.
So North Korea is saying, we have a button.
We're going to send missiles and blow up your cities.
We're not going to listen to you.
We're not going to abide by international norms.
And there's nothing you can do about it.
That's a genuine threat.
And it tests the credibility of the United States.
And there has to be some sort of response.
Now, also, and there was a response.
And we've been working for a long time and we have a lot of military assets in the region.
Also, it's a joke.
It's a joke and it cuts Little Rocket Man down to size.
This is the worst thing to do to these people.
Kim Jong-un, he's trying to seem like a serious, scary leader.
And what does Trump do?
He just makes fun of him.
It just says, oh yeah, that's cute.
Oh, by the way, my button works because you can't get your missiles to fire.
Now, the other reason, the third reason why I really enjoyed this tweet is it worked.
Just hours after this tweet, North Korea reopened a line of communication that had been closed off with South Korea for two years.
It had been closed off during Barack Obama, and they reopened this line of attack.
Why is it?
I wonder.
There has to be a credible threat of force, and Donald Trump seems like a crazy person.
Many people even in this country think that he's a crazy person.
This works to his advantage.
He knows that it works to his advantage.
You can see it from the tweets.
I think anybody who still believes that he's just randomly tweeting whatever thought pops into his head hasn't been paying attention for a year and hasn't been paying attention to the shocking effectiveness of his administration.
So it did work.
Kim Jong-un somewhere in a little bunker in Pyongyang, little rocket man is quaking in his boots because he doesn't know what president of the United States would ever tweet something like that.
This guy.
And it's credible.
So this isn't something new, by the way.
This line of attack, my button's bigger than your button.
This followed precisely the line of attack that Trump had during the 2016 campaigns.
Do you remember when Marco Rubio started doing his Don Rickles impression when that campaign was on its last legs?
He's always calling me Little Marco.
He's taller than me, he's like 6'2", which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who's 5'2".
Have you seen his hands?
They're like this.
And you know what they say about men with small hands?
You can't trust them.
He said I had small hands.
Actually, I'm 6'3", not 6'2", but he said I had small hands.
They're not small, are they?
I never heard that one before.
I've always had people say, Donald, you have the most beautiful hands.
What?
He hit my hands.
Nobody has ever hit my hands.
I've never heard of this one.
Look at those hands.
Are they small hands?
And he referred to my hands.
If they're small, something else must be small.
I guarantee you there's no problem.
I guarantee it.
Welcome to America.
America in 2018.
So Trump was called sophomoric for engaging in this measuring contest.
But he doesn't take any guff from anybody.
George W. Bush was in many ways a very good president, but he failed on this front.
He failed marvelously because he refused to hit back at the scores of people who were attacking him very unfairly.
And those lies, those innuendos drowned his presidency.
Maybe in the historical record he'll be vindicated.
To some degree, but they drowned out his presidency and Trump won't let that happen.
He fights back.
Ben has talked for years about this.
When a bully hits you, you hit back twice as hard.
People accuse Trump of being a bully.
Maybe it is, but it takes a thief to catch a thief and sometimes it takes a bully to subdue a bully.
Now, what does all of this mean for broader policy?
A lot.
Unlike Barack Obama, whose entire foreign policy consisted of strategic patience and leading from behind and phony red lines and more flexibility after my election, Vladimir, and empty threats and apologies, Donald Trump is confrontational.
His opponents say confrontation threatens world peace.
It'll kill us all in a nuclear war.
If we only hug our enemies and appease them and give them whatever they want, then they will let us all live in peace.
Another Republican president understood how ridiculous those fantasies are.
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory.
They call their policy accommodation.
And they say if we'll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to love us.
Alexander Hamilton said a nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one.
Now let's set the record straight.
There's no argument over the choice between peace and war.
But there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace, and you can have it in the next second.
Surrender.
Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement.
And this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face, that their policy of accommodation is appeasement.
And it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender.
That's the only guarantee of peace and what a peace that is.
That's the peace of slavery.
There is no choice between peace and war, only fight and surrender.
We had Victor Davis Hanson on the show a few weeks ago to talk about his new book, The Second World Wars.
In that book, he makes an excellent observation.
He writes,"...throughout history, conflict had always broken out between enemies when the appearance of deterrence, the material and spiritual likelihood of using greater military power successfully against an aggressive enemy, vanished." The appearance of deterrence.
You see that when the appearance of deterrence to the aggressive enemy.
Is there a more perfect description of the Obama doctrine?
Don't worry about whatever we say.
Don't worry.
worry, we'll never actually use our military might to a decisive degree, a total surrender of American credibility.
In one exchange, he actually told Russia, he told the leader of Russia, Medvedev, that he was blustering in threats against the regime.
I will have more flexibility after my election.
And Medvedev responded, I will transmit this information to Duh.
It was caught on an open mic.
These are the policies that threaten world peace.
And we saw it happen in real time.
The joke goes, they told me if I voted for John McCain, we would get a third war in the Middle East.
And they were right.
I voted for John McCain and we got a third war in the Middle East.
That's exactly what happened during eight years of Barack Obama.
No decisive victories, just more quagmires, incredible amounts of death because we were simply managing wars that the administration in Washington was half-heartedly fighting, that it didn't want to win, that it didn't want to directly challenge anybody, that it wanted to lead from behind.
What did that get us?
It got us chaos and destruction.
It lost us whole states throughout the Middle East.
And it was a major knock to our allies and to American credibility.
Donald Trump doesn't do that.
It isn't that he's playing 4D chess.
That's what they accuse us of.
They say, you think he's playing 4D chess?
He's not.
It's not that he's playing 4D chess.
It's that he has credibility when it counts.
So Barack Obama – there was a piece in the New York Times, which very occasionally I will read, and the New York Times said Obama's lies compared to Trump's lies – Trump has all of these lies, and Obama had very few lies.
But all of Trump's lies are basically to the tune of I exercise every day.
Yeah, I'm a really cool guy.
Everybody loves me.
I had a big crowd size, right?
Those are the Trump lies, these little egotistical minor white lies.
Barack Obama's lies are, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
That is more important.
He admitted to blustering to the American people, to deluding the American people.
Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, boasted about conning the American people.
His foreign policy advisor, Ben Rhodes, boasted about conning the American people.
Those are the lies that matter.
So you might say, well, Trump doesn't have any credibility.
He's always exaggerating.
He's always talking about his crowd size.
Okay, he doesn't have credibility on his crowd sizes.
He doesn't have credibility on trivial, superficial nonsense.
But where it counts, he's had credibility.
He's followed through.
Before the UN vote condemning the United States for moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, another promise that was followed through after countless administrations and Republican administrations promised to do it, and they didn't follow through.
Trump did follow through.
But before that vote, Trump threatened and said the United States is watching the votes and there would be consequences.
Nikki Haley reiterated precisely as much.
The vote proceeded anyway and what happened?
If this were Barack Obama, if it were another fake red line, nothing would have happened.
But with Trump, the United States immediately cut almost 4% of the UN's total budget.
Not just our contribution to the UN, 4% of the whole thing.
And that's just a warning shot.
We've given Pakistan $33 billion in aid over the past 15 years.
We had allocated...
$250 million in aid for the fiscal year 2016.
We haven't given them that aid yet, and we're going to withhold those funds until they play ball.
No more Mr.
Nice America.
How about aid to the Palestinian Authority?
Will the U.S. maintain its present level of funding of the U.N. Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in light of the General Assembly of Jerusalem resolution pushed by the Palestinians and the Palestinian U.N. representatives' threat to unleash,
quote, all the weapons we have in the U.N.? I think the President has basically said that he doesn't want to give any additional funding or stop funding until the Palestinians are agreeing to come back to the negotiation table.
And what we saw with the resolution was not helpful to the situation.
We're trying to move for a peace process, but if that doesn't happen, the President's not going to continue to fund that.
You tell him, sister.
Be still, my beating heart.
Oh, it's pitter-pattering out of my chest.
Absolutely right.
Now, I mentioned the military historian Donald Kagan earlier.
He has an excellent book on the origins of war and the preservation of peace.
That book is called On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace because he's not the most creative titler in the world, but he makes an excellent point.
One of the great threats to peace, one of the great causes of war throughout history, has been when great powers get complacent.
They rest on their laurels.
So let's take two examples.
The Second Punic War in the 3rd century BC and the Second World War.
What do those wars have in common?
In both cases, a dominant power was perceived to be complacent.
In the case of the Second Punic War, there was Rome.
In the Second World War, Britain.
And so a lesser but angry power rose up.
Surely a minor defeated power would never challenge the dominant power again.
Surely North Korea would never really launch a rocket.
We don't need to worry.
It would never really happen.
Coincidentally, both of those wars were among the deadliest conflicts of all time.
Ancient historians considered the Second Punic War the greatest in history.
World War II is the single deadliest conflict in world history with deaths estimated between 50 and 80 million.
This is a real trouble.
So listen, we have got to get to this day in history.
Before we get to this day in history, and we'll conclude with some thoughts on how this all ties together, but before we get to this day in history, I have to tell you about something very important.
I have to tell you about upside.
So, how are your things to do in 2018 checklist coming along?
Mine is a work in progress.
I don't do checklists.
I kind of just sticky notes all over the wall like I'm schizophrenic or something.
I do have one thing on mine that belongs to every business traveler's list.
Book your next business trip at Upside.com.
So, you know, when you're booking business travel, first of all, travel is such a degrading experience these days.
Flying is so awful.
They cram you into little tin cans and put you in the cargo hold, and maybe they'll give you a little thing of peanuts but no more pretzels because they might – or too salty or too expensive or something.
So when you're booking your business trip, when you do, I promise you will get a better business travel experience and a free pair of Bose SoundLink wireless headphones.
More on that in a second.
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So, all of that, plus it has great prices for flights, hotels, and rental cars.
To get your free pair of Bose SoundLink wireless headphones, those are really good headphones, just book your first business trip with Upside by going to upside.com slash...
Do you know Marshall?
Can you guess?
Covfefe.
Covfefe.
C-O-V-F-E-F-E. That is upside.com slash...
C-O-V-E-F-E-F-E. To claim your Bose SoundLink wireless headphones.
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And Seaside for complete details.
Okay.
Now it is time.
Oh, you know, Marshall, you've reminded me.
That's too bad.
We were going to have a great this day in history.
It's a very personal one.
It's near and dear to my heart.
But if you're on Facebook or YouTube, I've got to say goodbye to you.
If you're on TheDailyWire.com right now, thank you for subscribing.
You help keep the lights on.
You help keep Covfefe in my cup.
If not, go to DailyWire.com right now.
What do you get?
You'll get me.
You'll get The Andrew Klavan Show.
You'll get The Ben Shapiro Show.
You'll get no ads on the website.
Yeah, yeah, it's all really nice.
The Leftist Tears Tumblr.
You're going to need it.
You're going to need it.
I promise you the threat of a nuclear war and the button on Trump's desk, that is a much less severe danger to you than the flood of leftist tears that are pouring out when they read those tweets.
Make sure we're cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority.
We're cutting off aid to Pakistan.
You really, really need to get this Leftist Tears Tumblr or you're going to be washed away.
It's going to be like that scene in Deep Impact, you know, and the giant wave is washing away Morgan Freeman or whatever.
That is what's going to happen to you.
So go to dailywire.com.
We'll be right back.
Okay, it's time for This Day in History.
This day in history.
A topic near and dear to my heart.
On this day in history, in 1961, the United States cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba.
I know, it was terrible.
Luckily, the president stockpiled all of his Cuban cigars before that happened.
Now, after two years of deteriorating relations, we closed our embassy in Havana.
I love Cuba.
I traveled there for a weekend in June with our senior producer Jonathan Hay and Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring.
They have very delicious stogies there, beautiful peaches, truly wonderful people.
But the United States has bungled our relations with that island ever since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959.
And this has a lot to do with what we're talking about today.
Those errors almost plunged the world into global nuclear conflict during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
These decisions say a lot about confrontation and appeasement.
Bill Buckley, William F. Buckley Jr., when he started the National Review, founded the modern conservative movement, he refused to support Dwight Eisenhower because he considered him too soft on communism.
Cuba is the prime example of that.
In early 1960, Castro signed a trade treaty with the Soviet Union.
In response, the U.S. began funding and training a group of Cuban expats to overthrow the dictator.
All well and good.
Good to get a commie out of there.
Trouble is that campaign was tempered.
It was moderate.
It was bit by bit.
So Castro began stealing even more private property.
To this day, Cuba is essentially a mafia nation.
It's a mafia-run nation with the Castros at the helm of it all.
So in response then to that, the Castros stealing private property, including countless American interests, the U.S. began to implement certain cutbacks in trade with Cuba.
Too little, too late.
Two months later, just a few months into his presidency, John F. Kennedy sent the Cuban exile force into Cuba during the Bay of Pigs debacle.
It was a major failure.
It was a major setback for the Kennedy administration.
Just one year later, the United States entered into a 13-day standoff during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the 50-year Cold War ever came to direct nuclear conflict.
Two big nuclear buttons, both of which worked on two separate desks.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had met Kennedy four months earlier, and his impression was that Kennedy was weak.
Again, the perception of weakness, the perception that this superpower had lost its resolve.
He installed missiles just 90 miles off American shores, with Fidel Castro chomping at the bit to launch them.
How many times had the U.S. weakly challenged Castro, tried to assassinate him, tried to invade?
In fact, many historians credit Castro's hotheadedness with helping to convince Khrushchev to back off.
Now, as a result of this bungled foreign policy, the United States was forced to remove our missiles from Turkey, though fortunately nuclear war was averted.
What should we learn from all of these episodes, past and present?
Peace can only be maintained with the credible threat of force.
As Ronald Reagan put it, peace through strength.
Teddy Roosevelt said to speak softly and carry a big stick.
But sometimes you can't speak softly.
Sometimes you have to speak bigly, especially on Twitter.
And in those cases, everybody needs to know that we have a big button on our desks and it works.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Come back tomorrow.
Tomorrow, we'll do it all again.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.
