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Oct. 17, 2019 - The Michael Knowles Show
48:53
Ep. 434 - The Trump Doctrine

Trump catches heat from all sides over his decision to move U.S. troops out of northern Syria, AOC and the rest of the Squad pick a presidential candidate, Kanye West gives lessons on family values, and finally the Mailbag! Date: 10-17-2019 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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As President Trump catches heat from all sides over his decision to move U.S. troops out of northern Syria, we examine the president's seemingly contradictory foreign policy impulses, and we ask, is there any such thing as the Trump doctrine?
Then, AOC and the rest of the squad pick a presidential candidate.
Kanye West give lessons on family values.
And finally, the mailbag, all that and more.
I'm Michael Knowles and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
I have before me the single greatest letter ever written by a head of state to another head of state.
This is President Trump's truly bizarre and very, very entertaining letter to Erdogan, the president of Turkey.
We will analyze it because this letter, as well as President Trump's treatment of Nancy Pelosi, as well as President Trump's treatment of the They do tell us something about the Trump doctrine.
We will connect all of the dots.
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Does President Trump have a coherent foreign policy doctrine?
A lot of people are looking at this recent letter that he sent to the President of Turkey, Erdogan, and saying he's a maniac.
He has no idea what he's doing.
He's a complete lunatic.
He might be a lunatic, but he's crazy as a fox.
And the fox matters here because...
When we think about foreign policy, there are all sorts of analogies we use.
Isaiah Berlin, the philosopher, said, are you a fox or are you a hedgehog?
Is Trump a realist?
Is he an internationalist?
Is he a liberal?
Is he this?
Is he that?
Is he this?
Is he that?
I think that President Trump does have a coherent foreign policy doctrine.
His detractors say he's impetuous and he's petty and personal and stupid and ignorant.
His more charitable detractors say that if Trump does have any sort of doctrine, it's full of contradictions and paradoxes, right?
So, on the one hand, he says...
We're going to go kill ISIS. We're going to go overseas and send troops in and kill ISIS. Then he says, we're going to take all our troops home.
We have too many troops abroad.
On the one hand, he says, we want tariffs.
Tariffs are great.
Tariffs are a great thing.
On the other hand, he says, we want to get rid of all tariffs.
We want totally free trade.
One day, he says, we hate China.
We're going to destroy China.
Next day, he's congratulating China on 70 years of communism.
Seems like a lot of contradictions.
I think the doctrine is a lot more coherent than people think.
And you can see it in this absolutely...
Wild and crazy letter that he sent to Erdogan.
Here's the letter.
This is an authentic letter.
He referred to it yesterday, but it's going around the internet.
Dear Mr.
President, let's work out a great deal!
Exclamation point.
Right at the beginning, completely uncommon, just like you'd talk to somebody in a bar.
Let's work out a great deal.
Really positive is how he starts.
Then he goes a little negative.
You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy.
And I will.
I've already given you a little sample with respect to Pastor Brunson.
This was another foreign policy conflict that we've had with Turkey.
I've worked hard to solve some of your problems.
Don't let the world down.
You can make a great deal.
General Maslow is willing to negotiate with you and he's willing to make concessions that they would never have made in the past.
I'm confidentially enclosing a copy of his letter to me just received.
History will look favorably upon you if you get this done the right and humane way.
It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen.
Don't be a tough guy.
Don't be a fool.
I will call you later.
Sincerely, Donald Trump.
There is so much in this letter to unpack.
Tells you a lot about the doctrine.
He starts out, let's make a good deal.
Very positive, very willing to negotiate.
Then he threatens the president of Turkey for the rest of the paragraph.
Then he talks about how he has worked in Turkey's interest.
Then he encourages him to make a good deal in Turkey's own interest.
Then he gives some evidence of why this is in Turkey's interest in the enclosed letter that's confidential.
Then he goes on to talk about Turkey's interest.
Then he threatens Turkey and shows why it's not in their interest to work against the United States here.
Then he includes that last bit of advice.
Don't be a tough guy.
Don't be a fool.
I will call you later.
I think the Trump doctrine, you could sum it up in those three lines.
Don't be a tough guy, don't be a fool.
I will call you later.
What does he mean, don't be a tough guy?
He doesn't mean don't be tough.
Trump talks all the time about how we need to be tough.
Trump has positioned himself as the tough guy.
What he means by don't be a tough guy is don't act foolishly out of a desire to appear tough because of your pride.
I think that's what that really means.
Don't let your pride make you fall into stupid decisions, which he then reiterates in the next sentence.
Don't be a fool.
And which I think he then vindicates that interpretation in the final sentence, which is, I will call you later.
Because Trump doesn't let his pride get in the way of things.
You know, Trump gets this knock on him for being prideful and narcissistic and petty and everything's about his own ego.
I don't think that's the case.
I think everything's about his interest.
I think he views politics through the realm not of pride, but of interest.
I think there's actually a profound humility in viewing politics through that realm of interest.
I mean, if Trump had real pride here, what would he do?
He'd go in and blow Turkey off the map.
He'd glass the whole country, right?
He'd take out the Turkish military.
He'd say, don't you dare do this.
We're going to get you.
This is the...
This is the credibility of the United States on the line.
He's not doing that.
He's saying, let's make a deal.
Okay, you did something I don't like.
We'll make a deal, though.
That requires a certain humility and not allowing pride to make you prefer to appear like a tough guy than to actually cut some sort of deal.
There's a lot more to this doctrine, but I think it actually can be distilled into some pretty clear points.
How does it compare with other doctrines?
Ronald Reagan had a doctrine.
Reagan's doctrine was in part written by Charles Krauthammer in an essay that Krauthammer wrote, in part not to even observe the Reagan doctrine, but to write the Reagan doctrine.
Krauthammer copped to this later on.
And he said, I wasn't sure what sort of foreign policy was going on here, but I figured I could encourage the White House to follow my foreign policy.
And Reagan then articulated this doctrine at his State of the Union address.
He said, quote, freedom is not the sole prerogative of a chosen few.
It is the universal right of all God's children.
He said America's mission is to, quote, nourish and defend freedom and democracy.
He said, quote, we must stand by our democratic allies and we must not break faith with those who are risking their lives on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua to defy Soviet supported aggression and secure rights, which have been ours from birth.
Support for freedom fighters is self-defense.
Now this doctrine, the Reagan doctrine, has been knocked because we ended up supporting people in the Middle East who then...
Turned out to be not so favorable to us 20 or 30 years later.
We supported people who were Islamists, who supported political Islam, and who now we would describe as terrorists.
So he gets hit for that.
That I don't think is a legitimate criticism.
The Reagan doctrine made perfect sense within the context of the Soviet Union.
It was in the national interest of the United States to constrain Soviet expansion, to constrain communism.
And so that is what we did.
We did this by advocating a policy of...
Liberal internationalism.
We did this by advocating a policy of freedom as the birthright of all people around the world and this particular American conception of freedom and we were going to stop the Soviet Union, which we did and it worked.
That's the vindication of the Reagan Doctrine.
The Berlin Wall came down.
The Reagan Doctrine worked.
What was the Bush Doctrine?
The Bush Doctrine was in many ways the extension of the Reagan Doctrine in a world outside of the Cold War.
This made less sense because politics is contextual.
Politics is about interest.
During the Cold War, we could easily identify the interests of the United States with the Reagan Doctrine.
After the Cold War, liberal interventionists lost sight of this key feature, which is what is in the American national security interest.
And in the national interest broadly, what liberal interventionists at that time said was it was in the interest of the United States to have broad sort of liberal empire that would create Madisonian ideas of freedom all throughout the world in places and in contexts that did not have any history of that.
This appears not to have worked very well, though they are very similar doctrines.
The context is what's different.
The interest is what's different.
And the Trump doctrine is a repudiation of the Bush doctrine.
Now there are other components of this too.
You know, President Trump spelled this out in a pretty nuanced statement he gave on Syria.
He's been relatively mum on his decision to pull out of Syria as all of the left and half of the right are furious with him over pulling troops out of northern Syria.
He made a statement in the White House yesterday which was...
Actually quite nuanced.
The statement he made on Syria explained his foreign policy vision as a vision of interest and nationalism.
Here he is.
President Erdogan's decision didn't surprise me because he's wanted to do that for a long time.
He's been building up troops on the border with Syria for a long time, as you know.
Our soldiers are mostly gone from the area.
We only had 26, 28, but under 50.
I think it's probably 28, but under 50 soldiers, which is a very tiny force.
And it didn't surprise me at all.
They've been warring for many years.
It's unnatural for us, but it's sort of natural for them.
They fight.
And they fight long and they fight hard.
And they've been fighting Syria for a long time.
And on the border, that's the border with Syria.
And I say, why are we protecting Syria's land?
Assad's not a friend of ours.
Why are we protecting their land?
And Syria also has a relationship with the Kurds, who, by the way, are no angels.
Okay?
Who is an angel?
There aren't too many around.
But Syria has a relationship with the Kurds, so they'll come in for their border and they'll fight.
They may bring partners in.
They could bring Russia in.
And I say welcome to it.
Russia went into Afghanistan when it was the Soviet Union, and it became Russia, became a much smaller country because of Afghanistan.
You can overextend.
You can do a lot of things.
But frankly, if Russia is going to help in protecting the Kurds, that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
This is an astounding statement because it shows a level of nuance that I think a lot of people didn't think that Trump had.
My position on the decision to move 50 or so troops out of Syria, out of northern Syria, is basically that the issue is much more complicated than anyone would like you to believe.
We'll get into that in one second.
We'll get into what this means because the foreign policy, the doctrine that President Trump just espoused in that statement is not some modern, new, crazy, shoot-by-the-hip thing.
This is a foreign policy that goes back to Charles de Gaulle.
It goes back to Lord Palmerston.
It goes back to George Washington himself.
We'll get to that in a second.
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What Trump just said here, the statement that's really getting people upset, is that the Kurds, all the Kurds aren't angels.
It's like he's attacking the Kurds.
But what he said to follow up is, you don't see a lot of angels really anywhere.
James Madison said this, right?
We're not governed by angels.
We are not angels ourselves.
And the situation in Syria is complicated.
The alliances have been changing rapidly.
Just to give you a little taste of it, until 2017 we supported the Free Syrian Army.
Then we stopped supporting the Free Syrian Army.
Now I suppose we're opposed to the Free Syrian Army.
When we tried to go in to fight ISIS, when Barack Obama went in in 2014, he tried to get Turkey, which is the second largest military in NATO, to go in with us.
Turkey didn't want to go in because the official policy of the United States was not regime change in Damascus, was not ousting Bashar Assad.
So we make a deal, not with the Kurds broadly, but with the YPG, the People's Protection Units, which is a group of Kurds, This was a tricky alliance because the YPG is associated with the PKK, which is the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party is officially considered a terrorist organization by the United States, as well as by the EU and the United Kingdom, and crucially, by Turkey.
So we make this alliance.
That's okay.
That's fine.
And we're working with a common interest to defeat ISIS. We defeat ISIS. Now the question is, do we privilege an alliance with a sub-state group of people, the YPG, which has an affiliation with a group that we consider terrorists at the State Department, or do we privilege a 67-year alliance through NATO with our NATO ally, Turkey, which is a nation-state?
There's no question about that.
Obviously you privilege the relationship with Turkey.
Obama would have done it.
Trump did it too.
The same people who are criticizing President Trump for betraying our allies are also the people who criticize Trump for undermining NATO. But we chose our NATO ally over our sub-state actor ally.
And this was a very sad situation because we have...
We've regularly abandoned the Kurds.
We've abandoned the Kurds in the 1970s when we used them to stir up trouble against Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Shah of Iran.
We abandoned the Kurds after the Gulf War in 1991 when we suggested to them that we would support them in an uprising against Saddam Hussein.
We didn't do that and they got massacred.
And we've abandoned groups of Kurds now.
This happens regularly.
So one of the arguments, one of the arguments for the pulling the troops out of Syria is now that Bashar Assad is ensconced in power, he's not going to be ousted anytime soon.
It is in the Kurds longer term interest to strike a deal for some form of sovereignty and independence with Bashar Assad rather than to continue this civil war in a stalemate and try to work out a long term alliance with the United States, which has abandoned them on multiple occasions for the last 50 which has abandoned them on multiple occasions for the last 50 I say all of that to say this is a very complicated situation.
And what is Trump's takeaway from this?
Trump's takeaway from this is nations do not have permanent friends.
Nations have interests.
They don't have permanent friends, certainly, with sub-state actors.
They don't have permanent friends with nations.
They only have interests.
Some people say this is cynical and awful and evil and un-American.
B.S. This is an idea advocated by Lord Palmerston, by Charles de Gaulle, and by George Washington himself.
George Washington in his farewell address said, quote, It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.
Why?
Does that mean we can't have any friends?
No, of course we can have temporary alliances.
But nations have interests, not personal friends.
Then Trump goes on to caution against the military-industrial complex.
We're going to bring...
Our great soldiers back home where they belong.
We don't have to fight these endless wars.
We're bringing them back home.
That's what I want on.
And some people, whether you call it the military-industrial complex or beyond that, They'd like me to stay.
One of the problems I have and one of, for instance, with the witch hunt, you have people that want me to stay.
They want me to fight forever.
They do very well fighting.
That's what they want to do, fight.
A lot of companies want to fight because they make their weapons based on fighting, not based on peace.
And they take care of a lot of people.
I want to bring our soldiers back home.
We're not a police force.
We're a fighting force.
We're the greatest fighting force ever.
Okay, so President Trump warns against the military-industrial complex.
Sounds a little bit like a kook, like a conspiracy theory guy with a tinfoil hat, right?
Sort of.
He also sounds like President Eisenhower, who used that exact phrase when he was leaving office.
He said, beware the military-industrial complex.
And he sounds a little bit like Washington, who says, avoid these permanent alliances.
Sounds like Jefferson, avoid entangling alliances too.
Then Trump explains the really tangible reason why he wants to get The soldiers out of Syria and what this means for American grand strategy broadly.
I campaigned on bringing our soldiers back home.
And that's what I'm doing.
That includes other places too, many other places.
Statutorily, it takes a period of time.
Diplomatically, it takes a period of time.
But, you know, we're in many countries, many, many countries.
I'm embarrassed to tell you how many.
I know the exact number, but I'm embarrassed to say it because it's so foolish.
We're in countries, we're protecting countries that don't even like us.
They take advantage of us.
They don't pay nothing.
Okay, what President Trump is saying here is...
Not only are we going to pull out of Syria, I want to pull out of all these 130 countries that we're in around the world.
I want to pull out.
Why?
Because he's defending the Westphalian system, the order of nation states.
As opposed to an imperial order where the United States acts as a sort of benevolent liberal empire around the world.
I think there are good arguments for both of those.
I think there's a good argument for the system of nation states.
I think there's a good argument for empire.
Trump is making clear he supports nation states and the Westphalian system.
You even see this.
You get clues about Trump's Foreign policy, the Trump doctrine, the Trump grand strategy, in his interactions even with individuals at home.
He had this meeting yesterday with the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi made a big scene about it and she stood up and pointed a finger at Trump so she could get a picture and put it on Twitter.
Chuck Schumer was crying about this at a press conference outside because the most dangerous place in the world is not in northern Syria.
It's between Chuck Schumer and a television camera.
Here's Chuck Schumer complaining about the meeting.
He was insulting.
Particularly to the speaker.
She kept her cool completely.
But he called her a third-rate politician.
He said that there are communists involved and you guys might like that.
I mean, this was not a dialogue.
It was sort of a diatribe, a nasty diatribe, not focused on the facts, particularly the fact of how to curtail ISIS, a terrorist organization that aims to hurt the United States in our homeland.
Okay.
He says Nancy Pelosi kept her cool.
She didn't.
We have photographic evidence that she didn't.
She stood up and wagged her finger like a lunatic.
The reason I bring this up is because President Trump at different times in his life will say Nancy Pelosi's the greatest.
When she became Speaker of the House, he sent her a note.
He said, Nancy, you're the greatest.
Congratulations.
Then he goes and screams at her.
On one day, he says Ted Cruz is a liar whose father murdered JFK. The next day, he said, I call him Beautiful Ted now.
One day he's attacking Rand Paul.
The next day he likes Rand Paul.
You remember just a few months ago, Trump was going after Congressman Elijah Cummings as one of the worst, most crooked members of all of Congress.
Then Elijah Cummings, very sadly, passed away today.
He's only 68 years old.
Very, very young man.
And we were all nervous that Trump was going to say something mean about him, which would serve no purpose at all and would be very unseemly.
And he didn't.
Trump sent out a tweet.
He said, quote, My warmest condolences to the family and many friends of Congressman Elijah Cummings.
I got to see firsthand the strength, passion, and wisdom of this highly respected political leader.
His work and voice on so many fronts will be very hard, if not impossible, to replace.
Very nice note.
Absolutely right.
He's not saying that he really likes Elijah Cummings here, but he is.
He's saying, look, obviously the guy was strong, stayed in office a long time.
He was very passionate.
He was one of the most passionate orators in the Congress.
And he did have wisdom.
He had certainly a lot of political wisdom.
And it's sad that he died so young, and President Trump made a nice note about him.
People who are more rigidly ideological, who have a little more, I guess you could say pride, or consistency would be another word, would have stuck to their guns and said he's a really terrible guy.
But it's all contextual for Trump.
This gives us some of the Trump doctrine.
The keys here are the context.
Circumstances changing.
One foreign policy strategy will not fit for all times and all places.
They must be adapted to different circumstances.
What worked in the Cold War will not necessarily and probably won't work after the Cold War.
And the Trump doctrine is one of radical self-interest.
So President Trump, there's an irony.
There's a paradox.
There's a contradiction.
On the one hand, everything about him is personal.
He says to Erdogan, I'll call you later.
He says, don't be a tough guy.
Don't be a fool.
He's really hitting him really hard.
But then he says, but don't worry.
I'll call you later.
There's a personal touch to it because politics is acted out by persons.
But you don't take anything personally.
Even in the same letter, he changes tone like three times.
He doesn't take this stuff, the attacks, he doesn't take that personally.
The attacks he gives, he doesn't take that personally.
He can switch on a dime.
And this is important because what he is taking is the Charles de Gaulle idea that nations don't have friends, they have interests.
He's making that even about himself.
He's saying politicians don't have friends, they have interests.
And so we work together when our interests align.
We don't work together when our interests don't align.
Be that the YPG Kurdish forces, be that Turkey, be that Russia.
In the post-Cold War world, with a rising China being the number one adversary, maybe you have to change.
Maybe Russia is no longer our number one geopolitical foe.
If China is now our number one geopolitical foe, maybe we need to play Russia off China, just as during the Cold War in the 1970s, we played China off of Russia.
It's highly contextual, it's strongly based on radical self-interest, and it has the underlying premise that the system of nation-states Is more in American long-term strategic interest than a single superpower liberal world order led by the United States.
Liberal international empire.
That's the premise.
And he will follow that to the radical self-interest of politicians and of the United States.
You can disagree with that.
But that is a coherent foreign policy doctrine.
And if you don't think it's coherent, if you strongly disagree with it, you have to propose an alternative.
And when you propose an alternative, then you have to look not just at the successes, but at the failures of that liberal internationalism.
Not just the great successes of the Reagan era, but some of the failures that came afterward.
We will get to domestic politics, where AOC and the squad endorse Bernie Sanders.
We'll even get to Kanye West family values and finally the mailbag.
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We have a lot more coming up.
We got AOC. We got Kanye.
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Me, Andrew Klavan Show, Ben Shapiro Show, Matt Walsh Show, Ask Questions in the Mailbag coming up.
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We'll be right back.
Big announcement in the presidential race.
Yes.
AOC plus three, AOC and the squad are endorsing Senator Bernie Sanders for president.
This makes a lot of sense.
They are the socialists.
They are the hard leftists.
Bernie Sanders is the OG socialist.
He was around St.
Petersburg when he felt there was time for a change.
I'm almost certain he knew Karl Marx personally, so he's been around for a long time.
They have endorsed him.
That's a big pickup for Bernie Sanders.
Tom Perez, the head of the DNC, said that AOC is the future of the Democratic Party.
And if she's the future of the Democratic Party, I guess Bernie Sanders is the future of the Democratic Party.
I thought Bernie Sanders was the future of the 19th century, but he's the future of the Democratic Party, it would seem.
It's a big win for him.
It should help him in some of his lagging poll numbers against Elizabeth Warren.
The flip side of that news is freaking Joe Biden can't catch a break.
He had a terrible debate performance.
He was falling apart.
And Barack Obama won't endorse him.
Now, you might say, okay, Obama's just not making any endorsements this year.
No, he endorsed Trudeau.
Barack Obama Is endorsing Justin Blackface Trudeau, wore blackface pretty much every single day of his life until he was 29.
That's a slight exaggeration, but we've seen at least three occasions where he did it.
Barack Obama's endorsing that guy.
By the way, Barack Obama's interfering in foreign elections.
Isn't that so awful when foreign governments collude and interfere in their elections?
Oh, no, hold on.
Hold on, never mind.
That only matters when it's a fictitious storyline used to attack President Trump in the 2016 election.
Doesn't matter when Obama does it.
So Obama's interfering in this election, endorsing Justin Trudeau in Canada.
Meanwhile, not a word about poor Joe Biden.
Bad news for Biden's campaign.
Why is Obama really not endorsing?
I think it's a self-preservation thing.
I think if he felt that Biden could win or would win, he would endorse him.
But he wants to be on the winning side.
He doesn't want to be repudiated by voters as he was in 2016 with the election of Trump.
In 2016, Obama said, I'm on the ballot.
If you vote for Trump, you're voting against me.
And guess what happened?
Trump won.
And I think he doesn't want to be humiliated again.
And what it really means is he doesn't think that Biden is going to win it.
A little shocking bit that comes out just before we get to the mailbag today.
Kanye West, a perplexing public figure.
Leader of pop culture, who all of a sudden, he's played himself off as one of the most narcissistic people in politics.
He said George Bush doesn't care about black people, so he made him a big leftist hero.
Then Kanye West endorses Donald Trump, hugs him in the Oval Office.
Kanye West starts talking about Christianity very seriously, starts reading the Bible seriously, makes an album now called Jesus is King.
And Kanye West was...
Caught on reality TV telling his wife, Kim Kardashian, that she needs to dress more modestly because she's his wife and he loves her and she's part of his soul.
And when she does that, it hurts his soul.
I count myself in the blessed few Americans who have never seen an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
But I might start watching because this clip is really, really good for the culture.
Here's Kanye West.
You now say that you're not into me wearing a tight dress.
You are my wife and it affects me when pictures are too sexy.
Corset's like a formal underwear.
It's hot.
It's like it's hot for a boo-boo.
So like the night before the bed, you're going to come in here and say that you're not into a corset bag.
I just feel like I just went through this transition where from being a rapper, like looking at all these girls and looking at my wife.
Like, oh, my girl needs to be just like the other girl showing her body off, showing this, showing that.
And I didn't realize that that was affecting like my soul and my spirit as someone that's married and loved and the father of like now about to be four kids.
shut that down real quick.
You built me up to be this like sexy person and confidence and all this stuff.
Just because you're on a journey and you're on your transformation doesn't mean that I'm in the right, I'm in the same spot with you.
This is a tremendous exchange.
People are talking about Kanye West's new comments on politics and culture and religion.
They're speaking about it from a primarily racial perspective, like Blexit and that kind of thing.
That is legitimate, sure.
I think...
Even more exemplary here is Kanye West as a millennial, as someone who speaks to millennials in Gen Z and someone who's pretty young himself.
Kanye West...
Is coming out of the same culture we all came out of.
Increasingly irreligious, increasingly uncultured, increasingly shallow politically.
And he is going through a transformation because he is learning things.
And he's learning things on every one of those levels.
He's learning, oh, hey, maybe the left isn't really helping the black community.
Oh, maybe the left isn't really helping anybody.
Oh, hey, maybe these conservatives aren't so bad after all.
Hey, maybe Republicans do care about black people.
He's learning that and then he's learning on the metaphysical level.
Oh, maybe life isn't all materialistic.
Maybe it's not all just about appeasing appetites and it's not all about a cult of the self.
Maybe there's a metaphysical universe and a moral order.
Maybe there's a God.
Maybe that God has a personality.
Maybe he's a real person that we can talk to.
Maybe...
My relationship with my wife is not just a kind of sexy, lustful relationship.
Maybe that relationship is emblematic of something higher.
Maybe the relationship of Christ to his church.
Maybe I should privilege modesty over just this kind of material appetite satisfaction.
He says all of that to her.
And then her answer is great too, because she said, you're going through this transformation, but I'm not where you are necessarily.
Maybe I'm a little behind where you are.
I love it.
It's an interaction that the culture is working out right now and Kanye West is a little ahead of the curve because Kanye West has always been a little ahead of the curve on pop culture.
That's why he's probably the leading pop culture figure in the United States.
I think this is a great thing and we can either react to it By knocking Kanye West for not really knowing everything politically and not really knowing everything spiritually and getting some things wrong here and there.
Or we can react to it with encouragement because Kanye West is actually asking questions.
He's curious.
He's following ideas with some logical rigor and he's leading people back from this brink of cultural destruction, pulling them back a little bit.
And we can either criticize him for not doing it fast enough or well enough, or we can applaud him for doing it at all.
I think it's a great thing, and I encourage Kanye on his journey.
Let's get to the mailbag.
First question from Megan.
Hey Michael, my question pertains to Pride Month, and that pride is the worst of the seven deadly sins.
I was explaining your viewpoint to my mom, also patriot, and she said, well, what about being proud to be an American?
Is he saying that is negative?
And I didn't know how to respond.
Is there a way that you would articulate a difference between being a normal level of proud and pride, or do you consider them the same thing?
Pride is excessive love of one's own excellence.
So there is a place at which being proud to be an American gets bad.
This would be chauvinism.
The word chauvinism actually comes from excessive love of country.
It comes from this figure from the French Revolution, Nicolas Chauvin, who was, you And, you know, a guy who would give everything up for his country.
That's the personage of Nicolas Chauvin.
And that chauvinism is this excessive love of one's own excellence.
That's not what most people mean, though.
When most people talk about being proud to be an American, what they're really talking about is love of country and loyalty toward country.
So that's a good thing.
That's a virtue.
I mean, that's similar to filial piety.
The love that you have for your parents is seen in the love that you have for your country.
And sometimes we use the word pride for that, but that's not really what we mean.
In the case of the pride parade, that's a totally different use of pride.
That is the use of pride as we see in The Seven Deadly Sins.
That is an excessive love of the self.
How do I know that?
Because all that pride is, is about me, me, me, me, me.
It's not even just gay pride now.
It's fat pride, skinny pride, this pride, that pride.
It's all about this radical subjectivism.
Whatever I want to do is good.
Whatever appetite I have should be satisfied.
Whatever feeling I have Pride is the only word.
I'm trying to think of another word for pride.
Whatever narcissistic tendencies I have must be affirmed.
I am beautiful.
I am wonderful.
I am brave.
I have self-care.
I have self-love.
That's the form of pride, and that is pride in the sense of the seven deadly sins.
I actually don't even use the phrase, I'm proud to be an American.
It's excusable because it's alluding to something else, but those are very different circumstances, and if...
The Pride Parade were celebrating love and loyalty toward something objective, something outside the self, something outside of one's own identity and outside of one's own desires.
Then I could understand that.
But until they get rid of that your truth and my truth and me, me, me and everything I do must be affirmed, then Pride is clearly in the vicious category, not in the category of love and loyalty.
From Aaron.
Mr.
Mr. Knowles, where do you think the left would be if Trump had not been elected?
Would the Democrats have pushed their agenda to the point where nearly all 2020 candidates are socialists?
How much is the left following their arguments to their logical conclusions?
And how much is Trump derangement syndrome?
The left always gets radicalized during Republican presidencies.
This happened during the Bush presidency just as much.
The left would be where they are.
The left would have moved further to the left.
This is far bigger than the question of Trump.
Does Trump irritate them?
He does.
Does he push them a little bit?
Sure.
But this has been a trend since the 1960s when the conservative movement really came into fruition.
And moved the Republican Party to the right, and when the new left took over the Democratic Party and moved it to the left.
This has been going on for a long time, and in some ways it's to be applauded, because it's people following their ideas to their logical conclusions, or in the case of the left, their illogical conclusions, which now denies reality itself, denies the reality of sex, denies the reality of the Constitution, denies truth altogether.
From Claire, who's your favorite monarch in history and why?
Oh, what a difficult question.
I would say Charles Martel.
Charles Martel, who beat back the invading Muslims at the Battle of Tours and saved Western civilization.
But he technically wasn't a king.
So I'll take him off the table.
If I had to choose my favorite monarch in history, at least in recent history, I would have to choose...
Prince Joseph Wenzel, who is the heir to the house of Wittelsbach.
Now, you hear that he's a prince, but I say he's a king because he's the rightful heir to the throne of England through the Jacobite line of succession.
James II, the last great king of England, was ousted by those damn dirty...
House of Commons.
He was ousted by the Parliament.
And then those Dutch interlopers, William and Mary of Orange, came on over and began that illegitimate line in England.
And this was almost rectified through the Jacobite Risings and Bonnie Prince Charlie coming from France to Scotland.
He was a little foppish, though.
Didn't work out that well.
So currently, the legitimate King of England is Franz the Duke of Bavaria.
I think he's Archduke or Duke.
One of those two.
And that would pass to his brother Max, because Franz doesn't have any kids, so it would pass to Max.
Max has a daughter named Sophia.
And then finally we get to Prince Joseph Wenzel, our future glorious king of England.
Aren't you sorry, you asked?
From Amy, based on the current political climate, which Democratic candidate do you think will take the nomination?
I think right now the leading candidate in the Democratic race is either Oprah or Michelle Obama or possibly Hillary Clinton.
What do I mean by that?
There was this poll that came out just the other day from the Boston Herald.
It said that right now Elizabeth Warren is leading in New Hampshire.
New Hampshire is a very important early state.
Liz Warren has something like 25 percent and then Bernie and Biden have 24 and 23 percent.
However, if Michelle Obama gets into the race, Michelle would have 26%.
Warren would have 20%.
The other candidates would be down around 15%.
What this shows is that the Democrats are unsatisfied with their current choices for president.
This is why Mike Bloomberg is considering running.
This is why Michelle Obama has been floated so many times.
There is no clear frontrunner right now.
Technically, if you look at the polls, it's Elizabeth Warren.
She is an incredibly weak frontrunner.
Biden is not actually out of it yet.
His campaign is completely falling apart, but he's still got a chance that he could get it.
This is anybody's race.
From Michael.
Do you believe leftists are genuinely immoral or do you believe they are amoral?
Thank you to everyone at the Daily Wire for the messages you send in making a difference in people's lives.
Depends on the leftist.
I think plenty of conservatives are immoral too.
If you're asking about the ideology, the ideology is immoral because...
In the long run, there's no such thing as amorality.
You have to pick a side.
If you stand in the middle of the road, you're going to get hit by a truck.
You're either with us or against us.
And so leftism is an ideology that...
Stokes envy.
I mean, socialism is the gospel of envy and the creed of ignorance, as Winston Churchill said.
It stokes envy.
It celebrates pride.
It encourages wrath.
It discourages forgiveness and redemption and grace.
It encourages lusts and following one's own appetites.
It encourages gluttony.
I mean, you actually can check off all of the seven deadly sins.
Those are encouraged by leftism.
So it is an immoral ideology.
I gave a speech about that at YAF one time.
Does that mean leftists are immoral?
No, I think they could just be kind of ignorant of what they're doing or going along with the culture.
It's a very tempting ideology.
I would have considered myself a liberal for parts of my teenage years.
So I have nothing but compassion and empathy for leftists, but they are following an immoral ideology.
And ultimately, if the moral argument doesn't convince you to abandon it, I would just look at the Self-interested argument.
Nobody benefits from following those vices down to the bottom.
Nobody benefits from living in a culture of wrath and misery where you think half your countrymen are deplorable and irredeemable.
That's a misery-making recipe.
So I would suggest, in self-interest at least, they abandon that.
And also they'll enjoy living in a more morally coherent lifestyle.
Last question.
Michael, I saw your interview with Peter Benjamin about transgender regret, and I must say bravo to you and to him for a very insightful conversation.
My question is, what do you think is the best approach as a parent if you have a young child who is confused, even if you have not promoted these ideals in the home?
Such a good question, as I hope that interview with Peter Benjamin brought out or displayed Transgenderism, meaning gender confusion, gender dysphoria, is a real phenomenon.
It's a real psychological phenomenon.
And it's a serious struggle for people who have a 40% suicide rate.
The 40% suicide rate is not society's fault.
It's not the fault of some ideology.
It's the fault of the psychiatric condition that affects, some estimates say 0.2, some estimates say 0.6% of people.
So you have to address this if your child is experiencing this, for instance, as you would any other psychiatric condition, as you would any other health condition, because it can be very serious.
You shouldn't just dismiss it or shove it off and say, oh, well, you're really a boy.
Don't worry about it.
You should take them seriously.
Also, just like any other health condition or like any other psychiatric condition, you shouldn't indulge fantasy.
The leftist premise, when the left, and they do this constantly in the press, and it's not fair, but that's life, they call me and Shapiro and every other person who doesn't indulge fantasy, transphobes, hateful people who hate those suffering from gender dysphoria.
Let me make myself perfectly clear.
I believe that I take gender dysphoria much, much, much more seriously than anybody pushing this absolutely wicked transgender ideology.
I think that their premise is fundamentally wrong.
The premise of the left is that fantasy is good and reality is bad.
And if you live according to reality, that you are somehow cruel and wicked.
And If you just look at the analogy on other mental health conditions, it would be like telling a schizophrenic that really the voices from the walls are talking to him and he really should follow their dictates.
It is so profoundly patronizing and condescending and contrary to human flourishing.
The people who indulge transgender ideology, per se, are committing a very serious wrong.
They are committing a sin and they should stop doing it because it is hurting people and it is in no way compassionate.
That's what we see from transgender regret.
Also, you should take this condition seriously, and you should try to get your child any help that they can, and you should try to tell them that reality is reality, and you should also use the tools that modern medicine has available to us, and modern psychiatry, and of course, the church, of course, spiritual discussions as well.
That would be my recommendation for a coherent and compassionate way to address transgenderism and not the shallow, condescending, patronizing nonsense of those who would indulge fantasy and gender ideology.
That's our show.
I'm Michael Knowles, and I will be back next week, so I hope you have a good weekend.
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