Amazon founder Jeff Bezos goes to outer space, Texas Democrats spread the WuFlu on their private jet booze cruise, and a supermarket magnate warns of 10-14% increases in the cost of groceries by October.
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Jeff Bezos became the second billionaire in outer space yesterday and the one to make it farthest out.
Irritating, it seems, just about every single person in the country except for me.
I think it's terrific.
With the way we blow cash in this country, on aimless wars, on open borders, Dr.
Fauci funding the Wuhan laboratory in freebies from the money printer.
Jeff Bezos has every single right to spend his wealth on an inspiring joyride, especially before inflation eats all that money away.
If Texas Democrats can take a maskless, taxpayer-subsidized private jet booze cruise to D.C., then Jeff Bezos can slip the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday from Ivan JC, who says, Since we're redefining everything, I no longer own a firearm, but rather a cordless hole puncher.
That's a great way to put it.
You know, I think I'm going to have to add that to the lexicon in the next edition of Speechless.
Two can play the language games.
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I love the Bezos thing.
I think it's great.
Everyone is going after this guy.
Even Tulsi Gabbard, who's quite nice usually and talks about the spirit of Aloha.
Even she was making the joke that everyone else was, which is, hey Bezos, please stay up there.
Do the world a favor.
By the way, I think that that tweet Tulsi sent out, I bet that was a staffer tweet.
It's just not the right tone.
Tulsi has a certain tone, so I would guess that that was probably a staffer.
But everyone else was making the same point.
Stay up in space.
No one wants you.
You're too powerful.
You control everything.
By the way, where's my latest Amazon package?
I ordered it 27 minutes ago.
Why isn't it at my door yet?
But yeah, we hate you, Jeff Bezos.
I think it's a great way to spend money.
The big complaint that people are making about Jeff Bezos spending some untold millions of dollars on going up into space for 15 minutes is they say, Jeff, you could have solved poverty.
You could have ended poverty, but instead you took a joyride.
And first of all, Jeff Bezos can't end poverty because the poor will always be with you.
We know that.
Our very Lord and Savior told us that, so I think it's probably true.
I think we can take that one to the bank.
Second of all, it's not as though Jeff Bezos just blew his money on some vanity project.
It's not as though he just blew his money on some silly preposterous only self-indulgent thing.
He spent his money on an inspiring activity.
He spent his money on an actual human achievement.
To explore the cosmos, to slip the surly bonds of Earth, and to inaugurate an era of what very possibly will be commercial civilian space travel.
That's great.
I like that.
Among all the mundane, tedious, awful things that we're debating in our politics, we can't even agree that a man is a man and a woman is a woman.
We're talking about letting criminals out of prison and all sorts of just ugliness in our politics.
With the implicit, and actually explicit promise with these multiple companies, Richard Branson's, Jeff Bezos, that other civilians will be able to go into outer freaking space and look at this beautiful creation of planet Earth, that's wonderful.
I'm so glad that he could do that.
The criticism of Bezos spending his money this way reminds me, it's almost exactly the same as the criticism of the Catholic Church, and I guess some other churches too, but it's mostly the Catholic Church, for having really beautiful cathedrals.
I'm sure you've heard the criticism before.
They'll say, the Catholic Church...
Has all this money and what?
They're spending it on the greatest works of art ever that glorify God and bring truly sublime and beautiful art to the common man?
They're spending it on that instead of some other welfare program or something?
That's awful.
That's terrible.
They should just cure poverty.
No, you're never going to cure poverty.
And it is a wonderful thing for civilization when wealthy individuals and wealthy institutions spend their money in a way that is inspiring and uplifting and gives glory to God, and even in ways that promote human achievement.
I think that's a wonderful thing.
I can't believe I've got to defend Jeff Bezos.
You know that I'm not the biggest fan of gigantic multinational corporations and big technology companies, but credit where credit is due.
I think it's great.
It's way more inspiring than certain other joyrides that are going on these days, notably the joyride of Texas legislators who hopped on a private jet.
They brought a case of Miller Lite with them, and they fled the state to D.C. because they didn't want to be forced to vote on a law that they simply didn't have the votes for to impede.
One of these legislators is a woman by the name of Michelle Beckley.
They're all fundraising off of this.
They've all fled the state.
They're not doing their jobs and they're trying to fundraise on it.
So this woman, I think, is typical of the group.
She goes, my name is Michelle Beckley.
I'm one of the brave Texas Democrats who came to D.C. to fight for voting rights in my state.
Now I'm fighting to flip a seat held by an anti-democracy Republican.
Can you help us get more followers?
Generally speaking, if you need to tell everyone that you are brave, you are probably not brave.
If you are really brave, if you're doing something admirable and virtuous and courageous, people will recognize that from the act itself.
You won't need to tell them about it.
She's obviously not fighting for voter rights.
She's fighting to impede voter rights in her state.
The people elected their representatives.
The representatives are trying to secure elections and protect our democracy by instituting, reinstituting very basic voting rights measures.
And the Democrats totally were outnumbered here because the people don't want their agenda on this.
And so they broke the law by leaving.
What is actually happening here is that this woman and all of the other people on that private jet absconded from the legislature.
They picked up some booze.
By the way, showing an ID along the way, in order to buy alcohol, you generally need to show an ID in this country.
And yet they don't believe that you should show an ID to go vote, which is why they fled the state in the first place.
They jumped on a private jet without any masks on, I'll also note.
So, So this is now in violation of state law by fleeing and in violation of federal law by not wearing the masks on the planes.
They go to D.C. to hang out and fundraise, and then they spread COVID to everybody.
So COVID rates are spiking among this group of people.
They're calling it the Delta variant airlines.
That's going to be the new name of their private jet.
So nothing about this admirable, nothing about this virtuous, nothing about this brave.
And they're not even...
Because the COVID virus is spreading so quickly among these legislators, they're not even going to tell us how many of them have been infected anymore.
So, the last number we've got is that more than 10% of them now have the virus.
We're told that the Democrats, they're the party that takes COVID seriously.
We awful Republicans, we're not taking COVID seriously.
Well, they're the ones spreading it on their private jets.
Kara Santucci, who's the spokesman for the Texas House Democrats, said that they would be providing daily rapid tests for the members.
They've been keeping people apprised.
Because don't forget, they're in D.C. right now.
So they're meeting with a lot of people on Capitol Hill.
They're meeting with people in the White House.
But it turns out now, COVID is spreading like wildfire.
And so, in a Monday statement, they're saying they're no longer even going to release their daily COVID count.
And what would you know?
What would you know?
The White House staffers that they're meeting with are all of a sudden coming down with COVID.
These guys, man, they cannot win for losing.
They say that they're trying to support democracy.
They end up quite clearly subverting democracy.
They say they're fighting for the rights of everyone to vote, but they're actually undermining very basic election integrity measures that the vast majority of Americans support.
And as usual, they're saying that they're taking COVID very seriously and they more than just about anybody are spreading the virus.
Multiple White House officials have tested positive for COVID-19, including at least one case that the White House did not publicly disclose and an aide in Nancy Pelosi's office who tested positive right after she met with the Texas Democrats.
Yes.
And yet, despite...
To me, if I were in crisis communications, if I were a PR person...
I would look at this situation, and let's say everything were equal, the institutions were not tilted for the Democrats.
I would look at this and I would say, this is about as bad a look as it gets.
You undermine the will of your constituents to take a private jet, you break multiple laws, and you spread the allegedly horrific worst epidemic in history around the country to some of the most powerful people in the country.
This would not be a good look, right?
And yet...
Because things are not all equal, because the prevailing institutions entirely favor Democrats, the media can't get enough of these Texas legislators.
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The mainstream, lamestream establishment legacy, I forget what we're supposed to call them now, the old media, the old corrupt leftist media, cannot get enough of the Texas Democrats who are currently breaking the law and spreading COVID to everybody.
Our friends at the Media Research Center put together just a little montage to give you a smattering, for those of us who don't watch this sort of stuff on TV, of the coverage that the Texas Dems are getting.
Texas Democrats who blocked a voter suppression bill and fled to D.C. are showing how to fight for voting rights.
More than 50 elected Democrats left Texas last night to block the passage of new voter suppression laws.
More than 50 Texas Democrats flee the state, all fighting for voting rights.
These Democratic lawmakers are trying to stop a controversial voting law...
...using the only tool they have left...
...in a last-ditch effort to block a voting restrictions bill.
They are running away to block a Republican effort there to limit the ways people can vote.
Texas Republicans are trying to push through new restrictions.
Restrictive voting rights bills.
One of the most restrictive voting bills in the country.
Why is this bill even necessary?
Texas state Democrats are trying to fight back.
It's showing Democrats here in the Capitol how to fight.
Democrats are bracing for their next battle against voter suppression efforts.
You know, when you talk about what you're sacrificing, you are sacrificing a lot.
Why was it so important to you to make this sacrifice?
What are Democrats prepared to do to protect our elections?
What are you, the voter, prepared to do?
So the corporate media, the regime media, are pushing one message, which is that this is voter suppression and this is terrible and it's a threat to our democracy.
Now, what the Republicans in Texas and elsewhere are doing is, in many cases, just bringing back the election integrity measures that we had 18 months ago.
Bringing back and reaffirming election integrity measures that we had before corrupt politicians used COVID as an excuse to take away all of our election integrity measures, including those that even Barack Obama some years ago said were very important.
It shows you something we've been talking about for many, many days now, and weeks actually.
The disparity between the people and the ruling class that purports to speak for the people.
The vast majority of Americans support the voting rights measures that you're seeing go into place in Texas.
This is clearly true as a matter of the majority of Texans because the majority of Texans elected these representatives who are now putting in place these voter measures.
But it's true around the country and it's true across demographic groups.
It has widespread support.
And yet the corporate media, which is the stooge of the liberal ruling class, is pretending that the people are crying out.
No, our democracy is crying out for election integrity.
The people are crying out to have their votes protected with election integrity measures, not by taking away election integrity measures.
Because when people who are not eligible to vote, vote, that steals a vote from eligible voters.
That suppresses, that truly suppresses people's right to vote.
So of course, I don't want to hear the liberal regime lecture me.
On the importance of masking.
They don't believe in it.
They never have.
I don't want them to lecture me on the threat of COVID. They don't believe it.
They never have.
And most of all, I don't want them to lecture me on threats to our democracy.
They hate our democracy.
And as Angelo Cotavilla points out, when they talk about our democracy, what they are talking about is their oligarchy.
And some people have had enough.
Rand Paul...
Rand Paul, if he never does anything else in his political career but just smack down Anthony Fauci, it will have been a life well lived.
It will have been a political career that was worth it.
Dr.
Fauci, the most powerful politician in the country, who's never appeared on the ballot, who no one has ever voted for, who is accountable basically to no one, presidents come and go, Dr.
Fauci remains.
Fauci has been caught in lie after lie after lie about the masks, And about how long it's going to go on and about this, that, and the other thing.
But most notably, he's been quite dishonest on the subject of the virus's origins.
He dismissed what all of us plainly saw early on, which was a connection between the Wuhan laboratory and the virus.
He dismissed it.
He tamped it down.
He contradicted it.
Then when the evidence was so obvious, he opened the door a little bit again and he said, okay, possibly.
He denied that His organization at the NIH was funding gain-of-function research, the kind of research that beefed up viruses such as COVID. He denied that his department at the NIH was funding this kind of stuff going on at the Wuhan laboratory.
And he denied this under oath.
Rand Paul believes he perjured himself, and I do too.
Now it's clear that that did happen and he's fighting desperately tooth and nail and Rand Paul won't let him get away with it.
Now you're getting into something.
If the point that you are making is that the grant that was funded as a subaward from EcoHealth to Wuhan created SARS-CoV-2, that's where you are getting.
Let me finish.
We don't know if it did come from the lab, but all the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab, and there will be responsibility for those who funded the lab, including yourself.
I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, Senator, because if you look at the viruses that were used in the experiments, That were given in the annual reports that were published in the literature.
It is molecularly impossible.
No one's saying those virus caused it.
No one is saying that those virus caused the pandemic.
What we're alleging is that gain-of-function research was going on in that lab, and NIH funded it.
That is not...
Get away from it.
It meets your definition, and you are obfuscating the truth.
I'm not obfuscating the truth.
You are the one.
I'm expired, but I will allow the witness to...
Let me just finish.
No, you are.
No, I am rubber and you are glue.
And Senator, excuse me, Senator, whatever you say will bounce off of me and stick to you.
Okay, Senator?
And that actually is probably true because the media will just cover for Fauci and will dishonestly attack Rand Paul.
But what Rand Paul is saying is 100% true.
And you've got to pay attention to what a talented politician Dr.
Fauci is.
Fauci, earlier on, you remember we played the clip on this show, when Rand Paul found out that Dr.
Fauci was in fact funding gain-of-function research and was in fact funding the Wuhan laboratory, Dr.
Fauci said, that is not true.
We were not funding that kind of research, and even if we were, it's totally fine.
Right?
He said, hold on, well, what is it?
It wasn't happening, but okay, it was, and it's cool.
I like it, actually.
Can't have those things simultaneously.
So what Rand Paul says is, you denied funding all this kind of stuff.
You denied that this kind of research was going on.
Now we know that both things are true.
And people are going to be held responsible for funding this laboratory where this gain-of-function research was happening.
Then Dr.
Fauci comes out and he says, the specific grants that we were making were not specifically for viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, such as the Wu flu.
But that's not what Rand Paul was saying.
So then Rand Paul comes back to him, and Fauci's trying to just stall here and just kind of run out the clock.
But Rand Paul's saying, no, no, I'm not saying that you funded this specific virus.
I'm saying that you funded gain-of-function research.
You funded this laboratory where gain-of-function research was happening, and you should not have been doing that.
You don't need to be funding the specific virus that they're working on to know that it's a problem to be funding a place at our greatest geopolitical threat, China, where they're doing this kind of research that can shut down the global economy.
And Dr.
Fauci just keeps trying to just change the topic just a little bit so that he can grandstand.
He's a very adept politician, which is why he's outlasted so many presidents.
And you're going to see the corporate media, who none of us elected, flacking for Dr.
Fauci, who none of us elected, over Rand Paul, who a lot of people elected.
This is so typical.
You are going to see the blob, which for a hundred years now has become less and less and less accountable to the people and to our constitutional system.
You're going to see them all flack for one another.
And we, the people are going to be called the threat to democracy.
You saw it yesterday on Twitter.
Great example.
Twitter, hipster Rasputin Jack Dorsey, whom none of us have elected, suspended a duly elected member of the United States House of Representatives.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, She's the real boogeyman now.
The left hates Marjorie Taylor Greene because she said kooky things on Facebook some years ago.
So they say, see, we've got to kick her out.
We've got to give more power to the blob and less power to anyone who's ever said anything kooky on Facebook.
So Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted out, quote, The controversial COVID-19 vaccines should not be forced on our military for a virus that is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65.
With 6,000 vax-related deaths and many concerning side effects reported, the vaccine should be a choice, not a mandate for everyone.
What's the lie?
This was taken down for misleading information about COVID-19.
What's the lie?
Okay, I'll tell you what their excuse was to temporarily suspend her account and to say that this was misleading.
They said that the virus is not dangerous for non-obese people in those under 65.
But what they'll say, well, a handful of people who are not obese, who were under 65, faced serious consequences.
So lie, five Pinocchios, 10,000 Pinocchios.
That's a lie, mostly false.
6,000 VAX-related deaths.
They'll say there were 6,000 reported deaths, but we haven't confirmed that those deaths are, they were reported to the VAERS vaccine injury system, but we don't know.
We haven't confirmed.
So that 10,000 Pinocchios, that's a lie.
Many concerning side effects reported.
I guess that part is just obviously now admitted by the CDC and the FDA, even though at first they tried to deny it.
Okay, so that part they're not going to say.
And therefore the VAX should be a choice, not a mandate for everyone.
Well, that's wrong.
They'll say that's a lie too.
They'll say even a normative statement, even a statement of what policy we should have, they'll say that's a lie because the experts in the media and in the scientific public health establishment whom no one elected, they are to make our public policy.
They are to be our rulers rather than our duly elected representatives.
According to the progressive worldview, Dr. Fauci and Jack Dorsey have a far greater right to rule than someone whom the people elected.
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Ben, we'll be right back with a lot more.
Coronavirus is spiking in some places around the country, and it's not just on Democrat private jets, though it is spiking there.
It actually is.
I hope none of them face serious consequences from the virus.
Looking at the statistics, it's very unlikely that they will face serious consequences.
And so, because of that, it's probably pretty funny that the people who have been hammering this issue are also the ones who are ignoring all the precautions they want everyone else to take and where the cases are spiking.
But you know where else they're spiking?
Among illegal aliens.
New report from Fox News says that the number of illegal aliens testing positive for the coronavirus in the Rio Grande Valley sector of Texas has skyrocketed.
Guess what the increase is compared to the previous 14 months?
Just guess.
You think it's 9%?
No.
You think it's 90%?
No.
It's 900%.
900%.
And so you're going to hear your benevolent bettors tell you, hey...
Don't go on vacation.
Hey, just stay home.
Don't go out if you don't need to.
In LA, you're getting another mask mandate even if you've taken the vaccine.
Hey, everyone needs to get vaccinated right away.
Super duper.
Hey, you shouldn't really go to school yet.
You shouldn't go to church.
You shouldn't go to businesses.
Just ignore those people.
Just ignore them.
Because they obviously don't believe it.
Because if our ruling class really believed that any of that were really important to the public health, they would shut down the border.
You can't say that it's dangerous for vaccinated Americans who have been locked down for 18 months to leave their homes, but it's totally cool for unvaccinated, untested, illegal foreign nationals to pour across our border to the tune of almost 200,000 a month.
You can't say that and be consistent.
What this is about, not so much a virus, not so much the particular public health measures.
It's about the imposition.
It's about who rules us.
We mentioned it a little bit yesterday about the rates of COVID among the illegal aliens.
Well, now this new report, 900% increase.
And there's no end in sight to the foreign nationals pouring into the country.
Speaking of spikes, bad news for the rest of us here in America.
Because we knew this was going to happen.
The title of the show yesterday was The Bill Comes Due.
There's a lot of fears of inflation right now.
Well, John Katsimatidis, who's a very well-known guy in New York.
If you're not from New York, maybe you haven't heard of him.
He ran for mayor or governor.
I think it was mayor some years ago.
He's the owner of Gristidi's, a very popular grocery chain in New York.
And just a magnate in the supermarket business.
Well, John Katsimatidis is predicting that the price of your groceries is going to spike, and it's going to spike more than it has already.
It's going to spike very soon.
You know, we're both in the food business and we're in the oil business, and food prices are getting higher, and we expect even more increases by October.
And we're...
first.
So it's a real number.
And oil prices, I know they're a little bit off today, but I expect even higher numbers.
And it's a real, it's a sine wave.
And everything just goes up and down.
But it's, I expect by October, You're going to have over a 6% annualized rate of inflation.
So you're going to have over a 6% annualized rate of inflation.
You're going to see 10% to 14% according to Katsimatidis by October 1st.
It's a real number, he says.
10% to 14% inflation on your groceries.
And then even after that spike, because he says, you know, it's a sine wave.
It goes up and down.
But even after that spike, you're going to see 6% annualized.
But at least your 4th of July cookout was 16 cents cheaper.
That's what Joe Biden said on the 4th of July.
Yeah, the cost of your barbecue is 16 cents cheaper.
Cool.
At least you're not getting mean tweets.
Right?
At least the mean orange man is not doing what?
I don't know.
Colluding with the Russians and the Ukrainians.
Whatever.
Neither of which turned out to be true, and instead they installed a guy who did collude with the Ukrainians, because his son was being bought off by...
Anyway, you know, we've talked about the Hunter Biden story a lot.
Anyway, what's the point in even complaining about it?
That's the world we're in right now, okay?
That's the regime that we are living under.
And it's not just Joe Biden.
Joe Biden doesn't know what end is up.
Joe Biden is a vessel of this liberal establishment of the regime that involves big tech and higher education and lower education and the multinational corporations and the news media and all of it.
Nicole Hannah-Jones is the person who created the 1619 Project at the New York Times trying to reframe American history, reframe our country away from what it once was to now this increasingly radical left-wing regime.
Nicole Hannah-Jones.
Has some curious things to say about Cuba.
As you know, right now there's protests going on in Cuba.
I'm not sure it quite amounts to a revolution, but people are challenging the dominant regime in Cuba, the communist dictatorship.
The regime says it will do anything to maintain power, and they're already beating people and killing people in the streets.
Nicole Hannah-Jones believes that Cuba actually is an exemplar, that Cuba is the most racially equitable country in the atmosphere.
She said this, this was a while ago in 2019.
She's been pretty quiet about Cuba the last few weeks.
She says it's the most equal multiracial country in our atmosphere.
She said this in an interview with Vox.
Vox is Ezra Klein.
And she said that socialism was the factor behind Cuba's purported equality.
We're getting a little taste of that right now.
I'm not saying we live under a communist dictatorship.
We're not there.
We're living under something a little bit different.
You might call it managerialism.
You might call it surveillance capitalism is a new term that's going around.
We're living under a kind of corporatism.
But it's not quite communism.
But I think you're getting to see a taste of this.
Equality does not imply a standard of living.
People can be equal when everyone's really rich and doing very well, and people can be equal when everyone's really poor and miserable.
And People can be unequal, but everyone's doing very well in terms of material wealth, and people can be unequal, and most people are poor, and some few people are very, very wealthy.
And it's that latter category that you're starting to see here masquerading as equality.
People are not equal in Cuba.
The Castro regime were billionaires, and virtually everyone else was very, very poor.
But okay, you take a few people, a few of the lucky ones who are maintaining power out of it, and everyone's equal and everyone's miserable.
That, I think, is what...
What they're after here.
And it is what you're seeing, by the way.
You're seeing beefing up of policies to support the poorest of the poor.
You're seeing the richest of the rich get richer and richer and richer, including Jeff Bezos, who I'm very pleased with today.
So I'm not even just singling him out.
I'm just pointing out that the richest class, they're doing much, much better.
And what's being hollowed out is the middle class.
They're the ones seeing their jobs shipped overseas.
They're the ones seeing their opportunities curtailed.
They're the ones seeing their communities destroyed.
They're the ones who are seeing confiscatory sort of policies pushed upon them.
They're the ones who are seeing their dollar devalued disproportionately so.
That's the real play here, and it's a hollowing out of political power, because if you hollow out that American middle class, then you are transferring not just wealth, but political power away.
Now, speaking of regime change that might be happening in Cuba right now, I've got to get to this clip of General Petraeus.
General Petraeus, one of the top guys in the United States military, former director of the CIA. He was ousted over a sex scandal.
Petraeus, though, was head of US Central Command.
He's played a very important role in the wars in the Middle East over the last 20 years.
General Petraeus is criticizing what he considers to be the hasty decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
I fear that we will look back and regret the decision to withdraw.
And I think, sadly, we may regret that sooner than I had originally thought when I said that right after the decision was announced.
Beyond that, I think we will also look back and regret the hasty way in which we seem to be doing this with no plan yet.
But what I see now, sadly, is the onset of what is going to be quite a brutal civil war Considerable ethnic and sectarian displacement, assassination of government officials, millions of refugees flooding into other countries, particularly Pakistan.
We will see the return of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, though I don't see an immediate domestic security threat for the U.S. in that regard.
Okay.
The war that we've been fighting for 20 years...
We're now getting out of.
And this is a hasty decision, according to General Petraeus.
I want to be careful here.
I'm not saying that there's never an argument to fight a war for 20 years.
Actually, for much of our civilization's history, the United States doesn't really like long wars, but the West has.
I mean, England, the mother country, fights wars by the decade and by the century.
You have the Hundred Years' War and other such engagements.
So I'm not against long wars necessarily.
But what is the purpose of the war in Afghanistan?
I think we need to be honest about that.
The purpose of the war in Afghanistan, the point, the aim, is just to be there.
It's just an occupation.
It's just to sort of keep the relative peace and impose our interests there.
It's a war of empire.
Fine.
Like many of those British wars, it can be a war of empire.
But then we have to acknowledge that the United States is an empire, and the people who are instituting that empire don't want to acknowledge that.
They want to pretend that it's something else.
And a lot of Americans in the United States, a lot of our people don't want an empire.
They want a nation.
And I think the debate right now is not so much Democrat versus Republican or left versus right.
It's the people who want an American nation versus the people who want a liberal empire.
On the side of liberal empire, you have some people who are Republican or traditionally more conservative, like General Petraeus, like George W. Bush, like a number of other people.
And you have people who are traditionally on the left wing.
You've got the corporate media.
You've got various other places.
The State Department, largely.
Now, who's trying to pull out of Afghanistan?
Well, Joe Biden is sort of making the call here, isn't he?
But Donald Trump made the call before that.
So it doesn't cut neatly along these sorts of partisan lines.
I think it's a much more fundamental debate that Donald Trump's election really threw in a stark light.
Do we want to have a nation?
An American nation?
And if we do, what kind of nation is that going to be?
Or do we want to have a liberal empire?
Is our flag, the flag of the stars and stripes, the flag of the American nation?
Or is it the rainbow flag or the BLM flag that makes these sort of universal claims that we're now flying at embassies around the world?
Speaking of regime change, there's regime change potentially going on in California.
You know Bruce Jenner is running to replace Gavin Newsom.
That's probably very bad for the Republican Party since Jenner himself has said that he doesn't care about the Republican Party.
He doesn't care about the Trump agenda.
He's mostly loyal to the LGBT, LMNOP crowd and specifically to transgenderism.
So that's not good.
That's...
He ain't my candidate.
There's some other candidates who don't have a very high name ID and aren't raising a lot of money.
And then there's Larry Elder.
My friend Larry Elder has a national presence, could maybe make a play here.
And Larry Elder has been kept off of the ballot by the California Secretary of State.
Here's why.
People are wondering, why is my name not on the list of candidates to recall Governor Gavin Newsom in this recall election?
Got this letter from the Secretary of State, Democrat, Here are the following reasons why you might be disqualified.
No declaration of candidacy was filed.
Doesn't apply.
Nomination signature requirement was not met.
Doesn't apply.
No income tax return, disclosure, consent, and acknowledgement form was filed.
Doesn't apply.
No income tax return were filed.
Doesn't apply.
The only box check, listen to this, incomplete redacted or unredacted income tax returns were filed.
We filed both redacted and unredacted tax returns.
So I guess what they're saying is we redacted something that shouldn't have been redacted or we didn't redact something that should have been redacted.
Never has anybody been disqualified from a ballot here in California for a reason like that.
This morning, I'll see you in court.
Love Larry's response here.
This is a bogus technicality.
They passed this law that you need to submit your tax returns as a way to go after Donald Trump because they wanted Trump to release his tax returns.
This was struck down for the presidential, but they kept that provision in place for lower races, including gubernatorial.
Larry Elder is saying, I met all of the requirements, but I think what they understand in California is that Larry Elder is probably the greatest threat to Gavin Newsom.
Even if he's not a major threat, he's still probably the greatest threat out there.
So they're trying to keep him off the ballot, and he will see them in court.
One of the great statesmen of our age is not a Republican politician.
He's not a Democrat politician.
He's not a dictator.
He's not an oligarch.
He is Tom Brady.
Tom Brady was at the White House this week and he demonstrated such political skill.
At some point, this guy's going to have to run for office.
He's so...
Obviously, very good looking, very popular, very wealthy.
Checks every box for a politician.
But he also strikes the right note.
So Tom Brady, standing right next to President Biden, made some pretty wild political jokes.
And no one can quite tell where they landed.
But we found our rhythm.
We got on a roll.
Not a lot of people...
You know, think that we could have won.
And in fact, I think about 40% of the people still don't think we won.
I understand that.
You understand that, Mr.
President?
I understand that.
Yeah.
And personally, you know, it's nice for me to be back here.
We had a game in Chicago where I forgot what down it was.
I lost track of one down in 21 years of playing.
And they started calling me Sleepy Tom.
Sleepy Tom.
Okay.
Now, obviously, someone either at the White House or on Tom Brady's team wrote the jokes, maybe both.
But the jokes are really good political jokes.
And they're really good political jokes, especially for this moment where Tom Brady, who is very famously friends with Donald Trump, is he's not boycotting the White House like all those immature athletes who didn't like Trump.
But...
He's showing up there and he's making some jokes about Biden.
But the jokes could be seen to Biden's benefits.
So the first one is, yeah, people didn't think we could win.
About 40% of people still don't think we could win.
Yeah, you know what that's like, Mr.
President?
Because Biden can go along with the joke because Brady did win.
So he's saying, yeah, those 40% of people are wrong.
But also he's making the point from the White House that 40% of Americans don't believe Joe Biden won that election.
That's a pretty indicting number.
Then you see him make the Sleepy Tom joke.
Yeah, you know, I forgot this and they called me Sleepy Tom.
Well, he's the part of the joke that Biden can go along with is that, you know, look, this just happened once and people are making a big deal about this.
But the part of the joke that's actually pro-Trump and anti-Biden is he's saying, yeah, I made, I forgot something.
And so people are comparing me to you, Mr. President, who you can't remember anything because you're a doddering old man.
I'm not...
I'm not saying like, yeah, Tom, you totally roasted Biden.
And I'm not saying, Tom, you jerk, you sold out Trump.
I just want to point out the political skill of staying right on that line, walking that tightrope.
Very, very impressive stuff for if and when Tom Brady wants to get involved in politics.
It was rather charming, too.
He's kind of a gentleman, you know?
I mean, when you think of all these athletes today who are just making these childish, ugly statements, Colin Kaepernick, the hammer girl from the Olympics, you just think, ugh, gross.
Tom Brady shows up there, and he just has a little bit of charm, and he tells some jokes, and jokes, you can laugh at them if you're on the right, and you can laugh at them if you're on the left.
I think we need more of that in politics.
Speaking of disbelief, the White House Communications Director, Kate Bedingfield, Has now gone on television to double down on the White House's position that social media companies need to do their bidding and censor their political opponents.
When Facebook and Twitter and other social media outlets spread false information that cause Americans harm, shouldn't they be held accountable in a real way?
Shouldn't they be liable for publishing that information and then open to lawsuits?
Well, we're reviewing that.
And certainly they should be held accountable.
And I think you've heard the president speak very aggressively about this.
He understands this is an important piece of the ecosystem.
But it's also the other thing the president has pointed out and spoke to when he was asked about this yesterday is It is also the responsibility of the people creating the content.
And again, I would go back to, you know, there are conservative news outlets who are creating irresponsible content that's sharing misinformation about the virus that's getting shared on these platforms.
So it is a big and complicated ecosystem, and everybody bears responsibility to ensure that we are not providing people with bad information about a vaccine that will save their lives.
I hope Trump's lawyers are taking good notes here.
Donald Trump is suing these social media companies for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights.
It's a very hard lawsuit to argue because you have to argue that the government is using social media to enforce its own policies.
Remember, the First Amendment is...
It only puts certain obligations on the government.
So if a private entity violates your free speech rights, that's generally speaking not going to fall under the First Amendment.
But if the government is using big tech as a proxy, if they are colluding with big tech, if they are threatening big tech, To get big tech then to clamp down on political opponents, then that would fall under the First Amendment.
It's as though the Biden White House wants to walk right into this.
And maybe they've got some really clever 4D strategy.
Or maybe they just think there's no way that the conservatives are going to get them, that the liberal regime has so much power that no judge is going to really rule against them and the media are going to flack for them.
It's just they're not going to face any consequences.
But we will.
Really, really troubling story coming out of Arizona State University.
An ASU professor is right now arguing that parents should lose, quote, veto power over transing their kids.
So, you know, right now the culture and a lot of the public health professionals and a lot of the institutions are encouraging parents Children to mutilate themselves and encouraging little boys to pretend that they're little girls.
And they're saying this is being taught in preschools, public preschools in New York.
This is being taught all over the place.
Parents, thankfully, can still go in and say, hey, don't lop off my kids' genitals.
Hey, don't pump my kids full of cross-sex hormones.
Well, one professor, Maura Priest, is arguing in the Journal of Medical Ethics that parents should not have that right.
She says, quote, Puberty suppression is consistent with the proper goals of medicine to promote well-being and therefore could ethically be offered to non-binary adults in principle.
It is proper to medicine.
Now, of course, mutilation is not proper to medical goals because mutilation takes otherwise healthy organs and harms them.
And that's what happens when you pump a little kid full of cross-sex hormones and pretend that little Johnny is little Jane.
But this shows you the end of things.
The squishy position of, hey, let anyone do whatever they want.
Maybe don't do it to kids, but let adults make whatever choices they want.
This doesn't work because eventually you have to make some claims of the good.
If a man really can become a woman, and it is really good for men who think that they're women to be mutilated to look like they're women, then obviously that treatment, if it is a medical treatment, then obviously that needs to be offered to kids.
And at a certain point, we've got to ditch this silly language of choice, choice, choice, And get down to what is good and what is true and what is beautiful.
We'll need to look up for that, I think.
We'll need some inspiration.
We can look up to where Jeff Bezos' space pod is and maybe look up a little further to the objective moral order and the God that created that order.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles.
All she'll see tomorrow.
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On today's episode, the Biden administration signals a possible shift in U.S. policy toward Cuba, a federal judge upholds a state university's vaccine mandate, and the U.S. reaches another landmark in illegal border crossings.
