Propaganda goes into overdrive during the first major war between civilized nations in many decades, the White House can’t point to any Ukraine policies that have worked, and Trump calls Putin “smart.”
Check out my shop page to purchase shirts, stickers, and books (one with words, one without) https://utm.io/uedo1
My new book ’Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds,’ is now available wherever books are sold. Grab your copy today here: https://utm.io/udtMJ
Stopping the attack on America starts with exposing the source: from within. Subscribe to The Daily Wire and start streaming The Enemy Within today. https://utm.io/uejBd
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The late American Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said that there were three types of knowledge in war.
Known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.
That is, things that we know that we know.
Things that we don't know, and things that we don't even know that we don't know.
But there is a fourth type of of war knowledge.
Known unknowns.
That is, things we think we know that in fact we do not know.
And when it comes to the war in Ukraine, it is that fourth kind of knowledge that we are all full of.
Everyone knows, for instance, about the ghost of Kiev, the ace fighter pilot who shot down five, maybe even seven Russian fighter jets on just the first day of fighting.
We know about him because we read about him on social media.
We even saw videos of his heroics in the sky.
Except we didn't.
The video isn't real.
The airplane isn't even real.
It's a cartoon from a digital combat video game.
Everyone knows, for instance, that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is not only refusing to flee or surrender, but is actually fighting on the front lines.
We know this because we've all seen the photos of him wearing combat fatigues, gun in tote, except the photo isn't from last week.
It's actually from months ago and a long way from Kiev.
Here we go.
Reuters fact check.
Everyone knows about the 13 brave sailors guarding Snake Island who refused to back down to a Russian ship, whose final words to the Russians were, go F yourself before all 13 were killed.
We know this because we saw the video.
The Russian warship comes up.
This is the Russian warship.
I repeat.
I suggest you surrender your weapons and capitulate.
Otherwise, I will open fire.
Do you copy?
You're just seeing this on the island.
You're hearing this audio.
The Ukrainians say, this is it.
Should I tell him to go F himself?
Just in case.
Turns up the volume.
Russian warship!
Go F yourself!
And then we were told they were all killed, but what a way to go out.
We saw that happen, except we didn't.
It turns out the sailors, happily, were probably not killed, but captured, as even the Ukrainian foreign ministry now admits.
None of this is to take away from the bravery of the Ukrainians.
Those sailors, they seem like pretty tough dudes, regardless of whether they were killed or captured.
The Ukrainian servicemen, the civilians, and President Zelensky himself are all demonstrating immense bravery.
But most of the stories you're hearing right now about this war seem incredible, precisely because they are not credible.
They are the product of dueling propaganda machines, with both sides going into overdrive to spin the best yarns to help their side.
This war is unlike anything we've seen in my lifetime.
It occurred to me a couple of nights ago that this is the first major war in my lifetime to take place between civilized nations.
And it's all the more frightening because our political elite in the West did not believe it could actually happen.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show, Michael.
My favorite comment Friday is from Not A Cat.
Who, quoting John Kerry, says, hey, please invade with hybrid electric tanks.
Thank you.
Yes, that's true.
That'll help turn things around.
That way we won't get distracted by the bloodshed and the tanks and the missiles and the airstrikes.
Distracted from the really important issue that is the sun monster.
That's what we've got to do.
We've got to really focus on, especially energy policy here.
Well, when you want to focus on energy policy at home, I strongly recommend you check out GetUpside.
Gas prices are through the roof.
That's why you need to download the free GetUpside app and use code Knolls.
What will that get you?
That will save you 25 cents for every gallon of gas every time you fill up.
How?
Through cash back.
There is no catch.
There are no hoops you got to jump through.
You just download the free GetUpside app in the App Store or Google Play right now.
You use promo code Knolls.
You get 25 cents per gallon or more on your first fill up cash back.
Do not pay full price at the pump anymore.
Gas is about to go up even higher than it already has been in recent months.
You can earn up to 30% cash back, not just at gas stations, but at grocery stores, restaurants, food delivery too.
You cash out anytime to your bank account, PayPal, or an e-gift card for Amazon and other brands.
Just download the free GetUpside app.
Use promo code Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, just free money.
Get 25 cents per gallon or more cash back on your first tank.
Promo code Knowles.
One day after the fighting started in Ukraine...
There were people, friends of mine, here at the Daily Wire, outside the Daily Wire, they said, oh my gosh, Michael, did you hear about the ghost of Kiev?
I saw it trending.
What's the ghost of Kiev?
Oh, Michael, it's unbelievable.
There's this ace fighter pilot, no one knows who he is, and he's just shooting down Russian fighter jets left and right.
They haven't seen this kind of thing since World War II. They haven't seen this thing in 70 years, probably.
I said, oh yeah?
And how do you know about the ghost of Kiev?
They said, well, we saw him trending on Twitter.
Oh, Twitter, that thing that is completely controlled by a handful of extremely ideological people that totally manipulate it.
And why else do you believe?
Well, we saw this video.
Man, it's like something out of Hollywood.
Oh, something out of Hollywood, you say?
Huh.
Maybe, maybe, and I don't want to sound like a tinfoil hat guy here, maybe it's completely fake.
Like most of what the establishment tells us, maybe it's just completely made up in some soundstage in Hollywood, or more likely on a hard drive in Hollywood.
Of course, there's a ton of propaganda.
There's propaganda in every war.
We happen to be living in an age of extremely accelerated, extremely heightened propaganda because of how advanced our technology has become.
Just think about how easy it is to make a deepfake.
Think about how easy it is to use Photoshop.
Now place the most powerful governments on earth in charge of that technology.
And recognize that they've also got access to the widest communications distribution platform ever known to man that can be highly manipulated without you even realizing it.
And then you see propaganda taken to brand new heights.
A war between, say, a superpower on one hand and illiterate goat herders on the other.
This is a war between civilized nations.
Okay?
Civilized nations who are known...
Well, it's a war technically between Russia and Ukraine, but it's really a proxy battle between Russia and the West.
So you're seeing a kind of replay of the Cold War here.
Two entities very well known for their extremely sophisticated propaganda, especially the Russians.
Okay?
I'm not saying necessarily that everything you think you know about this war is false.
What I am saying is that there is absolutely no reason to believe that any of the things you think you know about this war are true.
We just don't know.
We just don't know.
We are in the midst, obviously, the Ukrainians are in the midst of a real guns firepower war.
The rest of the world is in the midst of a very intense propaganda war.
Now, this isn't to say there's no genuine heroism.
There's a story, it appears to be a real story, of a hero sailor.
Vitaly Shakun Volodymyrovich.
I'm sure I'm butchering the pronunciation.
This was a Ukrainian sailor who saw that the Russians were about to cross a bridge from Russian-occupied Crimea to mainland Ukraine.
So he runs out onto the bridge.
He realizes that he's not going to be able to get off if he wants to destroy the bridge, and he blows himself up.
Now, that story appears to be true.
That's very, very impressive.
That's genuine heroism.
It's very hard to parse, though, the real heroism from the made-up propaganda.
There's a parliament member in Ukraine right now.
This woman in Ukraine tweets out, quote, I learn to use Kalashnikov and prepare to bear arms.
It sounds surreal.
As just a few days ago, it would never come to my mind.
Our women will protect our soil the same way as our men.
Go Ukraine.
That seems like she's staying in Ukraine.
I don't think she's fled.
Seems that she's got a Kalashnikov in her hand.
I guess it's true.
I guess it's real.
Hard to tell.
A little bit more of a margin call.
And then some things we just can't possibly know.
The Ukrainians are claiming that they have killed thousands of Russian fighters.
The Ukrainian government is claiming that Russia has suffered about 3,000 troop casualties and lost 516 kinds of various military vehicles, 80 tanks, 10 airplanes, 7 helicopters.
That was just by Friday.
I'm sure they're claiming much higher numbers now.
Is that true?
I don't know.
We just don't know.
We don't really know what is going on in Ukraine, and yet we're all glued to it.
And we are following this, and we're very wrapped up in the outcome.
Vladimir Putin appears to be implying that he's willing to use nuclear weapons.
For goodness sakes, this war feels very different than other wars that we've had, at least in my lifetime.
There have been a lot of wars in my lifetime.
This one feels totally different.
Why?
Why?
I got into a lot of trouble for saying this.
I did not expect to get into a ton of trouble for saying this, but as usual, when you say something that is obviously true, those are the tweets that get you into trouble.
And so what I said the other night was, this is the first major war in my lifetime to take place between civilized nations.
There have been other wars.
Okay, there have been wars.
There was the breakup of Yugoslavia.
There were those wars.
Was that a major?
I wouldn't call those major wars.
There was Kosovo.
I remember Kosovo vividly from the 90s.
Would you call that a major war, though?
All of the world is holding their breath.
Probably not.
There were obviously the Middle Eastern wars.
But would you say, please forgive me, I know I'm not supposed to say this, would you really say that Muammar Gaddafi's Libya is the height of civilization?
I don't think so.
Bashar Assad's Syria, you think that's really, that's it.
You think of Renaissance Rome and Bashar Assad's Syria, yes.
Civilization, ain't it great?
No, I don't think so.
Some people responding, a lot of very angry blue checks were responding to my observation.
And they said, Michael, you idiot, don't you know that Iraq is the birthplace of civilization?
Many thousands of years ago, Iraq was a civilization.
Yeah, it's been a while, hasn't it?
Hasn't it?
Do you think now, today, or even during Saddam Hussein's reign, you're just going to go to Iraq for a lovely getaway, part of the grand tour?
We're going to go to all the wonderful civilized salon discussions in Saddam Hussein's Iraq?
I don't think so.
Okay?
It's so disingenuous.
This war really is different.
You know, the only thing worse than a Democrat State of the Union address is the predictably tepid official GOP response.
Well, on Tuesday night, 15 minutes following President Biden's remarks before a joint session of Congress, Ben Shapiro will offer a real reaction, one based in facts, free from focus group testing and oversight by Republican Party leadership.
Put simply, Ben will destroy!
Joe Biden's State of the Union with facts and logic.
Join me, Ben, Jeremy Boring, Matt Walsh, and Andrew Klavan tomorrow night at 815 Eastern, 715 Central on Daily Wire's YouTube channel.
Ben's formal response will be airing as soon as Biden's address ends on the same channel, so make sure that you tune in.
When you tune in on YouTube, it's actually completely free.
That's a price you can afford.
When you want really good prices, I strongly recommend you check out Priceline.
Head on over to Priceline.com right now.
It feels like we're all getting less these days.
Less.
Social interaction, less sunlight, less steps in, less time in the office.
While that last one might not be so bad, aren't you ready for more?
Don't you want more stuff?
Since 1998, Priceline has been the best way for travelers to book the trip they want at the price they can afford.
Priceline saves consumers more than $1 billion every year, billion with a B, so their customers never have to miss the moments that matter.
With Priceline, you can save up to 60% on your favorite hotels.
You can also get exclusive deals on rental cars and flights.
When you save more, you can do more.
More walks on the beach, more talking to strangers, more fun in the sun, no matter where you travel, still less being in the office.
There are a few things that feel as good as knowing that you saved money.
With the discounts Priceline offers, you get that feeling a lot because when you save more, you can enjoy more and do more.
Priceline, every trip is a big deal.
So when you're ready to book on a Priceline.com for the best deals that will help you get more out of it.
This war is different.
This war is different.
When I said that this is the first major war between civilized nations in my lifetime, I chose those words carefully.
And all of these liberals got so angry.
I mean, there have been thousands and thousands of responses, all sorts of blue checks.
And one thing I notice about all of the responses to my observation is they're really angry and they call me all sorts of names and they use all sorts of nasty language.
And none of them have examples of wars that prove me wrong.
They'll say, what about the 2020 and 2021 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?
What?
What are you talking about?
Well, what about the war in Afghanistan?
I said civilized.
Well, what about this or that?
There's major war between civilized nations.
I'm sorry if it hurts your feelings to point out that Libya is not a particularly civilized place.
I'm sorry if it hurts your feelings to point out that a battle between Saudi Arabia and Yemen does not match all of those criteria.
But this is a little different.
We're talking about reality.
You've got a nuclear former superpower conquering its neighbor, Ukraine.
A state with a long history of civilization, that's a little bit different.
Okay?
I'm not even making the point.
When I made this observation, it wasn't some dunk on Middle Eastern tin pot dictatorships.
It wasn't.
It wasn't to say, oh, how wonderful Russia is, or Ukraine is, or Western Europe for that matter.
It was to point out that this is a different kind of war.
That's why we're treating it differently.
And the propaganda has really turned up a level because of that civilization.
Because they're really, really good at it.
They're better at it than Yemen is.
And it's even more crucial to how we view this war because the liberals didn't think this could happen.
This was the argument.
After the Cold War, we've reached the end of history.
Liberalism won.
Relatively free markets won.
Globalism won.
Free trade among nations won.
We're going to just slowly expand that into a new world order.
This is not a tinfoil hat phrase.
This is a phrase used by the President of the United States by...
State Department officials.
We're going to have a kind of order of the nations.
We've got one hegemonic superpower.
That's the United States.
We're all going to trade.
We're all going to get along.
And there's not going to be any more wars.
Certainly no more wars between the civilized nations, except there are.
Except it's happening.
But Putin, he's not supposed to invade Ukraine.
Yeah, well, he did.
So what are you going to do about it?
The thing that you said wasn't going to happen, that all of us conservatives said very likely would happen, very much could happen, that thing did happen.
So Jen Psaki, so White House, can you just answer me a simple question?
What policies have you used with regard to the Ukraine conflict?
What policies have you put in place that have worked?
What have you guys done throughout this slow-moving Russia crisis that has worked?
In what capacity?
Well, the President talked to Putin.
He talked to the G7. He threatened sanctions.
He put sanctions in place.
Now he says the sanctions are going to take 30 days, or about a month.
Do you guys think the people in Ukraine have about a month?
Well, Peter, let me just take a step back and explain to everyone how diplomacy works and how our approach from the United States has worked.
What the President has done is he has built a global coalition To stand up in the face of President Putin and President Putin's aggression and invasion of Ukraine.
What he has done is he has rallied the world, our European partners, even at cost to them in some capacities, to put in place significant sanctions, historic sanctions, that would have an enormous impact on the Russian financial sector.
It is President Putin's choice to go to war and invade Ukraine.
That is what he has done.
So nothing.
You got nothing.
Okay.
You knew that Jen Psaki had nothing the moment that Peter Doocy finished asking the question.
And she said, hey, wait, hold on.
What worked?
What do you mean what worked?
Like she's stalling like kids do in class, you know, seventh grade English class.
Hey, Johnny, what happened in chapter three?
Chapter three?
Do you want me to answer the question about you?
Yes, that's what I asked you.
Chapter three, huh?
Um...
Well, let me give you a little lesson about literature.
That's what she's saying.
Let me give you a little lesson about diplomacy.
No, I don't need a lesson about diplomacy.
I don't need international relations 101.
Just cite the policy that's worked.
Well, hey, forget about the policies that we've already tried that didn't work.
We're going to put some sanctions on Russia.
Oh, you're going to put sanctions on Russia.
The thing that Trump did that then Biden took away.
Okay, what kind of sanctions?
Because Trump put sanctions on Russian energy.
Trump stopped the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is, if any specific...
Individual event is at the heart of this war right now between Russia and Ukraine.
It would be this pipeline because the minute that Vladimir Putin gets the green light on his pipeline, he gets to invade Ukraine because he doesn't need to rely on Ukraine to ship his oil from Russia to Europe.
So what about that?
Oh, right.
Joe Biden gave the green light to the pipeline, which was essentially rolling out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.
What are you doing now?
Oh, you're putting sanctions on Russia, except you're not sanctioning the Russian energy industry, which is the only thing that matters in Russia.
This news had started to break on Friday.
Okay, we're going to have sanctions on all the other industries in Russia.
Russian haberdashers are going to be in trouble.
The people who make those stacking dolls in Russia, oh boy, they're going to have a bad Christmas.
They're going to have trouble heating their homes.
But they're not going to have too much trouble because the Russian oil industry is going to be just fine.
The Russian gas industry is going to be just fine.
Nothing.
They've done nothing that has worked.
And I was trying to figure out why.
Why?
We know that the Bidens are in the pocket of Ukraine.
Let's not forget, speaking of the energy industry, Joe Biden's son, Hunter, had a no-show job in Ukraine, because Ukraine is also a corrupt oligarchy, just like Russia.
And he had this no-show job where he was being paid hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to do absolutely nothing for the expertise in Ukrainian oil that he obviously does not possess.
So what?
The Biden family has some interest in Ukraine.
Why do they seem to be so incoherent in their policy?
Because they don't have any direction.
They didn't think this war was possible.
The liberal establishment did not believe this war would really happen.
It breaks their view of the world that Russia would invade another country.
And so they don't know what to do when it happens.
And they go one way and they go the other and they keep vacillating back and forth.
And what they're really trying to do is just pretend that it's not happening.
But it is happening.
And it's happening because of specific policies and incentives you left in place.
What can Joe Biden do?
Not very much if you ask him.
Let me pull this out for you.
Where is it?
There you go.
You got it?
Okay.
Say presidents can't do much.
Thank you.
I dropped my speech.
Where is my...
Can't...
We can't...
presidents can't do much.
Some presidents can't do much.
This might be the truest thing that Joe Biden's ever said.
Joe Biden can't do much at all.
He's given no direction.
We know because of the propaganda that's flooded everywhere.
All we really know about the Ukraine conflict is Ukraine good, Russia bad, change your Facebook profile picture to be the Ukraine flag That's going to help.
That's going to be really helpful.
And, you know, tweet about it.
You've got to tweet about it.
That's very important.
And maybe make videos involving slam poetry about how Vladimir Putin has mommy issues.
That'll show him.
That'll stop the war.
And beyond that, I don't know.
Beyond that, who beats me?
This reminds me of when Michelle Obama, during the Obama administration, was responding to the Boko Haram crisis in Africa.
Boko Haram, this terror group, had gone in and captured a bunch of extremely young girls and brought them into sex slavery.
And the Obama administration's really forceful response there was to have Michelle hold up a white sheet of paper that said, hashtag bring back our girls.
And you remember when the head of Boko Haram just broke down crying.
He said, please, no more.
No more hashtags, Michelle.
We can't take it.
Okay, you can take back your girls.
Take them.
Take them back, Michelle.
Please.
No more white sheets of paper and memes.
We can't take the memes.
No, that's not what happened at all.
It's not what happened at all.
It's completely, completely incoherent.
And this is what got Donald Trump in trouble.
Because he made a comment over the weekend at CPAC that got him in trouble.
This is what I thought about when I made my tweet about how this is the first major war between civilized nations in my lifetime, and everyone got angry.
I thought, they didn't get angry because it's false.
No, people don't generally get angry at false statements.
They just kind of ignore them or they laugh at them.
They get really angry when you make true statements that political correctness says you're not allowed to make.
And that's what Donald Trump did over the weekend at CPAC. I was watching all of this take place in the domestic political scene while enjoying a delicious cigar, which is why you ought to go check out Thompson cigars.
Go to ThompsonCigar.com right now.
You know there are few consolations in this temporal, physical world of ours.
You know, we work.
We work, we work, we work.
And what do we get?
Nothing but nagging and people constantly demanding things of us.
And it gets to be so much.
Do yourself a favor.
Treat yourself.
Just one hour at night.
Maybe you've got a good book.
Maybe you've got a buddy come over.
Maybe you have a little drink or something with it and you smoke a delicious cigar.
I've been a Thompson cigar customer since I was 16 years old and my mother bought me my first box from Thompson.
They've got the best selections.
Go check out right now in particular the Olivas, the My Father.
The My Father lines are absolutely fabulous.
If you want a little bit higher end, Go for the Padron.
That's fine.
Maybe, you know, you want to splurge.
You can save a lot of money right now if you want to splurge.
If you go to ThompsonCigar.com, they rarely do offers.
Right now they're offering our listeners 15% off orders over $75 and 20% off orders over $99.
To take advantage of these incredible savings, go to ThompsonCigar.com.
Use promo code Knowles when you're ready to check out.
That's T-H-O-M-P-S-O-N Cigar.com.
Use promo code Knowles.
The Daily Wire is constantly adding quality content for your listening and viewing pleasure, and our newest show, Crane & Company, is no exception.
Crane & Company is a daily sports show hosted by former athletes and coaches, Jake Crane, Blaine Crane, and David Cohn.
They are joining forces with The Daily Wire to bring you all of the sports that you love with none of the woke nonsense attached.
When you tune into Crane & Company, you will be getting in-depth sports analysis, informative interviews, predictions, and wagers, and constant live chat engagement with fans.
Tune in live today at 3 p.m.
Eastern every weekday at dailywire.com or on YouTube.
You can also listen as a podcast on Apple Podcasts or your platform of choice.
Make sure you subscribe.
Give the show five stars if you like what you hear.
you here.
We'll be right back with a lot more.
Vladimir Putin is a very smart man.
The Western leaders, by and large, are very stupid men.
I'm not making a value judgment.
I'm not ascertaining or comparing the character, the virtues of this world.
I'm just...
Making an obvious observation.
Vladimir Putin is smarter than Western leaders.
Donald Trump made that observation at CPAC, and it got him into a whole lot of hot water.
Yesterday, reporters asked me if I thought President Putin was smart.
I said, of course he's smart, to which I was greeted with, oh, that's such a terrible thing to say.
I'd like to tell the truth, yes, he's smart.
The NATO nations, and indeed the world...
As he looks over what's happening strategically with no repercussions or threats whatsoever, they're not so smart.
They're looking the opposite of smart.
If you take over Ukraine, We're going to sanction you, they say.
Sanction?
Well, that's a pretty weak statement.
Putin is saying, oh, they're going to sanction me.
They sanctioned me for the last 25 years.
You mean I can take over a whole country?
Are they going to sanction me?
You mean they're not going to blow us to pieces, at least psychologically?
The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of course he's smart, but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb.
100% correct.
It's funny that people accuse Donald Trump of being prideful, haughty, irresponsible, reckless, boastful.
He's demonstrating a great deal of wisdom and humility in this statement.
Wisdom and humility that our current leaders don't have.
Ironically, it's our current leaders, Joe Biden, not the least of them, who are demonstrating the haughtiness, the recklessness, the irresponsibility in underestimating Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine is in this situation today because Western leaders, for a long time, but mostly Democrats and especially Joe Biden, underestimated Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump is giving the devil his due.
He's saying, no, look, this guy, he's clever, he's smart, he's going to pursue what he feels to be in the national interest of Russia.
He's got cojones.
You've got to give him that.
He's got cojones.
He's going to call NATO's bluff.
He's going to call the American bluff, and we're not going to do anything about it.
We're not even going to institute real sanctions.
We're going to put little fake sanctions on Russia that won't do a damn thing to really gut their economy.
If you really wanted to gut their economy, you could put much stiffer sanctions.
Obviously on the energy industry, on specific oligarchs who are holding Vladimir Putin's money, but they're not exactly doing that, at least not yet.
Our leaders are dumb.
They're so dumb.
Our leaders are so dumb they are making the best argument to support Putin.
I don't think Putin is making a very good argument to support Putin.
Putin is a sort of cartoonishly villainous figure and he's now invading this country and the war is obviously being brought by him.
I don't think it's very complicated as to who is bringing this war.
And yet, Western leaders are so stupid that they have to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory, even on the publicity front.
Why would anyone?
Why would anyone support Vladimir Putin in this war?
Richard Moore, the head of MI6, the British spy agency, he actually gave us an answer.
He gave people a reason.
He tweeted out over the weekend, quote, With the tragedy and destruction unfolding so distressingly in Ukraine, we should remember the values and hard-won freedoms that distinguish us from Putin.
None more than LGBT plus rights.
So let's resume our series of tweets to mark LGBTHM. Is that history month?
I thought that was October.
Whatever.
2022.
2022.
If the only thing, if the main thing that distinguishes us from Vladimir Putin is that we trans the kids, pass the vodka, man.
That's it?
Are you kidding me?
You're going to have half of this country go sign up for the Red Army if that's the thing that distinguishes us.
Transgenderism is what distinguishes us from Putin?
That's the best you've got?
Oh my gosh, these people.
It makes me feel a little bit better, actually.
I'm sometimes tempted to believe that the world is actually run by just a secret cabal of the intelligence agencies.
There's a fair bit of evidence to that effect.
You know, the CIA and MI6. And the thing that makes me believe that isn't true is how stupid the heads of these intelligence agencies are.
It's like this guy is Putin's publicist.
Let's find one of the worst things that the West is doing, you know, trancing the kids.
One of the worst things we've ever done, frankly.
We're mutilating little kids because of a false anthropology and convincing little boys that they're little girls.
And we're going to say that that is the very best thing that we're doing and the only thing or the chief thing that distinguishes us from our enemies.
Yeah, that'll do it.
You're going to have people turning in their AR-15s for Kalashnikovs.
Good grief.
Good grief.
Speaking of British propaganda, this is a story from last week.
I didn't get to it, but it actually fits in much better with what we're talking about today.
The Queen has COVID. This is a very sad thing.
I love the Queen.
She is a very nice German lady.
She is one of the last sensible, distinguished, noble people in America.
Europe, or greater Europe, Britain, and she's one of the last vestiges of a government that's not completely insane in the West.
She's got COVID, and she's very old, so I hope she comes out of it.
There was a media report about her COVID diagnosis.
I will describe it as it plays, in case you're listening to this, but there's very little inconvenient fact that That the reporters put into this news report.
The 90s are a significant danger of the bad outcomes of COVID. It's true.
Dr.
Makesh Heiker-Wall says a COVID patient the Queen's Age should be isolating and might benefit from new medicines currently approved for high-risk patients at Australian hospitals.
Oh yeah, what are those medicines?
Sotovimab and Stromactol, which is...
Hold on, my pause!
Hold on.
So the first one was just some kind of medicine.
Go back a little bit.
Oh, hold on a second.
Stromectol, prescription only, three milligrams, four tablets each containing three milligrams of ivermectin.
Oopsie daisy, I was told that ivermectin is a horse dewormer.
Ivermectin?
The Queen is taking horse dewormer?
Man, she's dumber than Joe Rogan.
Man, that's so crazy.
Does the Queen fight in UFC? She must be smoking a lot of pot, too.
She's probably a crazy Alex Jones conspiracy theorist.
That's weird.
In a news report about how the Queen, at her advanced age, would benefit from some therapeutics to fight off the coronavirus, they include Ivermectin.
Now, if you try to find that clip right now, you won't succeed because the public health establishment got very upset.
The powers that be, the censors got very upset when it came out and they took the clip down and the news, the news organization edited it, took it out.
What they said was, this is according to Snopes, the network played some B-roll footage that showed a package of stromectal, a brand name version of ivermectin, which accidentally, accidentally insinuated that the queen was using this drug.
The network has since apologized and explained that the footage shown should not have shown Sotrovimab, or should have shown rather Sotrovimab, which it already did, and approved COVID-19 medication, not stromectol.
Okay, so it's not real.
Don't believe your lying eyes.
It's all fake.
We're sorry.
The news organization said we're really, really sorry.
The queen is definitely not taking ivermectin.
You know, ivermectin, that very well-known drug that has been used and prescribed to humans for many years now, the discoverer of which won the Nobel prize, you know that, but that in the last 18 months was just called horse dewormer and you're not even allowed to prescribe it anymore.
Yeah.
Do you know that drug that lots of people who have COVID have taken?
Yeah.
The queen's totally not taking that.
And you, you can believe them because these are the same people who told you about the ghost of Kiev and the snake island massacre and all of the other propaganda that just is not true at all.
You, you, you.
Listen, they might have been lying with all of their other propaganda, but this time they're totally telling the truth.
I would never...
Hey, YouTube censors, I would never insinuate that the Queen is obviously taking ivermectin and that the news report was right and that now they're pretending that it was wrong because of the pressure from you guys.
I wouldn't insinuate that.
Why would I insinuate that?
I believe anything that the ruling elites tell me.
Of course.
They're always right and they would never lie to us.
Right?
Isn't that the case?
I'm not so sure.
There is some good news coming out of the United Kingdom, though.
The good news is that the UK will be lifting all remaining COVID restrictions.
Boris Johnson announced, quote, We will remove all remaining domestic restrictions in law from this Thursday, the 24th of February.
We will end the legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test.
We will end routine contact tracing and no longer ask fully vaccinated close contacts and those under 18 to test daily for seven days.
We will remove the legal requirement for close contacts who are not fully vaccinated to self-isolate.
Great stuff.
I love that.
That's really good news.
It's not just good news coming out of a nominally conservative but actually effectively pretty liberal government in the United Kingdom.
It's coming out of...
Private corporations, woke corporations, super leftist American corporations, Google is dropping their vaccine mandate.
Really, really good news.
Google has announced they are dropping social distancing requirements and masks for vaccinated employees in most areas.
They are going to have a few cities that will still require masks, but they're likely to drop those soon.
Unvaccinated employees who are approved to enter offices will still need to follow some additional protocols, but basically Google's going back to normal.
You're seeing this in lots of cities around America, even left-wing cities.
They're dropping the mask requirements.
They're dropping the vax requirements.
It's over.
Why?
Why is it forever.
It's over because it's election season.
It's not over because COVID's gone.
It's not over because we're getting to COVID zero.
Remember, that's what the libs told us for a while.
When we get to zero cases, zero transmission, that's when we'll get rid of it.
No, actually, what they originally told us was two weeks to slow the spread.
That was two years ago.
What day is it?
February 28th.
This all started on March 16th, 2020.
We are two weeks away from two years of this.
And they kept moving the goalposts all the time.
And it was slow the spread, then flatten the curve, then find the cure, then get the jab, then get like three more jabs.
Then you got to stop the surge again.
There was another surge of the Omicron or the Delta or the whatever.
And it was going to go on forever.
And people pushed back and it killed the ruling class in the polls.
And then all of a sudden, poof, like magic, the science changed and we get to get rid of the masks and the vaccine mandates.
Why did this happen?
It ties right in with what we're talking about on the show today.
Because the people stopped believing the propaganda.
The very concerted propaganda effort of our ruling class.
Not just the government, but the corporations and the media and big tech and all of it.
When it gets to something like the Queen...
Is the queen taking ivermectin or not?
I don't know.
What do I know?
I don't know.
I'm not her doctor.
I don't see the queen's prescriptions.
It is similar to what I said at the top of the show.
It's not necessarily the case that the queen is taking ivermectin for her COVID. But it is certainly the case that we have no reason to believe that the queen is not taking ivermectin for her COVID because we can't trust these people.
This is another thing that's really, really weird about the Ukraine-Russia war that's different than some of the other wars that we've had in the last 25-30 years.
You've got nations that are not really united in any way.
Say what you will about George Bush or the wars in the Middle East, but at least when we went in to Afghanistan in particular, but even Iraq, the nation was broadly in favor of it.
Almost all of the Democrats voted for the Iraq War, and the Republicans were pushing the Iraq War.
The New York Times was pushing the Iraq War.
Everyone was kind of in on it.
Now, we are much less united than we were.
We don't really trust our institutions.
We don't trust our elections.
The Republicans don't believe in the 2020 election, in large part.
The Democrats don't believe in the 2016 election.
The Democrats don't even really believe in the 2000 election.
We're not united, and so the war is a little difficult to process.
There's a caveat here to the way that we're trying to understand the Ukraine-Russia war.
I think that there are some people on the right in the United States...
Who are tempted to really admire Vladimir Putin.
I'll give you the reasons why.
Well, Trump says he's smart.
He is looking after his nation.
Vladimir Putin ain't no citizen of the world, that's for sure.
Vladimir Putin is interested in Russia and expanding Russia.
And there are a lot of Americans who wish that American leaders were much more interested in defending America's borders than they are borders around the world.
That would be one reason.
What's another reason?
Vladimir Putin's not woke.
Say what you will about the man.
He ain't woke.
Vladimir Putin has been using state money to build beautiful cathedrals in Russia.
He built that beautiful cathedral just a few years ago.
What do we build in America?
We build drag queen story hour venues.
What is Russia building?
Big cathedrals.
I understand why some people might like that sort of thing.
There's something, though, that the admirers of Vladimir Putin are missing, which is Vladimir Putin doesn't like us.
Okay, Vladimir Putin does not care about cultural battles in the United States.
He's not on the side of conservatives.
He's not rooting for us to win.
It's actually a product of liberalism, I think, that we believe that all of our political battles in the United States just translate exactly, perfectly to political battles in Ukraine or Russia or China or anywhere else.
It's a product of globalism, actually, that makes us believe that our political concerns here in America are exactly, can be perfectly mapped onto what's going on in Russia or Eastern Europe or Asia or wherever.
But that's not the case.
Vladimir Putin doesn't care about American conservatives.
He doesn't care about American liberals.
He doesn't like America.
He views America as its adversary.
And he's trying to counter America and counter NATO, particularly in these battlegrounds in Eastern Europe.
The trick for us is, how do we here in the West get control back of our own governments?
Because I don't think our governments like us either.
Nobody likes us is the problem.
Vladimir Putin doesn't like us.
The ruling class in America and the West more broadly doesn't like us.
The ruling class in the West thinks that we're neo-Nazis, thinks that we're Bull Connor, thinks that we're hate-filled, awful, terrible people who just need to go away and die.
And we need to go die of COVID, like that teacher said.
That teacher was caught on a hidden camera and said that we played last week.
We're just, Oprah Winfrey said this on television.
She said, you know, some of those backwards conservatives, they just need to die.
Okay, they just need to go die.
Joe Biden said it just a few weeks ago.
Half the country's awful terror.
So nobody's really sticking up for us, and it makes us think, well, I don't like Biden.
I don't like my ruling class.
So am I supposed to?
No, I don't really like Putin.
I don't know anything about Ukraine.
I don't.
You know, Socrates was one of the smartest men in the history of the world because he knew that he knew nothing.
I think that is what is required now.
When we're talking about this Ukraine issue, reading a think piece on it and following the Twitter trends and watching videos supposedly about the coast of Kiev, does not make you an expert on Ukrainian policy?
Now, I'm preaching to the choir in a way here.
I think that generally the conservatives, the more independent-minded people, even in the center and independent-minded liberals, they know all this.
Okay, you guys know all of this.
But the mindless automatons who are just taken all the propaganda that they are fed, they do not know.
They do not know all of this at all.
And it can really lead to some pretty disastrous results.
I'll give you just one anecdote of this.
In California, a woman tried to get on a bus.
Public bus.
She wanted to get on the bus.
She was turned away from the bus because she didn't have a mask on.
She then was run over by the bus.
But at least she didn't get COVID. She was run over, tragically killed.
Lucy Prieto Frescas, 59 years old, this is a young woman, tried to get on the bus.
Turned away.
Somehow she fell underneath the bus and was run over.
This is the perfect analogy for our COVID regime.
People driven crazy by absurd propaganda forced into their heads for two years straight are now doing much more harm than good.
The lockdown measures have always been doing more harm than good.
Some of us called this two years ago.
But it's certainly the case now.
We in the West, what we have done, Out of fear of a cold, out of fear of a cough, have thrown our citizens literally under the bus.
It's sad that this real-life tragedy is such a good analogy, but it is.
Speaking of California...
There are some signs that things are improving, at least on the right.
Kevin McCarthy is the House Minority Leader.
He's the Republican Leader in the House of Representatives.
Kevin McCarthy just threw his former colleague Liz Cheney under the bus.
Liz Cheney was in Republican leadership.
Can you imagine that?
Shows you how bad off the Republican Party is.
Liz Cheney was in Republican leadership.
And she spent all of her time going on CNN, talking to the Washington Post, attacking Republicans and conservatives.
Now Kevin McCarthy, her leader, has endorsed her primary challenger, Harriet Hageman.
That's good.
That's a good sign.
The people who like Liz Cheney are Democrats exclusively.
And so from a tactical standpoint, Even for maybe the moderates or the independents or whatever, who are kind of more liberal, but maybe they'd consider voting for her.
Maybe we should go with Liz Cheney.
Maybe she can appeal to more people because she's more in the middle, even more a little bit on the left.
She won't appeal to more people.
She'll appeal to nobody.
That is propaganda.
Liz Cheney appeals to people who will never vote for a Republican.
She is the Republican where Democrats say, you know, I could vote for that kind of Republican.
Maybe they could, but they wouldn't.
They would always choose the Democrat over her.
We have been fed this kind of propaganda, we on the right in America, for decades.
Well, you better nominate John McCain because Democrats could vote for that kind of Republican.
Yeah, they could, but they won't.
Yeah, you should vote for Mitt Romney.
You should nominate Mitt Romney.
Democrats could vote for that Republican, except they won't.
Except they won't do it.
There has been a huge amount of waking up.
There's a little bit of a paradox.
We live in an age where propaganda is so easy to produce, and it's so easy to produce at a very high level.
That actually, I think a lot of people are waking up to it.
They're seeing through it.
They're saying, wait a second, if I can't even believe a video that I'm watching because it was likely manipulated, what can I believe?
We are headed for a very, very messy period politically.
Internationally, you're already seeing that happen.
Domestically, you're seeing that happen too.
The only way out is through.
Do not believe everything you see on the internet.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
See you tomorrow.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe.
And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe.
We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies, executive producer Jeremy Boring.
Our technical director is Austin Stevens.
Supervising producer, Mathis Glover.
Production manager, Pavel Vidovsky.
Editor and associate producer, Danny D'Amico.
Associate producer, Justine Turley.
Audio mixer, Mike Coromina.
And hair and makeup by Cherokee Heart.
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2022.
Today on the Ben Shapiro Show, Vladimir Putin surrounds Kyiv and puts his nuclear forces on high alert as Europe moves to isolate him.
