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Trump promises to make America great again again, DeSantis finally (sort of) responds to Trump’s attacks, and a woman goes viral for dissing her (white, straight, conservative, “cis”) dad at his funeral.
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I've said for over a week that the 2024 presidential primary has unofficially begun.
Now it has officially begun.
Donald Trump announced last night that he will indeed seek the presidency in 2024 to make America great again.
Again.
The speech is getting mixed reviews.
I love the guy.
It was not my favorite speech that he has ever given.
And yet, from the perspective of strategy and rhetoric, it might be the most interesting speech he's ever Lots of people noticed that Trump never once mentioned his potential rivals in the race.
He never once mentioned Ron DeSantis.
No one seems to be noticing that the entire speech was essentially about those rivals, guys like Ron DeSantis.
People seemed somewhat confused as he was giving the speech last night that virtually the whole thing was about foreign policy, China, Russia, North Korea, as well as parts that weren't about foreign policy, that were mostly about foreign policy related issues, drugs, immigration. that were mostly about foreign policy related issues, drugs, immigration.
Even Trump's take on election fraud was framed through the lens of foreign policy, was framed through Chinese interference.
Why would Trump focus his whole speech on foreign policy, which most people don't even really care that much about?
It doesn't make sense until you remember that foreign policy is the one area of politics in which governors, people like his top rivals, have no experience.
Trump's speech was pretty toned down.
Very few zingers.
No encouragement of chanting.
No Mexican rapists or lock her up or anything like that.
In some ways, the speech even veered into the realm of the boring.
Something that Trump, for all his faults, has never been accused of being.
The guy is not boring, okay?
So why?
Why did he do it?
Doesn't make sense until you remember that Trump's chief rival is being pitched as Trump without the downsides.
All the great policy, none of the wild and unseemly digressions.
So, Trump chose to present himself in those highly prepared remarks last night, As Trump without the downsides.
The whole event was planned to a T. It was clearly strategic.
It may work.
It may fail.
But there can be no question about one thing.
This is no lark.
This is not Trump shooting from the hip.
If last night's launch was meant to set the tone for the campaign, Trump intends to run a disciplined race because that man intends to win again.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Henry Knox, who says, Ron DeSantis did not show us how Republicans can win with message and rhetoric in Florida.
He showed us if we can clean voter rolls, limit mail-in voting, vote and count votes on Election Day, Republicans can win big.
A lot of truth to that.
I mean, I think it's a little bit of both.
I think DeSantis has done a very, very good job on messaging.
But it's true.
You look at what happened in Florida.
It wasn't just in Florida.
Texas did very well for Republicans.
Ohio did very well for Republicans.
What's the unifying factor?
Is it soaring political rhetoric?
Is it really keen messaging?
No.
The common factor there is the Republicans cleaned up the election issues and insisted upon election integrity.
And Republicans around the country would do well to take note and implement the same sorts of things, okay?
The speech last night, Trump was, paradoxically, the least interesting and most interesting speech Trump has ever given.
Most interesting because it was intentionally the least interesting.
We knew from the top, we knew from the very top of the speech, Trump was going to announce.
How did we know?
Because they announced it before he got on stage.
Gentlemen, please welcome the next president and first lady of the United States of America, President Donald J. Trump, accompanied by Mrs.
Melania Trump.
So there you have it, right there from the open.
It's not the former president.
It's not the Donald.
This is the future president and the future first lady.
Okay.
So he comes on, he milks the Lee Greenwood song, you know, proud to be an American.
Trump's just there.
Totally, he seemed energetic, he seemed ready to go, nice and bronzed, vigorous, full of life.
The guy does not really seem to age.
It's amazing to think he came down that golden escalator 2015.
That's seven years ago.
It's a long time, especially when you're up there in your 70s.
Trump seemed basically as young and vigorous as he ever did.
Maybe it's the aspartame and the Diet Coke has just sort of pickled him and he doesn't age.
But either way, this was not a Joe Biden scenario.
He came up, he looked pretty strong, he looked pretty vigorous.
But this was not a 2015 speech.
This was not the Mexican rapists are killing everybody and we need to deport them and we've got to get tough on crime.
This was an elegant speech, as he put it.
In fact, he didn't even really focus on the 2020 election was stolen kind of line that Trump has been harping on for the past two years.
He touched on it, but only a little bit briefly and only with a little bit of a wink.
For the first time in memory, China was reeling back on its heels.
You've never seen that before, because the United States was outdoing them on every single front, and China was paying billions and billions of dollars in taxes And tariffs.
The farmers know that because they got 28 billion of it.
No president had ever sought or received one dollar for our country from China until I came along and we were getting hundreds of billions of dollars.
Many people think that because of this, China played a very active role in the 2020 election.
Just saying.
Just saying.
Sure, that didn't happen.
So this was an important piece of rhetoric here because it shows you, one, Trump was not going to focus on 2020 was stolen.
We see that he didn't touch at all on the questions about voting machines and the recounts and the dragging on the count until a week later.
He didn't focus on that at all.
He did focus on some interference from China.
But he did so in a lighthearted way.
This wasn't a madman driven crazy by having the election stolen from him and pulling his hair out.
It was with a little bit of a wink and a nod.
Listen, I'm just saying.
Okay, we would never talk about that.
But look, China, maybe they did.
I mean, moves on.
I suspect was in that speech to signal he's not going to give up on the issue of election integrity, but he's not going to let it dominate his thinking.
This is a man...
As he presents himself, who is in control of his emotions and can even sort of make a joke about something really awful that he believes happened.
Then he focused the whole thing on the future.
For a while, he used this phrase, and I couldn't quite figure out what the phrase meant, but it's a really brilliant little piece of political rhetoric.
See if you can figure out what the phrase means.
In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.
Together we will be taking on the most corrupt forces and entrenched interests imaginable.
Horrible state.
We're in grave trouble.
This is not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate.
This is a task for a great movement that embodies the courage, confidence, and the spirit of the American people.
This is a movement.
This is not for any one individual.
This will not be my campaign.
This will be our campaign altogether.
So, I got those moments wrong in the speech.
The piece of rhetoric there that's really, really important is Trump answering his critics who say, you're a narcissist and everything's about you.
And Trump is saying, it's not about me.
This is about you and it's about us together.
It harkens back to that really brilliant moment of rhetoric in the 2016 campaign when Hillary had unveiled her motto, I'm with her.
And he said, I'm with her?
Uh-uh, that's not my motto.
I'm with you, that's my motto.
Totally changes the subject, even, of that motto.
For Hillary, the subject was all these little peasants are just, you know, paying obeisance and pledging fealty to her, Her Majesty, Hillary.
And with Trump, he says, no, no, no.
It's my campaign, and I'm saying, look, I am with you.
And the campaign, even though I'm the one running it, it's really all about you.
And Trump finally got back to that, and I think it answers the narcissism charge.
Then there was a really curious piece of rhetoric in there that did leave me scratching my head a little bit.
Figure out if you can...
One of the beautiful things of the pause, if there is such a thing, is a beautiful thing, but one of the important factors of the pause is that we see how bad they've done.
So we will be able to do it properly and it will be much easier.
Everybody will agree with us because everybody sees what a bad job has been done during this two-year period and it will be a four-year period.
Everybody sees that.
It will be much easier for us to do what has to be done.
The pause.
The pause.
What is the pause?
Oh, the pause is the Biden administration, which is not the movement that came in to defeat Trump and MAGA. It's just this little pause between the inevitable...
First and second administration for Donald Trump.
It's a smart piece of rhetoric, and it's the sort of thing we've seen from him before.
Trump always pushes you past the sale.
But this is a point that Scott Adams made very clear in 2016.
That Trump, he goes so, so far, he says, listen, we're going to round up every single illegal in this country and deport every single one of them because they're all rapists and murderers.
And you say, what?
What are you talking about?
And he says, no, okay, we'll just deport some of them.
And you've already accepted the premise that we're going to deport anybody at all.
And so he kind of brings you along.
He just plants these seeds in your mind.
So by saying, this was the pause, already in your mind, you've got this idea, oh, of course there's going to be a second Trump administration.
Yeah, I don't really like this Biden administration pause, but I'm looking forward to the inevitable second Trump term.
He lulls you into this kind of, almost hypnotically, to accepting his vision of the future.
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Trump then came back to a theme.
He did it in a subtle way, but he also came back to a theme that made clear that he is not going to just be running some squishy, cut your taxes, GOP establishment kind of campaign.
He talked about the center of American life.
We will defend the rights of parents and we will defend the family as the center of American life.
But who would think, standing up here 10 years ago, 15 years ago, that a politician, and I don't like to think of myself as a politician, but I guess that's what I am.
I hate that thought.
But that a politician would be up saying, we will defend parental rights.
Of course you're going to defend it.
Who would think that we even have to mention this?
Who would think it even should be a subject to be talked about?
We have to defend parental rights.
Can you believe this?
Now, you love that bit.
You love to hear that from Trump.
Even beyond the point on family, which we'll get to in a second.
When he says, listen, I come up here, I'm a politician.
Do I have to say that?
I hate the idea that I'm a politician, but I guess I am.
The disingenuous, oily, slick career politician.
He would say, oh, I'm not a politician.
Maybe I'm a public servant, but I'm not a politician.
No, no, it's about something greater than me.
Trump comes up.
And he actually is not a career politician.
He's only been a politician for about six, seven years.
But he says, I guess I am a politician.
Okay, I hate that idea because I don't like politicians, but I guess I am one.
It's that honesty that I think people found refreshing.
Even if some people felt the speech should have been more fiery, I kind of was hoping that it would be more fiery.
There is a common theme that I saw cropping up on social media, even from some of Trump's critics, which is people saying, you know, I like the guy.
One of the great listeners to this show, Britta, there are some people who are really in the inner circle.
Of the DW crew.
And I saw her pop up on Twitter.
She says, oh, I just like the guy.
You just can't convince me not to like the guy.
I was talking to friends of mine.
They said, you know, yeah, just made me kind of miss him.
Made me think, oh, you know, I remember that.
That was nice.
I miss that guy.
When he says that the family is the center of American life, this is an important statement about political philosophy.
Because there are two views on the subject.
There is the view that the family is the center of American life.
And there's the view that the individual is the center of American political life.
And the Libs believe that it's the individual.
They want to destroy the family and they want to first break society down into atomized individuals.
Then they want to gather them up into this sort of homogenous, ugly collective.
The Libertarians also tend to view the individual as the center of American life.
Because they think that our politics essentially come down to natural rights and entitlements that we get as individuals.
Conservatives don't think that.
The traditional conservative perspective is, no, individuals have their place, but the fundamental building block of society is not the atomized individual.
It is the family.
That's the fundamental political unit.
Trump is siding with that traditional point of view.
That's not exactly the libertarian point of view.
That's not the neoconservative point of view.
That's not the liberal point of view.
That's not the leftist point of view.
That is the traditional conservative point of view.
And that is the lane that Trump had success in in 2016.
And if he's going to have success in 2024, that will have to be his lane as well.
Then he got a little zestier.
Then he made some tangible promises.
I thought the best promise of the night had to do with a sort of...
Oblique acknowledgement that things went wrong during COVID. As commander-in-chief, I will get Biden's radical left ideology out of our military, and I did.
I did.
And in the first day, they put it back.
They signed an executive order and they put it back.
It was gone.
We will abolish every Biden COVID mandate and rehire every patriot who was fired from our military with an apology and full back pay.
So...
Trump did not acknowledge that he made any mistakes during COVID, and this was not the speech to do that.
You know, just like in a eulogy, you're not going to talk about how terrible a person is.
Well, actually, these days people do that.
There's a horrible case of that going viral right now.
We'll get to that a little bit later.
But there's a time and a place for everything.
In a campaign launch speech, you're not going to acknowledge that you did things wrong.
But here he's saying, look, what happened during COVID is awful.
I am promising that We will rehire those patriots who got booted from the military over not taking the experimental Fauci-ouchie drug.
So it's also a kind of implicit acknowledgement that that vaccine that he's been pushing for two years actually is not all that great.
It's not as great as it had been sold to be.
That's why the soldiers didn't want it, and that's why he's going to not only give them their jobs back...
Give them an apology and full back pay.
So Trump is very good at painting these images with words.
It's not just, they'll be reinstated to their posts.
It's, no, no, we're going to give them an apology.
You can picture this.
An envelope.
Sorry, we shouldn't have done that.
Envelope full of cash, full back pay.
It's just much more evocative.
Then he gets to the issue of voter integrity in a more tangible way.
What are you going to do, Trump?
If you say the 2020 election was stolen and the libs basically rigged it and took it from you, well, who's to say that they're not going to take it from you in 2024?
What are you going to do that's going to stop that sort of thing from happening?
To eliminate cheating, I will immediately demand voter ID, same-day voting, and only paper ballots.
Paper ballots, same day voting, voter ID, so simple.
And, and, we want all votes counted by election night.
Great.
This is the right answer.
Three simple things.
Voter ID, same-day voting, only paper ballots.
Simple.
I can remember that.
This is very, very popular, especially, obviously, with Republicans, but with moderates, centrists, even center-left as well.
Easy to remember.
Very, very tangible.
And then the most zesty, the most flavorful, spicy kind of moment in the speech was Trump decided to take on the issue of drugs.
We're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts because it's the only way.
We don't need any more blue ribbon Committees.
We don't need...
I don't like to say this, and I don't even know if the American public is ready for it, and a lot of my people say, please don't say that, sir.
That's not nice.
They kill 500 people each on average.
And if you don't do this...
In China, when I was with President Xi, I said, President, do you have a drug problem?
No, no, no, no, we don't.
He looked at me like I didn't know what I was doing.
No, no, we don't because we're very tough on these guys.
So this is great.
I loved it.
I mean, I myself wished we got more of that.
We're going to kill all the drug dealers.
Bah!
You know, that's kind of what I wanted from the speech.
Trump obviously took a different strategic tack.
But I'm glad we got this in here.
It raises a question, though.
Okay, now Trump is promising he's going to give the death penalty to drug dealers.
But Trump's signature domestic legislative achievement was something called the First Step Act.
Which let a bunch of drug dealers out of prison.
That was the whole point of the First Step Act, was to let drug dealers out of prison.
So, it's a total 180 on his previous position here.
How's he going to back it up?
I mean, how's he going to justify that?
What is his rationale for that complete reversal?
Might just be, hey, I thought about it, or hey, I fired some stupid advisors, or whatever.
I think he does have to answer for that, though, if he wants that promise to carry any weight.
And then finally, he ended on a note...
And this note of humility I found quite refreshing.
I am asking for your vote.
I am asking for your support.
And I am asking for your friendship and your prayers.
This very incredible but dangerous journey.
If our movement remains united and confident, then we will shatter the forces of tyranny and we will unleash the glories of liberty for ourselves and for our children and for generations yet to come.
America's golden age is just ahead.
And together, we will make America great again.
Okay, there you have it.
And he says, I'm asking for your prayers.
I really liked this moment because there is a misperception I don't think that's true.
I think Donald Trump has far greater humility than the vast majority of people in politics.
He jokes about it.
He jokes about it.
He puts his big name in letters and he talks about Trump, Trump, Trump.
But he will give you little hints that he's actually got a much deeper sort of humility.
You remember one time he was asked about...
He's having a drink.
And he said, you know, I've never had a beer.
I'm probably the only president in history who can say that I've never had a beer.
It's the best thing you can say about me.
It's the only good thing you can say about me.
And he's kind of joking.
He's like, yeah, I know, people criticize me.
I've got all these problems.
But look, I've never had a beer, actually.
I just don't like to drink.
Trump is the guy who leans down and he just picks up the Marine's hat when it falls off his head.
It wasn't a big photo op.
I don't think he was conscious of it at all.
It's just the sort of thing to do.
He says, hey, can you pray for me, please?
Hey, guys, this isn't about...
This isn't just about me.
I think this whole system is terrible.
I'm not running to get all sorts of plaudits at the fancy parties.
They don't invite me to the fancy parties.
The people who run the real sophisticated set, they don't like me and they've never liked me.
So I'm just here to get some stuff done, okay?
I'm here to fix the ice rink.
I'm here to fix the economy.
I'm here to fix our trade deals, fix our foreign policy.
So I thought it was a great dose of humility.
If this is the tone of his campaign, he'll be answering his critics.
He will be.
The arguments against him We'll fall apart.
Particularly that he's a loose cannon and he can't control himself and he's undisciplined.
That was a disciplined speech last night.
Is it enough to overcome his younger rivals who are more in the political spotlight right now?
That remains to be seen.
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Before that extremely disciplined speech last night, Trump had been lobbing some attacks at his potential rivals, specifically Glenn Youngkin.
In Virginia, who could run for president, could make a pretty good run at it.
And Ron DeSantis, who is Trump's chief rival right now down in Florida.
And DeSantis finally responded to these attacks.
Trump calling him DeSanctimonious.
Trump directly and indirectly going after the governor, trying to discourage him from running in 2024.
Here is DeSantis' response.
One of the things I've learned in this job is when you're leading, when you're getting things done, you take incoming fire.
That's just the nature of it.
I roll out of bed in the morning.
I've got corporate media outlets that have a spasm, just the fact that I'm getting up in the morning.
And it's constantly attacking.
And this is just what's happened.
I don't think any governor...
Got attacked more, particularly by corporate media, than me over my four-year term.
And yet, I think what you learn is, all that's just noise.
And really what matters is, are you leading?
Are you getting in front of issues?
Are you delivering results for people?
And are you standing up for folks?
And if you do that, then none of that stuff matters.
And that's what we've done.
We focused on results and leadership.
And, you know, at the end of the day, I would just tell people to go check out the scoreboard from last Tuesday night.
It's a good answer.
I'm not knocking the answer, but it's a B-.
It was a mistake to take the bait.
I think that DeSantis could have totally gotten away with 90% of his answer.
It was that last little bit where he goes, and by the way, check the scoreboard.
I beat Trump.
Trump's candidates didn't do as well as my candidates, at least what he's insinuating.
His candidates didn't do as well as I did here in Florida.
Why would you take the bait?
Why would you take the bait?
Trump's attacks on DeSantis have not been playing very well.
And there's a rule in politics, when your opponent is hurting himself, don't get in the way of it.
What Trump is attempting to do right now, when he's looking at his potential rivals and attacking them, as is perfectly normal, I know everyone's very upset at Trump for going after Youngkin and going after DeSantis.
That's just called politics, okay?
When you're running in a primary, you attack the people who are posing the greatest threat to you.
Right now, that is DeSantis and people like Youngkin as well, though further back.
All Trump is trying to do is elicit a response.
If DeSantis would just ignore the attacks, he's the one with political power right now.
He's the one in office.
He can make himself seem like a real leader.
He's just doing things, and there's Trump who's just criticizing him.
As DeSantis responds, and this happens in politics, you can't help Sometimes you just get baited into it, but it's a political mistake.
I don't think he should respond if he wants to give himself the best chance in 2024.
I think he'd be better served to ignore the attacks entirely.
Trump is doing what he has to do to bring DeSantis down a couple pegs.
DeSantis doesn't need to help him do that, though.
Now, how are the establishment media responding to this announcement?
I think that the way that the Washington Post and the New York Times and NBC and all the rest of them cover Trump is going to play a pretty big role in how Republicans shake out Trump versus DeSantis versus maybe somebody else.
They're going to do it because here's a lot of people watch that speech and they said, okay, I like Trump.
I'm for Trump.
And a lot of people watch that speech and said, oh, I like Trump and he did great stuff, but I'm for DeSantis.
A lot of people watch that speech and say, oh, you know, okay, whatever.
And then here's how WAPO covered the speech.
The twice-impeached former President Donald Trump, 76, who refused to concede the 2020 election and is the subject of multiple criminal investigations, is running again in 2024, increasing the likelihood of a potential rematch with President Biden.
That was their tweet.
Now, this is the headline of the actual article.
Trump, who as president fomented an insurrection, says he's running again.
Sub-headline.
The twice-impeached former president has been eager to declare his candidacy, hoping to get ahead of likely rivals and potential criminal charges.
I hate him!
I hate him so much!
I hate him!
Why is he doing it?
Orange man back!
Orange man is back!
I hate him!
That's what the Washington Post is saying.
And I'll tell you what.
I generally don't make primary endorsements.
I love Donald Trump.
There are other good candidates, too.
I'm pro-primary.
I want them to duke it out.
We'll see how it shakes out.
But reading that Washington Post headline makes me much more inclined to support Trump than before I read the Post headline.
Because the libs hate Trump the most.
They hate him.
They hate him more than they hate any other Republican.
And the media and the whole liberal establishment we know is very, very corrupt and wrong about pretty much everything.
So the fact that they hate Trump the most is a big mark in Trump's favor.
It's not DeSantis' fault that they hate Trump the most.
It's not Hawley's fault or Cruz's fault or Nikki Haley's fault or Tim Scott or Yunkin or whoever's going to run.
It's just a fact.
They hate Republicans generally, but they really hate Trump.
And that is a big mark in Trump's favor.
I mean, this is psychotic stuff from the Washington Post.
This, you know, three, four-line headline.
Trump, who did this and I hate him?
And look at this.
This is a five-line headline on this tweet.
Trump, he did all these terrible things and he wouldn't concede and he's old and I hate him and he's ugly and I hate him so much.
Okay, I guess when I read that, every time I read one of those tweets, it makes me at least half a percent more likely to support the Donald.
Other people can run too, though.
Everyone's only talking about Trump DeSantis right now.
What about Greg Abbott?
Greg Abbott right now in Texas is setting himself up to run for president in 2024.
And he's doing a pretty good job.
Greg Abbott just announced on this important issue of immigration that he has invoked the invasion clauses of the U.S. and Texas constitutions to fully authorize Texas to fight back against the influx of illegal aliens.
This is a good idea.
I'm glad that Abbott is using this kind of language.
It is an invasion.
That is what is happening.
That is what illegal immigration is.
We're talking about not just a million legal immigrants a year, which is a lot of people, but two million illegal immigrants.
If you don't call that an invasion, I don't know what the word invasion means.
And Greg Abbott is now legally calling it that.
So what does it mean in practice?
He says he's going to deploy the National Guard to safeguard the border and repel and turn back immigrants trying to cross the border.
He'll deploy the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest and return the border immigrants who crossed illegally, return them to the border.
He'll build a border wall in multiple counties on the border, deploy gunboats to secure the border, designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, enter into a compact with other states to secure the border, enter into agreements with foreign powers to enhance border security.
He's not going to be able to do that.
The governor of Texas doesn't conduct American foreign policy.
This is why Trump focused on foreign policy in his speech last night.
It's because the governors don't really have a say.
So that one's pretty empty.
And provide resources for border counties to increase their efforts to respond to the border invasion.
Okay, so that all sounds good, but where's the teeth?
Where's the teeth of this?
You know, Ken Cuccinelli...
Who's a great conservative leader and he was at DHS during the Trump administration.
He points out that Governor Abbott has not, in fact, invoked the full authority of an invasion declaration.
He's said that he's being invaded, but he's not blocking the invaders from coming.
And Cuccinelli points out, until Abbott removes the illegals back across the border and out of the country, this will just be a PR stunt.
And I tend to agree.
I mean, this is something that Trump is going to have to prove, that DeSantis is going to have to prove, that Greg Abbott is having to prove right now.
Enough of the words.
I like the feisty, zesty rhetoric.
I like clarity in rhetoric, too.
I mean, that can serve a political purpose.
But we need action.
Okay, all the invasion declarations in the world and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee if you're not actually taking the foreign nationals entering your country, invading your country, and sending them back to their countries.
If you're not doing that, then you're not really doing much of anything at all.
And I suspect this is also why Trump kind of toned down his announcement last night.
He didn't want to be accused of just bluster.
You can bluster your way through a first campaign, but then you've got to get a little bit more serious.
And Trump put a lot of wins on the scoreboard.
Let's not downplay that.
Trump got Roe v.
Wade overruled.
He's the biggest conservative win of my lifetime, maybe of the century.
And he got a lot of other wins, too.
But that zesty rhetoric is only going to play for so long.
Then you need results.
Because the libs are getting results.
At the G20 summit, Klaus Schwab, for some reason, the head of the World Economic Forum, for some reason, is speaking alongside the world leaders of the 20 most powerful nations on Earth.
Klaus Schwab came out.
He said, we are going to transform the world.
If you look at all the challenges, we can speak about a multi-crisis.
An economic, a political, a social, an ecological, an institutional crisis.
But actually...
What we have to confront is a deep, systemic, and structural restructuring of our world.
And this will take some time.
And the world will look differently after we have gone through this transition process.
Politically, the driving forces for this political transformation Of course, is the transition into a multipolar world, which has a tendency to make our world much more fragmented.
There you have it.
The transition into a multipolar world.
When they talk about the Great Reset, when they talk about the World Economic Forum's agenda...
What they are talking about in the bluntest terms is the end of American hegemony.
The fact that he's even standing up there, I love that.
And what we will do in the future is we will get rid of all of your food and you will eat all of the bugs and you will live in your little pods and you will not have your countries anymore.
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, Mr.
Schwab.
Who are you?
Like, why are you there?
Who elected you?
What, I am the ruler of the World Economic Forum and you will eat the bugs.
You will!
You will!
Sir, who are you?
Why are you doing this?
But he is right.
Listen, just because the guy has bad ideas, just because the guy is prescribing bad things for the world, doesn't mean that what he is describing is inaccurate.
Very often, people who have terrible ideas about how to move forward to the future are pretty perceptive about describing the present.
Karl Marx, for that matter, was pretty good about his perception of the flaws of the capitalism of his age.
His prescriptions were horrible, but Klaus Schwab is recognizing this, that there is a movement away from American hegemony into a multipolar world.
That is, in many ways, what the MAGA movement is about.
MAGA means make America great again.
It's not reduce taxes again, or make us totally free individuals again, or do whatever you want again, or whatever.
It's not.
It's make America great.
National greatness, which is a push against this multipolar world where America does not have any power anymore.
You know, that's the big fight here, okay?
And Trump, channeling Ronald Reagan's campaign line, has really repopularized this idea of American greatness.
Now, do Americans really want to be the global hegemon anymore?
That remains to be seen on the left and the right.
But that is what the battle is going to be about.
And we're up against some pretty serious people.
You know, I talk a lot on my show about the squishes.
The sort of spineless jellyfish, Adam Kinzinger, former Congress lady, future president in her own mind, Liz Cheney.
It's the kind of behavior you would never dream of engaging in or modeling to your son or daughter, and yet the numbers are in.
Most of you squished this very morning.
Did you know?
You probably didn't even know you were doing it.
You might be squishing right now if you are still not shaving with a Jeremy's razor.
If you're still using one made by a company that has explicitly said that you are toxic, you are, one, shaming yourself.
You are, two, funding those radical gender ideologues who wish that you would just disappear down a drain with your unwanted stubble.
Don't squish on the truth.
Switch to Jeremy's Razors and get your Founders Series Shave Kit today.
Go to jeremysrazors.com.
Make the switch.
Speaking of an absolutely incoherent and sort of absurd worldview, moving beyond the World Economic Forum for a moment, the libs are just shameless.
On this issue of transgenderism now, in particular, the libs are just freaking shameless.
They've been pushing the transing of a lot of people and of the kids specifically.
They say, yeah, we're going to pump you full of cross-sex hormones and chop off your genitals, and that'll be really, really good.
And it's actually a human right to get your genitals chopped off by some quack doctor.
And the conservatives are the ones who say, no, no, no, don't do that!
That's bad!
That's harmful!
That violates the Hippocratic Oath!
That is just absolutely evil!
You should never mutilate somebody like that!
That's really harmful to them!
They say, how dare you!
How dare you say that?
This is a human right to have your genitals lopped off and have you be pumped full of chemicals that give you osteoporosis and sterilize you.
That's a human right, and it's good, gender-affirming health care.
Until now they're making the opposite argument.
Because now some people are saying, okay, look, fine, if we have to go along with the transgender madness and we have to let the boys into the girls' room and have the boys compete on the girls' swim team, okay, well, if you're forcing transgenderism on us, then at the very least you have to say that the boys who compete on the girls' swim team, in order to not have a completely unfair advantage...
They at least need to go through the transition surgery, right?
They at least need to take all those hormones you're telling us that they need.
And they at least need to chop off their genitals.
They can't, if they're going to do it, and again, I'm not saying that they should do it, but if they're going to do it, then they at least have to actually do it, right?
And now the libs are coming back and they're saying, no, how dare you?
That gender surgery, that's akin to torture.
You can't force anyone to have that gender surgery.
That gender surgery is horrible.
Because they're lopping off your genitals and pumping you full of chemicals and sterilizing you and giving you osteoporosis and stuff.
Wait, wait, wait!
That was the argument I was just making.
You're just...
When I was just making that argument against transgenderism broadly, you told me to shut up and I was evil and that I was violating human rights.
But now that it's convenient for you...
Now that we're saying, okay, if you're going to do it, at least you've got to go the whole way.
Now that it's convenient for you, you're acknowledging that I was right in the first place.
This is what the Associated Press has done.
AP has said, in scores of countries, including parts of the US, transgender people must undergo painful, complex surgeries that often render them sterile before their genders are legally recognized, a practice human rights groups have condemned as torture.
Dubbed torture, ID policies leave transgender people sterile.
There's a very long article in the Associated Press about how the transgender surgery is so awful.
And that's why we shouldn't make transgender people do it.
If the transgender surgery is torture, Thank you.
If it is disordered, if it is unhealthy, if it causes undue pain, then all of those things would be true whenever someone has the surgery.
It cannot be the case that the surgery is good, wonderful, necessary health care when someone wants it, And evil, torture, painful, scary, disordered, torturous when someone doesn't totally want it.
The surgery itself has to be one thing or the other.
It cannot simultaneously be contradictory things.
That would violate the law of non-contradiction.
But this is, in some ways, the logic of transgenderism just applied broadly to the very nature of reality.
You're saying, no, everything only is whatever I identify it to be.
Whenever I identify it to be that thing.
And when the way I identify it changes, then the reality changes as well.
It's a way of saying that There is no such thing as objective reality.
Every single thing, not just my own subjective self-perception, but everything out there in the whole world, including the surgery itself, is just whatever I say that it is, which is a kind of solipsism that creates a hell for people.
It puts people in their own hell and it throws society into hell.
And it just reminds you too, these people are completely disingenuous.
We can make logical arguments until we're blue in the face.
They don't care.
They are immune to logic.
Because they're saying that reality is not reality.
Reality is just whatever I want it to be.
That the exact same surgery can be It's necessary medical care and torture, depending on what I say, depending on when it is convenient for my argument, which is why we should not accept any of it.
Don't try to find a middle ground.
Don't say, well, okay, maybe, listen, people should be able to transgender themselves after the age of 18, but not before the age of 18, or maybe after the age of 12, but not before the age of 12, or now it's like the age of 8 or something.
No, there's no middle ground.
Just say no.
No.
And it also reminds us that politics that only is about consent is preposterous.
It can't just be, well, it's torture or it's affirming good, healthy medical care based on your consent.
No, no, no.
Your consent has nothing to do with it.
Consent is an important category on its own, but it has nothing to do with the nature of that thing.
It's the same argument that when a mother wants a baby, it's a beautiful baby.
When a mother doesn't want a baby, it's a stupid clump of cells that doesn't mean anything.
No, your desires do not dictate reality.
Okay, your desires have a relationship with reality, and your desires should actually be molded by reality, okay?
Not the other way around.
Speaking of children, a woman just went viral on TikTok.
This is so sad.
This is so, so sad.
It's a woman who went viral on TikTok giving a eulogy for her recently deceased father.
Here's what she had to say about her dad.
But Dad, please know that while I am grateful and highly aware of all that you've given this family, I still don't miss you.
When you died, I felt like there was a hole.
I missed something, but it wasn't you.
It was the idea of what you had become.
I missed being able to hope and wish that one day you'd turn a corner and see the world from my perspective.
I missed the idea that one day you might help me fight for the things that matter.
I missed my fantasy of you.
Because when you died, it solidified the fact that you'll never be what you could have been, but only what you are.
And what you are is a racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, Trump-loving, cis-straight, white man.
That is all you will ever be to me.
And Dad, before you tell me to respect the dead, please remember that you disrespected and disregarded the lives and deaths of entire communities of people with your ideology.
You told me to never back down, so I won't.
You know for a fact that even against you, I'm not afraid to share my peace.
You are everything I aspire not to be, and I refuse to stand up here and sing the praises of a man who is the paradigm of white supremacy.
So I'll take your racist mindset, I'll take your money, and I'll take your advice.
And I swear to God I will make this world a better place, not at all because of you, but in exact opposition to you.
Shocking, of course, but it really shouldn't be shocking.
This is what happens in totalitarian regimes, in the total state.
This is what happens, that children are turned against their parents.
This is one of the final stages of family breakdown, when the regime, when the ruling ideology is able really to crack that family in half.
And there has been a very concerted effort for at least 60 years now to destroy the American family by a strategic political left that has succeeded every single step of the way because it met with feckless resistance from the right, the right which...
Which also retreated from defense of the family as the fundamental political unit and embraced a bunch of platitudes about how society is really just about the individual and do whatever you want, just don't make me pay for it.
And so they conceded the whole culture and they conceded that fundamental unit and now you've got whiny kids attacking their fathers, which is nothing new, but to do so during a eulogy after the fathers died, that really would be...
It's unusual.
And it's going to become more and more usual, unfortunately.
And this is the kind of stuff that we are fighting right now.
And so when candidates come up in 2024, I suspect that the lesson that the establishment media wants us to take from the midterms We're good to go.
That a marriage is between a man and a woman.
You know, I said on this show that Republicans who vote for the radical redefinition of marriage to something other than what it has been for all of human history until five minutes ago should not be in the Republican Party because they obviously don't want to conserve anything.
And I had these people post about me on social media.
They said this is an extreme, radical, far-right, fascistic, absolute maniac who says this.
Why?
Because I expressed the view that Barack Obama held in 2011.
I expressed the view that the current Democrat president held 11 years ago.
Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, same thing.
That's how fast this is moving, okay?
And the candidates who just say, well, we're going to all come together and kumbaya, that's not going to do it, man.
People are looking around, they're saying, our country is being invaded.
That's what Greg Abbott's saying.
Our country doesn't have borders anymore.
You've got Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum saying...
We will destroy your hegemony and your culture and you will eat the bugs.
You've got the educators saying family is evil and we're going to redefine the family and don't listen to your awful parents.
We've got political leftists talking about taking kids away from parents if the parents won't transgender the kids and mutilate them and sterilize them.
And now they're admitting that these procedures that they previously defended do sterilize people and they are akin to torture.
They're absolutely right about that.
Those are the stakes in this election, okay?
And we need a big candidate with a big vision who is not just going to focus on one little issue or this little issue or even just domestic or just foreign policy.
We need a candidate who's going to take on the whole kit and caboodle.
Who is capable of that?
We will find out during a primary process.
You know, the rest of the show is going to continue now.
We talk about a story that really has fascinated me, the FTX collapse.
This is the second largest crypto exchange in the world.
It was run by the second largest donor to the Democrat Party during the midterm elections.
And it's this guy who prattles on and on and on about what a wonderful guy he is, Sam Bankman Freed.
And he's this...
This sort of holier-than-thou lib, this pre-name virtue signaler, and it turns out he's one of the biggest scam artists of the century.
The whole thing collapsed.
I don't know anything about crypto, so I'm interviewing Eric Voorhees, who is one of the OGs, truly one of the experts and leaders in the whole space.
