The State of Israel goes Old Testament on Iran, President Trump appears to flip on mass deportations, and Ron DeSantis says you can run over rioters.
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Should President Trump allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon?
Exactly the same numbers.
11% said yes, 89% said no.
Can you see the dilemma that President Trump was facing?
Those two things, especially as Steve Witkoff says that the diplomatic talks were not working, and they probably couldn't ever work, those two things were going to collide.
So last night, the state of Israel took matters into its own hands, sort of.
By launching a massive attack on Tehran.
Leaving all the rest of us thinking, are we once again in a regime change war in the Middle East?
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is the Michael Knowles Show.
So Nothing says thank you, Dad, like a year of common sense.
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What happened when I wanted to find out all the details of this Israeli attack on the Middle East?
Who did I ask?
You know, Professor Jacob, my Jewish associate producer.
So, here are the facts so far.
I mean, this is all happening in real time right now.
Israel attacked Iran last night.
This was after President Trump evacuated the embassies in the Middle East of American personnel.
So, the U.S. was telegraphing, something's going to happen in the Middle East.
And we all knew that there's zero appetite for the U.S. to get involved directly in a war with Iran.
So it was obviously going to be the state of Israel.
And that happened last night.
Now, up until it happened, a lot of people thought, okay, Israel's not going to do anything until Sunday.
Israel's not going to do anything until Monday.
I had very, very plugged-in people, very pro-Israel people telling me, nah, nothing's going to happen anytime soon.
And then it happened last night.
And it wasn't just a usual kind of...
No, this was a very serious attack.
They hit the capital of Iran, Tehran.
They hit a bunch of military sites in the area.
They hit Natanz, which is one of the main locations of the nuclear program.
They hit Tabriz, apparently another nuclear site.
They hit Isfahan, south of Tehran.
They hit Iraq, not Iraq, Iraq.
They hit Kurman Shah.
I'm sure I'm mispronouncing all of these names.
And this was all confirmed by Israeli and Iranian media.
They took out top Iranian military leaders, Hassan Salami, who was the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is kind of the main Iranian military group.
They took out Mohammed Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian military.
They also took out the commander of the Iranian military's central headquarters.
That would be Major General Gholamali Rashid.
They killed six nuclear scientists.
I mean, this is...
They get results.
Okay, so they took out six nuclear scientists.
The Iranian Fars News Agency is reporting that more than 70 people have been killed.
More than 320 were injured.
Interesting, actually, is when you think about the scope of this attack, you'd probably expect more people to be killed, except this was obviously all highly, highly targeted to take out top people, to cripple Iran's military, because this is clearly a regime change war.
This is not merely about going after the Iranian nuclear program or slowing down the malas in their pursuit of a nuclear bomb.
This is about regime change.
And you can kind of tell by the name of the operation.
They're calling this Operation Rising Lion.
Now, lion might refer to Judah, you know, in the state of Israel.
The lion is also the symbol of the Shah of Iran, who was deposed in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
So, Rising Lion, okay, you've got actually two symbols of the Shah of Iran, the lion and the sun.
So the rising lion, what is that?
That would seem to signify regime change.
Kicking out the malas, bringing back in the Shah of Iran, which, of course, in principle, everyone is fine with.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution was horrible for America.
It was because of Jimmy Carter's fecklessness that we allowed that to happen.
We allowed our old ally, the Shah, to be deposed.
That said, I think most Americans, rightly, Are very skeptical of even more regime change in the Middle East because it really hasn't worked out very well for us.
And even we recently had regime change in Syria.
I was one of the few voices on the right saying that actually Bashar al-Assad, for all his sins, was probably better than a lot of the people who could replace him.
Nevertheless, clearly the Israelis are aiming at regime change here.
So what does Trump think?
What does America think?
Trump is supportive of it for now.
We will get to what Trump has to say about it.
Trump has very interesting comments.
They seem to be a little bit contrary to what Secretary of State Marco Rubio is saying.
We'll get to all of that in one second.
Just first, though, before we get into any of this, were the attacks justified?
Was the state of Israel justified in hitting Iran?
However, I think you've got to go through the criteria here.
To be a just war, the belligerent nation has to have just cause, legitimate authority, right intention.
It has to be the last resort.
Diplomacy has to have failed.
It has to be proportional.
There has to be good probability of success.
There are some other aspects that you can sometimes bring into just war theory, which comes all the way from antiquity.
So let's ask, was there a just cause?
That's the first question.
Was there a just cause?
Well, what Israel would say is, Iran was days or weeks away from getting a nuclear weapon.
And everyone has to take this with a grain of salt because we've been hearing since the 1980s that Iran is weeks or months away from getting a nuclear weapon.
And that hasn't happened yet.
Now, in part, that hasn't happened yet, perhaps because...
And by the way, even Netanyahu was saying Israel's really more like months to a year away from getting a working nuclear weapon.
So that's even coming from Netanyahu.
Okay, that part, maybe yes, maybe no.
At the very least, though, you would say Iran vowing to destroy the state of Israel, Iran funding terrorism all around the world, but...
Iran, clearly, I think, at least desiring to make a nuclear weapon, means that the Israeli attack is not so much preemptive as it is self-defense.
Kind of like a guy, if a guy reaches for a gun in his pocket, you have the right to shoot that guy.
It's not really even preemptive of you to shoot that guy.
It's really more in self-defense.
If a guy has a gun out and he's about to pull the trigger on you, you have the right to shoot him.
If a guy's down there reaching for his gun, you have the right to shoot him.
So just cause, I think, basically the state of Israel is in a decent position there.
Legitimate authority.
Some people, including Iran, deny that the state of Israel is a legitimate authority.
But I think- They've won a lot of wars since.
The UN says that they're a state.
The British Empire, the group we used to know is the British Empire, which had authority over mandatory Palestine.
They said Israel had some kind of right to exist there.
So I don't know.
I think it's a legitimate authority.
Right intention?
I think the intention is to stop Iran's nuclear program.
I guess that's right intention.
Now, that might be used slightly as an excuse for the broader goal of regime change, which makes that slightly dubious, but I still think they're basically in the clear of their last resort.
look, they have tried diplomacy, or at least the United States has tried diplomacy.
And Steve Witkoff, the Trump intermediary on Iran, seems to be suggesting, yeah, look, the Iranians are not going for a deal.
And by the way, of course they're not going for a deal.
Because if the United States is saying, look, Then, if I'm the mullahs in Iran, I've got to go look at Libya and say, hold on, isn't that what you said to Gaddafi?
You said, give up your nuclear program, and we won't depose you.
And then what happened?
Things didn't work out very well for you, Gaddafi, so I can't trust that promise.
I get it, but the upshot of all of it is, you're probably not going to get a deal.
So, okay, it might very well be last resort.
Was it proportional?
Yeah, I would say the goods to be achieved were probably proportional to the ends used.
Doesn't seem like civilians exactly were targeted.
Depends on how you classify nuclear scientists, I guess, but I wouldn't say that's exactly a civilian target.
Probability of success, as I mentioned earlier, say what you will about the Israelis, they get the job done, so I think there's good probability of success.
All of that to say, preemptive war is almost certainly not justified, depending on how you define preemptive.
I hate to sound like Bill Clinton and prevaricate.
Well, it depends on what the meaning of is is.
But in this case, if you're saying, look, this group has vowed to destroy me as a nation and they are, at the very least, pursuing a weapon that poses an existential threat to my country, I think you have just cause.
I think that's pretty clear.
Now, what about the U.S.?
My chief concern as an American is I don't want to get dragged into this regime change war.
Because some of the propaganda that's going to surround this program, or this attack, is that actually Israel is just standing up for all of civilization, and this isn't really just about an existential threat to Israel, it's about the whole world, and I don't totally buy that.
There are bad countries that have nuclear weapons.
Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
Pakistan harbored Osama bin Laden for 10 years.
North Korea has nuclear weapons.
Okay, the reason that Israel carried out this attack It's because the state of Iran poses an existential threat to the state of Israel.
I get that.
So that means that my view as an American is I would like to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, but I really, really don't want the United States to be involved in a regime change war in the Middle East because it doesn't work out well for us.
It could derail the Trump agenda.
So where do we stand on this?
Rubio and Trump both weigh in.
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The United States first has denied involvement.
So we have Marco Rubio here, secretary of state, and this has been posted on the White House social media.
We are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.
Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense.
President Trump and the administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners.
Let me be clear.
Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.
Okay.
Okay.
Fine.
Fair enough.
Practically speaking, that statement won't matter to Iran.
Because practically, in the eyes of Iran, there's no difference between Israel and the United States.
In the eyes of Iran, Israel is a client state of the United States in the Middle East.
And fair enough.
I mention a lot.
We're the global hegemon.
We're an empire.
And that's true.
The state of Israel probably would not exist without So Iran's not going to care about that statement.
I see why the Secretary of State is trying to distance us.
Saying, look, we're not involved.
We're trying to pursue diplomacy.
We're not.
Don't hit our sights.
But when push comes to shove, basically all Iran's going to have to do is hit American sights.
Which would probably be existential for the Iranian regime, no matter what public opinion says in the United States.
But it's a thorny situation.
Rubio clearly trying to create big distance between the U.S. and Israel.
Trump?
Not so much.
Trump comes out and he says, first of all, before these strikes even happen, he was asked about it.
He said, look, we're going to see what's going to happen.
Look, we're going to see what's going to happen.
We're going to see.
He said, but Iran's not going to get a weapon.
Then, after the State Department's statement last night, this morning, I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal.
I told them in the strongest of words to just do it.
But no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done.
I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told.
That the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world by far.
And that Israel has a lot of it.
With much more to come.
So not just...
We make the weapons.
Israel's going to use the weapons.
But also, we're going to keep giving Israel weapons.
So he is basically backing up the view that is certainly held by the Iranian regime.
Namely, Israel is our client state in the Middle East, and we back them in this action.
That's a very different statement than you saw out of the State Department.
Much more to come, and they know how to use it.
Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but they didn't know what was about to happen.
They are all dead now.
Oh, man.
Talk about ratcheting up the rhetoric.
Iranian hardliners spoke bravely.
So he's actually showing them some respect.
He goes, look, the Iranians tried to get it done.
I'm granting them the respect that they tried to get it done, but they couldn't quite bring themselves to do it.
And there were hardliners who spoke bravely.
I'm admitting they had courage.
This is kind of the way Crusaders talked about Saladin, okay, in the Middle Ages.
He's saying, look, Iran, I respect you.
And I know you're trying to get something done here.
And I respect how tough you were talking to us.
Okay, I respect that.
But you don't have the cards.
And the guys who talk the toughest are all dead right now.
Because of Israel using American weapons with American backing.
So, he says they're all dead now and it will only get worse.
There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal.
Come to an end.
Iran must make a deal before there's nothing left.
Now you're talking about glassing the country or something?
That is an escalation of rhetoric you wouldn't hear from Netanyahu.
And save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.
I think he's hearkening back to Persia, ancient Persia, even before Islam existed.
Certainly long before the Islamic Revolution.
Iran, it's not just Islam.
Islam is relatively, you know, by historical standards, a novel thing in Persia.
There is a history in Persia.
These great eastern empires before Islam, before Muhammad.
No more death, no more destruction.
Just do it before it's too late.
God bless you all.
So here you're seeing an interplay.
A little good cop, bad cop between the United States and Israel.
Because Israel is saying, hey, Mullahs, hey, Ayatollah.
We're not just after the nuclear sites.
They're not saying this explicitly, but they might as well be.
They're saying, we're going to topple your whole regime, just like we did in Syria.
We're going to topple your whole regime.
You're going to be out of power for the first time since 1979.
And then Trump is coming in, and he's saying, maybe not.
Hey, don't worry.
I'll talk to my Jewish friends over there.
Maybe we can work out a deal, but you've got to come to the table and give us a nuclear deal right now.
If you want to stay in power.
So this is not really a statement for the Iranian people.
This is a statement specifically to the clerics who are in charge in Iran, who are apparently not that good at running the country because they let the Israelis really run roughshod over them last night.
And it's already a fairly weak regime because of the sanctions.
So I see a little good cop, bad cop here.
But very interesting how the American strategy has shifted.
Last night, Hey, that's Israel.
We have nothing to do with it.
Don't hit us.
Stop it.
We don't want anything to do with this.
Then Trump comes in.
Yeah, hey, look, we're on board, man.
And we're going to be on board even more.
And frankly, we're even on board for regime change if you don't come to the table.
Big, big shift.
Now, speaking of big shifts out of the Trump administration, beyond the Iran news, there's a big shift in the immigration policy.
Trump comes out yesterday.
I go away for one day.
I was on the PBD show yesterday.
If you want to check that out, it was a great, great time on the PBD show.
You can go check it out at the Patrick David YouTube channel.
As I'm over there, Trump comes out and seems to do a 180 on the mass deportation policy.
Remember, before yesterday afternoon, the policy was, we're going in, we're rounding up everybody.
It started out, we're just going to go for criminals.
Then it came into, we're going to round up everybody.
Now Trump pulling that back, he sent out this statement first, then he doubled down on it.
He said, our great farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good long-time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.
In many cases, the criminals allowed into our country by the very stupid Biden open borders policy are applying for those jobs.
This is not good.
We must protect our farmers.
But get the criminals out of the USA, changes are coming.
Okay, so this statement is a confounding statement for a lot of people.
He says, look, we're arresting a lot of illegals.
There's, what, 11 to 16 million illegals in the country.
Some of them, a minority, are violent criminals.
Basically, all of them have worked with violent criminals to get into the country because the violent criminals control the border.
They're all criminals to some degree because they broke our laws and came into the country.
He said, we're arresting people who are illegal aliens who shouldn't be here, and it's taken away good workers from people, and the people who are taking those jobs are violent criminals.
Even though the violent criminals are the first group that we're supposed to be rounding up, but now we're not going to focus on the supposedly more innocent illegal aliens.
We're only going to focus on the violent criminals.
Okay, it caused a lot of people to scratch their heads.
Trump was asked about this at a press conference.
Here's what he had to say.
What made you change your mind about targeting in California farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business?
Well, we're not targeting.
In fact, if you look today, I put out a statement today about farmers.
Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers.
They've worked for them for 20 years.
They're not citizens, but they've turned out to be, you know, great.
And we're going to have to do something about that.
We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not.
And you know what's going to happen and what is happening?
They get rid of some of the people because, you know, you go into a farm and you look and people don't, they've been there for 20, 25 years and they've worked great and the owner of the farm loves them and everything else.
And then They end up hiring the people, the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else.
So we're going to have an order on that pretty soon, I think.
We can't do that to our farmers, and leisure too, hotels.
We're going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.
Okay, so he's doubling down on it.
says, look, we're not, basically, we're not doing mass deportations.
I mean, we're only going to focus on the violent criminals and the But then he sent out this Truth Social post.
Biden let 21 million unvetted illegal aliens flood into the country from some of the most dangerous, dysfunctional nations on Earth, many of them rapists, murderers, and terrorists.
This tsunami of illegals has destroyed public schools, hospitals, parks, community resources, and living conditions.
They've stolen American jobs.
Now, hold on.
Hold on.
You could understand they're rapists, they're murderers.
Okay, then he's just talking about the violent criminals.
They've stolen American jobs.
Hold on, I thought, but the ones who have taken American jobs, it seemed like Trump just said during the press conference, those guys get to keep their jobs because the employers want them to have those jobs, and we're not going to deport them because we want them to keep their jobs.
But here, he's inveighing against those very same people for taking American jobs.
Not the violent criminals, but the peaceful ones who nevertheless broke the law and took American jobs.
Now we've got to really scratch our heads.
Consumed billions of dollars in free welfare, turned once idyllic communities like Springfield, Ohio, into third world nightmares.
I campaigned on and received a historic mandate for the largest mass deportation program in American history.
Polling shows overwhelming public support for getting the illegals out.
That's exactly what we will do.
As commander-in-chief, I'll always protect and defend the heroes of ICE and Border Patrol, whose work has already resulted in the most secure border in American history.
Anyone who assaults these people will do hard time in jail.
Those who are here illegally should either self-deport using CBP Home app or ICE will find you and remove you.
Saving America is not negotiable.
Okay.
Okay.
Seems like these are contradictory things.
Which is why I think the most important takeaway line is the line that Trump said in that press conference.
We're going to have to use a lot of common sense.
The Trump deportation policy is not going to be purely ideological.
It's not going to fit on the back of a napkin.
It is going to be grounded on the paramount political virtue, which is prudence.
I think Trump is trying to signal to a lot of different groups that he gets their concerns and he's going to have to come to some kind of conciliatory, prudential solution.
But at the very least, he is signaling an important fact for his administration.
He was elected on mass deportations.
He won the popular vote on mass deportations.
He won 46% of Hispanics.
On mass deportations.
And mass deportations means you're not only focusing on the guys with face tattoos.
Mass deportations means mass deportations.
I think Trump is signaling that.
And so you're going to have all the Trump haters today trying to nitpick him from every single side.
My view is Trump is at least telling us he knows why he was elected.
He knows the meaning of the phrase mass deportations.
Let him cook a little bit.
If he were signaling that he did not understand that fact, then I think you'd need a lot more pushback.
You'd need to clarify things.
He gets it, man.
He's a very shrewd politician.
He's like a generational political genius.
He gets it.
But it's important for all of us to keep that in mind, too.
Everyone wants to deport all the illegals except the ones they know.
Everyone wants to deport all the illegals except their gardener.
And that makes sense.
If an illegal alien came to my door and said, hey, Tom Holman is on the way, can I hide in your attic?
I guess I'd say sure, as a matter of personal charity.
I would also then vote for Trump a thousand times and I might donate money to help Tom Holman get all the illegals.
Those things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Trump is dealing with the tension between those things as president.
I think he still gets it.
Mass deportations are a majority popular mainstream political issue, and the Trump administration has a mandate to carry them out.
Hold on, much more, much more to come, much more insight, wisdom, joy, levity.
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Okay.
Now, speaking of the Trump administration apparently flipping policies, Trump also came out and he said, Is it right after saying, we're going to kick all the Chinese students out of the country, we're going to revoke their visas, they're spies, they're bringing biohazards in, we don't want them.
Trump said this.
I've always been in favor of students coming in from other countries.
That includes China.
And we have 500,000 Chinese students coming in.
I've always been in favor of it.
Does it mean you Yeah, you have to watch students, but you have to watch other people also.
I've always been strongly in favor of it.
I think it's a great thing.
It's also, it's good for our schools.
It's good for, I think it's good for our country.
I'm also in favor of having them stay.
I've been in favor of letting them stay.
If you get educated for four years, you're willing to get educated for four years.
I like people being able to stay.
You know, they have some great students.
Okay, so people, they're going to be in whiplash.
Their heads are going to be spinning.
Once again, this will not be the final word on the matter.
Trump will say something that will apparently contradict this probably next week or the week after because he's trying to get a trade deal with China.
That's what this is about.
So he's even acknowledging here.
He says, I'm all in favor of all these Chinese students here.
It doesn't mean you don't have to watch them.
So he's admitting.
He's saying, no, no, there's a risk.
There is a risk to bringing in these Chinese students.
And maybe we'll let them in and maybe we'll kick them out.
What kind of deal are you going to get us?
That's what's going on.
That's what's going on with the Chinese students issue.
That's what's going on with some of what he's saying about mass deportations.
That's what's going on in Iran.
Trump's chief political skill in these negotiations is unpredictability.
And it's worked out pretty well for him.
It's like what he talked about on Joe Rogan.
The guy likes to weave.
He weaves, okay?
He weaves back and forth.
So what's my view on the Chinese students?
My personal view on the Chinese students is it is a massive security concern because They can just get them in through foreign student visas.
So we do need to watch that.
We've got to watch the Confucius Institute stuff.
We also need to make sure that the Chinese Communist Party doesn't prop up the universities, many of which need to be pummeled by the federal government.
All of that remains true.
And also, we need to figure out some kind of trade deal with China, because China is one of our chief creditors.
And we need to make sure that the economy doesn't tank before the midterms and before Trump's just trying to work out a deal.
That's really what's happening.
You've got to take a lot of these statements as the tactical matters that they are.
When Trump speaks on these issues, I don't care if you're talking about tariffs, I don't care if you're talking about bombs, I don't care if you're talking about anything in the middle.
He's always moving for leverage.
That's what this is about.
Wherever the policy lands, the one thing I'm almost certain of, it will be different than what he said last week, and it will be different from what he said this week.
Speaking of threats, I've got to give a shout-out to the Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey, who's warning rioters that if they encircle vehicles in the street, if they try to shut down traffic, they're going to get run over.
So, I'm going to break it down for you, alright?
And if somebody wants to know what I mean by turn violent, alright?
This is what I mean.
If you resist lawful orders, you're going to jail.
Let me be very clear about that.
If you block an intersection or a roadway in Brevard County, you are going to jail.
If you flee arrest, you're going to go to jail tired because we are going to run you down and put you in jail.
If you try to mob rule a car in Brevard County, Gathering around it, refusing to let the driver leave.
In our county, you're most likely going to get run over and dragged across the street.
If you spit on us, you're going to the hospital and in jail.
If you hit one of us, you're going to the hospital and jail and most likely get bitten by one of our big, beautiful dogs that we have here.
If you throw a brick, a fire.
We're not going to play.
This has got to stop.
This has got to stop.
So this is the sheriff saying, look, if you mess around in these riots, if you get out of hand, we're going to hurt you, we're going to arrest you, and we might kill you.
That's we, law enforcement.
Ron DeSantis goes further.
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, comes out.
He says, hey, if you're a rider and you really get out of hand here, not only might law enforcement kill you with immunity, ordinary citizens might do it too.
And we also have a policy.
That if you're driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety.
And so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that's their fault for impinging on you.
You don't have to sit there and just be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets.
You have a right to defend yourself in Florida.
Really rah-rah about this policy just out of their base passions.
They're going to say, yeah, that's right, go get those protesters.
But Ron DeSantis is a reasonable guy.
He's a very grounded, reasonable guy.
And I think this policy is grounded and reasonable.
Even though it sounds so provocative.
Wait, hold on, you get to run over protesters if they're surrounding your car in the street?
Yes, that's reasonable.
That doesn't come from wrath.
That doesn't come from a knee-jerk reaction.
That's reasonable.
Put yourself in the position of a parent.
He's driving his car.
He's got his little kids in the back seat.
And these violent leftists surround your car.
We know many times in the past they drag people out of their cars when they surround you.
There's no good reason for people on their feet to be surrounding your car.
What do you do?
You have a responsibility to protect your kids.
The reasonable thing to do is try not to run these people over, but...
The reasonable thing to do is to run them over.
It's the tumistic principle of double effect.
You're not trying to run these people over.
You're trying to get your own kids out of danger, and you have a responsibility to do that, and the double effect of that might be that you've got to run some of them over.
This is absolutely right.
Imagine you've got a kid in the back of the car.
Your kid is in need of medical care.
You're driving to the hospital, and these lunatics shut down the freeway.
The responsible right thing to do is to drive your car, and if the protesters won't get out of the way, if the lunatic leftists won't get out of the way, well, you're going to put them out of the way.
That's the responsible right thing to do.
I want to see legislation like this in, at the very least, every red state around the country.
It's beautiful stuff.
I can't believe.
We didn't have time to get to the most important news story.
Namely, some random OnlyFans lady is attacking another OnlyFans lady for saying that OnlyFans, a pornography website, is no longer about women's empowerment.
Ah, how did we get...
We missed the thing that everyone's talking about.
Look, Monday.
You know I'm going to tease.
That'll be Monday.
Because right now, we get to my favorite time of the week.
The mailbag.
Our mailbag is sponsored by PureTalk at puretalk.com slash Knowles Canada WLAS to switch hassle-free in as little as 10 minutes.
Take it away.
Hello, Mr. Knowles.
I love the show and love the cigars.
I do have one of those am I the bad guy questions.
For Father's Day, my wife decided to surprise me a little bit early with a humidor.
Now, on this humidor is a silhouette of Che Guevara, which, as we all know, was not the greatest person.
Am I the bad guy for asking her to send the gift back because I do not want a portrait or symbol or silhouette of Che Guevara in my household?
Let me know what you think.
Thank you.
No, no, I don't think you are.
I think you could play it straight with your wife.
You should tell her, you say, oh man, this was a very thoughtful present.
Thank you so much.
I really wanted a humidor and this is a great humidor.
You know, one thing about it though, I'm going to have to swap out the humidor.
Don't say you're just going to return and get the money back.
I'm going to have to swap it out.
Same company, maybe, you know, I gotta swap it out.
Because, you probably didn't notice this, there's a communist animal who's, the face on there, that's not just a random guy, that's actually this crazy communist.
So, I gotta swap it out.
But this is a great gift, thank you, I love it, it's fabulous, we'll swap it out.
That's all you gotta say.
But you don't need to be afraid of your wife, or be so protective of your wife's feelings that you're not willing to tell her the truth.
It's okay.
That's cool.
I've done that with Sweet Lilies.
I usually keep gifts, but I say, oh, you know, this is great, but, you know, the pants are too tight.
Sorry, got to swap them out.
It's no big deal.
Next question.
Hi, Michael.
My name is Sinead.
I freaking love the Daily Wire.
There is just not enough time in the day to consume all of the content from podcast hosts, writers, all of it.
My question is about what you said about the Pope being a person who Catholics can look to for answers when you can't interpret something in the Bible in agreement.
And my question, well, first of all, thank you.
first time in my life understand what the Pope is for.
I'm a Protestant.
And secondly, my real question is where do, symbolizing that that's possible.
Thank you so much.
Looking forward to your answer.
Bye-bye.
Excellent, excellent questions.
So, how do we work out our salvation with fear and trembling?
Well, you know, we obviously do that because that's scriptural.
And so, you know, we pray, we worship God, we follow what God has told us to do, we avail ourselves of the sacraments, we don't presume our own salvation, though we have hope.
We, you know, we have to have a lot of humility and awe and wonder, which is the beginning of wisdom, holy fear.
So, that's what we do.
Then, how do we go directly to God?
Well, I'll give you a good example of this.
I, at least once a week, go see God in physical matter in the Holy Eucharist.
I go directly to our Lord, who is present for us on the altar of the Mass, the highest sacrifice.
So that would be one way that I go directly to God.
Now, I know it's a little bit of a cheeky answer in the sense that you might be asking, well, hold on.
No, I'm asking, how do you go to God without priests and without sacraments and without churches?
But I think, actually, your question is more profound than that.
We obviously want to go directly to God.
How do we go to God?
Well, God gives us some ways.
I mean, our Lord says to us, hey, this bread, this is my body, which is given up for you.
This wine, this is my blood.
Do this in memory of me.
And then he explains what that means in John chapter 6 when he says, those who do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood have no life in him.
Truly I say to you, the flesh of the Son of Man is true food and his blood is true drink.
You have to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
And this confounded the Jews and some of the disciples and they went away.
And then Peter says, He doesn't go away, and our Lord says, why haven't you gone away?
This is a hard saying, and all these other people went away.
Why didn't you go away?
And he says, well, Lord, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of life.
And our Lord says, that's right, this was revealed to you by my Father, and you, Peter, I give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
You are now no longer Simon, you're Peter, and on this rock I'll build my church.
So, going directly to God might look a little different than we think it does in abstract liberal modernity.
To me, going directly to God?
If I have to choose between a kind of merely mental action and a tangible sacramental fact, to me, one of those seems much more direct than the other.
And then in terms of confessing my sins directly to God, I do that.
I also do that.
And I pray to God, acts of contrition.
But our Lord also says to the apostles, he says, hey, you have the power to forgive sins.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven.
Whose sins you retain are retained.
So in that case, our Lord is asking us, Or is empowering his apostles, and they choose to have successors, and we've had that since the apostolic age.
He says, hey, go out there and act as my representative to forgive sins and to retain sins.
So, you know, it gets back to your first question about fear and trembling.
How do we work out our salvation with fear and trembling?
We worship God, not merely in the way we want to, but in the way he wants us to.
Because God wants to be worshipped.
In certain ways.
This is the purpose of the book of Leviticus.
This is the point of the book of Leviticus and the book of Numbers.
He shows us this figuratively in the Old Testament, and he shows us this in the New Testament, which is journalism.
And the Acts of the Apostles is a history.
It tells you how this is done in the physical, tangible world.
And I think it's good to have humility to say, all right, well, God, how do you want me to worship you?
How would you like me to come to you?
Because however God wants us to come to him is going to be best for us.
It's going to be better than our own answers.
So anyway, that's my long-winded answer to your simple question.
Next question.
Hello, Michael.
My sister-in-law is currently pregnant as a surrogate.
I have two kids myself, ages two and three.
The way I see it is I have kind of two options.
I guess my first question, my first option would be, As tough as that would be, that would mean missing niece's birthday parties, maybe Thanksgiving, stuff like that.
So I don't know if that's a good idea either.
But pretty soon she's going to start showing.
My kids are going to see.
They're and pregnant.
They're going to know what that means and they're going to ask all the right questions.
I just don't know if I'm going to have all the right answers.
So any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Yeah, maybe you should.
You know, if you said, Michael, should I cut out my sister entirely?
I'd say, no, probably not.
But I think you might want to be prudent here.
I don't know if you live near your family.
You know, I don't live near my, neither my wife nor I are near our families, our respective families.
It wouldn't be that hard.
We go seven months without seeing members of our family all the time.
That wouldn't be hard at all.
For you, if you live down the street, it might be a little trickier, and that might involve a different calculation.
But you might explain to your sister, look, there's a real risk of scandal here.
I know that you are doing the surrogate thing for the best of intentions, but I think it's really morally dubious.
I don't want to scandalize my kids.
Our Lord tells us those who scandalize the little ones should have a millstone tied around their neck.
Scandalizing, especially scandalizing innocent little ones is a big, big deal.
Our Lord speaks bluntly and directly about not all that many things in the Bible, and that's one of them.
So you might say, look, no knock on you.
I know you did it with the best of intentions.
We can have a long conversation at some point, if you like, about the ethics of surrogacy, but we might need to chill out.
We might need to miss a couple.
But we'll see you next year.
We can talk about it then if you want.
Maybe that's what I would do.
Okay.
Do we have one more voicemail bag question?
Hey, Michael.
First time, long time.
So, I'm 17, right?
And in class, we're working on our college essays.
So, I was wondering if you had any knowledge, any tips, right?
I know you're extremely smart about these things, on how to do effective self-reflection and really write the most.
Deep and impactful college essay that I can.
I mean, how else am I going to get into your alma mater, right?
Thank you so much, Nick.
Great question.
And I do mean to be pedantic and condescending in here.
Never use the word impactful.
Do not use it.
Everyone uses it.
Don't use it.
It's a silly word.
It's full of impact.
How is a thing full of impact?
It's a bad word.
It's one of my least favorite words.
I much prefer many racial slurs to the I word.
Impact.
Don't use it.
And don't seek to write the most deep, profound, heartbreaking work of staggering essay, personal statement, when you're doing your application.
You should write an appropriate essay.
You're not writing Anna Karenina here.
That's the mistake a lot of students make.
They want to bring their reader to tears.
Subtlety is good.
Less is more often in prose.
I wrote my college admissions essay about how much I love cigars.
Why?
It seems like the last thing you should write about.
Because it's something I was passionate about.
It said something about my personality.
It allowed me to have a little levity.
It allowed me to have a little seriousness because I wrote about the Cubans and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
It allowed me to show a little bit of an artistic side.
It had all of these things.
But it was appropriate.
It's the kind of essay that an 18-year-old or a 17-year-old could reasonably write.
I think it was, by the standards of a 17 or 18-year-old, it was a really good essay, relatively.
But it wasn't the memoir of a 45-year-old.
It wasn't trying to be that.
Don't make it try to be that.
Don't be grandiose.
Don't be pretentious about it.
Don't be just give a simple, You like playing ukulele?
I don't know.
What do you like?
You like playing pinochle?
Are you interested in your great-grandpa's war medals?
I don't know.
Just have it be something offbeat.
Put yourself in the shoes of the person who's reading this essay.
Think about all the essays they're reading, all the grandiose, pretentious, overly written nonsense, you know, ugh.
And say, what would be refreshing?
What would be exciting for that person to read?
Okay, what can I write about that could be good and passionate?
Then the other thing is, use an economy of words.
Keep it tight.
Close up space.
Read Strunk and White, if you haven't already.
It's like a 50-page book on how to write well.
And if you just read that book, you will write better than 99.9999% of the people you're competing with to get a job, to get a spot at the university.
